I Wish I Knew

“Wow… I don’t think I’ve ever noticed the burn marks that covered the walls around me... I guess I wouldn’t, right?” she thought as she adjusted her right leg, which was missing from the knee down, further into the dark, daunting hole in the cave. She always had to take the prosthetic off and crawl when trying to get in here.

She had come back to this humid cave time and time again. A monthly cycle of leaving and returning. The moss that grew in this small cave was the only source of food and once it was gone it would take another 30 days to grow back.

To travel from cave to cave was no walk in the park with only one… functional – leg. Many times, the steep mountain would cause her prosthetic to become dislodged. Luckily, she had not lost it, for good, yet.

It was only a few years ago that everything changed, but not in the way it was supposed to. The world, as she knew it, was wiped away by a plague.

It started like a ringworm. Small circular patterns would develop on random parts of your feet. Nothing could treat It and no doctors had ever seen It. But, at once, billions of people, all around the world, had, what seemed to be, ringworm.

At first It took months for the ringworm to travel from the ankles to the knee. By that time, doctors all over the world were cutting people open and testing them religiously. It was like a sci-fi movie from hell.

Many of the people who had It, but were not getting tested, got used to It over time. They seemed to think it was just part of “life” now. Some thought they were “chosen” and started some crazy cult. Some thought it was the end of the world, so they lived out a “bucket list” … but after the first 6 months… something happened.

Once it got to the knee the shapes started to change and the people who were carrying them did too. They started getting… hungry, but not for regular food. At first there were reports of people eating plastic bags and tires in the street. This did not seem too crazy but then within a couple days, there were even more reports of people trying to eat at homes.

Social media started sharing pictures of 10-20 people, at a time, with bloody mouths and torn throats, laying in the streets, or by homes. No one was left out. Not kids, not women, and not even pets.

Posts of movies where people and animals alike, would be eating… but even if they were bleeding from one ear to the other, jagged teeth from taking full force bites out of concrete surfaces, they would just smile and eat, as if they could not shake the euphoria of eating themselves to death.

Once the first 1,000,000 had died, things got serious. Bodies laid in the streets for weeks and cities could not keep up. For those who were still alive, the worms had started to reach the pelvis within a week of reaching the knees. IF, it made it to your pelvis, your hunger would transform into thirst.

Sewers were lined with hundreds of thousands of grotesque humans – some would still be living with holes seeping from inanimate objects being thrust through their intestines. Somehow, if It got to your pelvis, you became immortal to consumption, but only long enough before it reached your heart.

At that point, the worms would shift into what appeared to be the shape of a target, in the center of your chest. And in that moment… as if it were happening on a tv screen, the target would open up into a hole in your chest, from front to back, now gaping as if melted in front of your eyes. And just like that, what was, was no more.

Within days the human world had been consumed by what used to be - life on earth. Now that life had turned on itself, she was left – all alone.

She could not remember much about the events leading up to her being alone. She remembered that she had a family, but she could not remember their faces. She could remember that she was not born with only one leg, but somehow it saved her.

She was not even sure where she was, at least not on a map. She had made herself a home away from all the bodies piled in the streets of the cities. The smells of decomposed, rotting corpses, piled for miles at a time and she could only remember walking to get away from it.

She was not sure how far she had climbed before coming up in this little cave. She must have been so tired she just stopped here - but she was far enough away that she didn’t have to worry about the smell anymore.

She was so hungry when she woke up, that she just started eating the moss shimmering in front of her, a small patch glistening by her cheek. It was just there, on the cave walls and she could not remember how long it had been since she had eaten... She ate until the walls were bare and left the cave to find more food.

It took her a day to shuffle through the bare swamps that had become what she believed was a forest. After a year of decomposing billions of bodies, the grounds had become like bacteria filled mush. There were no streets or structures anymore. It was just layers of reddish-green mud like substance. High hills and mountaintops were the only escape.

It had been a year since she found herself in that cave. She had not heard her name and truly did not remember it. She had thought about etching it in the cave walls but never found the desire to do it, until today.

“Wow… I do not think I’ve ever noticed the burn marks that covered the walls around me. I guess I wouldn’t, right?”

The space was only large enough to fit herself and maybe 2 other people. The walls made what appeared to be a perfect circular space, but had to be crawled into, by entering a short gap in the rocks.

Her sight was surprisingly good for such a dark space, but she had spent so much time in the caves last year, she could almost see it with her eyes closed.

She started looking around the cave, reaching towards the base of the walls, sliding her fingers across the rocky floor, hoping to find a sharp enough object to start her etching.

As she peered at the walls, just barely visible by the light shining through the gap in the rocks, she had a thought…

“I didn’t realize the sun set in front of this cave…” As she continued to look - the light grew slowly, but she noticed the rocks making patterns, and shapes… shifting, almost like… someone was making shadow puppets… as she looked at her feet, she saw something…

A heart-shaped locket lay in the corner by the moss.

“Where did this come from?” she asked herself, slowly, and quietly. Her hands began to quiver as she slowly picked it up, staring all around her. The fresh blood on the locket, stained her dark, dirt filled nails.

As she opened it there were words transcribed on the inside… Frozen in fear, she heard the voice behind her reading the locket aloud…

“Don’t worry. You won’t remember…”