Darkness was all my eyes saw. Rubble was all my feet felt. The cold wind was all my ears heard. It was dreadful. My nose and my mouth were lucky they didn’t have to absorb my surroundings. I was carrying nothing but the dirty air in my lungs, wandering to a place I didn’t know, but that was usual for me. I’ve been doing this since I was 16. Five years of trudging between cities has brought me to the age of 21. Going to a bar with my friends to celebrate my age isn’t what I’m thinking about. I’m thinking about survival. Hopefully the one who wrote my life will allow me to live until the end of what seems like a sequel to the Tell-Tale Heart.

My name is Jillian, and I’m an outcast who travels city to city, often being chased out of them. I trust no one, not since total strangers turned on me. Not since my friends turned on me. They saw the eye. An absolutely gorgeous eye, yet it plagues me. It’s location, location, location… on the back of my neck. Yeah, I mean seeing an eye on the back of someone’s neck kind of takes away from the beauty of its deep blue gaze. My worn and torn black scarf is around my neck at all times, each thread tightly tied together to conceal a secret that leaves so many loose ends in my life.

I continued on my way to the next city, nothing in my wake but the dust my feet bring up. Every now and then, my shredded blond hair is whooshed into the air. It reminds me of my mother, before… before that day, the day when jets of Australia flew over the rest of the world. No one expected such peaceful people to drop them. The bombs. The atomic bombs. They wiped out half of humanity and created the wasteland I walk in now. We used to call it England.
With them came radiation, and lots of it. Many people who didn’t flat out die mutated from the radiation. It’s how I got my eye and it’s why I must hide myself. I have never been able to find people like me. Humanity has turned on itself. But my mind draws back to my mother. “Jillian, I love you so much, sweetheart. I want you to remember your father and I will watch over you. We will be with you. And where there is a mountain, there is light on the other side. We will see each other again someday.” That’s what my mother breathlessly choked when I found her lying in our front yard with a fallen telephone pole penetrating her chest on that day. There is no light behind any mountain for me.
I block the thoughts from my head and keep focus on my journey. I take in my surroundings to try and fill my mind with other things. I notice the sun peeking out from behind the trees. I gradually became more aware of my surroundings and I realized in the distance that there was a highway. Highways meant cities. It was time to reach just another stop in my life. I wonder how long this visit will last. My record is 6 days.
I traveled over many hills of wilted plants and yellow grass. How could anything have survived? I finally reached the highway, or at least what’s left of it. It’s all rubble, ready to collapse any minute. Cars rusted to the core, hiding the color completely, were overturned on the road. Fragments in the supports, cracks in the pavement, this highway was broken just like me.
I follow the highway passed some tolls, which I unsuccessfully searched for food. I am desperate. Providing for myself gets harder every day. When I reach the outskirts of the city, I pray out loud.
“Mother, the time of entering another city has come. Please lend me your strength. You give me strength, and I couldn’t ask for a better angel to have watching over me. I thank God for you every day.” I feel stronger every time I pray. My mother always answers my prayers. She loves me and I love her.
I reach the first buildings of the city. It is a small city with very short buildings. It was like a town with a city layout. Windows of glass were shattered and doors were off their hinges. This was the norm of cities nowadays. There were cars just like the highway and roads just as cracked with lampposts shattered on the streets. I’m exhausted, and I felt like I could collapse at any second. I have no food or energy, and then I returned to the darkness of the night.
I woke up face down on the sidewalk, my scars reopened most likely from fall. I also noticed something else… I almost screamed. My scarf is gone! The wind must have taken it off! It must have been loose! What if people saw my eye? Suddenly, I hear scuttles of feet across the pavement and whispers glided with the wind. Then something caught my eye. It was a figure glaring at me through a window. I could tell it was a young man, but he was shady, and I couldn’t figure out anything more. I was being watched, and then my eardrums were shattered. A huge bang comes from nowhere, and I turn towards the figure, expecting to see him charging at me, but he turned and ran. What is that? Is that a tail? I didn’t have time to process this thought. People were coming. I just knew they were coming for me. Someone must have seen the eye, and it seemed the news was a wind, flying by and phasing everyone it contacts.
