A Small Gray Dot

I turned the car off and sat there a few minutes, afraid to get out and go in. Finally, knowing I didn’t have a choice, I creaked open the door and heaved myself from the seat. I glanced into the back but decided not to go to the door with Zoni in my arms. I steadied myself and forced my feet to carry me up the porch steps.

I rang the doorbell and waited, praying that either my mom or my dad would open it. I waited for what felt like an eternity before giving up and using the key they’d told me to keep when I moved out.

My mother was in the kitchen. She lay on the tiled floor next to the refrigerator and was in the same condition as Zoni. I stared down at what was left of the woman who’d given birth to me and loved me all my life, my heart a lead ball in my chest.

Deep down within, I’d known what I would find, but the blow wasn’t any less.

I don’t know how long I stood there before helpless rage speared through me shattering my iced-over mind. What was this… this… thing that was taking the people I loved from me? I turned from my mother, and looking wildly around the kitchen, I spotted a mug on the small table where my parents usually had their coffee in the mornings. It was one of a set I’d given them a couple of Christmases ago. They’d loved and used them ever since. Mom said they were the perfect size. But, where was the other one, the one my dad used? And where was he?

I ripped through the still house searching, afraid to call out.

Maybe this thing hadn’t touched him; maybe he’d turned in late and was still asleep. He did that sometimes when he didn’t have to work the next day, sleeping until Mom nagged him awake. Or maybe he was somewhere in the house and in shock at what happened to Mom. Maybe he was still alive. When I didn’t find him in the house I rushed back through the kitchen and flinging open the back door, I ran outside. Maybe he’d gone to a neighbor’s—

He was lying at the far end of the deck in that now horribly familiar condition. His coffee mug lay smashed beside him as if he’d stepped out, mug in hand, and gone over to look at something, perhaps to see how far the fog extended.

I froze for a moment, my heart quivering as my hope of finding him alive died. Then I plodded around to the driveway, opened the back door of my car, and gently lifted Zoni out. I carried her into the house and, avoiding the blood, laid her on the kitchen floor because after the fog dissipated, it turned into a typically hot, Southern, late June day.

With burning eyes, I began the task of enshrouding my parents. I found bed linens but it was not as easy as it was with Zoni. I had to place them in piece by piece.

I attended my mom first, and then my dad. My dad… I try not to remember but even now, years later, I can still smell the stench and hear the buzzing of the flies and the sticky, ripping noises as I pulled the pieces of my father from the bloody wooden deck and placed them into the shroud.

I got him wrapped and tied, and dragged him into the kitchen where I put him next to my mom.

My head ached and my stomach was churning by the time I finished. My body was shaking while my mind was trying to rebel, but I tried to reach someone who could tell me something. Anything. My cellphone was still out but the phone in the kitchen had dial tone so I used it to call 911. Again, it was useless. That time I didn’t even get the recorded message. The image display only showed a picture of the police department while the words “Please wait” continuously scrolled down the screen. It was frustrating but not unanticipated. There were far too many issues in the city needing attention.

On the way to my parents’ neighborhood, I’d passed a number of people whose reaction to this… thing… was to go on a rampage. They were howling and running, busting out windows, throwing things at cars, and in general making a terrible disaster even worse. I supposed they hadn’t gotten the message to stay in their homes. I didn’t stop the car but I saw dead bodies – some of which appeared to be in the same condition as Zoni but others seemed to be whole.

There were vehicles sitting wrecked in the streets around which I had to weave. I saw smoke in several places in the distance and heard gunfire, and that made me wonder if there had been an attack. That, as I found out later, was not the case. The smoke was from fires set either accidentally or by someone whose reaction to the calamity was to destroy. So was the gunfire. Not everyone who died that day did so by the direct effects of whatever happened that morning.

I didn’t consider myself lucky to have made it to my parents’ house unscathed, but I suppose I was. Lucky but not fortunate.