The Teeth

When light,

The world lies in silence.

Peaceful. Eerie.

Quiet.

When dark,

The world explodes with sound.

Piercing. Raucous

Loud.

When light,

The scavengers go out to gather.

Food. Water.

Life.

When dark,

They hide in barricaded houses.

Scared. Terrified.

Death.

When light,

The world exhales a breath.

Breathing. Alive.

Safe.

When dark,

The world hyperventilates.

Blood. Death.

Exposed.

I live in this world, with the dangerous ying and yang of life and death.

And I don't know why I still try to survive. All I know is that I must keep my mother alive as long as possible.

She lies in a stupor on the cot by the window, looking out with a blank stare. Martha, the leader in the shelter helped me tie her wrist to one of the beams that goes up to support the roof. It makes me wince to see her pull and pull against the bindings, bloodying up her wrist. She's caught the virus, and is slowly going crazy. It happens in phases.

Phase One: A fever, and the skin becomes very hot to touch.

Phase Two: The fever disappears, and skin cools to an icy temperature. Violent nightmares occur during this period of the sickness.

Phase Three: The infected person starts to go crazy, violently flailing and throwing themselves into anything, attempting to get to the closest blood source. By the end of this stage, the infected person has totally lost all traces of humanity. It seems to be some kind of vampirism, or zombie-like state, and nobody has been able to be cured.

It's been almost three months, and from the last report over the now-dead radio, just over three weeks ago, over 80% of the world's population is dead. Not dead, per say, but turned into an Other.

An Other is what we have started to call them, due to some celebrity tweeting it at the very start, as a joke. We all thought it was a joke back then. Now there isn't even any power anymore. No nothing. Nothing but desperate people fighting to survive. Many have suicided already.

There's a total of six people in this shelter. A family of five took us in, my mother and I, and one of them died in the process. I still get dirty looks from the father. Now our ragtag group consists of Martha, the mother, Julian, the Father, and Fred and Jacob, the teenage twins. Technically, they aren't teenagers, since they are both in their early twenties, but for some reason I can't stop thinking of them as teenagers.

The window is all boarded up, but Mother still likes to peer out. Imagining, I like to think. She is imagining the days when all we had to worry about was paying the bills and who was wearing what to school. Trends and money are inconsequential now. Now Earth has been transported to a horror movie setting, and set on fast forward.