#SampleSunday – After The Virus, Chapter 3:

Over the next 12 weeks I will be sharing a chapter of my novel After The Virus  each sunday. Warning: for coarse language and brutal content. This is a post-apocalyptic love story. I hope you enjoy getting a peek. Feedback is welcomed and appreciated. If you are so inclined, purchase links can be found on the side bar. – Meghan

Read Chapter 1

Read Chapter 2

——

RHIANNON

She’d found a wheelbarrow for the dog from one of those urban garden centres. The place seemed stripped of anything remotely food related. A motorcycle with a sidecar, even if she could drive one, would be too conspicuous. Her last group had figured that out the hard way.

The dog’s leg was dislocated. She certainly wasn’t a vet, but she could read. Finding medical books was as simple as opening the front door of a veterinarian. Stitching through actual flesh was gut wrenching. And still, even calculating for weight, she’d worried about dosage.

She’d also found a tiny strawberry plant under the mulch she’d salvaged as rain protection. Wasting precious time, she’d repotted it.

——

She was headed to the haven of the mountains. There was no reason for them to follow, except revenge, which, she hoped, wasn’t worth it.

Then she saw the sign: REWARD FOR LIVE CAPTURE. The words a child-like scrawl in red paint slashed across a billboard from her last modeling gig. The campaign itself was so recent she hadn’t cashed the cheque before the dying started. She’d never thought her eyes looked that blue in real life, but they sure did when her face was hawking mascara. So…they’d recognized her.

She glanced down at her chipped fingernails. She was sure she didn’t resemble her last film; she’d spent the entire time in a wedding dress and wielding a gun. She wondered what the reward would be; valuables held no value now. This wasn’t the first time her face — and body — had gotten her in trouble. Even he had told her, he, her stepfather, that he only touched her because she was so beautiful. She was a prize or a pricey piece of meat.

She named the dog B.B., because she was just blood and bones when she found, rescued, and patched her up. B.B. didn’t mind the wheelbarrow.

They traveled evenings to early morning, and got off the highway ASAP. When you had no idea where you were going, time didn’t factor at all.

She hoped they’d assume she’d head down the coast to LA, but she hadn’t been there when the chaos had really hit and wasn’t ever going back.

 —–

B.B. didn’t stay in the wheelbarrow for more than a few days, which was good, because, despite all the Pilates, her shoulders screamed.

Going was slow with B.B. limping. They stopped, often, for supplies, but never slept where they scavenged. Dog food was oddly easy to find. She tried to not let B.B. gorge, but it was difficult, rationing a starving animal, and, despite her injury, B.B. bulked up fast.

It was four days before they saw another human.

 ——

Memory was a trap as sure as chain or concrete; one that she’d armored against even before she found herself living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland — were haunting and terror were everyday events. It didn’t do to dwell, wasn’t a functional way for her at least, but some days, like today, with the sun warm on her back, and B.B.’s nails click, click, clicking on the pavement, her mind wandered.

Often, when people got hint of the bits of terrible she’d confronted in her life, they wondered at the fact that she wasn’t lying in a basement somewhere with a needle in her arm and a hole in her soul.

She couldn’t answer those survivor questions, couldn’t be a life coach or some sort of role model, because she had no idea what made her different, what made her brain different than others who had suffered — she’d made the best of the situation, controlled it as much as possible and walked away when she got the chance, though some ties proved harder to break than others.

Sometimes the other person refused to let go.

In moments of weakness, she worried that the armor — all the years of protective layers built up around her heart and soul — had nothing underneath to protect.

Enough dwelling, Rhiannon. Keep on moving onwards. She had a plan — get away — and someone to protect — B.B. — that was as far as she needed to focus.

Except, except — the billboard haunted. She’d thought, when she’d had time to even think, she could shed that image and become, what, she didn’t know, but something other than herself. But that billboard, the fact they hadn’t raped her, the fact they’d given her a guided tour on the way in; it felt — planned? Contrived? Maybe she was just paranoid after so many years of so many fan stalkers, only one of which had ever laid violent hands on her and she had to admit, if only to herself, she had had some culpability in that situation.

B.B. pressed a shoulder against her knee and even before her brain cleared of its memory fog she could feel the tension rippling through the dog’s flank.

B.B. must have sensed the man about a mile before, because her nose was glued to the ground.

She, confident they’d left the city behind, had carelessly pushed their traveling further into daylight.

He, the man, had laid traps.

B.B.’s questing nose dislodged a pile of ripped up, wilted wildflowers and she yanked the dog backwards seconds from triggering a wicked leg hold trap — a trap big enough for a bear.

She froze, standing in the middle of the road with her fist clench around B.B.’s collar; every muscle in her body screamed exposure. Sheer rock rose to her left and dropped into a massive river to her right. No one was crazy enough to ride those rapids. Not any more.

She tamped down on her flight instinct. She let her gaze wander further up the road where seemingly random piles of leaves, weeds, and grass barely covered more traps. So, he was a moron then, but, obviously, violent.

Whistling.

B.B. growled; her target uncertain, but her belly low. She finally unfroze, had sense enough to drop to the ground, and crawl to the cliff edge. B.B. followed.

He was a hundred feet below: naked, hairy and fishing. Weren’t two of those three illegal? Or at least they used to be. She’d be worried about that hook, as a man.

The idea of fresh salmon beckoned, but leg traps? That’s a big no way, no how.

She tried to ease back, but then, just as she thought she was out of sight, she dislodged some rock — shale, her useless brain offered — with a twist of her foot. In the endless second it took for rock to hit river rock, she wondered if she should put more stock in astrology and that doomsday horoscope she’d read before this bad run.

He saw her.

He shouted.

She ran.

She ran forward not back, because she was miles past any decent place to hide. B.B. could barely keep up and wouldn’t be able to maintain.

She twisted her ankle, fell, and bloodied her palms. B.B. whined through her panting.

She looked up to find her forehead inches from a trap.

Fucking bastard. Fuck, fuck, fucking bastard with his little shriveled dick — and she didn’t give a shit if that river was fed by a glacier or what.

This wasn’t the time to fall and stay down. That time had passed, years before this shit. If her mother hadn’t destroyed her, nothing would.

So she got up.

Only then did she see the path carved in the cliff. Unless he had a fucking elevator, they’d be gone long before he got here.

——

He came for them that night, reeking of rotting fish and human waste. He hadn’t bothered to dress, perhaps clothing would have slowed down the plan that was evident by his engorged dick; it was, she noticed, as puny as she’d thought it would be.

He slunk in by the light of her embers, his belly low as he, on all fours, stalked her. She’d expected him, but was still thrown by the sudden, full body, vicious attack.

