by TJ Seitz
Lilith’s Necklace
T.J. Seitz
Copyright 2015 by T.J. Seitz
Prologue
The Council of Elders banned most fiction books soon after they officially proclaimed that The Plague had ended.
Everyone is taught that The Plague began in February of 2017. It was initiated by a Middle East terrorist group called ISIS a few months after they captured the country of Israel and gained access to some of that country’s top secret research.
A scientist associated with the extremist organization hastily manufactured genetically-mutated germs in one of their hidden laboratories. Many of those parasites were resistant to all antibiotics and could live on surfaces or airborne for extended periods, until a suitable host was found.
One in particular caused nearly every human who came into contact with it to lose all body fluid. The bacterium behaved like a microscopic sponge that rapidly reproduced and literally sucked the life from its victims.
The biologist and his sponsors were not the sharpest tools in the shed. They obviously didn’t put a whole lot of thought into what might happen after the specimen was removed from their lab.
I wonder if the leaders of ISIS believed that the tactic would result in a quicker victory, in the lines of when America dropped a-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan during World War II.
Instead they killed off seventy-five percent of the world’s adult population over thirty and around fifty percent of those under thirty years old within the first eighteen months of the catastrophic event.
The microbes were especially fatal to males who were vaccinated for chickenpox or never endured the disease as children. Having high cholesterol, diabetes or being malnourished was also a death sentence. Oddly, most women of Native American origins who were menstruating or pregnant were not affected by the organism. Their children (both boys and girls) who nursed for at least the first year of their lives were also resistant to the infection.
I find it ironic how the same group of people who were nearly annihilated by common illnesses, such as the flu, when Europeans started living in the Americas fared much better than the rest of the world. The Plague was a form of celestial karma for my ancestors.
Terri
Before getting too far ahead of myself I should probably take the time to stop and introduce myself.
My birth name is Teresa Rider. Most of my friends and remaining family members back on Earth called me Terri. However, here on Mars everyone thinks my name is Lilith.
I was born twenty six-years ago but am only considered around twenty-three because of all the time I spent in stasis on a transport ship.
There’s nothing outwardly exceptional about me.
I’m five foot, six inches tall and weighed one hundred and thirty-two pounds (on Earth). I have short brown hair, brown eyes and recently started wearing glasses.
I’m not good at math or building stuff and don’t really have much to say. Crowds make me feel anxious.
My memory and tendency to over-analyze things are probably my most apparent traits. I’d consider those two qualities both a strength and weakness.
I like to observe and help people.
I was raised on a small family farm (if you could even call it that) inside the Creole Quadrant of Louisiana by my maternal grandmother Abigail.
Abby McKay was a stubborn, independent old woman who spoke with a thick Cajun accent. She was born and raised around the bayou.
Granny was half French-Creole (She claimed to be more Ishak or Atakapa than French though.) and half Scotch-Irish (Which was probably an oversimplification on her part because her mother’s family was actually one-hundred percent Cherokee. They adopted the family name of McKay at some point before leaving the reservation in Oklahoma for better job opportunities in Lafayette, Louisiana. ).
She complained a lot and rarely said anything nice about men. Both of her common law husbands left her for other women long before I was born.
The lady was just four feet nine inches tall and fat. She waddled around with a limp because her hip needed replacing but she refused to do the surgery because, “She wanted to leave this world with all the parts she came into it with at birth.”
Her hair was naturally curly, long, thick and dark brown, without a trace of gray. It was impossible to tell how old she was; she always looked the same as far back as I can remember. Her plump round face hid any wrinkles she might have had if she were skinnier.
She always wore simple homespun housedresses with a frilly apron tied over them and walked around barefoot. I’m pretty sure she was half blind but she instinctively knew her way around her house and property by feel (and sound) making it unnecessary for her to wear glasses.
My mother, Fran, ran off with a guy whose last name was Redman when I was two years old. I don’t remember either of them. My dad died before I was born. His name was Jessie. I think I have an uncle but he was raised by his father and his second wife.
My grandmother did not talk much about any of them. I have a feeling that Granny thought my mother abandoned her just like my mother’s father did years before.
I’m unsure about the circumstances regarding Gran’s son. Whenever I tried to talk about any those subjects she’d choke up a bit, say things like, “I’m an old woman honey, my memory is not as good as it used to be, “or “Let’s leave the past alone and worry about something we have more control over like now or the future, “then change the topic to something less disturbing for her.
When I turned thirteen, Granny enrolled me in a five year vocational boarding school near Atlanta, Georgia. She didn’t want me spending the rest of my life living in a backward community where most people only had two choices to improve their lives; marriage or the military. Both were big gambles in Granny’s mind so when government recruiters offered me a scholarship that paid full tuition plus room and board she quickly seized the opportunity and signed me up.
After graduating and completing my apprenticeship there I was assigned to work at a health care facility in Eugene, Oregon.
Auntie Helen, Granny’s sister, and Helen’s daughter Esther moved in with my grandmother soon after I left. Helen’s husband died and they needed a place to live. Granny offered them my old room.
Reminiscing
My colleagues and I talk a lot about food and our past lives. Melancholy or homesickness is a common problem here, so. Nearly everyone I know is in therapy or taking some kind of anti-anxiety medication because of it. I miss my home life but not my home.
It’s easier for me because most of my family is either dead or were never around to begin with. There’s not much to long for. Someday though I hope to have kids of my own and recreate the feelings I experienced living with my grandmother.
Our solar-powered modular home was full of smells and sounds.
There were four lazy Tom cats (Granny preferred male cats because she liked their disposition better) who were better at shedding fur than catching mice and a black labra-dork dog named Molly who liked to eat poop and thought she was a person. (Granny was always chasing her off the furniture and away from the litterboxes.)
When I was eight, I remember setting a spot for the dog at the kitchen table (for fun). She got right up onto the chair and waited patiently to be served. I put a bowl of dog food on the table in front of her and she refused it. I then put some mashed potatoes, green beans and a hot dog on the plate and she carefully ate it. Granny saw what I did and yelled at me to not waste food.
I had to keep my bedroom door shut at night or all the animals would try to get onto the bed with me. Molly was a bed hog, had stinky breath and snored when she slep
t. The cats would wrestle with each other and pester me to get up and feed them at all hours of the night.
Despite her arthritis and frozen shoulder, my grandmother used to bake bread at least twice a week, can the vegetables we grew in our garden, knit and make a lot of the clothes we wore with an old sewing machine that her grandmother bought her when she turned ten. She claimed it was to save money but I think it was because she needed to keep busy and avoided shopping at most of the larger retail stores because she thought they exploited poor people.
I hated feeding the chickens and weeding. We lived in swamp country. It was almost always hot and muggy. The bugs drove me crazy. It would not bother me in the least bit if I never saw another snake or alligator for the rest of my life, which is quite possible now since I live on Mars where there are none.
There weren’t many neighbors. We were surrounded by marsh and farm land.
Outside of school I only had a couple of playmates. Sabina and Caroline Taylor were twin sisters who lived across the road. They were almost a year older than me but in the same grade. We all spent a lot of time together, avoiding their four older brothers who liked to terrorize us until they were old enough to join the army and move away.
Those boys were always trying to get us to scream or chasing us with gross stuff like dead fish or rotten eggs.
I remember sleeping over their house one time