Creative Zoie

Creative Zoie

[creative-zoie-blog]

Plague

Have you ever played those games where the end goal is either total world domination or you end up killing everyone off with a disease? Strategy games like that are very interesting to me, mostly because of the endless amount of opportunities presented to you and how you choose to utilize them. This story is about a doctor in a very similar situation. Will she make it out okay? Does she end up finding the cure? 

Amelia woke up with the sun in her face, a slight breeze coming from the open window, and instead of birds, distant screams. Nothing like the sounds of distant screaming and the smell of projectile vomit in the morning.

Amelia was a nurse at the local hospital where people were being treated because after all, there was a plague going on. Not the typical bubonic or pneumonic, but something that the doctors were afraid of. Something doctors didn’t know how to cure or even how it started. No one knew what was wrong or what the bacteria infecting everyone was. All the World Health Organization was telling the world and hospitals treating people in the area was that this bacteria mostly came from livestock and it must have been transmitted through air filters on planes and unprotected water treatment on ships.

Stretching, she shut her window and looked outside. It was hard for her to imagine how only a week and a half ago there were people walking their dogs down the street, mothers standing with their children at the bus stop, kick balls being kicked up and down the street with the occasional one landing in her yard. Now, the world around her had stopped. There was color, but at the same time everything looked desaturated. The birds had flown away, the screams and constant ambulance sirens scaring them off. Feral animals were beginning to pile in the streets and because of the fear of necrosis was so high. Amelia watched as a truck came by that simply had REMOVAL labeled onto the side. A man in a hazmat suit came out with a shovel and began to put the dead animals across the street into the truck. Bodies were burned at a far off facility, the government thinking the farther the bacteria was off, the less people would be infected.

This wasn’t the case however, Amelia knew that after working in a hospital for years. You can get a disease in multiple ways. The body doesn’t have to be gone for long before its pathogens are released into the air. Just because sheets are washed at a hospital doesn’t mean the threat of infection is gone.

Closing the curtains, she went to her closet and put on her scrubs. She had to hand her other ones off to the removal teams that were circling the cities. The government was issuing new scrubs for the hospital workers every shift. They were white, reminding Amelia of sanitorium workers in the 1950s. Over the scrubs she put on a hazmat suit, similar to the Removal teams. The air mask she wore filtered through the air, but honestly she didn’t know how well of a job it did. No one knew they were infected till it was too late. People would come into the hospital and get their blood drawn and if there was any blood that may have been spilled and left out to dry, pathogens from it got into the air and infected the surface, leaving anyone and everyone vulnerable.

Leaving the house, she looked around. How could a world full of life turn so quickly into a world of death? How could the governments of the world not keep up with air sterilization and water purity? Why wasn’t the FDA making sures animals got their shots? Screw organic, at this time Amelia would rather eat a meal full of chemicals and pesticides if it guaranteed she would be healthy another day.  The rations provided were freeze-dried portions. They made her stomach feel empty and her body hollow. But food was food, and Amelia was raised to never complain.

“Morning Charlie,” she said as she walked into the hospital. Beds were filled and there was barely room to walk, only pathways to get gurneys and hospital beds through.

“Morning Amelia,” Charlie said. He was one of the only resident doctors who was on call. He was the only one wanting to be around the plague. Sure there were others, but most people had resorted to staying at home to spend potential last hours with their families.

“How was last night?”

“God, if I knew how to explain it I would. I spent the night either helping with new patients or by trying to research what was going on. I don’t...whatever this is it’s getting more and more out of control.”

Amelia sighed, her breath fogging up the front of the hazmat suit. “Whatever the hell it is, hopefully it gets cured soon.”

“Breaking news,” the TVs on the walls spoke. The entire ER room went quiet. The coughing stopped, gurney wheels squeaked to a halt.

“World Health Organization announces no more air, sea or driving travel aloud. This is due to fear of further infection. Fear of further outbreak is imminent, stay advised.” The TVs turned off and the hospital staff looked at one another as patients began to get upset.

“Well it’s official, we’re screwed up the creek without a paddle,” Charlie said and leaned against the nurses station.

“They have to let planes through. At least the planes that have doctors to help us. How else are we going to know the type of research going on around the world?”

