Journal Entry – 9/5/2016
Mandy says it’s over. I think she’s serious this time. I don’t know what I’ll do if she’s serious. No I know exactly what I’ll do, what I’ll have to do. That must be what she wants: me. Gone. Forever. Is that what you want? You can’t be serious!

Journal Entry – 9/6/2016
She’s serious. I tried to talk to her before Gym class, to like mention how we’re still going out to the coast this weekend. Mandy didn’t even make an excuse, she said she knew what she wanted and it sure wasn’t spending another dumb weekend weekend with me. That’s what she called it, “dumb,” like great vocabulary bitch get your shit together we have something special. Had something.
I threw up right on the gym floor. At least I got to chill in the nurse’s office instead of spending the period with her fucking friends laughing at me.
I’ll show them.

Journal Entry – 9/7/2016
On Sunday I’m gone. I guess this is my note. No, I’ll need something bigger than this.

Journal Entry – 9/8/2016
I figured out how I’m going to do it, and make a show of it. I’m going to break into my mom’s lab at the Evil Science Company. She’s shown me around her work before, I just need snag her badge and key ring before she gets up in morning.
They test on animals down there. Before I do it, I’ll release as many as I can: mice, rabbits, chimps. Let them all run wild, so when they find my lifeless body, overdosed on tranquilizers, they’ll think I went crazy for some animal-rights cause like some kind of hero.
Except until they read this, I guess? Hi mom! Let everyone think I died for a cause, but tell Mandy the truth. Make her feel that.

Journal Entry – 9/10/2016 (Morning)
Mom, it’s not your fault. Goodbye.

Journal Entry – 9/10/16 (Evening)
What is happening to me?! I can’t go home like this! Where do I go?

Journal Entry – 9/11/16
I spent the night in the woods. I thought I would be cold, but I guess this hair really keeps you warm. It was more than that, though, like I don’t feel warm either. I just can’t feel the discomfort.
What were they doing in that lab?

Journal Entry – 10/10/16
It’s been a busy month, trying to hide, finding these ruins, foraging for food. I was able to clear out a lot of rubble from a mostly-intact ballroom. I guess I’m really strong now. I barely thought about Mandy.

Journal Entry – 11/10/16
I was chasing down a deer when a hunter shot me. I don’t think the bullet even pierced my skin.What am I now? What must that hunter have seen? Was he trying to shoot me?
I got the deer, though. I’ll need this for the winter months.

Journal Entry – 12/24/16
Ran out of deer meat last week. Considered hunting for christmas dinner, but I know all I’ll find is barn animals in farms outside of the woods. Need to resist that urge. Not that hungry anyway.

Journal Entry – January, 2017
Still not hungry.

Journal Entry – February, 2017
Still no need for food.

Journal Entry – April, 2017
I observe these woods. The creatures feared me at first, but they seem to understand I have no reason to harm them. If only the creatures outside of the woods knew this, too. Several aircraft have flown unusually low over my ruins. I don’t think they have seen me.

Journal Entry – March, 2018
I do not think I killed any of those men. They shot at me, and I struck back, but just hard enough to get them out of the way. Once clear of their ambush, they had no chance of catching me. And so I go North.

Journal Entry – June, 2020
I believe I have catalogued all the species of flowers that grow in these hills. The rabbits lead me to a final, beautiful species I had overlooked. Now, the squirrels would like me to move on to the trees.

Journal Entry – November, 2025
Smoke in the South. Must be very far away, but there is so much. Moving farther North.

Journal Entry – 2066
All the world is poison and silence. My catalogue is complete, much sooner than it should be. At least I can explore the South now.

Journal Entry – 2120
A flower, a simple weed, is flourishing in the equatorial regions. Is this in spite of the radiation, or due to it?

Journal Entry – 31014
I can smell human survivors breeding in some sort of bunker in the mountains.

Journal Entry – 115043
The wars between the Flower People and the Survivors came to a quick end. Oh how I believed in those primitive, leafy creatures when they first began to speak. Alas, those who were once my kind have returned to their role as oppressors.

Journal Entry – 570410
Perhaps I should have intervened in this uprising, but I am glad to see the flowers bloom over the corpses of formerly-Survivors.

Journal Entry – 99999999
Not even this latest generation of bacterial mono-consciousness could control the climate of this desolate rock. I watched them pass, regretting our connection could not last all of eternity.

Journal Entry – …
How do I perceive when there is no light? How do I think when there is nothing left to ponder? Is it only these question that are left when all else has ceased? Or is this, at long last, my experience of death while the universe continues without me?

Journal Entry – 9/13/16
Mandy heard the cops handcuffed me and said she thought it was pretty cool. They were just security guards and they didn’t have cuffs, but hey, only mom knows that.