Bitten
May 15, 2020 | Georgia | 20-29 years
It was like the zombie apocalypse but slower, calmer. Everyone was sequestered into small communities, left with no real organization. Everyone was wearing masks indoors and outdoors. Water had to be purified. My family is big. I am 23, the oldest of eight children—four girls and four boys. We were able to stock up on a lot, and we had plenty of hands to grow a garden. I live by myself now, but in the dream, I was still at my family's house, which isn’t that big, but we made it work.
First, my third sister got sick. She didn’t lash out or anything, but she was laying in bed and convulsing, and we were trying to find some sort of doctor or medication to to save her. But we weren’t fast enough, and she passed away. That hit us hard.
It was a while after that. I know because one time my mom found an old pair of shoes of mine, and she asked me do I still want them, and I started to say, “no, give them to (third sister)” but then I remembered that she was gone, and I started to cry. And my mom grabbed a big box and said, “Whatever goes to her, we’ll keep in one place, and it’ll be her place.” And I said okay. It made me feel a little better, and allowed us to grieve somewhat.
I remember being in a small court room, and people were yelling about the loss of meat. And how some people where gathering up guns to shoot anyone with the first sign of illness. They also demanded that my family give up some of our shares of goods, since we were so big, and had “hardly” lost anything.
It was during the infighting that my third brother got sick. He got irritable, and violent. Someone tried to convince him to steal from us. My other sisters and I were in the storage shed, trying to clean up, when some people and my brother came after us with guns. My father and second brother were able to subdue them. But my third brother went from irrational to showing the same symptoms as my sister, and we were realizing we were quickly losing him too.
My family was breaking apart before my eyes, and I didn’t know what to do. My parents were yelling about meat, even though there hadn’t been any fresh meat in weeks.
During the course of one of their arguments, I was standing with my fourth brother, he was only nine at the time. My hand was resting on his shoulder, and he tried to bite down on it. Not a hard bite, but I snatched it away. And when I asked him why he tried to do that, he looked lost. That’s when I realized that it had got him too. And I started to sob so loud that my parents stopped yelling and looked at me. And everyone else looked at me.
All I could say was, “Not my bruh…..not my bruh….” And I was just holding my little brother’s hands up so that he couldn’t bite me, and I was weeping. Because I had reached despair. I knew it would take all of us. There was nothing more to do. I wanted to wrap him in my arms, but I was scared of getting bitten. I just wanted it to end.
And then I woke up. But I woke up still thinking some things were true. I was so past the mourning period of my sister, that for a few seconds I still thought she was dead. I was still crying for my dying brothers. I started praying so hard, my hands were shaking. So I called my mom, and they’re all alive and okay, thank goodness.
Note: Dreamer adds, “I don't have nightmares very often, but they do tend to be apocalyptic in nature. I didn't even realize this could be covid19 related, until I wrote down the part about the masks. This pandemic is more frightening for some than for others. So I hope people realize that the fears that people have are very warranted. When we lose people, anyone, we are losing a bit of ourselves.”
