[♣️] c:
♣️ - a fading memory
Days. Countless days. No, they count one after the other, but they’re so similar as to blur together into one endless day. The time cycle stretches on in a 24-hour pit of default settings. Rain arrives every three days on the eleventh hour.
Salt-water shrivels the tongue, makes her heave fruitlessly onto the watchful ground. So when she can she waits for the downpour and spreads her coat out to collect still more. Lukewarm drops hitting her open mouth make her choke, but still she drinks them in like a baby bird.
Boarded-up buildings, sealed away, form temporary havens. Amelia yanks open mostly-processed doors and takes stale bread out of pantries where white has crept up the walls and turned the lower goods into tiny blocks. Her stomach sloshes and aches dully. By this time she’s past being hungry. Only the command to press on keeps her ingesting what she can. Of course, the number of houses with stale food isn’t infinite and what’s fit to eat grows smaller by the day. So she works her way back toward the edge of the city, closer to the waters around Fairview.
One time, a short while after the end, she stands on the precipice where she leaped and sets her shoe-tips at the pale edge. Wouldn’t it be nice if she could let it sweep her away? Then terror of the struggle, the aching pressure, push her back onto firmer ground. Later on, days and days and days and days and days, she climbs as high as her shaking fingers can clasp onto the thick edges of squares and rectangles, and clings to her high perch while the droplets weigh down her coat and turn to chills that rumble through her bones. This method isn’t foolproof either, and she could be stuck paralyzed and in pain to the end. So she climbs down after an hour of holding on.
One thing’s sure at least, that this won’t be forever. Eventually the food will run out, is running out, and she won’t be able to move. Perhaps it’s best to crawl into the water than face that slow end after all.
The thoughts still crowd in while she sleeps now, only they’ve become one long endless day blurred in blinding white and swallowing rain.
