Seven

          “What day do you think it is?” Cole asks, his voice echoing to the sound of his footsteps coming up from the basement. I’m rounding the bannister and rushing down the stairs as Bullet bounds behind me, heading for the boys.

            “I don’t know,” Jagger replies. “Why does it matter?”

            “It’s just weird that time passes and we don’t know what day it is, what month. But today has to be a Monday. It feels like a Monday.”

            Jagger snorts as I reach the basement door, the sound of Bullet’s nails clicking on the laminate. Cole is the first one to come into the hallway, flinching when he sees me standing in front of him. A chuckle escapes his lips before he sees my face and the seriousness that has worn its way into my eyes.

            “What’s wrong?”

            By the time Jagger is able to push past him, I’m already heading for the stairs, taking them two at a time to get there before whatever is in the closet can break through.

            “Something’s in there,” I tell the boys as we stand outside of the little boy’s bedroom. “I heard it.”

            Cole looks over the bloody carpet and nods. “Yeah, I can tell.” Without any fear, Cole adjusts his gun and stalks towards the closet, looking more and more like the Cole I know. Ever since we left Emily, it’s like a part of him is missing, like it quickly died away. But somehow this event has sprung the recklessness that is Cole, and he puts himself between me and the chair holding the closet doors closed. “Let’s check this out.”

            As he removes the chair, Jagger grabs my shoulder and guides me away as if this whole thing is new to me. And with the recent events, maybe it is. I feel dazed, too so to even notice Bullet’s protective stance and the fact that I’m holding my shotgun by the barrel, letting it rock vertically as it bumps into my leg.

            The doors slam into the walls, the thwack of the sound making me jump. I wait for the popping of the bullets, the thump of the zombie hitting the ground, but no one shoots. Cole curses under his breath and Jagger turns his back on the closet, trying to block my view but I move around him to see.

            The little boy from the picture sits perched over the decaying body of a child, only bloody, filthy closed left to show any sign that a human being was there at all. His eyes are wild as he stares up at us, full of hunger and thirst. I can barely see the white in them through the red, but somehow I do, and instantly I’m reminded of the little, nameless boy I left behind.

            I’m a terrible person.

            Gunfire tears me from my thoughts and I have to look away, unable to watch the child’s undead life end. Jagger calls for me as I’m rushing out of the room, moving in slow motion like my legs are filled with cement. I have to grasp the railing as I move down the hall, wondering where the parents were and how they could have left their son locked inside a closet, allowing him or simply ignoring the fact that he was his own sister.

            And how could I allow the boy to disappear from my own sight? What makes me different from those parents, letting their family die away? He was just a child and as much as it rips me apart, I can’t help but wonder what happened with him, and hope that it was quick. More than that, I hope that he found his family if there is an afterlife, and that Jack would be there to guide him.

            Jack. The other life lost because of my carelessness and the person I had known but couldn’t remember. And Emily, too. The best friend I had who treated me like I was the filth she strived to get away from.

            I find myself staring into the bathroom mirror downstairs. With a trembling hand, I wipe the dust away, creating a clear streak of reflection. My face stares back at me, but I look nothing like the girl in the photograph and feel nothing like the girl in my memories. Hair matted, skin dirty despite my cleanliness this morning, and hollow, sunken cheeks from lack of regular food. Dark lines sit underneath my eyes, like permanent makeup to emphasise the emptiness in the brown swirls around my pupils.

            My fingers find my hair and I pull, not to tear it from my head but to feel something - a way to release all my pent up emotions, the ones I don’t know how to control. I’m screaming before I understand why and suddenly Jagger is behind me in my reflection, his arms wrapping around my own to drop them to my sides. If I needed confirmation for the unrecognizable girl in the mirror, now I have it and the longer he avoids my gaze the more I know it’s true.

            When I begin to cry my voice dies out and I break down for the first time, really acknowledging what has happened to me, really feeling all the things I’ve pushed into a deep, dark place inside of me.

            “It’s not your fault,” Jagger murmurs, lifting his chin to the top of my head. Immediately I know that this is not right, this is not the way we used to be, the time when we were together.

            He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. “It is. Everything that happened up to this point, every single miscalculation was entirely my fault and mine alone.”

            I don’t know whether I’m relieved or disappointed that he knows better than to fight with me. Maybe I need the distraction or the comfort, but I let the subject of our disagreement drop, knowing it’s not worth it to fight. Neither of us will agree with the other. We’re both too stubborn to drop our walls.

            And then I feel it. The hands on my back, the force behind them.

            I scream.

            The way my body tumbles down the stairs, each thump of my skull on the hardwood until there is nothing.

            Everything goes black.

            “Sloane,” Jagger whispers. He pulls away to hold me in front of him so he can see my face. “What’s wrong?”

            I know he can see it in my eyes and had felt the difference in me as it happened, as the fragments of the memory crossed my mind.

            “What’s wrong with me?” I whimper. “Why am I the only one who can live, who can get away and stay human? Why do I have to live through this over and over again?”

             Jagger brushes his thumb across my cheek and lowers his voice in the dark bathroom. “I don’t know. But nothing is wrong with you. You’re perfect. You are absolutely perfect the way you are.”

