This is a story that I wrote in my creative writing class. The prompt was to create a story that is based on a post-apocalyptic world, so for my piece I created the “apocalypse” by it beginning to snow one day and never stopping. This story takes place a short period of time after the snow starts, and follows the perspective of Jamie, who you’ll learn about below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The cloth covering Jamie\u2019s face had long since frozen, leaving his beard interlocked with the fraying threads. It had been a week, he mused, since he had last ventured out, and it looked exactly how he remembered it: Nondescript, white, and colder than hell. Taking one last look around, he saw no tracks, nothing out of the ordinary, and no reason to stay. Jamie had long since decided that he shouldn\u2019t stray too far from his tunnel, because if he lost that, his life would surely follow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The tunnel seemed to lengthen every time that Jamie traversed it, forcing him to burrow his way down to the door. Panting and freezing, he muscled the door open and stumbled into the mudroom of what he had started to call home. Even though he had been there for at least a few months, he still had the suspicion that he would one day have to fight over the place, as no one in their right mind would leave such a palace for so long, at least by choice. The moment that Jamie had gotten through the tunnel the first time he thought it was a mirage, though he was pretty sure that those only existed in the desert, not the snow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He couldn\u2019t say how long it had been, but he remembered the first day as if it had been imprinted in his brain. Hungry, freezing and on his last legs, he found the tunnel and expected a hollowed-out snow pile at best. Instead, he found the massive oak door to be unlocked, and the supplies that lined the racks inside had nursed him back to life and sustained him since. Jamie didn\u2019t know how long he had stayed there, though part of him wished that the occupants would return sometime just so that he could have a conversation with another human. It had been long enough to get comfortable, but not long enough to relax. He had, after all, found warm oatmeal on the stove when he first arrived, though no one had returned for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The front door closed with a thud and Jamie flicked on the light switch. The florescent hum filled the mudroom as he untied his boots and shook the snow from his jacket. He placed the rifle on its hook, hung up his layers, and slid into the slippers. They were too big, but they had started to form to his feet. Jamie walked past Hector, giving him a high-five and a greeting. Despite his glossy eyes and taxidermy body, Hector was the closest thing to a friend that Jamie could find. Walking through the mudroom and into the supply closets was always a fascinating experience, as Jamie had never fully come to terms with the scale of preparation that the previous tenant had. There were rows upon rows of metal shelves, spanning across multiple rooms. On these shelves was enough food, vitamins, electrolytes and supplies to support a small family for a very long time. Jamie, despite eating from them three times a day, had barely made a dent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It had been a few days since Jamie had eaten tuna, so he plucked a can from the shelf and continued looking for the rest of his meal. He passed rows of canned chicken, dry beans, and dehydrated vegetables. Settling on rice, he grabbed a new bag and slung it over his shoulder. Being one of his favorite meal items from before the white, he had finally made his way through the first industrial sized bag. Maybe he had consumed so much because rice goes with every dish, though he knew deep down that it made him think of his family, and thus it gave him a little twang of interaction and belonging. As he hoisted the bag up, the tuna can slipped from his grip, fell, and rolled under the racks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDamnit. Did you see where that went, Hector?\u201d Jamie asked into the empty house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grunting, he placed the bag of rice back on the shelf and got down on his hands and knees to look for the can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What happened next seemed to all blur together. Jamie reached for the can, snagged his finger on something, and felt it slice through his flesh. He yanked his arm back, hitting his head on the shelves in doing so and his finger started to bleed. Jamie bent back over to see what had cut him. Upon examination, he found a wire that was the same color as the floor and missing a part of its plastic coating. That must\u2019ve been the culprit, he decided. Tugging the wire, he saw that it went to the corner of the room, along the edge of two walls, and into the ceiling. Forgetting about the bag of rice, he began to walk toward the corner mentally tracing the path of the hidden wire as he walked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ring. Ring. Ring.