Of course, not as thrown as he was by the bear trap in her sleeping bag.

He screamed and thrashed, but still managed to show surprise when she swung down from the tree. Unbelievably, lust hardened his face even more than the pain. She didn’t take this as a compliment, knowing that any woman or maybe any warm body would do for this crazy — he considered himself a hunter, after all.

She was sorry to see that the sleeping bag softened the teeth of the trap. Unless it got infected, he probably wouldn’t lose the leg. What a pity.

“Get this the hell off me!” he demanded, “I wasn’t coming to kill you! I haven’t seen a…woman…talk… I just wanted to hear your voice.”

“I believe the common way a living being is forced to get out of this sort of mess is to chew their own leg off,” she sneered. “Try that.”

“Fucking bitch!”

B.B. lunged for his throat and she half-heartedly held her off. Revoltingly, he fear pissed; the spray soiled her runners.

“You’re right about the bitch part, on two counts, but certainly not the fucking.” And, leaving him to his hopefully dire fate, she pulled the still snapping and snarling B.B. away.

She always did like a great exit line, though she mourned the loss of a perfectly good sleeping bag.

#SampleSunday – After The Virus, Chapter 2:

Over the next 12 weeks I will be sharing a chapter of my novel After The Virus  each sunday. Warning: for coarse language and brutal content. This is a post-apocalyptic love story. I hope you enjoy getting a peek. Feedback is welcomed and appreciated. If you are so inclined, purchase links can be found on the side bar. – Meghan

Read Chapter 1

——

HIM

He wasn’t too sure how many bodies he’d lifted onto the pyre, but he was damn sure they weren’t going to burn like well-aged firewood.

‘Course, he’d never burned a body before.

He didn’t count. Didn’t want to count. He’d done everything he could before he’d dealt with the bodies. Cleared the cars, boarded windows, even swept the main street.

There weren’t more than 30 houses in the township, but they’d been prolific people. The bodies of the children particularly bothered him.

He wasn’t one of them originally, but he thought they might have accepted him eventually despite the twang in his accent and his permanent tan.

He’d never know now — every last one of them was dead or, if there had been survivors, they hadn’t stuck around.

He didn’t mind the quiet.

His life before hadn’t been so labor intensive, though he’d painted his father’s house one summer during high school: brown with brown trim. It still bothered him, not using a contrast color for the trim; ‘course it didn’t much matter, who knew if the house was even still standing.

But he enjoyed feeling his muscles stretch under his skin. He felt powerful here; this town was something he could control among the chaos.

It was getting warmer, so he had had to deal with the bodies. He was pretty sure that “immune to the virus” didn’t mean immune to everything, and he wasn’t interested in dying because he’d been too much of a coward to clean.

He didn’t like to think about immunity, because that just brought up thoughts of self-worth and why he was still here when others weren’t.

Others. What a nothing of a word to use, even in his own head. People. People, who he’d never loved, couldn’t love, like they’d deserved.

He stopped shifting bodies. He’d tied them all, one by one, in sheets from the homes he found them in, hoping that they wouldn’t break apart too badly on the way to the fire. The back of the pickup was almost empty. It wasn’t time for a break, but he could feel the darkness pulling him.

He cracked a can of cola, Coke, of course, though he couldn’t really tell you the difference. The bubbles always somehow lightened his mood.

He’d spent months dwelling, wallowing in wretchedness, hopping from survivor group to survivor group, until all the dead had finally died.

All the wants, needs, and desires of all the other Immune, even though there were so few of them remaining, crowded and controlled his own.

He grew tired of not knowing which woman had crawled into his sleeping bag and, come morning, the tense grins from their chosen protectors. As far as he knew, he never impregnated any of them. Their need to breed when surrounded by death was almost instinctual, but it wasn’t his instinct. Their eyes grew dim and sunken as each month passed. Hunger gnawed more than bellies.

When spring made mountains passable, he’d moved on from the final group. He thought they’d been sorry to see him go, his able body and all.

He crushed the empty pop can, but placed it carefully in the blue bin in the truck bed; you never knew these days what you’d need tomorrow. Though he couldn’t quite figure what he’d need a crushed soda can for, making the world worse than it already was wasn’t his first choice.

Thinking of needs, he wouldn’t mind a bit of conversation and a welcomed warm body in his bed. He shook his head and shouldered a corpse.

He turned and saw the three men. Two had their rifles, casual, on their shoulders, but one, the stupid-looking one, of course, had it aimed.

He heaved the last body on to the pyre. They just watched. His own rifle was in the truck, feet away. Not that it mattered against three.

“Coke’s cold,“ he offered, as he removed his Dallas Stars baseball hat and wiped his forehead, all the while watching Stupid with the rifle.

“Lower that, ya redneck idiot,” the big, hairy one ordered, his laugh definitely forced around the edges. Stupid listened, begrudgingly.

“You’re long way from home, Tex,” Big said, as he presented his hand. A handshake would force him to step further away from his rifle.

Now I make out if they’re actually friendly or just aching to kill. The shake might tell me, but the eyes are a better bet. Neither did.

“I think them Stars might’ve had half a chance at the cup this year,” Big considered in a way that made it clear he wasn’t talking hockey.

“Fairies dancing ‘round on ice,” Stupid bulldozed over the underlying tension, “that ain’t no mind skill, now football, that’s like chess-”

“You didn’t clean this place just for yourself, did ya?” Big, ignoring Stupid, asked.

“Yep,” he replied, knowing they’d think him lying. “Not halfway through the bodies, but I started with the hotel,” he hoped they missed mattresses. Then he upped the ante: “Got a stove working.”

The quiet one, the one he was damn sure was the leader, spit and spoke, “Hot food and a soft bed is a fine offer for strangers, thank you.”

He turned, expecting them to follow, and picked up his rifle from the truck bed. He heard no bolt slide in response, so he continued round the back of the general store.

“You got marshmallows?” Stupid asked.

Marshmallows?

“For the bonfire?”

He chanced a look back at them — they, stone cold detached, kept pace. To see all the dead, all piled there, was more than a horrifying sight, but, obviously, not to them. He was in trouble, the dying kind.

He was going to have to add them to the pile.

Killing was easier imagined than done. In fact, except for some angel-of-mercy deals, he’d never actually killed a person or an animal. No matter that they’d eventually figured out The Infected never healed. No matter that the dying didn’t always want to go in a painful puddle of puke and piss. Euthanasia, self-defense — it’s all still murder. Maybe he didn’t like where this life had dragged him, killing and screaming, but he’d do it.

——

He turned the corner onto Main Street. They’d parked dirt-crusted motorcycles by the hotel, so staying, at least overnight, was a foregone conclusion.

