Timeline/World: New York City – Iathea
Characters: Vanna Chhitmahal
Race: Human
Age: 28
Final Word Count: 558 words
I was really young when it happened but I can still remember bits and pieces of it, I remember just watching the snow, I remember mom huddling under her blanket, feverish. I remember warming up hot water on the fire stove we had and making tea for her because she was sick. I remember listening to the radio until it no longer played.
Just the same, I remember the sound of the distorted voice on the speakers outside, several days after the snow had fallen, calling all survivors to a meeting point. Most of that information was lost on me back then, I didn’t understand it but mom knew. She was sick but she knew and understood.
She didn’t want to go, not at first. She still held hope that dad would come back, but he had been overseas for months at that point and my little mind at least could put two and two together, that much snow everywhere, he wasn’t coming back. So I convinced her that we should go, I helped her bundle up as much as she could handle of the weight, I bundled up in what little I had and we set out. It was hard and slow going, mom kept on stumbling and falling, mumbling in her fevered state. I knew she was sick but I just didn’t know the extent of her sickness.
It felt safe and warm in that underground place, I helped mom to the bed in the room we’d been given and I just brought her soup and teas as I could find it. Back then, I couldn’t really understand why she ate less and less, why she ‘slept’ more and more, not even waking anymore, why she was cold.
If it wasn’t for Dyllon talking to me on that particular day, I think I would have only realized what was wrong with my mother when she would have started to decompose. While I never really asked because I didn’t want to know, I assume that the official paperwork for her death state she’d probably died a week or so before she’d been found, cause of death being whatever sickness she’d had since before the snow had started. I missed her in a bad way but Dyllon was a good distraction and I slowly learned to look forward instead of back.
Dyllon’s mom—adopted in a way, I learned later on—used to look at me with these sad eyes and it made me want to just cling to her forever but eventually, the sad eyes faded with everything else. There was sun outside, a new jungle world to discover that I hadn’t really been able to bring myself to really pay attention to, too worried about my mother and giving her all the peace and quiet I thought she needed to get better. My new family made everything feel easy and I’d like to believe I grew up into a good man.
It doesn’t feel like forever ago that we were all on the very brink of extinction on this old planet we’ve left behind but it does seem like it has been, more or less. There’s just so much to discover here, there’s never a dull day that goes by and it feels good to have essentially started my life over in this place, it feels right.
Works of JD Beckett 