Creep

Before I opened my eyes, I knew the room I was in was cool and dark; pitch black dark. I knew the bed below me was soft and just outside of the room, I could hear hushed voices that sounded harsh.

Contrary to my assessment of the dark, when I opened my eyes, I saw clearly as if the room was brightly lit. But it wasn’t. The room was dark, I could just see as if my eyes had adjusted in less than a second.

My whole body felt sore, like I’d just run a marathon, and my throat was dry like after said marathon, I’d had no water to drink. I had an odd tingling in my mouth, and I could not remember how I had gotten wherever I was. In fact, I struggled to retrieve a last memory; any indication of what was going on.

I sat up slowly, expecting my head to spin, but still felt all right. I swung my feet over the bed and they hit warm, soft carpet. When I stood up and took a step, I began to feel less sore, which made me wonder exactly how long I had been lying down. Before I moved to the door, I stood a moment and listened to the angry voices, realizing I could make out pretty well what they were saying; it was my mother and Tom. Pieces were coming back to me, very slowly, and they frightened me. I was in St. Vincent, in my mother’s house.

“Tom, I just had no idea it was so bad,” she said. Her voice sounded worried, like the mother she was.

“I guess I didn’t either, but I saw her and I just… I lost it. I’m so sorry; I’ve never felt so awful in my life. For a second, I thought it would make it better.”

I could remember Tom and I in the park, sitting on a bench.

“Well it didn’t, did it? I can’t believe you did something so goddamn stupid. When they find out, they’re going to take you away.”

When Tom spoke, there was fear in his voice. “I’ll run away.”

“They’ll catch you,” she replied. I could tell she was trying not to cry. He was breaking her heart, just like I did. I took a moment, and then remembered what he did to break her heart.

I burst through the door, filled with rage—an emotion I was almost certain I’d never felt before that moment.

“What the fuck, Tom?” I yelled, trying not to scream in front of my mother. It was incredibly hard.

He flinched when I yelled. He was a far cry from the Tom I had met yesterday, if that was yesterday. He was now almost meek looking, afraid and full of emotions I had honestly not imagined he could feel. And I hated him. As I felt my teeth growing and my throat burning, I hated him more than I had ever hated anything.

So many thoughts were rushing through my head as I stared at Tom; just started at him. I was one of them now, I had been infected. I felt weak and sick and I knew that in just a couple days, I would be dead. I would be dead to the world and my father and nearly every person I had ever loved. I was looked down upon by nearly all of society. I was less than human.

I was dead.

--

I spent the next few hours crying in my mother’s arms while Tom sat in the next room.

“What do I do now?” I sobbed to her.

“We have to call the police, and we have to tell them what happened,” she spoke as if she was detached from the situation. It was like she was still in shock.

“Then?”

“They’ll examine you, they’ll question you, and then you’ll probably be assigned an apartment, or you can live here with me.” The bleakest future. Certainly not what I had always imagined for myself.

I wiped my eyes. I was still capable of crying. “What about Tom?”

She looked away. “He’ll probably be killed.”

“Killed?” I asked, raising my eyebrow. She looked sadder than I’d ever seen her.

“They kill the ones who infect others purposely. It’s the law. We have… a lot of laws.”

I shook my head. That couldn’t be the truth; that did not happen in the real world. That was the stuff of horror films. They didn’t just murder people like that. He hadn’t killed anyone, he just ruined the rest of my life.

Yeah, maybe he could be put to death.

The look on my mum’s face was devastating. I hadn’t realized, until that very moment, exactly how much she loved Tom. It made sense; he was all she really had since this tragedy, and things like this brought people close. She had never had a son, and now she had one, and he was going to be killed.

It would kill her, and that tore at my heart. I was more angry at Tom than I had ever been at anyone in my entire life. Every inch of me wanted to burst into his room and release the beating of a lifetime on his worthless body. What a creep. What an asshole! How could he have done that to me, or to Mum? I shook with the rage and I shook with the sorrow.

“Is there any way that can be avoided?” I asked.

She looked up at me suddenly, shocked. “Oh darling, don’t ask me that.”

I raised my eyebrow. She rubbed gentle circles on my back, like she had when I was a child and I couldn’t sleep at night.

“Why not?”

She kissed my forehead. “I love Tom, and I love you. He’s been as much my son this past year as you’ve been my daughter for the past twenty, but I couldn’t ask you to do anything to get him out of trouble. Not for this.”

She was crying now. It tore me apart; this was a pain I had never felt before. “There is something?”

She stood up and moved to the window. The moon wasn’t nearly as bright that night as it had been the night before.

“Don’t ask about it.”

I walked across the room and opened my bedroom door. I cracked it open and looked at Tom, still seated in the lounge. He was hunched over, his head in his hands; the perfect picture of regret.

I felt nothing but anger.

I looked towards my mother, standing still next to the window, trying as hard as she could not to stop crying. One child infected, the other to be killed.

I couldn’t do it for him, but for her, I could do anything.