Nightmares

Alaqua Slaughter

Written:7/4/06

Posted: 7/4/06

Updated: ------

Fandom: Resident Evil

Rating: T
Type: One-shot

this is just a half-hearted attempt to get my creative juices flowing. I've got no inspiration for all of my other stories so I thought I'd give another fandom a shot. I don't know if it's brilliant or crap, but I'll still write it just for the heck of it.

Nightmares were expected.

It was inevitable, after going through something as horrific as that event. All the innocents that died, the blood all over the streets, the fires, the crunching of bones as bodies were eaten, the moans, the rotting flesh of corpses that didn't...wouldn't lay to rest...

Yes, nightmares were a fact of life after something like that.

What made it worse were the screams of those who could have been saved. Bursting through a door and finding a fresh body, zombies converged around it. Leaving a room only to hear a horrified scream from the person you just left. The pain of a decision to leave a stubborn person behind.

Situations like that hurt. Right in the heart. It was enough to wake up sweating, in tears.

It was also frustrating. They could have made it. Hours of life wasted thinking about those who had even a remote chance. If circumstances had been different. If they had only come. If they had screamed sooner. If they'd had the sense to get out. If they'd been armed, with anything. If...

That's what was annoying, the millions of 'ifs'. A novel could be written with all of them, complete with details and descriptions. But who had the nerve to write such a thing? The whole situation was so ridiculous that it'd be stuck on the fiction shelf.

Zombies...who'd believe it?

An evil corporation, giant animals and arachnids, bio-weapons... who in their right mind would take such a story seriously?

The evil corporation hiding behind the fasçade of a friendly pharmaceutical company? Secretly making bio-weapons that could easily wipe out an entire town in months... days... hours...

It was proven, after all. Racoon City ring a bell? No? How about secluded mansion in the Arklay Mountains? Rockford Island? Antarctic Umbrella facility?

What makes me cringe is the fact that it could happen again. Again. In a different town, a whole other disaster. With even more deadly and advanced bio-weapons. I can barely take the thought of innocent people dying because of that. They'd have been so carefree, so happy, so oblivious. Only to crumble at the insane sight of zombies, of all things. The un-dead. It nearly drove me insane.

Having to shoot down an already dead person can do things to you. I would know.

Waking up in the middle of the night, having just had another dream of a particularly nasty bio-weapon. Shooting at it and knowing it was once human. It once had its own life. Friends, dreams, ambitions. A family. All of it taken away for some experiment.

It's easy to forget that those rotting bodies were human at one point. But it's just as easy to remember it. Just as it's easy to realize that you could have been one of them...

I had skills. It's not bragging, if I didn't have them, I wouldn't be writing this. I'd be literally non-existent. I'd be floating in heaven somewhere, watching Umbrella, just waiting for something to happen again.

But I'm alive. I don't know why I was spared, I just was. I don't even know how I got out of there. I know how, of course I do, better than anyone, but I don't know how. I wasn't all that experienced in anything. Just beginning my career... my life.

And all of it went up in that explosion.

Anything valuable that I had. Gone. New friends. Gone. New home. Gone. My beginning. Gone. Gone. Gone.

Fate... destiny... they have a funny way of working. I'd just moved, just began, and they go and take it away. I'm not as angry as I'd been before, but still a bit miffed. Everything I had is gone. Nothing left. But I guess it's a chance to start again. Maybe it was fate saying I was in the wrong town?

I hope not.

Or maybe it was destiny saying I had a higher purpose. I was supposed to be there so I could survive and help take down that damn company later. Help spread the story with the other survivors.

I'd like to believe that, but I know it was more of a "wrong place, wrong time" sort of deal.

I know I'm not going to go around telling people about my ordeal. Those particular memories are best reserved for nights when I'm feeling angst-y. And if more people do end up believing it and question me about it, I'll just brush them off. They'll get the point.

I envy people who live normal lives. Who don't have to think about that night. Who don't have any worries besides the everyday ones. Who don't wake up screaming for someone to come back...

Nights like that tend to last forever.

I have a duty to protect people. To make sure they don't go through that. And I intend to stick by that duty. It's not so bad knowing things others don't know. As long as they're safe from the knowledge of the experience, they have nothing to worry about.

Ignorance is bliss. But knowledge is power. And there is no power, only responsibility.

I guess it's my responsibility to prevent another outbreak... to keep the ignorant happy. To keep them safe. To make sure nothing of that magnitude ever happens again. To live to see the day Umbrella is brought down. For good.

But until then, I'll endure the nightmares.

hmm...well, it's something at least...no reviews are expected so thanks if you even took the time to read this!