Page 10 of Camriel
Jesus stared at her in silent judgment as she drank the water down.It was slightly creepy to have four statues of the deity watching her.
“I swear I’m not going to steal this comic book,” she vowed to the ceramic figurines.She’d found it hidden in the closet of a teenage boy’s bedroom.The poor kid’s parents had been so strict that they didn’t even have a TV.“Monsters,” she said with a shudder.“Then again, they were raptured and I’m still here, so I guess that makes me the monster.”
Again, the memory of her first kill floated to the surface of her mind.She shoved it back down, refusing to dwell on it.At least she hadn’t been forced to kill anyone else today after that idiot had attacked her in the morning.
Victoria had found canned peaches in the pantry and scoffed them down.She ate a couple more cans of fruit, then yawned widely.She’d burned up a lot of energy and needed to rest.Her store of energy bars was light enough to carry and she was scrounging for other food along the way.
“It feels so weird to be going to bed so early,” she said as she finished the comic book and tucked it under her arm.There was no way she was going to sleep in the master bedroom.An actual life-sized statue of Jesus stood in one corner.She’d almost kicked its head off in startled surprise when she’d investigated the house earlier.
Choosing to sleep in the boy’s room, she left the comic book on the nightstand.Undressing, she stepped into the only bathroom in the house and used bottled water to clean herself.She also washed her clothes and draped them over the small student desk to dry.
She got dressed in clean clothes, but left her sneakers off as she stripped the blanket and sheets off the bed.She lay down to find it was too short for her, so she pulled her legs up and curled onto her side.Used to the noise and bustle of the city, it was too quiet in the burbs.A scream rang out and she smiled slightly.The sounds of insanity were normal for someone who’d lived in a crowded city for their entire life.
It was a long way to the Adirondack Mountains, but Victoria didn’t mind.She’d never bothered to learn how to drive, since she could walk everywhere or take public transportation.The vehicles that had been abandoned wouldn’t be usable for long.Their batteries would die from inactivity and their tires would eventually go flat.Soon, they would be rusty relics left over from a ruined world.
“Sheesh, can you get more morbid?”she scolded herself.“The world hasn’t really ended.There’s still lots of people left,” she reminded herself.“Okay, so a lot of them are trying to kill each other and everyone is kind of evil, but the Earth is still here.It hasn’t been nuked beyond redemption.”
Her peptalk wasn’t helping much.Nothing was going to be the same now.The US didn’t have a leader or a government after the Capitol Building had been bombed by a militant group.Someone would eventually take charge, but they would be just as evil as the rest of them.
“Am I truly evil?”Victoria mused uneasily, shying away from the first death she’d inflicted.She’d only killed in self-defense, but she’d be lying if she tried to deny that she sometimes enjoyed it.“I’ve mostly obeyed the law and followed the rules of society, so what did I do that was so bad?”she asked.
The small statue of Jesus sitting on the nightstand didn’t answer her.There were no answers coming.Deep down, there was something missing, or flawed inside her.She’d never been to church voluntarily, although some of her foster families had forced her to attend Sunday services.
“It’s not like I burst into flames every time I went to church,” she mumbled, edging towards sleep.“Maybe my parents are evil and left a stain on my soul that I’ll never be able to get rid of,” she figured.
That disturbing thought followed her into sleep.
Victoria had always had vivid dreams.This time, she found herself in Central Park.It was nighttime and a familiar body lay at her feet.“It’s one of the four dudes who attacked me,” she realized.
Stepping over the corpse, she saw the other three men she’d lured to their deaths.The dream was so realistic that she felt the breeze that fluttered her bangs.She looked down to see she was wearing the same Lycra outfit she’d had on last night.“I’m reliving my memory,” she figured.It was a regular enough phenomenon that it wasn’t unusual anymore.The red light from the meteor shower was absent, so they must have crash-landed already.
Retracing her route to the East River, Victoria climbed the same fire escape.Sure enough, dozens of naked men were clustered together.Freezing the image, she studied them from afar.
“They’re dripping wet,” she said with a frown, noticing their hair was slicked back.Wishing she had binoculars, she pondered whether to move closer or not.“It’s not like they’re really here,” she reminded herself.“It’s just a memory.”
Psyching herself up, Victoria climbed back down to the ground and headed closer to the river.She crossed beneath an overpass, ignoring the humans who were huddled behind a cardboard shelter around a metal drum with a fire inside it.
Slowing down when the group came into sight, Victoria fought against the urge to turn tail and run again.Menace emanated from the group of tall, muscular dudes.Some had dark skin, others were pale and the rest were somewhere in between.Every single one of them had a red tinge to their eyes.
“Yeah, that’s fudging creepy as shiz,” Victoria said.
She avoided the guy who’d turned his head to look at her, somehow knowing he was being watched.Every instinct was screaming at her to leave.It took all of her willpower to stay.
“Ninety-seven,” she said after quickly counting them.“There’s something seriously not right with these cork suckers,” she added.“They’re all naked, ridiculously ripped and have a weird red tint to their eyes.There can only be one explanation for who and what they are.”
Coming to a stop a few yards from the man she’d avoided, Victoria looked him dead in the eye.“They’re aliens,” she figured.“They’ve come here inside the comets to take over our planet now that all of the good people are gone.I bet they plan to enslave us with their freaky mind powers.”
Dark brown eyes bored into her as if they were staring into her soul.Victoria gasped when the alien blinked, somehow breaking free from her control of her own dream.Some of the droplets of water that coated him began to run down his skin.His gaze focused on her and a cruel smile curled his lips upwards.“Offspring,” he announced in satisfaction.
Victoria froze the dream again, heart pounding hard and fast.“I’m fudgingoutof here,” she said with a shudder and sprinted away from the aliens as fast as she could.
Her feet carried her home, but she didn’t unfreeze the dream.Standing in her bathroom, she stared into the mirror.Her gaze went to her short black hair, her olive skin, then to her dark eyes.“No fudging way,” she murmured in horror.“That shizbag can’t be my father!He’s a mother fudging extra-terrestrial!”
She began to laugh, but it had a hysterical edge to it.Victoria didn’t have prophetic dreams.Her talent was to relive moments of her own life, but she couldn’t pick which moments.At least she hadn’t dreamed about what had happened the day after the Rapture again.This memory was almost as disturbing, though.
Snapping awake, the wrestler checked her watch and groaned.She’d only been asleep for a couple of hours.
“It’s not even nine o’clock yet!”she complained.Rolling over, she eventually drifted off to sleep again.
