Windows

 Even though I am flanked on both sides by similar scenery, they could not look more different.  Sitting on the left side of the train car, I rest my head against my window. The window is huge, and provides an enormous view of the trees as they pass by at 150 miles per hour.  I can still pick out detail from this vantage point.  Greens, but many yellows, and reds, too.  I can see the distinct trees, and the branches themselves. I can see trees in background and foreground, rivers and clearings dividing them.  The blue sky above and the afternoon sun illuminating everything clearly.  Being up close, even at this speed, I can tell what I'm seeing. A distinct and diverse forest.  I turn my head to face the opposite window, and what a difference it makes!  The window is so much smaller from this side of the train, and everything passes by in an instant. No longer can I tell that it's a forest with my eyes alone, because all I see is an abstract smattering of colors.  The autumnal hues mix together on a conveyor belt canvas painted with a sponge.  How interesting my surroundings, one side clear and clean, the other tumultuous and clouded.  Both things, in actuality, are the same, but from my windows, the choice between a placid stream and a raging river. I smile at the thought, close my eyes, and let the confluence sing me a lullaby.

---

It's 9 in the morning, but I have all of my living room lights on.  The morning feeling never sinks in, the artificial light sterilizing my mentality.  I take stock of my banal, brown apartment, bathed in the yellow cascade of a bulb without a cover.  The winter coldness seeping in adds another layer of depression.  Still, I head over to the single window in the corner of the room.  There are no curtains on it, because what would be the point? The apartment used to be the upstairs of a house, hastily converted to a small apartment by a slum lord to double his revenue.  My fingertips land precipitously on the decrepit wooden windowsill as I take in my view, which is thus:  the vinyl siding of some storage warehouse.  There is about four feet of separation between the buildings, a small stone alleyway with weeds creeping out all over the place.  My second-story window lets me see the drab, dark beige paneling and nothing else. A disgusting sort-of napkin brown color that must have been chosen for it's cost-effectiveness. The building stretches far enough that it blocks out the sun, except for when it's at it's absolute zenith.  I get down on my knees, keeping my fingers on the sill as if hanging for my life, and try to find an angle where I can see the gray winter sky.  Hunched there like a lecherous goblin, I take a deep breath and close my eyes.  It takes the experience of not being able to see outside in your own apartment to know it must now go on the list of must-haves for the next place.  Nothing makes me feel more like I'm in a prison than staring out this window.

---

With nothing else to do, I end up tracing the mortar between the bricks of my cell with my finger again.  Eventually it goes where I can't follow, into the recessed window slit.  I guessed that the tiny, rectangular window was about 3 feet high and about 4 inches wide, but I had no frame of reference at the time, and I haven't been there in 20 years.  The light was as annoying as it was tantalizing, shining a bright, joyful beacon whose brightness held no warmth and only blinded me.  Outside was a lush, green field of grass, leading to a large hill on the side of a highway.  The angle only allowed me to see the very tops of cars speeding by.  I could not hear them, but I imagined I could.  I never pictured myself longing for the sound of traffic.  Inside I had sterile white walls, a drab grey metal desk with a stool attached, and a drab grey metal bed with an uncomfortable cot.  Unwelcoming and blank.  My shoulder butted up against the wall awkwardly, and my cheek pressed hard into the recess, the discomfort welcome as long as I could peer outside.  Clear blue skies, perhaps a single cloud passing overhead.  The cloud made it's speed apparent to me as I locked my eyes on it for an indeterminate amount of time.  The occasional glint of sunlight off the roof of a passing car, if I stood just right.  The rushing, cool, summer wind, pressing the waves of grass one way, then another.  Deeply I stared into the field, noticing patches of dirt, rocks, hills and valleys, distinct features in a normally congruent plain. Viewed through a sliver of glass no wider than my palm.  What a view.

---

My alarm goes off for the 3rd time, jarring me awake from a 5 minute snooze.  I finally sit up in bed with a groan and start my day, 15 minutes beyond when I wanted to.  Every morning I tell myself that snoozing my alarm in these increments doesn't help wake me up, nor does it allow good sleep, yet I do nothing to change it.  It's not 7 am yet, and my studio apartment is still dark.  I know the layout well enough that I can cautiously make my way around without having to turn on the lights.  I put a single cup of coffee on, mostly by feel, and make my way to the bathroom while it brews.  By the time I'm done brushing my teeth, the sunrise illuminates my home.  A sight I never tire of.  I lean against the wall and simply stare at the majesty of the view.  The entire north wall of my apartment is glass, welcoming the purple and orange sunrise complexion.  I welcome it as well, mentally, with a silent smile and a sip of black coffee.  Overcome with a feeling of cosmic intimacy, I walk up to the glass and place my forehead on it.  Being on the top floor of my building, 71 stories high, pressed against the window, I am as close to the view as I can reasonably get.  Existence is painting a picture.  Emotions are snared out of the ether, captured from the essence of the sun, and implanted hard on my brain and in my spirit. My eyes trace lines across skyscapes; imaginary, invisible lines that disappear faster than they never were, yet leave an impression on my conscious. I take a few steps back, directing a movie, aligning the photography of the scene.  The confines of my room frame an image from several directions, while imploring me to see everything from a new angle.  It's so beautiful I could cry.  I check my watch...I'm running late.  I have to go to work.  This has to stop.  I pull myself away from the view with insulting contempt for my job.  