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The shrillness of the phone made him jump. It had never rung. Jamie had assumed that the phone lines had long since shut off. Even if they were still up and running, he didn\u2019t have anyone to call. He didn\u2019t even know if anyone else had survived the white, though there was certainly someone living in the house before he found it. Whether they were still living, was another matter altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He ran toward the phone, desperate to talk to someone. Anyone. Scooping up the receiver, he breathlessly exclaimed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHello?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The only answer he got was a quiet static, and after speaking to the phone for a minute with no response, he hung up. Jamie\u2019s entire body was shaking. The thought that not only were there other people alive, but they knew to call the house, sank his stomach through his legs right down to his toes. The walls felt like they were closing in on him. Who was the rightful occupant of the house? Was whoever called expecting for someone other than him to be there? Who called?<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his shock over the phone, Jamie forgot about the rice, the dropped tuna can, and his dinner plans with Hector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still pondering the phone call, Jamie reached for the fridge doors out of pure habit and ate from there. He did not return to the supply room, and he barely had enough mental power to wrap his finger in gauze. While he was wrapping, he absentmindedly dabbed some ointment from a tube that said \u201cNeosporin\u201d which seemed to be the right thing to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next hours passed slowly. Jamie sat by the phone, willing whoever called to call back. He was not a particularly religious man, but he was begging God for there to be someone on the other end. Similar to how a dog\u2019s owner doesn\u2019t recognize its growth from puppy to adult because they are always together, the loneliness since the white had grown and grown, unbeknownst to Jamie. He hadn\u2019t realized just how big it had grown until the phone exposed a massive, gaping pit of loneliness in his chest. For the first time in months, he cried.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not a few tears, but big, racking sobs. His face felt hot, like he had built a fire and leaned too close while blowing on the embers. Eventually, he lost the fight against human nature and feel into a listless sleep, having not moved from the chair by the phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unsure of how long it had been, his body was jerked awake. It filled his ears, and his stomach leapt through his chest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ring. Ring. Ring.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Jamie hastily answered the phone screaming incoherent greetings. \u201cPlease don\u2019t hang up,\u201d he begged. The phone responded with the same static, though Jamie swore that he could hear breathing on the other end of the line. Seconds passed, and then minutes, and before he could stop himself, he was swearing into the phone, willing the other end of the phone to be man enough to speak to him. To give him reprieve from the lonely mutterings of his mind. The anger boiled over, and after no response to anything he said, he slammed the receiver down, and once again the racking sobs took control of his body. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Everyone always says that you don\u2019t know what you have until you lose it. That losing something important to you can be one of the hardest experiences in one\u2019s life. Jamie had just decided that\u2019s bullshit, as the emotional drain of losing something is nothing compared to living an incomplete life, just to have someone dangle the one thing you long for in front of your face and mock you for not having it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Seconds turned into hours and hours to days. Jamie sat by the phone, day and night, willing it to ring. He occasionally got up to eat, though instead of making meals he now ate tuna from the can with the occasional Twinkie from the pantry. Before getting to the house, he didn\u2019t realize how much he loved Twinkies, but from the first bite on his second day he decided that that they weren\u2019t too bad. As the days passed, Jamie was more and more unsatisfied with his life in the house. The phone didn\u2019t ring and the chair was starting to have an imprint of his body. By his count, it had been 4 days straight of sitting by the phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the fifth day, Jamie asked Hector if he needed to get out of the chair and do something different. Hector, as usual, just looked back at him from the mudroom without a word. The silent judgement was the kick that Jamie needed, and as he placed his hands on the chair to get up, he felt a shooting pain through his bandaged finger. He grimaced as he stood and noticed that his jaw was sore. Shrugging it off, Jamie walked away from the pantry and the kitchen, past the mudroom, into the bedroom for the first time in 4 days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHowdy Hector.