#my dad got told to “go back to his country” by this decaying bitch of a school bus driver that was fighting with him while we drove home 🤩

[et3rnal-dr3am3r]

sometimes i think that racism in my area isn’t bad, especially given how diverse of a place i’ve always lived in, but then something happens and i think twice about that.

[czarbok]

rant with a huge tw// ed

i never thought that i would be the one to develop an eating disorder, especially at the current age i’m at. when i was 8, i kinda suffered from an anxiety-induced food aversion which would make me not eat in fear of choking/throwing up. because of this, i was underweight for a good chunk of time. from about third grade until 8th grade, i was very scrawny; my friends mom would constantly say i had toothpick legs and my grandma would call me a skinny minnie lmao.

i had a huge appetite and a metabolism that was even faster through these years. i had shaken off my food aversion by fifth grade but never managed to gain an excess amount of weight. i didn’t hit 100 pounds until seventh grade and it was partially because i was going through puberty and growing. i still got my period on time because i was eating frequently. i ate a lot of junk food and huge servings of meals but never seemed to gain weight. people envied me.

by ninth grade, i was still really skinny. a-cups for my bra, toothpick legs, ankles that i could almost wrap my fingers around, the whole bit. i was getting into more muscle-building sports at this time. in jr. high, i ran track and cross-country but i gave both of them up for softball and soccer respectively. as much as i liked to think i was gaining muscle, i still looked like a stick. i looked awkward and stringy in all of my uniforms. the best way to describe how i looked is a praying mantis.

in ninth grade, i had also gotten my first boyfriend. he was a year older than me and he was more experienced than me. he was on the wrestling team so he frequently had to cut weight and cutting weight meant skipping meals and binging and purging. dinners at his house were awkward because i would be eating a huge plate of food and he would eat nothing. because he was lactose intolerant, he would eat large portions of ice cream and dairy products just to shit out the weight. he wasn’t that much heavier than me which i felt like it bothered him because that’s just the type of person he was. i never weighed myself at this time because the scale was always kept in my parents’ room and it was never right. i only got weighed at my yearly physicals.

the following summer, my boyfriend had broken up with me and i was devastated. i would lock myself in my room and only come out for basketball or soccer. i also ate less because my forming depression made it hard for me to get an appetite. i don’t know if i lost any weight, because again, i wasn’t weighing myself. i tried to get more involved with soccer, constantly practicing and honing my skills as a goalkeeper. i was also honing my skills in basketball summer league because i wanted to be on varsity in the coming year.

i had petty feuds with my first ex-boyfriend that whole summer and into my sophomore year of high schools but by the time school came back in, we seemed to become “friends”. at this time, i had also met my second boyfriend through mutual loves of music and soccer. he was overweight but i didn’t care. i really liked who he was as a person. he made me laugh and made me feel better about my breakup. he acted like a therapist and a best friend to me. but we didn’t start officially dating until february of our sophomore year.

before that, we were really close friends. we made fun of a boy i dated for a month and my first ex-boyfriend. we hung out a lot at his house and he made me feel like my world was getting put back together. i had won second team all-conference in soccer as sophomore, one of the first to do so, and i was excelling in basketball making a promising effort to be on varsity.

then i went to the doctor for on-going foot pains. my doctor told me that my foot had been broken for three years because of a basketball injury. the bone and joint had decayed and rotted and i needed to do something about it if i wanted to continue to play sports. i obliged because i wanted the attention that my foot injury would bring me, especially for my ex-boyfriend. so november 2015, i had surgery on my foot. i had an artificial joint put in my foot at the age of 15 and my doctor promised that i wouldn’t have to worry about it for 15 years if i followed through with physical therapy.

i got out of the hospital the same night and went home with all sorts of drugs including vicodin, antibiotics, and anti-imflamatories. drew, my friend and second boyfriend, was always a text away to keep my spirits up. i was out of basketball for a month and a half and lost my varsity jersey because there was no point in me having it. that wrecked me and it wrecked me even more that i couldn’t play with my best friends. i sunk into a depression that made me question if i even wanted to return from sports.

my weight wasn’t a concern to me because i never worried about it. i went through countless hours of pt in the early mornings before school so that i could get back on the court quicker. it was painful and constantly made me tired because my endurance and energy had diminished since i was put out. but i still didn’t notice my weight.

i returned to basketball in late december, winded and hesitant. i galloped when i ran in fear of destroying my new joint but i looked more fluid and confident than i ever had before. drew and i were increasingly becoming closer but i was increasingly becoming more and more suicidal.

january 1, 2016, my dad’s best friends and a very close friend to my family suddenly died in his sleep. we had actually been at his house for new years that night and now he was dead. it shook my family to the core. it brought out a side of my father that i had never seen before. he came into my room crying and hugged me, saying that he didn’t know what he was going to do without him. i was heartbroken and sunk into an even deeper depression. we spent a lot of time at his house, helping his now widowed wife and sons— two were adults, one was a senior in high school, the other in 8th grade and best friends with my sister. the calling hours rocked me as some of his favorite music blasted through his alma mater. one of them had been rose tattoo by the dropkick murphys, one of my favorite songs at the time. i still can’t listen to it. another song was the devil in i by slipknot which played frequently on my family’s favorite radio station; if it came on, the station would immediately be switched.

