Juliet Lanka

“I held her under a door frame, like we’d been taught and when the shaking stopped, we ran out like our lives depended on it. We were lucky. Our building didn’t collapse but so many others did. Thousands of people died in that earthquake.”

“I spilled chocolate ice cream on my leg. I wiped it off and there was still a pale brown stain in the shape of the ice cream splotch. I told my mother who said it was a birthmark. I will swear under oath that never before that moment did I have a birthmark there.”

“I had this horrible feeling of uneasiness looming in the back of my mind, so I told my buddies I’m turning in for the night. They called me the next morning and informed me that the bar had gotten shot up and like 3 people were injured.”

“Walking Ghost Syndrome happens when you’re exposed to a certain amount of radiation. The radiation kills your bone marrow but not much else. You get sick for a few days due to sepsis from all the dead bone marrow, then seem to get better, but your life now has a quite literal deadline; with no bone marrow, your red blood cells and immune system aren’t getting replenished so once you run out, that’s it.”