Send “Memories of Sorrow” to see a painful and tragic memory of My Muse
Once, Ava had hoped that the memories of those first days when people started biting each other would become blurred by the passing of time. Most of them did, you could only watch so many people die before the circumstances of each death started being reduced into mere categories: rotters, suicide, other people, the weather, or starvation. Those were the most usual ways to go nowadays. People didn't stand out in her memory unless their death was particularly unique, and even then she forgot certain details, small things that weren't important.
However, there was one, just one, that remained unchanged.
It'd been less than two weeks into the apocalypse when big cities began to fall, either to the dead or to Sunset Protocol. The military checkpoint Ava and so many others, her sister included, had been stationed at had quickly been surrounded by people, those who came from other cities wanted to get to DC in hopes of finding safety there, those who were in the city wanted to get out as the cases of this illness increased, both roads were filled with both vehicles and people on foot, more than they could handle; and with people came the dead.
Everything went to hell after that, there was no saving DC, there was just a chance to get as many people out of there as possible. At some point, she'd lost sight of Victoria while helping a man who'd proven to be an useful veteran two days ago, David García, and when she found Victoria again, the bite on her sister's shoulder left it clear to Ava that there wasn't anything they could do.
But Victoria wouldn't be her sister if she gave up so easily.
"You're not blowing my brains out until we're absolutely sure I'm turning," Victoria'd told Ava, despite being the youngest one, for once, she showed more authority than Ava, and Ava was just too overwhelmed to retort.
Victoria thought that if there was even a small chance she wouldn't turn, it was worth waiting; and Ava clung to that, she hoped, for once in her life she prayed to a God who before now she'd only ever turned to forcefully when her grandparents made them all pray before each family meal. She wanted this to be different, wanted Victoria to be some kind of unique person that wouldn't be affected. Her sister barely if ever got sick growing up, she'd always had a hell of immune system. So why should that change?
The symptoms started showing around eight hours after Victoria was bitten, excessive sweating, a burning feeling on the bite, like alcohol had been poured on it, and numbness on her limbs; twelve hours in and she'd passed out twice, each time awakening weaker than the last; Twenty hours in and Ava had to physically hold her up for her to walk, a nosebleed joining the other symptoms; twenty two hours and David was walking behind them while Ava carried Victoria on her back; Twenty four hours and they couldn't keep going.
David had left them alone, checking the perimeter to ensure they wouldn't be bothered. Ava held her little sister's hand and talked to her about stuff that seemed so small before but so important now: childhood memories, family vacations, dumb shit they'd said and done and argued about through the years.
"Me too," Victoria whispered, scoffing when a tear slipped down Ava's cheek. "Don't go soft, remember we promised to stay strong."
"We were going to stay strong together."
"Keep the knife," Victoria told her, voice a weak wheeze. "You better don't lose it."
"I'll take better care of it than you ever have," Ava taunted. "Not like that'll be hard, considering you lost mine."
They laughed, then their expressions fell again as Victoria coughed out blood. "Remember," she gasped. "Not until it happens–"
"In case it doesn't happen." Ava nodded, pressing her forehead to Victoria's.
"Exactly," Victoria nodded weakly, pressing back against Ava's forehead. "I don't want you stabbing my body for nothing."
Ava breathed with her until she stopped, held Victoria's hand even after it went limp in her grasp, and continued to hold it when, now cold and stiff, it squeezed her own again, attempting to pull it towards her mouth as Ava leaned away, her eyes cast to the ground.
The knife made it between Victoria's teeth before Ava's free hand could be pulled in, muffling the dead woman's groan. Ava squeezed her eyes shut as the corpse's teeth clicked against the metal, refusing to look this thing that was no longer her sister in the eye, afraid of the lifeless gaze that she knew would have replaced her sister's once lively brown eyes.
She pushed the blade further into her mouth, through flesh and bone until Victoria's body went limp, then pulled it out and let the body slump back against the tree.
Ava wasn't sure how long she spent just kneeling there, the knife still in her hand. She wasn't even aware of its weight, or if her hand sweating around the handle, until David returned and attempted from pry it from her fingers, Ava yanked her arm away, glaring at the man.
"I dug a hole," was all he said, giving her a sympathetic look. "You should say goodbye and bury her, it isn't safe out here."
It was a quick burial, so quick it couldn't even be called a funeral, definitely not what someone who'd died because she'd chosen to help people instead of saving her own life deserved. But it was all Ava could give her little sister in that moment, a hole in the woods and a name carved in a rock with the same knife that'd put her reanimated body down.
A minute of silent grieving, then they left.