I turn around and run for my life like I had done many times. I can literally see the mob now, and they have guns. It seems like after the bombs dropped, all technology was halted or lost, but of course, guns are the exception. Tripping is not an option. They have opened fire, which I hear whiz by me, knowing I’m only alive because of my light feet hopping over every pile of rubble or fallen pole. Finally, after running three blocks, I trip in front of what seems to be a small hotel, having only three floors and a church of white marble and beauty down the street. I scramble to my feet but fall over again. I give up. I’ve been running from death only to live a life of pain and face death over and over again. I just stare up to the sky, waiting for an angel of pure white to swoop down and carry me to heaven.
Instead I see more dark figures on the roof of the hotel, and I see by squinting that they too have guns. There really is no getting out of this one. The mob has enclosed me in an intersection, their forces on three of the four sides, and their buddies on the roof presumably aiming at the fourth. The forces on the roof threw a grenade down to the street, but it landed very far from me. It landed on the mob! These guys are on my side!
Immediately I get up and run for the hotel doors, more bullets flying passed me. The moment the elevator of the lobby opens, my jaw drops. It’s the guy with the tail, and he actually has a tail!
“My name is Kyle. Please listen to me. The people who live here saw your eye, and I found out by listening to their talk. I got undercover sometimes to find out their plans. Our peoples have been fighting in this city for a long time. I’m the leader of the mutants. I was trying to sneakily approach you through that building with the broken windows, but that’s when the mob came. There was no way to get in there and save you. Hoping you came here was the only way to keep you safe.”
I stared into his brown eyes, which were the same color of his ragged t-shirt. What choice did I have? I had to believe him.
“Are all these people like me?” I asked looking around. I saw people with oversized pimples, looking like a game of connect the dots done wrong. Others had lost limbs and had them grown back the wrong way. I mourned for them, and I felt tears in all of my eyes. I didn’t cry, but I shivered as a tear ran down my spine.
“We’ve got to get out and help them!” I exclaimed, not waiting for an answer and pointing to fallen bodies outside the doors.
“We have to keep you-,” he started, before I grabbed a handgun from his belt and ran towards the doors. I’ve never used a gun before, but I didn’t care. I just knew I needed to get out there. And then I saw it. A child in the middle of the battlefield, no older than 8, standing there while a grenade fell from the roof of our building. I screamed and covered my eyes, heard the boom, looked again, and saw nothing but a pool of blood and dismantled body parts. I lost it. I fell to the floor and started wailing, not caring it was our enemy’s child. It reminded me of the children laying in the street on the bombing day who lost their lives when they did nothing to deserve it. This is what the human race has come to.
I needed to stop this fighting, but how? I looked at my surroundings and saw the church I saw earlier. That was all I saw, not any of the violence going on. I just ran as fast as I could down the street to the church. I pushed open the rotted oak doors and ran over the carpeted floor to an elegant white staircase which I hoped brought me to where I wanted to go. And that it did. There stood a rusted gold church bell with the handle to ring it waiting for my hands. I reached, pulled, and watched the fighting in the intersection stop.
Once I got back, I screamed at both sides. I cried hysterically while almost unable to catch my breath. This was my only chance at changing these people. I had to make it count.
“Stop fighting! This isn’t worth it. I’ve seen to many dead innocent children, but I just saw one die. You guys are just destroying yourselves. Your children will grow up to hate each other, and your future feuds will get even more devastating. I was ready to charge into battle, but seeing that child die changed my mind. How many deaths of innocent children will it take all of you?”
Murmurs in the crowds broke out. I was unsure if I had really done anything, but then I saw a regular man approach a wounded mutant with medicine. My words brought an understanding between the people. I did it. I saved this city from destruction and united these people. None of my other visits to other cities were like this.
“Jillian, why don’t you stay and help us build our society once more?” Kyle asked approaching me.
“I can’t. There are other cities like this. The only way our race will survive is if we all unite as one people,” I replied. “It is my duty to restore peace between mutants and non-mutants and travel across this wasteland. We can only rebuild our world together.” I turned around and walked to the edge of the city and stared at the horizon. I saw a mountain in the night sitting there sleeping, but after waiting a little bit, I saw the sun, rising from behind it. I thought of my mother.