\u201d He said as he passed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The bedroom smelled like it always did, slightly musty, like it had been wet and dried but the smell never fully dissipated. The walls were a nice dark oak color, and the bed was in the corner while the rest of the room was taken up by bookshelves and a desk. While Jamie liked the color of this room, it wasn\u2019t the reason that he picked it. The other room, with the army green walls, had a regular bed as well as a bunk bed, and Jamie couldn\u2019t stand to be in a room that had other beds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As if awoken from his four day stupor, Jamie felt like he needed to get out of the house and clear his head. Everything felt off, and he couldn\u2019t exactly put his finger on why. His head felt like it was splitting open and his jaw felt like he had been chewing a rubber for four days straight. Not a big deal, Jamie thought, as he had known that he grinded his teeth in stressful situations. Way before the white, when he had been laid off from his job due to a change in ownership, it had gotten so bad that he needed a mouthguard for when he was at home. When the white hit, he packed the essentials and escaped his city before the real looting began, but he didn\u2019t remember to pack the mouthguard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maybe, if he had been smart enough to pack that in with his essentials his jaw wouldn\u2019t be so sore. Jamie shifted his train of thought away from what he could\u2019ve done as he opened the dresser and put on the base layers that were plentiful, preparing to brave the cold outside the house. First came the leggings, which he had to sit down on the bed to put on. They were a little bit long for his legs, so he cuffed them at the bottom and tucked them into his wool socks. Next came the long-sleeve shirt, which was still so new that it had tags on it. $63.99, though Jamie got it free of charge from the dresser. He wondered if money existed anymore, or whether people, if there were any, had gone back to the barter system, like the conspiracy theorists always predicted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After layering up and walking into the mudroom, Jamie told Hector the plan about clearing his head outside. Hector didn\u2019t respond, but Jamie could tell that he approved. He stepped into his thermal outerwear, laced up his boots and reached for the rifle on the hook. There, on the shelf directly adjacent to the hook, sat an unopened box of 30.06 ammunition. Jamie scratched his head with his non-bandaged hand, having sworn that the only ammunition that he had seen was in the supply room, to the left of the tuna before the corner of the room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The box was heavy in Jamie\u2019s hand, and he was taken aback as usual when he actually held a cartridge. Few people realize how big a 30.06 cartridge is, and how menacing it looks in its form. The cartridge by itself is longer than most people\u2019s fingers, and when shot produces recoil like a horse kick. Jamie had been in the house for months, trying desperately to find meaning in his isolated life, wandering around the house and venturing out into the storm once or twice a week, yet had never seen this box of ammunition. No matter, he thought, because his rifle\u2019s magazine was already at its capacity and he had a round chambered as well. What, exactly he brought the rifle for, he wasn\u2019t sure, as he had not seen any wildlife in over 4 months, and people for much longer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was one time that Jamie saw hoof prints near the opening of the tunnel though, and the thought of simmering meat is tantalizing enough to bring the rifle just in case. The zipper closed the top of his suit from the elements with the elegance of a rich person\u2019s winter jacket as Jamie slung the rifle over his shoulder and grabbed the door handle. Just as he was unlocking the door, he stopped dead in his tracks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Dropping the rifle, Jamie dashed into the kitchen. His oversized snow boots clomping along the wood floors as his breath caught in his throat. The piercing ring of the direct current\u2019s tone slicing through the fog in Jamie\u2019s brain. He needed the phone. Needed to be able to talk to someone, anyone, other than Hector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just like last time, however, when Jamie answered the phone it yielded no conversation and no reprieve from his engulfing loneliness. This time, the sobs didn\u2019t come. There were no gut wrenching gasps, and no tears streaming down his face. Instead, Jamie felt a wave of numbness flood over his body. Not numbness like you would except from when you went to the dentist and they gave you a shot, or numbness like you experience when you get stitches at the emergency room. Though Jamie hadn\u2019t experienced either since the white, he was sure that they didn\u2019t compare to the full-body immersive numbness that he was feeling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you could imagine watching the most important person in the world to you fall off a cliff, watching them sail through the air, and crumbling hundreds of feet below, that is the type of numbness that Jamie felt. It seemed that the phone had opened a part of Jamie that he had repressed for so long, and you know what they say\u2026 When it rains it pours. The numbness grew so intense that it made Jamie feel paralyzed, like there is no point in him doing anything as there is nothing to be working towards. For all he knew, there were no people, there was no end to the white, and there was no reason for him to continue suffering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jamie