"Newborn" A short tale by Victoria Grace

 

I was born in an instant. I was born in a hot flash. I was born because my papa was lonely. Somewhere from the light or the dark, I don't know which, I came alive.

My eyes snapped open just as my papa was slicing at a hunk of wood, talking to himself about what a beautiful "marnet" it was going to become for "the bambenose". I don't know what a "marnet" is, but from the way he smiled, it must have been something good. 

He stood there slicing, slicing, with little bits of the wood flying everywhere around him. I just sat, watching him, smiling. Above his head were little hanging people. They didn't talk like my papa did and I wondered if maybe I could play with them. I tried to walk off of the table I was sitting on top of, but I couldn't control my body and I landed below, making a loud noise and causing my papa to stop his slicing.

He turned his head around and yelled out, asking who was there, but I couldn't answer him and say "It's me, papa" because I had landed face first. When I didn't say anything, he went back to his slicing and I tried to get up. It wasn't easy because my body felt so stiff but I managed to push myself to my feet which, looking down, were small wobbly brown things--not like my papa's which were big and white. I hoped that after my papa saw me, he would get me better feet.

I tottered over, saying "Papa, here I am! Here I am, Papa!" and hugged his legs, looking up at him, knowing he would laugh out loud and scoop me up.

But something else happened. The tool he had been using to slice, dropped from his hands and he stared at me, his mouth open and his eyes popping out. I was waiting for him to pick me up, but instead, he started screaming and clutching his chest. He kept shouting, "il lavoro del diavolo! il lavoro del diavolo!" over and over again before he fell down, with his eyes staring up and his mouth open.

I didn't know what to do. Had I said something bad?

I walked over to him, a little bit better than before (my body was getting easier to move), and tapped him.

 "Papa? Papa? Wake up. I'm sorry that I made you mad" I said.

I stood there, tapping and poking him for a while until it had turned black outside, but he still wouldn't move.

When I had been brought was just a moment ago. But then I started wondering about the who and the where. What kind of reason was there to come alive for papa if he wasn't going to be there to BE my papa? I knew I had no answers for these questions and maybe my head would've been too dense to understand the answers if I'd been given them. So I sat there for hours, curling up my stiff knees the best I could, staring up at the ceiling at the little dangling feet of the hanging people. Smiles were frozen on their faces. I really wished one of them would've talked to me, letting me know when everything would be better again, when papa would wake up. I was there until the morning, waiting for one of them to speak to me, hoping they would be my friends, but it was just me, silent papa, and the blackness that took over the small dusty room.

I stopped trying to move him after a few hours went by. Papa had gone to another place. Maybe it was the place I had come from or the one I was going to end up, I didn't know. But I knew that I needed help.

I felt a sadness in me because all of this happened because I accidentally did something terrible to my papa. I hadn't meant it. I loved him, but maybe he didn't feel the same way about me and that's why he had gone from this place of wood and dust and strange hanging people who just smiled and grinned at me without answering my questions.

I put my hand that I knew somehow was his handiwork, on his pale face, but I didn't feel anything, no sensation on my fingers.

 

 

"Goodbye Papa" I said, 'I'm going to meet others like you. I hope they won't all fall down and leave me. I need a place to belong, I hope you understand. Sleep well."

The door of the little room was cracked open and I squeezed through. It was very different on the outside and looking up into the blackness I saw a shiny white circle that one day many days later, I overheard someone call the moon. Down at my feet were little yellow flowers standing straight up. My sadness went away and I started giggling, grabbing a few. It was all so pretty and I was so amazed by everything that I didn't even hear the furry creature come up behind me until I heard its panting. I turned around and looked into its shaggy face with a pink tongue hanging out of it. Thinking at the time that this was maybe one of the "bambenose" I heard my papa talk about, I reached out to touch it, but suddenly its sharp teeth sank into my arm, taking a chunk out of it. I looked in confusion at my arm and at its furry face. "Why did you do that?" I asked. It didn't answer, though--just spat it out and ran off. I started feeling sad again. It didn't like me like my papa didn't like me. 

I went on, walking, looking for a place where I could meet more people who I could ask questions about the beauty and the wonder of all that was around me and why I had come alive, but everything was dark and there wasn't anybody around. 

I sighed and decided to wait for the next day. I sat down in a large, green corner and patiently waited for the people to come out. The next day, another big round thing came up in the sky, which unlike the moon, was orange and I later heard, was called the sun. I peeked out from behind and saw lots of people moving around--big ones like my papa and ones with long hair holding the hands of even smaller people. The even smaller people I really couldn't stop staring at. They were kind of like me, but their bodies were white and softer than mine. Were they the bambenose? I saw that they were being picked up, like I had wanted from my papa, hugged and given brightly colored things to eat. The big people and long-haired people holding their hands didn't scream at them, but talked to them real nice, and gave them kisses on their faces. I started thinking about my papa again and wondered if I should go back and promise to be extra good to make up for the terrible thing I had done that had caused him to fall down and go away. Maybe, just maybe, he would wake up!

I was about to turn back when I saw a person with long black hair up ahead, sitting down on the grass. The long-haired person had a small, really TINY person that sucked at its chest. I watched, amazed, and got closer and closer, until I was standing right in front of them. The long-haired person was looking down at the tiny person, touching its head and smiling. I stood there, not saying anything, for a little while longer, until I couldn't stop myself from asking "Why are you doing that?" The long-haired person lifted its head, still smiling, but when seeing me, shouted, their eyes wide and popped, then began screaming things at me that didn't sound too nice until other people, both big and smaller ones, came running towards us. 

"Hello. I was just born last night. Can you tell me where I am and maybe where I can get new feet?" I asked. 

They didn't answer me, but like my papa, started screaming, "il lavoro del diavolo!" at me and the big ones, with their red faces curled up, began kicking at and stomping on me.

I was very frightened because bits of me were chipping and flying off of my body and they would not stop.

One of the big people dropped me and before I could get stomped again, I ran as quickly as my wobbly feet could go and I kept running until I couldn't hear the people screaming at me anymore. I found another spot in another green place far away from all of them and I curled up, looking at all the damage done to me. They had taken a lot off of my body and there were holes and little chunks missing. I still didn't feel anything on the outside, but there was a strong feeling moving up inside, where nobody could see or know about me. I felt like the only one of its kind in all of the land around me, and it didn't feel good. I felt alone. It only became worse when I looked down and saw that one of my legs was dangling, about to break off. I snapped the whole piece off and threw it aside and tilted my head back, looking up at that "moon", which had appeared again. I can't sleep like my papa so I just looked up until the sun came back, big, bright and reliable. I began to consider the moon and the sun as friends of a kind. They gave me warmth and cool and were beautiful to see. And best of all, they didn't yell at me or break my body. Of course, they didn't say anything at all but they were still comforting.