            With only a fraction of words, I can feel everything mend between us. Seams that were ripped bind me to him and then we’re whole, like fabric being sewn back together. I never really wondered what it would be like if roles were reversed. What if I had been with Jagger and he disappeared, returning without a memory? How would that affect me? But here he is now, telling me that I’m perfect the way I am, even though I’m not the girl he fell in love with.

            And I still can’t remember our lives together.

            “I don’t remember how I felt about you before,” I tell him quietly, watching his eyes look like glass in the dark. “I don’t really remember you from before at all.”

            “But how do you feel about me now?”

            I have to look down at the floor before meeting his gaze again. I don’t know if I’m supposed to tell him I love him when I’m not sure how I feel at all, or lie and tell him I do. I’m not sure if I should tell him I can’t feel anything for someone I can’t remember, or that my feelings might change when I do. So I tell him I care.

            “I don’t think I can ever feel the way about you that you feel about me because I can’t remember. But I feel.” I cover his hand on my cheek with my own and feel the heat rise into my palm. “And right now, that’s enough.”

            He pulls me into him, so close I can feel his breath on my lips. “It will always be enough.”

            His hands find their way around my waist, pressing me into him so tightly, so gently, that I feel as if we become one. With everything going on, this should be wrong. Wrong, the way my fingers clasp behind his neck, feeling so strangely familiar. Wrong, the way he touches his forehead to mine. Wrong, the intention in his eyes mirroring those in mine. But it isn’t. For once, things finally feel right.

            Jagger closes the distance between us, his lips gently brushing against mine as if they’re asking, testing the waters. Instead of a memory, electricity feeds its way through my veins and I’m demanding myself into him, trying to get as close as two people can possibly get. I kiss him back and let my lips graze his until there are no longer questions, but need.

            “You don’t know how long I’ve waited for this,” he breathes into me. “I’ve missed this so much. I’ve missed being like this. I’ve missed you.”

            Everything fades away but kisses and murmurs and hands. Like always, he lifts me with ease onto the countertop, but instead of fixing me and my cuts and bruises, he’s fixing us. He’s putting the invisible thread between us back together, mending what used to be.

            Even if I can’t remember and even if I never do, it feels right. It may not have been the first time we kissed, but it’s my first time. And maybe for Jagger, it’s his first time with me, too.

            And then there’s the sound of footsteps above us.

            With his arms still around me and his face hovering close to mine, Jagger kicks the door closed. We’re only alone for a few, airy moments before there’s a knock on the door. We choose to ignore it. But when Cole refuses to go away, Jagger pulls back from my lips and closes his eyes, annoyed and breathless.

            “What?”

            I hear him shift weight on his feet and the sound of Bullet’s claws beside him. “I need to talk to you guys.”

            “We’re busy.”

            “It’s important. I’ll meet you in the living room.”

            Jagger’s jaw tightens as the footsteps fade away. He tilts his head back, breathes a heavy sigh, and then looks at me. “I’m sorry,” he says, as if this is somehow his fault.

            “It’s fine.”

            He leans in to give me one long, passionate kiss before pulling away. His hands are the last to leave from my hair and he steps back towards the door. “I guess we better go find out what he wants.”

            I smirk at him in the dark and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “I guess.”

            It feels like the walk of shame as I count to five before following Jagger into the hall. The light is dimming, casting shadows across the ghost-like house that make it seem like everything is jumping out at me. When I reach the square room seconds after Jagger, Cole isn’t sitting.

            “I think we should find a new house. It’s not safe here.”

            Jagger runs his fingers through his tousled hair and folds his arms across his chest. “You took care of it.”

            It.

            “I don’t have to explain myself to you.” He narrows his eyes and crosses his arms, mirroring Jagger until he realizes it and drops his arms limply to his sides. “Let’s go.”

            And that’s it. We grab things from the house, load up our backpacks, and step into the low chill of the day. The sunset is pretty even though it makes the darkness looming. It’s orange sherbet and rose pink and should be a perfect ending to a perfect day, but instead is only seen by those who haven’t been eaten alive.

            It brings out the colours of the trees across a rising forest behind the subdivision. They’re slowly turning from green to oranges and reds, some leaves even yellow. Autumn is coming, or could already be here. The seasons still change even though humanity has stopped.

            The three of us are silent, walking the bend beside the trees to a different street, a different house where a different family lived. If you ignore the rust, discarded objects and bloody, broken windows on the occasion picture perfect house, I could pretend that things were normal. We could be walking to Cole’s house to sleep over for the night, ignoring the fact that it’s a Monday. The crickets still call and as the sun completely fades, little, flashing lights come out and make the scariness of the shadows disappear entirely.

            “Fireflies,” I whisper to myself. Lifting my hand, I point my palm up to let one of the tiny creatures land on my skin. “How can something so pretty, so innocent, live in a world like this.”

            My question hangs in the air as we continue on, letting the insect find its way back into the sky. When we find our place for the night, I’m still wondering, watching for movements in the corner of my eye of what else might be lurking around tonight.