Modern Drama

“Is there any hope?” she asked me.

I didn’t know what to tell her. There’s always some hope, even though sometimes it’s slimmer than a piece of paper. We’d done everything we could think of but it hadn’t worked. All our standard operating procedures, all of them, had failed. We had worked out a dozen different alternatives, and not one of them had done any good.

The power had gone out. Our supplies were low, and only got lower in our desperate attempts to salvage something from the disaster that now faced us, bringing us even closer to our present, near-hopeless situation.

We all knew what faced us. One by one we would gradually succumb. One by one the madness would grip us, turning us into mindless animals, desperate for even the slightest whiff of salvation.

“Come on, it’s not that bad,” Jerry said, trying to lighten the mood.

“Shut up!” Sharrice yelled at him, feeling the madness already. “Just shut up! You have no clue what you’re talking about!”

It was true... of us all, Jerry would be the least affected.

“Easy Sharrice,” I said. “No sense turning on each other at this point.”

Sharrice wouldn’t hear me though.

“You’re the one who left the machine on!” she whirled, pointing an accusatory finger at Niles, who managed to look outraged and guilty at the same time.

“I always leave the machine on!” the fat man argued. “The timer is set to turn it off so the fuse won’t get shorted!”

“Stop it both of you!” Margie yelled, her shrill voice piercing through both the other’s bellowing voices. “This is pointless!”

“Margie’s right!” I added. That shut them up. The number of times Margie was right about anything I could probably count on one hand. “There’s no point arguing over who’s fault this is! We have to fix the problem, not the blame!”

Everyone had the decency to look a little chagrined, and we started working the problem again. Jerry looked at the fuses and tried to reset the power. Sharrice and Margie co-operated long enough to salvage enough supplies for us all. Niles and I tried to get the machine working again.

Nothing worked. We tried everything, and then tried it again. The fuse was totally blown. We tried to rewire the fuse, but that only made matters worse, blowing the lights. In the dark, we tried to fix the machine. I knew a little and Niles knew a little and together, by the light of a flashlight, we tried, but the machine was finished. Our supplies, already low, dwindled in our attempts to salvage whatever we could. Even those attempts proved fruitless, since what was left wouldn’t be enough for all of us, even if we got the machine working, even if we got the fuse fixed.

There was no hope left. One by one we would succumb to the madness that loomed before us, giving way to the ravening monster that lurked inside us all.

There would be no coffee.