slowly clambered back to the mudroom and unlaced his boots, pulling the tongue away from his shins as he slid them off his wool socks. Next came the expensive zipper, which exposed his base layers with the same ease that it concealed them. Jamie stepped out of the suit and put it back on the wooden hook, for the first time undressing without melted snow around his feet. When Jamie had finally taken off all his layers to combat the cold, he slumped into the bench in the mudroom and found his face in his hands. There were still no tears, but the emptiness that he felt could\u2019ve engulfed a whale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reaching down toward the rifle, Jamie wrapped his fingers around the stock and lifted it up. He turned toward the hook and as he turned, tripped over one of his slippers and fumbled the rifle. He instinctively grabbed for it with his other hand, and as he did the rifle caught his bandage, pulling it off his fingers as the weapon once again clattered to the floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He didn\u2019t bend down to pick it up. In fact, he wasn\u2019t even looking at the rifle. What Jamie was looking at was his hand, which was now littered with little black spots by his cut, which had deep, dark marks in the middle of each circle. The bandage had not received much blood; therefore, Jamie didn\u2019t see much point in changing it out while he had limited supplied in the house. Now that the bandage was off, however, Jamie thought about the wire that he never followed as well as the implications of the clear infection in his hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Leaving the rifle where it lay, Jamie worked his way toward his bedroom to scour the bookshelves. He had seen a few first-aid books around the house but couldn\u2019t put his finger on where exactly they were. The first bookshelf yielded no luck other than a book outlining how to field dress an animal and shelves of fictional stories. It appeared that whoever lived here before enjoyed Harlan Coban and Lee Child, as there were more than ten books by each of those authors neatly organized by each other. The bottom shelf held more fictional stories, but one caught Jamie\u2019s attention as it was a book that he had read before; The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho. He pulled it out absentmindedly so that he could read it for later, tossing it gently onto the bed before moving on to look in other rooms for the first-aid books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A piece of paper lazily fluttered back and forth in the air as it made its way from its resting place in the book toward the floor, between Jamie and the bed, though he didn\u2019t see it as he was already turning his back to head to the next room. It landed, face down, near the bedside table, making a little crinkling noise that Jamie missed as he was already in the hallway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The hallway wasn\u2019t too long, but it felt painfully long to Jamie as he walked toward his least favorite room. The doorway had a beautiful wood finish, slightly lighter than the wood finish in the mudroom. To the left was the bunkbed with the wooden frame, to Jamie it looked like the top mattress was a twin size and the bottom was a full size. He had never really understood why it was called a \u201cfull\u201d size, when it could barely fit one adult reasonably. He almost chuckled to himself, thinking about this while walking past the bunk bed to the bookshelf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the second shelf, about two thirds in from the left, lay the book that Jamie needed. Its spine proudly emblazoned with the title \u201cBushcraft\u2019s First Aid.\u201d He grabbed the book, slid it out of the shelf, and walked back into the kitchen. When he sat down in the chair next to the phone, it felt more comfortable than he remembered. Perhaps, he mused, that was because it had an abundance of time that week to form around his body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Flipping to page 72, where the informational photographs were, Jamie found a photo of an infection that looked very similar to his own. Underneath, was a small font that read \u201cTetanus.\u201d The numbness suddenly dissipated and what was replaced with it was a quickly spreading panic throughout his body. He knew what tetanus did and knew that it is incredibly hard to survive once the infection has spread in the body, which judging by the photographs he was comparing to his own finger, indicated that it had already begun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bushcraft indicated that there was more information on tetanus on page 96, which Jamie awkwardly flipped to with his healthy hand. A few things stood out to Jamie right away: No cure\u2026 symptoms include tense jaw, tensing until the infected can no longer open their jaw at all\u2026 need to let it run its course while receiving intensive care\u2026 It even went so far as to say that many people require mechanical ventilation, which acts as an iron lung for people who lose the ability to breathe on their own. Jamie grimaced to himself as he thought back to his sore jaw, which had only gotten worse in the days following, as the idea of a mouth guard and stressful situations seemed pitifully ignorant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hindsight is often 20\/20, especially when it comes