Without a soul my spirit’s sleeping somewhere cold

Until you find it there and lead it back home

-Evanescence: Bring Me To Life-

Unlike high school where you stick around with the same classmates for years, college was a place where friends came by and went away.  In the fall semester, you went to a course and met people in the same lecture and the best scenario would be they remain your friends, still calling your names and asked to hang out together even if you were no longer in the same lectures with them the next semester.  Worse than that, those people will just say a short ‘Hello’ or ‘Hi’ or ‘How is it going?’ still tried to make short conversation with you.  Worse than that, those people who spoke to you last semester ignored you when they passed by you this semester, as though you never knew them and they never knew you.  But, that’s not the worst case because you just have to admit that they at least opened up to you for one whole semester when you were in the same lecture with them.

The worst could happen when you were in the same lecture with some people for the whole semester but these people never wanted to let you to become part of their lives.  You sat in the same lecture with them but they never, even once, looked at you.  When that happened, you just have to admit that you were invisible in their eyes, never existed in their lives.

Believe it or not, Erika faced worse than those listed.  She felt like she never knew herself.  She felt like herself, her very own self, never wanted to open up to herself, to tell her what’s going on, to at least tell her where she belonged.

Memories.

She had memories of herself went to college.  She saw herself walking to class, listening to lecturers and being busy with homework, assignment and projects.  She saw herself with friends.  She saw herself at the gym, running on the treadmill while watching television.

She had memories of a guy.  She saw the guy at different, random classes, classes he did not belong to.  She saw him attended one class to another, with high level of curiosity and thirst for knowledge.  She saw him with friends, enjoying every bit of his life.  She saw him at the gym, running on the treadmill, ears listening to his iPod.

She saw the guy without the face almost everywhere in her memories.

+++++

Her eyes snapped open.  She quickly sat up and stretched her muscles.  The numbness gone and it was replaced by comfort.  Erika looked at her toes and blackened toenails caked with mud or whatever dirt she could not bring herself to think about.  For a moment, she lost in her thought, thinking about the same, repetitive old memories, which she couldn’t tell whether they were really memories or just her dreams.  They happened whenever she slept, the dreams or memories or whatever (she’ll figure that out one day if it was still not the end of the world), about college life and a particular, faceless guy.

She thought about it all the time, literally, because there was nothing she could do in this broken, lifeless world.  She was alone and jobless.  There was no dream to pursue, no ambition, no competition because she’s alone, alone in the wide, deserted area.  Her only commitment was to survive until it was really the end of the world.  If she was lucky, she would find human skeletons (at least a ‘human’ skeleton), which were no longer stench, showing just how long they were abandoned.  Hell, she didn’t even know the date.  She didn’t even know how long had it been since she woke up and find herself surrounded by dead people, smoke, heat and rubbles, what left of a wrecked town.  It might already be a year, based on the cycle of the four seasons.

Sometimes, she even wondered if the last thing she did before she woke up in the land of war was being a college student.  She only had the memories of college and no more.  But, if she really was a college student before the whole event occurred, why the hell she woke up and found herself fully dressed in the military uniform?  Why those who died around her also were in military uniform?  Was she in the army and were those who died her squadron members?  Why didn’t she have any remembrance of that?  Who is she?  Where is she right now?  Which country?  Which continent?  She might be on the land of dream, America, based on the broken signboards.  But, it was no longer the land of dream.  No place in the world could be the land of dream anymore.

Quite a few times she thought about giving up life.  There was nothing.  No human.  She had no home.  She lived like a nomad.  Walking around and finding shelter was what she did every day.  Once in a while, when her bag pack started to empty she had to find food.  It was not like she was in the jungle, where she can rely on animals and plants.  She walked through abandoned, wrecked city and she had to become a scavenger for food.  She would break into what could be the gas stations or grocery shop pre-war, looking for canned food.  She wouldn’t give a about the due date of those foods because it was not like she kept track of date anyway.  She would fill up her bag and continued heading north.  Why north?  She followed her heart and it told her there’s hope at the north.  The further she walked north, the less the cities looked wrecked, like post-war effect.  It was more like just abandoned, abandoned cities with no sign of lives.

She had enough of these boring memories.  It must be almost afternoon.  She put on her socks and then wore the military boots she had worn since the beginning of her journey.  She could just get ‘new shoes’ from any abandoned houses, but she chose to stick to the boots.  It was the most comfortable for a very long, extreme walk and she honestly did not know how far more she had to walk to find another human, just like her, surviving.

