F*** Cancer, This One Did Us All In.

34. This is the one after I f***ed up.

  Fear.

  Fear like you wouldn't believe.

  It was a slow yet heavy fear, one that hung like mercury in my veins, poisoning me and making every move sluggish and slow.

  I junped at every shadow, pissed myself at every sound I could hear and hid as best as I could whenever a Flesh-eater walked by.

  I wasn't scared. No, I wasn't afraid. What I felt was far more primordial and ancient than that. What I felt was where Fear had been born. The dark cave away from life and hope where only coldness and darkness lived, where a bottomless void grew and solidified, cold enough to petrify anybody. What I felt was the capital 'F' Fear. Everything I had felt before was just Fear lite.

  I was walking as silently as I possibly could, my shaking gun held out in front of me and the sealed bag of dried fruits hidden inside the thick jacket I wore.

  I was walking between these two buildings, I couldn't tell you what they were for the life of me, all I knew was that they were pretty tall and extremely dark. My stomach grumbled and I clenched my jaw. I wanted to eat, but my Fear far outweighed my hunger. So I walked, in the semi-dark, then dived behind a dumpster when I saw a small group of four Flesh-eaters walk past the end of the alley I was in.

   Oh god, I couldn't do it. I was going to die before the night was out. I was such a huge idiot.

  But at least if you die you can't get them hurt. Can't get them killed.

  Yeah, at least there was that. At least I couldn't hurt anybody else if I was - um . . .

  What is it?

  My hand. It was inside something sticky. Something wet and disgusting and - and -

  I looked down to see what my hand was in and even though it was dark I could clearly see that, yep, that indeed was a head my hand was inside. The head, it seemed, was attached to a body of a woman who apparently liked wearing suits.

  I looked at her as I felt something crawl up into me and-

  Don't speak out! Don't react! Don't speak out! Don't react!

  I breathed through my nose and looked at her with eyes widening and head pounding and the feeling that my life was going to end soon.

   Like in a horror movie when the person's about to die, you know they're about to die, but the movie draws it out and keeps our nerves on edge and adds in random noises to scare the living hell out of us when all we want is for it all to over, please let it end, please let me die!

  Then my eyebrows furrowed as I got an idea. It was a really bad idea. What was up with me coming up with bad ideas? What day was it? Damnit, I didn't even know what day it was. Screw it, I'll say it was Wednesday. Wednesday would now forever be Bad Idea Day.

  Although, to be fair to myself, we've already used this trick.

  I looked down at the woman and the suit she wore, and slowly nodded to myself.

  Yeah, I'd say she was round about my size.

× × ×

When I woke up the next morning, I was starving. I reached into the jacket I wore, that I had refused to ditch and instead smeared some Flesh-eater blood on, and pulled out the bag of dried fruits. My head made my movements slow, made my mouth ache and my body sore and my mouth ache and - and my mouth ache. My thick, clumsy fingers pulled at the bag and after what felt like forever it finally opened.