Monsters

Chapter Sixteen

I had tried turning on the news to see what had been going on but the power had gone out shortly after I returned upstairs. After a while, I had asked my mother what we could do but she'd been as uncertain about our situation as I had. So we attempted to distract each other with stories and conversation with the hope that the military or the government or someone would figure out what was happening and come to help us out. That is what we ran on for the most part as my mom began to grow worse.

She'd begun to tremble as I wrapped her in every blanket we had in the room. I was worried about how sick she'd become and how I couldn't do anything about it. The medication that we did have didn't seem to be helping her much at all. And as night began to fall once more as the world itself grew quiet I watched as my mom finally dosed off and I got caught up in my worry. My clothes were wet, still a bit soaked from when I hugged her when she came home. My arm had stung from the cut and I couldn't bring myself to sleep too worried for my mom and our situation.

Hope; I had still been running on blind hope to this point that someone out there was trying to figure things out. That was, however, not the case, but I didn't know that then. Sometime during the night, my mother began to toss and turn in her sleep as if she were in immense pain. She began to convulse and I rushed towards her side unaware of what I could do to help. "Mom," I began to shake her awake with worry, "please wake up!" I screamed with tears until suddenly she stopped moving altogether.

Quiet, the world had fallen into this still quiet as I waited for my mom to move and show any signs of life. What I got instead was her gasping awake with glowing red eyes. There was this inhuman growl that came out of her as she started to crawl toward me. I scrambled back in terror. "Mom, what are you doing?" She just continued her way toward me as if she couldn't hear me at all.

"Mom, please, you're scaring me!" I begged her and she launched herself at me. I tried to fight her off as tears streamed down my face. I was just a kid then and I was scared. At some point during all of it I had managed to shove her off of me and her head slammed hard against the corner of her dresser. Her body became lax and she stopped moving entirely.

"Mom?" I whispered yet she still didn't move. "Mom, no!" I screamed crawling to her and trying to shake her awake. "Mom wake up please!" I'd begged her as I took her head into my hands. She never responded and I fell back realizing what I had done. "I'm so sorry," I said to her unmoving form and I broke down crying.

I brought my hands up to place my head in them only to feel a burning, stinging sensation. I quickly brought my hands back away from me to see that at some point during the struggle my mom had managed to leave a bite mark on my right hand. My heart dropped, and my chest tightened as I realized what this had meant. It only made sense that the same thing would happen to me.

After a few moments, I got up and did my best to place my mom in her bed. With a heavy heart and a sense of dread in the pit of my stomach, I went to lay next to my mother on the bed. And I just stayed there on my side watching her with tears in my eyes.

So I had laid there and I waited to turn; seconds turned to minutes, minutes turned to hours, and finally, those hours turned to days. I sat and waited and nothing happened. I never turned like I had expected to. Like I was supposed to. The days after led me to a nightmarish transformation, a transition from a human to the monster I am currently.

I had coughing fits that led to a fever that led to trembling convulsions. I had been so certain because of this that I would turn soon. But I didn't turn, not fully at least. What happened to my mom should have never happened, and if I could, I'd go back in time and do everything in my power to stop it from happening. But I couldn't save her, it's already too late for her, but what about everyone else?