A Place Just For Us (Rick Grimes)

Chapter Forty-Nine: Last Day On Earth I

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❝ How much sorrow can I take?
Blackbird on my shoulder
And what difference does it make
When this love is over? ❞
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I couldn't fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which placed the foundation for many moments to come— making my fate. How long had it been? I was in the middle of it before I even knew that it had begun.

Counting seconds, minutes, or hours no longer seemed an option. I foretold myself that I wasn't going to like the ending, no matter how long I would stay in the back of this truck for. Darkness consumed the way I struggled in vain. My feelings could— would not be repressed, I told myself, but my fear outweighed my pain, my throat hurt from screaming and my knuckles bled from slamming them into the walls that surrounded me.

As I tried to search for a trail to follow, trying to find the strongest gleam of hope my body owned in this precise moment, I let myself back into a corner for the first time. I let myself breathe. It helped to debunk to endless dwelling on what would happen once these doors would open again. I was hopeless in some horribly deep way and for a flash of an instant, I could see just how lonely and helpless I was. This feeling ran deep and it scared me, because it seemed catastrophic. This was the price I was going to pay for everything I had done. And I would be lying if I said I wasn't afraid that it would last forever.

For a short period of time, I thought nobody could hurt me without my permission, but as I was sitting here in the dark I realised how easy it was to get ripped apart by strangers, and how hard it was for myself to get myself back together.

Because I couldn't tell whether my clothes were soaked with blood or with sweat. I couldn't tell what time of the day it was. I didn't know what stood waiting for me. At this point, they knew me better, they knew my weaknesses without knowing me. Why had I underestimated the loneliness of utter darkness when I had experienced it all before? I learned it felt nothing like a stab wound; it couldn't compare to the emotional wounds.

Then, when the truck had stopped moving, the doors opened abruptly. An intense light broke through the darkness, and it blinded me, drawing a thin line between the lights and the nightfall onto my curious vision.

Briefly, for only a moment, I hoped it would be Rick Grimes, but it wasn't.

Rough hands reached for my clothing, yanking at anything and everything their hands could find to pull me out of the truck, and throw me onto the ground, right into the dirt— as if that's the place where I should have been all along. I tried to process what was happening, and it took me long enough to realise where my broken body found itself. My vision sharpened, almost just like a camera's lens, and that's when I realised everything really had fallen apart.

I found his blue eyes in a sufferable distance. Out of all the people who surrounded us, I managed to find him in a heartbeat, and it brought me the kind of realisation you'd never want to experience. The look on his face showed me how broken he was, and as he was shaking his head, I thought he showed me disappointment for my betrayal towards him all those hours ago, but he was hurting, because I was here— because I found myself where he knew he could possibly lose me, and it's what made me swallow away my sobs. I didn't need to look around again, one glance had been enough to know we were all under serious threats.

"Well, now that we're all complete, let's meet the man!" I had not heard this voice before, but the tone had been so exaggeratedly excited that it had scared me thoroughly.

I dared to let my gaze travel far enough to notice how we were lined up perfectly, as if ready for slaughter, and it's what it felt like. It feared me how I expected the worst of things, even without knowing these people, without hearing them speak more than I already had.