“Who’s going to help us Amelia? Primary research is being done in Australia, that’s a 22 hour flight. The only other closest country would be Iceland and that’s at a minimum 12 hours.” Charlie looked down at his gloved hands and rubbed them together nervously. “We can’t save the whole world, you understand that right Amelia?”

“But if a cure is ever developed, we need to save those that we can,” Amelia said quietly as a body bag was rolled past the two of them.

“I know that you want to do the right thing Amelia, but sometimes you can’t. This thing has infected one billion people. A seventh of the world is gone and it’s a matter of time before the other six billion of are infected.” Charlie walked away, going towards an operating theatre that had been turned into a makeshift research facility. What did Amelia know compared to Charlie? She may have been an actual doctor longer than he had, but he was in the thick of research and trying to understand why people were just dropping dead around them.

Amelia reported to her station, the entrance of the hospital where new patients were being brought in. The air reeked of vomit and the smell of death from outside. People wearing hazmats suit could still smell the wretched air through their air filters. Throughout the day bodies continued to be brought in and out of the hospital, coming in alive and leaving through body bags. It was dreadful, and it was even more dreadful that the cure being developed was taking longer and longer since the disease was evolving at a faster rate than researchers could expect.

Normal hospital shifts were 12 hours and Amelia was more than thankful when hers were up. She went to the authorized decontamination area and stripped off her hazmat suit, handing it to the removal people to be disinfected. The nurse in front of her looked away as she took off her scrubs and handed her new ones for tomorrow's shift. God, if only Amelia could have a day off, but in a situation like this all Amelia could do is remember what a day off felt like.

A muttered thank you left her mouth as she grabbed her suit back and changed into her clothes from home. Home seemed so different now, and it was sad that the hospital was becoming more and more normal to her. She had been working in the medical field for twelve years and surely one would think that she’d be used to it. But she would only work four ten hour days a week, she wasn’t used to chaos. At least not the chaos that was slowly taking over the planet.

“Amelia!” Charlie yelled as she left the hospital. He was wearing his normal clothes and carried his suit and scrubs in hand. “Amelia, you don’t look good.”

“Charlie, I look the same as I normally do, I’m fine.” She watched him as he pulled her arm towards him and lifted the cuff of her sleeve.

“How in the hell did you get a cut?” He said, going to run his finger over the mark before pulling away from her in a slight horror.

“My suit, my suit was fine when I took it off,” she mumbled, dropping to the ground and pulling the hazmat suit out of its protective bag. It’s stupid that the removal team wouldn’t allow them to wear them again until the next day.

Charlie dropped down next to her and the two began feeling every inch of the fabric to see where there could be a possible tear.

Her fingers brushed against a tear, a small one at that, running from the back of the elbow up towards the armpit. “They would have noticed this during decontamination,” she said in a worried jumble of words as she looked at Charlie with panic.

“We need to get you inside,” Charlie said, leaving Amelias suit in the filth of the street and rushing her back to the ER.

“Charlie, what if I’m fine? What if it just got caught on something?” She said as panic overcame her. Being on the other side of the examination was horrifying considering that these nearly lifeless masks stared at you as they tried to make sure you weren’t diseased. The only sound that could really be heard was the nurse or doctor breathing out of the mask and Amelia found herself getting closer to her nurse to hear her better; the nurse backed away.

Charlie stood in the corner, his own suit being put on while Amelia was admitted. She could only see him move his head as he talked. She felt betrayed because how could her own friend think she was so easily infected? Yet at the same time, what if she was? What if he got her in early enough to save her life?

The doctor and nurse kept working around Amelia, running tests that she could do with her eyes closed. Now her eyes were wide open in fear. Death rates were in the thousands and at the end of the week would be close to a hundred thousand dead world wide, hardly anyone was surviving this. Earlier during her shift the WHO let out an announcement saying that now total heart failure was occurring. How could someone go from a simple cough or nausea to total heart failure?

“What do the tests say?” Charlie spoke. He had probably been standing in the corner of the room for two hours as both of them waited for blood results to come back. Though the disease was mostly airborne, there could have been contact with Amelia’s neck and an infected patient.

The doctor didn’t say anything, simply handing over the piece of paper to Charlie. Amelia watched as he stared her down, coming closer to the bed and resting his heavily gloved hand on her arm.

“What are my results?” Her voice was a hoarse croak. “Charlie, you need to let me know.”

His deep breath was emphasized by the mask. “Amelia…”

“Dammit Charlie! Am I living or dying?!”

