Tales from the Pandemic
A collection of short fiction reflecting the experience of the pandemic
Issue 1: Saturday 18 December 2021
Welcome to the first issue of A Flash in the Pan! I hope you enjoy it. Like many things I do, it’s an experiment. Let’s see how it rolls.
The following three pieces were written for a Writing Group at my local library during 2020, the first year of the pandemic, when Melbourne suffered through 200 days of strict lockdown, and vaccines were not yet available.
Two of these pieces are pessimistic; one optimistic. While they are certainly not among the best things I’ve ever written, they do encapsulate my feelings at that moment in time. At the end are some notes about how I came up with the ideas.
The Hunter
(466 words)
The truth is, of course, there never was an end to this thing, never a day when you could say “it’s gone, let’s return to our normal lives”. People may believe that. But I know it’s still out there, prowling around in the dark.
I can hear it as I lie awake in the long slow hours after midnight. I lie there listening and I hear its sinister growls, so deep they make the floor tremble beneath the bed. Sometimes, during the day when I’m in the woods, I catch a glimpse of its sleek grey shape slipping between the trees in the distance, and once, as I walked the streets in the city, I saw it slipping behind a dumpster at the far end of an alley . When I ran there it was gone, of course. It’s too canny to be caught like that.
Oh yes, I’ve been out there every day in the woods, looking for the thing which has destroyed all of our lives. Destroyed my life at least. They laid me off at the factory. I used to be on the production line, making suitcases. No one buys them any more. No one’s going anywhere. So they ‘let me go’. Let me go. Makes it sound as though I’d been wanting to go and they had been holding me back because they loved me so much they couldn’t bear to part with me. Bullshit. They fired me, is what they did. And then the pathetic assistance from the government dribbled away and I found myself lining up at a food bank. Begging for charity, with so many others. Standing six feet apart, of course.
Well, enough. Today I decided to take things into my own hands. That thing out there has to pay for what it has done. It’s gotten away with all of this for too long.
So once the sun had set, I went to the wardrobe and dug out the camouflage jacket I’d bought back in college. Those were the days, when I thought it was funny to wear a military jacket while dangling a peace sign round my neck. Funny. Ha, ha.
In the hall closet was my father’s rifle, the one he bought ‘for hunting’ but which has enough firepower and ammo to stop a charging herd of buffalo, as he often boasted. I don’t know why he thought he would encounter such a thing around here, but I learned early on not to question anything my father said.
It felt good to pick up the heavy weapon. Made me feel strong. With this I knew I could destroy that thing out there, that monster which they say has caused five million deaths around the world. And counting. Well, it’s not going to get away with it any longer. There has to be justice.
And I’m just the man to deliver it.
© Copyright 2021 David R. Grigg. All rights reserved.
The Shadow Time
This is the shadow time:
……Behind us the bright light of the past,
…………Only the uncertain dark ahead.
This is the shadow time:
……Gone is the handshake, the hug, the kiss,
…………Now we must stand apart and sadly wave.
This is the shadow time:
……Gone are the footy crowds, the friendly crush at the pub,
…………Now we sit alone at home and stare at the box.
This is the shadow time:
……Gone are the joyful choirs, rehearsals too dangerous.
…………Now concerts are impossible to imagine.
This is the shadow time:
……Now we know which workers are truly essential:
…………The nurses, the teachers, the grocery staff.
……Essential, yet at the same time disposable,
…………Required to work, exposed, vulnerable.
This is the shadow time:
……Shall we give up to this Angel of Death
…………Those too old, too sick, too unloved?
……In truth we are all essential,
…………And none of us is disposable.
If we get through all this, we say,
……if my job is still there,
……if I get to keep my house,
……if I'm not evicted,
……if I can see my friends,
……hug Mum on Mother's Day;
……if I can go to the pub again,
……and the footy;
……if I can sing again,
……if I can go to a concert,
……or the theatre, or see a film;
……if I don't get sick;
……if I survive;
……if I'm still alive;
……perhaps when all this is over.
When? No one knows.
……This is the shadow time.
(290 words)
© Copyright 2021 David R. Grigg. All rights reserved.
Looking for a Silver Lining
(949 words)
Jamie checked the website yet again. The library was still closed, of course, but he checked his account anyway. There, glaring at him, was the hold he had placed two months ago on Silver Lining by Anne Sheffield. The conclusion of her Silver and Gold trilogy. He was number 1 in the queue to get the book, just as soon as it was returned by the previous borrower. But of course, with the pandemic shutting everything down, there was no way for the previous borrower to return the book.
Jamie slapped the table in frustration. The previous book had ended on a shattering cliff-hanger. He was dying to read the final book. He’d only discovered Anne Sheffield’s work in the library earlier in the year. Her books had been written way back in the 1980s, decades before Jamie was even born. The Silver and Gold trilogy was now out of print, he’d tried everywhere. With no ebook version ever produced, so far as he could tell. But the library had a set of the old volumes. If only he could get his hands on it!
Then he had an idea. He’d struck up a friendship with one of the librarians last year, and had his mobile number. He picked up his phone.
“Bob? It’s Jamie Deacon. Yeah, yeah. Look, I know you’re probably not meant to do this, but…”
It took quite a bit of persuasion. Bob wouldn’t give Jamie the contact details of the person who’d borrowed Silver Lining two months ago (“I’d get into big trouble over the privacy laws, Jamie”) but agreed to pass on a message.
