I don't feel like myself

“I don’t feel like myself.”

“What do you feel like?”

“I feel like killing you.”

“How are you feeling today?”

“Better, but, distant.”

“Distant how?”

“In the sense that I feel closer to the voice in my head telling me to stab you than I actually feel to you… Which feels weird, since your right in front of me and you’re my sister and I love you.”

“I brought your dinner.”

“Is it flesh.”

“…Sorry?”

“Is it human flesh.”

“It’s tofu.”

“Oh, I like tofu.”

“You didn’t drink your tea.”

“I thought it was your blood.”

“I’ll get you another one.”

“No, I’ll only think its your blood and when I realise it’s not… I’ll be disappointed.”

“I want a hug…”

“I want to give you a hug.”

“So do.”

“I can’t”

“Why? I’m your sister.”

“Because… you’re still thinking about snapping my neck.”

“See, this is why you’re the best; you always know what I’m thinking.”

“Why can’t I go outside anymore?”

“You know why.”

“I miss the sky, the walks in the park we used to take… I miss embarrassing you in front of the cute mailman.”

“You killed the mailman.”

“… I remember… Will you tell my about the sky?”

“I don’t feel like myself.”

“I know… you feel like killing me.”

“I always feel like killing you, but today… I think today I am going to kill you.”

Captain Hawks stopped the tape recorder, his gloves finger leaving behind a smudge on the dusty layer. Looking around again of the dim-lit basement, the walls littered with scratch marks and smudged blood. His Squad moved, collect samples and reading diary entries and shuffling through the overall mess that was scattered and broken around the room.

In the far corner, back by the stairs, lay the rotting corpse of a well-intended, optimistic sister, skull smashed in, pried open and brain ripped out.

Jodie Madden, blonde, 27, veterinarian. Cause of death undetermined – blunt force trauma to the skull or trying to be a good sister; which ever had come first. Her sister – Cathy Madden, 24, aspiring actress – had become infected with the same virus that was sweeping the country and had been kept captive in the basement for several months. A tragic series of events that had slowly happening to every family out there.

Except these sisters weren’t like everyone else.

One had encountered Patient Zero.

The other had a breakthrough on curing her.

Both were now dead.

Captain Hawks sighed, spying a polaroid picture of the pair on Miss Madden’s desk; it was dusty, but surprisingly not bloody. Picking it up, the Captain carefully folded it and placed it into his vest pocket.

“Captain,” a female voice echoed, “the diary entries stop three months after Cathy Madden’s infection.”

“Abruptly?”

“Seemingly. There seems to be a couple of pages torn at the end.”

“We have all her research journals still intact,” Hawks mused, scratching his beard. “That should be most helpful for the lads in white back at the labs. Those diaries give any indication to who Cathy Madden caught the infection from? Who might be Patient Zero?”

She shook her head. “None. Until Cathy become ill, her and Jodie Madden weren’t on good terms. Both were only back her to organise their recently deceased mother’s belongings… The sisters were rather opposites in life.”

Hawks soaked the information in. “Did Cathy Madden keep any form of diary or anything she’d log her thoughts?”

“Might be something on the taps,” a male solider with rounded specs pipped in from the corner. He held up a carboard box with some tapes. “These are labelled different to the others.”

“Take em with us.”

The Squad eventually finished their investigation of the house, clearing out he basement to be shipped back to the labs at base. This lead had left Captain Hawks momentarily hopeful. Momentarily feeling as if Jodie Madden’s optimism of finding a cure for her sister wasn’t in vain.

In the back of the truck, he pulled out the photo of the two girls; smiling happy, sisters in their early twenties. These two were the reminder her needed to keep pushing.