Losing Inertia

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Losing Inertia Page 18

by VK Gregory


  There was something I needed to do.

  I went back to Daniel, trying not to look at his face as I reached into his pocket for his car keys. I don’t know where I found the energy to drive, my legs were heavy with exhaustion, my heart aching. There were several casualties along the way, I hit more than one pedestrian, but I didn’t stop as I drove towards the awe-inspiring mushroom looming on the horizon, its underbelly lit up from beneath, with orange, fear-filled fire. I drove erratically, tears streaming down my face, sometimes I veered off dangerously, sometimes I drove too fast, or too slow, but I just wanted to get there.

  I came to a screeching halt and got out the car, not even looking at the sky above. My house had, of course, not changed. It stood, as it would stand forever - empty, still, silent. Gathering radioactive dust and rotting away. Except for this moment. I opened the door and went to the kitchen. Nothing had changed, we could have stepped out hours ago, except for the slight smell of rotten food. I tried running the tap for water to wash away the blood, but it barely trickled. I found a half-used water bottle on the kitchen side and used that to pour over my hands, watching the red liquid pour down the drain as I tried to get them clean. But the water seemed to make it worse and my hands seemed even more saturated with blood. I used a paper towel to dry them as best I could and found my way to the living room.

  I slowly circled her. She stood exactly where she had for so many weeks.

  ‘Move, do something,’ I looked at my mother, pleading with her to break free from the statue-moment. Her eyes were like sunken pits of despair. Her legs were a strange, purplish colour, where I assumed blood had pooled from standing so long. ‘He’s dead. Everyone’s dead. I will be soon too; there’s a mushroom cloud the size of a small country out there. I can’t…I just can’t,’ I let out a sob, the silence broken suddenly, and the moment suddenly seeming too real. The dreamlike quality of my presence was no more. What I was about to do was very real indeed. Was I doing the right thing? She looked so ill; I couldn’t let her die a slow death. I smiled at her, ignoring her overwhelming skeleton-like appearance, focusing on the mother I had once known so well.

  ‘Goodbye, mommy,’ and then I reached out to touch her cheek, and for just the briefest second I felt the softness of her skin on my fingers. But somewhere in that second, she blinked, she really blinked,

  ‘Katy?’ her voice was barely a whisper, barely anything, but it was real. Was it real? She stared at me for the briefest half-second moment, she saw me. Before recoiling in horror from my touch. Her voice turning to a pain-filled shriek that overwhelmed my ears.

  ‘Mommy’ I cried, as she cried, her eyes filled with agony. Her body crumbled and squealed and shrieked as I tried to reach for her, save her. coating my own body in her crumbling ash. She was gone. Had she been alive. Had she really called my name? I tried to frantically brush the ash from my face, grittiness filled my mouth as I coughed, crying dry tears.

  It was the last moment of tragedy I could bear. There was nothing left for me here in this world. I took the picture from the mantelpiece of Daniel and I, taking a moment to glance at it, my stomach lurching in fresh, raw grief. Then I made my way back to the car.

  The burst of energy I had found to perform my final task was now gone. I struggled to walk and driving felt like an impossible task. But somehow, I found strength to push the pedals, to wrench the gear stick into place to force my dying body to complete this final test.

  I crashed the car not far from where Daniel lay on the cold ground and hit my head hard on the steering wheel causing blood to pool into my eyes. I allowed my body a moment to recover, resting my damaged, dying body on the dash of the car, breathing in the scent of dust and plastic. But I would not die slowly in this car. Pulling up the door, I watched the smoke from the car bonnet cautiously, expecting it to burst into flames at any time. Once the door was open I fell through the door to the road, not feeling the tarmac against my body, not feeling the sting of the grazes on my knees. I scrambled to my feet and staggered the few hundred metres necessary to get back to the house with the red door.

  I did not want to see Daniel or Dean but their silent mounds filled the street with tangs of drying blood. I opened the door with my bloodied hands, my eyes also filled with red as blood flowed over my lids. The brass was slick under my fingers and I struggled to depress the handle.

  Inside I looked desperately for something to wipe away the blood from my eyes, so I could see. But the kitchen seemed devoid of cloths, or towels, eventually I just splashed bottled water on my eyes until I could see without the dark red haze clouding my vision. Dabbing my face dry on my sleeve, I looked for a bandage, searching the cupboards around me. I found our special drinks in one long wooden cupboard, along with our two cups. Daniel had still brought me water after I had stopped the food and shakes. As I moved the shakes to the side I noticed a small dark bottle at the back, it had no lid. It looked empty and written on the side were the words, ‘Rat No More’.

