Crimes Against Nature

Shelter

Nothing more bittersweet than finally finding a worthwhile, fortified home, and not wanting to be there.  I never really kept a journal before, but I guess I should have.  Thinking back, it would have helped others.  God knows they will need it.  Better late than never anyway.  I’m going to tell the story of what happened to us, if only to show you all that nobody is ever truly safe.  Not until they are all gone.  As long as one undead is risen, you must live with fear and caution and the notion that it can strike at any time, even when you’re expecting it.  Especially when you think you’re ready.  Be as safe as you can, whenever possible.  Don’t take any chances.  Please, trust me.  Run if you have to.  Stay fit, stay alert.  It’s the only way.

I want you to succeed where we failed.  You hear stories about the end times.  Some people think they are prepared, but we knew we were.  We were better than everyone around us.  I knew, in my heart, we would outlast it all.  Now we is just me.  From everything to nothing.  There is a way to succeed, but I do not know it.  Heed my advice and find the way.  This is my story.  Listen well, and maybe you’ll learn.

Family

Everything was in place, so I looked around once more before giving the signal.  It was a two-story home, so we were set up how we had been tens of times before.  This wasn’t our first live run, but by our first one we felt like experts with how many times I’d made us practice on an empty house.  My sister and I flanked the front door, ready to go in one after the other.  My fiancé was waiting 5 paces out, as backup.  My mom was waiting outside the one back door.  My dad was at the window in the living room, in the front and left, about halfway between here and the back door, with my dog at his side.  I lifted my hand into the air and closed my fist.  My sister whistled.  We were a go.

She twisted the handle and opened the door.  I pushed in with my shoulder and walked in, scanning the doorways as I went.  There was a staircase right past the entryway and a zombie stood there, hunched backwards.  He heard me as I approached, but they are too slow and stupid to react fast enough.  I pull it’s head back and jam my knife under his chin until it reaches it’s brain.  The zombie dropped to the ground, immobile.  My sister was trained on me with her knife and a nine-millimeter, just in case.  My fiancé brings up the rear, packing heavy firepower.  She has her shotgun on her at all times, and a machete strapped to her back.  I nod to my sister and we go into the living room on the left.  She stands in the doorway to the next room and I open the window.  I hold up my index finger to my dad and motion behind me.  He knows this means we saw 1, killed 1, and to get the entrance. 

My sister leads the way into the next room, a small pantry with the back door.  She gives my mom a thumbs up, who has a rifle slung over her shoulder and a baseball bat through a belt loop on a power tool holster.  My mom has a lit cigarette in her mouth and she looks back and forth once while in view of my sister, before setting her sights back on the door. 

We go back into the living room and out the side entrance, behind the steps we previously saw.  I’m leading the way again.  Only one more room on this floor and it’s extremely dark.  We don’t have a flashlight, so I tap my back over my left shoulder, so my sister knows to press up against it with hers.  We walk into the room back-to-back and she lets me know she has seen a zombie when she touches the butt of her gun gently to my hip.  I stay the way I am facing, and I hear her stab it a few times and then a heavy lump fall to the ground.  I don’t even have to glance my sister’s way, as my fiancé clicks her tongue to the roof of her mouth, signaling success.  I touch my index fingers together above my thumbs in an A.  My sister takes her cue and goes to the back to get my mom, and I go up front to get my dad.  We all meet at the bottom of the stairs.  No words have yet been exchanged.

My mom takes aim up the stairs and my dad starts ascending.  About 5 steps from the top he snaps his fingers and the dog does a quick lap.  It goes down the hallway each way, without entering any rooms, then assumes it’s place back at my dad’s side.  We all wait motionless for a 15-count, hopeful we can draw out anything lurking.  As soon as it finishes, my sister passes my dad and watches the hallway to the left and points to her right without looking.  I stand at the top of the steps, facing right.  My fiancé nudges between us, one foot on the top step with us, one foot a step down, panning back and forth.  This is the trickiest part, as our position is compromised and there are usually more rooms up top.  There are two rooms down the corridor to the right, with one at the end of the hall, and another two down the left, all the doors closed.  The sun is giving more light on my sister’s side, so she will go first.  My dad takes up a position in front of me, facing the right hallway, and I back up my sister, while my mom comes up the stairs about 5 from the top, and watches the entrance to the house.  My sister holds up a 3 to me, opens the first door and goes in.  After three seconds she comes back out and holds up a zero.  Nothing in that room.  The same thing in the second.  My turn.   We trade positions, and my dad keeps up his.  Same process for room one, but when I come out, my dad stomps his left foot and points.  The door handle on the last door is wiggling.  I alter the code for the next to last door.  I hold up a 1 and open the door.  I go in, and return, holding a 1, and retreat next to my father.  There was a zombie in there, but we don’t want to get caught out with the other door having several, so we wait it out in this position.  My sister is aimed down the hallway, and my father and I are side by side, my knife at the ready, and he has gently let his pistol down to the ground and taken up a pitchfork with both hands.  My fiancé slings her shotgun over her back with the attached strap and pulls out her machete.  We have a protocol in case we need to, a weapon and plan for almost every scenario we managed to dream up. 

A zombie comes lumbering out of the door.  Take no chances.  As it approaches my dad stabs it through the neck and sticks into the wall.  I quickly stab it through the temple and it goes limp.  He takes the pitchfork out and waits.  I hold up 4 fingers and we all do the mental countdown.  Right on time, my father walks towards the door and pierces it with the pitchfork, about waist height, leaving it in.  The handle is too heavy for it to remain perpendicular, but that’s our plan.  We trade places and I open the handle and push back.  The zombie tries to get out, but the handle is enough to trip it up.  It starts to fall towards me, so I retreat, but my fiancé is ready.   As it hits the ground, she moves up to meet the falling zombie and puts her foot on the back of it’s head.  In one clean motion, she separates it’s head from it’s shoulders. She falls back and we wait, silent.  Ten seconds go by and I drag the zombie way from the door while my sister stands above me.  I pull the pitchfork out and give it to my father.  Same process as before now.  My sister holds a three up, enters, returns with a zero. The house is clear.  We all let our shoulders down.  A little more loose now.    

We continue to move as a group after we empty it, just in case.  We start at the bottom and board up the doors.  Only one across the top and one across the bottom of each.  Even if we’re only staying an hour, we don’t want to be ambushed or caught off guard.  This is the easiest way.  We had practiced our methods on empty houses and in training sessions tens of times before we tried to take a house we knew had zombies in it.  Nobody was really counting, but it felt like this was the 30^th or so time we’d done this.  Always without mistake, always efficient.  We wanted to survive, and caution begets longevity. We all smiled and talked casually as we ate dinner.  Lots of canned food left here, surprisingly, and we had tons left over.  We left it all outside while we cleared the house, but we brought in after to rearrange our inventory.  We are good at this.  We can do it.  We all know it.

