Other People

There was a split second. One, brief effervescent moment where the world wasn’t what it was. Melissa tried to hold onto that moment. She dug her nails into it, but it turned to salt and crumbled at her grip, it fell away and faded and reformed into the truth. Her head hit a pipe or a valve or a knob. It was then that she truly opened her eyes. The white hot pain jolted her and she squeezed her hands into fists. Something soft yet rigid was in her right hand. Melissa had been crawling or stumbling down a tunnel for hours, her knees were reflections of her journey they were bloody, mashed to a pulp, skinned almost to the bone.  She couldn’t see but tried to surmise what was in her right hand. It bended and extended. It seemed to have …

It was then the last few hours came rushing back to Melissa, flooding her brain with unbelievably exquisite pain. She was holding a human arm. Not just anyone’s arm. Her mother’s arm. 

Every memory began to torture her. It was just her and her mother; they were under attack from other people. They swarmed their house like locusts. Melissa got bit, she was 13. Her mother abandoned her and fled, locked herself in the basement. Once bitten, the other people didn’t care about her, they moved around her, they trampled her and she died. She died slowly; painfully. She remembers it feeling like her brain exploded. Soft buds of pain bloomed in her brain like a flower. When she awoke the people were still in her house but they had gotten disillusioned and stumbled, no longer the swarm of urgent violence driven by lust. They lost direction.

Melissa moved, shifted, rose and wailed. It was a bellow. It was pain. She was mourning her life lost. She found the door to the basement and she threw herself against it. Crying for her mother, yearning for the fear to end. The other people joined in and eventually the door shattered. Her mother was in the corner, like a rat, scratching, squealing, begging. She went to her mother.

“I’m going to get you out of here.” Melissa stated, calmly.

“My poor baby. I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you.” Her mother cried.

“I’m going to get you out of here.”

Melissa grabbed her mother and dragged her out of the basement and kept dragging her to the road, down the road, for miles. When the men in uniforms showed up and strategically placed a bullet in the other people’s head. When the bombs started falling, Melissa continued to drag her mother. Down into the sewers where she crawled on all fours, dragging her mother’s body. The flesh melted away until all that remained was her mother’s arm, her slender wrist, her wedding rings. She remembered then, why she told her mother she’d get her out. Before she dragged her out of the house, Melissa snapped her mother’s neck, so she would never become what her daughter was, a monster.  Better one of them escaped a fate worse than death.

In the dark, Melissa placed her mother’s hand against her face. She took off her mother’s wedding rings placed them on her fingers.  Then she resumed her crawling. Each movement tore new ligaments, shredded more bones but Melissa crawled. She was determined to keep going until her bones grated to dust and she was free.