I wished that I could have understood what I was doing that was bad and made the people shout and get red. If only I had known what bad thing I was doing, what the purpose of coming alive was all about, my papa wouldn't have gotten mad at me and fell down, and he could have picked me up, smiling and happy like I had wanted him to be. 

Ever since my birth day, I stay away from all of the people because they scare me. I get around okay with one leg and hop from one place to another, sometimes still peeking out of my corners at all of them, hearing them talk, laugh, and picking up new words. They all look so happy. Like I want to look. I miss my papa and it's been a long time since I've seen him, but I finally understand that he's gone forever and there is no going back.

The thought has occurred to me that I might not ever get new feet.

"Rememberance" A short story by Victoria Grace

I was watching her as she slept, her body tired out from the chills and fever. I listened to her weak moans as she slept in a cavernous, dim place that smelled of sweat and misery. I watched from my corner within the shadows, unable to help or give comfort as she cried out, curled into a ball on the battered and filthy mattress. The stress of the sickness tore through her frail bones like thunder. I always desperately wanted to shield my daughter from the worst that life can bring, but in the end I was helpless to change the inevitable. I came back at the time when she needed someone the most and I was witnessing her death unfold in flashes. All I could do was remember who the both of us used to be many years ago.

When she was a child, we would go to the church in our neighborhood just a few blocks from the house that had become my prison and just a bit of time away so that we could escape his rages and have a little freedom. We looked forward to it all week long and he knew that. If he was in a bad mood or if I had done or said something that he disliked, it could be taken away from us in an instant. Me and my daughter would often seek safety within the hallway closet, listening out for his loud snores in our small apartment, so I could quietly creep into his bed and wait for what tomorrow would bring. But on Sundays...the good ones...we were free. I never had a dollar to my name but after church we'd go to the park across the street and have a picnic. One afternoon before the evening that would decide both of our destinies, her big brown eyes locked on mine, and she tilted her head a little, asking me the question which I never knew how to answer.

Mama, why does Daddy hurt you?

She pointed to the bruising on my arm, pushing up the long sleeve of her yellow dress she'd gotten as a birthday present from my mother, who I hadn't been able to visit since he had moved us two states away. Her eyes started to well up and I wanted to start crying right there with her in the park, just thinking about how much pain and how much anger she must've heard all those horrible nights.

It was alright. Jesus sees everything and he's going to help us, make our lives better.

When? 

She had asked so softly that I could barely hear her.

Sooner than you think. 

I hadn't told her that that night, we were going to make our escape.

Without even realizing it, I'd closed my eyes thinking about the past, and those memories that still haunt me from time to time. I opened them to my daughter having lost control on the mattress, crying.

"It's okay, Mama's here." I spoke to her from the shadows. One of her eyes cocked open in surprise at my voice and she weakly searched the darkness for the presence she felt but couldn't see. After a few moments, she laid back down, mumbling something I couldn't hear. She was going in and out of consciousness now. The cold that had so easily turned into the flu had beaten her.

That night years ago, I had slipped out of the bed, away from his snoring body, and grabbed the keys to the car from his pocket. It was the keys he was too drunk that night to remember to hide.

We're getting out of here. 

I had shaken her awake and clamped my hand over her mouth. Those huge eyes of hers had fixed on mine, the terror in them gleaming. She knew how dangerous this was and the price I would have to pay if we got caught. She knew exactly what her father was.

The front door seemed like a hundred miles away. There was an almost unnatural silence that night. The sound of the chirping crickets was gone. There wasn't a single car which drove by in the street. It was as if me and my daughter were frozen in the moment, trying to get through to the land of the living.

She put all of her trust in me. All of her hopes and fears, I could feel them like an electric charge. This was our last chance.

I was opening the door. We felt the warm night air on our faces and the sounds of the night returned. His car was in front of the house. The keys dug into my palm.

I remember turning to her with a smile.

But I saw the panic in her face and heard her scream. I felt the blinding pain of my hair being yanked out by his rough hands. Then I saw the kitchen knife he was holding.

I snapped out of my recollection of that night, to see my daughter struggling to breathe now, choking from the fluid in her lungs. I took my daughter's hands in my own and prepared for her to see me.

I reached out to touch the gray strands of her hair that had fallen in sweaty clumps on her worn, prematurely aged face and hoped that she would be going to the same place with me. She had had a hard life, the kind that's been shaped by the colors of death. I'd watched her through the addictions, the endless self-inflicted punishment of her body, the violence from the men who hung around her like bad odors, the kind of pain I had gone through, and I'd longed to push her in the opposite direction. Save her the trouble. But there was never anything I could do. The dead could not interfere with the living.

I didn't know how to give her any more comfort. I didn't know exactly when the end was coming but I knew it was probably soon. I had watched as she had fallen apart, seen the illness consuming her and bringing her only moments from seeing me again.

I watched as the last breath left her body.

She was standing before me now, as she was when she was a little girl. Her gray hair was thick brown curls again, her eyes were gleaming with youth and vitality, and she was wearing the same yellow dress that she wore the day my husband killed me.

Wordlessly, she held out her small hand to mine and we walked together out of the crack house she had spent her last days in, past the semi-conscious addicts, the broken glass, and out into the fresh afternoon sunlight.

"Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse" & Stephen King's "The End of the Whole Mess"

I just began a science fiction anthology called Wastelands and the anthology kicks off with a wonderful Stephen King story, "The End of the Whole Mess".

First off, I've read another anthology edited by John Joseph Adams called The Living Dead, a collection of zombie tales that is upcoming to be reviewed here. Each short story was really well-written, just incredibly inventive plots with fresh perspectives. One story by Susan Palwick called "Beautiful Stuff" about the use of zombies to win a political election...what a sharp punch to the gut. It's STILL stuck in my head. So, these anthology collections are definitely becoming a real favorite of mine! Now in Wastelands, the focus is not on the dead but on that all-too-real fear of disaster and dread and world's death. In "The End of the Whole Mess", that end is horribly final, and it sneaks up on the world instead of exploding over their heads.


It's an incredibly powerful story that explores the stupid tendency for human beings to constantly war against each other, and the determination of a brilliant scientist to try to put an end to it and bring peace to mankind once and for all...but at what cost? The answer is absolutely terrible. Worse than any violence that could ever be committed. It's the crumbling, the utter deterioration of mental coherence, the tearing apart of the ONE thing that is the center of human civilization itself. Intelligence.

