The Last Journey

Dyanna was thankful that her husband hadn’t lived to see this day. What would Gerald’s fate have been? Would he have stood beside her in mutual sadness, watching their son walk away forever…or would he have had to go with Chris in an attempt to find refuge? She pushed the thought from her mind.

She kept walking, each step unconsciously taking her towards the only place left for her to go. She was heading home, back to the house where she had grown up and that had passed to her when her mother had died soon after Dyanna married. It didn’t matter that it was in shambles, its roof and windows open to the elements. She needed to see it. She craved the familiar, longed for remnants of her past life, of her humanity. She had been happy in that home, first as a young child, then as a young bride, a wife, a mother.

Somewhere along the way, she realized she was passing through what had once been the downtown district. No longer teeming with people, it stood abandoned except for a few lines curving along buildings in the distance. She stopped in front of the former Bloomingdale building, now a desolate ghost of its former elegance, letting the memories come. How long ago had it been since she used to shop here, with a toddler Chris in tow, his tiny hand constantly pulling against her tenacious hold and her authority? He had hated shopping, especially as he grew into his teens.

Before the outbreak, Chris, at the age of 14, was just beginning to break away from her, to shy away from her love and the dependence it inspired. He and his running buddies had sought to debunk the mysteries of life and puberty, and she had stood on the sidelines, observing, but always at the ready whenever the boy in him would emerge again.

She remembered a particular incident, almost a year after losing Gerald, when she had left work early one day to come home and find a drunken Chris and a couple of his friends lounging on her good sofa, their dirty sneakers scuffing her cherrywood living room table, discarded beer cans strewn on the floor. Not feeling well, she had reacted by yelling, and then piling all of them into her Honda and taking the visiting miscreants home to their parents. On the way home, Chris’ stomach had finally reacted to the alcohol and she had pulled over to let him retch. The next day he had had to stay home with a bad hangover. Still angry, she had left him alone, not trusting what else he would get into.

When she arrived home that night, she found that he had baked some quick-fix brownies from a box. Standing before her, he offered her a trayful of irregularly shaped, overly baked confections, a tentative smile on his face as he held them forward.

"Forgiven?" he had asked with a silly grin. She had sat down at the kitchen table, silent for a few moments, not willing to let him win her over so easily. Slowly the grin had left his face, followed by a look of contrition and fear.

"I’m really sorry, Mom."

He had set the tray down on the table, standing there looking awkward. After a few long moments, she finally reached over and picked up a brownie, against the shaky protest of her stomach. And was rewarded with a big smile and a promise never to be do something that stupid again. And he had kept the promise. He hadn’t had enough time to break it.

She smiled now as other memories cascaded in her mind, bringing a slight reprieve from the misery. But then she caught her reflection in a small shard of glass hanging along the side frame of the display window that had been destroyed some time ago. The smile faded with a gasp and was quickly replaced by shock. One of the governmental dictums had been the destruction of all mirrors, and now she knew why.