Fiancé

The only real danger, or so I thought at the time, were the sheer number of them.  We could clear out a house with as many as 10, as long as they were spread out.  This isn’t Rambo.  They are still moving, heavy things.  Even more so because they don’t have inhibition.  They come at you with their full weight and when they lean on you they have a lot of force behind it.  Still, they are slow and dumb and we’ve outwitted hundreds, killed hundreds. 

Every once in a while you stumble upon an area where something bad happened.  People caught unawares, the tide turned too quickly, who knows.  You’ll be walking past a department store or a high rise or a building that someone inevitably thought was impregnable, and the first thing you’ll notice is the smell.  Corpses smell bad, but the difference between one and twenty is astounding.  Everything over fifteen we vehemently avoid.  It’s not worth it.  Too risky, a waste of energy, a waste of resources.  It’s very easy to be overrun, and you can’t plan for so many.  The first time I knew we were in real trouble was when I heard them before I smelled them.  The footsteps were audible from a block away.  We should have turned and planned something else right then and there.  Who knows why we didn’t. 

I remember my mother was the first to notice them.  She was out front as usual, walking down the middle of the street, lit cigarette dangling from her lips as she leveled her rifle in one direction and then the other.  We had all heard them, like I said, but we kept on down the street, certain they were inside a building and we could pass them easily before they became a problem.  Then it became a problem.  My mother stopped dead and didn’t even signal.  She turned and started walking briskly back towards us, still aware that sudden movement or loud sounds were sure to draw them to us.  She told me she saw at least ten, probably more, just around the brick drug store on the next corner.  We stood in the middle of an intersection and deliberated, but we didn’t have as much time as we thought.  The street to the right began to fill, and then, unfortunately, the street to our left.  For how prepared we always were, there was no preparation for this.  At a glance, we were facing a minimum of thirty-five.  At least double the most we have ever seen before.  A giant horde, by all standards.  We knew we had to retreat, so we doubled back the way we came.  The long and winding road is better than the booby-trapped one. 

We made it out of town easily, but now we had to decide:  retrace our steps back to the last safe house we knew, or try to find something close by on short notice.  We opted to go back.  I wasn’t keen on the idea.  We got a good amount of clothes and water on our way through town, but had to turn back before we got any more food.  We’d have to dip into our stash, so it would be a wasted trip, and a long one, on stockpiled food.  Not a good sign.  It would also force us to look elsewhere for more food stuffs.  On the other hand, staying nearby would leave us in a hard-to-defend situation, with a lot of eventualities to plan.  In these times, most decisions are lose-lose.  You just have to live with what you choose.  Learning to live with what happens is everything now.

Progress was slow on the way back.  We had plenty of experience making the trip out during the day, but we never had to double back and make a full return trip.  It’s not something you can really prepare for.  My mom and dad were tired.  It didn’t help that my mother had a cigarette hanging from her lip most of the time.  I never even really tried to talk her out of it.  Before this all I was gung-ho about her health, but now she sort of had a point.  She could go at any time, no use putting herself through hell just to get taken out by an undead.  Or something.  Hard to rationalize anything anymore.  We made it more than halfway, but it was getting too dark to travel, we had to pack it in for the night.  Luckily we were on a state route.  Bigger than a back road, but still flanked by trees on either side.  Not any cars coming through so we can set up a fire in the middle of the road, but it’s still a tough spot to camp.  Trees on both sides make it bad to stay in the open and bad to hide in the woods.  Another lose-lose.  I elected for the street to give us better views on all sides.  I figured it would be harder to get snuck up on this way.

We set up sleeping shifts.  My fiancé, my sister, and I were to sleep first.  My mom and dad chose to stay awake.  We all laid around the fire in a sort of triangle formation.  We didn’t plan that part, it was just where we ended up.  My mom stood about 20 feet away on the south side, and my dad the same on the north.  The dog hung out by his side, as it always did.  We were switching shifts when we got caught out and I’m not sure if that made it better or worse.  We knew we wouldn’t have much warning, but we didn’t realize how much of a disadvantage that would put us in.  My mother called out about the undead coming from the eastern woods, and took aim.  She didn’t fire immediately, she never would.  We always go close range first.  The loud noises attract more, so we try to handle as much as possible quietly.  That was probably our second mistake.  We couldn’t have known, but hindsight is a fucking nightmare.  I was up in an instant and bearing down on the zombies lumbering out of the woods.  Our plans fell to shit immediately.  I started counting and holding up my fingers.  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.  Eight.  Nine, ten.  Holy Shit.  Not enough fingers. This was already a mess.  We were trained though.  My sister, my fiancé, and I immediately took up formation.  I was in front, and them each a step behind me, weapons at the ready.  I would pull a zombie forward, away from it’s fellows, and they’d take it out quickly.  It was working, but damn was it tiring us out.  We have to retreat the whole way for the tactic to work, so even though we met them at the edge of the forest we had backtracked all the way to the fire already.  Our plan was breaking down.  My mom and dad didn’t have room to flank us, they were backed up too far.  I shouted for everyone to run down the road a few feet with me so we could regroup.  We decided to run north, on my dad’s side.  We had to get away from our only source of light, but there was no other option.  I did a quick count as I backpedaled towards my family.  I knew they would stop me up short, so I didn’t need to look where I was going.

One, two, three, four.  Five, six, seven.  Eight.  Shit.  Not good.  I knew we took out six already.  They were still coming.  More and more pouring out of the woods.  If we retreated any further we would lose the light.  If we stood our ground we might be overrun.  My mother asked me if she could start taking shots.  I looked around and everyone looked tired, afraid, nervous.  Except her.  She was ready to fire.  I told her to do it.  She started dropping zombies quickly.  We would just back her up for now, get anything that came in close.  There were so many of them.  They kept coming out of the woods, and we couldn’t see as well now.  She was taking them out as quickly as she could, but she have to have downed fourteen or fifteen already.  A new record, by all accounts, but no cause for celebration.  As they dropped, more would fall in behind.  It would give us time to regroup, over and over, but we were always backpedaling, always reloading, always forming a new plan as we lost light and time and energy.  Then it happened.

My dad tripped walking backwards and went down.  He had his gun in his hands so he wasn’t able to brace himself.  He hit his head.  I reached out for him, but my fiancé was already on her way.  The dog stood over him, and she in front, fending off the zombies with her shotgun.  Only two shells fit the chamber, so it was slow going, but she was doing her best.  I snuck up behind and tapped her on the leg to let her know I was there.  I grabbed my dad by the shoulders and started pulling him backwards.  Some good and bad happened.  He complained that I was hurting him by dragging him on the asphalt.  This meant that his head injury wasn’t too bad, but also that I had to carry him, it took me a few seconds to get him up on my shoulders.  We had to break rank.  My sister, my mom, and my fiancé took up positions and fired relentlessly, as fast as they could, while I retreated with my dad on my shoulder.  Two people down put us at an even greater disadvantage.  I got about thirty feet behind them and called out to pull back.  My mom and sister immediately turned and ran, but when my fiancé did, she also tripped.  One zombie had actually gotten so close, that it’s finally-dead hand lay between her feet and she didn’t see it.  She went down hard.  My mom and sister sprang into action immediately. I didn’t want to put my dad down again in case anything happened, but I moved closer with him.  It felt like it was all I could do.  My sister was a godsend.  She pulled out her machete and became a flurry of blows.  She was ending them as fast as they could come.  Once we got to this point, this dire situation, all plan and semblance of caution went out the window.  It turns out you are wildly more efficient at killing zombies when you don’t account for caution. 

