It seems I’m not immune, after all, to the inconvenience of quarantine. My grocer’s imposed buying limits on essential items. I can get three days of protein drinks, and no more.

I’m not panicking. I’m not. I can still look elsewhere. There’s more than one grocer. But should the shelves turn up bare…oh. I’m not eating much yet, just rice cakes and crackers and slices of fruit, toast points, smoked oysters, borscht and applesauce. Can I live on just that? I definitely, definitely want to live.

Is there something else I could use? Something I could stick in my blender, and it would spit out the equivalent of a cup of Ensure Plus Protein? I don’t want to be that arsehole gobbling up all the Ensure so the old folks can’t have it. That hardly seems right. But I don’t want to starve. Maybe protein powder, those big tubs you get? But do those have fat? I need something with fat. I don’t get any fat, except from the oysters…do oysters have fat?

I wish I’d paid more attention in health class.

I wish I could eat dairy products.

On another note, the screaming hasn’t stopped. It’s coming from the end of the hall, across from STAIR 5. I’m pretty sure it’s human. One of the screams contained a word today, and that word was fuck. It could still be a parrot, or I could be imagining things, but I’m three-quarters sure I got fucked.

I’m not being screamed at 24/7. It’s just intermittent, every few hours. I’ll get two screams or three, maybe five minutes apart, and it stops. I go back to my life, go off high alert, and the minute my guard’s down…SCREEEEEEAAAGH!

I got screamed in the bathroom today. I was brushing my teeth, and SCREEEEEEAAAGGH! I did a snorty wee gasp and huffed toothpaste up my nose.

I got screamed in the shower, halfway through my shampooing song (it’s Vitti na Crozza, which is the perfect length for working the suds through my hair)—anyway, I was doing my shampooing song, and I thought I’d gone horribly off key, but it was only the screamer, screaming up my shower.

I got screamed drinking tomato juice, but I didn’t snort that. I did, however, get brain freeze, unrelated to the screaming.

I’m being screamed now—now, as I write this.

Should I scream back?

SCREEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAGH!

(I didn’t really. I can’t scream indoors, or not like a proper scream. Not one you could hear down the hall. I close up my throat if I have to scream, so it’s more like a thin, whistling hiss.)

You know what’s funny, though? That barking dog, the one across from me…it stops barking when the screaming starts.

(I feel like I’m writing the world’s pettiest horror novel. I need some work to do.)