He glanced over at the general store and was happy to see they hadn’t smashed the remaining windows.

“We aren’t looters,” Big supplied.

“Am tired of canned shit, wouldn’t mind some fresh meat, in more than one way, if you get my drift, hey Tex?” Stupid liked to blurt agenda.

“I never was much of a hunter, and couldn’t bring myself to kill if I caught anyway,” he answered as dubious looks passed between the three.

The motorcycles were well ridden, and he momentarily thought he was wrong about their intent to stay, but then he saw that the hotel door was ajar.

“Saw you loading the truck, couldn’t figure what you was doing, so we looked about a bit, before we came to how do you do,” Big offered.

Who was the stupid one now? Overly secure in his remote location he’d been blasting the truck stereo and hadn’t even heard the motorcycles, and now they’d pretty much cornered him.

“The town is on a well, so there’s showers, cold, but still,” he offered as he crossed the three-story hotel’s old-fashioned veranda.

 ——

The lobby was shuttered against the heat, and the gloom did little to illuminate the velvet and wood décor he’d so painstakingly restored.

They’d dumped gear here, and chose to only carry rifles to meet and assess him, but it wasn’t much, so maybe there were only three of them.

“Kitchen’s through there. You’ll find food. Stove works, like I said,” he directed.

“Don’t seem like you live here regular,” Big judged.

“Yeah, you running a bed & bang, Tex?” Stupid actually clapped him on the shoulder.

The dull air dropped degrees.

Stupid removed his hand.

“Stop crowding the man,“ Leader instructed. “He’s solicitous, not accustomed to the company of fools. A personal choice, am I right?”

“Sometimes I don’t understand nothing that comes outta your mouth,” Stupid whined and, in that breath, Leader backhanded him to his knees. Instantly, Stupid began to blubber and grovel.

Big stepped back to avoid eye contact and association.

Leader caressed the blade in his belt.

Don’t react — but — if they start killing each other, they aren’t going to stop there. So, compounding his idiocy and assuring doom, he spoke.

“Just oiled the floors,” he drawled.

Leader tensed his shoulders, clenched the hilt of his blade, but then he cackled, like an actual madwoman.

“You got yourself a bonfire to light, Tex. Take the bitch out of my sight, and put him to work,” Leader ordered, “otherwise he’s worthless.”

Big and Stupid looked confused by, and then wary of, this suggested separation. Not that he was pleased with being ordered around either. They hadn’t asked his name, hadn’t offered theirs; a sign of disassociation, so said his useless psych class, but now he was walking away-

He sensed the knife seconds before it would have severed his spine.

He dived onto his hands and kicked Stupid in the gut as the blade sliced his leg.

Rolling to his feet, he saw that Leader was on the veranda casually lighting a cigar.

Stupid, who’d lost his knife with his fall, charged.

Jesus, he thought, as Stupid slammed a shoulder into his rib cage, it’s a God damn game.

As proof, Stupid grunted, “…only room for three!”

As he struggled with Stupid, warm blood flooded his leg. Damn it! Did he slash an artery? Could someone bleed to death from a calf wound? Then he remembered; he’d never had had any damn idea what a damn artery looked like, let alone where the bloody Christ one was in the body.

Stupid, without his knife, wasn’t up for twelve rounds. He was mean, but skinny and a little slow. A piece of siding to the head took him down. Winded and light-headed from blood loss, he stared down at the board in his hand. Damn, now I’m going to have to re-board that window. Stupid groaned and rolled over on his back.

“To the death, Tex,“ Leader cheerfully suggested, “you want his place, you kill him for it.”

“Not interested in your sick game,” he spat. He probably shouldn’t have sneered while saying so, because Leader had that psychotic glint again.

“Allow me to make it perfectly clear: it’s you or him,” Leader warned. Stupid started to cry, not blubbering like before, but silent shaking. He tossed the piece of siding away.

Leader raised and cocked his rifle, “You going to die for a man who would have willingly killed you? We are the chosen ones in this revitalized, reborn world, but here a man has to step up, has to fight for his existence. Fight or die.”

Christ, he’s one of those, those messiah complexes.

“Listen, the world that left us behind wasn’t half bad,” he offered. “Why ruin the-“

“Kill him or I will; he’s worthless to me now. Why sacrifice yourself if he’s going to die anyway?” Leader argued. “Prove yourself and live.”

“Boss, maybe-” Big began to beg, but faltered as Leader turned dead eyes on him. Stupid still silently wept; tears eroded his aggression.

He couldn’t stand by and watch a man be killed. Being stupid wasn’t an executionable offense.

“None of us survived because we fought some war; we all lucked out. Now, it’s a big, empty world, so you go play your game somewhere else.” He was insane, gambling with his life, but words continued to flow from his freed mouth. ”You’re no second coming. You. Just. Lucked. Out.”

Leader, his lips stretched across his teeth, aimed. No way to miss this close, so he waited for the bullet to carve through his skull. He heard the shot before he ever felt it, which was wrong, wrong sense order, wasn’t it? Though maybe a brain had no feeling nerves.

Leader slumped away from the gun that Big still held to his temple. Stupid scrambled to his feet to supplicate himself around Big’s knees.

“I…I…,” Stupid stuttered, his words stopped up with emotion.

“I know, I know, you’re welcome. Now you go on ahead, move the body before it stains Tex’s patio,” Big cajoled.

“You won’t mind the extra on your pile o’ bodies, will ya, Tex?” Big grinned. “You got a nice place here, but we’ll be moving on tonight.”

Still struck dumb, he watched Stupid haul the body back towards the bonfire. “It’s safer, safer to, to travel at night,” he finally offered.

“Yup,” Big agreed as he crossed towards the motorcycles and, straddling one, he turned to say, ”they don’t make ‘em like you anymore, Tex.”

“My name is Will,” he offered.

“Well, Will, thanks for the morality lesson. We won’t be seeing you again.” Big drowned out his own laugh with the roar of his motorcycle.

 ——

He watched until he couldn’t catch a glimpse of them on the horizon, then he scrubbed the blood off the veranda while the pyre burned.

#SampleSunday – After The Virus, Chapter 1:

Over the next 12 weeks I will be sharing a chapter of my novel After The Virus  each sunday. Warning: for coarse language and brutal content. This is a post-apocalyptic love story. I hope you enjoy getting a peek. Feedback is welcomed and appreciated. If you are so inclined, purchase links can be found on the side bar. – Meghan

——

HER

Waking up was never a good idea, and this morning she had momentarily thought she was…before, before them, before this life. If this was what it was to survive the virus, she didn’t much like it, but the alternative, killing herself, seemed cheap and easy.

