The Resistance — Week #4
Prompt: As an incurable plague rages across the globe, an avid comic book collector uncovers a hidden family secret.
“The death toll of the nation has risen to 3.7 million as of this morning. The government urges the public to stay indoors, and reduce all contacts with any other human being.” The 1920’s Bentley radio blared across Mandy’s bedroom. On the other side of the room, Mandy laid on her bed, avidly reading one of her limited edition Superman comics.
Ever since The Plague had started 6 months ago, she had been keeping track of the death toll every single morning. First, it took her mother, then her father, and when her sister was taken away too, she had hoped that she was next. For the past two months, she had been living in solitude, hidden away in her late grandparents’ Victorian house. She watched the food supply dwindle as the death toll increased.
The nights were the darkest. She would hear an orchestra of gut-wrenching screams coming from outside the house. Anyone infected with The Plague would suffer from night-pains; a deep tissue pain that made you feel like millions of fire ants were chewing on your flesh beneath your skin. Sufferers would usually emit deep guttural screams as a result of the excruciating pain that they were experiencing. Mandy remembered these screams so clearly — especially when they were coming from her own house.
Unfortunately, she knew that there wasn’t a cure for The Plague. The misuse of antibiotics all over the world had resulted in these incurable infectious diseases, wiping out millions of people whenever it started. Mandy had heard a rumor going around that only people with resistant genes will survive The Plague, but she wasn’t sure what to believe anymore. There were too many rumors, there were too many deaths, and she was all alone.
She remembered the night she discovered the truth. It was one of those nights where the screams just couldn’t seem to end. The pouring rain had made it even more sombre. There was no escape as the feelings of loneliness tainted the depths of her heart, so she had wandered down into the darkness of the cellar, where she had kept all her family’s things after their deaths. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she flipped through old photo albums, looking at how happy they all once were.
She remembered the instance that piece of brown letter fell from an old photo album. The way her hands had trembled as she read through the contents of that letter. The way her heart had thumped violently against her ribcage. She remembered how she thought it was a practical joke, left behind by her dead sister, but the official stamp at the bottom of the letter had changed her mind.
That night, she finally understood why her whole family had been taken by The Plague, but her turn never came. Somewhere out there in this world, their resistant genes was keeping her real family alive.
This creative fiction piece was crafted in 30 minutes based on a writing prompt as part of Written Weekly, a writers’ group held weekly in PJ.
