WWC WK14: Freedom

Author's Note: This story was written for (and won honorable mention in) HarperCollins and Inkpop's Weekly Writer's Challenge #14, their horror short fiction contest. I took vampires and played with them, as well as with the concepts of quarantine and plague.

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The Prisoner hasn’t seen the sun in months.

The Prisoner: that is my name. If I had one before this, I don't remember what it was. I don't care what it was. That part of my life is over now.

Pain is my constant companion. My prison smock, filthy and crusted with pus from the oozing sores on my legs, crackle every time I move. The backs of my eyes ache from trying to pierce the blackness all around me. What thin, tasteless slime they give me can’t ease the hunger pains in my belly. The one blanket they leave me cannot keep me warm.

Only the rats can do that.

I used to wonder how long they planned on keeping me here, imprisoned for a crime of which I was innocent. After days in isolation, with no sustenance but the human food they provided—food which the afflicted could not consume—I thought that would prove to them that I was clean.

When my hair began to fall out and I lost the strength to pace my tiny cell, I stopped wondering. I tried to stop caring altogether as the weeks blurred into months.

At least, I think they were days and weeks and months. There are no windows in my cell, no clock, no light, no sounds but the ones I make. The door is solid mesquite wood, some of the hardest in the world. I know, because my father built the door himself.

Tears burn my eyes when I think of my father, but I just sniff and scrub at the wetness dripping down my cheeks. Crying is pointless. In the first weeks, I screamed myself hoarse, sobbing for my jailers to let me out. No one came. I only received food because the computerized system the prison had in place deposited the slop in the same corner of the room every day from the silver-washed mesquite wood dispenser.

They made everything of mesquite wood in this place. The psychiatric institution known as Palo Verde Mental Hospital in Tucson, Arizona—up until the epidemic, that is—had used the grant money they'd received to study the sickness afflicting the US population. The head scientists discovered that even the smallest traces of the chloroplasts found in tree bark burned the sick ones like acid. The effects were increased when the wood was brushed with a thin glaze of silver nitrate.

Everything in my prison was made that way. Mesquite wood held up longer than almost anything except oak, but where would they get oak trees in a desert? There weren’t enough trees to supply enough wood to confine all the afflicted all over the country, all over the world. My father, a carpenter, had told me this while swiping the glaze brush across a wooden door similar to the one that imprisoned me.

I should've known this would happen. Once the Epidemic of 2178 began, the littlest things turned neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend...father against child. The littlest thing...including the fact that garlic made me violently sick.

In the backwoods town that Tucson became over the course of the hundred years following the first outbreaks, fact and fiction interbred freely until no one knew what was truth and what was myth. Popular opinion stated that if wood and silver were lethal to the afflicted ones, then garlic had to fit in there somewhere. I don’t know if that's true, but it doesn’t matter, because it got me trapped in here anyway.

I can hear the rats scuttling around in the darkness beyond me. I have to hold very still when they come. If I spook them, they might attack. Humans weren’t the only creatures affected by the Epidemic. City animals like dogs, cat, and vermin became increasingly violent. In Tucson and other desert cities, including capitals like Phoenix and Nevada, coyotes began attacking humans in droves. According to my father, wild dogs and other desert predators used to only mob a human if they were starving. Now, anything with teeth is a threat.

Greasy, matted fur brushes against my oozing foot. I don't even flinch. Contact infection from the vermin doesn’t concern me anymore. I know that my imprisonment will have one of three outcomes: death, madness and then death, or becoming one of the afflicted through a diseased rat bite.

Imagining myself as one of the afflicted brings my hands flying up to my mouth. My lips crack and bleed when I peel them back to check my teeth. Probing fingers discover my gums have receded even further from dehydration. I have fangs now. Lovely. If that were all I needed to become one of them, I'd be all set. Unfortunately, it isn't. My body shows the signs of the disease, but that's all. No super strength, no speed, nothing.