again, drew helped me cope and we were getting more intimate. we still joked about our exes and had fun but we were becoming closer than friends. by late january, i contracted mono for the first time and lost my appetite for over a week. i probably lost a lot of weight, but again, it wasn’t a concern.

i had also been trying to get my drivers license through february, taking the required classes and trying to schedule in-cars. ohio is a bitch state to get your license in. by february, drew and i were official and he urged me to get my license so i could take him places. i frequently broke down because i was so overwhelmed with recovering from an injury, recovering from mono, now softball, and school. drew urged me to see a therapist because i had frequent suicidal thoughts that worried him.

it wasn’t until may of 2016 that i received my diagnosis of depression. i was put on a low dose of serafem and put on suicide watch for that week because my mental health was so bad. my relationship was drew was getting rocky; i was starting to distrust him and he seemed to want to do everything without me. i finally finished the in-class session of my drivers test and passed but i still had to do in-cars before i could take my test.

that same month, my mom forced me to go to the obgyn to get on birth control because she thought i was sexually active with drew. (technically we weren’t). i had heard rumors that birth control caused weight gain but i wasn’t concerned, i got on it anyways. i was very strict with the time that i took it for about a year before not caring. i still take it every night, just not at the same time lmao. i didn’t realize it, but i started gaining weight.

drew broke up with me in mid-july of 2016 and i wanted to kill myself. and i tried. taking the vicodin i had from my foot surgery, i tried to od but only woke up from it in the middle of the night, devastated that i was still alive. but then i thought, who would take care of kojack, my cat, if i died? he would most certainly be kicked out of my house for his poor use of the litterbox. so i held off trying again. i finally got my drivers license and it stated that my weight was 125 lbs.

i went to my psychiatrist once a month where i rarely received an up in my antidepressants. i was only on 20 mgs of prozac for two years and i struggled heavily. my psych constantly treated me like a child and never really helped me with anything. so i stopped going but my prescriptions continued.

it was probably a mix between the prozac and birth control that made me gain weight. i ballooned to 135 my junior year of high school but i was still active in sports yearround. in november of my junior year, i started dating a close friend who was also a wrestler. we were also sexually exclusive. this boyfriend didn’t have to cut weight nearly as much as my first boyfriend but he didn’t eat. i began to gain muscle and was making a name for myself in athletics, winning all conference recognition in all three sports.

my paternal grandmother ended up passing away from what i think is medical malpractice in november of 2016. i was very close to her. she was my sisters and i’s babysitter growing up and she was always at our sporting events. we had been in buffalo, new york with my mom’s family when we heard the news that she was dying. early in the morning, my mom rushed us back home to ohio, worried that she would die before we got there. we had gotten there in two hours, a record if i had ever seen and she died shortly after we got there. i never went into the room. i saw my mom hold her hand as she took her last breath and my grandpa pacing and crying as she departed. i was shaken. but then i wasn’t. she didn’t die, i was sure of it. i never accepted that she had died becuase she was so prominent in my life. i made jokes about her passing but it never seemed like she died.

the boyfriend ended up breaking up with me after a wrestling meet after ignoring me all day. i was heartbroken but got over myself quicker than the other breakups. there was nothing between us but sex. at this time, i was starting to realize that my first boyfriend raped me, but i don’t want to get into that.

the summer of 2017 was a whirlwind. i was going around, trying to find someone to fill my sexual needs by disguising it and saying i wanted a boyfriend. i was in the best shape of my life. i was healthy and muscular. i ended up fucking one of my best friends and ruining our friendship right before my senior year started but i wasn’t too bothered by it.

in early september of 2017, i began talking to someone. i had actually met this guy at a cage the elephant concert with drew when he was dating someone else. i honestly thought he was weird and looked way older than he was. he also frequently told me that he loved me despite not really knowing me. either way i was freaked out but decided to give this guy a chance because of mutual interests. we started dating in late september of 2017 and i had never been happier. we’re still dating to this day and we’re currently living together.

donovan and i ate out frequently our first year of dating. i was taking my antideppressants on and off. i went from 130 lbs to 135 that year because we ate greasy foods, ate out a lot, ate a lot of junk food, and drank a lot of pop. i was ignorant to my weight gain but noticed it a bit once my last season of softball rolled around. i had committed to my college for soccer but wanted to play softball still because i loved it and was good at it. my uniform pants felt tighter.

it didn’t look like i had gained weight under clothes. i still fit in jeans i wore through freshman year but my stomach had definitely gained mass. i noticed this when we took a trip to the beach in late may and donovan took pictures of me. but i wasn’t bothered.

over the summer of 2018, i managed to take that mass off my stomach with soccer workouts to prep me for my upcoming collegiate soccer season. i also got my first job as a hostess which left me hungry because i couldn’t eat on the job. however, this led to binging after work and workouts but i still looked trim.

