Tuesday, November 5, 2013

The Infected...

   Duela panicked as she slammed the heavy door behind her and bolted it shut, gasping for breath and grasping desperately for something resembling coordinated thought. "Okay," she talked herself down, "just through the window and up the fire escape. The roof will last for a while. They hate the sun. That I've seen." She glanced down at her bloodied, pale hands. How many had she clawed her way through to get here? How many once-helpless innocents had she mown down for the sake of her own safety, for the priceless, rare gem of an opportunity to be alone, to sort out her thoughts, and to arrange some sort of plan in this madness? It's always fight or flight, I suppose they say, but this time...this time it was different. These were people she knew, people she loved once.  

It could be that way no longer.  

Taking a deep breath, she focused, calmed, steadied her hands in front of her. The feeble, persistent scratching from the other side of the office door started them shaking again. Who knows how long that door would hold.  

 It was an old house, built when real wood and metal were used liberally throughout the construction of such things—that had been what saved her. They were weak, but they never stopped coming, and their numbers were ever-growing. Her mother. Her brother. Her own fiance—all had succumbed to the sickness. Narcoleptic Introvert with Radical Domains, was what the news called them. N.I.R.D.s, for short.

   It had started small enough, she supposed: a few stories on the news, singular, alarming only in their irregularity. Then a few more. Then people on the street started showing signs—people she knew, people she talked to every day! Ugg boots replaced with Converse, Abecrombie gave way to the Avengers. Even Starbucks—for years, a safe haven when all else had failed her—had become infected! “Free double-shot for every Whovian!” their blackboard up front had boasted in bold, brightly-colored letters, a miniature TARDIS carefully sketched out next to it in cerulean blue chalk. “No, stop that!” Duela panicked--”don't give it a name. That's how it enters. That's how it starts...” But, try as she may, she couldn't block out the image of this morning. That horrible, nightmarish image as she turned the corner of her own hallway to pour some cereal or drink some coffee or whatever her regular ritual had become since the turn.

   Her brother. Her own dear brother, the one she had tried so hard to protect. Gone was the faux-hawk—shaved down now to a close-cropped crew cut. The eighty dollar jeans—pre-torn so carefully by the slave workers in India or Vietnam or wherever the hell they were from this year—replaced by denim just a little too short, revealing his custom Joker-fied sneakers. His collar was no longer popped—indeed, there wasn't even a collar to be popped any more—if there was, it was covered up by some ghastly abomination of a hoodie: black, with “1 + 1 = 10” on the front. He said it was binary. BINARY! But the worst of all—the thing that had set her screaming and running into the street for relief—was what he held in his hands. In those small, scabbed-up little boy hands—those hands she had held so lovingly when he was a baby as she sang him to sleep with Kanye West's latest hit—was a Nintendo DS. Some ungodly yellow mouse-looking thing scarred the front with it's abominable visage, and the boy was mumbling something under his breath about “Missing No.”

   She had found this place in her panic—thrown aside countless tweens with “Keep Calm and Chive On” tee shirts, clawed her way past deceptively loving couples with matching Deathpool shirts “Deathpool? Deadpond? No! Stop thinking about it!” and finally to this sanctuary. They had followed her, of course, cruel mimicries of concern echoing through the halls. “Such concern! Wow! Many anger , very confuse!...You have yoga pants, we have a Hulk!...Do you want a banana? I like bananas, bananas are good for you!”God would they ever STOP?! Wasn't it enough that they had to take her brother—now they had to come for her, too?!

   "I'm almost there," she thought, determined. "I just have to get to the roof, I can hold out there for a while, at least." Another deep breath, and Duela crossed the room, reaching for the window latch. She stopped. Fingerless gloves. Shaking in horror, she looked down. A red leather underbust cinched her waist, coupled with a white shirt and some leather pants—one leg red, one black. Three black diamonds on the red leg. Thigh-high, heavily buckled boots completed the ensemble—again in the mismatched red and black. Her breath came in quick, short bursts—slowly, she walked closer to the window, studying her reflection in the glass through tear-clouded eyes. No, please God not this--white makeup—anything but this, please—black lipstick—ANYTHING else—pig tailsjust please...don't let me be...

Duela had dropped her guard while she regrouped her thoughts. She had focused too much on the sickness, too much on the symptoms and that look in her brother's eye—the brother now forever lost, like her. While she had mourned, It had set in, becoming embedded in her system deeper than the purest, most predisposing genes.  

She had become a N.I.R.D.  

She was....in cosplay.

Tears streaming down her face, streaming her heavy black eyeliner, Duela crossed back to the door, unlocking it with trembling fingers. Clenching her teeth and closing her eyes for a moment, she slowly opened the door. Suddenly laughing manically, she stepped through the door, screaming out in a high-pitched, tear-strained voice, “Hi, Puddin! Harley's home!”