Another rat comes close, scrambling over my hand. My father once told me rats can sense danger. I doubt that, because they keep returning to my cell.

When the little beast begins nibbling on my motionless fingers, I snatch it up. It squeals and writhes, attempting to gnaw on my hand to force its release. Unfortunately for the creature, that kind of pain doesn’t faze me anymore. It's nothing compared to the burning in my legs.

I snap the rat's neck with a sharp twist and before I can force myself to think too much about it, I sink my teeth into its plump belly and bite down. My long teeth pierce the thin skin easily. Blood squirts into my mouth, and I suck.

There's no other way to survive in this place. The food the "doctors" offer isn’t enough. It is blood, or death. My time here has given me new sympathy for the afflicted. Is that the choice before them—blood or death? I can't see the evil in that, really.

Can't see the evil in that? Finally, you're speaking sense! The voice in my head is back.

After the beginning of my time in the darkness, when my voice was a breath of air in my ravaged throat, a man's voice began whispering to me, speaking to me. It only came when I didn’t speak. If I tried to talk to it aloud, the voice vanished and didn’t return for what felt like days.

It didn’t take long for me to realize I was hearing things, but in the silence of my prison, an imaginary voice was better than nothing. What took me longer to realize was who spoke to me.

The voice belonged to my twin brother, Rafael.

I know this to be impossible. My brother had been one of the first in our town to become afflicted, and my father had taken great pride in telling everyone that he wouldn’t hesitate to "stake any of the bloodsucking bastards and send them straight back to hell."

That included flesh and blood. Rafael, my father had explained to me then, had sold his soul to the Devil, and so Father rammed a stake through Rafael's heart without a qualm. I didn’t see it happen, but when drunk, my father would recount it in full, bloody detail. Apparently, blood spurted up from my brother's chest like a geyser, contaminating everything within fifteen feet of his corpse.

Why my father felt I needed to know this, I have no idea. With everything I've forgotten about my life before the darkness, I would love to forget that detail as well, but I can't. That staking happened before they reopened the institution. People talked about trying to find a cure. As if that would ever happen.

Trying to shake off the dregs of memory, I listen for the rats. Do they come? I think I hear them scurrying about again. When I kill one of their number, the pests hide for a time, but never for very long. They're stupid enough that I don't feel bad about feeding on them. They flock to me like moths to a flame, lambs frolicking to the slaughter.

You're finally thinking straight, Robin, my dead brother's voice whispers in my mind. The strong were born to prey on the weak, food is food, survival of the fittest, blah-blah. About time.

I want to say, "Shut up, Rafael," but if I say a word, the voice will disappear and I'll be alone. So I don't say anything. I just listen to the scurrying of vermin, and wait for another to come to me. I'm still hungry, and my belly is a pit of white-hot pain.

Close your eyes, Robin, Rafael's ghost says. Trust me on this.

Close my eyes? Why? This is the first time my voice has ever ordered me to do anything except eat. For a time in the past, I refused food, hoping death would come quicker. In the end, I gave in and ate.

Do it now. Close them.

I do. There is no difference in the blackness. Eyes open, eyes closed, it's still black as midnight in a cave in this prison.

A light flicks on.

Pain explodes in my eyes, ricocheting around in my skull like a thousand bullets. I cover my face with my hands, keening. The agony would've left me screaming, but I'm too weak.

Work through it, the voice tells me. It's still here? With all the noise I'm making? Your eyes will adjust in a moment. You have to be able to see.

After several moments curled into a ball, covering my eyes with my hands and the sleeves of my prison smock, the pain lessens. Fades. Vanishes completely. I can look around and see.

My prison door is open. A boy stands in the doorway holding a candle. That dim, flickering flame blinded me after so long in the pitch blackness of my prison cell.

Heart pounding, I slowly scan the boy from the toes up. He's barefoot, his fish-pale feet streaked with black grime from the corridor. His raggedy jeans, with words in black ink scrawled all over the denim, seem familiar. My heart jerks sideways in my chest when my eyes travel up the scrawny, fifteen-year-old chest and find the face I know so well.