---

Lights out is 7 pm, but it's summer so it's still bright out.  I have the bottom bunk closest to the door on the right side of the room.  Luckily, our pillows are at the side of the bed that lets me look out the entrance of the cabin, which has windows above the door.  My bed is made neatly, militaristic, folded to their specifications this morning.  Some of the boys still struggle with this, but I like being neat, even if it's forced upon me.  It's almost a shame to break the organization of the bed, so I elect to climb under the sheets while they're still tucked and made.  This keeps me fairly stationary during sleep, which is reassuring, because I've been told by some of the other kids that I talk in my sleep, and sometimes sit up.  I made some friends here, as much as you can under the circumstances.  I'm just naturally friendly.  I'm one of the first ones into my bed, and they tease me about it.  I like to watch the sun go down.  I can see the colors of the sky changing, the horizon darkening.  I'm so focused on it, I don't notice Roger is yelling at me from across the room.  He said it's my turn to sing us to sleep.  A joke he has been perpetuating for a few days.  Nobody expects me to, because most people don't.  I like Roger, though.  He's funny.  He's two years older than me, seventeen, and he's going to be here for a lot longer than me.  It's only been two months for me, but it felt like forever.  It feels like I'll never leave.  I start singing "Under The Bridge," by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.  It's met with laughter and silence as usual, but I keep going.  I'm watching the sky darken, only focused on the colors leaking out of my vista, emptying into the black of space.  By the time I get to the chorus, Roger and a few others are singing with me.  When we get to outro, the cabin is pandemonium.  Half of us are laughing, a few are clapping, a handful are singing, belting, screaming the lyrics.  Suddenly the door slams open, letting the now pitch-black into the room. The silhouette of a guard screams at us to be quiet.  Some of us try to stifle our giggles as he stares us down.  Eventually, all is settled and he leaves.  Even in this moment of joy, I wish I was home so badly.  I stare at the pure dark of the cabin window until I don't even realize I'm asleep.

U F O

Piloting my red space cruiser across the green galaxy, I traveled in rhythmic, separate, repeating lines. Scouring the cosmos with exacting purpose, but it was too large. It continued on and on.  

That's what I let my imagination slip into for a little while. The reality was I was cutting my grass with my gas-powered lawnmower.  The relativity of my yard is annoying to me.  Partly because of the relativity itself, and also how dull and trifling a yard is. When I want to have people over, or throw a ball, or run around with my dog, it's so small. Painfully small, like an animal shelter cage. When I want to mow it, however, it may as well never end. You had to drive the mower slowly and deliberately to cut efficiently.  I was barely finished with half the yard, and the second half was hanging over me like the shadow of a raincloud. I stood still for a couple seconds, but didn't want to start the mower again, so I let it run loudly while I gathered myself.  The yard may have been small, but somehow it continued on and on.

There is a sense of peace nestled in with the minuscule accomplishment felt when I finish mowing the lawn. The roar of the mower quiets down, my muscles can relax, and the yard has a fresh haircut.  My laziness surpasses my work ethic at this point, so the mower tracks clippings across the driveway and into the garage. All to make myself feel less guilty about spending the next hour, or longer, sitting in a lawn chair in my yard. My brain gives me a gold star for the day, and that's enough to convince myself. 

It was one of those wonderful summer nights I remember from when I was a kid. The sun was beginning to set, but it would still be bright for a long while yet.  The sky was a dull, baby blue, cloudless, stretching below the horizon and mixing up, into the stratosphere.  I could hear cars driving a few street away, but couldn't see any. There must be children playing a game, perhaps jumping into a kiddie pool, a few houses down, from the sounds of it. The more distinct memories I have of nights like these involved me with Fourth of July sparklers, or arriving home dirty from sports, or simply sitting, like I am now, but with my mom and dad and my sister.  Nostalgia is funny that way, where I am enjoying the moment now, while longing for a similar one from the past. It is it's own emotion entirely. A combination feeling of desire, yearning, and comfort.  A new memory is about to be made, that will both encompass and eclipse these.

In the current technological age, I make a concerted effort to not access my phone for long periods of time if I can. I hate myself for making a habit of reaching into my pocket to check my phone for notifications when I have a lapse in activity.  Here, I take it out of my pocket and place it on the ground next to me, deliberately dropping it into soft grass without leaning out of my comfortable position in the chair, to reinforce the idea that getting it will disturb my position.  The beer I placed in the chair's cup holder earlier is so soaked with condensation that it slips out of my hand and stays down at first grasp.  The tab pops the lid open loudly and crisply, and the first freezing gulp whelms my taste buds, but acts as a palate cleanser for my mental state. It signifies the transition from phoned to un-phoned.  In a form of meditation I don't even realize I am doing, I take a few deep breaths as I gaze at my surroundings. The old, rotted, wooden fence separating my neighbor's yard and mine. Scattered clumps of dust, rock, some garbage, and what I assume is dirt, skirting the fringes of my lawn, a sort of wave of suburban detritus.  I let the thought creep into my head for but a moment that I should clean that sidewalk up before I continue my assessment.  The big, empty field catty-corner to my house. I can't glance at it without thinking of all the backyard sports, snowball fights, rock throwing, and laying down I have done there for years growing up. Those moments are a maelstrom of memories that pass by in a flash. What a joy it is, to a child, to have a grassy field.  Down the block, a smattering of houses, similar to mine in every way except for the persons living there. Some butted up against one another, some separated by a yard or a fence or a little dividing alleyway, but identical in spirit and purpose. They blend together into a single area, "the houses," and I move on. I can almost see the top of the hill at the end of the street I live on. It creeps up and up and crests at the perfect angle to block my sight. I know there is a small playground and a basketball court up there, even though I can't see it.

The other direction has more houses, with a hospital sitting behind them.  From my position, the center, I am home plate and the hospital is the center field stands. The outfield is many homes.  I can't see beyond my neighbor's house and fence to the left, so that's my entire sight line. I know there is a train station behind me, and behind that further, a small forest, with giant mounds of rocks, even though I refuse to turn my body to look.  The mounds of rocks had always intrigued me. They are not one rock, like your typical mountain. It looks like there are hundreds of thousands of individual rocks piled on top of some black dirt, or silt, or something. I honestly have no clue. I've always wondered what it was back there. When I was a kid, I never questioned it. We just climbed up it and then threw the rocks. Now, I question it, but feel too  adult to ask.  "Hey what is that stuff back there, like a dirt mine or something?" I've tried once or twice before and nobody seems to care.  