She laughed a lot although she was lonely by herself.  She thought the insanity had gotten into her, bit by bit.  She found it funny how she can eat whatever she wanted by taking it from what supposed to be grocery stores.  She would laugh at how she actually quite liked the idea of the world without human because there was no idea of money or doing things for praises, attention and power.  She did everything to survive, as if back in the historical time, except that she walked in debris and soot and skeletons.  She laughed at how a compass, the only working device she found in the military bag pack when she woke up, was her faithful friends now.  Maybe it was better that way.  A compass cannot talk bad behind your back.  A compass showed the way.  True friend she would say.

That thought had accompanied her throughout the journey.  She walked through towns, cities, suburbs, village and they all looked the same to her, abandoned, with no sign of lives.  She swallowed her own saliva, throat felt so dry, body felt so dehydrated.  She looked around, to those empty buildings, with hope to find anywhere that might still have source of clean water.  Gas station, or what used to be one might have clean mineral water still capped, waiting for someone to drink it.  She was sure as hell there was no other than her wanting it here.  No human, no competition.  It might be a little easier for her to find one bottle for herself.

But, apparently it wasn’t that easy.

The Sun was not that scorching but the fact that she had not anything to drink since two days ago made she felt weak.  She tried to not cry herself out, because the tears will waste her body fluid, in her opinion.  Or maybe she should cry and drink her own tears?  Maybe she would do that, as a last resort.  Yes, she was desperate but she still hoped for fresh water, not the saline water which was her own tears.

Yesterday, she broke into a grocery store, but there was nothing there.  There must be a fire before, because it was burnt although the whole building was not entirely collapsing.  She slept with hope she will find water today.  But, she wasn’t that lucky today either.  It was almost evening and the coldness started to seep through her skin and she still had nothing to drink.  This was one of the times she hoped it would rain because the acid rain seemed so tempting, so life-saving.

“Water.  Water,” she muttered, surprised that her dry throat still can produce voice, even though it was so hoarse she didn’t sound like herself.  Damn, she didn’t sound like herself for so long.

“Water,” upon hearing her own voice again, her tears fell.

“Water!” she shouted with croaked voice.

She kicked a stone, no, a rubble which must be part of a building before.  She bent down and picked up the rubble and threw it to a window of a building.  It shattered just like how she was shattered right now.  She used what left of her energy to run to the building hoping that it would have the precious clean water.  There was nothing.  She looked around.  The door was stuck at its frame and she didn’t have enough energy to push it open.  She got out through the shattered window again and wounded her hand in the process.  She sat down, slumping.

She looked down at her own blood, trickled down her hand.  She didn’t feel pain, not at all.  Instead, she the blood.  It was not as good as fresh water, but it was quite refreshing for her dry throat.

Tears fell down again.  She felt defeated.  She missed hearing human’s voice.  She missed hearing human speaking.  Born in the 21^st century made she missed the noise, the hectic life, the fast speeding life, with commitments and satisfactions to achieve.  But, that was before.  The 21^st century now was destroyed.  All the promised for utopia was buried in the deepest pit of Hell.  There’s nothing now, nothing.  No other human.

Or maybe there was still another human.

She laughed in sorrow.  Maybe her mind was playing trick to her.  She heard footsteps, like someone was running and then it slowed down, like that someone decided to walk.  She laughed at how her brain tricked her, made her believed there was another human.  Through teary eyes, she saw someone approaching.  She laughed.  Really, another human?

A man.

He approached her slowly and carefully, with a rifle in hands.  The barrel was pointed at her.  She laughed.  Maybe it was the time for her to die.

“Are you real?  Come to finish me off?” she asked.

The man stopped immediately.  He let the rifle go and it swung back to his shoulder.  Through her teary eyes she could see the man walked to her, still slowly and carefully but not hesitating though.  She started to wonder if she was seeing the real thing.

“You,” the man said.