"Rafael?"

"Hey, Robin."

He sets the candle down on the floor and steps inside. His eyes, so familiar despite the washed-out corpse gray color specific to the afflicted, take in what I haven’t seen until now: the rotting rat corpses littering the floor of my prison, the human filth that hasn’t been collected in weeks, the maggots that writhe and the flies buzzing around the five-by-five cell.

"Father said..." I trail off, unable to confess what our father had said about Rafael.  

"He lied."

"But you are..."

"Afflicted," he says without inflection, striding toward me. In two steps he's at my side, kneeling. "You are not."

"No," I whisper.

"Brace yourself," he says, so softly I barely hear him.

"What?" I croak.

He bares his teeth and sinks them into my neck. As his incisors rip into my throat, I scream. Darkness clouds my vision. My heart stutters in my chest. I can feel the disease burning its way through my veins. I'm afflicted now.

I don't know how Rafael got down here or how he's survived this long. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is, he's saved me. I'm either going to die or I'm going to be like him. Either way, no more darkness. No more feeding on rats and being tormented by nightmares only to wake up to pitch black. No more imprisonment, no more starvation, no more any of it. I'm free now.

As my blood drips down my neck and chest, soaking into my smock, I smile. My brother gulps my dehydration-thickened blood. Even though it hurts, I start to laugh.

WWC WK12: Comatose

Author's Note (5-20-13): this piece won 2nd place/honorable mention for HarperCollins' Weekly Writer's Challenge #12, where we were challenged to write a tragic romance. It couldn't be more than 1500 words, and it had to follow all the requirements listed in my original author's note below.

Original Author's Note:

Okay, reqs:

Word length – check

Cliffhanger – check

Alternating first-person POVs – check

Second genre – tragedy, check

Complication – check (suicide attempt, coma)

Unattractive attribute – he’s been hit by an SUV; he’s a mangled mess

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“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted,” I read aloud to the corpse beside me. Well, he wasn’t entirely a corpse. His chest rose and fell with each breath, and the machines beeped with every thud of his heart. Swathed in bandages, though, I could hardly discern the life in my boyfriend’s body.

I didn’t feel comforted when I thought of when I first met Jeremy. I just felt a weight crushing my chest, the weight that told me I’d never see him smile again, never hear his voice. While I breezed through the Gospel of Matthew, that weight continued to bear down on me. Continued to press me until my ribs felt like they were cracking, until my heart threatened to burst.

Comfort didn’t find me as my thoughts returned to the Sunday after Prom. It didn’t steal into my heart as I remembered sitting in Sunday School between my best friend Kiesha and my sister Amy. The sun had filtered through the windows as we dragged our metal folding chairs into a semicircle. Remembering the warmth of the sunshine on my arms left me cold.

Jeremy had been sitting in the double-sink in the church kitchen because we only had enough chairs for the girls. The other boys had cried dibs on the counter space, leaving Jeremy to hunch up, rear-end in one sink and feet in the other…

Us girls got to wear our Prom dresses to church that day. It was tradition. When I sat down in front of the counter, careful of the boys’ feet, I wished it wasn’t. I didn’t feel comfortable in my shin-length black dress with rainbow sparkles. Out on the dim dance floor at Prom, I’d felt smooth and pretty.  Now I just felt stupid.

Warm breath tickled my ear as someone murmured, “You look really pretty, Ashley.”

Yelping, I jerked, knocking Jeremy in the nose with my head. He grunted and clapped a hand to his face.

“Oh, my gosh! I’m so sorry! Are you okay? Is it bleeding?”

“Nah, it’s okay. Sorry I scared you, I was trying to be smooth,” he said, pulling his hand away. He wiggled his nose, grinning. Brown eyes seemed to light up like sunlight on dark honey. “I really like your dress, by the way.”

“Thanks.”

