1st 5 Pages November Workshop - Jiordano

Name: Toasha Jiordano
Genre: Young Adult Dystopian
Title: Epoch Earth; The Great Glitch

I was ten the first time I saw someone glitch out and die. It was the scariest damn thing I’d ever seen. He barged in the room from behind me as I stood there in front of the television minding my own business, mentally cussing the stupid dress my mom had forced me to wear that day.

All of a sudden a blood-curdling scream shattered the quiet around me and he started clawing behind his ear. I could smell his burning flesh, hear it sizzling like a steak. Within seconds he fell to his knees, tears and spit pouring out of his face. And that face! It didn’t even look human anymore. The agony concealed his features so much that I feared him as I would a monster or beast. Still I stood there, motionless.

Both of his hands covered his ears and this guttural roar erupted from his contorted mouth. I watched in horror as he managed to drag himself over to a small table in the corner. The fingers on his left hand dug into the hardwood floor. One by one his nails popped like tiny twigs. It took him forever to drag his body a few inches. His right hand scraped at the back of his ear the whole time. During this entire process I stood there with my mouth gaping in horror wanting to flee and never once thinking to help.

As his fingers felt the hard edge of the table leg, he worked his way into an upright position. The screams turned to pitiful moans by this point, but they were no less unnerving. Half kneeling on the table, steadying himself on his knees, the man hunched over as if to vomit. No sooner had I wondered why he crawled all the way over there to puke, he began bashing his head on the table.

If you’ve never heard a human skull smack against a wooden table - the dull thud that’s eerily like the final split of a sliced watermelon -  I suggest you keep it that way. Every thwump sent shivers across my spine and bile to my throat.

His legs buckled repeatedly, threatening to drop him to the cold hard floor, yet he persevered. Charred sizzling chunks of meat slipped off his head and onto the table. The sight churned the peanut butter and jelly climbing its way up my throat. His bloodied hands still tore at the flesh behind his ear between thuds, desperate. I swear I could see half his finger disappear down the hole he made as he rooted around in there.

Within seconds, or years from my estimate, he had retrieved his prize! The chip was larger than most, half an inch square. Congealed blood hung from the corner, ready to drop in the already darkening puddle of him on the table at any second. The inhuman mask his face had become softened in relief. A final sigh escaped the man’s lips as he flopped over onto the floor, pulling the doilies and magazines from the table on top of him.

At some point my mom screamed from behind me and something crashed to the ground. The commotion snapped me out of my daze as she rushed to his side. She cradled his mutilated head in her arms, kissed his crimson forehead and chanted his name. Through fingers that now covered my eyes, I watched her mind meld with him, becoming one.

The entire time these events unfolded, I never ran to my father. I never yelled for him in horror or cried out for my mom. I just held my breath and watched. In my defense, I was ten. But still, to stand idly by and allow your flesh and blood to be reduced to a pile of, well, flesh and blood. I felt like a disgrace.

“Sam… Sam… Sam…” Mom’s tears erupted hard and fast, commingling with the carnage on his face as she wept her comfort over him.

Her mournful wailing harmonized with his death rattle creating the most gut-wrenching low sorrowful tones. She matched his breaths, ragged as they were, and tuned her wails to his moans. In complete sync, my mother escorted my father through his journey out of this world. Her head flung back, dark locks of wavy hair soaking up dad’s coagulated blood on the table behind her. Only the whites of her eyes were visible now as they rolled deep into her head. Her grief song died as soon dad had no air left in his.

Complete silence blared through the room as my father’s body expelled the last of itself onto the floor of our living room. The floor that a week ago he’d told us for the tenth time he’d finally get around to polishing. The floor that mom had just yelled at me for leaving coloring books all over this morning. This is the floor where my father glitched and died, taking that innocent little girl inside me with him.

After my father’s last breath, my mom’s cheeks returned to near pink. Her eyes, black and barely open, settled back into their normal positions. She straightened herself, smoothing damp matted hair down her blood-stained apron. Turning those empty black eyes toward me she whispered, “Synta, go find your brother.”