I center back on myself and take another sip. I sink down deeper into my chair to get into a more comfortable position.  My legs stretch out in front of me, and I cross my ankles over each other.  My left arm hangs limp over the armrest, and my right holds my beer firmly in it. I have entered this position many times before, so I know I'll be comfy this way for quite a while. I settle in for a bit of a haul and gaze up at the sky, thoughtlessly.  

I don't know exactly when it entered my field of view.  Had it been creeping along while I was surveying other things at eye-level, or had it jumped into position suddenly? Was my awareness that low? Was it just so foreign that I could not fathom to take stock of it until it was more apparent?  One of many things I learned I will never know. 

A large, dark orb floated across the sky. It was massive, large enough to immediately be frightening. It wasn't careening towards us, at least I don't think, because it wasn't getting larger. Once it caught my attention, I stared, mouth agape, for what could have been seconds, minutes, or hours. Completely transfixed, I didn't dare look at anything else, just in case. In case of what? I was never even sure. I wanted to be prepared in case it adjusted course, as if it wasn't fully in control. A "just in case" attitude doesn't work on something so obtuse, so large, so foreign to my senses. Moments like these you cannot prepare for, and you don't realize until it's over that you are nothing more than a helpless observer. I've quickly realized I know nothing and I control even less.  I was ready to activate flight, to run, to find some form of protection or defense. Against what? My fear overtook me.  Yet the orb felt nothing towards me. As I stared, a husk of a man, I began to realize it was moving. It continued on and on.

It was traveling across the sky. To me, in my perception, at quite a slow rate. I could tell it was moving, but it was going so slowly that I needed a frame of reference to notice.  

In these summer nights, another memory, which I didn't perceive until now, was the moon. When you are a child and you see the moon out in the day, it is a wondrous thing. The large, gray ball, hanging delicately in the blue sky, almost translucent, surely majestic.  There is an intrinsic and shared joy to seeing the overlord of the night grace us in the daytime. But now, this fortuitous sighting intriguingly became my earthly shackle.  As the mysterious black sphere moved in front of the moon, it gave an even greater fear. I now had a reference for it's size, it's shape, it's speed. In a matter of seconds it had blocked out the moon entirely. Now we had a new moon, a dark and ominous one; unfamiliar and unwelcome.  As quickly as it blocked out our satellite, it allowed it to appear again. It continued on and on.  My grip was tight on both the arm of the chair and my beer.  I hadn't even realized I had been squeezing them both for dear life as if I were on a roller coaster.  As this massive thing crept across the twilight sky, I forced myself to relax.  The power it displayed unfathomable, I acquiesced to it's demands.  Hope had left me.  For if this thing wanted destruction, I was to become dust myself.

It continued on and on.  Then, as eerily and hastily as it has appeared to me, it began to vanish. It wasn't getting smaller, but further away.  It was leaving.  Without warning, everything and everyone returned to what we were doing, whether we liked it or not, by virtue of the interloper departing.  Changed, yet unchanged.  Different now, yet not in a quantifiable way.  A communal witnessing, and nothing else.  It was as if the sky had become a drive-in movie for the entire globe.  We watched, jointly captivated, summarily enchanted.   All we could do was watch.  Then the movie ended abruptly and we were left staring at an empty screen.  

Weeks have gone by but there is no more information. Plenty of news about it, all speculation. Months go by and people start to forget, to care a little bit less. A year goes by and time has made fools of us all.  Memories are funny that way. There is a deep nostalgia lingering in me.  Brought on only by a brief sight, a simple glance.  A moment of scent sends a flood of recall in the form of emotions. I relive moments in my past just by being in an area I've been in before. Yet as we distance ourselves from this visitor, and as it becomes more and more distant, it, too, becomes forgotten. The government agencies said they were unable to track it. Not when it was arriving and not after it had gone. It was there, it passed by, then it left.  A blink in time. A light bulb flickering off for a moment before maintaining it's shine. Ships in the night and all that.  No different than me watching a bird overhead.  We pass by each other this way in daily life constantly, but we pay it no mind. And soon, nobody will pay mind to this as well.  

Five years pass.  It's summer again and I've finished my yard work. I sip a beer, I sit in my chair. I scan the horizon, the blue sky, the zenith.  I no longer think of my childhood. My eyes crave the sight of the orb like a desert oasis.  Have new memories formed in this area in the meantime? The thought never enters my mind. Life has gone back to normal for everyone, it seems. Yet I have become fanatical. I miss the traveler. The unknown.  There is nothing I want more. Upon first seeing it I was struck with fear, held in place by dread.  Now I have a form of bravery brought on by my anguished thirst for an answer. A second meeting. 

Once, I was in the present, but tied to the past. A vessel for nostalgia.  Now I'm gripped by a longing for the anagogic, the abstruse.  Either way life was passing me by.  It continued on and on.

Manufactured romance

A man and a woman are in the backseat of his car. They finished dinner and drove for a while before pulling over in the parking lot of a city park. They start kissing and she stops him.

"This feels really trashy," she says. She wants romance, she tells him. 

"You want romance? Use your imagination."

She rebuffs him.

He doubles down. "I'm serious. Imagine you're my mistress. We're in a lonely mansion, lit only by the moon and the occasional flash of lightning," he takes a break from the story to begin to pull her shoulder strap down. "We can't see one another, only feel light touches. You are the object of my affection. I desire only to have you, even though we can't. That's us right now, only a different setting," and he smiles at her.

She frowns. "That's not funny, I'm being serious." 

"So am I," he says. 

"Why can't this be romantic? Because we're in a car? Because we're not in a bed? I live with my parents, I can't bring you home." 

She feels bad. Or rather, she doesn't know how to feel. She begins to acquiese. 

He sits up and pulls back from the story.

"Wait. Don't undress. How about this?"

