Dear me,

If you think this year minus the coronavirus outbreak would somehow be all sunshine and rainbows, you’ve got another thing coming. Several thousand things, actually — many of them coming straight at you with frightening speed, wielding their spiny tails as weapons.

I’m you in an alternative 2020, and you’re still depressed, still waking up exhausted and phoning it in around 11:30, but now, with the anxiety of living amongst a run-away Komodo dragon population, taking that midday nap is near impossible. (As is masturbating in the shower — damn their acute smell for human fluids).

You’re still ordering Dominos every night and eating the whole thing in bed. It’s just that now, you have to make sure your government-issued trash bin is locked after you throw out the empty pizza box in shame, lest the Komodo dragons get a whiff of that pepperoni grease and swarm your home looking to rip apart anything that moves. Those chipmunks you’ve grown to love so much over quarantine — the one’s that you’ve named as you watched them run around the yard? They didn’t last a week over here in this 2020. Not even Chazz.

You’re still drinking alone and binging Hoarders, but now, you’re hitting the bottle even harder so to drown out the sound of Komodo dragons rustling around in the bushes you stopped caring to water months ago. (Positive side note: Hoarders has gotten very interesting given the Komodo’s love of enclosed spaces and spoiled food).

You’re still sick of working over Zoom calls, (the scaley vermin have overrun American offices) but now, you become unbearably tense whenever one of your co-workers gets up to use the bathroom after what happened to Janet back in April. Her harrowing screams coming in distorted through your laptop speaker, the sound of flesh and bone hitting kitchen tile, the way the Komodo dragon sauntered in and perched itself in Janet’s office chair like it knew you all were watching — it keeps you up most nights. That, and the overall job dissatisfaction that’s gone totally unchanged in this version of 2020.

You’re still taking aimless walks around the neighborhood and avoiding texts from the people you love, but now, you feel an extra jolt of guilt every time you see a Komodo dragon prowling near the sewer grates, knowing that it could easily outrun and kill you, leaving nothing but a pair of bloody flip-flops that some overworked investigator would have to show to your poor mother as she nods and weeps uncontrollably into the bosom of your father (whose face has been disfigured by another of the heartless lizards).

No one’s sure how they made their way over to the States — boats, I reckon. But who am I to say? I’m just an equally downtrodden version of you that doesn’t feel safe leaving the house without a freshly sharpened javelin. Sometimes, I (we) think about not taking the javelin outside with us. Sometimes, we wish a ten-footer would come up from behind us while we’re in line at the CVS, sink its mighty Komodo teeth into our neck and end it all.

Yes, you’re still making needless trips to the CVS to buy Tate’s cookies and look at whatever tacky holiday décor they’ve got in stock. But now, you and everyone else are required to wear protective chainmail because no store can guarantee Komodo dragons haven’t infiltrated their plumbing.

What I’m trying to say is, the grass isn’t always greener; quite often it and all the other local vegetation has been decimated by a bunch of fucking Komodo dragons.

So please, count your blessings. And keep on counting the coronavirus death toll over there in your 2020 if you must. Still, I guarantee it doesn’t compare to the stress of watching Donald Trump Jr. shoot a bunch of caged Komodo dragons on the White House lawn and drop a banner that reads MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, as millions of Americans go on unemployed without any federal response to the beasts attacking them every day. At least something finally killed Steve Bannon.

Sincerely,
You