It all happened so fast. I can barely remember the details. It was 58 days into the quarantine and people couldn’t hold it anymore. I do remember the pain. It all started in the cities. Those people went the longest without the paper.
Ironically the people who stockpiled all the stuff were the ones least likely to need it out in the middle of the country. They were the least likely to talk to anyone who had traveled anywhere anyhow… or suffer from the effects of the virus (or terrorism, or whatever wild xeno/homo/trans fill in the blank followed by phobic fever dream thoughts filled their hollow gourd heads). But eventually they ran out too.
In the cities though they ran out fast; It was too many people. It was too many people holding it for too long.
After the paper was gone people just started holding it, unable to figure out what to do in its absence. At first it was okay. We cramped. We hurt. But we were hopeful. No sir, you weren’t going to break my spirit. Just because I was holding it and the virus was running rampant. That wasn’t stopping me from frequenting my favorite restaurants and stuffing my face hole. This is ‘Merica after all. YOLO.
Our founding fathers would have wanted us out at our favorite Mexican restaurant, eating a quesadilla (pronounced kaysa-dill-uh). Certainly my laissez-faire attitude would be enough to protect me from the danger as “Toniggggggght we areeeee young!!!!” blared into our air pods. Mexican is probably safe right? Mexico is not Asian, right???
As it turns out no one was safe though. And on one fine day 58 days into the quarantine, when we literally could not feed ourselves anymore bullshit, and we could no longer hold it, people started popping.
One by one across the nation from coasts and then inward to the middle people started firing off like brown bottle rockets celebrating a new independence day for those who were left behind. It started off with the confident young city dwelling folks of the northeast who ran out of the paper first.
For a moment the country folk felt happy as they watched the city dwellers pop. But soon it happened to them too. Brown explosions everywhere, like a giant roll of bubble paper, where each bubble is a whoopee cushion, a whoopee cushion filled with shit.
The people fired into the sky trailed by brown and exploded into an odorous shit filled star. For weeks this brown fireworks display went on, like the most impressive, and yet poorly executed early Independence Day celebration that no one asked for (but we kinda were).
After the final explosions settled, a new Independence Day was created. The only survivors of the great quarantine, after the “Shitsplosion of 2020” (as it came to be known) took the country up from the shitty ashes and started again, only interested in making a living for their families and living the “American Dream”, which now included, not exploding from holding your shit for 30 days.
These survivors of course were the immigrant owners of small grocery stores and restaurants that everyone avoided during the quarantine. As it turns out they had produce and paper and everything else you might need and continued to operate normally during the whole ordeal. Now they have the country, but they have to clean up after everyone else’s shit.