What I liked about King's writing in this story is the interesting development of the characters. The young scientist who's ultimately responsible for the end of civilization starts out in such a genuinely positive way. He truly begins as a would-be hero--constantly learning, developing, and earnestly trying to help society. But the cost of his idealism unravels into this destruction that annihilates his family and the world around him. The end is neither loud or violent, but a quiet erosion of everything that makes humanity special. It's an AMAZING story, the last few lines practically brought tears to my eyes, and is just a powerful example of why Stephen King is my favorite writer of all time. It's an understatement to say he's a master. He has a talent of using words like I've seen very few contemporary horror writers possess. I believe the word for it is genius.

"Past Lives" A Short Story by V.G. Grace

Vincent woke up cursing and shielding his eyes from the glaring whiteness of the early morning sunlight, which wrenched its way into the fog in his head.  The last thing he remembered was the disembodied face of his wife.

"Laura!" he bellowed, his voice careening off of the tall oak trees that circled the camp site he had chosen for last night's fishing expedition, "Where the hell are you? I want my coffee!"

He waited for her to come rushing towards him clutching a canteen of hot coffee, and standing quietly before him with her eyes peering downward. He would sip it quietly for a few moments, waiting for the beads of sweat to appear and trickle down her smooth pale forehead, smelling her fear, relishing her fear, before he eventually pounced. It was always the highlight of his mornings.

Grunting with effort, Vincent struggled to lift his girth off of the ground, almost falling flat on his face. Then, looking around, he noticed that this morning, unlike all other mornings, Laura was not rushing towards him, on call to carry out his day's commands.

"Laura!" he shouted, "Better be in front of me in the next five seconds or it's gonna be a kick in the ribs instead of a slap to the face. Your choice!"

Nothing. The birds went on singing, their blissfully oblivious chirps the only sound in the overwhelming quiet of the forest.  A moment later, a raccoon waddled out from behind a pine tree and sniffed the air curiously. His glossy black eyes widened almost with a human look of fear and he ran up the tree, scurrying up its branches.

Not once in their two year marriage had she ever had the nerve to disobey him. She knew what the consequences were. He'd made sure of that the first month they were married. Irritation rapidly transformed into rage, that familiar sizzling pop of violence, which crackled through Vincent, erupted, and searched for a target.

"You're in for it!" he screamed into the silence, as he started stomping through the woods towards their cabin,

The small wooden vacation cabin had been in his family for the past fifty years of Vincent's life. Once the representation of his family's final achievement of the American dream, the promise of many successful times to come, it had become the last possible refuge for him after a string of economic failures and the nightmare of one woman.

Vincent kicked open the cabin door and began to scream out his wife's name again when he suddenly froze at the sight lying before him.

The well-worn furniture that had crowded the small living room had disappeared. The woven rugs Laura had bought at a flea market in town and which he had allowed to be one of her few contributions to the cabin's decoration, had vanished. On the wall, where the usually bright sunflower patterned wallpaper was now peeling off into greying flakes, the old photographs featuring dour, unsmiling relatives from Vincent's side of the family, had inexplicably vanished. In every corner, there were tangled, dusty piles of cobwebs, its whiteness shimmering underneath the ray of sunlight which shone through the living room's newly broken window, absent of the curtains that had been covering it since his wife had sewn them a year ago. Instead of the bright, cheerful interior that welcomed Vincent every dawn, it looked untouched and abandoned, as if it had long been languishing in darkness and isolation instead of it being the familiar and comfortable home he had lived in for the last fifteen years.

'What the hell?" Vincent mumbled dazedly.

He stumbled backwards into the corner, feeling something soft brushing up against the back of his neck. He whirled around to see a large black widow spider descending from the ceiling.

He growled and lunged at it in one fell swoop, throwing the spider to the ground where his massive leg came down with a mighty stomp.

Grinning with the satisfaction that only an act of violence brought him, he lifted his leg up from what he expected to be the mutilated remains, but like only a gentle breeze had knocked her down, the spider in its eight-legged spindly entirety, scurried off from the site of her near-murder and disappeared up the peeling walls.


Before the confusion could hit him, Vincent's vision suddenly blurred, turning into a swirling haze. Yelping in pain, his eyes screwed tight with water trickling down his cheeks and he clutched his ample belly, dropping to his knees. The pain was becoming more intense by the second. It was as if a swarm of bees were buzzing, buzzing, buzzing through the recesses of his mind, stinging the fleshy parts along the way.

"Stop. My head! What's happening? Wha---leave me alone! Leave me ALONE!" He shrieked into the shadows of the cabin.

As swiftly as it had started, it stopped.

Vincent opened his eyes to see the bright wallpaper with its cheerful yellow flowers back as it had been. His comfortable easy chair with the ever-familiar butt imprint of a million beer and football nights was sitting there like always, almost mocking him with its sameness. The cabin was filled with the soft glow of the antique porcelain lamps his mother had brought over from the old country, illuminating the cabin amidst the shadows of outside. It was no longer the early morning sunshine but the weak moonlight streaming in. He glanced at the television set back in front of his worn in, broken-down easy chair to see glimpses of an old black & white sitcom he loved to watch while eating the enormous dinners he demanded his wife  cook every night. She's causing all of this, Vincent thought. She slipped something into the food. Vincent's heart began to thump as if he was running a marathon, and cold sweat trickled down his multiple chins onto the hardwood floors.

"Yeah, that's right," he said out loud as if to reassure himself, "This is all an hallucination."

He turned to his left and there was his wife, standing with her back to him. Her bony spine protruded through the thin fabric of her tank top and her frail shoulders bobbed up and down frantically as if she was in the middle of hyperventilating.

Vincent stomped over to her, his rage at full-throttle.

"Hey!" he barked, "Just what do you think you're doin' to me, bitch?"

She still stood with her back to him, her loud breathing not skipping a beat. Her slender frame began to shake uncontrollably, her jagged breathing almost bouncing off of the walls, a sharp sound of long-buried agony ripping, tearing into the air like a thousand needles.
 

"I've had enough of whatever tricks you're pullin'. Maybe you slipped somethin' in my dinner last night or maybe you put some kinda hex on me. Whatever it is, it's gonna end right here. Turn around and start actin' normal!" he yelled.

With her back still turned, Laura lifted a revolver, that she had been clutching tightly, desperately, to her right side, and aimed it directly in front of her. It glinted beneath the moonlight--her body was no longer trembling.

"You-you LIED.  You said you were going to be a good husband to me, give me a good life." she whispered. "You said you were going to make me happy, happiness like nothing I've known before." she shook her head, " Just misery like nothing I've known before. Cruelty like nothing I've known. You lied because no woman would have you...you're garbage on the inside."

Vincent lunged then for his wife, his beefy arms eager to wrap themselves around her thin neck and choke the life out of her, choke the defiance out of her, choke the words out of her. Just as his fingers came near her throat, he felt a violent jolt and stared at the wooden floor beneath him.  He looked up, dazed, to see that he was crumpled in a heap at her back. Her arm was still outstretched, pointing the gleaming pistol in front of her. She had not even flinched. Suddenly cutting through the seemingly endless moment of silence was a pathetic, begging voice.  A male voice. His own.

