Grave

Jack Vital


Stay alive, he whispered.


I haven't posted in a while. He took my phone saying I need to rest and worry only about healing. I was too infected to argue. Too weak.


I've been awake for a few hours now but for the past several days I've been in and out of consciousness. Terrible dreams of dark tunnels, Dee, Trevor, my parents, rooms full of blood and shit, and the stink. Oh god the stink. I would wake up to it and will myself back to sleep despite it. Waking up to it was waking up to the blackness that had reined over my life for the past 2 weeks since Trevor died and came back. You should have saved him. You can't do anything right. Pathetic! You actually need someone else to help you live. He'll know you're infected. He'll know...


You're not infected. You would have turned already. You'd be one of the risen. Anyway, you can't spend a spare second thinking of it, he says. 
I'm not even sure of his name.
Grave. My name is Grave.
He leaves some food that he says will help me heal and then walks away.


During these past days when I'd wake up I could feel the blackness inside me. It haunts my sleep with the dreams, my waking life with the stink and with the doubts. I'd wake up to thoughts of how infinitely incapable I am. I'd wake with my senses confused. I'd waiver between feeling as though I was producing the stink, to wondering if I were dead, to being sure I was dead, and then the doubt would incapacitate me.
You loser. You pathetic piece of rotten shit. My stomach would cramp trying to stave off the thoughts. A battle clashing inside me. The blackness versus... something. Me?


I remember thoughts like: you won't get far, you have no idea how to stay alive, you couldn't save Dee or Trevor, you couldn't even open your mouth when that cowboy came in shooting the place. 


The thoughts were somehow unfamiliar but critical in a way that felt familiar. I'd never done anything special. Never been popular or good at my job. I float between inconsequential and completely apathetic. This voice knew that. It would wake me up.
It would tell me to look under my skin and pick at my bullet wound. It wanted the black out, but not to purge it, but display it. I could feel it and I was sick. My stomach would cramp and my mind would fight but I couldn't do it. I'd go pick at my wrists or at the bullet hole. I'd shiver and ask for my mom. I'd shiver and ask to just end it. I'd shiver and bargain with a God I'd never talked to.


But every time I did it seemed that Grave would come in.
You're causing your own suffering. Your body and mind must be healthy. Fight the thoughts and rest.


He'd say that Dee was out of my control. He'd say that in order to survive I must listen to him. He'd say it isn't safe where they are and that we need to head north to the cold. There is light there, he said. 


Grave just came in and asked how I was feeling. He asked me a bunch of questions about how I was feeling physically and mentally. I didn't say much. My stomach hurts from trying to fight off the thoughts and it doesn't leave much fight left for the pain, the tears, or the smell.


So, here I am. Healing. Is anyone out there? What is going on in the world? A lot of sites aren't updated. Grave keeps telling me I shouldn't worry about it right now. It seems like this isn't just happening in Boston. If you have information post it here, please. We need to know the truth.