This morning I found out that someone I didn’t know had died. I didn’t know him but I’d followed him online for years, ever since he randomly started reading and commenting on my livejournal because he liked my list of interests. I watched him fall in love, get married, welcome two daughters into the world, get divorced. He stopped following me when I left livejournal, but I still kept tabs on him. LJ, flickr, instagram…
I don’t know how he died, and it bothers me.
Amar, what happened? The world is less colorful without you in it.
Shortly after I found out he was gone, I drove my husband to the hospital for one of those routine tests they love to give people over 50. I told him that if I died suddenly, I wanted him to post here and on Facebook to let people know what happened.
Larissa was eaten by a grue. Larissa was in a horrible car accident. Larissa fell down the stairs and broke her skull. Larissa succumbed to the Poltroonian Oyster Flu.
I waited around the hospital all morning, and I drew. I started a little side project to work on when I feel stuck, or when I am waiting. It’s based on something I wrote first thing on a Monday morning in August 2017. This first page is a little busier than I like, but it made the time fly. And I like the way it sinks through layers of fiction into the there-and-then of my actual life: a house, a meadow, insomnia, the moon.
(Mooncop, by Tom Gauld)
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