The Letter

It was dawn when they arrived. The sky was a painting of fire, peach, and lilac. The dark curling smoke wrapped around the building from whence they came and polluted the innocent sky. A feeling, a state of being, resounded through all who saw what lay below. Nothing would be the same.

The television blared and blathered on about the weather, while what should’ve been the real story was on the banner in the least noticeable font.

First, they thought it was terrorism. Pictures of the wreckage posted on the screen every five minutes, but they showed no pictures of them.

They roamed the streets, eyes glazed and stances relaxed. They were bloodied, bruised, rotting at every bit of them. The mind decayed first. They were friends, family, and no one could bear to end their suffering. Selfish. They aren’t the ones being controlled by a parasite, yet they let their dearest ones fall prey and succumb to the disease. The ones unaffected did nothing to stop it.

Not in the beginning, at least.

People were transformed by the disease, even when they weren’t bitten. Humor grew stale. Children grew, lost, and adults, loster. I became something else entirely. I was fueled only by anger and a will to live.
The world was dying, metamorphosed in a matter of weeks. What cities were once lively, now desolate. What sounds heard prior to the Arrival were now replaced by moans of the not-so-dead. What people were kind in the beginning had lost their pleasantries, softness from the old world ripped from them by the desperation caused by the new one.

You were different, Alice. Despite being in the middle of all this hell, you still smiled when you saw me, the first person you’d seen in weeks. I didn’t deserve that smile, but you would’ve given it anyway, despite knowing who I was and what I’d done to what you saw as “helpless and deserving of compassion.” I only saw them as takers.

I bet you don’t even know how much you helped me that day in Seriphen. I was gone. My only escape from what hell we lived in was hunting the monsters that destroyed everyone’s lives. Even so, you still didn’t see their deaths as fun. It was duty, and only done out of necessity.
You stayed soft, even after the months after the Arrival. You saved me.

I was something dark before I met you. When I started to hurt, I couldn’t stop. I lived for the pain felt by others, by them. You pulled me from the cold dark, and held me until I was warm again.

I fell for you at first sight, Alice. I can’t bear leaving, but I have to. It’s happening to me. I got too close and the spores… You know. The fever’s setting in, but I feel cold. I’m so tired, I can barely write this, but I have to let you know before I get as far away as I can.

I can’t risk hurting what’s most important to me. Alice, you’re my light in this deep, dark, tunnel. You’re guiding me to my peace, even when you aren’t there to see it.

I love you, profoundly, inevitably. I hope you find this letter, and understand.

Thank you, for everything, my love,
Lucía.

I held onto the page for a moment, before it slipped out of my hand. I didn’t move to catch it. I should have felt tears peak behind my eyes, but I felt numb. Everything was in slow motion. No.

I felt the strength run from my legs, and my knees cracked as they hit the floor. My mouth opened and words just barely crawled passed my lips. I felt distant from myself.

“No, Lucía, no...” I had to find her. I grabbed her letter and rose, holding onto the table for support. I stumbled on unsure feet out of the door. Grief made me blind.

She couldn’t have made it very far. Assurances of the possibility her safety played on repeat in my head and reaffirmations of my inability to have been where she was. I should have been there. I should’ve been with her on the supply run. I should have helped her.

But I didn’t. I had to find her.

My search was mindless, I didn’t think for a moment about where she would be, because I knew that it would waste time.

When I found her, she was gone. She’d settled for a garbage dump. Something panged within me: anger, grief, loss, pain, regret. Echoes resounded within me. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there.

I didn’t get to say goodbye. I felt a scream bubble behind my lips, but I pushed it down. I didn’t want her to know I was there, not until I needed her to.

I dragged a foot forward. Then another. I watched her move, breathe.

She looked almost the same. Instead of the usually human, real movements, a thought behind each twitch, she moped, kicking around trash. Her brown hair laid short on her shoulders, usually-golden highlights somehow seeming murkier in color, like a dirt-filled swamp. I needed to end this before I got worse, before I could think of running away.

I grabbed a bottle from the ground and tossed it in front of me. It clinked against the concrete. Her hunched shoulders spread and she faced me.

Her eyes, amber, met my own. There was nothing in them, except hunger. She wasn’t mine anymore.

I pushed myself closer, inch by inch, trying to meet her halfway. I slipped a hand into my bag and grabbed a knife. She groaned, her mouth ajar and arms just barely raised, reaching for me, but not quite being able to.

She tripped on the bottle and fell backward, her shuddering breath knocked out of her. Blood gurgled at the back of her throat. I straddled her before she could stand again, my knees on her inner elbows.

She writhed beneath me, weakly, and our eyes locked again. I wanted to throw up. I laid the tip of the blade on her forehead and held it there. Her head wriggled and tiny gashes riddled her forehead and I couldn’t do it. My head pounded with the echoes of my inability. I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I can’t do it.

Her mouth opened and I swear I heard my name, but somewhere within, I knew it was just me, wanting her to be there, somehow present, somehow okay.

You’re guiding me to my peace, even when you aren’t there. I inhaled, near-tasting garbage at the back of my throat. I’m here, Lucía. I’m here.

I pushed the knife in, and breathed out. Her eyes grew duller. Her mouth opened in one last growl before she went completely still. She was gone.

I’d lost what was most important to me.