Erika quickly wiped her tears to get a better view.  Did she just hear a human’s voice?  Did she?  The scene in front of her was quite clear.  A tall man, eyes very deep, was looking at her with much concern in his eyes.  She couldn’t believe it.  Was he real?  Can she trust her own eyes?  Can she?  It was a man in front of her wearing a clean blue t-shirt and a clean grey jacket and also a pair of clean khaki pants.  He was not a wreck of a human like herself; dirty, dehydrated and famished.  He looked sturdy and fine.  He wore a watch that showed time and he had a rifle hung at his left shoulder.  He had a bag pack with a bottle of fresh water in its side pocket.  Fresh water.

“Are you…real?” she asked again.  That man crouched when he was right in front of her.  Their eyes met.  She saw hope flickered in the man’s eyes.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She was stunned for a moment.  Then, tears fell down her cheeks again, making another line cutting through the dust that was another layer of her skin.

“Who are you?” she asked, “Are you even real?”

That flicker of hope died in his eyes.  He stared at into her eyes.  She sensed something, like he was hoping for something.

“You…you don’t know me?” he asked.

She looked at him, gave him a look that was supposed to say ‘Should I know you?’ instead.  He quickly understood and laughed.

“Of course,” he chuckled, “I am real.  Human.  Yes,” he said.

She nodded.  He looked at her again.  Perhaps he noticed how desperate she looked.  She had cried again.  Only now she could feel how exhausted she was, after so long on a journey, alone.  Now that she found another human, she felt tired and dependent.  She cried and cried.

“Hey, hey.  It’s okay.  I am not going to harm you.  It’s okay,” he said, wiping her tears.  Then, he took out the water bottle from his bag and gave it to her.

“Here.  Drink this.  Drink it.  Finish it.  You need it,” he said.  She took it and gulped it down.  She felt alive again.

As she took another gulp, she saw him taking something from his pocket.  It was a walkie-talkie.  He pressed a button and brought it near to his mouth.

“Base office, base office, from Omicron.  Require immediate respond.  I repeat, require immediate respond,” he said into the walkie-talkie.

She took her third gulp.  He looked at her, smiling.  At that time, an image flashed.  She saw a classroom and a faceless guy.  Then, the image faded as she heard a crackled sound coming from the walkie-talkie.

“Omicron, from base office.  Proceed,” a voice from the walkie-talkie.

Upon hearing that voice, she stopped drinking.  That was another voice, human’s voice.  There was more human.  More.  Her hope lifted up high.  She looked at him.

“Base office, from Omicron.  I detect…no, I find a human,” he looked at her, “A woman, should be around 26, injured, dehydrated and famished.”

“Omicron, from base office.  Don’t fool around.  We’re not up to any joke today,” that was the response from the walkie-talkie.  Almost informal, this man couldn’t be in the military, she thought.

“Base office, from Omicron.  No kidding.  A woman, with 20-cm laceration from elbow to wrist, requires immediate medical attention.  Also, dehydrated and malnourished,” he spoke to the walkie-talkie.

“Omicron,” a pause, “Are you for real?” asked the crackled voice from the walkie-talkie.

“Base office, from Omicron.  Positive,” he said.  He looked at her again and smiled, so assuring that she felt safe for the first time after so long.

“Omicron, from base office.  Proceed.”

He looked around, as if searching for something.

“Are you alone?” he asked.  She nodded.  Then, he pressed the button on the walkie-talkie again.

“Base office, from Omicron.  Situation cleared.  Permission to take the casualty to the base,” said the man in front of her.

“Omicron, from base office.  Permission granted,” spoke the walkie-talkie.

“Base office, copy that,” the man ended the conversation.

“There’s more human?” her question sounded stupid but she couldn’t care less.

“Yes.  And we will help you.  Now, please let me take a look at your wound,” he said.

She showed him her hand, raw wound, still fresh and bleeding.  He opened his bag and took out the first-aid kit.  He tried to stop the bleeding and managed to do that a minute later.

“I’m Dongwoon,” he said, suddenly, while bandaging her hand.

“I…I’m Erika.  If my memory serves me right,” she said.

He looked at her and nodded.  He packed all the stuff again and put them into his bag pack.  Then, he took out something precious.  An apple.  He gave it to her and she took it and looked at it before took a bite.  He laughed at how she gobbled the apple.  Then, he bent down and took her bag.

“I’ll carry your bag.  Can you still walk?” he asked.  She nodded and stood up.

“Where are we going?”

“Home.”

Listening to: Dongwoon and Doojoon - When the Door Closes

Mood: Stressing out (Exam and quizzes are ruining my weekend)