Strand 502
Jie
Chapter One
Even though Jack was crazy, having him for a brother was kinda helpful sometimes. He prepared us for the disease better than anyone else I knew. We had a lifetime worth of food in the basement. We had piles of firewood out back. We had weapons and ammo. I was confident at all times that we would stay alive thanks to my older brother. Other times, however, Jack's paranoia wasn't so helpful. Like the time he hacked off all my hair with poultry scissors or the time I woke up and he had repainted my entire bedroom red and my palms and feet blue. I loved Jack, but I couldn't understand him and I couldn't make him understand that what he thought were vaccines or good omens were simply manifestations of insanity.
But I loved Jack dearly and I tried to be tolerant of his antics.
That morning, and not for the first time, the lights flicked on and I thought to myself that I didn't know how much more of his antics I could take.
"Jie," Jack said. He was wide awake and raring to go, as usual. "Wake up." I grit my teeth and shoved my face into my pillow, determined to sleep. Let 5:02 pass without me. I wasn't going to die if I slept through it. But, of course, Jack thought I was. Jack hesitated a few more seconds before stepping across the threshold of my bedroom and yanking the sheets off of me. A small sliver of me wanted to leap on him like a feral Beast and make him pay for waking me from my much needed beauty sleep, but a larger part, and the part that won out in the end, made me roll over in my bed and groan.
"Please, Jack," I moaned.
"It's four-thirty," Jack told me. "You have thirty minutes to wake up completely." In my half-asleep anger, I picked up a pillow from off my bed and tossed it at him. This was a game we played every morning at four-thirty when Jack came in his ever-awake state to make sure my eyes were wide open come 5:02 -- the alleged devil minute, the cursed time of the 502 strand when, according to Jack, anyone asleep at that time would eventually catch the disease—the Beast strand, in fact—and become a Beast. It wasn't a game I enjoyed, or ever won, for that matter. "I'm going to get the water," Jack threatened. "And you aren't gonna like it."
"Try me," I said and instantly regretted it. Now Jack would get the water for sure and pour it on my head and I, as predicted, wouldn't like it. But I couldn't take back my words, and Jack stalked out of the room. A few seconds later, I heard the faucet run and I groaned. When Jack came back with one of those paper Dixie cups full of icy water, however, my pillow and I were nowhere to be found. Usually, I hid under the bed, so Jack pulled up the bed skirt and felt around as far as his arm would reach. I watched from a gap in the closet door, trying in equal parts to sleep and to not laugh.
Jack stood and set the paper cup on my bedside table, looking a little peeved.
"Jie," he said threateningly. "Where are you?" I had never tried hiding in the closet before, mainly because hiding there required me to stand up and I couldn't take my pillow to sleep. In fact, now as it rested under my elbow, pinched between my body and my arm, it proved to only be cumbersome. Maybe Jack would have his way again. Once more, another 5:02 minute would go by completely awake, even as I hid from him. The only score I could see was that Jack was stumped and hadn't thought to check the closet yet. But that wasn't much of a perk, saying as every second I was more awake and Jack was winning again.
The minutes crept on. Jack got up and left the room to search the house, still not turning around and seeing the closet. I waited there in the dark and closed my eyes. But I found it surprisingly difficult to sleep standing up, and eventually, I just leaned my forehead against the closet door and groaned quietly. I could hear Jack searching for me frantically throughout the house. He screamed for me and I heard doors slam and something heavy crashed to the ground. I cringed and hoped it wasn’t the bookshelf. Maybe I’d made a mistake by hiding from him. It was 4:57 AM when Jack returned to my bedroom. His eyes were wide and insane with what? the misplaced chemicals in his head or his worry for me? Maybe both. He checked under the bed again, teeth grit and swallowing every second like he does when he's nervous.