She could hear a woman weeping; something she hadn’t ever done. Shut the fuck up, you’ll just entice them — the walking horrors and their keepers.

They hadn’t raped her, yet. They had other plans.

If you weren’t for breeding, they fed you to The Infected; that’s how they kept them alive, inhumanly strong and terrifying — the blood of the immune.

It felt like months, but she was sure she had only been here a few days. She was also very sure her friends-of-necessity were dead.

It was difficult to gauge in the dark. They, all women, were crammed into some concrete box, not chained, but definitely trapped. There was a toilet, the door had been removed and it didn’t flush, but at least they weren’t continually sitting in piss and shit.

She was definitely in some city they were working to get back online, but food still came in cans.

There’d been a power surge yesterday and, when her eyes adjusted, she’d seen the door through which she’d find freedom or death.

Chair-like cages, stirrups, and women with electrodes to their heads and bellies — baby mills? They had made sure she’d seen it all, like they were giving her some sort of insanity tour, when they’d dragged her in.

She was either going to go crazy, die of boredom, or kill the woman who kept trying to fiddle her whenever she succumbed to sleep.

Footsteps.

She could also hear the chains they kept around The Infecteds necks. Why bring them at all? These few women were too broken to bolt.

They came every few hours to either take women or drop new cattle. Normally, along with all the others, she pressed against a gritty wall, eyes downcast, willing them not to see her.

Not today.

Today, when she heard the bolts sliding, she stood and, stumbling over scrambling bodies, moved to the very center of the sty. Trapped here, she was losing all sense of being. It was time to make her stand — it was time to try to get through that door. She’d rather be dead than immobile.

She’d been told, before this, that she was beautiful, that her eyes were striking, so she ran her fingers through her hair and tilted her head. Harsh light struck her eyes, but she struggled to keep them wide, perhaps even coy, if she could remember how to be so. Silence fell, and, even more so than before, she felt their stares.

Two men loomed in the doorway with, heard more than seen, it — one of them, The Infected, all chain-rattling and snuffling great gobs of green snot. There had to be an ever-present danger of the hunter mutinying the master — they didn’t even keep the chains taut, but, right now, she didn’t give a fuck about anyone’s life but her own.

“Hello, sweet thang,” he, with the shotgun, purred. ”Remember me?”

Over his shoulder, The Infected groaned in an odd, soft sort of pleasure, at the smell of so many of the Immune so near.

She wouldn’t reply, not to him, not as if he had a soul, but she did suck on her lower lip to strike a thinking pose and keep them distracted.

Yeah asshole, I remember. Your dick is so insignificant you use a shotgun instead. She wouldn’t scream, so you pulled the trigger three times.

“We were just coming to get ya. Lucky girl. The Boss wants a taste, so no chains and chair for you, you get to ride the biblical way.”

Great, he thinks he’s funny — maybe even charming — but the fucking prick screamed his own name as he jizzed all over that fucking shotgun.

They reached for her, but she stepped forward so their fingers just brushed her bare arms.

The Infected growled at her nearness.

She dropped her eyes. She hadn’t been this close to one since — since it was someone she had known before. It reeked, worse for having been dying for months.

“Look out, sweet,” Asshole cautioned, “any bites out of you the Boss wants, he’ll take.” The two of them yanked, harshly, on The Infected’s neck chain.

What the fuck was his name? She couldn’t remember and she wanted to shriek it in triumph when she bludgeoned him with his own shotgun.

Their caution hinted that they wouldn’t hurt her, not too badly, unless forced. A woman was rare. A woman of childbearing age was precious. So, her full lips and wide hips would keep her relatively safe, until — well, there wasn’t going to be an until, not like this, not here, not if she could do anything about it.

They guided her down a concrete hall. She could hear generators whirling nearby, but didn’t see what they powered. Shadowed stairs led up. She could smell dampness; not the ever-present seeping rusty water mixed with piss and puke, but actual fresh rain.

The stairs led out. Outside.

She swallowed her hope so they didn’t feel her energy blooming. How much of the city did they control? All of it? If so, she was fucked.

More men at the top of the stairs equaled more staring. She hoped their Boss scared them dickless, otherwise she’d miscalculated. She could already feel pricks coming to attention, ready and willing to plunder her abyss. Except The Infected, of course; it just wanted to eat her.

She paused to consider that she might be crazy; she’d been in her head for days now — what if this was all some sort of massive psychosis brought on from some brain tumor — but then she quickly discarded this theory as unhelpful and irrelevant. It’s not like this was some movie, and even if it was all in her head, she still had to be herself, and react like she would; she still had to be in control.

They reached for her because she’d stopped, so she jerked away. They laughed. Men. Laughing. The virus had really shit-kicked women’s lib. She hadn’t grown up with four brothers not knowing how to handle a man. They were dogs and she was nobody’s bitch. Her bite was worse.

Cool air lifted her hair; she breathed like she hadn’t had oxygen for days, and looked to see that they were in a glassed space, like an atrium. It was night. More underlings held the door open, expectantly, so she headed that way. Outside, the street was wet enough to reflect the moon.

The Infected, already highly riled, lunged at the door guys as it followed her. They’d been stupid enough to lean in as she’d passed by, perhaps hoping for some contact, perhaps hoping for a whiff, or a smile.

Shotgun Asshole got tangled in its chain.

Yelling and beating commenced. The Infected roared in response even as it tried to cower between the neglected dried husks of the indoor palm trees.

The street was empty.

She felt the sure grip of her Merrell soles as she sprung ahead and was fucking glad she’d salvaged them from an outlet mall only days before they captured her.

These men had grown accustomed to, and lazy with, their dominance. She was a hundred feet away before they gave chase. She hit side streets and turned often.

The Infected could track her, of course. It loved a hunt.

She darted into an alley, to where they had obviously been clearing cars, though they hadn’t bothered dealing with the rotting corpses. She forced her brain to see these just as obstacles, to be climbed and dodged. If her hand sunk into some soggy chest cavity or her ankle twisted in mushed brains, she just ignored it. Her heart beat firmly in survival mode.

As she hit a relatively cleared section, some other person or people cut her path — perhaps deliberately — twice.

The effort to breathe quietly used too much air. She couldn’t soften the slap of her shoes on the wet concrete. She wasn’t going to make it.

She pressed behind a dumpster to listen to the chase. The men, and the bellowing Infected, were a couple of streets off, as best as she could gauge in the dark confusion. She pondered that she hadn’t seen any dead bodies for a couple of streets now, but then chided herself to focus.

“Left, left, and right,” a voice cut through her labored breathing. She tried listening to source him in the dark, but stopping breathing wasn’t currently an option. Was that heavily shadowed brick doorway concealing someone? The darkness was too deep to be sure. “Go,” he insisted. Someone else darted from the doorway and headed right.

