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I lay strapped down in my hospital bed. In the background I heard the quick yet steady beeps of my heart rate monitor. I felt the sharp pain of needles all over my body pulsing pain through my body with each breath I took, even the smallest movement would send waves of pain though my nerves. Each needle carried excess blood from my body through what looked like crimson wires. A few IV bag dripped heavy sedatives into my veins, yet there were so many perfectly clear patches in my memory, this was one of them.
The last thing I remembered was trying to kill one of the nurses who was working on me. She had been leaning over me as my eyes shot open. My hand Shot to her throat, pain jolted through my arm as its muscles tightened. She tried to scream but my grip was so tight that she couldn’t get enough air out to be heard. I remember myself screaming in her face, my jade green eyes locked onto her steel ones “WHY THE ******** ARNT YOU SICK, WHY THE HELL CAN YOU BE ALIVE, I HATE YOU….” By this point I was surrounded by the medics, The stabbed my body with sedative filled needles, I felt a chill then. My grip loosened and the world started to darken, “isn’t everyone else dead….”
I closed my eyes, and started to sift through my memories. Faces of the people I had knew, and would never see again. I would never get to laugh and smile with my friends, never get to say I love you to my parents, I would never get to speak to anyone that I had spent the last seventeen years of my life with. The image of my bst friend flashed though my mind, we had been pals for so long that I couldn’t even remember the first time we met, it was that long ago. We had shared so many good times, had gone through so much s**t together, and the sad thing was…. As I look back….. I realize how little I actually knew him. Both my parents were dead… my class mates… everyone that I knew or would have known… dead.
I felt the heavy weight of the drugs pulling me into darkness. I counted, that’s what they tell you to do when they put you under isn’t it? they said you couldn’t get past ten…
One…. Two… three… Four……
Darkness
~ ~ ~
I never felt the least bit sick, or at least not sick like everyone else. What I was strapped down to a hospital for was something completely different, though I was sure it was connected. I was forced to stand by as the people I knew and loved, wasted away in fits of bloody coughing and violent mucus spraying sneezes. There was the horrible stage just before their life was snuffed out that they started to hallucinate, when they started to talk to you, looking in another direction. Their eyes would glaze over, and then there muscles would start to spasm. Their final motion was a horrible cough that would send blood spraying everywhere. I had watched the horrible symptoms over and over, as those around me dropped like flies.
After a week I was the only one left, left behind. I was not the only one not affected, birds still flitted around from tree to tree, stray cats still lived in the alleys. Often when you passed a door you could hear the desperate sound of trapped pets scratching at the doors, you got used to it, besides leaving them to die was better then releasing a hungry animal on myself. I walked through the mostly empty streets, a few cars were on the street, with blood and snot sprayed over the windows, poor people that were too sick to escape their cars. I spent most of my time at the waterfront, looking out to the empty horizon. The wind off the water didn’t smell as bad as the vile smell of the dead rotting in the summer sun. time passed slowly in the empty city. Dates and times didn’t mean anything, there was only night and day.
~ ~ ~
I sat on the end of a dock, my legs dangled over the end. I brushed my long black bangs out of my eyes and looked at my reflection on the glass smooth water. My clothes were torn and stained. Next to me was a pile of empty tin cans, I had spent many of my meals here. Thin scares ran up and down my arms, some of them were still just scabs, it seemed that I was not welcome to join the dead that easily. My emerald green eyes glinted brightly in the summer sun, bright enough to see in the reflection in the water. My hair hung almost to my shoulders now, it was greasy but it still had its blue shine to it, like the feathers of a raven. I took a deep breath, and cringed as the horrible smell of rotting bodies. Even after all this time, the smell of rot still burned my nostrils.