The way things ended couldn’t have been any worse.  We finished them off.  Well, I say we, but it was my mom and my sister.  My mom never stopped firing, the saint, and my sister was a complete force of will, cutting down the undead with reckless abandon.  I was so happy I had them.  In the commotion, one of creatures was decapitated entirely by my sister.  The head sprung from it’s body, it catapulted and fell.  As bad luck would have it, the zombie body fell into my fiancé.  She was standing up, and it caught the back of her arm on the way down.  Cut her good, broke flesh and everything.  It was actually insane.  I still can’t believe it.

I picked her up and we didn’t say anything.  We knew what it meant.  We sat cross legged facing each other and laid our heads in the crook of each other’s necks.  Romantic, yet somber.  It’s a death sentence.  She’s not long for life.  She tells me she wants a ring on her finger before she dies.  I proposed with an engagement ring, but we lost it sometime during the initial catastrophe.  I got up to start looking around for something.  She started coughing soon after and the next time I looked back at her, she was puking.  She didn’t have the energy to move, so she just let loose into her own lap.  I became frantic.  I was throwing over bodies, searching their hands, their pockets.  Anything.  Clawing at the ground, swiping away pine needles and dirt and dust and trying to find something I could put on her finger for her.  Maybe I can make something makeshift.  I called out to her.  She responded with my name, but when I looked she was drooling, and it was thick.  It looked like more blood than saliva.  It’s really hitting her hard, and fast.  I was on my hands and knees, picking through leaves when my mom laid a hand on my shoulder.  I looked up at her and she took her wedding band off.  She put it in my palm and closed my hand around it.  She had tears in her eyes and she nodded at me.  I went to my fiancé but she was out of it entirely.  Couldn’t even lift her head to look at me.  I propped her up by her chin, but her eyes were rolled back.  I took her hand and put on the ring.  There is no time left.  I’m freaking out.  I say I do.  I yell it at her.  I didn’t mean to, it just came out quickly, and loud.  She doesn’t respond.  I say I do again.  Nothing.  I hug her and kiss her.  I hold her head in my hands.  No response.  She collapses into my lap and started convulsing.  I laid down with her and held her close to me.  Her bloody mouth buried in my chest.  I say I do.  I say I do.  I say I do.  We rock back and forth as one.  After a while she stops.  My mom came up and says it’s okay honey.  She says I now pronounce you man and wife.  I kiss my wife’s disgusting, bloody mouth without a second thought.  I kiss her forehead and leave a bloody lip print. I hug her tightly to my body until it hurts my arms.  I buried a knife in the back of her skull.

In the end, my sister and mom counted up the corpses.  Twenty seven.  Twenty seven to one.  Most people would take that trade, looking in from outside.  I would have given anything for that one to be a zero.  People like to talk big like that, say they would give anything, but I had nothing to give.  I wouldn’t give up my family.  They saved me.  They were there for me, they knew what to do, so they left me alone for a while.  I tried to grieve positively.  There was some crying, some internal pleading.  But I knew there was nothing I could do.  You must learn to live with what happens now.  This was a big learning curve. 

Sister

I honestly don’t want to talk about it.  I lost my best friend, my partner.  A hero of mine.  Nothing I can say about this will make it better.  I’ll give you the facts, but not the details.  There are no heroes, there is no circumstance.  Everything is a lie, and your character traits count for nothing. 

We knew nothing of ourselves, but someone even less about this plague.  We learn more as we go, at least we think we do, but at great cost.  Always at incredible cost.

We were traveling.  By the road, on the shoulder.  We passed a corpse just laying there.  My sister knelt down, put a knife in it, just to be safe.  She stood up and looked around.  We don’t know why, but it’s belly popped.  A mess of bile and blood and flesh and goo made it’s way onto her.  She swiped it off swiftly, but she said it burned her skin, still, after removal.  It wasn’t even that much, and we aren’t even sure what it was, what it did, or why it happened.  The only thing we know is that the next day she didn’t wake up.  At least not as herself.  She didn’t complain or cry, except to tell us that her arm was burning.  She had last rounds on overnight watch, and when I shook her awake in the morning, she never roused from sleep.  I listened for a heartbeat and felt for a pulse, but there was nothing.  Somehow it changed her.  It never got in an open wound, not in her mouth, nothing.  We have had their blood on us before, pieces of skin and hair.  This was something different, but we don’t know how. 

That’s it.  No special story, no crazy circumstance.  We don’t know what happened, or how it could have been avoided.  We haven’t seen anything like it before or since.  She was here one day, gone the next.  Fuck this world.

Shelter, cont.

There was another guy here who would talk to me all the time.  I honestly couldn’t stand him, but he would find me and sit next to me.  I would never acknowledge him or answer him back in any way, but he felt the need to talk at me.  I truly hated it with my entire being in the beginning, but I was too lost to care.  Later on, I came to like it.  After it didn’t have it anymore, I often think back on it fondly.  You don’t have many fond memories anymore, and I held onto this one for dear life.  I would call him a friend.  He was exactly what I needed at the time. 

That being said, he was pretty nonsensical.  Apocryphal in its verifiability, but people seem to like that shit.  To me, it was a fun thought experiment, but that’s as far as it went. 

He would say things like that's what they are.  They being the undead. Penance from the planet for our misdeeds. Think about it. No source. No solution. Each one we lose adds to their numbers. It's hopeless. The earth won. It won't let us kill it.  That's what he said zombies were. A defensive plague. Sent by the spirit of the planet.

Personally, I don’t care where they came from.  If he’s right, does it change anything?  No.  We’re no closer to a fix, to a cure, to anything.  We’re all still lost and alone and fighting a desperate fight.  I knew one thing for certain.  When you messed up their brain, they died.  When they were dead, they couldn’t hurt you.  So I killed them.  As much and as often as possible. 

I’d tell him this and he’d tell me some nonsense about how killing the undead doesn’t matter.  You can’t actually kill what’s already dead.  He was wrong, of course.  I had ended plenty of them.  Saw them lifeless once more.  It felt good, righteous.  More so than blaming myself for some sort of unnamed misdeed.  It’s no use trying to figure out the why of all these unknowns.  I was out there, trying to live.  Trying to make a better world for me and the people around me.  Let him think I was atoning for my sins.  If he’s right, it means the planet is sinning now.  Killing us back.  To him, their killing is okay. 

