"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear."
-H. P. Lovecraft
Red. Everything I see is red. Screams of the forgotten echo in my ears, and I claw at them until I draw blood. I want to cry out, but my throat is too coarse. The feeling of impending doom looms over my shoulder, creating a ghastly, unescapable shadow. Something's coming, something bad. Sweat pours down my face and coats the nape of my neck.
It's getting closer.
My mind races as I try to think of ways to protect myself, but I can't focus over the screams of the damned souls that haunt me.
Closer.
I look for something, anything that could help me. But the only thing I see is red. It's ambient. It's everywhere, swallowing me.
It's so close I can feel it's breath tickling my eyelashes.
This is it. How I meet my end. Death by red. Just as the thing leans so close I can sense the radiating heat from its skin, I wake up.
I sit up abruptly, fear frozen on my face. I can't shake away the hellish scenes as they replay in my head. This nightmare has been plaguing me since the beginning of the end. Cold air skims my skin and I shiver slightly, pulling my jacket tighter around my shoulders. Light from the dying fire I made before I slept illuminates the space around me, and I suddenly remember where I am.
Days had gone by since the last time I slept, and I stumbled upon a shed within the deeply wooded area I was scavenging. I hadn't seen or heard any I's nearby, so I decided to step inside for a quick nap, but as I could tell from the moonlight seeping in between the cracks in the aged wood, I had slept hours.
Night is always more dangerous. You can't see the I's because they are hidden by the darkness, and you can't hear them because their groans are masked by the sounds of the night. And the people. The people are worse. I know what people can do to other people, and this world has only made them more cruel.
I grab a yard of rope from my pack and tie a tight knot around the doorknob and attach it to a metal rod that is, what looks like, the remains of a coat hanger, creating a lock. A small, wooden desk sits in the back corner of the shed and I push in front of the door, making sure whatever is out is staying out.
There isn't much furniture in the interstice of a storage space, just a cabinet bolted to the floor and a mini fridge next to it. I rummage through them, finding nothing but a can of sardines and old peanut butter.
"One of these days, I'm gonna find something good," I mutter to myself.
My shoulder throbs as I sit against the wall. Something happened to it a while back when I was fighting of a hoard of I's, but I'm not worried. Because if it was a bite, I'd be dead already.
I open up the sardines, cringing as the pungent smell wafts into my nostrils. However, you kind of have slim pickings in this world.
Even though the smell is unbearable, it feels nice to have food in my stomach, something I haven't felt in a while. My head falls back against the wall I'm leaning on as the bitter cold of late fall nips at my nose. I cower deeper into my oversized jacket, the one my father owned. It's best not to think of before, because it clogs up your head and makes it harder to keep going, but my before doesn't deserve to be forgotten.