Cool are came in off the water, the smell of salt water replaced the toxic smell of the dead. Ripples on the water made my reflection waver the air seemed moist, “s**t, rain…” I looked up to see heavy clouds on the horizon “a lot of rain”. I looked just below the clouds, and stood up. “what the hell?”, black shapes dotted the steel gray water bellow the storm front. Boats, riding the wind from the storm, I closed my eyes, I could not be seeing this, everyone was dead, EVERYONE.
My head burst out in pain. I scratched my arm, ripping open the scabs in my arm. Blood spilled freely from the reopened wounds. Too much blood for the size of the cuts, but i was used to that by now, I had too much blood. I looked out to the horizon, both the storm and the boats would be here soon. Blood dripped down my arm, dropping onto the dock. I watched as the living approached, my mind moved out to sea. My solitude was about to be broken the fallen blood seemed to roll towards the newcomers, I took little notice of this, when you are alone for so long you imagine weird things.
~ ~ ~
I watched though a dust layered window, as the living step onto the docks. The soft patter of rain hitting the roof began. I clenched my fist as they planted a flag into the ground, claiming it for their own. What use was it to the dead? I bit my lip to stop myself from making a sound. The Living marched into my city, wearing steel gray uniforms. Larger boats hit the docks, and they lowered trucks and machinery for construction. Blood dripped down my chin, but I continued to bite my lip harder. They broke the emptiness as they trudged into to city of the dead, stepping over the few bodies that lay in the streets. The door behind me burst open, I felt a pain in the back of my head and everything went black.
They had one a war, without a shot fired, and without a casualty on their side.
~ ~ ~
My eyes shot open. My whole body was bursting with pain, like I was on fire from the inside. The needles felt surprisingly comfortable in my skin. The pain trobbed though every vein in my body. I could feel every cell in my body resisting the source of my pain. I felt a huge push, The IV needled that were putting the sedatives into my body ripped out of my arms with a squirt of clear fluid and blood. It was as if my body was resisting the sedatives. I stared at the bleeding needle holes, What the ********? I sighed, the pain was gone, and my mind was clear. I was free.
I looked around the room, I was the only patient. The hospital seemed empty, other than the few nurses and doctors that passed by the door every once and a while. The window was sealed off by a sheet of metal. The lights in the ceiling and in the hall flicked off for a few seconds, the whole building must have been running on some sort of crappy generator. I looked down to the leather straps that tied me down to the cot. Each was pulled tightly to my bare torso. Needles stuck out from my skin in every direction, I looked like a ******** porcupine. Plastic tubes moved blood from the needles into a holding tank next to the bed.
I closed my eyes, something felt strange. In the back of my mind there was a steady pulse, it matched the rhythm of the heart rate monitor perfectly, I could feel every cell in my body thrumming softly. I felt crazy because I felt like each cell of my body could be moved with just a thought. Crazy? I felt the blood moving though the tubes it was out of my body yet… I squinted at a needle that was stuck into my chest. My mind whiled, insane ideas boiled over as my head tried to make sense of the way I felt. I moved the blood inside of the needle. My mind seemed to click, impossibilities became reality, as I experimentally waved the tubing that was connected to the needle. It wasn’t me that was crazy, it was the world.
I grasped the blood in several of the tubes with my mind. I wrapped them all together making what looked like a arm with a many fingered hand. I ripped the straps that held me down apart easily. The way the blood moved with my thoughts felt surprisingly natural to me. I sat up, letting go of the tubes with my mind, the grotesque arm went limp and the tubes slowly unraveled. The white sheets of the cot were stained crimson, like some kind of morbid tie-dye.
I closed my eyes and pushed outwards, the needles all over my body ripped out of my skin each followed by warm blood, many fell to the floor wit a dull tinkle, others hit the bed staining it even more, one had gone out so forcefully that it had stuck into the wall in front of me. I looked down at the bucket where they had been storing my blood. I effortlessly knocked it over, covering the floor with my blood. I bent down and traced my finger gently across the dark red surface, I sent ripples trough the pool of blood, with my brooding thoughts.
Ray of Mel Community Member 
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