The 11 Hours

1

Her brunette hair sat in a nest of frizz on top of her distraught face as she stared at the paled faces around her; overcome with bumps and rashes, not a soul in the whole area could muster a breath or their last goodbye. Every wooden work desk, sleekly designed chair, cream carpeted floor, the pens sitting next to notebooks... it all looked perfect, ready for a picture, it was just the lifeless bodies that were out of place.

The girl, Maris, couldn't make a noise for she was too scared...too confused. She didn't know why she was the only one alive in her line of sight, why this happened...what happened. She wanted to puke, there was a horrendous aroma of sickness and seeing all these people was terrifying, but all that came were weak noises and empty coughs from Maris herself.

Maris was stuck in this room of death with her thoughts, jagged breathing, and the distant sound of alarms.

It was supposed to be the day of adoption - where families accepted another child, but instead it had become a day of letting go. Maris couldn't do anything but stare at the catastrophe around her. People slumped over desks, tables, the floor...anything in sight had a person covered in some nasty disease lying upon it.

Maris felt her hand and whole body trembling as she tried to stand up. She eyed the premises for a familiar face, hoping that a friend could be there with her. Someone else must be awake with her.

"Kasey? Max? Hello?" Her voice cracked and she couldn't help the shakiness coming though, "mom?" Maris tried to think of anyone she may have been with that she last remembered, but no one was moving. Maris' eyes widened as she discovered a familiar face. "Mom!"

Her numb legs ran to the crippled body dressed in cashmere and coconut scent. "M-mom! Are you ok? Ca-c-can you he-hear me?" Maris was shaking as she tried to turn her mother's dead weight towards her. She knew deep down that her mother was not to respond, but she longed to hear her voice one more time. Even if it was her telling Maris to stop fooling around with the water jug that provided for the office her school was visiting or to grab her a pen to sign off a check. Her mother's body fell towards hers and she gasped at the sight. Her mom's beautiful, smooth face was covered in gashes and bumps, tainted purple and blue like bruises. Her previously lively and chocolate eyes were bloodshot and white. Her plush lips were thinned and chapped; the only thing that was recognizable were her softly colored clothes and hair.

"Mom!" Maris' whispered lightly and her eyes didn't hold back anymore as she fell next to her mother, struggling to breathe through the pain, tears streaming down her face. Her mother was all that she had known; they were going to adopt a little boy that day, Kevin.

He was born in Hour Seven but was deemed unfit, and just like all the other misfit babies in Hours, they were sent to the Third Hour for nurturers and caring families. Her mother was an avid adopter and Maris had at least four siblings, each from a different Hour and each raised under the caring household that Maris and her mother offered in Hour Three. Maybe, with luck, some of them would have survived this horrific event. Maybe it was something confined within these walls only. Hopefully.

Hope seemed like a word Maris would be clinging onto.

"Mom - I am going to do t-this for you," Maris wiped away her tears and looked into her mother's dead eyes, "Please forgive me for leaving you like this." The lightheaded brunette began to turn away but her body wouldn't move any further. "No no I-I I can't."

Maris wanted to take her mother's body and put her in a place she deserved to be in. Her bed, for all the memories they had cuddled up to movies and cheap television dinners; the tip of the highest mountain, to be close to the sky and freshest of air; somewhere in seclusion, so she wouldn't just look like another dead body - she was someone special and she deserved to be found as that. Maris shakingly stood up and tried to gently drag her mother's body, as if any pain would make her condition worse.