He launches into another diatribe "You're a hardworking, breadwinning woman. Head of your field. You come home after a long day and sit in your favorite chair. I stroll up, place a cup of tea on the side table, drop your book into your lap. You sigh as I begin rubbing your shoulders, your neck. Then I quickly pivot to the foot rest. You put your feet in my lap. Without a word I take off your shoes and rub them until your head goes back in relaxation. This romance intensifies as I move up your leg, massaging you into ecstasy" he's enacting the gestures of his story on her body the whole time.

Spastically, he switches topics.

"We can be that. We can be anything. I am striving for your affection. Wooing you. I am a poet. Your eyes pierce me. Daggerish. No, much kinder, full of life. The way the sunlight pierces our atmosphere to warm us. The way an elegant swan pierces the surface of a lake to wash itself. Your face a vision of beauty. Not biblical, not angelic. Real, magnificent. As if sculpted by a man tasked with creating beauty itself."

He sits back. "Romance isn't rose petals leading to the bed, or candles lit around the tub, or soft music playing, or kissing under the moon. Romance is ever present when we're together because it's present in me. I am romance."

This worked and the woman he was with lunged into their sexual activities with delight.

A few days later a friend of his was asking how his date went. 

"Great dude she let me fuck. I'm not really interested in a relationship though, so I had to ghost her."

Men are pigs, don't fall for it.

Do Tell

 Lately a few people have been pointing out my mannerisms to me and I love it. I guess I should be astonished, or afraid even, that I don't know myself that well, but I'm not really paying attention. My mind wanders easily, and my imagination takes over. That sounds like something someone would say about a five year old. I don't mind. If I can be as carefree as a child, I've attained a victory, however subconscious it is. 

Speaking of my subconscious, there must be a lot going on in there. Wherever it is. Or whatever. Not too sure. Either way, the idea I have of myself and the idea other people have of me don't seem to line up. I'm often lost in thought, and in doing so I scrunch up my face like I'm trying to strengthen my forehead muscles. I'm just as often lost in song, and I routinely get caught singing some eclectic tune that has been jailed in my skull, or some song I made up entirely while drifting off. When I catch myself I imagine someone else seeing me. How strange he is, they must think, to be staring so decidedly at nothing at all. How angry he is, they must think, glaring at everyone around him.

That line of thought recently got turned on its head due to the state of the world, now that we are all wearing masks. Walking into the break room at work I was greeted by a coworker who told me they don't like me wearing a mask. They can't see my smile. I was taken aback. I flat out asked what they meant. They told me that I was always smiling, and they found it pleasant, and now the mask hides it.

My shock was immeasurable. I don't remember smiling. Perhaps they were wrong. But what kind of person would lie about something like that?  How kind of them to say such a thing to me at all.  A wonderful moment, indeed.  It changed how I saw myself. I was so happy to be a person that they saw was smiling all the time.  I have never cared about wearing a mask for health reasons, but suddenly I wanted to never wear one again.

Once I started to have my mannerisms pointed out to me I started to notice some myself. Looking at old pictures and sometimes videos, I would pick out my own mannerisms. A video of me watching my dog spotlights how I hold my hands and my arms when I am stationary.  I fiddle with my hands when they are by my sides.  My hands reach up and rest themselves on my neck, in the crook of my elbow.  It felt almost foreign to be watching myself from an analytical point of view. It also made me feel like these involuntary actions were my personality manifesting itself through my body.  Where many people may feel strong-armed by the idea of fate, destiny, of being a vessel, I was reinvigorated by my own quirks, steadfast in my love for myself. What an odd creature I am.  

This was many years ago I began to write this story.  Back when I worked in a job with a break room and having to wear a mask.  In a stroke of coincidence, I have had another feature of mine communicated to me quite recently.  At a restaurant, the people across from me told me I had nice eyes.  How lucky for me.  Something I have no control over, something I use exclusively for perceiving my world, people like to look at.  When I was younger, and susceptible to negative influence, my eyes were a point of derision. Quite large and alien, back then.  My love for myself grows once again with the help of the people around me. They took a moment to say a nice thing, and now I feel it in my head and in my heart.  

Can you see the disconnect?  I had wondered how I looked to the people around me.  Feeling strange as a being.  My habits look foreign, quizzical, deviating, unfamiliar. Perhaps even contentious, bothersome.  My mind told me this before any person did.  Still I took pleasure in being the way I am, in spite of the potential perception.  Concrete evidence was then presented and now I can take pleasure in the way I am, but from a different place, a better place, a more wholesome place.  Does the source of my inspiration make a difference? Very much so.  Living for spite, with spite, in a constant state of animosity with suspicion will take you down a path of acrimony.  Perhaps not full of malice, but

inspired by a rancorous gusto.  There is a peace that washes over you when your internal accusations are trimmed up.  A turbulence that I did actively notice was pacified.  How harmonious life can be when you are not fighting false diffidence.  A boon of arrogance washed over me due to not a kind word, but an honest one.  The nullification of doubt, of uncertainty.  Mental strife, inner turmoil: a revealing affirmation, much like a lifting fog.  

I am reminded of my forgetfulness often.  Nothing of major import, but noticeable to myself.  Being told my mannerisms lingers eternal, an adamant yet unconscious reminder that I wage no war, I need not live in the shadow of hostility.  My courage is impetuous, my certainty is impregnable, my style is convivial.  Thank you for letting me know.

The kinds of relativity that interests me

 There are many things that qualify for the subject: I don't quite understand and nobody can explain it to me.  I often wonder why Giants in fiction move at such a slow rate.  First we must dissect the relativity of speed.  Ants, humans, and elephants all exist, and they are each fast in their own regards, yet the difference in scale changes how we understand that.  Elephants are much larger than humans, and have been clocked running faster than most, at up to 25 miles per hour.  How many miles per hour can an ant move?  When I asked myself that was when I realized, at least colloquially, that we measure speed not in parameters of speed itself, but of how quickly a distance is traveled.  If an ant were scaled up to be similar to a human, would it be faster, similar, or slower than ourselves?  I do not have the faintest clue of how to figure that out.  When the question of fictional Giants is introduced, it becomes even more difficult.  We see Godzilla trudge through Tokyo, the size of a skyscraper.  Menacing, imposing, but also able to step several blocks at a time due to his size alone.  I have to imagine his size alone allows him to travel at least 50 miles an hour at a walking pace.  Is he faster than humans or just bigger?