august came and i moved into college. i was destraught moving away from my friends and family despite being only 20 mins from my hometown. the girls on the soccer team were less than welcoming to me and preseason was hell. i was placed on the reserves because my coach told me freshman year would be a developmental year to get me out of bad habits. i accepted. afterall, he did have an all-conference goalie starting. i worked hard despite not wanting to be there. i lost interest in soccer and started eating more again. my teammates constantly talked about me behind my back and i didn’t feel safe. i also contracted mono for a third time which sat me out of soccer for nearly two weeks. i came back winded and exhausted. even though i was sick, i still went to every home game and practice to support. i played in one last game before my foot joint gave out on me again. i was put in a boot and lost the rest of the season.

i had been in a boot before because of my foot joint since the surgery but something about this was different. anyways, i went up to my coach after the season had ended and announced that i would not be continuing on the soccer team for various reasons including my mental health. he tried to convince me otherwise but i quit. i ended up meeting with the lacrosse coach and joining that team instead. lacrosse seemed fun and it would be a challenge for me to pick up a sport i never played.

but i was gaining weight. the scale never showed but again, my stomach became prominent and chubbier because i was eating. in december, i went to a different nurse practicioner to get on meds again. the np would end up changing my meds every month and i would be put on four different antidepressants before my sophmore year of college.

between soccer and lacrosse, i began lifting more and running less. i wasn’t concerned with my endurance because it always seemed to be with me despite sickness and injuries. i put on muscle in my legs and arms and my stomach managed to slim down again before lacrosse started. by the time my freshman season of lacrosse started, i could cradle and pass decently for someone who had never played before but i couldn’t catch so my coach put me on defense to avoid me having to catch a pass.

once lacrosse ended in late april, i didn’t want to put on any weight so i began running. i started running a mile everyday through the summer which turned into a mile and a half everyday to two miles. i ran two miles almost everyday over the summer to keep in shape. i was also switching and adding meds and going to therapy as well. by the time my sophomore year of college rolled around, i was on klonopin, abilify, cymbalta, and strattera/vyvanse.

i maintained 135 lbs throughout these couple of years despite med changes and birth control. my sophomore year of lacrosse was going to be my breakout year because i had spent so much time improving my skills. sophomore year started out great. fallball was fantastic. i had taken leaps and bounds in improvement since april. i love lacrosse and wanted to be better than i was the day before.

in late october, i went to sleep with a stomachache that i dismissed as gas pains. i woke up frequently in pain and just thought i had to poop. going to the bathroom did not alleviate the pain. the pain had also shifted to the right side of my stomach. so i did some googling and saw that my symptoms mirrored a burst appendix. so i woke up donovan and we drove to the hospital at 3 am. through testing and scans, the doctors told me my appendix was imflamed and would need to be taken out before it burst. so later that afternoon, i received my second surgery.

after the surgery, i was extremely bloated from the air they had to pump into my stomach for the procedure. i was sure it was going to go away with walking and other techniques to get it out. it never did. i started lifting with the lacrosse team a week and a half later and followed up with my surgeon two weeks after the surgery. he weighed me and i weighed a whopping 140 lbs. i was shocked but brushed it off as i had all my clothes on and a jacket.

then i got home and weighed myself. 140. it couldn’t be. i had never weighed that much in my entire life. how did one surgery cause me to gain five pounds? i became obsessive over my weight going into november. i started working out five days a week instead of three but my weight never changed. going into december i started eating less but my weight fluctuated between 140 and 137 frequently. i ran more disntance and put more effort into lifting. i was constantly breaking down into tears because i just wanted to be skinny again. donovan tried to assure me that i was still skinny and looked great but i knew i didn’t. i looked gross and pudgy.

i started wearing baggier clothes and set up times where i would stop eating. 9 pm seemed like a realistic time to cut off eating so i did that. around christmastime, i contracted mono again and lost my appetite. because of this, i lost five pounds. i was estatic. finally, after two months of fretting about being 140, i was back at 135lbs. but then i was at 133lbs, then 132lbs before i realized that i hadn’t been this low in weight since high school.

so i started schedule eating once this semester rolled around. tiktok was giving me ideas to restrict calories and to fast and other borderline eating disorder ideas. i complied. i eat at noon, again at dinnertime which has to be later than 6pm, and then a snack before 9pm. by january, i was under 130lbs, which i hadn’t seen since sophomore year of high school. i was so happy and proud of myself. with running everyday and restricting the times that i ate, i had lost ten pounds in two months,

lacrosse came in late january and we weren’t doing as much conditioning as we had the previous year. i was worried that this would make me gain weight so i ran before practices some days and after practices on others. my weight dropped again to 125lbs, my goal, the weight my drivers license stated.

i was so happy i hit my goal but then i realized, what if i kept going? if it’s this easy, why stop here? i didn’t want to gain the weight back that i lost. plus everyone was saying how great i looked because i lost weight. tiktok videos came up encouraging me to lose weight. i weighed myself twice a day to see progress. my new psychiatrist and therapist weren’t keen on this and warned me to ditch the scale before this escalated into a fullblown eating disorder. i ignored them. i want to be skinnier, i want to look and feel great. i don’t want to be the weight that i used to be.

recently i downloaded myfitnesspal to track calories and calories that i burn with workouts. it says i should consume 1,390 calories a day if i want to lose a pound a week. with the workouts that i do, it wants me to eat more. i’ve been sticking around and eating no more than 1,000 calories a day with its frequent warnings of unhealthy weightloss. and maybe i’ve been lying to it because my weight sometimes fluctuates which i hate. i almost cried the other night because my weight was 124 lbs. my lowest so far has been 120lbs. donovan and my therapist are the only ones who know about my struggles with eating. my relationship with food has become dangerous. i hate eating and dread when the scheduled time to eat comes around. i hate the person i’ve become and at the same time, i don’t want to stop this habit.

