Fiction - Ashes to ashes

[dustydiary]

June
Emma is gone.

I was worried. For the last month, she didn't seem to know me. I thought she was falling back into her fugue state. Then it hit me: there was a "she".

Before, her illness always gave her a part to play. Wife, mother, child, victim. And she made room for the people around her in that fantasy world. Now she had torn off a blindfold and was really seeing for the first time. She was just learning what she was really looking at.

She told me she wanted to go out on her own. So I handed her my rifle, and a pack of precious bullets - the last that I had. Little good they'd do me without a way to fire them, after all. And I told her where to find people, and where she could avoid them.

It's been a long time since I've drank any water. I started thinking about it again.

She might come back. She might need more of the purification water.

I guess I have to stay.