"Baby...honey...please think for a moment about what you're doin!" the voice wailed.

"On your knees," Laura said quietly.

Vincent went cold all over, as if ice water was flowing through his veins straight into his heart. Beyond her gun, he stared into the wide, frightened eyes of his mirror image. Cradling an arm where a gunshot wound had created a raw bloody hole in the meaty part of his massive shoulder, the second Vincent's thinning hair was matted with sweat, which had mingled with the tears, both from shock and from pain, that were spilling from those bug-eyes.

"Can't be happening." Vincent muttered as he stared, numbly, at the duplicate of himself pathetically kneeling on the hard wooden floors, almost as before a religious icon.

"Oh GOD, I don't wanna die!" the wailing voice of his double shrieked.

"Shut up." Laura replied.

"It just can't be happening," Vincent repeated.

"Please, baby" the quavering voice of his double pleaded, "Put the gun down. We can get past th--"

"I told you, SHUT UP!" she suddenly screamed, her voice reverberating through the walls.

She placed the pistol against his sweaty temple.

"This is the end of you, Vincent" Laura said, "You hear me good? END. No more hurting me, no more putting your hands on me, making me feel dirty, like I'm not human."

"You whore!" Vincent roared behind her and his double, as he charged like an angry bull towards her again, landing ineffectually at the back of her scuffed tennis shoes.

"I'm begging you--" the second Vincent pleaded.

"You caused me to lose her. Our child." Laura went on, tears spilling from her eyes, her knuckles turning white as she tightened her hold on the gun.

Vincent struggled to get to his feet. The air felt thinner and the buzzing in his head came back, slowly at first, a muted throb.

The second Vincent reached out his hand to her, his eyes pleading.

"Baby...you're right....I've treated you like no man ever oughtta treat a woman. I swear to God, I'll change and make life better for you. Please put the gun down."

Laura said nothing, her hand still pointing the gun at his head. She began openly weeping.

Vincent was clutching his head, moaning now, the throbbing turning into an electric strumming, slowly reaching a shattering crescendo.


"Everything will be different," he went on, his voice repentant, "We'll have another baby, move outta here. We'll both go to counseling just like you wanted!"

Her arm still pointed the gun at him, but the fingers slightly loosened its iron grip. The corner of her mouth began to quiver.

Reaching out both hands to her now, ignoring the blood steadily streaming down his arm, the second Vincent edged closer.

"I'll be a good husband, the kind of husband a jewel like you deserves, baby. We'll be happy...I'll put the gun to my own head and pull the trigger if I ever get out of line. I SWEAR to you!"

As if she was a deer in the headlights, Laura stood there, frozen and suddenly unsure.

Her arm lowered slightly.

"Maybe--" she said haltingly.

Then he leapt upon her, bending her arm backwards with all of his strength, his garbled howl of victory piercing the darkness of the cabin.

She desperately thrashed in his grasp, then reached out and deeply slashed his doughy face, her long fingernails scraping his flesh from the chin to the eyeballs.

There on the floor, Vincent gazed on as a useless bystander in numb horror, his sight clouding over, struggling to hold onto his consciousness. It was all getting very hazy...


Vincent shrieked, his hands instinctively covering the deep red slash marks on his face, dropping to the floor, half sobbing-half screaming in pain.

Laura grabbed the gun and crouched down, ramming it into his mouth.

"Goodbye, Vincent," she said sadly, her face inches from his, "May you be trapped in the kinda hell you created for me." She then pulled the trigger with a decisive click.

Vincent did not hear the blast or see the back of his own head splattered against the sunflower-patterned walls. Instantly, he was catapulted into a vast empty whiteness, his body vibrating like a massive machine.

Chuka-chuka-chuka-choo, chuka-chuka-chuka-choo, chuka-chuka-chuka-CHOO.

He tried to scream but nothing came out except the electronic hum radiating from his head to his fingertips. He looked upwards and saw her face. She contentedly smiled down at him, her eyes radiant and sparkling. He tried to reach out for her but his limbs were paralyzed. He tried to speak, but his voice was gone.

Suddenly he was free-falling downwards, into a flourescent glow, further away from her face until it became a distant speck.

Vincent opened his eyes.

He started cursing and shielding himself from the blaring sunlight. It was a beautiful day, the birds cheerfully singing their early morning song.

"Laura! Where the hell are you? I want my coffee!" he bellowed.

"Decisions" A Short Story by V.G. Grace

I awoke to the smell of rotting meat. The air was thick with the odor, going up my nostrils, and filling my body with an unexpected hunger.
 
When I opened my eyes, I saw another woman lying next to me. She was on her side, her right arm slung over an upturned gallon of spring water, Mountain Best.
 
I had been laying face down, my lips stuck to some sort of sticky substance on the tile floor. When I rose, I saw that it was dried blood.
 
With some effort, I pulled myself to a sitting position. When I saw them, I let out a scream that sliced through the air and woke up the sleeping woman beside me.
 
All around me, heaped on the floor, sitting down, slumped against the shelves were bodies. Bodies of the young, bodies of the old; black and brown bodies, white bodies and yellow bodies.
 
Bodies with dried blood and vomit caked around their mouths, some bodies with eyes frozen in their last moments of what looked to be complete and total agony.

My hunger evaporated. I began screaming, couldn't seem to be able to stop screaming until the woman next to me grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me hard.
 
"Stop. Stop it! Calm down, you're all right. You're all right."
 
I started crying then.
 
I shook now with the force of my sobs.
 
"You're all right. You're all right," she said softly.
 
After a good ten seconds, I started to pull myself together.
 
"Wha--what is this. How did we get here? What HAPPENED here?!" I screamed out.
 
I looked at her, a pale woman with deep bags under steel blue eyes, which looked haggard, despite her sleep. Her red hair extended past her bare shoulders, touching a red-stained and grimy tank top that looked like it used to be white.
 
She looked at me grimly and shook her head, her curls bouncing from side to side.
 
"I know as little as you do." Under the flickering flourescent lights, I could see dried blood flecked throughout her blistered lips.
 
"I woke up just a few moments ago when you started screaming. Christ, I feel like I've been sleeping for centuries." she said, rubbing the back of her neck.
 
"Look around you. Do you see this? All these people, these cor--corpses!" I retched then, but surprisingly did not throw up.
 
She turned around at the pile of bodies surrounding us. Her hand flew up to her mouth, her eyes widening in shock, a whimper escaping from her lips.
 
"Shit." she muttered under her breath,
 
"Shit! This is insane. It looks like a cemetery exploded in here!"
 
