()%The Thing Within #ONC2023

Chapter 1

And the moment the door creaked on its hinges, I thought to hide. Inside the closet, I scampered and waited. Waiting felt like a heavy silence for what seemed like an eternity. Until I heard footsteps enter the room.

A short while later, I heard more footsteps, followed by a voice, that sounded foreign. "They're dead. No one's here!"

Silence. Then after a while another voice spoke. "There are some folks in the house next-door. Over there."

Oh no! They were going for the neighbor!

I was a nervous wreck as I waited till they were gone before tiptoeing out of the closet. Peering through the window, I saw my next-door neighbor's young daughter, Maggie, being held forcibly by a soldier in an unfamiliar uniform. They must be from Crisium, or some other island, I thought. "Open your mouth," he commanded.

She obeyed, thought her eyes flashed defiantly at the men.

The soldier shone a flashlight into her mouth and appeared to be examining her. Were, they looking for something? "Looks asymptomatic! No sign of illness!" he said.

The other soldier turned to her. "Is there anyone in the house besides your parents and you?"

She shook her head. "No."

"You've to come with us. Do you understand?"

She nodded at the men, looking bewildered, as she broke out into a coughing fit.

Suddenly, the man holding her drove a syringe into the side of her neck, making her collapse onto the pavement. He shook his head as he looked at her discarded torso before turning away.

Just then, the sound of someone coughing up a fit filled the air. Looking in the direction ot the sound, I noticed a young couple emerging from the hiding place, behind an old oil drum near the roadside. Regret and despair were written all over their faces.

The other soldier walked up to them. "I'm sorry for having to do this, but our instructions are simple: Kill anything that's contaminated! And what's not, we take to the ship." No sooner had he said it, than he aimed his machine gun at them and fired. I watched in horror as their bodies ricocheting violently from the shelling before falling onto the road.

"You think we'll find any who's not afflicted in these parts?" the other soldier asked.

"Don't know. But that's the order."

The men then began torching all the houses, including mine, with my dead parents. I crawled out the back and hid, peering through the flames, in the early morning darkness to see the men torching the other houses. When they were sure they'd torched the houses enough they entered the vehicle, a medium sized camper van and drove off.

It was at that moment I looked to my right and saw him. Rupert, the butcher's son, my next-door neighbor and classmate. His house was also engulfed in flames, and from the wretched look on his face, I swore he too had come to the threshold of loss tonight. Then I saw the others—his close friends and also my classmates, James and Daniel. Oh yes! It was Saturday night when they always stayed over at Rupert's for whatever reason. Secretly, though, I always thought they were into OUIJA or evoking the dead.

The heat was becoming unbearable, and I couldn't stay here for much longer. I needed to find a safer place, and that's when I saw it. My parents' old lodge house. Instantly, I began making my way to it. Looking back every now and then I was aware of Rupert and the guys tailing me. Almost five minutes later we were all at the lodge. I retrieved the key from beneath the doormat and opened it up. They followed me inside and I led them to the safest place I knew there—the library.

A little while after, we were all sitting silently in the single sofas arranged around a small table as everyone seemed in dire need of gathering their thoughts. I for one didn't feel like talking. Perhaps later, but not now. I needed to wallow in self pity for a while. My sorrow, at the loss of my parents, was monumental. And similarly, it was the same regarding the loss of the world as I knew it. I was now bound to a life I had no idea of how to live from this moment on, and so too were they.

Yet, we'd survived the night! Somehow, we'd survived. I assumed that the majority of the townspeople was perhaps already dead—killed off on this night alone. And whoever wasn't, had probably hidden.

I thought back to the group of us, who'd gathered here, in my deceased parents lodge house. I looked around at everyone, noting that they all seemed healthy. They were like me then. WE hadn't caught the virus. We were the lucky ones. Or perhaps I spoke too soon, for Rupert suddenly broke out in a fit of cough, and not long afterward, the others too.

"Are you sick?" I asked.

"Who isn't?" James answered.

"Like everybody else!" Daniel answered.

Rupert looked bewildered at me before speaking. "Aren't you ill?" he asked.

I shook my head at them. "No," I said, feeling guilty that I hadn't caught the virus. "Not yet."

Everyone grew quiet suddenly, as if to their own thoughts.

I lay my head back afterward and tried to rest, but my mind won't let me. Everyone I knew had been afflicted with this virus, except for me. I wore no mask and was constantly surrounded by the sick. Yet, I remained immune. Why was that? I lay there with my eyes closed, and thought for a long while, until finally, I fell asleep. My last thought before I drifted off being: It's up to me now to find the cause of this illness and if possible the cure! Perhaps, it had something to do with me, and if so, I needed to find out what that was!

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