“So, you wanna go to the movies sometime?” Jeremy asked.

I twitched and glanced at Amy. Was this guy really asking me out? My sister glanced at Jeremy and gave me one short nod. If she nodded as emphatically as I knew she wanted to, the guy in question would see her and I’d look like a dork.

“Sure,” I blurted.

“Awesome,” he said, and then it was time for opening prayer. We didn’t get to talk the rest of church. After Sunday School, I went to Young Women’s and the guys went to Elders’ Quorum. By the time I made it out of the crush of girls trying to meet up and chitchat with each other, Jeremy had gone home…

Now I turned the page to the first chapter of Mark and started to read aloud as the memory imprinted on my mind. This time, when the pain hit, I didn’t let myself cry.

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I held your hand that day. I remember.

At the movies, we held hands in the dark and ate popcorn. The music vibrated through my teeth. Your sister was with us, and Kiesha and my friend Peter.

We bought ice cream afterward at Gelatto’s. My cone smelled like your hair, like strawberries and chocolate. I thought that as we walked to my Toyota—your hair was the color of chocolate and smelled like fresh strawberries. The security lights in the parking lot turned your hair purple.

There was the screech of metal on stone. Light exploded on the right. We turned. You screamed, but you were frozen. I pushed you out of the way as the light hurtled toward me. And then…then what? What happened, Ashley? Why can’t I remember? Why can’t I open my eyes?

Ashley, what happened? Did I save you from the light? Did I die? No I didn’t die. I’d be in Heaven or something. But what happened?

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Blessed are those who mourn, I thought that night as tears rolled down my cheeks, mingling with the spray from my shower. I didn’t feel blessed. I didn’t feel comforted. I felt alone, and I felt guilty.

It was my fault the drunk driver hit Jeremy and put him in a coma. It was my fault because if he handt tried to save me, he could’ve gotten out of the way in time.

I glanced at the razor in its shallow shelf on the shower wall. Was I a murderer? Did I deserve to die for killing my almost-boyfriend? Because that’s basically what I’d done. I’d put Jeremy in a coma by being too slow, too stupid to move on my own. If he died, would I be a killer? Would I go to Hell?

The edge of the razor sliced through my fingers, drawing brilliant, crimson blood. It welled up and dripped onto the floor of the tub. Should I use it? Could I use it?

“You look really pretty.” The memory of Jeremy’s words sliced through me like the razor blade. I touched the frigid steel to the vein in my wrist and tasted condemnation. I was a murderess.

Thou shalt not suffer a murderess to live. The Old Testament verse beat at my heart. I had to die because only some miracle had saved Jeremy from dying under that out-of-control SUV. Without it, I’d have killed him. It was my fault.

The blade ripped across my skin. Dark blood gushed. I felt sick.

I remembered the smell of Jeremy’s aftershave when he’d hugged me the night of the accident. He’d picked me, Kiesha and my sister up in his car. Peter hugged Kiesha and my sister, and Jeremy wrapped his arms around me. My heart thumped hard in my chest. My cheeks burned.

He’d offered me his arm, like he was escorting me to some high-class, ritzy charity ball or something, instead of just a movie. He bought me popcorn and complimented me on my hair, which I’d straightened myself. We shared a two-pound bag of Gummy Savers. We bet who could fit the most in their mouth. I won.

Thinking about all that now made the tears flow faster. The weight pressed down on my chest as my blood swirled down the drain. White lights pulsed at the edges of my vision.

“Ashley?” Amy called from the other side of the bathroom door. “Are you okay?”

I tried to say I was fine, but nothing came out.

“Ashley?”

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Where are you, Ashley? Why haven’t I heard your voice today? Why haven’t you come today? Your voice in the dark is all that keeps me here. I’m trapped in the dark. Why don’t you come? Where are you?

Ashley, did I save you? Or did the SUV hit us both? No, because then you wouldn’t be able to read scriptures to me. What happened?

Where are you?

April Favorites, Woot-Woot!