I refuse to accept that.  I think what he said made me decide something in the end.  I thank him not for his insight or for his active participation in my recovery, if you could call it that, but in a roundabout way, he is the reason I am doing this.  Spite or hate or fear.  Motivations don’t matter.  In the end, I will make a difference.  If not for me, if not for my family, then for someone.  Anyone.  For this new world.  Hopefully.  Wish me luck.

Dad

I can only attribute what happened to a combination of several factors that quickly became incendiary.  Obviously, we were all very downtrodden.  We were disheartened, disheveled, and dour.  We had to ration food, and I took it upon myself to give larger shares to my mother and father and the dog.  I felt I was young and virile and most competent to able to act in those circumstances.  I often wonder if I couldn’t have changed something.  If I had tweaked a variable here or altered a decision there, would I have been able to make a difference?  It’s worse than hindsight because you just don’t know.  Everything is unknown.

My mother and I walked side by side through the woods, and my father very close behind with the dog.  It wasn’t a dense wood, and we found a path through the brush that was mostly clear.  It was early fall, so the temperature was beginning to drop, but the trees still held most of their leaves.  Every now and then a yellow one might drift down, but it was still strong and heavy and it got stamped under our feet.  We had a new way of doing things.  The creatures didn’t need to be killed if we weren’t setting up shop within a few miles.  We’d either dodge them outright or my father would use the back end of his pitchfork to push them away.  Long range was the way to go now.  It was working out wonderfully.

We eventually came out of the woods onto a gravel path.  It looked like an old access road, but it could have simply been unpaved.  We had the choice of left or right and I suggested we flip a coin, but my mother said left.  It curved down a short hill, and after a little while the trail ended abruptly and it led to an open clearing of mostly yellow grass and newly deceased leaves.  The clearing spun to the right and a little blue house sat in the middle of an opening.  It was surrounded by trees, but they were far back enough that it looked like a centerpiece to some massive forested display.  We approached slowly, but there were no signs of the undead anyway.  It was eerily empty and devoid of anything, but that was a just one of those feelings you get that mean nothing.

We walked up as a team, always together now.  Grouped together as much as possible.  We ditched the old formation for a triangle.  Myself in front and my mom and dad behind. My dad made the dog stay outside, since we don’t have people to spare for a lookout anymore.  I grabbed the front door handle and swung it open soundlessly.  They followed me in and we held our ground for a moment to look around.  It wasn’t very spacious: tight corridors, narrow stairs, small doorways.  We stood in a hallway as soon as we entered, and a small kitchen was to our left.  It was very dark, all the windows were boarded up completely.  I thought to myself that it didn’t make sense to board up all the windows and leave the door completely untouched.  I wonder what happened here.  I couldn’t make sense of anything so far.  We went into the kitchen together but there was nothing there.  We had to clear the house before we could come back for the goods.  Back out into the hallway.  There was another room on the left past the kitchen.  It looked like a living room, but everything was covered in sheets.  All the furniture, bookshelves, lamps, tables, shelves.  There was a bulbous mass on the floor next to the couch which was also covered in a white sheet.  Without turning, I stopped and reached my left hand back to my mother.  I touched her with a closed fist, then I did the same to my father.  They knew what this meant. I pointed to the sheet and approached it.  They leveled their weapons at it, and I did a silent countdown.  I held out three fingers and then after the count, quickly pulled the sheet away and backed up a few steps.  It was a pile of trash and oddities.  Old, wet, books and kitchen utensils and radios and a pair of glasses and a broken plant holder.  I asked my parents what they thought of it, but my dad just stared and my mother shrugged.  She tapped her fingers to her wrist as if to say let’s hurry up.  I could tell she just wanted to get outside for a smoke. 

In the hallway there was only a staircase leading up.  It was very narrow, so we had to walk single file, and we couldn’t get proper angles for protection.  My dad went up first, then me, then my mom. There was a small landing at the top of the steps, still narrow, and then a door.  He opened it slowly and didn’t move for a full minute, letting his eyes adjust to the room.  The windows were boarded up here, too, so it was hard to make everything out. He made his way in, and from my vantage point, I could see him stepping over something to get in the room.  I wished he had waited, but I guess his guard was down.  The room was cramped with furniture and oddities, all covered in sheets, and there were piles on the floor again.  He had stepped over one to get in the room.  I made my way into the room behind him, but it was small and filled with junk.  Totally cramped. And it smelled horrible.  We had become accustomed to the smell of the dead, and this wasn’t it.  It was something else entirely.  I held my hand out to my mother, palm facing her, outstretched, and moved it towards my body and back out.  She nodded and stayed in the doorway.  It wasn’t that far from us, but I try to always follow procedure.  It was tougher now with just the three of us.  My dad moved ahead to the door in the back of the room.  He was waiting for me to catch up to him to open it.  I took my time to look around the room.  It was so strange, this whole ordeal was.  The house, the clearing, the mess, the sheets.  It made no sense.  It wasn’t like I was going to find a journal lying around the room, so we would never know what happened.  That’s just the way it is sometimes. 

Something HAD happened here.  That much was sure.  I get caught up with things like this sometimes.  Why cover everything in sheets?  Was this before or after things went bad?  A lot of questions and really, no answer.  You get good at settling for no answer nowadays.  Each house we went into told a different story.  Sometimes you can hazard a guess. An empty house with open doors all over suggests they ran out in a hurry.  Lots of closed doors and corpses and you know they likely refused to leave and paid for it.  Every once in a while you run across something like this and you can only wonder and dream up ideas in your head.  I had this conversation with my mother before.  You see these weird things being done and we chalk it up to two possibilities:  people doing weird things in a panic at the situation, or children.  We surmise children because they are small and quick and energetic, and left alone in a house, who knows?  Maybe they make a game out of it, maybe they stumble their way through, maybe their brains say that the best thing to do is cover it all up.  To make yourself at ease, to try and hold some semblance of reality, you like to think that it all has a plausible explanation.  Nothing really does.  There is no plausibility, there is no reality, there is no “normal.”  Normal now is creeping around a house with your parents, looking for corpses to kill again so you can safely take any food left in the kitchen. 

In an almost comical way, I shook my head to clear my thoughts.  I picked an awful time to daydream.  Things had become strained though.  Doubts snuck in where I was normally steadfast.  We always had a plan, always knew that we would never be caught off guard.  Everyone thinks that.  That THEY are going to be the ones to make it through this.  Sure, we had good methods, good tactics.  We were smart about it, and more thoughtful than most.  But what it turns out to be in the end is sheer dumb luck.  You either luck out and make it, or you don’t.  We felt so safe with our methods, so much better than these other survivors.  We thought our plans were foolproof and our methods were life-preserving.  We got complacent.

What was once our foundation ended up becoming our fault. The silent cues, the hand signals and motions, the safety of knowing someone was right behind you, covering unseen angles. The gentle taps and reassurance of your partner and family letting you know it was clear. We were blind without them. At least that's how I've come to rationalize it. After all, it had been five, six days most since we lost her.


