Resurgam
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Sometimes I wish I was able to say things more clearly. That I didn’t get so stuck over my own words; that I wasn’t so self-conscious over saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. That I could bring myself to voice my opinions without the overbearing fear of being shot down and derided. Sometimes I wish that in order to speak my mind, I didn’t have to write my ideas down; that my spoken words would flow as easily as my printed.

But things are never that simple. No one ever gets what they want, and if they do, they’re either rich or beautiful. No one will ever care about anything unless you have the looks, the money, or you’re dying. No average person ever gets what they truly want in life. It’s always the second rate jobs, the second rate schools, the second rate house. “Middle class.” More like “the epitome of second place.”

I will never be victorious.

In my world, if you want to rank number one, you better have the guise, the coinage, or the Malady. I had none of these things, but it felt like everyone else did. My “average” title protruded so far from the norm that it was practically screaming, “Hey everybody! Look at this horrendous, middling, loser! She doesn’t have the Malady! Exterminate her!” I stood out like a sore thumb and as a result, I was forced to hide in the shadows.

But that was before. Things changed, people changed, I am not the same as I was eight months ago. I am noticed, I am envied, I am a star. For now.
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It starts with a standard chill. Itchy, dry eyes, sore throat, running nose, an overwhelmingly lethargic attitude–typical Common Cold symptoms. Anyone could mistake the Malady for it. Anyone could simply overlook the symptoms and write it off as nothing. Of course, the Malady never ended the way a typical, run of the mill, Common Cold so often does–with a slow decline of the indicators until the sufferer is good and healthy once more. No, the Malady was much more complicated than that–it ravaged one’s mind until there wasn’t a single note of sanity left. It created monsters of men; blood thirsty, leeching monsters. A literal dog eat dog world. A human-dominated world without the humanity, how twisted.

It was a disease meant to impede the Interlopers in their never-ending quest to perform a coup on the city of Chicago. They were savage, the Interlopers were–tied like steel manacles to their unruly belief that anarchy was the only way to rid of us the oligarchy-styled government of which the city was so dictated under.

Man made in a lab and a simple, “Oops, I accidently dropped the top-secret phial of the disease into the public’s drinking water;” the Malady was soon knocking down everyone’s carefully constructed door. There was absolutely no doubt that the instigator was an Interloper spy.

It seemed that absolutely everyone around me was coughing, sneezing, or exhibiting some other sort of Malady symptom. To me, it looked like I was the only person in the entire country that was as fit as a fiddle. I felt like a bright yellow neon sign in the middle of a dark ghost town. I was a cat amongst dogs; I did not belong.

Oftentimes, I snuck out into public markets with a hospital mask covering my face so as to not contract any Malady indications. Inconspicuous as ever with a hood over my head, I would look at the pathetic piles of hacking plebeians and scoff in disgust. I felt superior, aristocratic, and all-around cleverer than everyone around me for not stooping to their ailing level. I felt invincible, as if my body was sculpted from steel and absolutely nothing–not the wrath of Heaven, nor the fires of Hell-could bring me down.

Standing in the middle of a Chicago street one day, I came to realize that while everyone else’s world was crumbling down around them as they succumbed to the Malady, mine was in the process of being built higher and higher. I was a phoenix. I was born from the ashes. Ex cineribus resurgam.

I didn’t need money or beauty to save me from a plagued world. All I needed was my apparent natural-born immunity to the Malady. All I needed was to be freed of Chicago.

I turned my heel on the almost abandoned street that I had been staring down for a large amount of time. I had been gazing at the convulsing piles of barking individuals for a while without even noticing I was doing so. So many of them, it seemed, were well on their way to insanity. Soon, they would be cleaving each other to slivers of muscles and marrow like wolves and devouring the cadaver–newly contracted razor sharp teeth and elongated nails to tear through flesh like butter, the Malady would wreak havoc.

As time went on, I no longer felt so supercilious towards the pitiful entities–I began to feel sorry for them, even if a great deal of them only contracted the Malady for attention, to conform. Everyone wants to be seen, everyone wants to be heard, everyone wants to be a star, but no one should have to go through the pain that the Malady brings. No one should literally lose their head to a government-inflicted disease.

I knew I wasn’t safe in Chicago anymore, not with all of the scientists from Timbuktu and back congregating in effort to stop the spreading disease. Every day, more and more citizens were contracting the virus, and more and more of them were dying because of it. For that, however, I did not feel commiseration. I envied them. A way out without sin, what a tragically beautiful twist of fate in their hand of cards, for sure.

But if I couldn’t stay in my own home, where could I flee? I didn’t have any family in any of the outlying districts of the city. All I had was my older brother, Vinny and the childhood memories we had of our parents before the Malady took hold of them. The city was practically crawling with Surveyors–government elected officers meant to scope out all the immune and the ship them off to a laboratory for testing–and I was no longer safe. Chicago was on the verge of being quarantined away from the rest of the world and there I was, powerless to stop it. I have always been powerless; this was nothing new to me.

