The Pandemic Project Vol. 2

A Face to Recognize —after “Slide to Unlock” by Ed Park Dondrae Davis No one would have thought that life would be this way. Everything was going great.

You had a good job, your relationship with you and your girlfriend was better than ever until it happened. Hundreds of thousands of people were dying from an infectious disease.

It caused a pandemic. Many people lost their jobs, and many people lost loved ones. You were affected by the pandemic by losing both of your parents within three days.

It's been a little over four months now since you and your girlfriend have been out of the house. The governor shut the whole state down unless you are deemed an essential worker. You've been laid off from your job for three months now because of the pandemic.

No income is coming in, but bills are still expected to be paid.

This devastating time created more and more arguments between you and your girlfriend every day. You can suddenly feel the depression starting to settle in. Something has got to give, you think to yourself. First, you start pacing back and forth throughout the one-bedroom apartment that you and your girlfriend share. You grab your Bills starter cap and your black windbreaker with the 40-caliber pistol that you got from your father in the pocket. You take one last look at your girlfriend before storming out the door, slamming it behind you.

It was a nice quiet night in the empty streets of North Buffalo. Everyone was at home, not because it was late, but because of the pandemic. You stroll up and down Amherst St., with all of the crazy thoughts running through your head. You continue walking down Hertel St. from one end of Hertel to the other. It was a ghost town. All you can hear in your head is your girlfriend yelling and screaming. You notice a young male walking down the street, heading toward the corner store. You think to yourself; this is it.

You throw on your five-dollar pair of glasses and wait on the side of the building until he comes out. After about five minutes, the guy comes walking out of the store, not noticing anything. The guy heads down toward the end of Hertel with a bottle of wine he purchased from the corner store. You see that he passes the street that he had come off. You keep a good enough distance where you're not too close nor too far.

You figure maybe you would stick him up for his bottle of wine and the little bit of cash in his wallet. Then he continues to cross the street and glances behind him, unsure if he notices you following him or if he was seeing if there was a car coming down the road.

To the ATM he went. As he's inserting his card, you walk up behind him as quiet as a ghost.

You pull out that black 40-caliber pistol and press it in his back between his shoulder blades. You can hear his soul leaving his body at that moment. "Don't move and don't make a sound." You grab his wallet and cell phone from his pocket and his bottle of wine out of his hand.

"Please don't kill me. I'll give you whatever you want," he says, frightened. You realize that you've gotten what you went for, but then a greedy feeling comes upon you.

Quietly but with authority, you say to him, "Password." His fingers start moving frantically over the ATM keypad. Error, the screen says. It was as if his mind went blank, and he suddenly forgot his password. Or was it just that he was stalling. Then it seems if you could 81