Crestfallen ↬ Carl Grimes (old version)

D E S O L A T E

CHAPTER TWENTY: DESOLATE

❝ I have pretended to go mad in order to tell you the things I need to. I call it art. Because art is the word we give to our feelings made public. And art doesn't worry anyone. ❞

❝At this point, silence would eventually learn to create a deeper meaning in your brain. Connecting with each and every dark thought and fueling your midnight energy.❞

➳

BITTERNESS WAS A LONE TOPIC. EMPTINESS WAS A FAVORED ONE. Silence was a burden and living was a casualty. Surviving was a miracle and being able to walk was nothing more than a mistake. To most, these actions were nothing but something we did casually day by day. But to the young girl, these actions were barriers between living and surviving. She could barely even understand how her father was still up and thriving, for she was having her own troubles taking a single breath in the hot and humid air around them.  No. That wasn't the truth. No matter how many times she tried she could not blame the humid air for her gasping lungs. The ugly truth, no matter how much she tried to ignore it, was that every single breath she stole from others were slowly beginning to suffocate her from the inside out. The people her father killed in cold blood. The lives that crossed their own path, now nothing more than just empty carcasses. All that needed to be done was for her father to pull the trigger while she just sat and watched. They were haunting her.

Did those people deserve more days? Did she really have no other choice but to watch? Or was that something she was just telling herself to make this vigorous chore of surviving easier in any way shape or form.

She could barely remember the name of the city they were now in, much less remember where they were headed and why. There were no landmarks or milestones she could distinguish around her. Nothing but flat, dry land surrounded the small girl, the only marker of a life before this one being the dry asphalt road in front of her and the handful of abandoned cars littered amongst the drying weeds. Dark SUV's were broken and shedding their outer layer, hiding dangerous monster's in their shadows. Large trucks were flipped and scattered like corpses along the roads, their engines of steel and metal reaching out like claws beneath the tangled heaps of wreckages.

It was a sight to see. If you picture it, you could almost imagine the smell of smoke billowing around in the air and the sound of a helicopter's propellers pushing against the harsh wind. Maybe even people screaming and the constant sound of gunshots and bullets reaching their targets. But of course, these were just inferences on what had happened when this all began. And that was then. Now, all you could smell was death and blood. And as for sound....well... At this point, silence would eventually learn to create a deeper meaning in your brain. Connecting with each and every dark thought and fueling your midnight energy. So it wasn't much of a surprise to hear that constant fuzz in your ears as the silence controlled every fiber of the earth around you.

It was easy to get lost in this feeling. Milah could already feel herself wandering throughout its dark woods. In the shadows of her brain, nothing could stop her from soaking up each and every emotion she had continuously been forced to keep in and never let go. This feeling....Was indescribable. It was almost as if she were feeling nothing and everything at the same time. In between black and white, but not exactly gray.

Of course, she would always prefer her old ways of thinking and feeling. Anything over the way her brain controlled her now. But, to say she was worse off than anyone else would be selfish and petty of her. Because she wasn't. She was only messed up in the head and nothing more.