"Dang it, Jie! Where are you! Don't be asleep!" Jack cried. He pulled at his hair shakily and landed a killer kick to my bed, which had him on one foot for the next few minutes. For the third time, he checked under the bed. I glanced over to the clock. It was 5:00 already. This was as late as I had ever gone without Jack having me up and awake with him. He was getting frantic and suddenly, I didn't know what he would do, how far he would go. What if I didn't show myself to him by 5:02? Would he totally flip out? What would he do? I was anxious now, for my personal property, for Jack's fragile condition of the mind and for his feelings. I felt bad. Sure it was obnoxious to be woken every night for no real reason, but it didn't really hurt me. I didn't truly suffer for it. And yet, if it didn't happen, Jack would suffer. He would tear himself apart, believing he would find me feral and half-Beast any morning, all because he failed. Pity pained my heart and finally, I shoved the closet door open, throwing my pillow at the back of Jack's head.
"I'm alive, you idiot. And I'm awake," I said to Jack as surly as I could muster. He whirled around, looking relieved and angry.
"Jie!" He cried. "I thought you were asleep! I nearly lost my mind!"
"Too late," I shot back and looked to my digital clock. "It's 5:05. Can I sleep now?" Jack tossed my pillow to my bed and glared at me sternly.
"Don't you EVER do that again," he said. I rolled my eyes and collapsed on my mattress. "Do you hear me, Jie?"
"Gal, Jack," I grumbled. "You're not Dad. Chill out."
"I won't chill out!" Jack cried. He seemed really upset and even though it annoyed me that he would use a three year age difference as justification to scold and baby me like he always did, I felt a little bad that I had worried him.
Behind that regret, though, was a little bit of fear. Jack was a variable. I didn’t know what he was capable of.
Jack. What goes on in your head?
“Night,” I said and flopped on my bed.
“I’m not going to sleep,” Jack said and I let out a sigh.
“You have to sleep, Jack,” I said, but when I looked over, he was already gone. I was forced to get out of my bed to shut off my lights myself, which kind of annoyed me, but whatever. My sleep that night was tormented anyway. I couldn’t seem to dream without picturing Jack in a straightjacket like in some horrible early 1900’s asylum, the torturous kind, like in House on Haunted Hill. I remember I used to love that movie, but it stopped being so amusing when my big brother went off the deep end. Now all I could see behind my eyes were saturation chambers and electric chairs and laughing doctors.
* * *
It was the bookshelf that had fallen that morning, and I stood staring at it blankly. A few of the books were completely destroyed, torn to pieces in the manifestation of some sort of rage. Jack swore he didn’t do it, but of course he did. Maybe he just blacked out and didn’t remember? That scared me, though, so I stopped thinking about it.
Food didn’t really appeal to me that morning. Actually, the longer I stayed trapped in the house, the less our packaged food sounded appetizing. At first, it was alright. Ramen and microwave noodles were fine. But after two weeks of total lockdown, I was going stir-crazy. I imagined McDonald’s Big Macs and the cheap Asian buffet just down the street where Dad used to take me and teach me to use chopsticks like a true Korean. I’d never had much pressure from my parents to act like the perfect Korean daughter, servile and silent like the girls I’d read in books. But Dad did insist that I knew how to use chopsticks and I could eat the hottest kim-chi with the best of them. Dad always was one for food.
Jack offered me some of the dry cereal he was eating. I turned up my nose.
“Can’t we get real food?” I complained.
“This is real food,” Jack said, shoveling it in. His loud crunch filled the room and I thought that the grainy cereal must have scraped the top of his mouth at least a little, but he didn’t let on. He was trying hard to make it look delicious. “Doesn’t get more real than dry cereal,” he insisted.
“Yeah,” I muttered, dissatisfied. “Just like it doesn’t get more real than invisible friends, right?” Jack glared at me and stopped to swallow loudly.
“We can’t go outside,” he said.
“Why?” I demanded. Like I didn’t know why.