[dontdietwd]

Don’t Die, day 11

It all happened too fast.

As I fled from the house through the kitchen door, it was all a blur of running and noise, Daryl and Merle’s heavy, hurried steps right on my heels and the loud groans and growls from the two dead people running after us. Daryl ran faster than me and guided us around my house to reach his. As we reached the porch, I looked back and saw Bobbi-Jo’s dead, stumbling but surprisingly agile body turning the corner, the half-face she still had with perfect makeup, but her eyes void of any life.

We’d entered the Dixon’s house, locked all the doors, and had been there ever since. The house had three entrances; the front door, the kitchen door to the side, which led to another small porch, and the basement hatch door, that had always been locked and blocked by an old wardrobe and had never been a viable way in and out. The kitchen door was now blocked by an old and very heavy dresser, cardboard blocking the glass view. The front door, the only one that was left unblocked, was constantly guarded.

If I had to recollect and tell exactly who things went, I wouldn’t be able to. I don’t know if it was the electricity, the phone signal or the internet that went down first. I don’t remember if we searched through the house looking for things that could be useful before or after we saw dozens of dead people walking around the street, Bobbi-Jo among them. The battery radio still worked, but no useful information came out of it.

It was a virus. It was a parasite. It was bacteria. The cure was known. No, that cure didn’t work. It was the end of the world. Don’t let yourself get bit by one of them. That’s how you die and then turn. We will find the cure; we’ve got the best people working on it. Don’t get bit until then. The CDCs all over the country were working on it. Go to Atlanta. Go to Atlanta. There’s a center, food, and shelter until the cure is found. It’s safe. Don’t get bit and go to Atlanta.

“Yeah, but that ain’t true, is it?” Merle dragged in the same old, drunken voice, a bottle of beer in hand, his back to the arm of the couch, a leg resting along with it. “Sons of bitches don’t know nothin’.”

“What are you on about?” Daryl asked from his watch by the window.

“D wasn’t bit, was he now?”

“Nope,” I answered from the other couch where I was lying. “Died from a stab in the neck. Only one who bit him was me.”

“What?” Merle questioned, frowning.

“I bit him, you don’t remember that?” I sat up, bare feet resting on the worn out, dusty mat. “The night before. And I sure as hell ain’t one of those fuckin’ dead things”, I finished as I got up, leaning over to reach for a pack of cigarettes from the coffee table. “So ya right, son of bitches know nothing.”

“We don’t know he wasn’t bit,” Daryl said looking at me as I approached him putting one cigarette between my lips and handing him the pack. “He coulda been. Damn fucker was so hammered all the time, coulda forget it happened.”

“Or that.” I agreed.

Daryl threw the pack at Merle after he took a cigarette for himself and we went silent again like we were most part of the time when Daryl and Merle weren’t fighting, foul-mouthed and disagreeing on everything. I hadn’t slept more than a few minutes but felt alert anyway, I’d never needed many hours asleep to feel fine. What worried me now was that, after ten days in that house, their pantry had been emptied while we just sat around, ate, argued and fought and waited for something to happen. I worried that, after so long, nothing was actually going to change. Not if we didn’t take action, any kind of action.

“I’m going home.” Hours later I broke the silence.

“You insane?” Merle asked. “Ya can’t go back there. The street’s taken by those things. Your house’s taken.”

“You gonna end up like ‘em.” Daryl completed.

“Good to see you guys agreeing on something.” I crossed her arms and glared at them. “I’m gonna take things. Food, clothes, first aid kit, weapons. Lots of knives in the kitchen, a pistol in Bobbi-Jo’s bedroom. A rifle on the wall that might still work if we find ammo. Things on the fridge might still be good. Gonna pack all I can, you should too if we’re gonna make it to Atlanta.”

“I ain’t goin’ to no fuckin’ Atlanta.” Merle sat up, both feet now on the rug. “Won’t be nothin’ there. Shelter and food for free to everyone? Bullshit. Rich people, is all.”

“So you gonna stay here?” I opened my arms to gesture around the living room. “And do what? Starve to death? Thirst yourself dry? You don’t even wanna go next door for supplies, how ya gonna get food?”

He didn’t answer, only crossed his arms, shaking his head, a stubborn smirk still on his lips. Big fucking child.

“We know how to kill ‘em.” Daryl said still from his position by the window. “Just gotta stab in the brain and don’t let ‘em come close.”

“I got two good hunting knives there, one in Owen, the other in D. Should get ‘em back too.”