Either way, my initial query is about their motor function.  In depictions of the Titans from Greek mythology in popular culture that I have seen, they are positively enormous.  Yet they will throw a punch or try to stomp on someone, and it is an unbearably slow, telegraphed, and laborious process.  They will lift their foot and groan like a zombie, as humans underfoot simply run away before they can get stepped on.   More questions spring up. Loads and loads of questions that either nobody cares to explain or doesn't know.  Why would it not be more comparable to myself stepping on an ant?  If I went to step on an ant, I wouldn't raise my knee to my chest and then slowly drop my foot over the course of an entire minute.  I'd riverdance upon the ant with gusto and be on with it.  Why, then, does every iteration of Giants have them be slow, lumbering buffoons when they would be enormous, destructive, terrors? Is it all bad writing, bad storytelling? A horrid understanding of their mechanics? Deliberate misdirection or depictions made unscientifically? 

Something I have speculated, quietly in my own head where nobody can make fun of me, is that time is also relative to size.  By that I mean that maybe an ant sees us like we depict fictional Giants.  Far-fetched, I know, as there is no real way to test or understand this, and the basis for the idea comes from fiction.  Nevertheless, it is interesting to think about, and fake-reason about, as far as speed and size go.  Many problems arise from that.  I am still able to stomp the ant.  If they experience time differently, and I look like I am moving slow to them, then there is a disconnect between our different time dilations.  I look slow and pedestrian, but the foot drops nevertheless, crushing them.  So they are not actually moving slower in time, only the appearance of time moves slow. 

Extrapolate this to anything else.  What if the smaller you are, the longer time lasts? What if the larger you are, the quicker it flashes by?  At least in the sense of how time feels.  Well that would mean the universe feels like it could be just days old, at least to itself.  Ants feel like they've been around longer than time has, in their own ant minds.  This only brings more questions, namely the concept of "feeling" itself, and the very concept of relativity.  Both of these being human created concepts.  The universe doesnt feel anything.  So if there is an unfeeling entity also experiencing time, it cannot interpret it differently.  A mountain doesn't feel like humans are slow moving and itself is quick, for it is un-emotive, un-alive (in the interest of discussion this will not be discussed currently), and uncaring.  It simply is a mountain, existing throughout.  The Earth as a planet does not feel as if the mountains on it are changing faster than the humans.  There is a clear timeline of those events. 

I'd like to backpedal to the nature of Giants in the first place.  The scale we created is still rather small.  Imagine a Giant so big, that it floats in space and the Earth seems like a soccer ball to it.  Would it not be able to dribble us like Ronaldo and kick us into the sun?  Humans cannot comprehend or imagine this type of speed.  If it were ever depicted in fiction, each dribble would last for hours as we slowly drifted across space and the foot connected again for another bounce.  This depiction constrains our thoughts and encourages us to think slowly.  Everything is faster than we think, so fast we don't have words or ideas for them.

This disparity that defines relativity itself is also but a question. While scientific studies are not popular culture, I have to imagine there is a formula somewhere that encompasses what I am saying. But maybe there isn't. There are a multitude of factors that go along with size, some probably will remain questions forever. First and foremost, could something that large even exist? Godzilla-esque or larger. Probably not, based on meal consumption alone. It would have to eat a church full of people twice a day to sustain itself. Anything bigger wouldn't be able to live very long. BUT! What if it could? Are there theoretical devices to see how they could move? 

That's too many questions. I already have an answer. This Giant would move quickly, deftly. If it wanted to be deadly we would be at it's mercy. To a Giant, a monstrous, planet-sized space demon, we are smaller than the pesky ants. Poor ants. They are the first thing we think of when we imagine something very small. They are constantly stepped on just for existing where our feet are.  Let's leave them out of this. My theoretical Giant would blast us across the cosmos like a child throwing a bouncy ball as high as it can in the air for fun.  We'd careen through space, dead as fuck, an empty planet, slam-dunked further into the universe. 

I stopped caring about relativity when I realized it doesn't matter. Somewhere along the way I started feeling bad for the ants. I hope the cosmic giant who finds has the same compassion. 

FROG

 

A frog croaking on a lily pad. Darkness below and darkness above.  Streaks of moonlight, scent of flowers and mud, the buzz of a million, trillion insects.  Peaceful.  Tranquil. 

Curled up on the floor.  Fetal.  Crying endlessly.

There is some hilarity to be found in my recognition of frogs.  The last time I happened upon one in the wild was over a decade ago.  Yet the sound of their croaks is familiar, unforgettable.  Memories have slipped from my mind endlessly during this period.  Some just after their creation, some longer than that, but many have faded from my recollection entirely.  Without having seen or heard a frog in what I would guess would be half of my life I can tell you exactly how one looks, how one sounds.  Is this knowledge so simple that it is unable to be lost? So innocuous that it will forever hold a small portion of my brain for itself?  Eventually all of my memories will fade to black, and the only image left in my consciousness will be a large frog, floating on a lily pad.  The water jet black.  The piercing white of the moon a sliver of shine through the deep.  Bugs stirring about it.  Unaware.

Sometimes I get thinking about how there is no meaning at all. People attribute these effects to everything. Some things are bad, some things are good.  "Good" and "Bad," they decided.  It is more like we are dancing for nobody. All performers, no audience. When I think about it too long I can't materialize the thoughts as well.  Sort of backwards isn't that.  Lately I have come to think that the meaninglessness is cool. It makes me feel alive. It makes me want to live.  Like, really live.