“Alright,” Jack said, like he always did when we had this conversation. “Go on outside. Get some ‘real food’. But don’t come crying to me when you get the 502 and die.” I wanted to argue something, like that you couldn’t catch the 502 strand just by breathing it in, but in all honesty, I didn’t know. Maybe that was how people got it. All the scientists who tried to find out died a long time ago. Now, we were just struggling to stay alive. We didn’t even care about picking the disease apart, looking at the DNA and the how-tos and whys like we used to. Sure, that would bring a cure, given that there actually was a cure to be found and you lived long enough to find it, but we didn’t have the willpower anymore. The human race was ready to flop down and give up the towel. We were all alone and fighting for ourselves now. Probably the 502 would kill us all off eventually. I didn’t know, but like the rest of humanity, I didn’t really care. I was alive and as long as I stayed alive as an individual, I didn’t give a rat’s rear end.
Jack was different, though. Just one of the million other ways he was different from the rest of humanity, Jack had hope. He had this crazy, mad hope that we, the human race, would survive. I watched him eat his dry cereal and stare off into the distance as I thought about him. He thought we would live. He blockaded the house and filled it with food and water and took all the plausible and possible and impossible and improbable precautions to drag out our existence because he somehow knew that one day, he would rip off the boards nailed to the door and open it up to find a new, beautiful, healed world as if by magic.
“Bullcrap,” I muttered in response to my own thoughts and Jack looked up, another mouthful of dry cereal in his cheeks.
“Did you say something?” He asked. I looked into my brother’s brown eyes and saw that glitter there, that shine of knowledge that something better was to come. I knew, however, with knowledge as powerful as his that his hope was all wrong. He would be bitterly disappointed when the world completely ended. But I didn’t want to say that to his face, so I simply shook my head and pulled my fleece blanket closer around myself and wandered off.
Jack was crazy. He stained my hands blue and woke me up at four-thirty every morning and had black-outs where he shredded books. But he was mostly crazy because he had so much hope in a world where hope was a joke that dreamers painted in their minds for no one in particular. We laughed at that joke called hope, laughing the hollow, dying laughter of a race that’s seen its peak and is ready to collapse. But Jack didn’t laugh. He dreamed and lived and hoped. And it was probably the first time that the human race has been jealous of madness.
Even though Jack was crazy, having him for a brother was kinda helpful sometimes. He prepared us for the disease better than anyone else I knew. We had a lifetime worth of food in the basement. We had piles of firewood out back. We had weapons and ammo. I was confident at all times that we would stay alive thanks to my older brother. Other times, however, Jack's paranoia wasn't so helpful. Like the time he hacked off all my hair with poultry scissors or the time I woke up and he had repainted my entire bedroom red and my palms and feet blue. I loved Jack, but I couldn't understand him and I couldn't make him understand that what he thought were vaccines or good omens were simply manifestations of insanity.
But I loved Jack dearly and I tried to be tolerant of his antics.
That morning, and not for the first time, the lights flicked on and I thought to myself that I didn't know how much more of his antics I could take.
"Jie," Jack said. He was wide awake and raring to go, as usual. "Wake up." I grit my teeth and shoved my face into my pillow, determined to sleep. Let 5:02 pass without me. I wasn't going to die if I slept through it. But, of course, Jack thought I was. Jack hesitated a few more seconds before stepping across the threshold of my bedroom and yanking the sheets off of me. A small sliver of me wanted to leap on him like a feral Beast and make him pay for waking me from my much needed beauty sleep, but a larger part, and the part that won out in the end, made me roll over in my bed and groan.
"Please, Jack," I moaned.
"It's four-thirty," Jack told me. "You have thirty minutes to wake up completely." In my half-asleep anger, I picked up a pillow from off my bed and tossed it at him. This was a game we played every morning at four-thirty when Jack came in his ever-awake state to make sure my eyes were wide open come 5:02 -- the alleged devil minute, the cursed time of the 502 strand when, according to Jack, anyone asleep at that time would eventually catch the disease—the Beast strand, in fact—and become a Beast. It wasn't a game I enjoyed, or ever won, for that matter. "I'm going to get the water," Jack threatened. "And you aren't gonna like it."