She ran left.

“I see her, heading towards the park,” a woman, from a window above and behind her, yelled.

Needing to trust the first voice, she veered left again and then right. A tall chain link fence, pushed by unseen hands, suddenly closed the alley behind her.

There were people here. People helping her escape. Her brain clicked from image to image. The crisscrossing of her path had been to confuse the hunter, to whom any immune blood beckoned. Then the guiding voice and now the gate, but she couldn’t seek haven, couldn’t risk that this new group wasn’t just like all the others had been — the disintegration of humanity seemed utterly complete.

She continued to run through alleys and back lanes until she realized she was completely alone and compelled to stop. She tucked into some shadows. Her stomach revolted; nothing came up.

 ——

 She might have passed out there. If so, that wasn’t good because she wasn’t sure how much lead time she’d lost, but then she heard barking.

Savage barking. A dog. Here? She’d only seen maggot-ridden corpses in yards and ditches since, since everyone who was going to die had. She instinctively followed the barks.

The barks lead in a direction she knew she shouldn’t go, but the dog’s pain and desperation drew her, and then, then she heard the laughter.

More men. Laughing.

Before she even located them, she picked up a heavy piece of metal, some rusted piece of plumbing that had deadly weight. Turning the corner, she found them clustered in a basketball court nestled between derelict high rises.

They were baiting the dog, a powerful rottweiler, against one of The Infected. Fuck, how many were they keeping alive? One less, if she had her way.

The dog is fatally hurt, her brain argued. You aren’t going to save it, even if you sacrifice yourself. But her feet kept moving.

She smashed the pipe down to split the nearest head and then, on the reverse stroke, probably sent nose bone shards into a second brain.

In the following confusion, she flipped the pipe lengthwise and drove it into The Infected’s back. Their skin was saggy, soft, a bit like butter.

She easily skewered its heart.

In its dying rage, it grabbed the nearest man and tore off an arm.

Clawing hands were all over her now.

“Fuck, hold her!”

By the screams, it sounded like The Infected was eating one of them, but two others had her down.

Her skull smacked the pavement.

Blackness engulfed.

She realized they were trying to undo her jeans. Her self-rigged chastity belt was holding them off, but not for long.

Though she’d lost the pipe, she lashed out with fists and feet and received another blow to the head. But the dog wasn’t out of the fight and it tore at the throat of the one on top of her.

With her upper body freed, she managed to smash her heel through the teeth of the one on her legs, and she was up, slipping in the blood, fleeing, once again, for her life.

——

 After a block, she chanced a look back. They weren’t following, but the dog was, barely — with each stride she took the dog fell further back.

She couldn’t stop. She could hear them shouting into walkie-talkies and The Infected’s dying bellows. They’d be reinforced and all over her soon.

The dog went down and then managed to get up again. Its left flank was torn, the skin dragging, and maybe the leg was broken or dislocated.

Even in this dark, they’d be able to follow the blood trail.

So, with her brain warring with something she hesitated to identify as her heart, she stopped and turned back.

The dog made it a few more feet before collapsing — down for good.

“Hey love,” her voice sounded harsh and she flinched, “I’ve got you, do you trust me?” Weren’t rotties supposed to average 100 pounds? Though this one was terribly emaciated, so maybe — Fuck. Don’t fucking think, just do, Rhiannon.

She approached, the dog laid down her head, and, taking that as submission and acceptance, she hunkered down and somehow rolled the dog into a fireman’s lift and up.

With the dog across her shoulders, she took a step, “We can do it: first a pharmacy, then food.” She always felt better with a solid script to follow.

She smiled, the feeling of which was foreign and freeing.

Around The Web Wednesday…

 

A review of Suzie Ivy’s “Bad Luck Cadet”

I first stumbled across Suzie Ivy via her blog, Bad Luck Detective, and last week I was happy to see that she had released her first book, Bad Luck Cadet, which I believe is a collection of her early blog posts. I immediately bought and then, very soon after, read Suzie’s book.

I really liked it.

I knew I would, but still I am glad that that was the case, because — if you hang out with me at all regularly or if you’ve read any of my writing — you will already understand how unusual it is for me to like and follow a writer who is, in this particular incarnation, a memoirist.

Suzie Ivy is the Bad Luck Detective. She chose to become a police officer at the age 45 – it was a tough, male-dominated road (read her book). I don’t even know her and I think she is an amazing person. I really do love her stories. Actually, some times, I can’t believe they are “real life”.

So what exactly do I like about Suzie Ivy, and, in particular, the Bad Luck Cadet?

Beyond appreciating her as a person for the difficult lifestyle choice she made when becoming a police officer, I love how she has taken her police work and simply shared it with us all. She is insightful and humorous. I have actually laughed and then teared-up in the same chapter. Her writing is personal, but not overly dramatic. She details her real life in a completely accessible, and even charming, manner. She lets the poignant moments be, so you almost stumble upon them, rather than dressing everything up in flowery “look here” language.

The Bad Luck Cadet is a new, fresh character in the “cops & robbers” world, and I look forward to reading many more of her adventures.

Suzie’s next book is due out January 13, 2012!

The Bad Luck Cadet is currently .99c on Amazon!

Harbinger #FlashFiction – round up

How about a by weekly round up of the Flash Fictions currently available for “A Year Before Harbinger”?

Please note: These are unedited, non-proofed first drafts.

The three entries so far are:

September 30, 2011 – Peace of Mind?

October 14, 2011 – Meaning to the madness?

October 28, 2011 – Not helpful

Around The Web Wednesday…

  • Writer Suzie Ivy recently read and reviewed my novel, After The Virus – “Bad guys become good, worse guys stay bad and humanity fights for what’s right. What more could I ask for? Oh and then Doidge added zombies. Bottom line, I loved this book!”
  • A brand new project of mine can be found over at Yesterday’s Sunsets  – in an effort to offset the massive amounts of writing I am currently doing on the Harbinger first draft, I felt I needed another creative project, but not one that would consume too much writing time. I had always intended to document the amazing sunsets we are so lucky to get here in Vancouver, and this seemed like a good time to start doing so. I am adding a bit of random dialogue along with each post – just to keep my writing muscles flexed (in a different direction) as well.
  • Currently reading, Bad Luck Cadet by Suzie Ivy and very much enjoying it! I’ll post a review when I am done, but you can find excerpts of the book (and her next one) over at her Bad Luck Detective blog.
  • Just read Scott Fitzgerald Gray’s novella, The Twilight Child, and though I usually don’t read high fantasy, (which I believe is the correct term) I really enjoyed this short story. I even reviewed it!!
General update: I just cracked the midpoint of the Harbinger novel, and am trying to not get distracted by a new idea to redo my screenplay, Love Lies Bleeding, as a novel. I actually have most of the third act written for Harbinger, so it’s a bit deceptive to say I am only halfway. I should have a completed draft by the beginning of December, then the rewriting begins! I’ll continue the Flash Fiction Fridays every 2nd Friday and start posting some short stories soon as well. Sales for After The Virus have been steady (thank you!), and I am working on a POD (print on demand) version that I hope to have ready for Holiday shopping.

