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electricgoldtendercare · 6 months

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how you can help palestine

*i regularly update this post with any new info i find so please always reblog the original post*

Donations

donations currently reaching gaza:

help buy e-sims for people in gaza (PLEASE HELP CONNECT GAZANS TO THE WORLD. if you would like to stay updated, please follow @/Mirna_elhelbawi on twitter)

currently holafly e-sims are needed. please donate.

donate to get food packages to gaza - care for gaza

support palestinians: buy a keffiyeh from the last and only factory in palestine - hirbawi

secondary donations:

palestine children's relief fund

palestine red crescent society

save palestine - islamic relief canada

send medical supplies to gaza - palestinian american medical association

click to donate - arab.org

donate for the recovery of hisham awartani - gofundme

one of the three palestinian students shot by a racist in vermont for wearing kufiyas and speaking arabic. hisham’s injuries have left him paralysed from below the chest.

help bring down israel's weapon trade - palaction

NOTE: journalists based in gaza are saying a demand for ceasefire is the priority as not all donations are reaching gazans (focus on the donations that are directly reaching gaza). so please contact your local MPs every single day demanding as such. palestine need a permanent ceasefire.

Petitions

petition to investigate war crimes committed by israeli military

demand ceasefire - amnesty.org

open call for immediate ceasefire

american government call for immediate ceasefire

american government to stop funding israeli military

ceasefire and increase humanitarian assistance - oxfam au

petition to get canva to address their pro-israel stance

invoke the genocide convention to call for ceasefire in gaza - world beyond war

location specific petitions

gaza call for ceasefire - oxfam (UK)

end israeli occupation - parliament uk (UK)

email your MP - medical aid for palestine (UK)

protect gaza civilians - islamic relief (UK)

stop fuelling genocide - action network (USA)

@ biden: call for ceasefire now - move on (USA)

ceasefirenow.com - jewishvoiceofpeace (USA)

call congress and demand a ceasefire - uscpr (USA - they provide a script of what you should say, so don't worry about it)

note: you can call everyday. they tally the number of calls per issue. so more calls = higher chance for them to take action. p.s. you mainly go to voicemail so don’t worry about phone call anxiety. fight through it just this once please.

australia call on israel to stop attacking palestinians - apan (AUS)

immediate ceasefire and increase in humanitarian aid in gaza - actionaid (AUS)

email your MPs - stand with palestine (AUS)

[EN5622] call for ceasefire and end to occupation - parliament of australia (AUS)

closes 13 dec @ 8.59pm AEST

[EN5628] retract governmental support to israel and demand ceasefire - parliament of australia (AUS)

closes 13 dec @ 8.59pm AEST

sign to send letter to MP for ceasefire - nccm (CANADA)

ceasefire now! - ijv (CANADA)

ceasefire and allow aid to enter gaza - oxfam (CANADA)

house of commons petition 4661 (CANADA)

closes 9 dec @ 11.03am EDT

cessez-le-feu et un couloir humanitaire - le mouvement (FRANCE)

write to your député - assemblée nationale (FRANCE)

skydda civilbefolkningen i gaza! - mittskifte (SWEDEN)

singaporeans call for immediate ceasefire (SIN)

contact your elected reps and demand a ceasefire (GERMANY)

write to the EU demanding a ceasefire (EUROPE)

template of letters you can send (EU)

guide on how to contact your MPs in EU

p.s. if the template is outdated, just use it as a guide and add a few sentences here and there that reflect the current situation. i can’t find any recent templates so :/ at least this is something

multiple actions you can take to help palestine - plant een olifbloom (NETHERLANDS)

includes: links for donations, emails to MP, emails to media, links to petitions and demonstrations

den haag, maak nú werk van vrede in israël/Palestina - the right forum (NETHERLANDS)

māori call for palestine - ourActionStation (NZ)

special visa for palestinians in gaza with family in NZ - NZ parliament/pāremata aotearoa (NZ)

deem israeli actions as war crimes - NZ parliament/pāremata aotearoa (NZ)

basta ao genocídio em Gaza! - awaaz (BRAZIL)

globo e grande mídia, parem de desumanizar civis palestinos - the intercept (BRAZIL)

Campaigns

friends of al-aqsa

❥ UK-specific

urge your MP to speak up for palestine

hands off al-aqsa

stop administrative detention

petition for UK to stop arming israel

❥ International

boycott puma — email them to end their partnership with israel

boycott coca-cola

palestine action

join the resistance

islamic relief canada

urge your MP to rally for ceasefire

decolonise palestine

poster campaign to raise awareness on the war crimes being committed against palestinians | (very very important please share + read the sources provided)

text/call campaign for people living in USA

text CEASEFIRE @ 51905 to call for a ceasefire

text RESIST @ 50409 to send a letter to your representatives to pass HR3103–a bill that prohibits tax dollars from going to israel

download 5Calls app to contact members of your congress | (more info)

fax campaign for people in the USA

go on this website to send 5 free faxes per day

here’s a link to a pre-written fax copy you can download to send (the first link on the linktree)

here’s a video that explains how to fax your senator (it’s very easy and all you need is a valid email address)

BDS movement

get involved in boycotting companies associated with israel

please let me know if you have any more links. i will add them in. and please reblog the original post!!