Somehow, through my haze of cluttered, escape driven, thoughts, I found myself at the filthy stoop of my apartment building. Hurriedly looking both ways to make sure that there were no Surveyors present, I shoved my key into the lock, twisted the knob, rapidly clicked the door shut behind myself, and secured the door once more. I tried not to trip as I ran up the four flights of stairs to my apartment, and to my great amazement, I succeeded. Slamming the door behind myself, I snapped my multitude of locks into place. Safe. The Surveyors had yet to find me once more. I let out a sizeable breath that I didn’t know I had been holding.

This happened every time I ventured out of my nest and into the “Great Unknown” of Chicago’s underbelly. Swift, hushed steps, rapid glances to and fro; constant vigilance was my key to survival in those days. If the Surveyors knew that I was immune to the Malady, I would have been shipped off to some great, big scientific lab and turned into a lab rat. I had to keep a low profile–it was of the utmost importance, the very top of the list.

Turning around, I gave my home a slow look of careful scrutiny. I had to be absolutely certain that there had been no break-ins during my hour of absence. I’d heard horror stories from Vinny about the Surveyors on more than one occasion–once they worm their way inside of your domicile, everything is all downhill from there. Nothing but thick, iron shackles and rusty metal cage bars from then on out. A bleak future filled with sharp scalpels against flesh and a cruel absence of anesthetics. I thought that I’d soon as shoot myself straight in the temple than submit to a Surveyor. I would be no one’s guinea pig, no matter what the circumstances were.
Satisfied that no one was inside my flat with me, I shucked off my worn, leather jacket and tossed it haphazardly onto the old, patched love seat in the main room. Somehow–though it is completely beyond me as to how-I managed to toe off my scuffed boots and kick them aside without falling over myself and breaking an ankle. I tripped over everything, stationary or not, in those days. How so very clumsy I was. How so very breakable.

“Vinny?” I called out after hearing a slight thud from down the hall. Sometimes Vinny got home before I did, and although those days were far and in between, when he did, he sure knew how to make a real racket. Vinny was never one for stealth–always the loudmouth, he was. He wasn’t exactly one you could rely on if you were going to have a stake-out on the Surveyors–or the Interlopers, for that matter–with that big mouth of his.

I shouldn’t have said anything, though. I shouldn’t have called out for my older brother. I should have kept my trap shut until I knew for certain that it was just he and I inside of our apartment. I had foolishly lost my furtiveness in the faux safety blanket of my home.

Within moments of my voice stirring up the silence, the room turned to ice. I could feel it deep down inside my very bones; the chill spread like spilled Arctic water throughout my marrow and I could feel it, like a vice grip on my heart. The whole situation didn’t feel so right anymore, didn’t seem like our normal routine. I didn’t feel safe, I didn’t feel sheltered–I felt vulnerable and downright weak. I felt exposed, like a newborn cub without its mother. I felt like everything I hated.

It was tangible, the terror I felt. I thought that if my fear were a snowball, gently trundling down an ever-steepening decline, it would keep on rolling and rolling and rolling with absolutely no concern as to when the ground would finally raise up and cease its progress. I couldn’t imagine my fright without imaging an inflating balloon–it grew bigger and bigger with my every breath. I just didn’t know what would happen when it popped. But to be honest, I don’t think I would’ve wanted to know what would happen in the end.

“Vinny?” I called out again, despite my better judgment. Someone was in my residence, be it Vinny or a Surveyor, and in an act of self-preservation, I had to find out who it was. Hopefully, if it was an unwanted visitor inside my home, I still had enough time to spin around and race back down Chicago’s winding streets. With any luck, I could find a refuge for the night within the deserted subway tunnels.

To my great disdain, however, there was no response to my inquiry. Not a voice, not a thump, not a sound. The cutting silence raised the hair on the back of my neck in such a manner that my skin felt like it had been pricked by a million razor-sharp pins. Deciding on impulse, I tentatively, crept down the hall to my brother’s infinitely messy room.

Saying that the door to Vinny’s nest was open would be a complete and total understatement. The weighty, old, oak door, which had once stood so proudly in its frame, was slanted in a sickeningly tilted manner to the side. It was clinging for dear life on the edge by a single, struggling hinge. The door looked about ready to crumble down at any given moment and I had to be especially careful when crawling around its sloped cavity when I entered the room. I thought that if the door finally decided to subside completely to gravity while I was inching around it, my probable death might actually be better than being potentially caught by a Surveyor.

Vinny was not there. In fact, the room had a vacant, someone-just-left-in-a-hurry air to it, and it practically drove me up a wall. I was too late.

“Brother?” I called out meekly. Although I knew that Vinny definitely wasn’t present, it wasn’t going to stop me from trying. I had to make sure, had to double check and then triple check, had to rip apart his every belonging until I found him hiding beneath some object or other. But I knew that my hopes rarely ever turned out to be reality and therefore my chances of finding Vinny in his room were slim to none.