We had breached one hundred homes easily with her, and none without. We were slow to realize those clambering, soft hands behind us were not our allies. Or maybe in our subconscious, we were desperate to believe she wasn't gone. My poor sister. Their daughter. But she was gone and those hands were of the dead. And they gripped us up as a drowning victim grabs for a branch to pull them from a coursing river. Coming out from under the sheets and cabinets and furniture.  I realized sooner than my father, or maybe I was just stronger. Or maybe it was sheer dumb luck.  My fear at realizing I was being touched by a ghoul instead of my mother or sister wrenched me out of their claw, but I fell to the ground hard.  I broke the grip, and although it only took seconds, it was precious time I'll never get back.  I must have startled my dad because when I looked over he was dropping to his knees.  I really felt like I was so fast.  I thought I snapped into action in an instant, but my memory is hazy.  It was dark in there and I was startled; we all were.  I kicked the zombies away and lurched up to my feet in a hurry, banging into cupboards and shelves and a couch as I stood. I ran to my father but the aisles were narrow and I had to fight my way up over a corpse. I barbarically chopped at limbs with wanton abandon and careless fervor. This can't happen. I won't let it.

But I'm no hero. It did happen. He panicked, as anyone would, and stumbled further away as I was working my way towards him. Another hand reached out to me as I lunged for him. It got caught in my pants and tugged me back. "Dad!" I screamed. It was all I could think to do. Unfortunately, looking back, I was panicking, too. "Dad! Dad!" I turned and pulled the hand from my clothes, another had my ankle. "Dad, no! I'm coming!" It was already too late. "Dad! DAD! DAD!" I'm not usually so foolish. This was doing nobody good, but I was no longer a human. I had reverted to some primordial form running on instinct that only knew survival and squirmed for it, desperately, without knowing how or why. I viciously hacked the hands from around me. I would later find several severe cuts on myself from the crazed flailing. I regret none of them. In fact, it's as good a reminder as one can get. Even more permanent than a tattoo, and less of a conversation piece. I got free again, finally, and bounded to him in a few short steps. He had already started fighting back at this point, but I could see bloodstains on his clothes. He was doing a hell of a job, and I’m forever proud of him for it.  He reacted better than I did.  I chopped the hands away from my dad, but some of them clearly got to him. The bastards had pulled themselves up and taken a bite. Only a few. Still fatal. Everything is fatal nowadays.

We stood outside, my mother and I a few feet away from my father.  We had walked him to the side of the house to get him more out in the open, just in case anything happened.  I’m not sure what we were preparing for, but it was a strong habit now, and we apparently kept to it, for whatever good that does. We had said our goodbyes but he was barely coherent. He was quiet. I didn't realize how strong the man was until I thought back and recognized he had been quiet the whole time. Never complained, never cried out. He had been bitten several times wordlessly, and now he stood, head drooped, hands hanging limp, quiet as can be. Eerily silent.  Dead on his feet, as far as it mattered, just not yet turned.  I miss him.  So alive, so happy, so healthy.  A few little bites, not more than scratches.  Entirely doomed.

I couldn't do it. This was all too much. I knew it was practical, I knew it was the right thing to do. But I couldn't kill him. I was breaking down. I could feel my mind tearing itself apart. We'd all seen the movies. We all think we're strong. We make fun of the characters not strong enough to make the tough decisions from where I'm standing right now. I don't think there is a person in this world strong enough to kill their wife and sister and then still have the fortitude to kill their dad without hesitation. If there is, I never want to meet them. My mom sympathized with me. She was strong, in a different way. Somehow she was comforting me during this. The resolve she showed inspired me, even then. I like to think that if anyone can survive this, it's the woman who can show compassion to others when she has lost this much. Even still, we sat there hugging for what seemed like an eternity before I wiped away my tears and moved to do what had to be done.

But I couldn’t do it.  I sat there and just stared. I let him stay as he is. It was important to me that he be preserved. It wasn't fair. It was the only thing I could think of to fight back. He didn't deserve this.

He passed on in front of my eyes.  I could tell.  I knew we didn't have long so we had to be gone swiftly. I asked my mom to pack up.  We had hastily dropped our things at the door when I brought him out of the house. We were going to be on the road again for a while and we had a lot to gather. My mom did a great job. She really packed up quick, and efficient, too.  She even went back in all on her own and stocked up from the kitchen.  I didn’t find this out until later because I was zoned out entirely.  She called out to me to let me know she was ready and I went to meet her at the front door.  She asked if I had done it and I just looked at her.  She knew I hadn’t, and she simply frowned and put her hand on my shoulder.  She didn’t like it, but she knew. I called for my dog. I heard her whimper and her feet shuffle but she didn't come bounding through, like she had done every time before. I ran around the corner of the house and my dad was holding her. He had one hand on her head, petting gently, and he was bent over awkwardly. I called her again but she didn't move. I had literally no idea what to do. I stood there, stunned. I reached out for her. I stood, still. The words "Dad, please, no," trickled weakly out of my mouth. He looked at me. Excepting the blood, his eyes were the only part that looked out of place. They were yellowing, like the dead. He leaned down further like he used to do. She licked his face. He bit her on the cheek. I stood and watched. Helpless and afraid. She whimpered. I walked up. He looked and me, smiling a bloody smile. I ran a knife through his head. She looked at me. I did the same. My mother and I turned and left.

Shelter, cont.

It got better, at least for a while.  It was just my mother and me left, and as you can guess, we hit a stint of good luck.  We stumbled upon a house on top of a mountain ridge.  The house itself was half-burned down and terrible from a fortification standpoint, but the luck came in the form of the former owner. They must have been one of those apocalypse-prep types, because we found a door to a bunker in their basement.  At this point I was brazen.  My mother’s cough was pretty bad anymore and she had no energy for walking, so we were always stopping, and we couldn’t be quiet.  I had fired my gun often and I shot anything that moved.  So when we found a giant metal door in a stone archway, I just pounded on it with my fist fifteen or sixteen times.  An extended knock.  I didn’t care what was inside.  I just leveled my gun at the basement stairs in case I stirred up anything with all the noise I had been making.  My mother had a lit cigarette hanging from her mouth as usual, and her rifle lounged on her shoulder, uncaring.  This was us now.

I heard the door start to clank open and I holstered my gun in the front of my belt, so they knew I was armed.  I wasn’t afraid of people anymore, they had done nothing to us.  At least not while they were alive.  Plus I figure people in a shelter like this have to be pretty conservative.  It was part guesswork and part not really caring.  I only had my mom to care for anymore.  This wasn’t going to be a discussion.  They either let us in or we leave.  We were fine out in the open, I just wanted somewhere for her to rest for a while.

