THE END

Chapter 11

"He disappointeth the devices of the crafty, so that their hands cannot perform their enterprise"

-Job 5:12 (King James Version).

"Do you know what the tattoos on you mean?" Bekah asks me a few hours later as we make dinner out of some canned meals.

"Although I'm not precisely sure what language they're written in, I can understand what they mean, and how to pronounce the words."

"Really?" She glances up at me in surprise. "What does this mean?" She points to a particular tattoo on my forearm.

"I have put my spirit upon you." I tell her.

"I? Who is the I referring to?" she asks brows scrunched up.

I shrug "I don't know. God?"

She bites her bottom lip. "You said you can pronounce the words right? Can you say it the way it's written? Not in English"

I glance at my arm, "Aeu locquei meu spreito em cevo."

When I look up, Bekah's eyes are like saucers. "Goosebumps. Literally." She shivers as she lifts her hands up for me to see.

We take the plates of food to the dining area.

Dad and Greg reminisce about the good old days and tell us stories about how life was before the war as we eat.

After dinner, Bekah and I go to the room I woke up in while dad takes the other guest bedroom.

Hours after Bekah had gone to sleep I was still up, unable to doze off. My mind keeps going back to the book that I dropped on the floor in the basement.

Something keeps needling me about it. When my curiosity got too great, I quietly get out of bed and slip out of the house.

The moon is full and very bright, sufficiently illuminating the deserted streets. Crickets chirp in the otherwise quiet town as I cautiously walk to my parents' old home. As I enter, the writings on my arm softly illuminate the area just enough that I can make my way down the basement without stumbling.

Broken glass crunches loudly under my boots as I bend down to pick up the leather bound book. I drop it in the satchel I brought with me without opening it, in case what happened earlier happens again. I'll open it in the daytime. I glance around the dim room, squinting a little.

Light. I think, extending my arms out. Light blue ball of fire immediately hovers over my palm and brightens the basement.

It's becoming so easy to do that now, too easy.

I shove down my unease and walk around the basement. It is mostly filled with things that might have been useful in the old world but is now nothing but junk. A computer sits abandoned on the floor in a corner of the basement. A digital camera placed on a shelf. Some trinkets. Like I said, junk.

I pick up a framed picture of my parents, taken on their wedding day. Mom is wearing a beautiful, high necked princess dress, and dad stands beside her in a fitted tux, arms draped around mom's shoulder. They're both smiling happily at the camera.

They look so young and full of life here. I run my thumb over mom's face, cleaning the dust away, then drop the picture into my satchel as well.

I glance around one last time before carefully making my way outside. I ball my hand into a fist, extinguishing the light in my palm.