Twilight Nightmares (Twisted Tales Special Edition Book 1) (5 page)

Do I dare to dream of the days before the outbreak? Can my reminiscence help me find peace even though my actions caused the deaths of millions of people? Will I ever find redemption?

I stood in that cold bathroom and repeatedly wiped the sweat from my brow. I looked into the mirror, and the person staring back was not the one I'd watched grow into a man. The arctic sapphire accusatory eyes gazed upon me as an unknown guilt crawled up my spine and tickled the nape of my neck with its steely claws.

I shivered, and quickly looked away as the clock struck noon on the last day of college—and as a matter of fact, the last day for humanity. I wondered how much longer it would be before those who wronged me paid for their poor choices.

Chad, my good friend and the man I fell in love with
freshman
year, plowed through the bathroom door. It clattered against the wall, and he stopped short of a foot from me. His exertion painted his cheeks rosy and white, and he breathed heavily as though the world was going to end.

He said through heaves of what sounded like thick viscous air, "You
gotta
hurry... the cafeteria... people are... dying."

I put my hand on his shoulder, and smiled thinly. I had expected more of a grin because I knew why they were dying, knew the reasons they perished that day, but the realization that I had murdered people had an unequivocally sobering effect.

“What are you talking about?” I said as I turned back to the sink. Although I had just washed my hands, I felt like I needed to wash them again. I’d played violent video games, enjoyed violent horror movies, and killed people in the visceral images painted by well-written horror novels. However, nothing prepared me for the real thing, the real emotions tied to ending someone’s life.

“People are dying, babe, do you get what I’m saying?”

I turned the water on, pumped three small piles of foamy soap into my palm, and as I washed my hands, I looked at the small box sitting on the counter next to me. Inside were the remnants of my dorm room. There were a few pencils, a lot of pens, a valentine’s card from Chad, and a comb. The comb wasn’t mine. My hair was as wild as crabgrass on a hillside. Chad, on the other hand, always had fantastic hair. Hell, he had many amazing features. Gorgeous brown eyes, thin powerful lips that stretched into a big beautiful smile, and the way his eyebrows lit up when he looked at me. I took a deep loving breath, and then shut off the water.

As I reached for a towel, Chad grabbed my arm, and he did it hard. I turned to him with surprise because he'd never been aggressive with me before.

He said, "Seriously, you need to listen to me. Everyone’s
dyin
',
man
... everyone. We
gotta
do something."

I honestly don’t know what happened, but suddenly things became real. My skin tensed with gooseflesh, and my face felt numb. Deep inside there was a feeling of guilt, the same feeling you get when you do something that you can’t take back. For some, it’s taking the extra change the cashier gave them or the feeling after being conned by a
sleazeball
. For me, it was the realization that what I had done began to kill more than just the people that hurt me.

“Come on, we
gotta
help them!” Chad said and grabbed my hand. He pulled me through the door and down the hall toward the campus cafeteria. At first, I resisted him. I didn’t want to see what I’d done. I couldn’t face the reality of my actions, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to hide what I’d done from Chad. He would know I was hiding something. He always did, just as he always managed to get me to do the things I didn’t want to do. Before I realized it, I was standing at the cafeteria doors. Ground zero.

I looked through the small crosshatched glass window of the door. Inside the large room were hundreds of my classmates. They shuffled and crawled over each other as vacant in mind as the whisper of wind through a leafless tree. They had a dead stare in their eyes that was haunting, too. They had wounds on various parts of their bodies, and most had blood spilling from their lips.

One of them, I think it was David from Elementary Algebra, banged his head against the window until the glass shattered. He fell to the ground and began to crawl as the things that were no longer human began to file through the opening. Before I knew it, and before I could grow the courage to stop them, they disappeared from the cafeteria and spread throughout the campus.

I backed away from the door, and when I hit the wall on the other side of the corridor I said, “I never meant for this to happen.”

“What?” Chad said, and he came to me. As I slid down the wall, he knelt next to me. “What are you saying?”

I said in an almost inaudible whisper, “I did this.”

“Babe, I can’t here you.” He said, and when he put his hand on my shoulder, I flinched.

“I did this.” I said, but louder this time.

"What do you mean?”

“Last night I… treated the pool water. When… the acidity in the water was gone, I put that—that bacteria in there.” I said and buried my face in my hands. “Oh, God… I killed them all.”

Chad took his hand off my shoulder, and he moved away.

He said, “What bacteria? I don’t understand. What the hell did you do?”

“God, don’t you see, Chad? That stupid bacterium we grew in the lab, the one that we mutated. I just…” I said, and my words caught in my throat with a sour stall. “I didn’t know it would do this. I didn’t think it would spread without water…”

“Why would you do that?”