I scrambled to my feet, feeling a little wobbly at first, but quickly regaining my balance. I must have been out quite a while.
 
"Hey," I called out to her.
 
She turned around to face me, her hand still at her mouth.
 
"What's your name? How did you get here?"
 
Her eyes became wide and frightened like a child, then.
 
"My name? I..I don't know. I can't remember anything."
 
Panic rose up through me like a high-burning flame.
 
"Neither can I."
                                      


********

 
She rose to her feet, me grabbing her by the arms to steady her. Apparently, she had as little coordination as I did.
 
"Listen, maybe there's some identification on us, like driver's license, state I.D...." I said.
 
She still looked frightened, but a cautious relief flooded into her face.
 
"Yes! I mean, nobody goes shopping without their purse, right?"
 
"Only shoplifters" I said flatly, not meaning to be funny.
 
But she laughed then, the fear beginning to fade from her eyes.
 
I went looking around the area, keeping my eyes out for a purse or wallet on the ground.
 
I found a small pink handbag in the soup aisle, lying next to a fat man slumped against a row of tomato soup cans. His belly spilled out from beneath his flannel shirt, the flesh mottled and gray.
 
He stunk like a garbage pile in the middle of the desert. The smell surrounding me was like nothing I had ever smelled before, worming its way through my nostrils up into my brain itself.
 
I started retching and gagging, but was again unable to vomit.
 
"That's not surprising. You haven't eaten in God knows when," I muttered under my breath.
 
The pink bag definitely didn't belong to the soup man, so I scooped it up and brought it back to the meat aisle.
 
"I think I found something."
 
"So did I!" she called out victoriously.
 
"What?"
 
She presented me with a driver's license showing a picture of herself. In the picture, her hair was shorter and straight and she looked slightly younger, but it was no mistaking that it was her.
 
Rose M. McKenzie it read on the card.
 
"I found it in a straw shoulder bag that was down in the dairy aisle." she said, massaging her temples.
 
"I found a pink bag, back in the soup aisle, a couple of steps from where I fell. I think it's mine."
 
"Crack it open! I want to put the name to the face." She smiled kindly at me.
 
I reached down into the bag and came out with only a tube of cherry-flavored lipgloss and a library card at first.
 
"Try again. It may have one of those zippered compartments" she offered.
 
I felt around, my fingers landing on a zipper I nearly ripped open in my excitement.
 
I pulled out a cell phone but it had died who knows how long ago. There was a simple brown leather wallet containing a driver's license and $150 dollars in cash. Rooting around in the purse, I also pulled out a white greeting card, with the words "HAPPY COLLEGE GRADUATION!" printed on the front. Within was a picture of a man and woman. The couple's arms were comfortably slung around each other's shoulders, and they were sitting at a patio table. They looked very happy.
 
The man had a deep brown complexion, his salt-and-pepper hair giving him a look of distinguishment. A middle-aged White lady with a kind face and close-cropped blond hair beamed at the camera.
 

To Teresa--all our love and all our hopes for your inevitably bright future.                              
--Mom and Dad


"These are my parents." I said softly, showing the picture to her, and she looked curiously at the pair.
 
"Really? A nice-looking couple."
 
I turned over the driver's license and stared at my own face.  I was wearing a big grin and had a snaggle-tooth. My brown wavy hair was cut into a short bob, my eyes were green and my skin was a vibrant tan. I looked down at my arm and noticed that it had grown pale and splotchy with uneven purple bruising up and down my forearms. I was not quite as pale as Rose's color, but nearly. 

What the hell had happened while I was unconscious?
 
On my license, my name was listed as "Teresa Washington" and my age was listed at twenty-five.
 
"Teresa...that's a beautiful name," Rose said.
                                

********
 
We walked together through the ruins of the store and realized that we weren't in a supermarket, but one of those one-stop-shop places.
 
The furniture aisle was a disaster area; coffee tables and heavy entertainment centers overturned, broken chairs littering the floor, and it seemed that nearly every corner was smeared with blood, fluids, and--I had to lean in closer to make sure of what I was seeing--chunks of brains and entrails.
 
"Shit. Shit!" Rose kept repeating, as if it was a sacred mantra designed to ward off danger.
 
The dead lay everywhere. Some were sprawled on top of bloodied mattresses, others were sitting up- right in easy chairs and at desks, their heads lolling, their eyes often open and staring unseeing at us as we passed by. Some of the bodies were bloated to the point of bursting from the heat. There was no air-conditioning.
 
"We gotta find out what's going on here, Rose." my voice trembled and my stomach churned with nausea.
 
I could see that she was trembling.
 
"What do you think could've happened? I mean, how could something like this happen and we not remember ANYTHING? We couldn't even remember our own names." she said quietly.
 
I didn't say anything, couldn't think of an answer.
 
She turned to me, her eyes wide.
 
"Do you think it was...terrorists?" she said the word in a whisper, as if she was afraid that some were still laying in wait in the electronics section, ready to pounce upon us and finish the job.
 
I was silent for a moment.
 
"I honestly don't know. I don't know how I got here, how YOU got here, how these bodies got here and up until five minutes ago, I didn't even know what I looked like. Maybe it's terrorists. Maybe it's nuclear war. Maybe it's the end of the world. But if it IS the end of the world, I think we're entitled to some answers and to be together with our families. That's the least we're entitled to. If we work together, maybe we can find those answers."
 
For the first time since I woke up, I felt a surge of confidence and I think Rose was galvanized by it herself.
 
She stopped trembling.
 
"Okay, Teresa. You're right. This is no time for cowards. If you can be brave, so can I."
 
She stiffened her back and threw her chin out.

"Let's go find our answers."
                           

*********

I jabbed at the keyboard of the P.C. in front of me, clicking the 'home' symbol again and again.
 
This page can't be displayed.
 
The stark white glowed in the darkened store, as if it was taunting us with its uselessness. Rose was doubled over from the stench that permeated every inch, every corner, radiating from the greyish corpses tangled together in the aisle. I could hear her gagging but like me, nothing came out. There had been a rush, apparently, to get when the getting was good, but from the looks of it, most of the looters had dropped in mid-theft. A few were lying under monitors that had tumbled on top of them, their arms stiffly wrapped around the equally dead machines.

"Stop wasting time!" Rose cried, irritated, "let's go find a magazine or newspaper or something--" she stopped to gag again, this time I really thought there was going to be something, but after a few dry heaves, she pulled herself back up, leaning tiredly against a display.

I had solved the problem by stuffing a couple of cotton balls up my nose, but it was forcing me to breathe in the dank, stale air through my mouth and I was beginning to feel a surge of nausea again.

When we headed over to the magazine aisle, we found it was surprisingly intact.

