Posts Tagged ‘life before’

Miss Burton’s Class: Year Two – The Rise of the Maiden (Prologue)

Posted: November 4, 2013 in Life Before, The In-Between
Tags: , , , , , , ,
0

I feel myself being almost weightlessly dragged. It should hurt me, but it doesn’t. It’s so effortless. He’s pulling me by my feet, my arms outstretched above my head. I can hear him mumbling.

“Jesus, of all the stupid fucking shit I have watched you do for other people, this has got to be an Elizabeth Burton best,” he grunts, as he pulls me deeper into the woods.

I know it’s John. I can feel the callouses on his hands. I remember how much they used to turn me on, but that was in life before. It’s been a wild shit show ever since. It’s been over two years since everything changed. Since the Walkers came. Since John died.

Since I died.

I can hear the water muffled in the background. I know we’re back by my old encampment. I can feel him, lifting me and putting my onto a make-shift hammock. Every inch of me is pounding, sending a new ache throughout my body. My throat is nearly completely dried out. He’s complaining as he builds a small fire. He’s angry that I died, that I’m here with him. I’m still angry with him for being a dismissive jerk more times than not.

“I always told you, focus on you. Worry about you. Take time for you, but you were always off doing one thing after another and never giving a shit about yourself. This though, this is just fucking fantastic. I mean–”

“Not like you knew much about giving of yourself, John,” I manage to say, hoarsely.

“Oh don’t even.” He doesn’t turn to look at me. “Don’t even give me that shit about me never being there for you. This has nothing to do with us. This has to do with your stupid need to save the God damn world. It’s not on you, Liz. It’s not your responsibility to make it better for everyone else, all the time!” He throws some wood onto the fire and stands up, in one sweeping movement as I slowly push myself back up into a sitting position.

“Dying wasn’t that bad. Though, we might be stuck together forever now, but at least we’ll have time together,” I add, with infused sarcasm adding the best doe-eyed eye bat that I could manage under the circumstances.

He just rolls his eyes at me, uninterested in taking the bait.

I stumble to get to my feet. The last thing I want is for him to take care of me. He stands and stares at me. I know I must look even worse than I already feel. My death wasn’t the easiest way to go. As I stand, I feel a shooting pain radiate from the top of my head all the way down to the middle of my stomach.

Before I can say anything, I feel a warm, red liquid come shooting out of my mouth. I’m throwing up blood, a lot of it. I’m covered in it within seconds. John is staring at my horrified. I feel my eyes roll to the back of my head and after that, I’m no longer sure of anything except the cold, hard ground.

Advertisement

What’s love got to do with it?

Posted: March 29, 2013 in Life Before, On the Road Again
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

I’m laying in bed, staring at the ceiling. My head is still swimming from the beer I had with my friends earlier. My phone will not stop dinging. I know who it is, it’s John. It’s been John all night. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. He could have spent the night with me. We had plans to see a movie and go out to dinner, but just like he’s always done, he cancels on me about an hour before he was supposed to be here. Another lame excuse about a migraine or was it the drinking plans with his buddies that he had forgotten about?

I can’t remember. The beer has gone to my head. That last minute decision to go out instead of sitting home, wallowing in my hurt feelings…again is going to make tomorrow very long. I probably should have stayed home. It just made me drink too much and made my friends hate him even more, for blowing me off…again.

It’s a shitty feeling to constantly be pushed aside. How have I become one of those women that gets so wrapped up in a guy she rides it out even though she knows the inevitable outcome?

Because you love him, stupid. And because you think that one day it’ll be different and he’ll love you too.

I exhale, long and hard. I roll over and pick up my phone. I read the messages since I had stopped answering. His apologies and explanations and how it’s always someone else’s or some circumstance’s fault, not his. He’s worse than my students. And then he’s calling me and before I stop myself, I’m answering.

And then he’s saying something like, “Why do you always think I don’t want to be around you?”

Maybe because you never are. Or you makes plans with me but then blow me off all the time. Or you just push me aside like I don’t matter to you, like it’s everything else and then me and maybe I’m just to the point where I no longer believe this is all done because of baggage from an old relationship.

I close my eyes really tight. I don’t want to cry. I squeeze them until I see stars.

And then I open my eyes and in front of my stands another one of the Undead. I just keep swinging the branch I had picked up. I’m exhausted. My arms are covered in rotting blood and bodily goo. I’m just so sick of this shit. I know I’m surrounded, and alone. And I realize just how angry I am.