I cried, and the tears spilled between my trembling fingers. “They always treated us like crap. We were always that gay couple that everyone treated differently. Especially them, that fucking swim team.”

“I can’t believe this…” He said as he fell against the adjacent wall.

“I killed everyone.” I said.

For a while, we were silent. It was obvious Chad was still trying to figure out how I could have done the things that I did, but his emotional suffering didn’t last long, not as long as mine, anyway. He turned into one of those monsters a few minutes later, and I ran, never to see his face, hear his comforting voice, or feel his soft touch ever again.

He wasn’t the only person I loved that suffered from my hatred. My mother, father, and little sister all fell ill. Because the bacteria had mutated to be effective in freshwater of any temperature, it found its way into the water supply and spread everywhere. Within a few weeks, most of the world was gone.

With just a few of us survivors remaining, we found refuge in the mountains; a place far enough from the mindless wanders where we could be safe. Food became scarce, but water was abundant, though it required a cleaning process that took a lot of time.

I recounted the moments leading up to the end of the world for only one reason. Please know that I don’t seek understanding from my actions. I will never pretend that you should feel empathy or any sort of sympathy or pity for me. What I did was inexcusable, and something I expect nothing but contempt from anyone I meet. Hell, the reason I hadn’t killed myself was that I needed to make things right—needed to help people survive.

I open my eyes for the first time to a world of giants. These fascinating creatures walk around the room as zombies with hollow eyes and cold, pasty skin. They seem to have no drive, but they go about some kind of business that was yet unknown to me.

One in particular with short golden hair, pleasant soft features, and piercing blue eyes sits down in front of me. She rubs her lids and sighs as the cool blue glow from the computer casts wraiths of shadows upon her face.

Although I perceive the world, I don’t understand it or know how I came to be. I know I can think, and therefore I must exist, but I don’t know what created me. Maybe I just came from nothingness, an inexplicable rise in consciousness from a change in the world’s balance. I can’t be sure of what causes the hot black blood to course through my veins, and it seems no matter how long I deliberate over existentialism, I will likely find no answer.

The giant sitting in front of me yawns. Her mouth stretches wide and she breathes deep the thick warm air that ends with a soft sticky smacking of her voluptuous lips. She looks at me with those sultry eyes as she reaches for me, and it is a vision that, although I’ve just seen for the first time, is ecstasy.

She clasps her hands around my waist and brings me closer to her face. Those soft, supple lips come closer and closer and as they reach me, they pucker together. When she lays those delicate cushions upon me, exhilaration tingles through my body. Her tongue caressed my exterior, and then—

No, what is she doing? That feeling, I can’t—is she? She began to suck the life out of me. Each gulp pulls more from my body—

—no, stop—

—please!

Can anyone stop her?

Don’t do this!

I can’t—

I—

I approached my friend who stood at the tip of the exterior trim of a very tall building. I saw his toes peeking over the edge, testing the water before their grand escape into the deepest of oceans. When he looked back, his tortured faced burned with sadness, but he looked oddly relieved to see me.

“You don’t know what it’s like.”

“Yes I do.”

“No you don’t. I’m alone all the time. There’s no one to talk to, no one to turn to, it’s all just so… distant.”

“But you’re talking to me right now. That’s
gotta
be something.”

The wind pushed him against the wall and then pulled him toward death as if it was eager to end the whole thing. I took a step forward, worried he might fall, but he steadied himself and clung tighter to the wall behind him.

“Sure, but what then? There’s nothing left.”

“That’s a question I don’t have the answer to, but if we’re talking now, what’s stopping us from hanging out later?”

“Everything. My world is so dark and cold, and I know I said this, but I’m so damn lonely. I just can’t deal with it.”

“Isn’t there someone else there? Family? Friends?”

“No… there’s no one. All I want to do is fall asleep and wake up in a new wonderful place, but I can’t. There’s no end… no end…”

“That’s sounds hard.”

“It really is.”

“What about before… were you happy before?”

“I was, by comparison. Now it’s
like
I got this rain following me around. You know, like in the
cartoons?
Except there’s no
happy ending
. All I see is darkness.”

“Damn, I had no idea.”

“No one does. They all think they know, but they don’t. They can’t understand what I’m going through. They won’t until they step into my shoes and experience all this for themselves.”

“What can I do?”

“For me, there’s nothing anyone can do.” I said, and nodded. “You can get off that ledge, though.”

“Okay.” My friend said, and then cautiously stepped through the window. “Russell? Where’d you go?”

He looked around the room, but I wasn’t there anymore. Well, I didn’t actually go anywhere because I stood right in front of him, but he couldn’t see me anymore. I was only visible to do one thing, to stop him from making the same mistake I did. A moment later, I returned to that cold lonely darkness from which I constantly emerge to help those unable to help themselves.