We agreed but said nothing, just moved at the same time as if agreed. Only wondered about that later. Now we just moved to the kitchen table where we had previously set out a sort of kitchen knives. Daryl grabbed two of them as well as his crossbow. I chose a big butcher knife and two smaller ones and moved to the door sheathing them into my waistband being followed by Daryl.

“Ok, gotta stay together. Don’t go wandering alone.” I told him.

“I’ll have your back while you take the things.” He agreed and we gave each other a sharp nod.

Daryl pulled the door open and we crossed the threshold. The noise of the door and our steps attracted the attention of two dead people who were closest to the house, by the sidewalk. They turned their heads in slow motion, but as their dead eyes found the two living people on the porch, it was like their bodies came to life, groaning excitedly and taking stumbling but fast steps in their direction.

“Noise attracts them.” Daryl stated what I was thinking a moment before shooting an arrow right into the eye of the male one. We went down the steps and on the bottom Daryl stopped to reload the crossbow, hands working on it but head raised and eyes looking around attentively. The second dead, a female, was closer to me now. “In the brain!” Daryl reminded me.

I walked to the corpse as she walked to me and felt my heart accelerate. Damn, it really was a fuckin walking corpse, like for real, the sci-fi movies had really happened, who’d think that? But I got over that because no time to think right now or it’d bite me. I remembered how soft and easy it had been to stick the knife into D’s eye, so that’s what I went for before it could even get close enough to me. Blood splattered on me as the eyeball popped. Disgusted, all I thought then was that if this was how one got infected with whatever that was, I was screwed. But then again, we’d all touched the dead’s blood ten days ago and hadn’t got sick, so I didn’t really know what to think. Maybe it really was just bites.

“Let’s go.” I put the thought aside for now and we ran across the yard towards my house. There was one more there and Daryl’s arrow reached it easily. As we got to the steps, I heard a groan and looked back. It was Bobbi-Jo, or what used to be her. I stared at her as her corpse started coming to me. After ten days of her death, her figure was now something completely different. Her exposed flesh had started decaying; her eyes seemed even whiter than before, what was left of the skin of her face a nauseating shade of gray. Her eye makeup had oozed down her cheek.

“Sam!” Daryl’s voice called from the porch. I didn’t remember having ever heard him say my name before, I hadn’t even been sure if he knew it.

“Go, I got her.” I told him and heard his steps entering the house only a moment later like he had paused to decide and then moved. I let Bobbi-Jo approach, less agile than she had been days before, but still quick. When she was close enough, I grabbed her by the neck, keeping her dead, moaning form away from me at arm’s length. My heartbeat got even faster, I could feel in my temple, and my throat suddenly tightening. Bobbi was small, the same size as me, but had always been thinner as an effect of too many drugs.

In the moment I looked into Bobbi-Jo’s dead eyes, I remembered years of having her present in my life. The moment I had met her, my dad bringing her to our house and introducing her as his girlfriend. I remember thinking how could she be my dad’s girlfriend if she looked to be my own age. Later, I found out Bobbi-Jo was only seven years older than me. I remembered us moving from Atlanta to Savannah. I hadn’t wanted to. Dad didn’t really want to either, but Bobbi-Jo had insisted. That’s when they started living together, and it was hell on earth. We fought all the time when dad wasn’t home, and in the beginning Bobbi-Jo would pretend to be the victim when he arrived, but after a while she didn’t even do that anymore. I hated her. I hated her with all my might, I hated her for all the horrible things she told me, for the physical fights, for making dad father suffer, for cheating on him, for spending all the money he had gathered from years of hard work in a carpentry. For pretending in front of friends and family that she was suffering when he was dying from cancer. For getting herself a new boyfriend less than a month after he died. I hated having had to stay in the house, hated having Bobbi-Jo still live there. We each owned half of it, neither wanted to leave it to the other.

“Yeah, you bitch?” I snarled at her. “How’d ya like that? All the trouble ya had and that’s how ya die. Hope it was as painful as his death.” I raised the knife, eyes burning with all the remaining anger I carried with me all this time, “That’s for my dad!”

The knife entered her left eye and I held it in place for a long moment. The knot in my throat tightened painfully, the rage in my eyes being instantly replaced by tears. As I pulled he knife out, a wet noise following a splash of stinky blood, Bobbi-Jo’s body fell to the ground. With a sob, I felt no satisfaction; it just didn’t feel like it was enough. Leaning over, I stabbed a few more times, into her other eye and even into the hard bone of her temple and forehead, and I was probably groaning in anger at each stab because my throat complained quite a bit after. Finally, I stopped and straightened up, breathing hard, staring down at the disfigured head. The hand holding the knife was shaking, tears escaping my eyes.

When I turned, unable to look at the mass of flesh on my feet any longer, I saw Daryl standing under the doorframe, eyes watching me carefully, head turned downwards, crossbow hanging on his side.

“It’s clear.” he said quietly when I just looked at him, not moving or saying anything. “Was just one of ‘em inside.”

Without a word, I climbed the four steps towards the door, but Daryl didn’t move. I stopped on the step below him and looked up, eyebrows raised in question.

“You ok?” he murmured.

