Prologue

When I was younger, I was told I had a whole life ahead of me.

I would finish high school, go to college, graduate with a degree in the career I wanted, meet a nice guy, settle down, raise kids of my own, grow old, and die.

Too bad they were wrong.

There are no happy endings in this life. Only now. Living in the present moment, dragging your broken body to keep moving until it finally give out. Living for food. Living for shelter. Living to see the temperature drop ever so slowly day after day.

This new world is a game of 'what-ifs'. And I will win, or I will die trying.

-Journal Entry 10, dated May the Second, ten days after The Vanishing

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102 days after The Vanishing

I flip through the pages of my journal, my fingers trailing along the ivory surface, leaving marks of red in their wake. I'm growing colder by the second, and I can feel it. Strength and blood flow freely through the hole in my thigh, and although I pressed my extra shirt to the wound, it didn't seem to stop the bleeding.

I take a sharp inhale of breath, trying to control the burning pain. I flip another page, this time to the back of the book. Past all one hundred and two journal entries. Past my whole life after The Vanishing. I wish I had time to reread it all, to add what I know now, but it looks like I'll just have to settle for leaving one last note.

My fingers tremble on the pencil as I pull it out of my pocket. The bold cursive flows naturally through each page I wrote, but this script is choppy.

I didn't make it. I write in uppercase letters, the warmth still seeping out of my body and onto the floor. What a shame. I think to myself as my eyes close, waiting for the end, as I always have.