Before I used to think this way, forces would impart themselves on my thought process.  I became a person who worries about the world around me, more than it worries about me.  Instead of that, I want to feel completely free in my own body.  I want to put on a song and get lost in it. Not in a simple way, either.  To listen and feel and move. Surrounded by people, perhaps, but dancing by myself.  Fully grooving. When I fully accept that nothing matters, it doesn't sap me of hope and wonder. It makes me feel free. The cognitive shackles that I attached open right up.  Rather, the mental self-flagellation. All the ideas I have about fear and worry and perception were developed before I knew I didn't have to develop them.  Which makes me realize that my mind has gained strength.  As my body grew, so, too, has my mind.  Wisdom fully realized.

When you conjure certain ideas and gaze upon yourself from an outside perspective, you have a certainty to face. There will come a point when my life will end. There won't be a chance to look back and assess it, it will come without warning and without preparation. I want to know at the end. Know without knowing. That I tried my best to be happy.  The only way to ensure that is to create my own fulfillment out of nothing.  It sounds daunting, but when you are at a level of introspection it is involuntary.  Natural.  As natural as a frog on a lilypad.

In the face of certain Calamity, in the face of Inevitable Defeat, the only thing left is to live.  We all do it by virtue of having no other option.  Whether we enjoy it or not.  Whether we understand it or not.  Whether it ends up good or bad. You only have yourself, the idea of yourself, a sense of self. To pursue is the only choice. Better than nothing at all and better than not trying.  Better than fear, better than submission.  A formal summation is non-existence and I am forced to strive.  Strife in the face of everlasting void.  The simplicity of it all is quite stunning.

A song ends and the feeling that it thrust upon me lingers slightly longer, but the silence takes over.  Back to the norm, the standard, the rigorous lockstep of complacency, the frail machine: unthinking, unquestioning, uniformly nondescript.  My soul pours out of my ears and my eyes and my head until I am altogether empty.  Another song pops on and joy and love and otherworldly desire grip my heart as if to pump start it.  New blood flows in on the notes, and out comes waves of melodic emotion, soul fuel.  In these moments we are in touch with something greater than ourselves.  Not out of our control, not knowingly out of our desire until we seize it.  I am here to seize it.  As a frog on a lilypad on a jet black lake seizes a fly with it's tongue. 

So long and thank you.

It's easy to forget how weak and fragile and frail someone was when you can only imagine them full of life. Having seen her every day, in these ways. Skinny, down to the bone, her flesh barely a buffer between inside and out. Moaning, in pain or fear or anger, it's hard to tell, maybe a combination of all of them or maybe just an unknown ailment. Immobile, struggling to walk, leaning this way and that, falling over, slow. Weak, too tired to eat, too fatigued to move or talk, uncaring to overcome such large hurdles for basic functions.

Its not something that is seen in the moment. It's the same girl you've always known, strong and fierce, lively and spirited. Noticing on a subconscious level but in denial of what you know is happening. She's sick, but getting better. She has a good day and you think to yourself, there we go, she's on the up and up. Then all that comes cascading back when she falls hard the next day, literally and figuratively. Still, it's so difficult to change your perception at this point. You're certainly not trying to change it. Even when my logical mind knew what was going on, I was convinced, by her majesty, that I was being foolish. Maybe she was actuslly the first being that will live forever. 

After her passing, some old pictures made me realize what I had refused to see all along. In those photos she was bright and charming, eyes full of light. More weight on her bones and more bounce in her step. Videos of her quirks, mannerisms. Ones that didn't happen anymore later on, when she couldn't be bothered, or couldn't muster the energy. I had always viewed her this way, which is a testament to her essence. Leaving such a legacy of your personality, that even when it's gone, you're still a picture of yourself. When the power drains away and your being is unsound, yet the difference is not acknowledged, the vision of you that you have created never wavers.

It was strange to, at the same time, be reminded she wasn't herself at the end, and to also know that you never thought that, not once, until you were absolutely forced. Not until things were over did reality set in, pull back the veil and stun you with the truth. I couldn't be happier to have things happen this way.

Happy is a relative term. Once more I tell myself I am, tell others I am, then suddenly tears are dripping from my chin, and I'm fighting against my body not to convulse from the sobs. Again I am tricked by my mind, by my perception. This doesn't feel like happiness. My emotions tell me otherwise. But I know. A picture of her, bright green eyes highlighting her trademark scowl, goes in and out of focus as I clear my vision and have it subsequently blurred again by a rush of emotion. Though it does make me smile. She made me smile a lot, almost always, even when she was mad and didn't like me. When she wanted nothing to do with me. Later, also, when she was happy at the sight of me and let me know that. My body is telling me I've been wronged, that I should be sad, that I'm better off a pool of filth on the floor. She reminds me, even now, without presence, that my body is wrong.

Memory is sometimes what you choose, and in this instance, I can be glad, because it was chosen for me. Her influence so positive, so joyful, such a wholesome, innocent factor, that I had no other option than to be happy. During her struggle, I saw her as her brave and daring self. She was always a coiled viper and a blooming flower. Her heart beat fully and strong, her body rumbled and shook with power. Never compromising herself, even overlooking the void. An obelisk of confidence, of perseverance. Steadfast in herself through trial and tragedy. She was never anything but herself, until the last day. She had no choice. The same way that now, just by knowing her, I have no choice. It was chosen for me to be happy. There may be tears in my eyes, but there is a smile beneath them. To be like her would be a blessing. We would be lucky. 

The burden of a livelihood

Power doesn't instantly course through my veins when I pull the lever.  There is an idealized form of my job, but that doesn't really exist.  There are simply different types of people who do it.  We all do the same thing.  I stand still while pious types do a lot of grandstanding, and I fasten the noose and tighten it around the neck.  I wait a tick to let things settle and I gently pull a lever.  The rest is done by forces of nature and time.  The floor drops, along with the body, and then it's over.  Quick and blank.  