Hope you are all well – I just can’t believe it’s NOVEMBER!!

#FlashFiction #3 – not helpful

I will be posting, every 2nd friday, a series of short flash fiction that detail the year before the events that take place in my next novel, Harbinger. I will most likely sprinkle in a few short stories about specific characters, and, once I am ready to release the novel, I will combine these stories, do a proper edit, and make them available as a companion anthology. I hope you enjoy getting a glimpse into Olive’s life before Harbinger. As always feedback is welcomed and appreciated.

Please note: These are unedited, non-proofed first drafts.

________________

October 28, 2011

Something terrible, terrifying, had happened today on her way to lunch…she’d tried to stop it, really she had, but her brain overrode her, declared her irrational and stopped up her warning cry. And now she was pretty sure someone was dead.

At first she’d frozen, just staring at the boy, man really, walking up the sidewalk on the other side of the street and heading opposite to her. She knew she shouldn’t just stop and stare at random people, that that wouldn’t help with the weirdo vibe she was sure she already put off, but she felt involuntarily rooted and the nagging feeling of impending doom rose up from it’s constant presence on her chest into her throat. She almost choked, even though there was physically nothing to choke on. It became hard to breathe, laborious. And her vision momentarily swam and then suddenly snapped into focus and seemed to almost zoom, like a camera, in on the guy striding towards her. His flip flops slapped almost in time with the bob of his curly, brown head. He was wearing black shorts and a droopy navy hoodie, and his ear bud wires disappeared into his pocket. She thought he might have just come back from the gym…the was one a block up and over on 4th Avenue, they lined their elliptical trainers along their front windows and often strung banners off the edge of the roof that declare their membership fees. It looked like —

Pain shot across her jaw and she realized she was clenching it, but even the realization didn’t allow her to relax.

Stop staring. Stop staring. Stop staring, she chanted inside her head — the initially firm command turned to almost pleading. She couldn’t keep doing this…this was just crazy behaviour.

But her head wouldn’t turn, nor would her feet move.

Some thing bad was going to happen. Some thing bad was going to happen. Something really, really bad was going to happen. Now. Now. Now.

She gave in, stopped fighting the feeling, and suddenly her head was free to swivel and look around. So she did.

There was nothing on the street other than cars parked on either side. No other pedestrians or moving vehicles of any kind. There was nothing in the guy’s path. Unless he was going to drop dead of an aneurism, with which she couldn’t help him anyway, there was nothing threatening in the vicinity of the guy. But the feeling didn’t ease at this observation.

Maybe he was a threat to her? Maybe that was what all this impeding doom shit was? Something was going to happen to her?

He was close enough, though still on the opposite side of the street, that she could see that he did indeed have a gym bag over one shoulder, and that the bits of hair touching his face were damp with sweat.

She didn’t feel like running or hiding. He wasn’t a threat to her. She glanced around again, softly swivelling her body to track him as he passed by. He was completely absorbed in his music. She wondered what he was thinking of, what job he had that he could workout at lunchtime on a Friday, and whether or not he had someone who loved him waiting for his return.

He suddenly turned to cross through the middle of the street and she involuntarily threw up her hands, palms outward. Her brain actually screamed an incoherent warning. She fought the gesture. She fought the painful, chest and neck piercing, panic. There was nothing here. Nothing was going to happen. She couldn’t pull down her arms, like they weren’t hers to command anymore, and she was glad the guy didn’t seem to use his peripheral vision otherwise she’d look like total idiot — arms outstretched in warning, jaw clenched to fight the screamed warning threatening to rip out of her throat.

There were cobblestones here, mixed in with the asphalt and she’d always wondered what road stood here 50 or a 100 years before and why the city had only enough concern to partially preserve it.

His toe caught on one of the raised edges of the uneven surface. He stumbled, and instinctively flung his other foot forward to catch himself. His flip flop flew off that foot and he landed half barefoot, but upright. He chuckled to himself. He had a nice laugh, deep and sincere. He laughed like he didn’t know anyone was watching. He laughed like he could handle anything anyone threw at him.

Her arms fell to her side, limp. That was it?

He leaned down to reach for his flip flop — it was tucked beside the tire of a parked car.

She turned away.

A car flashed by her going way too fast.

The tires didn’t even squeal. The driver probably never saw the man leaning down between the cars, but still she was driving way too fast for single lane traffic. Any child could be playing with any type of ball in any of these front lawns, whether or not they were apartment buildings or duplexes or —

She heard a sickening thump — which wasn’t an accurate description, but, even though it was all she could hear repeating over and over in her head, she couldn’t actually articulate the sound. Which was okay, seeing as the 911 operator seem to think she needed to move on from this part of her phone call, and the nice policeman didn’t seem to think that the exact noise reverberating in her head was terribly relevant when he was taking her statement.

“I thought something might happen and I didn’t say anything. I saw him lose his shoe and I turned away because he was laughing and I didn’t want to be staring,” she babbled to the policeman, who didn’t seem to be very much older than herself, but was much more steady and, obviously, more stable. She thought it might be the uniform, but it was probably just him.

“I don’t think you could have done much more than you did, Miss, you called 911 and us. Now you just have to let the paramedics and doctors do their jobs,” he answered, kindly enough.

She’d never been called ‘Miss” before, the title seemed almost otherworldly, and it was on the tip of her tongue to correct him, but that wasn’t what was actually important. What was important was that he didn’t know. Didn’t know that she’d known. She’d known ahead of time, hadn’t she?

The police officer offered to drive her home, but she still needed to get to lunch. She was late and it was starting to hurt, like it had hurt before. The officer seemed to concerned to let her go alone, but she insisted that the restaurant was around the corner. She even mentioned how good the black bean cod was, and then felt terrible for saying so with the blood still wetly splattered on the cobblestones only feet away. She felt the heat of her embarrassment rushing through her face, but he didn’t seem to notice and just thanked for her “recommendation”, because he was always looking for good lunch place.”

