The High Place

[yarri]

Prologue part two: “The radio makes hideous sounds.� Bob Dylan

The hand mike of the radio was heavy in my hand. I thumbed the talk button on. “My name is Doctor Achilles Jameson. Is anyone out there?

Static, I clicked the talk button on and off, more static. The cat opened his eyes staring at me, judging me. He opened up his long tooth mouth and meowed at me.

“Don’t look at me like that. I put it together right.�

The cat yawned rolling over stretching. I repressed the urge to toss him off my generator. I repressed the urge to argue with him like he was human. I was hungry for something, someone to talk too. It was cold in the room the cat was old. He wasn’t really hurting the generator. I left him on it and thumbed the switch on the hand set again.

“I don’t know who will hear this, it doesn’t matter. I’m alone in the high place in the city of Seattle. I think I might be the last normal human left in the city since it happened. It happened. The word “It� to define an event of such magnitude that mankind’s very survival was placed in question. The word seems ill-fitting in retrospect.� The rain on the windows turned to sleet while my voice carried over the radio. I doubted anyone was out there listening but it didn’t lessen my need to talk.

I continued onward the words flowing out of me like a dam over flowing in a spring melt. “People always say when a tragic thing happens. Where were you when…? Me? I was in the heart of Seattle. It was the 4th of July and I was going to ask the woman I loved to marry me. Everything was planned out: the wine, a blanket, a firework filled night sky, and the ring.� I stopped for a moment pausing taking my thumb off the on switch of the hand set. I touched the Polaroid taped to the wall next to me. Bekka’s face smiled at me from it. I felt my chest tighten and my resolve strengthen. I had to continue telling what happened. My thumb pressed the talk switch.