The doctor walked to Amelia and handed her the piece of paper that held her fate. “We’re sorry Dr. Reynolds, but you don’t have much time left.”

Amelia stared at the piece of paper in her trembling hands then to Charlie. She could see the angst on his face past his mask. She looked up at the doctor who was already on his way to another patient. Her ears were ringing from the stress and panic and before she knew it, Amelia’s world was going black.

[creative-zoie-blog]

Similies and Metaphors and Symbolism, oh my!

When we got our first writing assignment, my god I was excited. Finally a chance to share work with my peers on the internet and actually receive a grade!

I wrote about anxiety, not because I have it, but because i thought it should be portrayed in a way that shows just how it affects everyone. Though the piece is short, it’s a great example (to me at least) of how anxiety affects our daily lives and tasks. 

Simile: Standing in front of the crowd felt like a pressure on my entire body.

Metaphor: The crowd in front of me kept staring and all it did was build an almost body crushing pressure inside of me.

Abstract: Anxiety, a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.

Concrete: She walked down the streets, knuckles white as she held onto the straps of her bag. Only one hand was holding a bag, the other clenched into a fists so her nails were rubbing uncomfortably against her skin. The thoughts crawled around her head, taunting and playing with the tissue of her brain. What if her interview went bad? Should she just turn around and lock herself back in her apartment. Stopping mid walk, she looked up. She was in front of the building, body shaking but no one around her noticed. People walking by didn't notice as her hand practically shook off her body as she opened the door and as her feet dragged across the tiled floor towards the elevator. Her shaking finger with still-white knuckles barely pressed the up button. This was it, this was the interview of her life and she had gotten this far-there was no turning back.

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Short Story

Oh god what Can I say about my first short story? I was terrified because it was so personal? I honestly didn’t want to because I have such an overwhelming fear of judgement? Or the fact I thought my friend who it was about would find it and be mad I didn’t do her justice? Either way, it got written, it got comments, and my friend approved of it. 

I would like you to close your eyes and tell me what you see.” I took a deep breath, hands that were previously clenched into fists relaxing as I closed my eyes. I felt my fingertips against my bare thighs, slowly beginning to clench onto my shorts. My toes curled into my socks and pulled at my shoes as I pulled my feet under the chair. “Do you have a picture in your head?” I nodded. “I see a rose. It’s wet because it still has morning condensation on it. The sun is just starting to rise and there’s mist over the rose bushes and the grass.” I could hear the therapist scratching away in two manners: Taking notes on what I was saying and the annoying sound of his khaki pants. “What else is there in your picture? Are there any people?” I drew in a sharp breath through my nose. I hesitated for an answer. “No.” “I’ve been treating you for nearly two years. I know that you’re a bad liar.” He was scratching at his khaki pants again. He always wore them when I had my sessions on Wednesdays. On Friday’s he would wear black slacks and a polo because if he finished his appointments by one he would go and golf. “I see them again.” I felt a tightness in my chest. It was pressing, squeezing at every organ that it could. It felt like a million knives coming from every angle, stabbing away. Is this how Caesar felt when Brutus betrayed him? Why does our mind have to be Brutus at times? “Are they with the rose?” “Yes. But...But it’s not them.” My eyes were shut and I could still feel the burn and sting of tears forming from behind closed lids. The silence felt unbearable. I knew he was writing down what I could possibly be thinking but he didn’t know what I was thinking. He didn’t know what I really saw. I remembered the accident, having the police coming to my door and telling me that they had found their body but they weren’t sure how it happened. They weren’t sure if it was a murder or a suicide. “We don’t have to keep talking about this.” His words hurt. If we didn’t have to keep talking about it why did you keep bringing it up at every session? Why do we need to reopen old wounds when wounds are meant to heal and we are meant to get better? My eyes shot open and I felt the tears of hot hatred roll down my cheeks. I wiped at my face and looked down at my hands, watching as they slowly closed back into fists. Standing up, I looked down and noticed how he kept scratching at those hideous khaki pants. He looked at me confused. “I need to go and be alone or a while if you don’t mind.” The words left my mouth as quickly as I left the room.

[creative-zoie-blog]

Scabs

“writing with a mental illness is hard because i want to make things beautiful.”

