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𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐃 𝐑𝐎𝐒𝐄 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐆 𝐀𝐅𝐓𝐄𝐑 I finally decided to leave him.
Him.
He will now and forever just be him. No name, no anything, just an angry memory.
He had said that he loved me and I even found a ring, beautiful and small just how I always wanted it to be. He had promised himself to me over countless dinners, mornings in bed, in between sips of orange juice and coffee. I allowed him to trace the outlines of my soul every night, bare and whole to him. He was a good man, at least that's what I always assumed. He was good at that, tricking people with his pretty smile and kind words. I fell into his trap, like a fly stuck to wax. But then I found those damned pictures of the beautiful dying woman who turned out to be his wife and it set everything in motion.
One butterfly flapped its wings in Florida and suddenly I was gone.
It wasn't hard to pack my things, get in my car, and drive home. My little, quiet, empty home. We lived in a small neighborhood in a small town outside of Atlanta and I assumed my family would be there sitting on the couch eating microwave dinners and my father, John, sitting and spitting angrily at something Conner was doing.
If it wasn't me getting the blunt end of his hand, belt, or his words, then it was Conner. My father always wanted a son. Only fourteen and with more scars than me by that age. But I had been a coward and when I had the opportunity to go off to college, I took it and didn't look back.
I had gotten in on a running scholarship. Track and cross country had been my entire life in middle and high school, and then, later, in college. It was easy to run, to pump my arms back and forth, to feel the dull ache of exhaustion begin to creep up my legs. It was easy to take off and never look back and to run until the sidewalks end.
I was on the way to becoming a doctor, until I changed majors about a dozen times. I had been fascinated with the anatomy of our bodies, the way we worked and then it lead me straight to psychology, go figure. To understand the inner workings of the mind, especially the ones of John and Nancy gave me a powerful feeling like I was suddenly on top. I was the one ahead.
I would come home for holidays but that was all I allowed my parents to see of me. I'd take Conner out for weekends once I graduated. Me, Conner, and Him. Sunday breakfasts, trips to the video game store, and the movies. If things had gone the way I had thought, we would've been a proper family.
But not all good things last. Especially not now.
When the dead came back to life with dangerous, poisonous bites, I had just gotten home. Well, it had been approximately fifty-nine days since the very, very beginning supposedly. The CDC and police departments and local news teams putting out strange memo's to broadcast over the television about strange happenings with the sick and deranged.
