Short story on the future of Covid

Short Story 1

Today was the 55th anniversary of COVID. It's been 55 years since the world was "normal". I say it like that because I've never known any different. My entire life has been like this, all 18 years of it. I grew up in a large secluded house in the country with only my parents for company. I call them my parents, but they are just a couple who couldn't have kids and they took me in. They told me they just found me on the street and decided to take me in. I kept asking for more details about where they found me and after a while, they kind of just started saying "Will, we've told you a million times stop asking there is nothing more to know". Now I am definitely grateful for them, taking me in must've been really risky for them, but I wish I knew more about where I came from.

From what I have heard, the virus has evolved a lot in 55 years. Now, it's dangerous to be even remotely near an infected individual. If you come into contact with someone infected, you die within 10 minutes. The symptoms don't start until 7 minutes after transmission. Which is part of why it was so hard to stop the virus from spreading, no one knows they have it until it is too late. People were getting infected then unknowingly moving around and interacting with others for the 7 minutes before they started getting symptoms. The worst part of all of this is there's no cure, nothing can save you except for isolation which has more recently stopped being as effective. Unlike the original virus, this one doesn't go away after a few weeks. It has evolved into a cancer-like virus, once it infects you it begins multiplying. Even the dead are contagious and can transmit the virus. When we learned that, the rest of us stopped moving the dead bodies. Fun fact, if you think dead bodies smell bad normally you are not ready for these corpses. They smell worse than your average dead body. It's like a mixture of a field packed with 10 years' worth of human feces and a 20-foot tall pile of vomit from alcoholics who religiously drink gin like it's water. I never thought a dead body could smell remotely similar to nail polish remover but here we are. You'd think I would be used to the smell after living in the same area for all my life but I never actually set foot outside until I was 16. Let me tell you, no house is big enough to keep a child entertained with only their parents for company.

This morning I walked downstairs to get a head start on my daily tasks which mom always assigns me. She said I should be contributing something to the family but I think she just wanted to keep me busy so I'd stay inside and out of trouble. As I descended the pristine marble stairway that lead me to the kitchen, where my mother seemed to always be dreaming up some new and unique recipe, I felt that something was off. I've always been a bit different in that I can sense when bad things happen before they do. The first time it happened, I was 5. I was in my room rereading my favourite novel when I felt these strange prickling feelings in the back of my skull like hundreds of tiny spiders crawling along the back of my brain right underneath my skin. At the time, I ignored it and quickly returned to my book. A few seconds later I heard a loud crash coming from the downstairs living room. Curious to know what happened I ran down the stairs to get a glimpse of what happened. I found my mother on the ground, her leg trapped underneath the top of a bookshelf. At the time I hadn't thought to make a connection between the two events but as I grew older and situations like that kept happening it became harder to ignore. I don't know what it is or how I do it but somehow I know when bad things are going to happen. If I felt the individual legs of the spider sensation on my neck, I knew it was close. If the spiders were pressing harder onto my brain I knew the event would be worse than if I could barely feel them. Today my head felt like it was being crushed between two large magnets. Panic spiked through my body as I ran, yelling for my parents. I had burst into the kitchen only to find it empty. The house was eerily quiet like the whole world was on mute. I continued searching for my parents to no avail. After I checked every room twice and found nothing, I thought about checking outside. I hesitated since Mother and Father told me never to as much as open the door without them. But they weren't here and I had no clue how to find them other than to continue searching. Sometimes I miss being able to use a phone, but we haven't been able to use a phone for 8 years. Dad said we had to stop calling to save power but I remember having a big episode that day so I have a feeling he wasn't telling me the truth. I was startled out of my thoughts by a loud crack, it sounded like a megaphone was amplifying the sound of a tree being snapped in half.