Lila's Unappealing Apocalyptic Adventures

I woke up in hell with no idea where I was or why I was. I have since decided that this was for the best. I suppose it is easier to accept a new life of damnation if you don’t remember anything better. If you can't recall whatever grievous sins you committed to deserve this reality.

Anyway, I opened my eyes to my new world and saw grey. It’s been 3 days now and I still only see grey. Grey skies, grey buildings, grey flesh. The colour permeates my skin until it's all I can feel. It’s a monotonous unity in my new life that I’ve come to embrace if only because the alternative is so much worse: red. The red in the corner of my eye. I feel it in the way my heart beats too quickly, in the groans in the night, in the smell of death that permeates the city.

But back to the beginning. I crack my eyes opened to hazy grey. I was cold. My cheek was cold. Because it was pressed against the asphalt. Of the alleyway. I was in an alleyway. And it was cold.

The next thing I noticed was the complete hollowness in my mind. The blank void where memories once lived. I tried desperately to scramble backwards for any scrap of my life. But nothing was there. For a moment I wondered if maybe I had just been born and that was why I had no memories. But I remember how babies are born and it is not like this. That was the especially odd part, I remember people, places and things but no specific people, places or things. I knew what trees were but could not remember when or where I had ever seen one before. I remembered what a face looked like but couldn’t imagine any individual’s appearance not even my own.

So I panicked about that for, I would guess, an hour, curled up in my new alleyway birthplace. I tried to shout for help but my voice was weak and strained. Which was lucky. I would have died if anything had heard.

I remember noticing how silent the world was and thinking no one would ever find me, that no one was even looking.

It was around that moment that I decided to move. First I tried to lift my head. And so came about the first mistake of my remembered life. That slight movement caused the ground under my back to tilt and a crack of lightning pain to shoot from the base of my skull to my tail bone. I had pretty much decided that moving wasn't for me, but when I heard my stomach growl so loudly it seemed like a genuine health risk, I chose to graciously award movement another chance.

My mind had turned into an eddying swirl of confusion and fear by the time I had managed to get into a sitting position. I felt vaguely sick and every muscle was either aching, shaking or spasming. Some ambitious ones even managed to do several at once.

I felt as though I had been in a coma. My eyes were crusty and heavy, I felt drowsy in the way you do after a long sleep when one part of you is too well rested to allow the other lazier part of you to return to slumber.

But a pump of adrenalin will wake you up better than an espresso shot and that’s exactly what I got when I heard a long, deep groan from the dead-end of the ally. The sound was inhuman, a mix between a gust of wind down a dusty corridor and the sound of pain and anguish. It was terrifying then but now it acts as a kind of alarm, it scares me in a whole different way because now I know what to expect. I obviously didn’t this first time.

A definite shifting sound followed by crashing metal. I stumbled to my feet only to find they were not prepared to hold my weight and my side slams back to the ground.

When the thing emerged, that was when I knew I was in hell. Its eyes, they were dead and milky. Completely still and set unblinkingly on me. Black lines of veins covered every inch of grey flesh. It opened its mouth in another groan and I saw broken teeth and whatever black liquid ran through its veins caked its mouth. It picked up one heavy foot and began running clumsily towards me.

This was definitely a new low point in my new life.

On a more serious note, the terror I felt on seeing this thing was indescribable. Half of my brain prepared to die while the other half started doing everything it could to prevent that outcome. I was already scrambling back. I tried to scream again but my voice broke in the middle coming out as a raspy squeak. I didn’t want this to be the last thing I ever saw. This perverse twisting of humanity and… something else.

My hand hit on something hard and twisted. I didn’t care what it was as my hand, searing in pain, grabbed something cold and solid. My legs kept me up me this time, they had no other choice. The thing was almost on me a crazed, starved look in its eyes. Some instinct I didn’t understand took over my arms. My fingers curled around the object with familiarity and I swung as if it was an extension of myself. A veritable soundscape of crunches, squelches and splatters ensued as the heavy blunt end of my weapon met the face of the monster. Black sprayed across the brick wall, across the ground, across me as the thing went down and didn’t stir.

