'I was five years old.
Her legs could barely stand the weight of her own, mutilated body. Dried blood sits around her eyes, staring into another world, oblivion to every other soul. My dad rubs his ash-burned thumbs over my tear-stained cheeks. I beg for my mother back, but I can only have what the virus has made of her. I will not allow it. I pull out of my father's embrace and break towards her. Her stiff cold body remains still and silent as I entwine my arms around her. Tears spill down my cheeks as I plead for a response that is human, that is my mother. Before security can rip me off her, something clicked. Then bang. Flesh and blood cradle around the bullet wound in her head. I scream for her and reach out to her, not the one that screams at hallucinations every night. I want her, it's all I want. As my fingertips brush past her arm, she loses it. Everything I know and love about my mother vanishes instantly. Her once warm, loving eyes go cold, the colour of charcoal. Her soothing voice that sang me to sleep every night comes out as a croak, no, a shriek. She is screaming. She is screaming at me. She lunges toward me, her hands finding my throat and clinging to it furiously. Security tries to break me free, but she won't move. Her ebony eyes lock mine as she wails at me, not aggressive anymore, but desperate. Security hurls me out of her grasp and several more shots go off. I lie on grass soaked red, pulling my arms over my eyes. I want to escape this world, this nightmare I live in. I want to run, scream, do anything. Then I hear a drop. She is lies beside me. She can escape, why can't I? Her eye colour returns and a tear forms peacefully. She is beautiful, but gone. Just as lifeless as she already was, but for real this time. She is dead.
I long for her. The one who gave me scars all down my neck…'