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H E R
When I was younger, one of my favorite pastimes was sitting on the vanity of the upstairs bathroom with my nose pressed against mirror and flip the light one and off, watching the pupils of my eyes expand and shrink. Over and over.
Then came the day when I crawled onto that sink and brought my face close to the smooth, reflective surface, but when my fingers went to the switch: nothing.
I felt my stomach drop. The power was out. Which meant everything being said on the television and on the radio was real. Before that, I had felt so unaffected by the outbreak that covered every headline. The only difference was my mother was overburdened with more hours of work at the Veteran's Clinic.
But the day the power went out, my mother never came home.
They told us to evacuate later that week. What about Mama? I wanted to plead. We can't leave her. But we did. We left her and our home and everything behind. Leaving Montgomery and its pillars of smoke and rambling people—I didn't even know what I was looking at was the end of the world through the dusty glass of the backseat window. My dad had a college friend he'd been in touch with, a dooms-day prepper, who said there was a community with walls being erected around it. Where things were normal. Safe.
We traveled across the state line to Georgia, making our way to the town of Woodbury. My father never looked back, Jody and I were his priority. And we never saw my mother again. It's the kind of thing that settles so deeply in your gut that it never really goes away. A hollowness, a dull ache, a reminder.
Since then, it's become a constant thing. That feeling of unresolved tension weighing my body down. With how many stomach dropping moments I've had, I'm sure it was far beneath ground by now. The heavy pull keeping my feet flat and trudging against the earth.
And now, I was stuck in another one of those instances. Almost in slow motion. Holding Judith's squirmy body close to mine as I hid ourselves behind her crib while I listened as Carl was forced to give a tour to Negan himself, who stood just on the other side of the door.
"Nothing's in there, just a water heater-"
But the room was intruded upon anyway.
The man's heavy boots clumped inside, pausing. "A nursery, huh? What kind of idiot's have a baby hanging around these days."
I held my breath, hoping he'd leave and not notice us. I tucked my feet in close, pulling Judith's legs around me. The toddler was growing bored of the 'hiding game' I insisted we play. I felt her chubby hand clench around my necklace. The one Carl had given me.