Lucky again for me they were welcoming.  I did what they asked, and we surrendered our weapons.  We had a decent stockpile of food and supplies between the two of us that I willingly gave to the supply in the bunker.  They welcomed us with open arms.  I audibly breathed a sigh of relief once we were inside.  I’m not sure if I had done that in actual years.  You don’t realize how helpful a big, deep, breath is.  Take one right now, a big breath of air.  Your body probably needs it.

Our luck ran out, as it always did.  And always unexpectedly.  My mother’s cough got worse and worse. She had no energy, she could hardly breathe.  She didn’t do anything all day.  I spent most of my evenings trying to get her to eat and sitting by her bed and chatting.  She would chat less each day.  I was as optimistic as possible for her, but we both knew.  What utter tragedy.  We had finally made it.  A nice group, good location, provisions, smart and capable people, a place to live, and smoking is taking out my mother.  After all of this.  All of this hardship.  Losing her family.  It honestly made me laugh.  I don’t believe in cosmic workings, karma, intelligent design, mystical forces, anything like that.  Even now, part of me thought this was inevitable.  There is no better joke than this.

She passed painfully, slowly, with a smile on her face.  She acted as if she was fine the entire time, and I don’t know if that made it better.  We were there for several months before it was over, and then I was truly alone.  Everyone was gone.  It was only me.

Mom

She made me promise to keep on living.  I still don’t understand how she was so damn strong.  Biblical, almost.  Prolific. Amazing.  I ended up promising her, and I couldn’t let her down.  It was a good promise.  She was so smart. 

I hate saying was.

“You worry too much about the why of things, but you have to just have to live.  None of this matters.  I know you can still have a good life.  You did so well.  You can never find a new mom, but you can make a new family.  Friends, acquaintances along the way, people you save, people who save you.  People worth knowing.  People worth living for.  They are out there, I can tell you that.  I know you don’t believe me, but you don’t have to, because I’m right.  Sure it looks pretty bad right now, but it will get better.  It won’t be the same, and you’ll always have these memories, but focus on the good ones.  Time makes fools of us all, honey.  Don’t forget me, but don’t let my memory be of my passing.  Let it be when your father and I took you to your first baseball game.  Remember when you surprised your sister at her piano recital and it brought her to tears.  Remember the first time you told your girlfriend you loved her.  Nothing can take that away from you except death.  To live is to win, and you must go on living for all of us. “

There was a long pause where neither of us spoke.  She started again.

"I know you want to be sad.  Anyone can be sad.  Don’t say you don’t have a reason to go on living.  Don’t say you have nothing left.  You’re alive and well, honey.  You have everything that there is. There is still a world out there that needs you.  I’m so proud of you.  You did great.  I have to go, so you take care of the rest.  Don’t quit now, or ever.  If being alone is too tough, then find someone new.  If the world isn’t how you like it, then kill the zombies to make yourself feel better.”

 Another brief intermission for a bout of coughing and sputtering.

“You can make it better for someone else.  If you get rid of them all, the world can exist again, without this curse.  Nobody else will have to go through what you went through.  There is no more noble cause.  To give up now, when you have so much potential, is a crime against nature, more criminal than these damn undead.  I know you don’t believe in an afterlife.  I know I don’t.  If one of them takes you, you won’t be able to see us again.  We live in you, now.  I love you.  We all do.  Thank you for all that you did.”

Me

I echoed her sentiments on the bulletin board I left in the hallway.  Nobody stopped me when I left.  I took enough rations for a few days.  I got my gun and my mother’s gun back.  Tons of survivors here, but what is surviving to huddle in a corner and wait for things to get better.  I willingly exile myself to the outside world, to the real world, to fix it.  I will kill every zombie.  Or enough of them to make a difference. 

The outside world

Things were getting back to normal, and a large portion of time was spent clearing locations.  A man was found once, by the military, after the resolution.  Alone, with little possessions.  He was near emaciated, with a long grey beard and a bald head.  It was in a major metropolitan city, one of the first to be evacuated.  It had previously been overrun, which was why it was strange to find him here, alone, not turned.  His things numbered few, and they were as follows:  A pistol, a rifle, a picture of his family, a small notebook with tally marks in it.  The tallies numbered into the tens of thousands.  The pages filled with them.  It was more than halfway full, closer to three quarters.  The top right of the pages had the totals.  The last marked page read 15,427.  The very last page of the notebook was also written in. 

“Will this ever be enough?  Did I put enough work in?  Was it worth it?” 

Elder Witch

At first I thought I was witnessing myself going crazy.  I knew it was going to happen sometime.  It is probably my greatest fear.  I'm seventy-four in a nursing home.  Chances are dementia or Alzheimer's or senility are going to set in soon.  So when I wished the curtains would open when I was still laying in bed, and they did, I understandably freaked out.  It's not something that can happen by chance or be explained by science.  One minute they were closed, the next, they slid open right before my eyes.  The problem with these occurrences, these "ghastly" experiences, is they all sound so insane, until it happens to you.  Suddenly you go from a sound skeptic to a fearful dissenter in the space of a heartbeat.  As I laid there, silently astounded, I truly didn't know what to think, for maybe the first time in my life.  Every strange probability, every wild speculation, became potential. It's a small wonder I didn't have a heart attack after that shock.

Still, I couldn't let my worldview be shaken.  I was old and set, and I was resigned to my position, weird happenings or not.  I still had my faculties, I said to myself, feigning a semblance of dignity, but really shouting into the wind.  I wouldn't realize how jolted I was until that night.

I had a dream.  Have you ever had one that seemed so real that when you woke up, you confused it with real life?  Well this was beyond that.  So far beyond that I would go as far as to say it *was* real.  I was sitting in a chair, in an entirely black chamber.  There were no walls, no endings, no perimeter, but it felt like a small box of darkness.  Then out of it came a middle-aged woman.  She couldn't have been older than 40, dark-haired and hazel-eyed.  She was shocked to see me.  I found out later it was because I was so old. She briefly talked to me, but I remember every word, and I know I will until the day I'm gone.  Her brevity was astounding, considering the situation.  She told me that she has powers, but she was passing on.  Those powers would come to me now.  There are forces beyond our control and comprehension, a sovereign momentum, that puts forth a wave of action that we can fight against and be dashed against the shores of cause, or succumb to it and flow into destiny.  I thought the whole thing was very obtuse.

After my incident with the curtains I began to have more things happening to me daily.  Some familiar, and some against the curve.  A black cat wandered in from my window one day.  I was sure I had closed it the night before, but as soon as I swung my feet off the bed, it hopped up onto the sill and sat there, staring at me.  It was still there when I came back from lunch, and it spoke to me.  It told me it was here to guide me.  That's when I knew I was going crazy, and I went to sleep in the common room, because I knew they would put me to bed and I wouldn't have to face the talking cat in my bedroom.

The cat began to follow me, and I continued to exhibit behaviors not unlike the minor miracle of me opening my curtains. 

