Salvation

I

Humans tend to avoid the unknown.

So, what did that make me?

Since I was just a kid, I actively threw myself into the unknown, hoping to understand what was hidden. Hoping that if I could understand the unknown, then I could have been able to understand myself.

I never was able to understand myself.

Why I was the way I was.

My mom liked to say I was born un submissive of the way the world had turned out, that I wouldn't willingly allow the horrors to crush me. Others said my father needed to put me in my place.

They were afraid of me.

Afraid of all the times that I came back to the clearing we had made in the woods near the beachfront drenched in blood. Blood that they weren't sure where it had come from.

I was 15 the first time it happened, and I had been so angry.

I was furious at Mason, he had promised to always be there. But he wasn't. The minute he turned of age, he left, scavenging with the others.

And I was left behind.

I went and scavenged on my own. We knew that the dead still roamed the island. There were many still trapped in homes that no one was able to kill.

But ever since that day, I called them biters.

They came after me, as I searched through the town. The place my dad had specifically marked as off limits since we've been on the island.

And I broke all of his rules daily, only this time, it almost cost me my life.

I was drenched in the blood of the biters I had to hack away at, something in me died that day. The child in me was gone.

Aiden had run to me when I stepped into the clearing that our cabins were surrounding. He covered his pure body in the blood that was soaking into my skin, staining me forever.

And I hated myself for ruining a part of my baby brother's innocence.

My mother took me down to the ocean, she helped me clean the blood that was staining my clothes and stuck in my hair. I stared at the horizon as she scrubbed her hardest, her hands shaking at the effort it took, my skin began bleeding from the abrasive sponge.

I knew she was crying.

My words were whispered as my chest constricted. "What's wrong with me."

Her hands stilled in my long hair. She didn't know what to say, none of them knew what was wrong with me, that was the issue. "There's nothing wrong with you baby. This is just who you are-" Her voice cut off, I knew she was crying harder, the tears falling in steady streams.

"A product of war."

I would never forget those words. As the salt water stung my bleeding skin, I let myself suffer. This is who I was meant to be.