Speechless

Chapter three

I wake up in the middle of the silent, beautiful night screaming with terror. I have had a nightmare about Jim. Shockingly it's the first nightmare I've had since the outbreak. But maybe that's just because all the other nights I've been too occupied, too worried about other things rather than be able to relax and sleep peacefully and let the realization of death surrounding me on all sides all the time now sink in. It's really petrifying once you process it, the life you are scared of and not knowing how many days, hours, minutes, or seconds you have remaining on this horrid earth.

My nightmare was quite strange but seemed so real. It was almost like I traveled through time, being back with Jim and when he was about to die. I wish I didn't have to see that again, because every time I think of Jim I see the image of his limp body on the floor and I feel my legs go weak. You get used to it, the torture of constant pain coursing through your veins. And it's not like medicine will heal it, no bandage will ever fix the gaping hole inside of me.

This is the first time I have awoken from my sleep screaming. My nightmare felt like a dream at first, which was the worst part of the nightmare, because my brain only tricked me that Jim was there, that he hadn't died two weeks ago. We had been fighting for survival together for three weeks before he died, the outbreak has only been out for give or take a month and half. That's at least how it feels. But my nightmare was awful, it started with Jim and I sitting by a fire. We were talking about anything, really. Anything to get our minds off of the fact of the dead walking around. We were eating a rabbit I had killed with my knife. I was quite good with one, actually. "This rabbit is delicious," Jim said.

"I try," I said jokingly. My dream was practically quoting our last conversation.

"See the moon?" Asks Jim as he points to the dark sky lit up by the moon and the surrounding stars.

"Yeah. What about it?" I ask.

"The way it shines up there, like it owns the night. The others stars practically bow down to the moon, only because the moon is shining superior to them. The moon thinks it's so great up there, just perfect. But if it weren't for the sun, the moon wouldn't even be shining so bright. So what if the moon is big? The stars have just as much importance as the moon, the moon gives us so much and is important to our solar system while the stars are just mesmerizing and beautiful. But little do you realize that even at night, the sun is the one running the operation. The sun is the light, while the moon takes advantage of it. The moon gets all of the credit while the sun is willing to share its light with something so selfish. Astonishing, really,"

"You're insane," I chuckled. "What's the point?"

"The point is that some things are not what they seem. It seems the moon has it's own light while it's all the sun's doing. Don't believe everything you see, you sometimes must think deeper,"

"And so why are you telling this to me again?" I had asked him.

"It's to show you that this world seems hopeless, lifeless, and like everything is gone. But maybe it's just not what it seems, we really just don't have that information yet. Like how people probably thought the moon had its own light before they claimed the information that it's actually the sun. We know nothing about what the government is working on and don't know anything about these creatures. Well, only how to survive them. We can't give up, Aubrey. This might not be as bad as it seems," explains Jim. I look down and laugh slightly, astonished once again by his brain. The way he chooses to lighten the mood. "It is a shame this happened though, I mean, so many beautiful things have died. Only few remain. Like you, for example. You're beautiful and you're still here."

"Stop," I said. "Please don't call me beautiful," I didn't say this because he was a thirty-two year old man and I'm fifteen, it's actually quite flattering my first real friend calling me beautiful. Because it was friendly, he was a true friend. But he just tilted his head, confused why I didn't except his compliment and blush. I do that a lot, even with my parents before they died. Suicide. It was awful. "It's nothing against you, Jim. It's just that if a man calls me pretty I blush and if they call me hot they are a total dick that only wants to hookup with me for a while until someone better stomps along. But when someone calls me beautiful, I no longer believe looks are all they mean. The word beautiful is a word implying how someone is inside and out, all around beautiful. On the outside beautiful means not a fake girl stuffing her bra with tissues everyday, but just breathtaking with her natural look. Then on the inside is when it gets more complicated. I believe it means to be a great person on the inside and not just act like it. To not have many regrets and not to have done many bad things. To think and act beautifully. I believe the words beautiful and perfect are much alike. And perfect I am not," I say state, looking Jim dead in the eyes. He just started laughing, quite at first and then louder. While not so loud The Gone could hear.

"For a girl your age you have as great as a vocabulary as me. And a tremendous way of seeing the world and things around it," he said. Almost exactly what Jason told me on the tree.

"Look whose talking," I replied with a giggle.

Then we get into Jim's death and I can't handle that right now. So all of this, I explain to Jason as he wakes me from this nightmare. He is holding me tight, protecting me from my thoughts, while I explain this horrid dream to him. But before I do, I ask him how loud I was screaming. "It wasn't too loud, it wouldn't catch The Gone's attention. It's ok," he assures me. I force a grin and pull a strand of loose hair from my ponytail behind my ear, not looking up at Jason. He cups my face and I'm almost forced to look at him. "You're beautiful," he tells me.

Then I cry again. And while I begin to cry once more, I look out the slight opening of the cave from our view, and can see outside into the night. And I see the moon. Then I cry even more.