So I've finally gotten around to taking pictures to do a Favorites blog like Lorien does! Yay! So this is my April faves. Yes, I know it's May already. Boo. Don't care, lol! So here we come to save the day! And I look FABULOUS!!

 

So, cosmetics!!!

 

That's not me, by the way, lol. That's my husband holding my favorite perfume, Pretty in Pink! In his mouth...Yeah, I don't know. He wanted to do it that way. I love using the perfume on my hair. It mixes well with my vanilla-and-passion-flower conditioner. My cats are kind of scared of it, though, lol.

 

 

 

My best friend/sister/editor, Lorien, bought me this lotion and it smells AWESOME! It's Berry Flirt from Bath and Body Works. I don't wear it unless I'm going out because my husband says it makes me smell like fruit and it makes him hungry, lol. And yes, that is his hand holding my lotion upside down for some reason...

 

Animals!

 

 

That's my favorite little beastie right there! I love him soooooo much! Isn't he adorable? And so fuzzy. Oh, and that's our cat next to him, lol.

 

Nah, I'm kidding. The black and white baby who looks a bit freaked out is our kitten, Taiki. He's...six months old, I think. He's my favorite kitten. Well, he's our only kitten. He's not actually mine, he belongs to my sister/roommate, but he lives in my apartment and I loves him. <3

 

 

That IS my cat. That's Jake, my Jakers. I loves him soooo much.

 

He's my favorite cat right now because a few days ago I had a complete hysterical breakdown and was sobbing my eyes out. Most cats would be like, "Ahhh! Water from the human's eyeballs! Run away!" Jake pressed himself up to me and was purring and nuzzling me and didn't care a bit that I was soaking him, poor baby. Lol.

 

Only when I'd calmed down did he start bathing himself like, "Ew! Ew! I'm wet! My fur is messed up! Ick!"

 

BOOKS!

 

 

I was supposed to get this for my birthday, but there was a mix-up, so I'm waiting for the Book Fairy to give it to me (hint-hint, Blaine, lol). This is Scarlet, a sci-fi retelling of "Red Riding Hood." It's a sequel to Cinder, which is about "Cinderella." I got this from library...as you can see from the barcode at the top.

 

Apparently this series was inspired by Sailor Moon! You can tell when you read the first book. And yes, that's Jake, still on my husband's head.

 

 

Requiem by Lauren Oliver - last in the Delirium trilogy. I got it for my birthday! Now I'm going to die a horrible, slow and agonizing death because it ends on a cliff-hanger and it's the LAST book but it's EPIC. But my b-day was in April and I squealed a lot when I got it.

 

My hubby likes beating himself in the head with books for some reason...

 

Darcy's Temptations by Regina Jeffers; she ROCKS my socks! I finally finished this book. I've read her first book, Darcy's Passions. Ms. Jeffer's a great Pride and Prejudice writer. Yes, my husband is chewing on that book.

 

Random Stuff

 

 

That is my favorite stuffed animal. My husband bought her for me for my birthday/Easter. Her name is Bun-Bun. And I love my husband. He is my favorite.

 

 

My sister/editor bought this for me at the Gem Show. It was actually from February, but I use it while writing I Hear the Bones Singing, which I've been working on like crazy in March and April, so...yeah. It's cool! The necklace, I mean. It deserved a shout-out even though I didn't get it this month.

 

 

Lastly, my mom took me to the residential school for the deaf in my state, and they put on a modified version of Beauty and the Beast (a play based on the Disney movie). That's the program up there.

 

It was pretty cute. Some of the modifications didn't make sense (like why Belle spoke ONLY in sign language even though she wasn't deaf and knew how to talk) but I enjoyed it. It was ironic because my first movie seen in the theatre, with my mom (just me and her) was Disney's Beauty and the Beast, lol.

 

And...I'm done. Now to read chapter 40 of Lorien L. O'Brien's Warrior - ALSO A FAVORITE!!!