  ‘Rats?’ I looked around for rat traps, or signs Danny had been baiting rats, or even that he would care if we had rats. But the more I looked at that bottle, the more my stomach ached. I sniffed the bottle, it didn’t smell of much, I sniffed one of the glasses, I remembered sipping water from it, but it was hard to tell, it was so hard to tell. But it was here, an empty bottle of what basically was poison, here where he always prepared my drinks.

  I thought back. Apart from the time after I had left. Danny had always made food, always prepared drinks for me, insisted upon it, and who was I to argue? I thought of the sickness that had abated once I left him and returned when I had come back, the hair loss, the stomach pains. My breath hurt, my chest ached and the sob was threatening to escape in a roar of anger.

  ‘No no, no,’ I pleaded, looking around, but there was no more evidence to find. Maybe he had only used it towards the end to hurry our deaths, end our suffering…maybe. Maybe.

  Somehow this was a worse betrayal than hurting or killing Dean, he had promised his love for me, sworn he would never hurt me and yet here I was, holding poison.

  With a quivering lip, I put the bottle down, grabbed an old knitted blanket from the sofa, and I walked out the house.

  He could have been asleep, if I had not known better. With a struggling gait, I walked over to him. I crouched down and looked at his shrunken, starving face, his balding head, the pits where his eyes had been. He looked 100 years old, he didn’t look like my Daniel. I had no desire to hurt him, no energy for revenge, just confusion, bewilderment.

  I covered him with the blanket. As I stood over him I tried to think of my love for him, took a moment to remember the day I met Daniel. The man at the garage, approaching my car with a smile, his face ruddy with the cold, his face charmingly sweet as he opened my bonnet and pointed out what needed to be done. The way he kept me longer than necessary, chatting about our respective lives. From there our lives seem to converge at every turn until we moved in together. Life had not been easy, our relationship was rocky from the start, we had many differences, many which seemed incompatible but somehow, we stayed together. I looked at him and sighed, my breath shuddered in my throat. Shivering with the cold and exertion, I left Daniel and started walking.

  Each step was like knives, using energy I did not know I had, I was a walking, talking skeleton. The pharmacy wasn’t far, but it felt like miles.

  I walked past the living statues without a second glance, making my way to the counter, behind which would be enough pills to end it all very fast.

  But I stumbled, I stumbled and I fell. Banging a hip excruciatingly on a shelf, I cried out in pain.

  It was then it happened. Right then. A man ahead of me suddenly moved and I stared in horror as he fell to the ground moaning and screaming. The livingstatues, the livingstatues became people again, suddenly animated, but near death, they all collapsed. I looked around me, staring at them, their screams of pain filling my head. Screaming for all the living statues who had died because
of Danny and I.

  I glared outwards to the livingstatues, on the ground, barely moving. I pitied them, grateful I had ended my mother’s life when I did.

  Their eyes seemed blind and helpless as tiny baby rats. Their bodies were practically dead already as they began to claw their way towards me, pulling their aching, creaking, bones across the floor, moaning and groaning, the pat, pat, shuffle of hands against tiles.

  They were coming for me, grotesque bodies, contorted and twisted, trying to reach me,

  ‘No, NO. STOP’ I shrieked, trying to back away from them, but I was trapped into a corner, and was too exhausted to get up, they were coming, closer and closer with outstretched bony fingers, nails hanging off, reaching for me, skin cracked and bleeding and blackening,

  ‘Stop it’ I cried, covering my face with my hands to hide the unfolding nightmare, but I was surrounded, an old man reached out his hands, grabbing my ankle. The pain was instant and intense as I screeched, beneath his grip my skin withered. The withering climbed up my body, ageing me, draining me. Intense pain I had never felt before, and maybe I deserved it for my blind love. I loved him, even now. Hoping he was waiting for me. We would meet again.

  My screech was familiar, it was their noise, the noise when I touched them. Other hands were on me now as they enveloped me, pulling me down, withering me.

  Death was slow. But exquisitely welcome.

  THE END

  With thanks to my editor, Fiona Gregory for her hard work and suggestions.

  I hoped you enjoyed Losing Inertia. Please leave a review once you have finished reading. I would love to know what you think.

 

 

 


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