Talking to some of the others like me you get a sense of who they are.  I'm strange in the way I have gone to see them work, asked them about it afterwards.  Got their feelings, studied their behavior.  People who don't do this job think it's a tale of stoicism.  A life of death, misery, but also a demented sort of power, as if we handed down the sentence.  As if we were more involved.  Some of them distract themselves.  Get lost in their persona and public perception.  Feed into it because it's easier than fighting it.  Others end up wishing it was them.  They feel responsible, they feel powerless, and they can't come to terms with their actions.  There is no internal struggle for me.  I am not conflicted.  There is no joy in my pursuit, but I am in control of my emotions.  I do not let my proximity to death allow it to encompass and eclipse me. 

I didn't kill those people any more than the smiling spectators did, or the rope, or the stage.  I am not a harbinger.  So distant am I from involvement I may as well be ethereal.  A ghost.  I am no more a murderer than a wave crashing a body against a cliff face.  No more at fault than the ocean swallowing a sailor.  I share the same blame as gravitational pull. So steadfast in myself am I that I do not need these comparisons.  I am unlike a powerful unseen force.  I am removed from contention.  So light is my footprint I elude detection from the keenest eye,  Hidden in plain sight.  No, I am not a killer. The death may as well be natural.  Often times it wasn't even their actions that caused their death, other than having the misfortune to exist in a time when the people who say you get hanged don't like you, or worse, don't even think of you at all. I am the pillar, the anchor, the lightning rod. 

The clothes are a part of the act.  The demeanor, the methodical way I move are because I'm distracted by my own thoughts.  Sometimes about what is happening on the stage, but other times about what is happening in my own life, or the lives of the people I consort with.  What I do is precisely that: my actions forced my chosen profession.  I am not a hulking demon obsessed with death, nor am I an unfeeling ape, taking lives with instinctual malice.  I am not a sadist, torturer, or lunatic.  I am not deranged.  But I am not unaffected. 

A swaying body is no longer foreign to me.  Not wholly comfortable, but something I see more frequently than a shoreline or a theater show.  It has taken it's toll, but mostly, it is dull.  My mind distracts me and I come to watching the corpse swing, hypnotized by the pendulum.  Imagine my surprise when this first happened to me.  Being comfortable enough with a cadaver on display that I idled like a feline. 

And while I do not feel guilt, and I do tend to wander or fall into a trance, I do feel something for the loss.  To me, life has become even more cherished.  The spectators, the crowd of thrill-seekers, the revenge-stricken psychos eagerly waiting for the drop are the scary ones.  Truly frightening it is to see a mass of villagers gather to watch a man die, only to disperse once the entertainment is over.  Once the soul flees the body, the last twitch melts out of their bones.  They care not for what each person has done.  To them they are criminal, deserving.  Maybe a few people are apathetic.  The rarities are dissenters. They somehow feel less for these doomed vessels than I do. I can hardly blame them. You would assume my desensitization to the ordeal due to my inundation with it, but I've learned a valuable lesson about the preservation of life. I wish to prolong it now, in all things. Seeing that husk dangle carelessly now makes me see the life in things thought lifeless and vacant.

I'm no executioner. I'm no madman. This isn't just a job. When you see death every day you become desensitized to it, but I've become hyper sensitive to life. When a man is stood strapped with a rope around his neck, staring into a crowd that is waiting to watch the soul leave the body, that makes you wonder. I see myself in them. Perilously walking the line between worlds, as we all are. Facing mortality by virtue of awareness. The grand illusion of complacency. Fear behind a veil of delight. So much is unknown, and for that, please be thankful. If we had more knowledge, understanding, and comprehension, we might not be able to leave our homes. All of us, fetal, crying, feeble against the futility of it all. We're all dead men, yet we walk, breathe, and deliberately encounter strife. Only to be hung by the neck, have an axe brought down on us, or to be lucky and go without splendor, frail and empty, alone in a bed. No purpose could have enough merit to warrant this. No virtue could eclipse the dread of an eternity as a corpse. 

There is no duty in life. Piousness or reverance cannot save us, from ourselves, or our fate, or the long dark of after death. I am thankful, being the one who pulls the lever. The man who commands the drop. It is a constant reminder that I should be happy because I can be happy. Misery would be easy, and just as fruitless. To be defiant in the face of extinction is to live. Guilt doesn't plague me, death is but the one thing we all have in common. I do not take them there with a light heart, but a stone mind. Fastening the rope, pulling the hood over their heads, changing them from living to something else. A daily reminder, not of the utter futility of life, but that to squander it is the only true sin. So easy it would be, under the circumstances, to give up, to quit, to laze about and cry and whimper. Easier than hanging a man. Easier than having a noose rend your consciousness from its cask. Choosing difficulty keeps me sane, makes me happy, creates a purpose. 

Each person must derive their own purpose. We are not here for a reason. There is no power, no majesty, no cosmic camaraderie. Futility is beaten back into its cage like a mindless beast, who will eventually overpower us and win, but for now, is only a threat in our minds. I feel no guilt as a hangman, but I do feel something. As each life wanes, I am reinvigorated in myself. Not as a direct result, but through my introspection. If we must all meet our end, let us face it strong and passionate. We can choose how to meet our fate. I will face it with a smile and a wave, to be remembered. Or maybe I'll face it with a noose around my neck, a hood on my head, and someone pushing me into the void. 

Known and Unknown

It was as if out of a dream. Ugh. I hate even saying that. I sound like all of the people I've dismissed in the past. It was though. Surreal. It didn't feel very frightening or spooky but it had a sort of mystical quality to it.