I'm an old woman but I like to keep my room tidy. Sweeping is a comfort for me, and I was casually collecting the dust from around my room. One of my sweeps missed and I was astounded. You old fool, I thought to myself, you actually missed the ground. But then I missed again and I looked around and realized why. I was gripping the broom tight, and it was suspending me a few inches in the air. When I noticed, it was as if I reminded my mind that I can't do that, and I slowly drifted back down to earth.

This isn't one of those storybook nursing homes where I hate it and everybody sucks. I like it here and there are a lot of good, nice, and earnest people. When word got out I had been talking to my cat, thankfully they just thought what I initially thought. That I had gone crazy. It was extremely nice to know that they thought I was a literal crazy cat lady and nobody treated me any differently. Sure, I had a very weird reputation afterwards, but Greg still played ping pong with me after lunch and didn't say a word about it. Tina still knocked on my open door every other day to get me for coffee (although she did start drinking it black because "all the milk here goes sour fast.") Marie would actually ask how my cat was, and I think she believed me when I said that it talked to me. Didn't bat an eye. I don't know if it's a testament to old people in general, or if they were just good friends. Maybe a little bit of both, but I was happy for it. Things were getting weird, but still looking up.

I'm a quick study.  I'm old, but I'm still right of mind and quick-witted enough to pay attention to what is happening around me.  I've read stories about this growing up. I watch it in popular media. I wasn't as dumbfounded as most would have been. The curtains, the cat, the broom, the bad milk, the dream. I knew what it all meant. I had become a witch. At seventy-four.

--------------

Call me cliché, but I came to calling the cat Renaldo. It's the name of my favorite cat from the Miyazaki film The Cat Returns. I never had one before, but I remember thinking how much I liked this cat when I saw it, so it felt natural. He told me he already had a name, but that he didn't mind. He smiled at me. Cats don't smile with teeth, and they always do so with their eyes closed. It's really comforting.  Until now I didn't know much about witches, and I still don't.  They use a very strange vernacular for everything and it feels quite obtuse.  I find myself hesitating to use the terms.  Renaldo is supposed to be teaching me, but I just call him my cat, or my cat buddy, or Renny or Renaldo.  He says he is my familiar, and that's one of the terms I won't latch on to.  When you hear "witch" and "familiar" and "spells" you think only of malevolence.  I'm the same person I have always been, I've just gone through something.  Furthermore, something entirely out of my control.  I am the same.  Only now I can do different things.  Magical and perhaps mystical things, but it doesn't change the personality I have come to know as myself for the entirety of my life. 

I would have been lost without Renaldo.  It turns out most of what we know about witches has been carefully cultivated and delivered by witches themselves so as not to reveal secrets or something all cloak-and-dagger like that.  I don't subscribe to the idea myself, but they apparently give witches a lot of autonomy so I'm allowed to just be.  Magic is far more powerful and esoteric than you can ever guess.  It is more a feeling than a power.  You alter the world around you with mental prowess.  It is completely beyond comprehension to a non-witch.

The most favorite trick that Renaldo showed me I can do is read tea leaves.  It's quite wonderful.  I can tell a person's fortune.  The mediums you see doing this in stores or for friends are all crazy people or party tricks.  That stuff is most assuredly made up.  But I can tell.  The same way I can levitate on a broom or bend the wind to my will or make a drink that will change how you act.  I get this feeling when I read the leaves that is what I think is really and truly magic.  To be able to divine.

I was and still am unsure about this whole thing, but it has brought me connectivity, at the very least. I can hear the wind, and blades of grass whisper to me. Ebb and flows of waterways bring news to my window. Animals look at me and they know I can control things. They look at me as if a stranger would when you both see someone slip on ice and look around for acknowledgement.

What I didn't realize until it was beyond morbid, was that with each passing moment I became more forlorn. Suddenly I had all I ever dreamed of, and nothing to do with it. Renaldo told me that witches live longer. I have at least 100 more years in me, most likely much more. For what? What have I got? I'm in a home. I have friends here but nothing solid. Nobody to truly depend on or form a connection with, or even someone that I like more than an acquaintance. Even the things I at first thought were fun and neat have fallen to the wayside very quickly. I don't even use my magic anymore. There is no point. I'm wasting away.

It went on like this for a long time. At least I think it was a long time. I don't keep track of the days, I just sort of try to change my routine so it doesn't feel like I'm a caged animal. I suppose most caged animals don't mind it. The dumb ones. When you cage a smart animal they go crazy. Birds and dolphins and rats. They only have four walls and their thoughts, which eventually leads to the same thing. The bad thoughts. Focusing on your mortality. Your essence. Your being trapped.

I suddenly had all the freedom in the world and I have never felt more confined. I was alone in the world and in a place I didn't know I hated until I was given another option. All the stories I knew about witches say they found out when they were a teenager. They usually did two things: they used their powers to impress a boy, and they ran away. I haven't tried to impress a boy in 50 years, so I did the only other option.

I forced out a cryptic goodbye to the people I thought might miss me. I didn't want them to worry, but I think they thought I was talking about dying. About my own death. Oh well. I can't control how they think. And so there I was, an old witch on a broom, flying in front of the moon with her talking black cat. About as typical as it gets.

-------------

My search for wisdom, answers, and the witch who could give them to me was brief, by all standards. I didn't get any sort of witch intuition or radar, but I think I did inherit some luck, so there is that. I would fly at night, along the countryside, until I got hungry, and then I'd find a farm or a cabin or a house with no lights on and I'd take some of their food. Not the most noble of deeds, but I couldn't even think properly at this point. I didn't know how to be a witch and I didn't have the tenacity to be creative. I would stockpile food when I could and I'd fly into open third story barn windows and sleep there. It would have been enjoyable if I didn't feel like a homeless wreck. After what I would guess was a month and a half of this I landed at a cabin with a light on. I had never done this before but there was an actual lantern sitting on the window sill and there was a white cat sitting next to it. I could feel it following me with its eyes and I couldn't tell what it meant but I could feel that it meant something. I circled around a few times and then decided to land directly at the window. The cat immediately spoke to me and I fist pumped on the inside for being totally right. I must have not entirely hidden my excitement because this cat raised it's eyebrow at me. What it said was:

"You know you're not very inconspicuous."

I retorted "Who cares? Is there a witch in there?"

"You're not very well mannered either. I'm Marlo."

"Hi Marlo. I'm going in."

I didn't have time for pleasantries. Cats are mostly aristocratic it turns out. All pomp and etiquette and grace and no flavor or zest. I think it makes the witches more uptight but they can't train me. I already know who I am.

There was a witch inside with a cauldron brewing. I immediately started laughing. The whole thing is so fantastically monotonous. Witches act like they've all been taught to act, it seems. She had some mild potion in there to help mushrooms grow or something silly like that. I spoke at her as soon as she noticed me.

"Hey can you tell me what this is all about?"

She was taken aback at my candor and age, but to her credit she forged ahead very gracefully.

"What *what* is all about, deary?"

I didn't like being patronized so I called her out.

"Deary? I could be your mother."

"Oh. You really are new to this. The agelessness hasn't set in yet. Do you have a name?"

