Viscera: Short Story

Recently I’ve found myself pondering the concept of my own mortality, which I guess is odd considering most might not even consider me living. I wonder if I sunk my fingernails into my sink and ripped, would it reveal the rot beneath; would it reveal the pulsing, living being of the virus that has invaded almost every crease and corner of my body. And I wonder if eventually it will take my autonomy from me too, that my current state might only be temporary and that one day I might find myself tearing at the flesh of the man next to me and have to watch as the virus simply takes what it needs. 

I stare at the ceiling, watching the shadows flicker around the room. Marcus’s breathing is steady and even beside me and I can’t help but think of how his muscle and tissue might feel between my teeth. He would be helpless to stop me until it’s too late. I shake the thought, it disgusts me. I shuffle closer to Marcus and wrap my body around his. He stirs a little but settles against me easily and I can’t quite believe the trust he places in me, a trust he places in nobody else. 

I’m used to restless nights by now, I haven’t had a full night's sleep since the apocalypse began. My current state certainly hasn’t helped. The world is too quiet, the quiet is too loud for sleep.

------

I wake up with tears running down my face and Marcus pulling me close. 

“Sorry” I rasp out, “I- didn’t mean to wake you.” My voice sounds raw and painful.

“Seb, hey it’s okay, you're okay.” He runs a soothing hand through my hair,  

“What's wrong, love?”

These are the moments where I know that he loves me, even through the dirt and the blood and the violence. Maybe on other dark, terrifying mornings he wouldn’t be so sympathetic.

“I’m okay, It just.. Hurts.”

Every word is a struggle, my throat feels chafed and bloody. Marcus holds me tight as more tears and pain rack through me. Some days are like this, where the pain is unbearable and I wonder if this is finally it, if this is it and my so-called ‘luck’ has finally run out. 

“We should probably move on, we’ve been here too long.” 

Marcus makes a good point but I also feel fucking awful.

“I think I’m gonna vomit” I choke out, rushing to pull myself up and out of the bedroom, making it to the kitchen before I retch. Black blood with chunks of … I don’t even want to think about it. It runs down my chin and drips onto the floor, my throat feels like someone’s gone at it with a cheese grater.  

“Now, we didn’t go to all the effort to find you something to eat just for you to throw it all up.” Marcus says behind me. 

I nod shakily, and pull myself up using the kitchen counter. My fingers coming away caked in dust, for a split second I think of the people that would have lived normal lives in this house. I wonder if they would have ever imagined things the way they are, or if they could have imagined the acts we’d committed within the walls of what used to be their home. I stagger back to ‘our’ bedroom, practically luxury for the apocalypse, a bed, mattress, even (admittedly moth eaten) sheets. I get dressed, making sure to cover as much skin as possible on account of both being sensitive to the sun and looking a little too undead for most people's liking. I move to pack up our meagre belongings, in the apocalypse it's best not to collect too much stuff, or move into anywhere you stay, you never know when you’ll need to leave in a hurry. I hear Marcus moving around in the next room, likely hunting for anything salvageable left in the pantry. I hoist my pack onto my shoulder and drag Marcus’ into the kitchen too, carefully avoiding the puddle of my own vomit. 

“I think that’s everything,” I say.

Marcus nods as I place our packs down and he carefully packs them with tinned food. Then, we hoist our packs up and leave. I feel no emotion for the house that was our home for weeks, I don’t think Marcus does either.

The silence after the end of the world never fails to be eerie. We’d spent the last month or so in sprawling suburbia, rows and rows of identical houses, all like time capsules of the time before. Dusty algebra homework, the table set for dinner, corpses gently tucked into bed. Just a minor infection, they told us, that’s what they insisted right up until the very last moment. Despite the millions that were tearing at the sinew of their neighbours, dropping dead as soon as the virus had ensured its future. 

Marcus and I wander down the middle of the road. Empty cars line the street, I keep expecting to see someone in their windows. We keep our eyes out for any signs of life, infected are sparse, the Virus killed too quickly but quickly enough that survivors are even sparser. 

----

We’re on a long, winding country road. It’s been this way for hours, and the sun is setting. She sends vibrant streaks of red and orange across the sky. The horizon is far reaching, it seems endless. There’s a house up ahead, silent and solemn, we’ll stay there tonight.

“Sometimes,” I start, breaking the carefully constructed silence, “I’m afraid that I’ll wake up and I won’t be me anymore.” 

Marcus is quiet for a while. 

“None of us are who we used to be.” He finally replies, his voice is soft.

He seems to think a while longer before saying, “Besides, who’s watching anymore anyway?” His voice is harsher this time, a hint of humour mixed into his tone.

----

The house wasn’t empty. There’s someone here, there was someone here. I can still feel him between my teeth. 

“You dwell too much,” Marcus says behind me. 

I sit on the ground, knees pulled to my chest. There’s blood smeared across the hard wood floors, flickering candle light illuminating what we’d just done.

“You don’t dwell enough,” I reply, my voice is rough, like sandpaper.

“Jesus Christ Sebastian, get over yourself.”  Marcus says in reply.

I hear him shuffling around behind me, getting himself comfortable on the mattress we’d dragged down from upstairs.

“Blow out the candles once you’re done sulking.”

There’s a dead man lying beside me. There’s a dead man lying beside me and we killed him. There’s a dead man lying beside me and I’m picking his entrails out from in between my teeth. The events from earlier play non stop in my mind. We’d knocked on the door, pretending to be travellers, cold and alone, desperate for shelter. He let us in, an older man with greying hair, perhaps he was in his late 50s. He told us that he hadn’t seen another human being for months. We sat around his kitchen table and he served us cold baked beans. There was a sense of normalcy to it. As we ate he told us about his daughter, how she had just started university when all this started.

“She can’t have been much older than the two of you.” He’d said, a sense of grief and sadness veiling his words. 

I think he knew something was wrong. When Marcus slid the knife into his abdomen, there was a grim sort of acceptance about him, he let out a quiet “oh” and then fell heavily to the ground. Then at the thick smell of blood and death, I become something that I am not. My body ceases to belong to me, puppeted by the virus. 

After a while I pick myself up off the floor and crawl into bed beside Marcus, the candles long since burnt out. He wraps his arms around me, settling against my back.