Nothing Left to Burn [DISCONTINUED]

Chapter 1 - Something More

Explain to me this conspiracy against me
And tell me how I lost my power
~

Aven trudged through the woods towards no particular destination, a bloody knife in one hand and a half-empty bottle of scotch in the other. She didn't know how far she'd gone, just like she didn't know how much was missing from her life. She just knew she didn't want to go back to the Kingdom.

Once upon a time, she never would have stayed in a place like the Kingdom for so long. It was nice, and that was the problem. It was too good to be true, and she preferred to be on her own anyway. In the past, it would have been easy to walk away and live on her own but she no longer felt like that person; she no longer felt capable of taking control of her life. Since waking up in a strange place with a fractured memory over a year earlier, to say she wasn't herself was an understatement.

She still preferred to be on her own, but she just couldn't do it anymore. Being alone sounded heavenly, yet it also filled her with dread. This was the most alone time outside the Kingdom she'd had in a while, and she needed to be wasted to do it; she needed to drink to be able to face the world the way she used to sober. There was no right answer, nothing she wanted to do and nothing she enjoyed one way or another. Inside the walls of the Kingdom, outside the walls. Alone, together. Nothing ever felt right.

She used to be more careful in all aspects of life. Even in the beginning of the apocalypse, she made sure she stayed with small groups of survivors for support until she felt confident enough to truly be on her own. And she had never been so careless as to wander out into a world of the rabid, poisonous dead without her wits about her, at least not that she could remember. She'd certainly never been so reckless as to gulp down alcohol in any capacity without food or water in her stomach. But today, all she had ingested was scotch.

She gagged and spat after forcing down an especially large sip. She always thought scotch tasted like ass but of course it got the job done nonetheless, and self-destruction wasn't supposed to be enjoyable anyway. She wasn't picky with her booze, that was just the bottle she grabbed that day and, like half the time, no one knew she took it from the supply room. The community had collected plenty of alcohol but it was mostly saved for special occasions. Of course, special occasions tended to be social gatherings, which she didn't care to attend. So instead she took it upon herself to drink alone, and since bottles of booze weren't important enough to keep close inventory on, the other Kingdom residents were none the wiser.

It was that last gulp that did her in. She used to have a good handle on her own limits, and she still did but they didn't matter to her anymore. She was pushing and pushing, waiting for the day it would be too much. Hopefully today would be that day.

She slid down a thick tree trunk, ignoring the way the bark scraped at her shoulders through her loose sweater. The forest spun and blurred before her, a kaleidescope of woodsy brown and green colors frosted over with winter. In the distance, she heard the dead shuffling and growling and she glanced down at the knife in her hand, her eyes lingering on her severed ring finger. It had taken a few weeks to get used to, but she could now kill the dead just as well as ever. At least when she wasn't on the verge of a blackout.

The growling got louder and she was partially startled out of her drunken stupor when a walker appeared from around the tree and tripped over her legs, squirming and reaching to try and turn so it could claim its meal. She swung her knife up to stab its head but instead nailed it in the shoulder. Of course, through her unsteady haze the spot she stabbed appeared to her to be where the head was at that second. She tried and missed again. She grabbed her wrist with her other hand to steady it and, just before the dead's teeth sunk into her arm, stabbed it in the temple, the knife sinking straight through the decayed flesh and into the brain.