Excerpt Thursday - Two today!

I thought I'd post from two different ones today.

Mystic Perceptions and the work in progress

After the Silence

Mystic Perceptions

Jac looked around the empty parking lot, not even sure

why anyone would ever be here. She glanced back at the

two men sitting in the car. They’re going to think you’re

crazy. She turned and walked over to the spot that had been

pointed out to her.

It wouldn’t be the first time someone thought she was

crazy, she frowned at the broken asphalt ground, and it

probably wouldn’t be the last.

Taking a deep breath, she knelt down and placed both

hands on the ground. There were glimmers of vibrations.

She focused harder, nothing solid enough to grab a hold of.

Moving her hands slowly, she tried a few more places.

~ * ~

“What is she doing?” Reid growled.

Brent shrugged. “I’m not sure.” He looked over in the

direction she was looking. “Does she see something in the

field?”

“Maybe.”

Looking away from her, Brent studied his partner.

“Why exactly are we doing this again?”

Reid rubbed his forehead quickly, and then glanced

back to her. “Because we’re out of ideas--and she has

looked at the same things we’ve looked at all along and

come up with something to follow every time.”

Nodding, Brent turned back to look at her. “She’s

presently looking at an empty field, surrounded by nothing--

pretty sure she’s seeing the same thing we did here.” He

watched as she walked slowly back towards them. “Why do

we have to wait in the car?”

“I don’t know.” The frustration was clear in Reid’s

voice.

Both men swung around in their seat to look at her

when she got in the back seat. Briefly she smiled. “Next.”

Giving his partner a scoffing look, Brent turned back

around.

AFTER THE SILENCE

When the super viruses began to increase was when the panic rose, the day that everyone old enough to rationalize knew there might be an end coming.  No medications seemed to work any longer, the germs had learned to overcome being suppressed.  If you did survive a major ailment, you were no longer a simple human; you became a mutated version of one and something that everyone feared. Diseases were no longer named or classified, there was just the virus.  It became a new specie, never the same symptoms or horrific details but still called one name. It turned out to be one specie that no one could placate with meaningless promises or hope to control.   

By my twentieth birthday the only members of my family that remained were my father and brother. Unknown illnesses had claimed my two sisters and our mother.  I had gotten one of the viruses and the doctors said I was a rare miracle because I had escaped death and obvious mutation.  Yes I had survived and even though we never discussed it, I too was now some sort of sub human specie.  Of exactly what no one knew, I’d never tried to discover it, it was just something that I could feel was now inside me and something my family feared but never quite said so.  I learned my lesson though and stayed as far away from anyone that didn’t look to be one hundred percent healthy.  I wasn’t pushing my luck.

The world at this point had slowed down.  If you came in contact with anyone that sneezed or even looked unhealthy in any way – you went the other way as fast as you could and quarantined yourself for a few weeks.  No one was safe, no one escaped the invisible killers that took ten times the amount of the population that the natural incidents did.  There were no longer burials for anyone that passed to the next life; the laws now said bodies were to be cremated.  Even in death you were something people were afraid of, that your corpse would somehow still manage to infect them. 

What did this mean in numbers?  A metropolis that once claimed millions of residents could be as low as a few thousand.  It was terrifying and it was now the reality the entire planet lived.  Births were fewer and fewer each year.  Survivors of the virus weren’t able to breed, no one could explain the whys though, but even those that had always been healthy weren’t having children. No one wanted to bring a child into this.  Most adults at this point weren’t certain if they wanted to live in this.

Oddly enough, we still had our advanced technology, if you could afford it.  Everything went to the highest bidder.  Those that couldn’t afford it lived in what everyone once called olden times.  The few elderly that had existed when life was slower and without high tech were the scholars now and reveled in being useful in society once more. It was their knowledge that brought the population back to what might be considered almost living.

My father in his paranoia when it all began started hording just about everything that could be accumulated.  We had enough food, clothes and supplies to last the length of this life time.  At first we had all looked at each other like he had lost all sense of sanity. His paranoia turned out to be wisdom few had.

As my twenty-first birthday passed, we lost him to yet another unknown disease.  This left my older brother and I on our own and not all together sure we knew what to do about it.  My brothers’ friends that had survived to this point all adopted me as their younger sister and responsibility.  I can’t even express my lack of enthusiasm to having six older male brothers trying to rule my every move.  Eventually they relaxed and began to teach me how to survive and if necessary defend myself.  It was a world where no one liked to walk alone any longer.  We weren’t safe from those that hadn’t quite made the transition of the times smoothly.  Many were what I’d say as stark raving mad – even though I often thought they’d just taken the easy way out and not dealing with reality might be the best at times.