World-Mart (34 page)

George rifled through his clean clothes, then slowly peeled away the layers he had worn for the past several days.  As he hit the last layer, he realized that he was in desperate need of a shower, and he grabbed his clean clothes and hurried into the bathroom.

He turned on the click-light and started the shower, then turned to look at his shaggy face in the mirror.  Much to his surprise, his eye color was in the process of changing.  The very center of his iris was still brown, but the rest of it had become ice blue.  He stared at the terrifying marvel for a moment, then forced himself to turn away.  He showered and dressed as if nothing were wrong, then went to bed with Virginia’s pillow in his arms and waited for the fever to render him senseless.

George woke with a start, shivering in the darkness, realizing that the wall heater had gone cold.  He looked around the apartment, feeling disoriented in the unbroken darkness.  He felt his way to the front door and slowly opened it.  To his surprise, the hallway was also dark.

He made his way to the shuttle hall, and then stood motionless as he opened the door and peered in.  The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed and flickered, seemingly struggling to stay on.  All else was silent and still.  A light stench permeated the air.  George struggled to remain standing as he surveyed the bodies.

His eyes went wide, a sudden panic taking over.  “Hello?  Anyone?” he called as loudly as his tight throat would allow.

He passed over the body of a young woman who stared wide-eyed into oblivion.  She had pale deviant eyes, and yet she wore an Education-Corp uniform.  Confused, George moved away from the body.  He passed another open-eyed corpse, noticing that it, too, posed a mixture of deviant eyes and higher-class attire.  He began to scan all of the nearby bodies, finding all of them to be deviants. 

He glanced up at the central air unit, noticing that intermittent gusts of glittery powder trickled from them, slowly settling to the ground.  He looked down, realizing that the ground was covered with both blue and green dust.

“Hello?” he yelled, but no one replied.

He hurried back to his apartment.  He made his way to the bathroom and turned on the click-light, his weary body shaking and sweating.  A terrified whimper escaped his lips as he huddled in the corner of the small room, beneath the imagined safety of the dim, battery-powered light.  He closed his eyes, hoping he might open them back up to find that this was all some twisted nightmare, that he might awaken, refreshed and renewed, to the realization that the world as he knew it would continue.

His eyes snapped back open, but to his horror, the grim reality remained.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Leigh M. Lane lives with her husband, a philosopher and secular humanist, and their two cats.  Leigh writes in numerous genres under different names, all of which explore the human condition (in all of its beauty and horror) through the deceptively simple guise of speculative fiction.

For more about Leigh M. Lane and her other works, visit her website at http://www.cerebralwriter.com.