For a time after that, my brain wouldn’t work. Everything felt too far away. I felt far away. I looked around and expected to be somewhere else but…

Pain in my legs. That’s what brought me back. My muscles were shaking. I looked down at the foreign things, they wouldn’t hold for much longer. Next to them hanging from my hand was my weapon. A hatchet. The blunt side coated in dark blood and the other gleaming and sharp.

I can’t say I have a perfect memory of the next few hours. I found a door off the ally, squeaking metal and a broken neon sign. A dark room with hardwood floors. The smell of booze. No windows. I barricaded the door I came through and the front entrance, that lead on to a main street.

Crawling up the stairs, pulling myself up into a creaky unmade bed, lying there restlessly for hours. I only got up to vomit, twice, not that much came up.

I managed to forage some dry biscuit-like bars from a small grimy kitchen. I think it was then I realised what my new haven actually was. A strip club. I was squatting in a strip club. The wide low main room was edged with stages and a few poles. There were alcoves cut into the walls with tacky purple sofas and matching curtains, for the sleaze who wants a little more privacy. My dignity took a hit but on the upside, there was a bar and I could totally get behind that. And I did.

The booze and food definitely cleared my head a bit but I kept coming across moments where it felt like there was no ground underneath me, like the foundations of myself had been taken. Reaching back for absent memories felt like walking down a dark staircase expecting the next step to catch you but instead, there’s just empty space and now you’re falling. Falling into an ocean where nothing is solid and every scrap of energy is used to stop you from sinking into the bottomless sea.

This, as you might be able to imagine, kinda fucked me up. I attribute my somewhat healthy and unproductive activity over the next few days to this. The aforementioned unhealthy unproductive activity consisted mainly of sleeping, drinking and not even nearly rationing the food I had access to.

Now you may be thinking “who is this dumb bitch who clearly knows nothing about apocalypse survival”. Well, you fucker, you have to take into account that at this point in my woesome tale I had not even decided survival was my goal. I spent most of these dark days considering whether I had what it take to starve myself to death or axe myself in the head. I wasn’t afraid of dying in pain but I didn’t want to die afraid and I knew I never wanted to see another of those monstrosities again. The drinking helped with forgetting its grey flesh and dark veins. The sleeping, however, did not.

Most of my dreams were frustratingly indecisive; no images just swirls of colours, sometimes partial pictures or smells or sensations would arrive but most would dissipate before I was even sure they were there. This was one type of dream I would have the other was far worse. A vivid recreation of the only significant remembered event of my life. The monster running at me again and again. I reach for the weapon but it crumbles to ashes and falls through my fingers. I throw up my arms in defence but they are never enough and now the thing is on top of me and I’m close enough to see the pupils of its once human eyes under the white film that covers them.

But whether my dreams were confusing swirls of nothing or reliving the attack, I still woke up feeling unrested and unsettled.

I would have gone on like this for a lot longer. Maybe I would have cut my own head open with Piper (that’s the name I came up with for my axe) or starved myself to death, except something changed.

Now, I don’t want to sound super corny or anything but it was because of a dream. I’m not really like a spiritual dreamy person or anything but I think I can explain it in a more logical way. Like I said, I had felt in these days like I had been adrift in an endless ocean with nothing to hold on to. I didn’t know who I was or what I fought for, if I cared about anyone, if anyone cared about me. If I loved anyone. In short, I didn’t know what I had to live for.

But I had this dream and in it two of the smallest memories resurfaced.

One was a locket. Tendrils of silver delicately laid over one another to form a heart shape that supported a black gem at its centre. I don't know why but when I saw it I was filled with the most intense desire. I wanted that locket. I wanted it more than anything in this world. The cold weight of it in my hand would mean completion. But why?

I reached out a hand straining for it and as I did I heard a voice. Except not exactly. I couldn’t tell you if the pitch was high or low, or the tone gravely or smooth. It was more like the idea of a voice. This idea of a voice was just as familiar to me as my own. It said only one word. One world filled with care and delicacy and purpose and love.

“Lila”

My name. I remember my name.