“Stop asking me that.”

I’m sure my voice sounded stronger than I felt at the moment. I felt my insides trembling, it that makes sense, my shoulder muscles so tense they’d stop a knife. I took a step up and passed by Daryl, our shoulders touching briefly. Stopping just by the front door, I looked around. It had been days, the house and the bodies smelled horrible, putridly, as if the air was solid. I didn’t look at the corpses for long. Daryl had already closed the kitchen door, so the only way in and out was through the front. He was taking his arrow out of the eye of the random guy Bobbi-Jo had brought home that night. I felt bile in my throat again at the smell of the living room of the house I had called home for so many years. It didn’t feel like it anymore.

“Go, I’ll keep watch.” He said carefully while he cleaned the tip of an arrow on the fabric of the couch.

It didn’t take long for me to go through the whole house. I emptied the cabinet of groceries into a backpack, there were several cans there, clothes I thought could be functional into a handbag – clean underwear! I’d been handwashing as reusing the same panties for days now! The two different pairs of boots I had and one I took from Bobbi-Jo. Hers were yellow and I hated it, but whatever. The carton of Morley packs, half a bottle of whiskey. That was for the boys. The first aid kit from under the bathroom sink. A couple of soap bars, toothbrush and toothpaste. I took the gun, checking it was loaded, two boxes of bullets from Bobbi-Jo’s wardrobe, knives from the kitchen, the rifle from the wall, and that was it.

“Hey,” Daryl stopped touching a finger softly on my shoulder as I was heading to the door carrying all the bags by myself, without asking for help. I stopped in a halt and looked up at him, a frown on my face. I was too tense and willing to get the hell out of that house for good to be expecting a touch, even the slighted ones, right now. “Thought ya’d want this.”

He handed me a picture he’d taken from a frame on the living room wall. I saw the back of it first, a sloppy handwriting that said “Jack and Sam at Chastain Park, spring 1989”. Turning it around, I saw myself as a nine-year-old sitting on top of a slide, smiling widely, blonde hair shining under the sun. Standing by my side, smiling awkwardly at the camera, was my dad, sandy hair graying on the sides, unkempt stubble, dark brown eyes lit up with contentment.

My throat tightened once again and I felt an uncomfortable prickle in my eyes, and I just nodded without looking up at Daryl. I knew that picture, of course, and it’d been on the wall for years, but I never looked at it. It was painful. I folded the picture carefully twice and reached around to my back jeans pocket, tucking it in. Taking a deep breath, I looked up at Daryl for just a second before looking out the door once again.

“Let’s go.”

We both stopped on the steps, though, Daryl once again higher than me, when we saw Merle ride his bike out of the garage of their house. He rode not once looking back, speeding away with a loud rumble, dead corpses trying to rush after it.

“Son of a bitch!” Daryl shouted as he rushed past me down the steps. She ran after him, crossing the yard to his porch and into the house, slowed down by the bags. When I entered he was rushing over the other rooms of his house. I dropped the bags by the front door before going looking for him.

“Fuckin’ bastard!” He was yelling when we met again on the corridor.

“He just left?!”

“You saw him leave, didn’t ya?” he answered angrily.

I raised her hands lifting my eyebrows in affront. Daryl just rushed past me mumbling “fuck” and I followed him into Merle’s bedroom.

“His stuff still here.” he noticed as I stood by the door.

“He’ll come back,” I said, arms crossed. “he wouldn’t leave you in this –”

“- -the hell he wouldn’t!” Daryl raised his voice again. “Is wha’ Merle do, he leaves. Not the first time.” His voice was bitter as he strode past me. When I reached the living room, having followed him one more time, Daryl was picking up one of the bags from the floor. “Let’s just go.”

“What if he comes back?” I asked with my arms still crossed.

“Yeah, maybe in a couple of months.” Daryl snorted out.

“C’mon Daryl, we don’t know that.”

“You know nothing ‘bout Merle.” he snarled turning to me, a backpack over one shoulder. “He ain’t coming back!”

“Daryl, listen, he’s just left, you sure you don’t want to wait at least a bit?”

“Why do you care if he come back anyway?”

“I don’t, really, but I know that if we leave now you might not find your brother again.” I uncrossed my arms and took a couple of steps towards him, speaking calmly. “We don’t know what’s gonna happen, how things are out there… What if you don’t see him again? What if you don’t see him again just ‘cause you couldn’t wait a few hours?”

Daryl looked from me to the door and back again, unsure, biting the skin of his lower lip.

“It’s past three, anyway,” I kept talking, knowing he was listening now “it’ll get dark soon; I don’t think we should travel at night. If not for Merle let’s at least just wait ‘til morning ‘cause it might be safer.”

Daryl stared at me, worry creasing his forehead, still biting his lip. I’d seen him do that before, anytime he was lost in thought, or worried, or unsure. He nodded sharply once after a moment and dropped the bag to the ground again, then moved away from me and deeper into the house. In the hallway leading to his bedroom, he said: “You watch over, I’ll take a nap.”

