The Monster

When we were children Scooby Doo taught us one very important lesson. Under the mask, the monster is always human. Not just human. But old, vulnerable, and scared. Greedy, yes. Nefarious, certainly. But human just the same.

This is how we will remember the outbreak.

Years from now we'll look back and remember that as Covid tapered off, reduced to pockets of sickness among the slow-burning states, we saw people remove their masks. We saw people--not monsters--looking back at us. And we knew we would have a future together.

We saw cheering crowds come together in Time Square, Tiananmen, and Merdeka, breathing the same air, reassured by a vaccine. We saw eyes in the crowd--weary, relieved eyes--as the masks came off. And we saw the return of humanity, and the recognition looking back at us.

We saw statesmen and politicians, who seemed like uncaring ghouls for encouraging us to leave home early to save our jobs--who advocated economic security over life. They took off their masks and we saw that they were tired, too. Scared. And old. Old in the soul. Old in the blood, in the way sickness and fear does to a person.

We saw advertisers and talking heads from the news, who rose like heads of a hydra during the quarantine, trying to sell us things we couldn't afford, stuck at home. Selling us on fear and anger. Selling us on products we didn't need. Services we didn't want. They used words like "in times like these" and "we must all come together." Then they showed us their new value snacker meal. Their deluxe channel package. Their premium membership service. But in the end they took off their masks, and we saw people. People who wanted to keep their job during the recession. People who had bosses they didn't like. People who had jingles to write. Stories to spin.

We saw hoarders and alarmists, who stuffed their homes with toilet paper and hand sanitizer. Those who acted like war profiteers while the country fought a battle to keep our elderly breathing. Those foolish few who invested in our misery; they took off their masks and we saw fear, and humanity, and simplicity. We saw greed and panic, certainly. But it was familiar. It was us.

And this was enough. This unmasking, this return to humanity, it was all we could ask for. But we got more. We got the impossible.

We saw doctors and nurses and heroes we lost. Men and women who sacrificed themselves--who fought behind plastic walls and shuttered hospitals. When the masks came off we saw, staring at us from across the street, those who had laid down their lives. We saw them, hiding in plain sight, behind a veil of surgical polymer. A sliver of plastic. A clicking, puffing respirator. And they came back to us.

We saw insurance companies and pharmacies remove their hideous, horror-shop masks. Revealing that they had been on our side the entire time. Their price-gouging, their reaping of the people; it had been for the greater good, like they promised all along. And here it was; a gift, a miracle. They offered it back to the people. They placed it at the feet of the empire. They smiled and asked for our forgiveness, and we welcomed them back to the communities they had been billing.

I saw my mother in the crowd, too. Alive. No longer a middle-aged victim of the opioid crisis. A "death of despair." She took off her mask and forgave the doctors who prescribed her cancer-level painkillers for a migraine. And those doctors; they took off their masks and forgave the sales team that brought them "sample" packets of vicodin and oxy to distribute to their patients, along with bribes of branded calendars, pens, hats, and free weekends to the casino resort of the doctor's choice.

Corporate heads who cheated their investors took off their masks. Politicians who dumped their stocks took off their masks. Bankers who gave bad loans took off their masks. Internet companies who sold our data took off their masks. And underneath, one and all, we saw that the monsters were human.

They had been people all along. All we had to do was acknowledge them, reveal them, and find the vulnerable, scared folk under the hideous guise. They had been us the whole time. All it took was an outbreak for us to want to solve the mystery.