#doomprep

[everyroute-arch]

.. @doomprep, sc .

it's difficult to imagine the end of the world, even as the hours pass her by in endless turnovers. the earth still spins. the sun continues to rise and set. things like hunger and sleeping remain commodities that cannot be spared. she thinks about long walks in the middle of the night and hanging out the passenger window of a camper van just to feel the wind in her hair whilst she hollers something seemingly meaningless at the time about freedom. only now can she realize she never knew a damn thing about what it meant to not live within its luxury. too hungry for the very thing she'd always had. a misshapen version that wasn't ever good enough, but the floorboards beside her bed are worn in from begging in the middle of the night to have back. because begging is exactly what charlie is doing. she wouldn't even call it praying anymore. it feels like too simple of a word for her outpouring of prophetic changes only the moon gets to bare witness to.

“ i know we're supposed to be grateful that we have this place— ” charlie ponders aloud, as if there's nobody for miles and miles. sometimes it's nice.. to pretend there isn't anybody not because there can't be but because they don't want to be. because they got to escape this place. yet, she forgets to pay respect to the fact that she didn't really have anywhere else to escape to. the world too big and her pockets too small. a taste for adventure that a pocket could never hold at all. “ and i am. ” & she is. the way the words hang from her lips say all she needs to say without saying it at all: luck be the noose that hangs thee.

she strokes the fire once, twice, and follows through once again. “ but don't you just wish we could sit up on these mountains and watch the sunset one more time without, i don't know, fearing for our lives? just one more time. ”

a thready laugh meets the air.

“ too woe-is-me? or would it be.. woe-is-us? whatever. ”

[madsway]

------ ¹ @doomprep / ² uncharted sentence starters. .. is that a sin? i think that's a sin.

“ that ain't a question for me. ” the pragmatic approach to all of life's problems had been invented and perfected during childhood. a bruise was just a bruise. a gun just a gun. painted on a mother. held by a daughter. there was nobody waiting on the other end of her midnight prayers. all she saw was a blood red moon dancing to muffled wails. nobody answered while she choked on familial disappointment. felt it curdling like spoiled milk in her veins with each passing day. IF THIS GOD DIDN'T ANSWER HER THEN.. HE WASN'T EVER GOING TO. and that isn't any damn god madison could ever subscribe to. she did everything right in the valleys of youth & still, he hadn't been there. so why did he get to be there for all of her wrongs? staring through the smoking chamber of a gun with a dull ringing in her ears— she decided he didn't get to be. “ i thought your god had all the answers. ” your god, his god, not hers. here is her penchant for poking in all the places she doesn't belong. maddie pulls the string of her jacket a little more taut around herself. hears that weeping again in the atmosphere. it reminds her why she does the thing she does. why she continues to wear these burdens like new skin. it's the closest she'll ever come to rebirth. the concern lining her face is subtle. in the right light, she would shed this skin into the skin of something he needs with more than her own agenda paving the way, but this ranch won't survive on gifts of the giver alone. her family won't survive. prying the bible out of someone's hands only works if they're cold and dead. it has to be tossed overhead into the flames by choice in life. something she knows all too well. does she wish the same fate for him? no, madison isn't that cruel. and she isn't sure they can bide enough time for the reckoning of jake otto to take full effect. but the night isn't over yet. “ come on, jake - you really think this is the plan he had in mind? you're smarter than that. ”

[waystelandmoved]

@doomprep:   i know i'm being punished. 

your heart beats inside the hollow auditorium of your chest like a nervous hummingbird;   it skips a beat and hair stands on end despite the warmth coursing through your veins.    there is an endurance to your faith,   similar in the way to your heart,   that without it:   you think you would cease to exist.    every spring that brought flowers to every fall that left the trees bare,   the cyclical seasons pass,   as did your fleeting moments on non-belief,   thirst for knowledge greater quenched by each new chapter,    paper thin cuts lined your pointer,   thumb wet with ink in pages flicked too quickly.    [some rushed through to simply be done,   you to reach the next chapter,   to coat yourself with an armour you could understand,  shrouded in text that gave meaning to the world].   even in the end of the world,  it was your crutch,     that there was some meaning to this apocalypse,   that bloody knees and scorched palms could not fix.  the punishment of mankind was never meant to be fair,   let the earth flood and the forests burn so that they must stare their own creation in the face,   to witness the horrors they made.     mankind was to be made in God’s own image,   so were you both not now walking hand in hand;   accepting of the death of civilisation caused by your own lack of discipline?

“those whom i love,  i reprove and discipline,  so be zealous and repent   —       revelation,   3:19.”    you catch his eye over the fire,   how the words spill from your mouth before you even have time to register them.    you’ve repeated them to yourself night after night since this began,   to know that the punishment is only forged out of love;  that one day,  you too can bask in the holiness of light once more.    this will not last forever,   through the drought will come rain and wash away those that sin and do not find clarity through repentance.      “sorry,   it’s new testament.”     shy,  meek beth greene —      what spills from you is golden,    how light leaks from your chest in every shaky breath.       “i think humanity is.   i think that—    assuming the responsibility for this is brave,   but wrong.”

[outguilt]

" are you going to kill me ? " his own hand rests lazily near the back of his jeans; gun tucked away safely there. normally, he'd have it out already and the other would be dead at his feet. but he was tired and the thought of spilling more blood made his stomach churn. he'd spilled too much over the years. " this seems like the perfect place to do it. " / @doomprep

[vaultify-a]

@doomprep said: you can still do the right thing here.

the wind whispers through the desolate landscape, carrying the stench of decay & echoes of a once-civilized world. squinting against the sunlight, troy's weathered face reflecting the toll of a world gone mad. (a man gone mad.) his piercing blue eyes lock onto his brother as the words breach the air. “you were always the optimist,” he retorts, a cynical half-smile playing across his lips. shifting the weight of his rifle slung across his shoulder, the cold metal a familiar comfort in this new reality, troy can't help but scoff. “what's your verision of the right thing, huh? saving people won't last a week out here? fighting for a world that's long gone? face it, jake— we're the lucky ones. we adapt, we survive, & we don't fucking look back.”

the undead roam like a grotesque shadow across the distant horizon, his jaw clenching a sight. a silence acknowledge of another harsh reality heading their way. pragmatism has become his creed, defiance glinting in his eyes. the world had already taken too much from them to consider a path paved with righteousness. “sometimes i think you just hate me, plain & simple.”