She practically ran to the restaurant, Connie’s Cookhouse — again, of course — and slammed herself into her usual table. She couldn’t get the sight of them loading the guy into the ambulance out of her head. This visual was scored with the thudding sound of his body smashing against the speeding vehicle and the parked car, practically in the same spilt second. Mixed in there somewhere was the drivers gut wrenching sobs as she sat, practically foetal, on the side of the road.

Two lives ruined today.

She didn’t order the cod. She didn’t deserve in. Though the chicken in mixed vegetable was almost as tasty, so it wasn’t much of a punishment.

But it was all just a coincidence.

Wasn’t it?

She’d just been wandering around under her typical doom cloud, saw this guy and tried to make him part of her daily-sought solution — if only for a few seconds. The shoe, the car, and the killing where all coincidence.

She asked for her fortune cookie before she finished her lunch…actually she could barely eat and had them pack it up only a couple of minutes after they placed it in front of her. No point in wasting good food.

She thought she just needed something, something clarifying, so she eagerly ripped open the cookie they brought her and practically gobbled the fortune it held:

There will be a change of plans this weekend.

Huh, now that was illuminating. And so so comforting.

Right.

So totally not helpful.

______________

Other Harbinger stories:

September 30, 2011 – Peace of Mind?
October 14, 2011 – Meaning to the madness?

#FlashFiction #2 – meaning to the madness?

I will be posting, every 2nd friday, a series of short flash fiction that detail the year before the events that take place in my next novel, Harbinger. I will most likely sprinkle in a few short stories about specific characters, and, once I am ready to release the novel, I will combine these stories, do a proper edit, and make them available as a companion anthology. I hope you enjoy getting a glimpse into Olive’s life before Harbinger. As always feedback is welcomed and appreciated.

Please note: These are unedited, non-proofed first drafts.

________________

October 14, 2011

It wasn’t as if she didn’t understand that fortune cookies were mass produced in some factory somewhere, probably not even in China — a quick wikipedia search on her phone revealed they probably were a Japanese American invention — and that the fortunes contained within were not written by some powerful mystic, though she had no evidence that such a person even existed, but printed out by the thousands via computer. And these fortunes didn’t hold some window to the reader’s destiny and the only guidance, or solace, they provided was self-imposed.

But still, with each cookie she snapped open and savoured, while dissecting the riddle contained within, she hoped. In the moment before she read the red block letters, while she was reading, and in the moments after as she began to interpret — she hoped for a hint. Just a little hint. A shove in the right direction would be welcomed, or even a slap in the face — anything to help with this desperately aching want.

Why? The never ending question perpetually reverberated around in her brain. Why, oh, why?

Yeah sure, she got that everyone asked why, all the time. But she didn’t mean ‘why me’ or even ‘what now’, she meant ‘why is this happening’, why has this always been happening?  She didn’t hear voices or think that the world was secretly inhabited and controlled by aliens. She didn’t get anxiety attacks or suffer from paranoid delusions, though honestly who’d really know? She just felt either completely empty, devote of purpose or even, in her extreme moments, worthless, or she had these absolutely compelling urges to…to…to…what? And, that was the problem. Not that the emptiness wasn’t an issue, but the other, this crushing need to do…what? There was no medication for that, at least none that she’d tried had made any difference.

Something was going to happen.

Something had been threatening to happen from around the time she’d hit puberty and had increased in intensity ever since.

If she could just speak the words, or formulate the thought, then she’d been free — free of the burden of not knowing, at least.

So…breathe, refocus, and read: To reach distant places one has to take the first step.

All right, she could work with that, a weighty prophecy to be sure, but all she had to was take a step. Now, she took the term ‘distant places’ figuratively, not literally, seeing as she’d never had the urge to travel — oh, her parents had dragged her around like all good parents who try to provide a glimpse into the outside world for their children’s education — but personally she was much happier staying put, surrounded by minimalist, but prized possessions. So, what would a ‘first step’ comprise of figuratively? An action? A decision? Or a choice? Hadn’t she been taking action by following the urges with awareness rather than blind devotion? And then dissecting the results, which were, admittedly, usually nothing, with her therapist, or when that failed, as it always did, in the relative anonymity of her online world? Couldn’t that be seen as a first step? Except nothing had changed, no matter how many times she’d tried to move forward, to follow the feeling to some conclusion, usually the compelling need to do something, just, eventually, eased and then disappeared. Some times she found herself still repeating an action, perhaps for weeks, only to realize she didn’t actually feel the urge to do so any longer. The incidences only happened once a year or so, with the remainder of the time spent vacillating between utter unfullfillment or obsessing about her weird, compelled actions. Like the time she became obsessed with spiders — the need to look for them everywhere, to know everything about them, and to try to understand their behaviours and feelings…

Um, yeah, admittedly weird. Unfortunately, this last round of urges had only gotten more intense.

Last week Friday, unable to force herself to remain at home, she attempted to eat at the sushi place a block away from Connie’s Cookhouse. She’d barely been able to remain seated while ordering, so she’d gone to the washroom to calm herself, but, by the time her bento box had been delivered, she could barely function with the relentless pounding in her head. White flashes kept streaking across her eyes and she’d had to hold on to the counter while waiting for the confused, and little bit tentative, waitress to process her debit card. She’d left the perfectly tasty sushi sitting on her table and flung herself out the restaurant’s door. By the time she’d done so, everyone in the restaurant had been staring, not in concern, but in anxiety of her ruining their lunch with her obvious illness. As soon as she stepped outside, she’d actually stumbled in the direction of Connie’s Cookhouse. She took a few steps further and the pounding pain in her temples immediately eased. A few more steps and her vision cleared. She practically got mowed down crossing the cross street against the don’t walk signal in her hurry to further ease the pain. As she settled into her normal table, with it’s view of the street, and wrapped her fingers around the plastic, single sheet menu, she was fully in command of her facilities again. Though the crushing awareness of doom’s approach hadn’t eased, but at least she could see and hear and walk again.

Three days later, in her regular monday appointment, her therapist said it was all psychological. That she inflicted that pain upon herself as some sort of self-punishment.

Um, really?

According to him, because of her directionless nature and general unfullfilledness, she felt she was a bad person, and she punished herself for being unfocused by repeating a chosen patterned behaviour. The ritualized nature of the repetition made her feel like she was in control of her life.

When she pointed out her rather privileged upbringing and fairly perfect childhood — at least  absent of any abuse or violence or other trauma, which were all cited in clinical assessments as reasons for this so-called-need to control — her therapist felt that only reinforced his position that she was punishing herself for simply being her. She was wracked with self-loathing exactly because there was no trauma to blame. Then he chided her, once again, for reading too many psychology books and online articles.

