🥈𝕊𝕖𝕔𝕠𝕟𝕕 𝕡𝕝𝕒𝕔𝕖 in the Guilded Raven Awards hosted by @TheGuildedRaven
🥈𝕊𝕖𝕔𝕠𝕟𝕕 𝕡𝕝𝕒𝕔𝕖 in the Coalition Awards hosted by @CoalitionAwards
🥉𝕋𝕙𝕚𝕣𝕕 𝕡𝕝𝕒𝕔𝕖 in the Regal Awards, hosted by @YaDramaQueenbkp
"Pareidolia is when...
Song for this chapter is chapel by Nicole Dollanganger
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It probably felt like the end of the world when people were being massacred by Nazi Germany or when the black plague started dropping people like flies or world wars, but it wasn't. It was only the end for them, of what they were, their lives. People somewhere still existed, so maybe when the outdwellers finish with what they're doing, people will still exist, not as they were but in some extraterrestrial zoo as an endangered species, like the Southern Corroboree Frog. The end of the world is never the end of the world. It's just the end of me.
***
The hanger was oppressively cold and loud. The noise seemed amplified within the fortress, and my stomach had a minuscule growling monster prowling for food, preferably a hamburger. But besides that, it wasn't oh so rank. I think I'm going insane. I toyed with my locket in my hands, hovering over my mouth, my eyes open but turned off. Haa, I'm going unsane, the opposite of insane. For instance, I don't use words like rank or do I? since I did use the word rank, does that mean that I do say words like that, and now I'm confused, or no, I should say that I am befuddled. I can't be the only person who gets befu- or whatever by their head? I don't feel like myself, haven't for a while. I still know who I am, but it keeps coming in and out of focus. Who was I before this? No, not who I was, who I am now, or is that the same thing. Who a person was, is who they are? You can't change that. Like how you can't change the past, but people can change how they think from the past and think differently in the future, right? So maybe I'm not actually insane. Or again, maybe I am. The brain finds ways of making unsensible things sensible.
"Hey, you up?" a voice asked me.
"Yeah?" I sat up from the cot I had been resting in.
"Wake up Peter Mark and quietly get your bag, get everything you need."
"Matt?"
"Just do it. I'm getting mom. Stay here; I'll be back."
"No, but Matt..." but he was already running off to retrieve mom from the medical section. I looked over at Peter Mark, sound asleep in the cot across from me. I knelt down and slid my backpack out from under the cot. I stuffed in my blanket and the few other odds and ends of mine that were lying around before I moved on to Peter Mark's backpack; when I was done, I slung the two bags on my shoulders and then tied the straps across my chest to make sure the backpacks would stay secure to me before waking Peter Mark.
"Peter Mark, come on, wakey wakey," I cooed. The toddler yawned, sticking his index finger in his mouth.
"Where, mamma?" he asked, beginning to whimper.
"She's here; we're going to go get her. Come on," I took PM's little hand in mine. He pulled away. "Peter Mark, no mammas this way," I told him. He started to cry and tug his hand away. "Stop it Peter Mark!" he had wiggled his hand out from my fist and was running off. Without thinking, I chased after him. Dodging around people and military personnel as well as I could with two bulky backpacks decreasing my speed, it wasn't long until I lost Peter Mark.
