Souls - XI

The first time I blew up was about three days after the world fell apart. I’m not sure I’m really blowing up as all I really see is fiery light escape and then nothing. I wakeup entirely intact, but sore as hell. I can only assume it’s because I blew up.

I didn’t know what was happening yet, I was just scared. Mass hysteria was breaking out and I didn’t know how to apply logic to this new illogical landscape, so I did what most of us did; loot. I’m not exactly proud of it now, but at the time hoarding weapons and supplies didn’t just seem like a good idea, it seemed an idea imperative to survival. 

So there I was, in a mostly abandoned mega-mart. This mega-mart had recently made the righteous stand to stop carrying any morally objectionable music albums or DVDs. Luckily for us they had no such moral problem with weaponry designed solely to kill things. Once I grabbed a rifle and some ammo, noises started floating from the entrance. I was no longer alone. I had already learned that in a crisis situation it is best to avoid humans. They are not an entirely stable species.

I made the choice to sneak out through the loading docks, located in the back directly past the returns department. The world of receipts and ill-fitting sweaters seemed like antiquity. I then did what I now know that you should never, ever do; walk through the shadows. 

There is nothing quite like discovering that when you reach out to the shadows, trying to feel your way through them, they now reach back out at you. The first one grabbed my wrist, the second one grabbed my ankle. They pulled in opposite directions, forcing my frame to the linoleum floor with a violent thud. That’s when I felt it for the first time, the heat that starts in my brain. It then works it’s way through my torso and, in a serious case, my limbs. That’s when I explode. 

And I exploded right there in the mega-mart. 

When I woke up I wasn’t in the shadows, I wasn’t in a mega-mart, I wasn’t even in my skin. I felt like I was floating in brightness, like a shapeless ether of light. Then I felt it, like a vacuum kicking in.

WOOSH

I was back in my body and I hurt. I hurt everywhere. As I tried to adjust to this, I noticed I was surrounded by the dead. There were six men, all of them surrounding me and all of them dead. Wide, dead eyes looking to the sky with what looked to be one last question that would never be answered. That’s when I saw my first soul.

I feel down to my thigh, the memory of that first soul rips me back to the current one hiding in my pocket. Just when you think things can’t get weirder you're walking along an interstate in Kansas with the soul of Christ in your pocket. 

It’s been three miles and I think I see the gas station, it’s right next to the adult bookstore named Veronica’s Private Stash. An entire stash of privates, this is a play on words. I pass by close enough to see that Veronica and her stash had been looted at some point, boards nailed up where windows used to be; priorities in the face of annihilation. Veronica’s spirit cannot be broken, though, the shop is open for business; the flickering “open” neon sign bravely indicating they will not be intimated.

As I pass, eyeing each car parked at the gas station across the street, my periphery notices a dirty man exiting Veronica’s Private Stash. He says my name, my real name. I haven’t heard that name out loud since this all started.

I know that voice, I know how it says my name. It always sounds like a question.

It’s my dad.