"Guess nobody was in the mood to see who was screwing who..." I muttered half-way to myself.

Rose laughed a little and I could tell she was beginning to feel better. She was standing straight again.

 But then I heard her shout as we scanned the aisle. "Wha--what, what the hell? There's nothing here about anything!"

 We ripped through entertainment, political, sports, business magazines, through one smiling, suited, half-clad cover after another and found nothing about crowds of people suddenly dropping dead while shopping for canned goods.

We dropped down to the cold tile, the papers fluttering around us.

"Maybe it was a sneak attack. By terrorists, like I said."

"I'm trying so hard to remember", I rubbed my temples in frustration, trying to will the truth into my head, "Whatever it was, we had no warning..."

I glanced at a cover of a smiling celebrity couple on a film magazine, their arms wrapped around each other's shoulders. They looked like they didn't have a care in the world. They didn't look like they were living in the middle of an apocalypse. I picked it up, and crusty dried blood from my fingers flaked off on their pale grinning faces.

"No damn warning at all."


****************
 
Rose and I walked out into a deserted parking lot--deserted of the living, but not of the dead.

Bodies lay across the concrete in a haphazard, tangled heap. Their flesh rotted beneath the warm sunshine, their clothes no more than dirty rags slipping off from skeletal frames. Some still sat behind the wheels of their cars, their fingers attached to the steering wheels.
 
Rose suddenly dropped down to the ground, gasping, her hands clawing the concrete.
 
"Rose! Are you all right?" I yelled.
 
"I remember!" she gasped, "It's coming back. I remember my home and how to get there. I remember why I was out! It was to get supplies for me and my family...water, canned goods, and batteries."
 
She looked up at me, her eyes ablaze.
 
"Something terrible was happening, Teresa. But what I can't remember!"
 
She started slapping the side of her head,
 
"Why can't I remember!" she shouted.
 
I grabbed her hands.
 
"We WILL find out. I promise you."
 
She nodded frantically.
 
"Teresa, we have to go to my house. I have to go home, I have to see my family. We have to go NOW."
 
"That's fine," I reassured her, "Take out your driver's license."
 
We peered at the address printed across the card,
 
"603 Jean Street Norfolk, Virginia"
 
"So we live in Virginia," she said.

"We know that much." I said. "Let's go."

                              
********
 
We took an abandoned silver SUV and Rose drove. There were more bodies along the way, lining the roads, but I tried not to look at them.
 
We eventually pulled up in front of a large yellow house with white trim.
 
"We're here." she said and turned off the engine, racing ahead of me before I could get out of the car.
 
"Wait! We don't know what's in there!"
 
I was thinking of how she would be able to handle it if she saw a dead husband or child. To be honest, I wasn't sure if I could handle it myself.
 
As I walked through the unlocked door, I heard Rose's screams from the back of the house.
 
I ran into the kitchen and found her crouched down over an old woman whose sparse tufts of white hair sprouted from a mottled scalp.
 
Both of her arms had been ripped from her body.
 
"She was my grandmother" she moaned, "She lived here. With me and my family."
 
I stood there, staring down at the old woman's body. Her rapidly decaying face looked surprisingly serene, and her eyes were closed, so that she almost appeared as if she was napping. You could almost believe it if not for her missing limbs and smell which filled the kitchen.
 
"Oh Teresa, " Rose moaned, "Who could do something like this? WHY?"
 
I stood there, uneasily, and not knowing what to say. What could I say when someone finds their mutilated grandmother on the kitchen floor?
 
"Rose...I'm sorry." I offered, somewhat lamely.
 
She didn't say anything for a while; just stroked her grandmother's face and stared into space.
 
All of a sudden, a deep pain punched me in the gut. I gasped for breath and clutched the kitchen countertop until my knuckles turned white.
 
Rose turned back to me in alarm.
 
"What's going on? What's wrong?"
 
I couldn't speak, wasn't able to. A burning agony shot through my belly and up my chest and throat until I felt I was going to breathe flame. My nerve endings felt as if they had been set on fire.
I felt at that moment that I was going to pass out, and my eyes rolled back in my head and I tipped backwards into Rose's arms.
 
"Teresa!" she whispered fiercely, "Please don't do this to me. Tell me what's wrong. We can fix it, but don't do this to me. Don't leave me. Don't do this to--"
 
"Hungry." I blurted out. "So hungry. I need....MEAT."
 
"Is that all? I'm sure we've got food. I'll check, don't worry. Pull yourself together, please!"
 
The pain as quickly as it appeared, began to fade until there was nothing left but a dull ache.
 
I looked up at her, her face etched with worry.
 
"I'm sorry I scared you, Rose. It must've been some sort of reaction to not eating for a while. Please....I'm so hungry. Do you have any hamburger, maybe, or chicken? Cold cuts are fine too. I really need meat."
 
I rubbed my stomach, wincing.
 
"When I woke up in the store, I was lying in some blood. I know it came from me. Maybe I lost too much."
 
She nodded.
 
"Yes. You'll be all right; I'll go check. Come to think of it, I've been feeling a craving for meat, myself, since we got here. Maybe we both lost too much blood."
 
She opened the refrigerator door and started shuffling things around. There was half a jar of green olives, a package of molding wheat bread and a quart of milk that, from the looks of it, had curdled days ago.
 
"There's got to be something here. Got to be." she muttered, frantically opening up compartments.
 
I could tell from her jerky movements and increasing desperation that something was wrong. That she was maybe beginning to feel some of that awful pain in the gut, herself.
 
Finally she found a package of raw chicken parts in of all places, the vegetable bin.
 
The expiration date read "July 10th, 2015" and from the clock on her microwave, it was August 31st.
 
She paused for a moment, before ripping into the plastic.

"I don't care."
 
My mouth began watering uncontrollably at the sight of the chicken, that burning pain beginning to return.
 
Before I could stop myself, I grabbed one of the thighs and bit into it, the slimy, stinking flesh rolling around my mouth, and I swallowed it greedily, barely chewing.
 
Instantly ashamed, I looked up at Rose, expecting her to be repulsed.
 
Instead, she was devouring a raw leg, slurping at the skin and frantically cramming it into her mouth, leaving a glistening sheen.
 
Her eyes met mine and I saw the horror in them. She let out a strangled shout and dropped the chicken leg, it landing on the tile floor with a wet plop.
 
"What in hell is happening to us?" she cried in disgust and buried her head in her hands.
 
I looked at the partially chewed thigh in my hand and threw it on the kitchen counter.
 
"Something...something bad. Maybe the something that killed all those people." I said quietly.
 
A loud thump caused our heads to snap upwards.
 
"Upstairs." Rose mouthed, and I nodded, grabbing two kitchen knives just in case; that "just in case" I still wasn't too sure of.
 