"Meredith. You?"

"Charla."

"Did you rename yourself?"

"Born with it. If I had to guess, Meredith, I'd say I was at least 85 years older than you. No matter. Ask away, we'll get this over with quickly if you please."

She looked young and exuberant. She explained a lot of the basics. The magic will smooth me out and make me feel youthful. There is no real code to follow, but if you step out of line you will be reprimanded. They can't take your powers, and you don't lose them until you pass. You choose a successor before then. People will show me the way.

With all the boring stuff out of hand we got into my important questions. The stuff that was really bugging me. The stuff all the stories gloss over. The meat of it.

"I don't want it." I said, matter-of-factly.

"Too bad. It happened. Why not try making the most of it?"

"I'm an old woman. My family is gone. I'm all alone. I was ready for the final steps of life.
Now I'm all twisted. I'm going to live for a very long time with very annoying rules and I'm still alone. I was done. That was it. I don't want to do this. I want to feel more connected with the world, not apart from it. I don't want this."

"But you are more connected. Literally. The wind is at your beck and call. You are not bound by gravity. You can see things others cannot dream of."

"But how? Why?"

"That is not for us to say. Who knows why or how anything happens, truly? This is your chance to be part of something bigger than yourself. To connect to the world around you in a way most people will never have a chance of achieving. And I don't mean the planet. I mean your whole world. Your body and your entire sense of being. You don't have to make sense of it, you just have to live it. Do your best."

"I don't know how. What am I going to do? Conjure spells and make potions and fly and talk to a cat? It's a young person's game, I'm not equipped."

"You are younger than me."

"Maybe in numbers but not in mind. I lived my whole life like a regular person, not a witch. You don't think about things the same. I had a husband, I had a kid. I worked my whole life. I was wasting away in a home. I don't want a second lease, there is nothing left for me. I'm beyond all that."

"You are beyond nothing. To squander something like this would be to spite the less fortunate. You cannot live your life dwelling on your past. They are just things, like anything else, and they fade in time, as all things do. If you allow yourself to be controlled by your past then you are a fool, and if you are willfully a fool, then you have already given up, and death will most assuredly come for you without you supplying effort."

"Jesus you're forward. And morbid."

"Oh? More morbid than you? Please leave."

"Hey wait a minute. Just tell me how to stop being a witch."

"Listen closely, I already told you. You can be aware of the past and not be a slave to it. You have been chosen. It happens at random. The same way a spore does not choose its host. The same way a snake does not choose its next meal. The same way a leaf ages and is sent on the wind. The same way a cloud fills the space in the sky. Opportunity has arrived, and you must embrace it."

"I was ready for the end. I can't do this. I'm all alone. I'm old. I'm.... scared."

"If you could only choose between being entirely lonesome on the frontier of creation, or being dead, it becomes an easy choice. Some choices are harder, but there is always a choice. Submit to the choices and you can guide yourself. Fight them and be crushed under the weight. A choice within a choice. Either way, life goes on, days continue marching, and you along with it. Will you be a friend to time or be made a simpleton in it's wake? You have always had fear, girl, and look where you stand: triumphant on a pile of dirt and ash and bone. You don't have to learn our ways, you don't have to be a part of anything you don't want, but to be given a wondrous gift and return it for fear of what might be is a crime against nature. Now leave, I wish to conjure spells and make potions and fly and talk to my cat."

After I left her place I looked for emotion, spirits. Awakening. Whatever I could happen upon. I spent months in a forest watching a single flower every day. Keeping an eye on it as it grew, and eventually it's blooming. I watched it the whole process. I drank from rivers and ate berries and plants I happened upon. I started meditating. I would do it for a few minutes, then a few hours. I meditated until time became comfortable. Time altered itself after a while. Not really and truly, but I felt time differently than I ever had before. If I was indoors, it happened after midnight. It no longer felt like a day or a time or a moment, but it was a dimension. A place apart from time that existed with different feelings and emotions. Indoors after midnight was trapped in a library: dimly lit and alone with all the knowledge you could imagine. Overwhelmed with knowledge. More books than there are stars in the sky or drops of water in the ocean. It was a maze of corridors in an empty but lived-in castle. Tapestries and banners only party visible by the light of the candles and lanterns. Shadows bouncing around large brown stones as you can only walk, stunned, through the massive hallways. It was a one room cabin on the edge of a precipice, sat in front of a roaring fire in a cozy fireplace. Wrapped in blankets and the steam of a hot drink straightening your back. If you were outside, this happened at twilight. When the lights in the sky changed from light to dark or when they changed from dark to light, nothing existed except colors and clouds and the imagination of the endless sky and every bit of starlight that touched me. The shimmering dark stretches on forever and you are a smudge of paint on a deep black canvas. You are a drop of ink on a blanket of stars. You are a blinking red light on the top of a mountain in someone's dream. You are the image of some coveted animal, brought to life by the squints and dreams of the hopeful. You are a cascade of swirled colors above and below. You are the moment in between asleep and awake, when your mind isn't sure if it's still dreaming or thrust back to reality.

That was enough for then. It was a brilliant time but there is more to what I want than a dreamscape or a fairy tale or some sort of forced enlightenment. That statement itself made me think. Is there more to what I want? I had a lot already. I had everything I thought I wanted. Then I had nothing.

But....

I have something again. Something really special. I took it for granted because I had given up. My past ruled me for so long. I wasn't living then, I had lived and I was remembering my own story, somberly, bitterly, and without vigor. The past is fickle. The past can be wrong. It's only as strong as we allow it to be. I don't want my past to be a giant glaring reminder of things I wished I had done differently or traumas that altered me forever. They are just things. That's right. I have new things now. Things that, when I think about, make me laugh like an idiot, but also have given me a purpose even before I knew I had one. I was out and moving and doing before I knew why or where or even what.

-------------

"Ms. Alfaro! What does this word mean?"

I couldn't help but laugh at the irony. He was pointing at a word in a book called 'Moon Magic.'

"Bruja means witch, Manuel," I said and patted him on the head. I spun him around gently by his shoulders and urged him back to his desk.

They were sullen and angry today, annoyed by the weather. None of them had opened their textbooks yet, quite unlike themselves.

"I thought you said we could go outside to study today," they piped up in one form or another.

"The weather isn't too great," I retorted.

They all moaned and let out audible disdain and some even slumped down and the worst of it were the ones who put on the grumpiest face they could muster. I looked over at Renaldo, also angry that he didn't have a warm spot to lay in this afternoon, and he smiled at me. I couldn't help it. I'm a sucker.

I reached into my pocket and gripped my wand, as discreetly as I could, and flicked it to and fro. The dark clouds started pushing out of view and before long, big, bright rays of light shone in through the windows. Their heads started to turn and almost in unison they looked at me, full of breath and youth and eyes bright with excitement.

"Well what are you waiting for? Grab your things. It looks like there is Sun beyond the clouds after all."