Ok, Who Got Bitten?

And Then There Was One

“— hey, Sam.”

“Sam.”

I turned and raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“What do you wanna be when you grow up?” Rachael asked again as she played with my hair, running her fingers through it gingerly.

“I want to be a writer!” I exclaimed, wincing as her finger pulled at a knot underneath my unkempt hair, trying to scoot to the edge of the bed. “I wanna tell a story.”

“Whatcha gonna write about?” She dropped my hair and fell back onto a pile of pillows, gazing at the ceiling distantly, her eyes following the blades of the fan as it travelled its circular path.

“I don’t know. Maybe about our adventures.” I collapsed beside her and wrapped a leg around hers. She tried to wriggle away but I pinned it down and giggled.

She snorted. “Adventures? We don’t have adventures. You’re only nine.”

“Yeah, but when I’m a teenager I’m gonna travel the world.”

“How you gonna do that with no money?”

“I’ll make money somehow. Want to help me?”

She sat up, leaning on one arm. Looking at me real serious, she didn’t say anything at first. Then she nodded. “Yeah.” She gently lowered herself again and wrapped her arms around my neck.

We listened to the clicking of the overhead fan’s chain as it wobbled ever so slightly above, the tick-tocking of a clock on the dresser. Our parent’s bedroom was dark, the shades drawn. Minutes must have passed in the relative silence as I thought about what adventures I might have.

“You’re my best friend,” Rachael suddenly said, just as I thought she’d fallen asleep.

I turned my head and met her hazel eyes. “You’re my best friend too, dummy.”

“You’re a butthead.”

I smiled and closed my eyes. After a few moments my sister’s breathing became low, steady. I popped an eye open to see that she’d fallen asleep, her right arm having slipped off of my neck.

I picked her arm up and repositioned it, then cradled her head in my arms. I watched her sleep until I became drowsy myself. I leaned forward and gave her forehead a quick kiss before shutting my eyes and falling into a deep sleep myself.

That day, I dreamt about my sister dying, and how horrible that would be to live with. I woke up crying to an empty bed, the sheets all wrinkled. My sister had woken up hours before and had gone outside to play. I just sat at the edge of the bed, crying away.

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There’s something about real, raw, intense fear that seizes your entire body and locks your brain up. There’s a point at which your eyes cannot possibly produce any more tears, a point when you reach the ultimate state of sadness that you end up becoming numb, and you lose all feeling.

I think maybe that’s the body’s way to protect itself from destroying itself. A fail-safe when the self-destruct button is dangerously close to being pushed. I believe that if, in that situation, you don’t just become totally unresponsive to what is going on around you, you run the risk of going insane.

Unfortunately, what nature may have designed to be a way to save my mental state was now just a horrible game of opossum, and I became a sitting duck for the monsters that would feast on me, aware or not.

I turned in time to see Savannah fall. Her leg buckled beneath her, a sharp snap echoing loudly over the groans.

There was no blood. At least around her leg wound. It was black as tar, the flesh drooping off and tearing as her white white bone popped through the skin. She tumbled and met the ground with her right shoulder and skidded into the dirt.