Our Own Terms

Mom always said to keep pushing, to keep moving. We were survivors. We survived when we lost the house. We survived when dad left. W survived when the world changed, and the schools closed. We even survived when the explosions started and it seemed like the lights would be out forever. The news would come on at night and would list the numbers of all of the people who had died. That’s all there was to watch, just a scroll of the dead until the electricity went out and all of the stations stopped running. I guess it was something nuclear. Mom never would give me a clear answer, she would just mutter something about how people would rather hate one another than live. I don’t blame her for being vague, she didn’t know what this would turn into.

Mom would sit awake at night in the early days watching the windows and reminding me, “We are survivors. We always make it through.” Once the world ended it was just the two of us. For a while I had thought that we were the only two people left in the world. I stopped keeping track of the days ages ago, but it has been so long since the last time I saw another person. I honestly don’t even know why I am bothering to write this. Whoever lived in this house must have loved to write. It is the first time in months I have seen paper and pencils, I suppose no one would really try to steal that now. When I was in school I used to love writing too. Stories about unicorns or ponies. Mom made sure that I kept studying as we moved. She said that the children are going to be the ones that bring the world back together. Maybe I’m writing because reminds me of the days when we used to sit in class and listen to the teacher talk about how we can learn so much from the writings of others. Maybe I’ll be the voice of the apocalypse, of the end times. More than likely this is pointless though. I guess it doesn’t really matter. Nothing has mattered for a long time. Everything got worse when mom gave me the locket. She handed it to me as she was dying and said “Keep pushing as long as you can, but you know what to do. We do things on our terms.” And just like that she was gone. Survivor my ass, I guess this is going to really take everyone. We will all go. No one dies of old age anymore. They die skinny and starving, and those are just the lucky ones. Mom passed quietly, lying on the floor of one of the empty houses we found. I didn’t even bury her. I couldn’t do it. I just moved on alone. Does that make me a bad person? Does it even matter?

When I opened the locket I couldn’t even breathe. We had talked about this before, the possibility of letting it all go, but she always said that isn’t what we do. I wanted to scream, it wasn’t fair she left me alone. She had the option for us the whole time, yet she left me alone. Every day without food our stomachs cramping in pain, the nights we spend lying on our stomachs so no one could see us through the window, terrified of what would happen if they did. We didn’t even know who “they” were. People lost their damn minds. You were just as likely to end up dead by the hands of a criminal as the next-door neighbor at this point. I guess killing people was how they decided they would survive. We traveled. Found empty houses for a few nights at a time, trying to find somewhere safe. There is nowhere safe. There is nothing. Just me, the people outside the door, and the locket. I had thought that the people outside were just criminals. Bandits like in the video games we used to play or the stories we used to read, but I don’t think they are. There is something wrong about them, the way they sound and the way they move. I have caught a glimpse here and there of them stalking around the house. I wish I had more answers, maybe it is the radiation. I read somewhere a while back that radiation can do weird things to the body, but I had always figured that the worst it did was cancer. I am really sorry mom. I know we are supposed to be survivors, but I can’t anymore. I won’t let them get me. I can’t keep them away another night. Shadows pass the windows at night, and sometimes you can hear the screams of those who don’t get the chance to starve to death. There are so many of them now. It isn’t the way it was before when one or two bangs on the window might happen in a night. It is like they can smell me. They know I am here, and I don’t want them to get me. It isn’t fair. I never even got my first kiss. They can all fuck themselves though. I am going out on my terms. There was a note with the pill in the locket saying what it would do. It should feel like falling asleep, and I hope to God It works. It is time to get out of this nightmare. Hopefully there are others out there who are braver than me. People who can start the world over again. The kids that survived. I’m sorry it can’t be me.