Scabs by Aubrey Hoffer is published on lulu.com, a self publishing site that honestly could be the best thing for authors who want their work out in the world but don’t have the resources to get a publisher or editor. You can pick the size of your paper, the size of your paper, the texture of the paper, how big the book should be. Honestly the possibilities for publishing your own works are endless!

Now, you might be thinking why I chose the quote I did. Simply put, I know what it is like to be depressed and only want to write about beautiful things when all I can think about and focus on are the ugly things that the world provides. Sure there are plenty of poetry books out there that I have read but not until I read that one line by Aubrey did I actually feel like someone got me. Someone understood the struggle of wanting to express beauty when the only thing you are surrounded by is hideousness and monstrosities that you want to get rid of no matter how hard you try.

Give lulu.com a look. Support authors who have amazing abilities and share their work with the greater public.

[creative-zoie-blog]

About Me?!

When introducing oneself, especially in college, people will normally just say their major and maybe a movie that they like. I’m going to go a bit more deeper than that.

My name is Zoie, I’m a sophomore in college studying Communication with an emphasis on culture and minoring in Counseling and Applied Psychological Sciences. I hope to do something with teenagers or young adults with both my major and minor because after all, you need good communication skills to be a counselor.

I chose this website because I’ve been using it for years. Six in fact. Four of the years on this website I spent writing fan fiction. I literally cringed writing that last sentence. But hey, I was a sophomore in high school with lots of free time and I bandwagoned on the growing trend. Little did I know that I would become one of the bigger blogs on this website with my following list growing to be over 18,000 and posts getting thousands of shares and likes. 

Other than writing, I sang in choir for three years and I thought it was cool to brag that my choir got to sing at Disneyland until some of my new friends in college said they had done it too. It didn’t feel as special of an experience as it once did, but it was a nice thing knowing that the music producer we got to work with let us sing the music from the scene in The Lion King where Mufasa gets trampled to death. I mean, yeah, the scene is so damn tragic and scarring when you see it as a child and even an adult but my choir was in the top percent that got to sing that song. We were elite, mediocre, but elite. 

There isn’t much else to me. I’m a kid in college just trying to make it through everything that life throws at her. Life means waking up one day at a time and accepting what that day throws at you. I’ve handled everything that I’ve been given well so far, I hope to make it the rest of the way just as easily.

Thanks for reading.

[creative-zoie-blog]

Class Exercises!

An activity that I really enjoyed doing in class was the scene writing where we used the already given scene of a person entering a bank. The scene was so diverse because everyone will always have a different experience while in the bank. Some people try to stay calm and collected, others go in there and freak out because they’re in a rush and they expect the tellers to help them out as quickly as they need to leave. 

The scene I created for that specific prompt was the CNA who needed to get to her job and wasn’t expecting there to be a line as she walked in. I mean, how often do you find a line at the bank that has more then two people in it? Not very often, and the way that I set the scene up made me think of nurses I used to work with: Very impatient and if they weren’t helped right away they would go insane.

It was just another day for Elise. She would get up at six AM, get herself out of the house by eight AM, have her errands done by ten AM and be in the nursing home no later than 11:30 AM for lunch. Today, Elise had to go to the bank, something she had done every two weeks for the past two years to deposit her paycheck, it was Friday after all.

She walked in, her strawberry blonde hair pulled into a braid as she moved her new Michael Kors sunglasses onto her head – a splurge from her last check. She sighed since there was a slight line but it was only nine, she still had an hour to go before she needed to head to work. Elise looked around the bank since it was strange for it to be so busy this early in the morning. She tapped her foot as the line moved slower, and slower. Working with the elderly, you had to have patience but right now hers was wearing thin. Looking down at her watch it was 9:20 and the lines had only moved five people in total!

“Oh for godsakes! Can you people hurry the hell up, some of us have things to do!” She yelled. The entire bank went silent and heads turned to look back at her. She pulled her bag closer to her and stood a bit straighter. “It doesn’t take long to process a damn check,” she mumbled and stormed out.

[creative-zoie-blog]

What do I want to Accomplish in ENG 288?

Hey there! What would I like to accomplish in ENG 288? Great question reader.

I would like to have the ability to polish my writing skills and make the pieces that I work on look either more professional or more entertaining for readers. Having the ability to write in second person would be pretty awesome considering there isn’t that much work out there in the second person. I am up for the challenge of second person and I normally do well with challenges!