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

My emotions got the better of me and I was fuming.  It was my own fault, and actually quite petty, but I don't decide when anger takes me, I'm simply a vessel.  In an effort to become better at controlling myself after becoming irate (or any emotion I don't want to be feeling), a new routine was formed.  The emotion wells up inside me, I feel myself overreacting, and here is where I have been trying to remind myself to take a deep (deep) breath.  That alone doesn't usually help, so tonight I took a walk.  I rushed out of the house hastily due to my brain's zeal, and with haste typically comes carelessness.  Of course I left my phone on my desk.  It wasn't of grave importance, but it's one of those things you become so accustomed to that you feel different when you don't have it.  I almost didn't feel myself. 

I like the darkness.  Contrary to everyone I have ever talked to, I find comfort in it.  An almost immediate sense of calm came over me once I allowed my eyes to drink in the darkness around me.  It's such a pleasant walk around the neighborhood at three in the morning.  You're in a different place entirely.  It's so very quiet.  The type of quiet where you can hear leaves rustling from a gentle gust on a tree a full block away.  The quiet that accompanies darkness.  A good quiet.  Being in a bit of a suburb you have only street lamps to illuminate the path.  As I leered into the spotlight of the lamp at the end of the street, I realized how little I knew about light.  You don't think about it often, but it's more mysterious than it lets on.  There was simply a cone of light in front of me.  The darkness was all around it, and it was almost as if there was a firm barrier.  At one point, light, at the very next, dark.  They butted up against each other and didn't battle for supremacy but instead recognized their own limits.  I wondered why the light didn't reach further, glow brighter, or allow me to see more.  Only half a block away, I had enough light to see my clothes and my shoes, and the surrounding foliage, but not to discern the different colors on them.  I knew my sneakers were red, my pants were navy blue, and the weeds popping up between the sidewalk were green, but they were dull, foreign.  Only memories. Interesting, and like the quiet, altogether unique in it's portrayal.  I felt so hidden.  An observer on the fringe of living.  I could press myself up against the hedge blocking off the yard next to me and, if anyone else decided to venture out here, they'd never see me, even if they were looking. 

A moment of lucidity showed me I had calmed down, so I circled back around the block to head home.

As I made the turn, a black plastic bag made it's way to the middle of the street, about two full blocks straight ahead.  It reached the middle of the street and stopped dead.  I followed it's lead.  I'm not afraid of bags, but it wasn't very windy, so I decided to have a stare down.  The uncertainty of the situation dawned on me.  That was just some litter, right?  Here is where I disagree with people about the dark, but I couldn't help but take a cautious approach.  I'm not one to allow being alone in the dark turn something so innocuous into something frightening, I was just unsure.  It was only a few seconds, but the the bag, which I can see clearly now is not a bag, crawled back to the side of the street it blew in from, then disappeared.  The new clarity filled in some holes that my dubious brain left out.  What looked like a bag before was very clearly an animal, sat down on it's hind and looking at me, before it walked back the same way it came.  It looked too big to be a cat.  It wasn't a skunk, I could clearly see it's belly and it's at least somewhat feline features.  A fox, perhaps?  Do they have foxes around here?  I cursed myself for not knowing.  It seems a very simple fact, yet I was entirely stumped.  And why haven't I moved?  I just kept looking at where this creature had been. 

I detest when people have a strange encounter and their first reaction is to chalk it up to the occult.  I am a vehement denier of ghost stories, especially since every single one I have ever been told by someone contains the phrase ''it just felt weird.'' How foolish I looked, my pride quickly extinguished, as I stood here in awe of a simple animal out for a walk.  Why did this feel so strange to me?  The creature was silhouetted perfectly by the street lamp between us, so it was entirely black.  I couldn't make out any distinguishing features.  It really was bigger than a cat.  It really did sit in the center of the street and look at me for as long as I looked at it.  Those things happened.  I'm a credible source.  The most credible I will get during this event is right here and now, when I'm not trying to retell it and it's fresh in my mind.  I also hate that it vanished before my eyes.  The corner of the street it walked back to is the hilly corner of someone's small front yard, so it should have been visible for a while.  I couldn't track it.  I don't know where it went.  It just wasn't there anymore. 

For a while I thought about what it looked like from the other side.  This poor maybe-cat, maybe-fox, just wanted to cross the street and a spooky human stood in the middle of the street staring at it, and stayed there for what had to have been minutes, even after it slinked away.  Any bystanders coming my way would have seen  a man all by his lonesome at this time of night, standing there.  Menacing.  Innocently lost in thought, but looking murderous, as night tends to make us.

This didn't turn me into a believer.  I'm not one of those poor people who don't believe until ''something'' happens to them. Nothing else even remotely intriguing happened the rest of the walk home, if you want to consider that part intriguing.  I kept walking that way, since I had to, and I checked down the street it went down when I arrived there.  It was pitch dark.  I saw no movement, no animal, not a thing.  I stood there for a few seconds, hoping that I would get my resolution, but alas I was met with nothing but a deep black and a soft, warm, conformable breeze.  So I'm not some loon who thinks they saw something supernatural, but I can't deny that something so simple, so banal, so run-of-the-mill made me want to think I was.  Maybe it has no merit at all.  If the same thing had happened in the light of day, surely I wouldn't feel this way.  I would have just seen an animal walk across the street.  I don't attribute this to the power of souls, specters, or spirits, but to my comfortable blanket of darkness.  Is this a damning glimpse into the fragile human psyche, which longs for adventure and mysteries and a break from the monotonous existence we've made for it?  Does this desire to see magic in the world force us to create it out of smoke and haze and communal fear?  Do our vivid imaginations always seek to fill the gaps in our understanding and in our memories? I will not allow complacency to turn me into a hapless sod, pining after a trifle to add substance.  I will not become a prophet, seeking to turn others to my cause. 

Or maybe I will.  What could it hurt?  I guess I really did see a ghost black cat in the middle of the night, and it made sure I did.  I had a brush with death as the spooky thing stared me down.  Ghosts do exist and I've seen one, without a doubt.  You're bound to see one, too.  It's probably watching you right now.  They don't come out until it's dark, though.  Just like me.

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?”