We crept softly up the carpeted stairwell, which led towards a large master bedroom. The king-size bed was unmade, rumpled and grimy sheets tangled in a knot upon the blood stained mattress. More blood was spattered across the floral wallpaper in a grisly pattern.
 
In the corner of the bedroom, in front of the walk-in closet, was one of the corpses.
 
But he wasn't lying down dead. His one arm grasped the remains of a human torso and ripped chunks of flesh off of it. Like we had stuffed the raw chicken into our mouths almost automatically, he was shoving the torn shreds into his, mindlessly chewing and swallowing with a loud gulp.
His eyes turned in our direction, but he looked right through us. His milky eyes did not register any sort of human emotion, just blank stupidity. He did not even move an inch, but continued to feast on the ragged fragments of the torso.
 
I heard a sharp intake of breath next to me and before I could say anything, Rose ran at him, raised the knife high and plunged it deeply into the corpse's head. He fell down in a heap on the fuzzy gray carpet, twitching uncontrollably, while she continued to savagely pierce his brain over and over again. Splatters of brain tissue coated her chest and arms, yet she still kept plunging until I shouted at her to stop.
 
The corpse lay still and quiet, now, like the others at the store and on the road. The remaining torso he had been eating fell beside him in a messy pile.
 
Rose fell down on her knees and punched the floor with her fists.
 
I rushed to her and put my arms on her shoulders.
 
"Do you know who that was?" she shrieked, "Do you?! It was my husband and that body he was eating was..."
 
she retched then,
 
"My sister!"
 
She howled then; long, hard and loud.
 

******

We left her house, each holding the other--almost propping each other up.
 
We climbed back into the silver SUV, this time me taking the wheel.
 
We sat there for a good ten minutes, not saying anything. Rose was clutching a rosary she had grabbed from her bedside table before we ran out of there. It had been her sister's, she'd sobbed. I could hear her mumbling a quiet prayer,

 Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord and and let perpetual light shine upon her. May she rest in peace. Amen.


My eyes were shut tight, my hands cradling my head. I was desperately trying not to have a breakdown.

"My sister must've come home from college, worried about us." Rose said flatly, after a series of prayers.
 
"Rose..."
 
"But I wasn't here. I was unconscious in a superstore, trying to buy what would be useless in the end."
 
I lowered my head, and a disturbing thought occurred to me.
 
"Rose...has it occurred to you that we haven't shed a single tear?"
 
She turned around, confused.
 
"What do you mean? You cried back at the store--" she began.
 
"No. No. I felt fear, revulsion, and sadness, and I reacted. But no actual tears, water, came down my cheek. It's weird. That just occurred to me right now."
 
She kept staring, disoriented.
 
"And just now, after all that's happened to you, you've screamed, you've gagged, but you haven't actually cried."
 
She was silent then and I didn't blame her. Who could even begin to face the possibility?
 
"We haven't cried and  neither one of us have wanted a drink of water, despite this heat. And neither one of us have even needed to use the bathroom. We were lying unconscious in a hot store for hours, probably days! How does that make sense?"
 
She was breathing raggedly now. I could heard it.
 
"And it's not like we haven't cried because we don't feel the pain. Far from it. Rose, what if we haven't cried because we just physically can't anymore?"
 
She was looking straight ahead at nothing in particular, her jaw clenching and unclenching, her hands trembling.
 
"Teresa, do you think something truly terrible has happened to us? More dangerous than we thought and that maybe," she breathed in deeply, trying to steady the rhythm, "that has something to do with us eating that raw meat?"
 
I thought back to the horror in her eyes and the revulsion I felt.
 
"Whatever is happening, regardless if the world is crashing down into a pile of rubble, I just want to be with my family. I want to go home."
 
She nodded in understanding and gave my hand a squeeze.
 
"And now I'm remembering how to get there."

 
*****

We came to a modest pale green house, its picture windows rimmed in black, fading flowers in once bright colors lining the walkway.
 
A mailbox in the shape of a rooster sat in front, bulging with mail never picked up, "The Washingtons" emblazoned in white lettering across it. As we got closer, I saw a brown finger dangling from the rooster's head.
 
Rose touched my arm, holding me back.
 
"I need to do this. You can wait here, it's okay." I said gently.
 
She looked from the dangling finger and back at me.
 
"No. You did it for me. Let's go, honey."
 
We walked together towards the house. Like Rose's, the front door was cracked open and we entered the cool darkness of the living room.
 
Someone had been there ahead of us, apparently looting the place for any money and valuables they could find. Furniture was overturned and all of the drawers of a desk were open, papers scattered everywhere. The TV had been yanked out of the wall. Someone had sprayed graffiti on a mirror in big red lettering.                      

                                                                      It's Hell




"Hello! Hello, is anybody here? Mom? Dad?" I swallowed, my throat painfully dry.
 
Rose called out too, looking throughout the living room, hallway, and kitchen but finding nobody.
 
"Let's try upstairs." I said, jerking my head in the stairwell's direction.
 
We entered another master bedroom, this one being neat and free of gore.
 
Rose pointed a finger at the bed in the left-hand corner.
 
"Teresa!" she cried.
 
There lying on the bed, their bony arms bound by rope, were the people in the picture. 

My parents.
 
I walked up to them, and gazed down at their decaying faces. They were both wriggling around weakly in their bounds, letting out soft moans that could neither be described as human or animal. They didn't notice me for a few seconds until I called out their names.
 
"Mom, Daddy..." I whispered, my fingers gently brushing across their hollow cheeks.
 
Their eyes, milky and vacant like Rose's dead husband's, finally looked up at me.
 
We stared at each other, me searching their faces for a glimmer of recognition, a piece of remembrance.
 
There was nothing. I knew they were gone forever.
 
I knelt by their bedside and lay my head on the sheet covering them, the tears coming up through my body, desperately wanting to materialize, but never able to appear. I silently raged. My parents were dead and I couldn't even mourn them. I knew I was right about who Rose and I were then. There was no longer any hope. It had just been a temporary hiatus.
 
I felt Rose's hand on my shoulder, felt her compassion radiate from her long, slender fingers.
 
"They were here. I tied them up, after they got attacked by one of our neighbors outside the house. Mom got bitten on the arm, and Dad was bitten on his hand. It was downhill from there fast. They kept getting sicker and sicker. After a few hours, they both ran fevers over 100 and they started vomiting and coughing up blood."
 
I closed my eyes, the sudden onslaught of memories flooding me like a tidal wave.
 
"They both had seen this thing rip through our neighborhood. They knew that whatever it was was not only air-borne but that when some people died, they wouldn't..." I paused. "Stay dead." 

"They'd go after the living. Sooner or later."

