Young Writers Society

Ugh. Hmm.

She’d been staring at it for ten minutes now.

What was she doing?

Samples. Samples. Right. Of the...stuff...

The plastic bag crinkled in her hand as she picked one of the growths from the wall. It felt like tearing off a wing off a butterfly. A butterfly. It looked oddly like a butterfly wing. So many butterflies. They clustered around the wall corner, dripping water. They sprouted like little leaves from the moldy mycelium blossoming on the walls. Why didn’t they flap their wings?

What was she doing?

Juliette clutched her forehead. She had a headache.

Slipping the wing into the sandwich bag, she went to look for some aspirin.

* * *

His eyes glistened like molasses as he took in a deep breath of the smell. Of that moment That gleaming, shining moment. He rolled the memory over in his mind like a candy in his mouth, savoring the sweetness as it melted. He almost felt like he was still there, as he tugged slightly on the photo, half-trying to pull it out of the paper.

It was an okay photo. Kind of blurry. But a souvenir for sure. A souvenir of perfection.

About a week ago, they’d gone on a family trip to the Rockies...or was it something else? Ferris couldn’t quite remember. But that wasn’t important.

He could still feel it as if he was there. The delicious soreness of his muscles after the hour’s climb. The righteous sweat under his clothes. The blood filling his cheeks as the icy mountain air stung at his ears. He could almost feel the chill. The zzzzzzzt of him unzipping his backpack and grabbing a crinkling Hershey’s bar. His family’s faces shining bright as stars as they crowded together at the top of the mountain for a picture. The warmth as their clothes pressed together. The rich brown gleam and creamy chunks of the chocolate melting in his mouth, as his face glowed, and a thumb tapped down on the red circle, capturing the perfect moment forever.

That was what was important. It was the most important thing in the world.

But it was over.

His eyes unfocused. Had it always been this humid…?

* * *

Chop

Chop

Chop

Where were they? He could smell them. He could feel their tart acidity stinging in his eyes. He could feel the moistness of the grainy cutting board. He was cutting them, wasn’t he? Why else would he still be moving the knife?

But there were no onions. It’d been an hour since he’d finished cutting them.

His hand stung. Had he cut himself instead of his onions? It couldn’t be that deep. No, it was fine. He had to keep cutting them. He needed to make dinner.

Stains of blood stained the cutting board, and more dipped from his bleeding hand. The metallic smell mingled the smell of the onions, the small white heap of shavings piled neatly on the other side of the chopping block. The smooth orbs that had birthed them were gone. A few of the chunks looked a bit pink.

The knife clattered back onto the cutting board. He weakly leaned back against the fridge, looking at his dripping hand. It looked like something was growing inside. He groaned. His head felt all...fuzzy…

“I need…” he whispered soundlessly, “...to help Mom make dinner...I…”

Flan staggered over to the crockpot. It oozed full of raw meat sprinkled with chopped carrot. The pink, bleeding slabs hung with rubbery yellow fat and had a few flies inspecting with their bristly black feet. Ugh. He shooed them away with a lazy wave of his hand and pressed his palms into the edge of the stove. Still looking inside the pot. It was full...the crockpot already had...stuff in it......was it ready already?

He listlessly reached his hand into the pot and plucked out a piece of raw beef, and ate it like an animal.

* * *

A fly landed on Daffodil’s finger. Black, bristly, and buzzing, the slight tickle against her skin suddenly sent her on a slow rise out of oblivion, jellylike and oozing, like a bubble in a travel bottle of shampoo. It was like rising out of molasses. But she did. Slowly.

Daffodil became dimly aware of the wilted petals between her fingers. They were brown and crackly like an old layer of paint. Grindingly, like a glacier starting to shift across a landscape, awareness dripped back into her limbs. Words to make sense of where she was. She was sitting. She could feel her flesh pressing into a chair, her muscles squeezed in a sitting position. She was at a table, a wooden one. There were wilted petals between her fingers. There was an aching hollowness in her stomach. Hunger had rooted in the emptiness like a weed.

How long had she been sitting here? Hardly breathing, motionless, staring into nothing?

There was a pitcher in her hand, with an inch of water in it.

