My name is Millicent, but I do hate being called Millicent and would prefer to be called Millie. I live in a house on a once busy road, facing the nasty streets filled with nasty people. I am glad I can’t see them anymore. I do love animals because they do not speak and I spend most of my days with them, my animals, or sometimes my sister. Most of the time, I feel like I am floating, the wrong side of the magnet against the ground. Always close, never touching. I never used to feel like that, but I think it is here to stay.

 

Sweet Stanley follows me everywhere just like the other two. I thought I was a dog person until I got a cat. I love my dogs; they are both kind. But Stanley and I have a special bond. An indoor cat just like me. 

 

It was a day just like any other day. Except it was my birthday; oh! How wonderful a day! I never did like my birthday. In fact I do hate it. I hate attention, especially now. It was warm outside, not that it mattered. Matter Matter Matter. Ha! I don’t know what that means, ha! I am not sure how old I am turning, not that it matters, ha!

 

If he nudges me one more time I promise I will get up and scoop his dry food into his bowl, I promise. I will always take care of him; he will always be happy. But until then, I will stay in the safety of my bed.

 

I think Stanley knew what type of day it was because he didn’t dare nudge me again. But suddenly it was my worst nightmare,

 

“Good morning Mil, time to wake up,”

 

“Absolutely not. Today I am doing my proce–”

 

“Nope, no process. You are getting up. Happy birthday Millie-rat! Big 2-2!”

 

“I’m fucking twenty two?”

 

“It’s been three years, now get up. No process.”

 

Evangeline hated my process. I am plagued by evil, of course. It just makes sense that Evvie would be well and fine and I would be plagued by my mind! How dreary. I do my process so that I can be awake, and walk, and participate in daily activities. I do not get up without my process. 

 

“Let me be, please”

 

“You don’t have time for the process today, Mil,” she stroked my head and suddenly grabbed both ankles and pulled, “we need to get you up!”

 

I thrashed, I screamed. Stanley thrashed and cried. Eventually, with great resistance and a short battle of tug-o-war, my feet touched the ground, burning like hot asphalt on a day like today. When did I last touch asphalt? It was the worst pain in the world, leaving bed without my process. It was time to scoop Stanley’s dry food.

 

We never did much for my birthday, of course, for the last three years really haven’t needed any birthdays. The last three years haven’t needed people. 

 

Bang!

 

“Fuck me!”

 

Evvie shut the blinds. She always tried to open the blinds so that I would get some vitamin D and my body would release itself from its process. This was Evvie’s calculated risk, for every so often they found a ladder and climbed up the ladder to the physically healthiest girl they could find and Bang! They tried to shatter the glass. 

 

We never looked at them for long of course, for too much of them would make me throw up and scream and yell at Evvie and call her horrible things and horrible names and I would then try to jump out the window and join them just to escape this house, on a once nasty street. 

 

They didn’t understand that even though I am physically healthy, physically quite perfect actually, I am dreary, oh so dreary. I suppose they would rather dreary old me than themselves; nasty, itself!

 

“It’s even uglier than usual, Ev! Here, fill Stan’s water.”

 

“Sweet Millie-rat, don’t look at them or they’ll keep coming for you.”

 

“Fuck it!”

 

“Millicent!”

 

“Sweet Ev, please let me go back to my process. I will be down in 3.5 hours and we can eat pizza and it will be my birthday and I will tend to everything and go back to sleep.”

 

“Millie, we must go downstairs and watch the news. I hear Dictator is speaking today. Then, we suit up and walk the dogs. Then, we drive for a long time. Then, we eat. Then, we drink wine. Then, we open your gift!” 

 

“Sweet sweet Ev, you are just wonderful and I love you so. But what in God’s name makes you think I am going to go outside?”

 

“Millie dear! Do you think I’m a fool? It is our new VR headset that you would have known we had bought if you ever came down for any reason except to cook for us all! Millie, Millie, do you think I am not sane?”

 

Evangeline tended to Stanley and tended to me. She picked out my clothes because she knows I cannot do that without my process. She means so well, my dear Evangeline. How she lives, though, is truly absurd. She cannot face the truth if it slapped her in the face. She doesn't want to end up like me, but if she doesn’t stop pretending, she will end up far worse. Ev is older than I, but she has never felt it. Nobody in my family had felt it except me, but since I did not become one, they do not think that I felt it. Nobody ever believed me.

 

Downstairs I go so that I do not start a fight because Ev’s law is God’s word in this house. Before the Great Death, Ev was a doctor. She received a large gold plaque and unlimited bottles of wine as well as a personal grocery bot to deliver wonderful food to us. Of course, this was because she tried to save people, and certainly saved nobody. But it was the thought that counted, and as such, we were the lucky ones. 