"But they still couldn't bring themselves to end it. They were too religious for that. Suicide would not be a part of God's plan, they said. So they had me tie them up as a compromise. If they stayed dead, I'd bury them. If not...well, they couldn't hurt anybody."
 
I stroked their faces, a fierce love coursing through me.
 
"I remember now why I was at that store, Rose. It was a last-ditch effort to find some medicine that could help them. I knew the truth but I still couldn't accept it. But they had already accepted that it was over."
 
I kept rocking back and forth, remembering the people crowding around me, each searching in desperation for their own miracle.
 
"I remember the bodies falling down around me, Rose, the spray of blood and vomit spewing from their mouths as they choked on their own fluids, and collapsed to the floor like overripe fruit. I remember my throat closing up and my body going numb and staggering down the aisle, dropping that pink purse until I finally fell down next to you, Rose."
 
I turned around. Her lips were tightly pursed together, her shoulders slumped in defeat.
 
"And we slept. But we died that day, we both died, and we've got no goddamned business being anything except dead."
 
Rose lifted two cold fingers and pressed them to my neck.
 
I did the same, but we both got the same answer.
 
We quietly sat there in the dark for a while thinking about life, death, resurrection, and hunger.
 
"So what do we now?" she said, slowly and deliberately as she stared up at the ceiling.
 
"We do what we're supposed to." I said, suddenly very tired. "Do you still have that knife?"
 
She pulled out the knife from her straw handbag, still stained with the blood of her departed husband.

"Maybe it's the necessary thing to do. But is it the right thing? If your parents thought it was wrong, how about you? I was raised Catholic. I've got enough guilt as it is." Her voice trembled with anguish.

"Would..." and her eyes stretched upwards, "HE understand?"

 I said nothing for several moments. The silence between us stretched like a gulf.

I shook my head and willed all of my courage.

"I remember hearing this phrase all of the time when I was a kid. 'God helps those who help themselves'. I think maybe, we're being given the strength to make the right decision."
 
She said nothing, but stared in sadness at the remains of my parents, who were still moaning softly and staring vacantly into space.

"I want to tell you that even though we've only known each other for half a day, I feel like I've known you for much longer. You know, it's funny. I was never that interested in female friendships in life." Rose said, reaching out to grasp my hand.
 
I squeezed her hand back, almost not wanting to let go of this last part of humanity, dead or alive, that had become so important to me in the past few hours. But the dead have to die.
 
I turned away as she pushed the blade through her eye.
 
The last thing I heard, just as the wet knife in my hand pierced my own brain, right as I dropped into darkness, came from my parents' bed, a low, nearly indistinguishable moan pushing out of their dead throats.
 
'Teresa'.

"The Way Things Are" A Short Story by V.G. Grace

The screams out in the street echoed throughout the neighborhood and reverberated through the brick walls of the Dansons' home."Just ignore it." Mr. Danson sighed, "Nothing can be done about it, now. Nothing at all.""He should've realized the consequences of disobeying curfew", Mrs. Danson said primly, "He knew it was right home at six o' clock. He only has his own tardiness to blame."
  
Their son, an exceedingly pale red-haired boy, was busily at work on his history homework.
  
"What a dumb a--" he started to say.
  
"Cory! Watch your language." his mother said in a warning tone, before turning back to her sewing basket.
   
"Jesus! JESUS!!!! Help! God, somebody please--"
  
The man's screams slid into piercing shrieks amidst the wet, ripping sounds of his limbs being separated from his body.
  
Hungry, animalistic growls accompanied his shouts and ignored pleas, combining into a cacophany throughout the block other families were busily drowning out by way of televisions, music, and earplugs.

 The daughter of the Danson family, a slender girl with frizzy auburn hair and eyes furtively darting out the living room window, said haltingly from her spot on the couch,
  
"Can't we--can't we do something? It doesn't seem right to just let him get caught by the night eaters. Maybe we can..."
  
Her voice trailed off at the family's cold glares. Her brother's pencil dangled in his fingers as he stared at her, open-mouthed, her mother dropped her sewing, her own mouth pursed into a thin, tight line of disapproval, and her father's book had fallen upon the thick carpet, fear glittering in his black eyes like a pair of shiny marbles.

 "Julia, you know to obey the rules!" her father yelled. "Every evening, they have free reign and all the fresh meat we can provide for them, and the rest of us have the good sense to be at home at sunset. The next morning, nobody's worse for the wear except dumb shits who don't know how to obey the rules!"
  
"Language, Richard." Mrs. Danson said softly, nodding her head, as she resumed her sewing.
 
"I'm trying to reach your daughter, Lillian!" he barked, "I've had it up to here with her bleeding-heart garbage. It's gonna get us all ripped to pieces one of these days, like that poor s.o.b. out there!" he jerked his head towards the window where the screaming had finally been silenced and the remains of the victim were being hungrily devoured by the growing number of night eaters digging into the ragged fragments of his flesh.
 
He turned back to his daughter, the veins bulging like cords upon his neck,
  
"I raised you to obey the rules, young lady. You shut your mouth and  do so unquestioningly from now on. Am I clear?"
  
Julia's shoulders had slumped in submission and she nodded her head meekly. It didn't pay to question, she thought. She didn't even know why she had bothered.
  
Finally satisfied, her father gave her one last glare before picking up his book and returning to the story of Russians vs. Americans and the then-feared event of nuclear apocalypse.
   
Julia struggled to prevent the tears from flowing freely, because she knew that would anger her father even more. He despised her weakness.
  
She walked upstairs to her bedroom and wept into the tiny embroidered roses on her pillow.Sometimes Julia wished that so many of her neighbors and friends wouldn't have to turn into night-eaters every evening. She knew that it was simply the way things were, that the curfew made those who didn't have the virus safe (except for those few rebels who didn't have the sense to get home by sunset and in that case, they deserved whatever they got), that it was just another natural step in evolution--but sometimes, in her fantasies, she'd wonder what it would feel like to let the night air brush across her skin, stare up at the fullness of the moon and just....be.The soft rays of dawn gently rose her from slumber the next morning.
  
She yawned, stretched her body, and padded tiredly to her bedroom window. The remains of the screaming man from last night were bloodily splayed upon the pavement, his entrails spilling onto the concrete from his bottomless torso. His mouth was frozen into a silent howl of agony. The steaks, hamburger, and raw chicken the block's residents had laid out the day before, had been left untouched. The night eaters would always ignore it if the rare living flesh was around.
  
The corpse on the ground was that of her best friend's father. His car was parked alongside his body. With a dull pain in her stomach, Julia noticed that two of the tires were flat.
  
Her hand dropped from the curtain and she turned away, a tear streaming down her cheek and plopping onto the carpet.
  
After all, it was just another natural step.