I’m angry for what I had to leave unfinished in my life before this. I’m angry for what’s happened to me since then and I’m sure as hell angry that I’m separated from everyone, in the woods and dealing with an endless swarm of these flesh eating assholes.

As I push on, each one of them begin to look like John or McGrady or some insane hybrid of them both. I just keep beating them the way that they had beat me down, each in their own way. I feel better each time my branch just rams one of them straight across the face. Each time, I feel as though I’m claiming a part of myself back, so I keep fighting because I know that I have to and because for the first time since I killed McGrady, I actually want to.

In Moments of Trouble, Think of Life Before

Posted: March 20, 2013 in Life Before, On the Road Again
Tags: , , , , , , ,
0

With one sweeping movement, he had her pinned to him, his mouth completely covering hers. In her mind, she screamed for him to let her go, but her heart wouldn’t let her. It had been six months since she had left him the last time and she had missed him more than she had imagined.

Her head wins out in the end and she pushes herself from him.

“No! You don’t get to do this again,” she yells, on the verge of tears. She’s too proud though to let him see her cry. She chokes them back with elongated breaths.

“Baby, don’t,” his voice filled with tenderness and love, both endearments she knows are fleeting.  “I love you, I want you with me.”

“It’s never with you, it’s behind you, it’s under you, but it’s never with you.” She begins to walk away and he grabs her by the arm, pulling her back. “I know how this plays out. I’ve lived it be played out twice already.”

“It’s different this time!” She’s wrapped around him, his hands running through her hair, kissing her forehead and cheeks. “It’s different. Baby, I want you with me. Beside me, next to me.”

“Bullshit!” She fits against him, both wanting the comfort of being close to him, but at the same time hating him for even trying to offer it to her and hating herself for even wanting it. “Bullshit! This has been two years of the same shit! You can not just jerk me around and tell me all of this shit and confuse me again. You don’t get to hurt me again! I’m happy now. Not with you. I’ve lived through the excuses and the bullshit and everything else that never made me any real priority or obligation to you. Maybe I found someone who doesn’t do that. Who calls when he says he will, who takes me out and doesn’t cancel on me, who spends time with me, who never makes me feel like I am any less than I am!”

He let’s her go. He steps back from her, realizing that she hasn’t been waiting for him this time. “What’s his name?”

She stops. “ Just fuck you, John. Just, fuck you.”

She’s up by her front door now. She’s away from him. It’s tearing her apart to do this again, but she knows that staying with him isn’t for her. She knows coming in second or even a third between his failing career and friends is not what is going to make her happy.

She has lesson plans and stuff to do for work and dealing with his melodrama is not how she wants to spend her Saturday afternoon.

That was my life before though. That was nearly two years ago. John was dead now and I’m standing in someone’s front yard armed with an axe trying to fight my way to a car with my things strapped to my back.

Javier is yelling. The walkers are everywhere. If I don’t keep fighting, they will tear me to pieces. I need to focus, but right now all I can think of is my life before. The mistakes I made in my life before and I judge myself in that moment because there is no need to even be thinking about it.

I just need to keep fighting.

Javier’s Story

Posted: January 25, 2013 in Life Before
Tags: , , , , , , ,
3

Last night when we had battened down for sleep, Javier crawled into our makeshift bed next to me. I was still annoyed with him for what had happened earlier in the day. He usually slides in beside me and wraps me in his arms, but tonight was different. He slid in next to me and remained very much to himself.  After awhile, I rolled over and found him awake, staring straight up at the ceiling.

“I could tell you didn’t like me very much this morning,” he said, still staring up and away from me.

“You’re right, I didn’t.”

He rolled over, laying his head on his bended arm. “We don’t talk much about our old lives.” I nodded, agreeing. “Maybe we need to.”

 Javier’s Story

Image

 Javier was born on July 14, 1979 in a poor, rural area of Spain called Extremadura. He was the youngest of eight children and the only son. He never knew his father and his mother passed away from cancer when he was only 18. When he was eleven, he had gone to work for the farmer that his family rented their home from. At first it was simple things, small errands that he would do for a barely existent wage. Then it built into him slowly becoming more and more important to their landlord.

At thirteen, he was moved to Madrid where he helped run all sorts of crime rings. They liked him for it because no one really would suspect a young boy to have such connections. His mother, on her deathbed, made him promise that he would get away from his life in Madrid and clean up. He left for America and to his oldest sister’s within a few months.

He worked minimum wage jobs and helped his sisters the best that he could until he was finally hired at Alcott Elementary ten years ago.