He crossed the hall with heavy steps and stormed into the room and I expected the door to be slammed closed, but he didn’t act that childishly. It was more like Merle to do that, even though he was the oldest. I think he was about ten years older than Daryl, but I’ve never known for certain. And he wasn’t here now. It was weird not having Merle there, because his presence was always known. Even if he was in his bedroom sleeping we could hear him snoring loudly and speaking on his sleep. He never slept quietly, I wonder how he even got any rest. Maybe that’s why he did all the drugs, to let go of whatever it was he had in his head.

Merle was a case to be studied. I knew very little about him. I’d been living next-door to the Dixons for eighteen years, and for a while, it was three of them; the father and the two sons. I barely saw the father over the years, he was always inside and when I did see him occasionally outside he was drunk and slurring racial insults at neighbors or inappropriate things at Bobby-Jo or myself, which turned into misogynistic ones when neither of us gave him any attention. He had died two or three years ago, I think, from something on his liver. Then it was just the two brothers. Merle had been gone from the house for long periods of time and back three of four times since I’d been there. At least one of them I knew he’d gone away with the army, I’m not sure if he went to a war or something, but in total Daryl was alone at the house for a few years. Their relation was… Delicate, let’s say. I always saw them together at the house and over the years even out throughout the city, so they seemed t be friends, but they fought a lot, never agreed on anything and Merle often talked him down. On those 10 days, I’d been cooped up in the house with them made this quite clear. I hated to hear it, I wanted to tell Merle to just shut the fuck up, but hey, who was I go meddle? I didn’t really know them; I didn’t know what was behind all that. So when it was too much I just left and locked myself in their spare bedroom, the one I’d been using, and stayed in there for a few hours.

Maybe Daryl was right. Maybe Merle had gone for good, left us, and was not coming back. Is shouldn’t bother me. It didn’t. It didn’t bother me. I couldn’t care less. What would I be missing without Merle traveling with us tomorrow morning? Not a thing. It would be better to be just with Daryl; I could deal with Daryl. He was not bad. He even spoke gently and carefully to me, something I’d never expected, something guys didn’t usually do. I would be fine, I didn’t care.

Except that I fucking did. I groaned in anger at myself and I observed the street through the window, shaking my head and taking a pull off my cigarette. I fucking cared, I wished Merle would come back. He was still Merle, still the person who verbally harassed me for years, but on those ten days in his house something had changed and I couldn’t pinpoint it, but I knew it had. He wasn’t harassing me anymore, except for a few jokes about how I should cook for them and maybe warm up their bed at night – Daryl punched him hard on the shoulder for that one and Merle laughed, even as he held his arm because that strong punch had to hurt. He was behaving not in a good manner, but in a manner I could accept. And he had come to my rescue that night, there was that. I wished he’d come back, mostly for Daryl, but also because I knew things must be dangerous out there. There was much more than this fucking neighborhood and Chatham, and if the world was ending things were not pretty out there.

But it was settled, in the morning Daryl and I were gonna go, leave this house and hit the road to Atlanta, with or without Merle. I moved from the window to the kitchen, where I lit a single candle and tried making some food. I didn’t even know what, maybe one of the last packs of powdered soup. I took a clean pan from the drying rack, placed it under the tap and opened it. It couched and gurgled and a little brown water came out, but then just air. No water. Great… I placed the pan inside the sink, rested my hands there and lowered my head. Yeah, it really was time to go.

I blew the candle off and returned to my spot by the window. We were going to hit the road. Leave our houses. I was going to leave my house and God knows when I’d be back. Of if I’d ever be back. The house I’d been living at for 18 years and had lived good moments, but also the worst of my life. I wasn’t sorry I’d be gone. I kind of wished I’d never come back. I wished life would change so drastically I’d never even had the chance to do so. Never have to decide to come back or not.

What was this weird thing I was feeling? I wasn’t bad, but shouldn’t it be bad? Shouldn’t I be dreading whatever the fuck was happening? The world seemed to be ending in rising corpses and nothing would ever be the same, why wasn’t I that scared? I mean, of course, I was scared, but in a strange way…. In a way that good things also scare us. Does that make sense? No, it doesn’t, I know it doesn’t. But I was… And I shocked myself when I found the correct word for it, even then, standing by that window as I saw a group of three dead walking up the field at the end of the road: excited. And now I judged myself for feeling it. What kind of horrible person feels that when the world is ending and so many people are dying and suffering? I hated myself for it.

I also thought of my father. I wished he had lived to go through it with me, he was always so supportive, always trying to make me look at the good side to everything, such a gentle soul. Yeah, but thinking about it made me see he was not fit for this new life, he would never be able to kill a corpse even if it was trying to kill him. No, he was too good. All of this would break his heart. And now I was crying, thinking about dad.

“Hey, we got no water,” Daryl’s voice brought me back from where my mind was to the Dixon’s dark living room. I looked back at him, who had only now figured where I was. I had lit no candles and there was just a gap in the curtain letting a little light in. Seeing me, he continued, “jus’ a warnin’ so ya have no surprise in here”, he pointed over his shoulder in the direction of the bathroom.

“Yeah,” my voice came out a little weak and hoarse. “I tried to cook something and the water was out. We got one more can of soup… Then jus’ things I bought from home.”