"Try me," I said and instantly regretted it. Now Jack would get the water for sure and pour it on my head and I, as predicted, wouldn't like it. But I couldn't take back my words, and Jack stalked out of the room. A few seconds later, I heard the faucet run and I groaned. When Jack came back with one of those paper Dixie cups full of icy water, however, my pillow and I were nowhere to be found. Usually, I hid under the bed, so Jack pulled up the bed skirt and felt around as far as his arm would reach. I watched from a gap in the closet door, trying in equal parts to sleep and to not laugh.
Jack stood and set the paper cup on my bedside table, looking a little peeved.
"Jie," he said threateningly. "Where are you?" I had never tried hiding in the closet before, mainly because hiding there required me to stand up and I couldn't take my pillow to sleep. In fact, now as it rested under my elbow, pinched between my body and my arm, it proved to only be cumbersome. Maybe Jack would have his way again. Once more, another 5:02 minute would go by completely awake, even as I hid from him. The only score I could see was that Jack was stumped and hadn't thought to check the closet yet. But that wasn't much of a perk, saying as every second I was more awake and Jack was winning again.
The minutes crept on. Jack got up and left the room to search the house, still not turning around and seeing the closet. I waited there in the dark and closed my eyes. But I found it surprisingly difficult to sleep standing up, and eventually, I just leaned my forehead against the closet door and groaned quietly. I could hear Jack searching for me frantically throughout the house. He screamed for me and I heard doors slam and something heavy crashed to the ground. I cringed and hoped it wasn’t the bookshelf. Maybe I’d made a mistake by hiding from him. It was 4:57 AM when Jack returned to my bedroom. His eyes were wide and insane with what? the misplaced chemicals in his head or his worry for me? Maybe both. He checked under the bed again, teeth grit and swallowing every second like he does when he's nervous.
"Dang it, Jie! Where are you! Don't be asleep!" Jack cried. He pulled at his hair shakily and landed a killer kick to my bed, which had him on one foot for the next few minutes. For the third time, he checked under the bed. I glanced over to the clock. It was 5:00 already. This was as late as I had ever gone without Jack having me up and awake with him. He was getting frantic and suddenly, I didn't know what he would do, how far he would go. What if I didn't show myself to him by 5:02? Would he totally flip out? What would he do? I was anxious now, for my personal property, for Jack's fragile condition of the mind and for his feelings. I felt bad. Sure it was obnoxious to be woken every night for no real reason, but it didn't really hurt me. I didn't truly suffer for it. And yet, if it didn't happen, Jack would suffer. He would tear himself apart, believing he would find me feral and half-Beast any morning, all because he failed. Pity pained my heart and finally, I shoved the closet door open, throwing my pillow at the back of Jack's head.
"I'm alive, you idiot. And I'm awake," I said to Jack as surly as I could muster. He whirled around, looking relieved and angry.
"Jie!" He cried. "I thought you were asleep! I nearly lost my mind!"
"Too late," I shot back and looked to my digital clock. "It's 5:05. Can I sleep now?" Jack tossed my pillow to my bed and glared at me sternly.
"Don't you EVER do that again," he said. I rolled my eyes and collapsed on my mattress. "Do you hear me, Jie?"
"Gal, Jack," I grumbled. "You're not Dad. Chill out."
"I won't chill out!" Jack cried. He seemed really upset and even though it annoyed me that he would use a three year age difference as justification to scold and baby me like he always did, I felt a little bad that I had worried him.
Behind that regret, though, was a little bit of fear. Jack was a variable. I didn’t know what he was capable of.
Jack. What goes on in your head?
“Night,” I said and flopped on my bed.
“I’m not going to sleep,” Jack said and I let out a sigh.
“You have to sleep, Jack,” I said, but when I looked over, he was already gone. I was forced to get out of my bed to shut off my lights myself, which kind of annoyed me, but whatever. My sleep that night was tormented anyway. I couldn’t seem to dream without picturing Jack in a straightjacket like in some horrible early 1900’s asylum, the torturous kind, like in House on Haunted Hill. I remember I used to love that movie, but it stopped being so amusing when my big brother went off the deep end. Now all I could see behind my eyes were saturation chambers and electric chairs and laughing doctors.