She looked up. Soft clouds of decay floated in her eyes, a tangle of dead flowers. The passionate red roses had hardened into closed, crackly flakes of wine granite, the cherry blossoms dropped their rotting petals onto the tabletop. The royal petals of deep purple irises were thin garlic peels stained with brown and bleached lily petals hung from the flower heads like rotten banana peels. Brittle stems of withered peonies rattled in the drafts and dropped orchid blossoms crumbled into dust.

It was a graveyard.

One part of her wondered why all these flowers were here, another sobbed. She’d spent her life tending to the flowers. And they’d died because she forgot the water them.

Her head felt clouded and spinning. Wobbling, she got to her feet. She needed to eat something, or she might wither, too.

* * *

It was late afternoon, that cooled the warm highways and began to melt the light from the sky as the sun sank down towards the hills. A crisp breeze whistled across those warm highways. Those warm highways that were void of cars.

That was good for Ciana, because she’d wandered under an overpass and was not obviously aware.

The plastic belly of a spray bottle bumped against her legs as she rubbed a threadbare washcloth against the concrete. The mint-green road signs flashed above her. Her were glazed and she was mumbling something under her breath.

“Just a little more...missed a spot...there...wait...missed a spot...just a little more…”

Her sandals shifted constantly on the asphalt. A cloud of locks creamy pale like buttermilk floated around her head and a teal dress fluttered around knee-length socks, now torn to shreds like gift wrapping. The highway gleamed, slightly moist in the humidity.

Suddenly, she swayed back, limbs slowing flailing like a ballerina in a music box, craning her neck to look at the sky.

“...Oh ...a butterfly…”

A daytime moon hung in the saturated blue sky, as milkiness seeped into craters and washed over the smooth lunar surface, and slate-gray clouds laced the edges. But the haze of daylight did nothing to quell the wave of panic that rippled through her.

Did nothing to stop that pale light, that awful pale light that spilled into her eyes, sizzling like a twisted sort of milky magma.

Not again…

She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to keep still and stop vibrating as a sensation like electricity shook through her, making her bones buzz and sparks sputter from between her eyelids. It was like trying to hold shut a plastic bag of water, too much, too much as it bulged and dribbled out. But she held it in, and finally the feeling ebbed, leaving her confused and empty as she was before.

It seemed like there was...some reason...that this shouldn’t be real. That it wasn’t possible.

But she just couldn’t remember why. She couldn’t remember much of anything. In this new face of life, reality was void.

* * *

Hmm…

Why...why was it cold...the noodles were just..warm...ah…Did I take too long eating them

But she hadn’t eaten them yet. They sat, limp in the cold, carbohydrate bathwater, gently shifting like little worms, coiled like squiggles of DNA. Her freshly washed fork gleamed lifelessly next to it on the table.

What was she doing?

Starling looked across the table. There was some sort of broken machine. The metal skin was peeled away like cornhusk, showing the innards of clockwork and branching wire. Glowing hearts blinked like christmas lights and transformers sizzled with electricity. Honeycombs of switchboard and disconnected plugs were strewn across the table. At first glance she could almost feel the memory of her long fingers plucking out wires. At her second it was gone, and the machine was incomprehensible. But it must’ve been hers, right? Why had she forgotten…?

She pushed back her chair and swayed onto her heels. The room didn’t seem right. Did she know it…?

Why was she standing in an inch of water?

* * *

“Ah..Mom…” said Flan, wandering dazedly to his parent’s room. His mom wasn’t there but she was on the couch in the next room. He didn’t see her. His footsteps skidded on the slick floor and his mouth was stained with the blood of the raw meat, making him smell of rust. “I...made the dinner…”

Mom turned her head slowly, as if the air was molasses.

“Good...should I..call,” she said, “um...whoever else lives here…”

“We all forget sometimes.”

“Yeah. We do.”

“It’s very...moist in here.”

“Yeah. Must be...rain…”

She trailed off again.

“Rain.” He nodded. “What’s your name again…?”

“I forget…”

* * *

When the blackout happened, everyone felt it, and it happened quickly, like this:

zzzt

FLASH

Lights off. 

“Oh,” said Flan.

“Oh,” said Juliette

“Oh,” said Ferris.

“Oh,” said Daffodil.

“Oh,” said Ciana.

“Oh,” said Starling.