Life as She Knew It

The man’s fingers lift her chin, eyes locked on her face. He turns it from one side to the other, inspecting her. Watching as she swallows, he hears her feet shift uncomfortably beneath the table that separates them.

“Look at me,” he demands, pulling her face closer toward him. Slowly, she meets his gaze. “How?” She doesn’t respond, eyes glazed over as they take him in. They aren’t scrutinizing as they stare back at him, her irises tinged with no hint of anger or fear. Only cool disinterest. He slams a hand down on the table, tightening his grip on her jaw as he rises from his chair. Pulled up to her feet with him until the shackles around her wrists scrape painfully against her raw skin. She watches him yell. Lets him make his threats and demands before forcing her back down into her seat. Tuning him out, she looks at the dark cement walls around her. At the two strips of yellow light humming on above her head.

She knows this place.

She watches his shadow move across the gray cinderblock wall behind him. His lines and curves ebb and flow, his silhouette changing into a memory she’d tried to bury lifetimes ago. A memory framed by these same stained walls. Images of a past bathed in the warm yellow glow of lights like these. The shadows of people who still haunt her, of the life that was stolen from her.

His shadow swirls into a new one, a woman’s. She’s young, not much older than fifteen herself. Lines of exhaustion run deep through her skin, her eyes dragged down and dark despite her tender age. Her trembling hands brush across the sweat-soaked hair of the infant in her arms. A mother’s lullaby barely whispered out hoarsely into the darkness through cracked lips. Tears roll down her cheeks, brushed away silently as she forces her wavering face back into its reassuring smile for the child who gasps fitfully for shallow breath between its whimpering cries.

A knock at the door breaks that smile once more, fear flooding her eyes where anguish had been as she looks down at the child. She pulls her tattered jacket from her shoulders, swaddling the feverish infant tightly and pulling it to her chest in one more panicked embrace. She closes her eyes as she fights back the tears from falling down her dirt-stained cheeks, fingers clawing at the loose floorboard to her left. With another forceful knock at the door, she sets the child gently inside the hollowed-out space and replaces the wooden plank just before the door opens.

Two more shadows.

“Fine, you don’t want to tell me?” The man asks, pulling her back into the present. “I’ll find out myself.” He grabs her forearm forcefully, pulling a knife from his belt. He waits to see her eyes widen, for fear to strike her. But she doesn’t respond. She doesn’t flinch as he drags the blade down the delicate skin of her callused palm, doesn’t gasp as he wraps his hand around hers, clenching her fist tightly around the wound. She only watches the blood drip out from between her fingers onto the wooden table in front of her.

Blood.

She knew it well. It’s scent, the metallic taste of it. The way it had stained cream-colored skin that day.

“Where is she?” The man had asked all those years ago, his deep voice radiating through the room as heavy footsteps pounded across the floor.

“She’s better than before, I promise,” the woman had said, trying to sound cheery as she buried her shaking hands in her pockets. The footsteps only grew closer to where the child lay. “It was nothing but a head cold, barely even a fever.” Desperation plagued her voice, its breathless plea shrugged off by the man.

“Where is the child?” He asked again, more a warning than a question. She didn’t answer, eyes glancing down at the slightly risen floorboard hiding her child before she could remember not to. The movement was all he had needed.

“Please,” she had begged, realizing her mistake as he set off toward the wooden plank. “Please, it’s not the blight. I promise, I promise!” She had lunged for him, her arms wrapping around one of his as she dug her heels in, tears boiling over and down her face. He shook her off, shoving her down until she was sprawled out heavy on the floor. She had watched in horror as he lifted the floorboard, staring down at the child.

Black circles ran beneath its eyes, its body shivering despite its thick swaddle. Sweat rolled down the little one’s cheeks, droplets speckled across its forehead. A girl, perhaps a year old. Her mother sobbed, begged, pleaded with the other man in the corner of the room as the one lifted the child from its hiding place carefully.

