The Social-less Man

April 8, 2020 Jim Dolan Jr.

I find myself writing this short piece thinking that we are living in a time that is far worse than being engrossed in the reading of horror novels written by Stephen King and Dean Koontz.

Unlike those novels, the book that I am living is not yet finished and its villain is not human.

In fact, the villain is invisible.  Its author, by choosing to remain anonymous, is just as sinister and almost as heartless.  He has chosen to release his book only a page at time to his craving audience and only one day at a time.  Each new page he writes is more frightening than the previous days, leaving his readers more anxious for his following day’s page.  We want to ask the author: “Will the book end in 300, 400, 500 or more pages?”, but even the author is not sure.

His unseen villain does not select his prey with marksman like precision and one bullet at a time.  No, his villain prefers a much more effective means of getting and holding our attention, as the readers all become potential killers and victims and for some of us, we will unfortunately become both.

He notes how innocently it all began.  One undiagnosed carrier, subsequently passing it on to an unsuspecting relative, friend or perhaps even a stranger.

With each passing day, the victim count grows in leaps and bounds until the numbers are growing exponentially with each passing update and each new page.

People have become frightened to go outside as everyone, family members, friends, unknown persons, might be the enemy, and everything, a door handle, shopping cart, an unsuspecting cough, a gentle bumping, an amorous touch on a face, could be a weapon.

The author has us walking in fear, finding ourselves even crossing streets to avoid oncoming people approaching us on our favourite side.  We are like robots at the store, following directions to enter and leave by different doors.  Trance like, we follow recently laid out directional mazes that guide us up and down the aisle of our chosen products, always cautious to stay six feet behind the potential enemy in front of us, sometimes glancing backwards to see if we are being encroached from behind.

We slide our income tax returns between the doors of our trusted tax accountant, afraid to engage in the simplest of face to face conversations.  We have replaced porch parties with online drinking dates hoping that our cell phone batteries won’t go dead all at once, just before we decide to raise a toast to our isolation.

Recently, the author has so callously locked us in our own homes.  His actions make us feel like hardened prisoners in the most maximum of security prisons.  For us on the outside, it somehow feels even worse as he has made us terrified to even answer the door.

The author closes each day’s page with these words “Until tomorrow, It’s God’s Will”