“Haphazard accumulation of knowledge only leads to faulty self-diagnosis,” he said. Some times she wondered why she subjected herself to these weekly chats, because it always came back to the unanswerable ‘why’. Here’s a new angle, why would she be punishing herself — oh, goody, let’s spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours dissecting that. Forgetting that the core problem hadn’t changed, just the current manifestation.

Sometimes, on the days when she wasn’t just tracking her descent into crazy town, she felt like maybe there was something she was supposed to do, some reason she’d even been born. And that is why she collected the fortunes, that is why she wondered about destiny and whether or not it was just utter bullshit. That is why she’d now eaten in the same Chinese Food Restaurant at the exact same time three weeks in a row, not because the food was damn tasty, which it was, but because some part of her believed that these urges where leading her somewhere and she just had to put in the time, and stay as sane as possible, while she waited for the pieces for click together.

Some times she thought there might be meaning to the madness in her head.

______________

Other Harbinger stories:

September 30, 2011 – Peace of Mind?

 

#FlashFiction #1 – peace of mind?

I will be posting, every 2nd friday, a series of short flash fiction that detail the year before the events that take place in my next novel, Harbinger. I will most likely sprinkle in a few short stories about specific characters, and, once I am ready to release the novel, I will combine these stories, do a proper edit, and make them available as a companion anthology. I hope you enjoy getting a glimpse into Olive’s life before Harbinger. As always feedback is welcomed and appreciated.

Please note: These are unedited, non-proofed first drafts.

________________

September 30, 2011

Fortune cookies were tasty, but they could also be a little condescending and, especially the one she was currently dissecting, more than a little smug.

At the end of the month you will gain more peace of mind.

Oh, yeah? Which month? This month? This month that was about 11 hours and 3 minutes from being over, so…this month? She smoothed the fortune, naturally curved from being in the cookie, on which she was still nibbling, on the table with both forefingers. She glared at the red-typed letters – in their all high and mighty capitals – that were supposed to offer a glimpse into her fate, a bridge to her destiny, but instead mercilessly mocked her.

Some time in the next 11 hours, supposedly, she’d miraculously feel like she wasn’t about to go crazy, any second, at the drop of any hat. The heavy weight, that some days felt like the entire universe crushing her chest, would lift. One minute crushing, and the next…What? Freedom? Better circulation? What?

Now she was just getting angry. She was the angry white girl sitting alone, hunched against the wallpapered wall, getting angry at a fortune cookie – how lame was that?

Even lamer the cookie was from lunch, eaten alone — did that need to be said two times in a row? Obviously Ms. McObvious — in a restaurant just two blocks away from her apartment slash office. She could afford better, in the case of the food and the apartment, but she chose…she chose this life…or rather she chose to try this life and see if it was any less crazy-making than the other life she’d lead up to two years ago out of her parents house, which, upon reflection, wasn’t exactly different — she was still her, wasn’t she?

Why the hell hadn’t she just gotten delivery, just like every single time before, usually for dinner, but still a valid point seeing as she could eat cold Chinese Food for lunch everyday of the week and be quite content. Delivery fortune cookies — she always ordered enough that the restaurant mistakenly assumed she was ordering for two — could be cracked and interpreted alone, in the safety of her home…well, in the office portion with it’s all inspiring view. Some days she wondered if it was the view that kept her climbing out of bed, continually trying to move forward, even imperceptibly. Honestly, the office, and specifically close to the computer, was where she felt most at home…mostly. Even the bedroom that her parents kept pristine, a whole 20 minute walk away, didn’t feel like it belonged to her — though that was nothing new and didn’t have anything to with her parents, who were pretty cool for older people. No, this was her little issue, her ongoing, raging problem, her lack of ability to connect, to feel connected —

Enough.

She knew why she was here, she could admit it — should admit it — if she wanted to try to get beyond it. She’d been fighting it for a couple of weeks now — this compelling need to go out for lunch, specifically to go out for Chinese Food, specifically at this restaurant, Connie’s Cookhouse, and specifically on this day, a Friday. She didn’t like giving in to these irrational urges. Her headshrinker — okay, her therapist — was continually confused whenever she brought up this concern.

“Everyone wants things, Olivia,” he’d say. It still bothered her that he called her by her full name more than a year since she’d started seeing him, instead of Olive. Oh, she knew that that was what was on her chart and she’d never corrected him, but she hadn’t wanted to be further labeled as difficult or picky or OCD — the damning list she was pretty sure he maintained in her file was long enough already.

Anyway, he just couldn’t get it, couldn’t feel it like she did. This wasn’t a I’m-kind-of-craving-black-bean-chicken feeling. This was a horribly suffocating feeling that the world would end unless she sat in this particular restaurant, at this particular time. She could order whatever, eat whatever, but she had to be here, for at least an hour.

Something terrible was coming, It had been coming for awhile now, maybe always…And it was going to consume her.

Though, rather obviously, not today.

She glanced at her watch: 12:58pm.

The pressure to remain rooted in her seat, eyes glued to the front windows, eased just a little bit and she slumped back in her seat. She rolled the bogus fortune between her thumb and middle finger, as if pretending carelessness, even though she knew she’d unroll it and stick it with all the others as soon as she got home. No matter that she currently felt like it was an utter lie. She kept a cork board, framed in an antique gold frame she’d freed from a ghastly meadow scene, filled with such things hanging right by her desk. A quick glance right and thousands of words from fortunes or tarot readings, floated there, suspended, just waiting enlightenment for interpretation. It was a jigsaw puzzle of her destiny, except there was no box picture or straight edge to follow, and she hadn’t managed to piece it all together. Actually, she hadn’t gotten to the piecing part at all, yet. She was a collector, not a creator.

She wondered if the road to crazy was just this slow. Ah, well, she only had another 11 hours until this foretold peacefulness would “gain” her mind – maybe it would happen, maybe it could, she wouldn’t mind a little quiet. It would be even better if someone else could drive for awhile. She was constantly anticipating the bumps and misjudging the terrain. Man, her metaphors were all over the place today.

Was it so bad to need a little guidance? Oh, she knew that people tried to throw her tow ropes all the time…she just couldn’t grasp them.

She got up, paid with debit and left the restaurant. Few people remained picking the remnants of their tasty lunches. Everyone else was probably heading back to work, and she supposed that that was were she should go.

It was a sunny, if brisk, day, but she was glad to have an excuse to pull her hoodie up — she liked the built-in blinders. This new one she’d bought with her birthday money three days ago had a bit of a point on the charcoal wool and cashmere hood. It was lined with soft cotton jersey, but had some patch label on the sleeve that she’d have to pick off. She hadn’t gotten around to yet, what with the sudden onset of world-ending doom.

Three days ago she’d turned 20, and she really had been looking forward to the new decade in her life.

Now, not so much.