Death & Despair: The Descent into Madness

[Wiggins]

Death & Despair: The Descent into Madness

 

It’s a cold morning, and I wake up with the chills.  I say a quick, godless prayer, and hope it’s not the infection.  Those damned things are starting to stink outside.  I glance over to the window and I can almost see the horrid scent seeping through the crude barricades.  Damn those barricades, too.  It’s morning outside, but I could barely tell.  I think I’ll have a slice of pie for breakfast.

 

I head downstairs and do my best to ignore the bloodstains.  Her locket, that damned locket, lies dead on the kitchen table.  I can’t bring myself to throw it away. 

 

Everything in this town is damned.  If I need to head into town, I’ll have to place an axe in old Farmer Bill’s soft, rotting skull.  Ms. Louise Parton would force me to curb stomp her head into the cracked pavement.  I once knew these people, now I know their insides…I smell their rot. 

The thick smell of decay slides down my throat with the stale tea, and the pie does little to mask the taste.  I read a newspaper from 2 years ago, just to separate myself from these hungry beasts outside.  I take another bite of pie and think, “Thank god for preservatives…It’s almost as if they were preparing for this.”

 

Today is the day, day 100.  I told myself that I’d find her by now, or I’d make use of that bleach.  The locket glares at me, as I contemplate the grave reality.  I grab my axe and pistol, and head out.  I need a distraction.  At this point, the zombies are easier to swallow than my brooding inner voice.  The zombies I can kill, this voice I cannot.  I open the door and the scent punches me in the nose.  The assault on my frazzled senses leaves me numb as I tighten the grip on the worn wood of my axe handle.    

 

I had gotten so good at this that I was cutting through zombies like overgrown weeds.  I go into autopilot and forget that these things were once my neighbors.  This town is ass backwards; even “Love Thy Neighbor” no longer makes sense.  All my virtues, all my morals, everything I was taught…it all means nothing.  I was nearly as dead and useless inside as these walking corpses.  Their rules became my rules.  I shuffle along, clearing a path to the old farmhouse.  

 

...

 

The thick overgrowth of the forest chokes out the red light of the dying day’s sun, and I finally come to the farm’s clearing.  The long shadows of the trees lie lifelessly upon the open meadow and I lock sight upon the old farmhouse.  There, up in the second story window, a ghostly silhouette stares out over the meadow.  The humanity flushes over me like a hot bath.  It’s her.  I dip my hand into my pocket and finger the cold locket.

 

The kiss that once breathed life into my soul, now feeds me death. And what a sweet kiss is was. I choose to live, and there was no place for life left in this town.