She was on her knees then, hands pulling furiously at the man’s pant legs, the bottom of his shirt, anything she could do to try to get him to look at her. But he kept his eyes trained on the man who was holding her child, watching as he gives a solemn nod. The woman saw it too, her eyes widening as she crumpled down at the man’s feet with a wail.

“There’s nothing we can do, Miriam,” the one holding the child had said quietly, turning back toward her. “This is one of the last remaining unaffected camps. You won’t make it to the others and even if you did, they wouldn’t take you in. You are both infected, there’s nothing we can do about it now. Please, don’t make this harder than it needs to be. You know the rules, once you’ve been exposed, you can’t stay here.”

“Please,” she had begged, gasping for air through her tears as she crawled toward him, opening her arms for her child. “Please, just give her to me and we’ll go. Please,” She looked up at the man with wide eyes from where she knelt at his feet, tears rolling down her cheeks and neck, staining the collar of her tattered clothes. He had put a hand down, brushing his thumb across her cheek tenderly as hesitation furrowed in his brow. She had relaxed at his touch, an ounce of relief softening her exhausted features at his tenderness. As her eyes fluttered closed, he looked up at the other man, giving him a small nod as he stepped back from the woman.

A scream.

A gunshot.

Her body fell heavy against the wooden floor, a small gold locket tied around her neck with a piece of worn leather shining against her dark hair, blood splattering across a picture of the boy who’d promised her forever only a year ago.

“It’s more humane this way,” the other man had said quietly over the feverish child’s cries. “She went faster than if we’d let it take her.”

“And the child?” The man holding her had asked.

“It’s not going to make it through the night, might as well just take it and the body to the edge and leave them there. I don’t want to waste more ammunition.” He had only nodded, looking down at the child through his protective gear.

The woman managed to open her eyes once more before she was gone, watching him over the sound of her own labored breathing. As she lay there on the dirt-covered floor, blood pooling around her, she stared up at him. At the man behind the glass shield he wore around his face, mouth and nose covered with a thick mask. And she takes note of those eyes. The eyes looking down at her child.

The eyes staring back at her now.

He wipes her blood from the table with a white cloth, carefully collecting each drop before pinning her hand down to the table once more. He watches in stunned silence as her wound heals itself, nothing but a faint white line where the gash in her hand had been only seconds earlier.

“How?” He demands again, his voice growing louder as his patience falters. “How did you survive the blight? Billions of people dead and you? Practically a child and supposedly already dead out there alone and you managed to survive it. You managed to heal, to overcome the disease that killed our world. How?”

She doesn’t respond, staring back up into those eyes without fear or hesitation. Reliving the memories they had burned into her mind so many years ago.

“Tell me,” he shouts, pain and desperation now tainting his desired image. She looks away from him, ignoring the telling emotion behind his words. She doesn’t want to think about who he’s lost, doesn’t want to think about how the blight has affected him. She doesn’t want gray, doesn’t want empathy or forgiveness. She doesn’t want to feel. “It’s been months, Miriam. Months of trying with no real answers. There are only eleven of us left.” She doesn’t answer, only tilts her head curiously as she looks back up at him. She watches the defeat wash away just as quickly as it had come. Watches the anger rise again, the emotion he always tries to drown his fear in. “You’ll tell me or your blood will tell me. One way or another, I’ll figure this out.” He grabs the knife again, shoving it into her hand.

“Again,” he orders.

She looks up at him, her eyes fiery and alive for the first time since he’d found her. A wicked smile forms slowly across her face as she buries the tip of the blade in her own palm, slicing down to her wrist without so much as a wince. The same way she has day after day here in this cell. She lifts her hand to his face, smearing blood across his jaw as she pulls his face closer to her. The last face her daughter saw. The face of the man that left both their bodies at the edge of what was left of human civilization three years earlier.

“No,” she whispers with a chuckle, her eyes locked on his, “You won’t.”