Placing my feet firmly on the ground to help find my bearings, I gave the room a careful examination. Everything was all out of sorts–completely topsy turvy. Vinny’s room in the first place was the equivalent to the aftermath of an F5 tornado, but the mess that I encountered upon walking in was something far, far worse. It looked like every single belonging that my brother owned was picked up, eviscerated wholly, and then slammed back down on the floor in any which direction. But the worst part of the entire scene wasn’t the whirlwind of broken wood and ripped pages or the vortex of shredded clothes and razed childhood toys, it was the blood. My brother’s blood. It seemed to cling to everything–a few drops here, a splatter there, it was everywhere. You couldn’t walk about in the room without taking in the irony scent.

I thought that if my stomach ever decided to detach itself from my internal organs, burn its way out of my body with its acidic nature, and then fall ten stories out of a building, that moment would have been a good time to do so. What I was feeling in that instant could have been the epitome of the clichéd saying, “My stomach dropped.”

Taken. The Surveyors had taken my brother. I didn’t need any further evidence; I had all I needed for assurance right in front of me.

I had seen this occurrence before, back when the Surveyors had taken my friend, Rhett. I had walked into his room, looking to borrow his black leather gloves, and came face to face with my worst nightmare. A whole team of Surveyors carelessly prodding about in Rhett’s room, looking for God knows what–they could be after anything, be it information or your blood, the possibilities are endless. One of them, a big, burly man in navy, had Rhett by the throat. It was at that point when I had quickly backtracked my steps and ran about the tunnels in a maze, so as to throw off any trailing Surveyors. How truly selfish I had been. I could have intervened, could have stopped the Surveyors–or at least thrown them off task for a few moments–but instead I chose to run away with a tail between my legs, leaving my friend alone to defend himself. I was pure, straight cowardice.

I was too late to do anything this time, though. Too late to help, too late to do anything other than stand in the middle of my absent brother’s room and mourn my loss. It felt as if I were a million miles away from my last living relative and that notion turned my organs to ice; it made my entire frame quake in anxiety. I fell to a heap on the filthy floor, but I didn’t care. Didn’t care that I was laying on my brother’s fragmented belongings because it meant I was closer to him. I didn’t want to be alone. No one ever wants to be alone.

For the first time in my life, I thought that if the Surveyors came back to reassess their handiwork, I wouldn’t run away as per usual. I would fight and mandate answers; demand to know what they did with Vinny, what they did with Rhett. I would rise from the charred ashes of my reality before spreading my mighty wings with pride. I would howl fiercely in contempt before striking down any impeding Surveyors with vicious slashes against their abdomens. With the floor stained scarlet, I would rejoice. I would be the phoenix.

When the door finally collapsed, its falling brought a massive rush of adrenaline into my body. I leapt to my feet, only to find myself staring into the onyx eyes of a Surveyor. Stocky in build, my current enemy wore the standard government issued, black Surveyor uniform and sported an oxygen pack against the lower part of his visage to keep him from breathing in infected air. His dark brown hair was cut close to his skull and the atrocious smile plastered to his mug spoke volumes about his poor dental hygiene.

“You are neither plagued nor Pre-Malady,” The man spat through his crooked teeth. “Why did you not turn yourself in at the Purging Ceremony of last May? You know the consequences now, of course.”

What the Surveyor said was true–I didn’t turn myself in at the Purging Ceremony like I was commanded to. But then again, what sort of person in their right mind would willingly hand themselves over to the government to become a lab rat in the never ending hunt for the Malady cure? What sort of person would freely give up a chance at life? All my friends that were immune to the disease fled Chicago in search of their family within the outlying districts. I wasn’t as lucky. I had no family in outlying districts, I had no pass to exit the city. It was just Vinny and I, and neither of us could afford a pass to leave.

The man’s words made my fear had return with a vengeance and I could do nothing but stare like a stunned animal, waiting to be crushed by the wheels of a car. I thought that perhaps my voice ran away with my pride because when I opened my mouth to answer the Surveyor, no sound came out. I must’ve looked like a gasping fish out of water because in my terror, I was certainly having trouble remembering how to breathe properly. My lungs refused to cooperate even further when he roughly grabbed me by my forearm, bringing me closer to him.

“You’re not going to resist like the other one, are you? Made an awful mess, he did. Didn’t like that too much. But then again, if I hated the fight, why would I have signed up for this job in the first place? Just play nice and you won’t get a knife to the gut, too.” The Surveyor had finally wormed his gravelly voice under my skin. His words burrowed down deep and took up residence within my abdomen like parasites, leeching off of my contentment. His declarations left nothing but pure horror in their wake–the Surveyor thrived while I felt myself fall deeper and deeper into despair.

I glared up at him, forcefully detaching myself from his hard grip. Despite how sick I felt, my courage finally returned to me at the mention of my brother. I would resist. I would be victorious.

“What did you do with Vinny?” I demanded of the Surveyor, only to be met with a hearty laugh.

“Sweetheart, if you think that I’m going to tell you a single thing, you’ve got another thing coming. In fact, I’d say that you already have another thing headed your way right now. Sweet dreams, princess.” The Surveyor smiled sickeningly before winding his arm back and striking me straight in the temple.

I felt myself fall to the floor and then everything turned to nihility.