I turned to the window again trying hard and failing not to think of what he meant about a surprise in there, and the room was quiet again. I guessed he’d moved away again. There were six dead people roaming the street now. Their moans and crickets and cicadas singing were the soundtracks of the night.

“You okay?”

I jumped a little. His voice was closer than I expected Daryl to be. Damn, the man could be silent if he wanted to. Hunting instincts.

“Sorry,” he smirked

“Jesus, Daryl” I turned away from him again. “I’m fine. Told ya not to ask me that.”

“Is jus’…” he shrugged. “Voice’s weird. You been cryin’?”

I crossed her arms over her chest, still looking out. He didn’t have to know that. It was personal. He wouldn’t understand what I was feeling now, not even I understood. Excited that the world was ending, only sad my daddy wasn’t here to see it?  Forget it.

“No,” I told him simply.

“Alright,” he stated and moved away from me in an instant. I followed him with my eyes, turning around a little. Damn, did he sound relieved that I didn’t share! Men and their troubles with feelings and stuff.

Who am I kidding, I have trouble with feelings and stuff as well.

But a little tiny part of me was a little disappointed that he didn’t insist? Yep, it definitely was.

“Did ya eat?” he asked already from the kitchen.

“No. Not hungry, you go ahead.” I responded mechanically, trying to see him in the dark, unsuccessfully. In a minute he was back, the cold can of soup in hand, half of its content in a bowl that he handed me. I didn’t take it, arms still crossed.

“Eat,” he said firmly, motioning the bowl again.

Sighing and rolling her eyes away from him, I took the bowl and started eating. That was not one of the good soups, but whatever. We ate silently, both standing looking out.

“There’s Mr. Walker from 4th street.” Daryl said around a mouthful of soup, pointing to the dead chubby, old man wearing suspenders.

“Dead man Walker.” I said in a dead serious voice.

He chuckled for a moment but caught himself and lowered his head to his can of soup quickly, going silent again. I held in a smile. This rough man could be cute sometimes and wasn’t even aware of that. Full of surprises, that guy. He’d never spoken to me before in those eighteen years but then he goes to the diner to warn me and get to my house to help and if hosting me here for 10 days like it’s all normal. I really didn’t understand.

“Why did you help me?” I asked suddenly after finishing my half soup.

“Wha’?”

“That day, with D.” I turned a little more to him after resting the empty bowl on the window sill. “You went all the way to the diner to warn me about him. Why did ya do that?”

He shrugged, not looking at me, “Was in the area.”

“Seriously, Daryl.”

He kept looking out, his expression closing up, and was silent for a moment. I just waited, staring up at him.

“Couldn’t hear him say what he’d do to ya and do nothin’.”

“Alright. Okay, you warned me, I told you I could take care of myself, but then you showed up there and helped me, and stick around and helped with the… Walker things, and then took me in here, and I’ve been here for days. It’s ‘bout all that I’m asking. Why you helping me?”

“Would you rather I didn’t?” he turned his head to me, annoyance clear in his voice.

“Oh, c’mon Daryl!” I turned away, arms up in annoyance for a moment Why couldn’t he just answer me?

“’Cause you needed, is why!” he cried, getting pissed. It was easy to piss him off. “You our neighbor twenty fuckin’ years, don’t gotta be best buddies with someone to help.”

“Well, you’re right we ain’t best buddies, but we were never even a little bit. We ain’t never talked to each other, and now I’m here practically living in your house.”

“It’s the fuckin’ Walker apocalypse out there!” Daryl yelled angrily pointing out the window. “What a fuckin’ cold-blooded motherfucker ya take me for? Ya thought I’d let the men rape and torture you, and then leave you to die alone eaten by the dead?” he snarled and took a step further, standing very close to me. I looked up at him, towering at least ten inches above me, but I didn’t flinch or blink. Somehow I knew he was not a threat. “That the kinda man ya take me for?”

I swallowed hard, my eyes locked with his, and his got a little self-aware after a second, as if he realized just how close to each other we were standing now. We’d never been close like this, even living in close quarters. I could pay attention to details on him that I never registered before. His stubble was nearly blonde, or maybe it was starting to grow grey, just how freaking blue his eyes were and the mole he had just above the left corner of his lip. Was he maybe noticing these detailed in my face too? I still had a faint bluish mark from that old slap, and my eyes probably looked tired now. No self-care with my face skin for many days now, it must look dry. Damn, I was starting to get self-conscious by him looking at me like that.

I should say something. Daryl hadn’t moved after his question, so maybe it hadn’t been rhetorical. I soundlessly cleared my throat of the lump that had formed there before saying in a very low voice, “Torture?”

Daryl nodded slowly, his jaws clenching tightly. “Yeah.”

And yet, he didn’t move.

“Guess I never thanked you.” I whispered.

That made him lower his eyes and turn again to the window, opening space between us once again. “‘S nothin’,” he mumbled tightly.

“You helped me avoid rape and torture. Guess that’s something.”

Before moving away from him, feeling too awkward and uncomfortable being so close, I touched his bicep quickly, squeezing it lightly before letting go.