Not Dead Yet (Sample Only, Now on KU)

Mumbai

My arm.

I'm acutely aware of my arm, more so than I've ever been before. It's like it has a life of its own, as if it isn't fully attached to me anymore. I don't know what to do with it, I mean, what do I usually do with my arm? Does it normally just hang next to me, so uselessly?

The heat, that's bothering me too. The intense, overwhelming heat that threatens to turn my insides to dust. I can feel it creeping through my system, shriveling up my organs, stripping me of every single drop of moisture inside my body.

It used to be busy here. Through the foggy blood lust in my brain, I can still just about recall that. It was a marketplace, filled with endless people as far as the eye could see. It would always be bustling, filled with color and noise, a hum of activity, wonderful smells to get the senses rolling. Me and Sandeep used to come here just for the tasters, and the way it'd instantly lift our spirits and make the world feel like a more exciting place.

It was an oasis in the never-ending humdrum of everyday life; work, housework, struggle, sleep. And repeat. This place put a smile on my face, no matter what.

The life it used to inspire within me is no more. The only evidence that it used to be anything is the chaos and mess strewn along the floor, like a moment frozen in time. If I was a historian I could try and piece together what happened when things went to hell, I could paint a wonderfully terrifying picture with my words, a warning to anyone reading it not to make the same mistakes again, telling the human race that this could easily happen once more.

But I don't need to make that report because the warning is still here, we're nowhere near recovering from this disaster of apocalyptic proportions.

Now my lovely marketplace isn't anything.

No one is here.

Well, not no one.

My head slowly, agonizingly, moves to the left where I see another person like me, hungry, desperate for something to satisfy this need inside. We move in unison, one goal in mind but no clue of where to find it. It's like we're communicating with something other than words.

We aren't the only ones either, there are others. I can sense them even if I can't see them. They're everywhere, like an infestation. I suppose this place is still the bustling wonder it always was, but just in a very different way.

I mean, I'm not exactly like the rest of them. A lot of them having no humanity about them left at all. They look like the mindless monsters who started this mess. All sickly and sallow, bloody and grimy, terrifying but a beast to be pitied all at once. They smell too, not that I can notice that as much anymore. Maybe I'm desensitized because I've been in the middle of them for far too long.

To be perfectly honest, I'm jealous. They're the lucky ones.

I know what I'm doing. At least, in parts. The times where my brain checks out and I 'wake up' somewhere completely new are becoming more frequent, and possibly longer, but I wouldn't class myself as dead or monstrous just yet. I'm just...changing. I know what the end result is, and it isn't pleasant, but I know from seeing it too many times that there's no point in trying to fight it, it'll railroad over me, no matter what I do.

I might as well accept it now.

Of course, I have the matching bite wound as the others which makes me the same, I'm certain we all have one of them. Mine's on my ankle, but my neighbor has a huge gaping one on her neck. That's how we've turned into this, how we've become these undead raakshasons. The bite comes first, then the sickness, then you lose who you are and you become nothing.