24

One: Kiara

ONE: Kiara

I did not remember when I last smiled. Maybe because it was not such an important thing back then, or maybe I wasn’t just happy at all. If there was anything people told about me, I was “serious”.  They all saw the long raven-haired girl sporting her big rectangular black-rimmed glasses almost covering half of her face, wearing her grandmother’s altered hand-me-down dresses.

What can I say, I had a goal after all: to finish my degree and become a successful writer and get out of Aster Ville and find my mother.

But on the morning before my 19th birthday, it all changed. My world changed and I was astounded. The past night, I was only concerned with how I was going to pass the devious class of an equally devious professor. I was thinking of asking him to reconsider the grade he has marked on my mid-term paper or if I should just make a new one. I was going to plead my case that same day, first thing before I attend my classes.

And there I was, in front of my good old bathroom mirror, running late and standing frozen. In the place where my heart is located on my chest was a scarlet red spiral mark. Nobody can mistake what it meant.

And it meant I only had 24 hours to live.

And at that odd moment, I smiled.

*

Fifty years ago, there was a worldwide outbreak of an incurable disease. Doctors could not explain where it originated or how it can be cured. Scientists, tried in vain to research about it. But nothing. Over thirty percent of the world population was wiped out five years after it surfaced. And then it just disappeared.

Some said it was an alien attack. Others presumed that it was rapture. Some even predicted that a new race for Earth would be born, of which I cannot ever believe in. It does not have an official name, since scientists cannot find its origin. So the media people took the liberty to name it, and they named it “24”, because once a person is infected, a red spiral mark on the skin above the heart appears, and from the time he or she woke up until the same time next day, would be his or her last 24 hours on Earth.

And then they die.

Just like that.

And just like that, I had one on my chest. So I counted off the last hours of my life.

As of the moment, I only had 22 hours and 34 minutes to live.

*

Date and Time: November 24, 6:26 a.m.

Time remaining: 22 hours and 34 minutes and counting

 I refused to make myself miserable just because I had the 24 disease. I wanted to die by not causing any ruckus in my social circle. I refused to become like those who wanted sympathy just because they’re dying. I refused to become a fame-whore. It broke my heart of course, who wouldn’t? One moment you were right there with your life planned ahead of you, and then the next moment, you’re counting your hours to live.

I dressed and proceeded on the same routine as always, thinking how I could persuade this professor of mine to raise my grade. Funny that even at that moment, I was still thinking about my paper and the C he marked on it.

“Kiara, are you ready? I’m gonna be late for the meeting!” My brother Kenneth called out from the porch and I quickly applied face powder and dabbed some red lipstick to cover its paleness. Kenneth is older than me by five years and he was an instructor in the university I was studying. He was in the social sciences department, teaching sociology and anthropology.

“I’m here!” I rushed down the stairs and grabbed my coat. It was chilly outside.

When I got there, he grumbled once more about how I was always late whenever he was driving me for school and grumbled once more about his life and blah blah blah. I knew he was having such a rough time since he was on the verge of becoming a full-fledged professor.