I wouldn’t say I blame the quarantine, but my roommates and I are digging a grave in our basement. We won’t need it right away (we’re young and strong and still able to create value for shareholders), but eventually it’ll come in handy. The concrete was the hard part. Chipping away at it with pickaxes like railroad workers of old. We brought a TV downstairs and put on the news to motivate ourselves. Death toll, community spread. Pundits speculating about how many Americans should be executed to boost the Dow.
I should clarify that the grave has little to do with the virus and more to do with what the folks on the TV aren’t saying. About a nation-sized machine that feeds on blood. About the scale on which our hearts are weighed against bars of gold and the hearts are always heavier.
We hit a pipe and cold water sprayed out, smelling of lead. I think it would have drowned us if it had kept flowing, but someone shut it off before it got the chance—a kindness which muddles the metaphor a little, but I guess I can forgive it.
We switched to shovels then. Dredging thick muck and tossing it aside. Water sloshed against an outlet and the TV died and the cord caught on fire. We were all thankful for that.
We’re nearly finished now. The hole isn’t six feet, but should be enough for the three of us. We thought about separate graves, but what’s the use in that? When it’s our turn to feed the machine, just dump us in the hole and cover it so we don’t spread anything. But please remember to put coins in our mouths to pay the ferryman. No room in the afterlife for freeloaders.
–Shane Inman