Date Written: First
Entry: 3-9-2017. Last Entry: 7-14-2022
Location: Dublin, Ireland and Various Locales in the United Kingdom
Other Notes: Janie Hull (27 year female) kept various
journals from 3-9-2017 to 7-14-2022.
Hull donated journals to AIR on 7-23-2022 in an effort to document what
she and her family had experienced in the years from 2017 to 2022.
March 9, 2017. 4pm
It’s been three days since the world went crazy. I don’t even know what to say about it. Josh and I are hiding in our hotel room and I
decided to write down some of what is happening because there is no TV and the
hotel staff has told us that we cannot leave our rooms. Josh finally fell asleep and if I just sit
here I know that I will go crazy.
We got to Dublin a week ago, two days after the
wedding. Some fucking honeymoon. I want to be back in Toronto and have all of
this not happening.
I wish I knew if my mom and dad are ok. The phone lines (landlines and cells) haven’t
worked since all this started, and the internet is just about useless. I keep thinking that it can’t go on much
longer, that by the time I wake up things will be back to normal and people
won’t be whispering about war or aliens or whatever crazy idea they think is
happening. I know it sounds stupid, but I keep thinking of my cat, Bowser,
alone in our apartment. Would the
neighbor even remember that he was supposed to feed him if all this craziness
is happening there too?
These French guys across the hall? They said this is
happening in every large city in the world.
I am sure Toronto would count as a large city. But it can’t be happening
there too. They can’t be everywhere can
they?
Oh god, it is happening again. I am going to wake Josh up in
case we have to run.
March 10, 2017. 2pm
We are still in the hotel
room. The hotel staff opened up the
kitchen last night and let us take whatever we wanted, lucky for us this place
had three restaurants so there was quite a bit to go around. It also helps that
almost every guest took off not too long after the first few explosions. After
letting us into the kitchens, the staff said that they were leaving…going home
to their families and that we could do what we wanted.
Josh and I decided to stay here at
least a day or two more; after that we will try and find a way to the
embassy.
March 12, 2017. 6am
We went outside yesterday.
I kept telling Josh we shouldn’t,
but he wanted to see what was left in the little store outside the hotel. It catered mainly to the hotel guests; aspirin,
cigarettes, snacks…that kind of stuff.
Josh wanted to grab any medicine and bottled water that might be there
before we tried to leave.
The only way I agreed to let him
go is if I went with. He argued at
first, but I flat out told him that I would rather be dead than left in this
creepy, quiet hotel room by myself.
The streets were mostly silent, I
could hear car alarms or something off in the distance but there weren’t cars
driving or people walking around. Everything smelled like smoke and pennies. There
were lots and lots of bodies. Josh tried
to make me go back in, told me to look up at the sky instead of around me, but
I couldn’t stop looking.
One lady was sitting with her back
to us on the park bench outside the hotel At first I thought she was alive…she had a
baseball hat on her head, camera strap around her neck, her purse still slung
over her shoulder. She was just sitting on
that bench, still wearing her accessories, just like she was about to hop up
and grab some touristy pictures to pass around the office when she got
home.
When we came around to the front
though, she didn’t have any legs. Her blue
coat was all purple and brown at the bottom and ribbons of what looked like
hamburger and blood and something pink and shiny in these weird ropey clumps
and there were flies crawling there.
Something had ripped her face in half one eye was just dangling down on
her cheek and I started screaming and screaming and Josh grabbed me and her eye
was just DANGLING there and-
March 13, lunchtime
I kind of lost it there. I’m not sure why I am keeping this stupid
notebook. Yesterday Josh tried to throw
it away, but I took it out of the trash can because writing in it makes me feel
at least a little more normal. I don’t
know why, I never liked to write before.
After we went outside, Josh
dragged me into that little store and filled up bags full of food and water and
took about 20 bottles of aspirin. He
took a few cartons of cigarettes and even though I spent the last year convincing
him to quit, I didn’t say anything. I
think cancer is pretty low on the threat list for right now. He tried the phones and the computer in the
back office (I think that was the real reason he wanted to go there), but the power was out.
The hotel still has power, they
must have a generator. We moved our
stuff up to a suite with a kitchenette on the top floor and Josh heated up some
soup he found in the restaurant freezer downstairs. I tried to eat, but I just keep thinking of
that woman.
We are going to stay here for a
while. We still don’t know where the
embassy is and there is power, food and running water here we don’t want to go
quite yet. I think if I wasn’t pregnant,
Josh probably would want to make a run for it but I can’t go very fast so we
are waiting to see what happens before we head out.
Quite impressive stuff. Thanks for this article.
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