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"And from the flowing fountain drink everlasting love Oh had I wings I would fly away and be at rest."
J u p i t e r
The first thing I remembered was the pain. The sheer, blinding pain that blistered through my leg. A burning sensation that coursed throughout my entire body. The irresistible temptation to succumb to death was almost inviting as the infected sunk its rotting teeth into my flesh. Fear. Fear was the next emotion that flooded through my veins. Shackling me to the impending doom I faced. I was going to die. I was going to die and all I could manage to do was scream. Nothing hurt anymore. And I could almost feel the infection starting to claw away at me from the inside out. I was going to die. Maybe death wasn't scary, maybe it was peaceful. Calm. And I wasn't scared of death anymore. I welcomed it. Maybe even wished for it.
A flicker of a smile woke me up. It had seemed like I jumped back into my body as Jessie flashed before my eyes. His smile reaching wide across his face. Jessie was always a happy kid, and even happier as we grew older together. I hadn't seen him much around the community as Dina had been taking up most of his time lately. The thought of their ooey, gooey romance almost made me hurl my guts up. Secretly, I actually thought they were quite cute together.
"Sleeping in the middle of the dance, are we?" He teased. And suddenly the pain was gone, the fear and the longing turning into a mere memory. I attempted to crack a smile, it appearing as more of a wince, "Too much to drink?"
I sighed into my cup, bringing the bitter brown liquid to my lips, "Not enough, actually." The taste of acid hit my tongue, and I seemed to relish in it. But with alcohol came the flood of memories.
Unconsciously, my fingers brushed against the inside of my clothed thigh, hidden away from plain sight. I had managed to keep it away from prying eyes for the past five years I had been holed up in Jackson community.
After I had been bitten, the thought of survival had never made itself apparent in my mind. That was, until the days turned into weeks, and the infection still hadn't turned into anything other than what it was now. A harsh reminder that I was in fact, immune. It seemed cruel, to have the one thing that nobody even thought possible in a world like we lived in. I often thought, why me? I wasn't special. That was proven when my mother had found me only minutes after it had happened, the infected laying dead on the floor next to me, my knife plunged deeply into the back of its skull. I had thought about doing the same to myself. Swiftly ending my suffering before anybody else did it for me. I couldn't bring myself to. Nor could my mother, she had looked at me in pure disbelief, maybe even a little disgust. She had left me there, without offering another word. I never saw her again.
Weeks later I was near dead. My body broken and bruised, the pain almost indescribable. I was down to my last bullet when they found me. Skin blistered from the summer heat. Thankfully I had attended to my leg hours before and still no signs of infection had showed itself. I didn't like to think about what would've happened if they had noticed. I was a good liar. I was entirely a bag of bones when Joel had helped me onto his horse. I don't remember much after that, the ominous darkness whispering my name drowned out much of the travel back to Jackson. And I had awoken in a room full of peering eyes.