 

Stanley hops in his sling and I cling him to my chest. He is telling me to get through today and then we can hide forever. Stanley gets me, certainly, and as always, only the animals really understood.

 

Black coffee was certain today, the last of the bot’s supply. Sweet bean juice, oddly allows me to breathe for a moment before feeling the dark crushing gloom of the third year and my…

 

“Happy birthday!”

 

Greeted by three more faces, the same three faces that I have looked at for three years, no more no less, faces and years respectively. I swallow the faux adam’s apple in my throat and thank everyone and show my appreciation for their care and for my health and for another beautiful year. Ev knows I hate it. Ev knows I don’t want to be here.

 

I do not recall a day so beautiful as this in the past three years, and that means it will be everywhere. Happy birthday to me, it thrives in the heat. Mother offers to cook but I am the only decent cook in this house so I grab a spatula and crack eggs into a pan. Everyone likes eggs in this house except for me, so I cook them. 

 

Bang! Bang! Bang!

 

I have never seen this many of them before, and mother begins to cry,

 

“I just wanted her to have a nice birthday. I don’t recall a single birthday during which the weather has been so beautiful!”

 

“Mother it is okay. Mother, the weather is beautiful, and mother, I’m not scared.”

 

She runs to her bed and cries, and cries, as always. I do not recall a day during which she has not cried in the past three years. Ev looks like she might cry. I give Ev the first breakfast sandwich and smile,

 

“This is the best day, I love making breakfast and you are so beautiful!”

 

Ev smiled and took a small bite. She knows I am plagued with dreariness, but sometimes I think she likes when I pretend to be happy because she still has some hope. Hope for better. I put on the record player because the banging gets worse and I know it will upset everyone especially because everyone will be so concerned that it will upset me on my birthday. Ha!

 

I don’t even feel my birthday anymore, sweet Ev. It is just a day, or is it even a day, maybe a minute? That’s it, it is a second. One second every time. I don’t really remember what I did yesterday or the day before, it just is a lot of seconds. I don’t feel the crack of the eggs, they are just moments in seconds and really none of it matters to me, not even the Bang! Because then it is the next second and it is all forgotten.

 

We sit to watch the news. The Dictator lists the number of them that we killed yesterday. We were successful yesterday; we killed 5,000 of them. This, of course, is the most we have killed in a while. 

 

We went about the day as we usually do. We laughed, cried, danced, danced, laughed, cried. And then we drank and drank and drank our wine. Bang!

 

It was rare for them to come at night. 

 

Crack!

 

“Fuck.”

 

We lived in a nice, kind house on a once busy street. The street became silent once they started coming. The Dictator mandated that we all stay inside for a while. A while turned into a year. And a year turned into a new life. 

 

They came in the day when it was warm. They had never come at night before. And they never cracked our house, not our nice house, with the doctor. Our family was supposed to be safe. 

 

They screamed. I had never heard them scream before and I had never heard the house move before and I had never seen Ev cry before and I had never had a birthday quite like this and suddenly I didn’t feel like the wrong side of the magnet and suddenly I felt my feet on the ground and suddenly I heard and I felt and I cried and I screamed and I moved with the house and I let the house move me.

 

And I looked at my mother’s eyes, and my brother’s eyes, and my father’s eyes, and I couldn’t look at Ev’s. I held Stanley tight to my chest, before I realized. And then I gave him to Ev and I told her to hold tight to him so that he was always loved and always knew that he was important and I held Ev’s hand and tears streamed down my cheeks and she wouldn’t let go. And I told her she had to let go. 

 

And she said that I’m not allowed to go outside.

 

And I told her I wasn’t well anymore, physically this time.

 

And she knew that I was no longer plagued in the mind but in the body this time. And she wanted to be plagued with me and she tried to come with me but I told her she had to take care of Stanley and learn how to do the cooking. And I was happy. 

 

And there were clouds and circles and there was a smokey figurine of a planchette and I felt haunted but I knew that I couldn’t be haunted because it was all science and I trusted science so I looked at the planchette and I told it I was ready. 

 

Our family was supposed to stay healthy, all of us, we were to be the healthiest and wealthiest of all, on our once busy street with our doctor. But on my twenty second birthday they came and they cracked the sliding glass door on the veranda and told me to come hither.

 

Suddenly I became one, and the white vans ordered by the dictator came to take me and I left my house on the once busy street and hoped Ev would fare better than I.