* * *
It was the bookshelf that had fallen that morning, and I stood staring at it blankly. A few of the books were completely destroyed, torn to pieces in the manifestation of some sort of rage. Jack swore he didn’t do it, but of course he did. Maybe he just blacked out and didn’t remember? That scared me, though, so I stopped thinking about it.
Food didn’t really appeal to me that morning. Actually, the longer I stayed trapped in the house, the less our packaged food sounded appetizing. At first, it was alright. Ramen and microwave noodles were fine. But after two weeks of total lockdown, I was going stir-crazy. I imagined McDonald’s Big Macs and the cheap Asian buffet just down the street where Dad used to take me and teach me to use chopsticks like a true Korean. I’d never had much pressure from my parents to act like the perfect Korean daughter, servile and silent like the girls I’d read in books. But Dad did insist that I knew how to use chopsticks and I could eat the hottest kim-chi with the best of them. Dad always was one for food.
Jack offered me some of the dry cereal he was eating. I turned up my nose.
“Can’t we get real food?” I complained.
“This is real food,” Jack said, shoveling it in. His loud crunch filled the room and I thought that the grainy cereal must have scraped the top of his mouth at least a little, but he didn’t let on. He was trying hard to make it look delicious. “Doesn’t get more real than dry cereal,” he insisted.
“Yeah,” I muttered, dissatisfied. “Just like it doesn’t get more real than invisible friends, right?” Jack glared at me and stopped to swallow loudly.
“We can’t go outside,” he said.
“Why?” I demanded. Like I didn’t know why.
“Alright,” Jack said, like he always did when we had this conversation. “Go on outside. Get some ‘real food’. But don’t come crying to me when you get the 502 and die.” I wanted to argue something, like that you couldn’t catch the 502 strand just by breathing it in, but in all honesty, I didn’t know. Maybe that was how people got it. All the scientists who tried to find out died a long time ago. Now, we were just struggling to stay alive. We didn’t even care about picking the disease apart, looking at the DNA and the how-tos and whys like we used to. Sure, that would bring a cure, given that there actually was a cure to be found and you lived long enough to find it, but we didn’t have the willpower anymore. The human race was ready to flop down and give up the towel. We were all alone and fighting for ourselves now. Probably the 502 would kill us all off eventually. I didn’t know, but like the rest of humanity, I didn’t really care. I was alive and as long as I stayed alive as an individual, I didn’t give a rat’s rear end.
Jack was different, though. Just one of the million other ways he was different from the rest of humanity, Jack had hope. He had this crazy, mad hope that we, the human race, would survive. I watched him eat his dry cereal and stare off into the distance as I thought about him. He thought we would live. He blockaded the house and filled it with food and water and took all the plausible and possible and impossible and improbable precautions to drag out our existence because he somehow knew that one day, he would rip off the boards nailed to the door and open it up to find a new, beautiful, healed world as if by magic.
“Bullcrap,” I muttered in response to my own thoughts and Jack looked up, another mouthful of dry cereal in his cheeks.
“Did you say something?” He asked. I looked into my brother’s brown eyes and saw that glitter there, that shine of knowledge that something better was to come. I knew, however, with knowledge as powerful as his that his hope was all wrong. He would be bitterly disappointed when the world completely ended. But I didn’t want to say that to his face, so I simply shook my head and pulled my fleece blanket closer around myself and wandered off.
Jack was crazy. He stained my hands blue and woke me up at four-thirty every morning and had black-outs where he shredded books. But he was mostly crazy because he had so much hope in a world where hope was a joke that dreamers painted in their minds for no one in particular. We laughed at that joke called hope, laughing the hollow, dying laughter of a race that’s seen its peak and is ready to collapse. But Jack didn’t laugh. He dreamed and lived and hoped. And it was probably the first time that the human race has been jealous of madness.