Time passed, and Jamie fretted, hoping for some contact.
Finally, three days later, an email dropped into his inbox from xkdabc03@gmail.com: “xkdabc03 is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting” followed by the link and date: two days ahead. Two days! Jamie ground his teeth in frustration. Still, there was nothing else to do.
He waited impatiently for the meeting, and was at his computer a good half-hour before the scheduled time. “xkdabc03 has placed you in the Waiting Room”. Minutes passed slowly. He drummed his fingers and tried to occupy himself with something else.
Finally… the Zoom meeting started, a few minutes after the scheduled time. He was still in the Waiting Room. Another five minutes went by. The host was making a deliberate show of contempt, Jamie realised, annoyed. Finally, he was admitted. His own camera was on, but the person at the other end had their video turned off.
“Hello? Who am I speaking to? Can you turn your camera on?”
A soft voice replied. “Not yet. I want to check you out first.”
“Check me out?” Jamie lost his temper a little, something his mother often warned him about. “Look, this isn’t a drug deal. I’m just really, really keen to get hold of Silver Lining, which you borrowed ages ago. You must have finished it by now. I’m probably Anne Sheffield’s biggest fan.”
“No way.”
“Yes I…”
“No. I am. Quick, tell me the eight spells cast by Wizard Incantus in Gilded Cage when he’s facing the Molten Monster!”
“What? Oh, I… um, hang on…”
“Don’t you dare look them up. Quick! I can see what you’re doing. If you pick up the book I’m ending this call.”
He didn’t have the book, it had gone back to the library. Racking his memory, Jamie slowly recited the names of the spells. Well, seven of them at least. “I… I can’t think of any others. I’m sorry.”
The camera at the other end clicked on, revealing a narrow face, copper-coloured skin, brown eyes with an Asian look, black hair. A girl, a little younger than himself. Nice-looking. She glared at him a little as she spoke: “There were only seven spells. If you’d known the book better you could have told me that instantly. I’m Anne Sheffield’s biggest fan. Agreed?”
“I… yes. Yes, you are.”
Short silence. “What’s your name?” Jamie asked.
“Mayda. You’re Jamie, you told me so. How long have you been a Sheffield fan?”
“Only since the start of this year, when I picked up Silver Wings at the library.”
“Ha! Have you read her short story collection Thirty Pieces of Silver?”
“No, not yet. But I found an old paperback of her first novel Lead Weight in a second-hand bookshop. She wrote it in the 1960s.”
Mayda’s face came alive with interest. “Never heard of it. Are you sure..?”
“Yes, for sure. It has her photo on the back and everything. Look, I was wondering about Silver Lining… I know we’re all socially-distancing, but couldn’t you, you know, drop it off somewhere I could pick it up? I’d be really grateful. And I could lend you Lead Weight.”
“No.”
“No? Oh, come on, you must know how desperate I am to read it.”
“Yes. But we’re not going to do it that way. My father has a cardiac problem, he is really vulnerable to the virus, so none of us is leaving the house. Mum’s paranoid about it. We get everything delivered and then we disinfect it. And you can’t come here, you might bring the bug.”
“Look, I’d wear a mask and everything…”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. This is the way we’re going to do this. We’re going to have a Zoom meeting every night, same time as this. And I’ll read you Silver Lining. I’m a good reader, I’ve been reading aloud to my kid sister for years. I do all the voices and everything. And you can read me Lead Weight. We’ll take turns.”
Jamie didn’t take long to think about it. He liked the look of Mayda. And the thought of both getting to find out what happened in Silver Lining and getting to know this interesting girl better at the same time—well, he’d be crazy not to. And maybe after this pandemic thing was all over…
“It’s a deal,” he said.
© Copyright 2021 David R. Grigg. All rights reserved.
About the Stories
The Hunter:
This of course is a very dark take on the feelings we had in the early days about the virus, and was probably influenced by some then-recent report of a mass shooting in America (let’s be honest, when aren’t there such reports?)
The Shadow Time:
The prompt was something like: “write about how the pandemic makes you feel”, and for some reason that turned into a poem in my mind. Like all poetry this took quite a long time to get right, word by word.
Looking for a Silver Lining:
The stimulus prompt was along the lines of “write something optimistic set during the current pandemic”, or words to that effect. And we were directed to a writing prompt website, which gave me this:
Obviously such a meeting of my characters was out. But I came up very quickly with thoughts about how devoted readers were coping with library closures (at that stage we weren’t even allowed to return books we’d already borrowed, because of the fears then held about surface contamination).
Then the idea of “something optimistic” brought up the idea of a “silver lining”. How could I spin that? Seemed like it could be a good title for a YA novel. And that led on to the idea of a frustrated reader blocked from reading the latest title in a series by a favourite author. In these days of ebooks, it was a bit tricky to make it convincing that a book would be completely unobtainable (at least at reasonable cost), but I think I managed that.
Maybe you’d like to try your hand at writing a piece of fiction along these lines? If it’s short, you could post it as a reply to this post, otherwise post a link to your story on your own website. (Though I reserve the right to delete anything which I feel is offensive or a breach of another’s copyright).
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Hi David,
Great to read these little pieces - I really enjoyed them and they bring back memories of the first months of the pandemic. Perhaps posting these is the first step to rekindling your love of writing? By the way, in reference to the poem and the library piece - I always thought it said a lot about our society that during the lockdowns, liquor stores were considered an "essential" service but libraries were not.
I enjoyed these, thank you.