to highly influential impacts on one\u2019s life. Jamie found no exception to this rule, and the helplessness and self-loathing that filled his head allowed no leniency for the cognitive barriers that are inherent with tetanus. The next hours passed in a blur, where Jamie began to feel his jaw more and more, and realized that he couldn\u2019t open it all the way. He stumbled from room to room looking in medicine cabinets and first aid boxes. Despite the effort that the original homeowners had put into being ready for anything, Jamie found no evidence of anything that would help him in his fight against tetanus. Since he was alone in the house, he had no one to help him with food, no one to look after him when the respiratory symptoms started, and no one to give a damn whether he lived or died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The days that followed seemed to drag on forever, yet the end of the day always came quickly. Jamie found his diet shifting from semi-complete meals to mashed vegetables and meager amounts of tuna, whatever he could fit through his clamped jaw. The fourth day after reading \u201cBushcraft\u2019s First Aid,\u201d Jamie wasn\u2019t able to open his mouth at all. He panicked, scrambled back to the book, and found nothing. There were no suggestions on how to regain function in the jaw, and no insights into how one can sustain themselves when they cannot open their jaw.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next day, Jamie started having difficulty swallowing. It seemed like his muscles just weren\u2019t up to the task. Whether this was from tetanus or from the lack of nutrients in his body, he was unsure, but he needed do to something. Anything. In a cloudy haze of panic, Jamie decided that the only way he could get any food was if there was a space to fit it into. Silently sobbing at the realization of what he needed to do, Jamie took a trip to the biggest medicine box, in the supply room, and rummaged around in it until he found some Oxycodone. He looked at the label on the bottle and found it to be 4 years expired. The instructions stated \u201cTake one tablet by mouth every 3-5 hours as needed.\u201d Since they were so long expired, Jamie took two. It was a struggle to get them into his mouth, though he finally succeeded by pushing his lower jaw back and creating a tiny gap between the top and bottom row of his teeth. The pain from this maneuver was excruciating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In an hour, Jamie wasn\u2019t feeling so much pain in his jaw, and knew that it was time to do what needed to be done. He walked into to the kitchen, stumbling over his feet. He hit his mouth a few times to see how much it would hurt, and when he felt very little, lined up his mouth with the side of the table and collapsed. It hurt. A lot. But when Jamie sat up, he saw three of his teeth teetering on the floor and felt the gush of blood from his gums. Reaching into his pocket, he removed a few pieces of gauze and stuffed them into the holes where his teeth used to be. In a few hours, this would be enough space to stuff food into, at least for the time being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reality seemed to swirl around Jamie as he called out to Hector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHector,\u201d He trailed off, the pain of grunting sounds through his clenched jaw bearing down on him, \u201ccan you help me get up and get into bed?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI can,\u201d Hector replied, at least Jamie could\u2019ve sworn that he heard him reply, as Jamie curled into a ball on the floor, \u201cjust give me a minute or two.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jamie couldn\u2019t muster the energy to respond, but was content with this answer and knew deep down that Hector had always heard him. He knew that it just took a drastic enough situation for Hector to come out of his shell and help him. Unable to move his jaw and barely able to breathe, the last thing in the world that Jamie expected to happen, happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ring. Ring.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Jamie scrambled into a sitting position, but not before hitting his head on the hefty legs of the table and scraping his knuckles on the wood stove.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, Jamie was able to grasp the receiver as he fell back down to the kitchen floor. Cupping both hands together and shakily bringing the receiver to his head, the world started the spin. Jamie\u2019s vision was starting to mimic a tunnel, and his tongue felt fat and swollen in his mouth. In a last, ugly motion, he pushed the receiver to his ear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHello?\u201d A voice at the other end of the line asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jamie tried desperately to respond, tried to say hello, grunt, or even breathe loudly, but nothing came out. He couldn\u2019t move his jaw, couldn\u2019t push air through his throat, and couldn\u2019t push his tongue around his mouth. The tunnel grew longer for Jamie, and in a clatter the receiver fell to the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What would you do if it started snowing one day and never stopped? If you don’t know, maybe you’ll get some ideas from Jamie in The White.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-minor"],"yoast_head":"\n