20 Years

August 15, 2042

I've never known a life any different than the one I've always lived. The life I have seems normal enough to me.
Wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast, load gun, and I'm on my way.
See? Normal... well normal enough for someone who was born during an apocalypse.

It's apparently been 20 years. 20 years since the world went from restaurants and bad TV to demons and monsters hunting humans nearly extinct. 20 years since I opened my eyes for the first time, took my first breath, and was given a name. This is the only life I have ever known. The only life I've ever lived. It's normal to me. My mom tells me that life before the creatures took over was much simpler. She says it was a life of laughter and peace. A life where her biggest worry was becoming a single mother at 21, and having to pay "taxes," whatever that's supposed to mean.

Sounds like a bunch of gibberish to me if I'm being honest, but I indulge her and her stories because it would always put her at ease telling them. Ever since I was a little girl, and she tried calming me when banshees would scream past my window, and wolves would howl through the night, her stories would always calm me down.

She would tell me about her favorite books before the apocalypse and how some "bitch" named Stephanie romanticized vampires to be sparkly and handsome when in reality our vampires were ugly things with multiple rows of sharp teeth and blood red eyes.
How demons were only talked about in religious books and shitty stories, and monsters didn't hunt you down but lived in closets and under beds.

However I digress.

20 years seems like a long time, but in reality it's been just the right amount of time.

20 years to love my mother.
20 years to survive.
20 years to live through an apocalypse.
20 years to be alive...
20 years of life, and then I die.

My fate was written and sealed 20 years ago. I didn't know it at the time, but I was given 20 years before I was sentenced to die. And die I did. It was only 20 years...