I Used To Live In A Small Town Not Too Far From Here But Moved Away After Everyone Died

I Used To Live In A Small Town Not Too Far From Here But Moved Away After Everyone Died

There were no windows in the room and I couldn’t find any immediate doors. The lights didn’t seem very secure on the ceiling. There was nothing on the walls or ceiling, and the only things on the floor were us and the machines we were hooked up to. It seemed like more people were moaning at that point and it strongly smelled of vomit.

“How’d you get sick?” a boy asked me from behind. He looked to be about my age, maybe a little older. There was a part of him that seemed not to care too much about anything, especially being sick. “I know how I got sick. I was bit by a snake.” He stared at me and I stared back cautiously. He had shaggy, long hair and veins stuck out on his neck and forehead. His eyes looked hollow. “It was a python. They aren’t even indigenous to this area. Were you bit too?” I shook my head. He laughed a little. “I know. You kissed someone who was sick.”

Ryan came to mind and my heart ached. My head was swimming as well. Pythons didn’t inhabit the area and the animal Ryan described didn’t even seem like a real animal. I looked up at the ceiling and the woman from the cottage was sprawled out on it, like she was lying on the ground. I stood up and looked at her closely. The boy followed my gaze and stood up as well. “You can see the snake too?” he asked, and the woman hissed at us.


I started marking the number of days I spent in that quarantine by writing tally marks underneath one of my machines with chalk I found on the floor. I could never tell if it was day or night or what hour of the day it was, but some of the other patients and I gathered they gave us shots at least once a day. I wasn’t sure what effect the vaccines were supposed to have on us. I wasn’t feeling any better; my nose would bleed often and I still had the nasty blisters on my arms. Everywhere I went I felt the woman’s presence. They’d give us three meals a day, that surprisingly weren’t that bad and the communal bathrooms weren’t too horrible either. It was the lack of presence, authority, and professionalism that bugged me out. It clearly wasn’t an official establishment.

The boy who saw the snake died on my third day there. Hours before, he had been screaming about the python; that it was too close to him, too near, but every time I looked over at him, I saw only the woman. I could tell by the other patients’ faces they too did not see the snake, but only whatever their illusion was that haunted them.

The doctors seemed to be thinning out. By the third day, their numbers had dropped drastically. The nurses too. Things seemed to be going crazier than when I first arrived because of the even greater lack of supervision.

Frank bothered me every so often. He would sniff my hair or bang on one of my machines. At one point, he almost cut the tubes attached to me with a sharp rock. The doctors, or whoever it was that was helping us, would have to stop him from doing this or that. The strange woman left me alone though. She would sit idly by and snicker. Everything made her laugh. The only patient I really talked to was the boy who saw the snake. The others were either too wild or too much in pain to be someone whom I confided in.