Fair Grounds - Short Stories

Site #6

'The siren from the street begins again, the shrill beep followed by the crackling taps just before the tin sounding words rattle the same sentences over in pattern. Attention! This is not a drill. Follow the instructions and you will be safe.

-Stay Calm
-No sudden movements or noise
- Do not attempt contact.
-Do not prevent entry 
-Do not attempt to resist

I felt my mouth mimic the words as they pierce the silence and screech through the empty streets.  Each inflection exactly the same as it was every time it alarmed. 

"We cannot assist you, this is a global event and your safety depends on your ability to be follow instructions. Good luck."

When it ends I wish for more. It was always the same, a deep angry part of me not wanting to ever hear that voice again, and then secretly longing for that loop message one more time just to hear another voice. I'd lost count of the days since I'd used my ears for human words from anyone but me.

It had been months, that I knew. The leaves had turned and fell and bloomed again before they finally blackened and died like everything else in the heat of the scorching sun that never seemed to end. Suddenly my thoughts of leaves and voices are interrupted as sound  drowns out everything and a shadow fills the sky and darkens the sun. This time it is not a drill, they have arrived again.

Stay Calm. I tie the black blindfold over Maisey's eyes just like we had practiced for the entire warm season. She didn't react to the fabric, or my touch as I pulled her onto my lap. I turn the rocker toward the wall and begin the soothing sway that somehow I hope pushes everything else away.

Dirt blows into the room through the door that I leave open to follow the rules. I can feel it on my skin, hitting us like mini shards of broken glass. Each tiny microscopic bite reminding me of some past sin that put me here. I view them in my head. Seeing those faces, names, and incidents march across my brain like a giant pain parade.

Killing Mr. Parker isn't one of the sins though. I refuse to be guilty for that. He tried to eat me, I think. Just a few days after I found momma. When I finally got brave and went all the way down the road. Past the corpses of all the dead animals and people rotting and melting on porches. Back when I still believed there were people like me around. People who lived, and moved, and may be afraid, but just wanted to have today.

I knew it was bad that day when I saw those Parker girls, or what was left of the girls. Their sticky bits of flesh oozing down the linoleum like wax from a candle no one was watching. Their thin boney bodies were tied to dinner chairs in front of empty plates. I should have ran. But seeing Mr. Parker sitting there, next to his hollowed out wife whose severed arm he had sitting on his plate, just froze me. When he grinned that bloody grin with bits of her skin hanging from his teeth, I grabbed Maisey and tried to run. 

I wasn't expecting him to bolt toward us like an animal, his fork leading the way, mouth open and eyes wild, like the cattle just before the slaughter. The vase was there, it was the only thing there. I didn't know his skin was that fragile, peel-able, how could one know that? Even today, with my eyes pinched closed and Maisey soft and warm like a baby chick on my lap, I can't come up with a way that wouldn't have ended up with Mr. Parker and us living. Like a rabid dog he would've kept coming.

Now I feel the energy in the room increase. Like being outside just before the lightening
back in the days when rain came. My hair stands on end and I feel Maisey stiffen her muscles as if the shock of that invisible lightening bolt landed directly on her frail frame. I rock faster. Warnings are ringing and screaming in my ears: 'no sudden movements or noise"- I know this. And yet my body rocks. Swaying like the deep blue water I remember seeing once.