UPCOMING PROTESTS

PALESTINIAN LITERATURE READING LIST

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electricgoldtendercare · 6 months

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Jake Kiszka // Female Narrator

Part One

After a blinding light eradicates mankind, you're left in a desolate and empty world. A year of solitude eliminates all belief that anyone else was left behind. Until a chance encounter on the side of the road. Jake is injured and fighting for his life, but his presence brings a renewed sense of hope. Touch starved and lonely, you need him. And undoubtedly, he needs you too.

"It would be the last man on earth that would end up being mine..."

Explicit sexual content Sex (penetrative & oral) /Foreplay /Blood / Injury / Hunting. / Intense emotions / Death.

Day 390 ~ Amelia

It was in my mind to go back the way I had come. To trudge through the heavy undergrowth of a path that was once there, but was now being reclaimed. But putting one foot in front of the other was easier on the road. Perhaps this lazy thought put me precisely where I was meant to be?

The mist was low and thick. The curve of the trees as they lined the asphalt disappeared into the smog. I could scarcely see where each step would take me, although I knew this road even in darkness. The way ahead was shrouded and I was weary. Carrying the heavy load of fire wood on my back and a sadness that had begun to gnaw away at the corpse of my resolve.

I was half a mile away from Grandma's cabin when I heard it. The low thrum of a sound that had no place in the silence which had become my world. Any sound that was not made by my own footsteps was nothing more than a tree in the wind or a creature meandering through the brush in search of food. I hadn't heard anything else in so long that my heart began to pound in my chest.

I knew that I had heard this sound before. It was familiar. And as it grew louder, I could feel the prick of fear at the back of my neck. The clamorous growl of it made me want to start running. Unable to take in a full breath, I started walking with more purpose into the line of trees.

I was never really certain what made me look back. The force of something beyond myself told me that I had to be brave. That if I were to hide, I would walk this earth alone forever more. And so I dropped the fire wood and turned into the mist. Swirls of it catching the golden hue of headlights as they illuminated the white fog.

The deafening screech of tyres on the corner rooted me to the ground. The fleeting moment seemed to pass me by much more swiftly than I would recall it later. All I knew was the streak of red as it crossed my path, the unfathomable look in the eye that caught mine through the windscreen and the way I seemed to know that one of us was going to bleed for it.

I clamped my eyes shut and waited for impact. Certain that the trajectory would bring me to death. And I would greet it as a friend. The intolerable ache of loneliness was all consuming. The days of solitude had etched away at any desire to remain alive. I hadn't known I was ready to die, but in that moment it was a truth I could not deny.

I felt the air sweep past me. The inevitable crash of metal on wood forced my eyes open. Colors of red and black and grey permeated the mist. And I felt the first drop of rain.

A former life that I had not lived in so long was resurrected. My brain seemed to ignite into a frenzy of pathways reconnecting themselves as I ran towards the billowing smoke. Whether it was adrenaline or something outside of myself willing me to strength, I managed to yank the driver side door open and step back as a lifeless body limped over the wheel.

I hadn't seen another soul in so long that I held my breath at the sight of him. A tangle of brown hair and blood, I instinctively moved him back as the scent of fire began to burn. His serenity came from the way it looked as if he was simply sleeping. I was stolen from the urgency of the situation as I began to wonder if he was dead or dreaming. My breath stilled in my chest as I pushed back his blood drenched hair from his brow.

And then he moved. Just a twitch of his eyelid. I frantically pulled off my gloves with chattering teeth, placing fingertips at his pulse. It was weak, but it was there. I clicked his seatbelt open and let his body fall into mine, dragging it into the mud as the wreckage began to blaze.

He let out an agonized groan as he hit the ground. The sound of another human voice sent me into a flutter of panic and relief in equal measure. Lifting his eyelid, I watched for any focus in his irises. Any dilation in his pupils. He didn't seem to be fully conscious, but the way he sucked the air in told me everything I needed to know about the balance of his life.

Lifting his shirt, I could already see the broken ribs against his fight to breathe. The potential for a collapsed lung was high, but without any medical equipment at my disposal I had no other choice than to drag him the half mile back to the cabin.

With the rain beating down beneath the canopy of trees, my hands covered in blood and soil, I felt his body slip from my grasp as I tried in vain to raise him. There was no strength I could muster to get him to his feet, he was like a rag doll. Void of any life that would grant him the strength needed for me to carry him.

Every muscle and sinew in my body fought against leaving him there. To stay with him next to the burning rubble of his car as flames licked up the branches of the broken trees was not an option, either. And I knew that dragging him by his feet would inevitably kill him. Each of those choices ended in him dying, regardless.

I didn't know that I was crying for this stranger until I felt the warmth of salty tears on my lips. I dipped my hand into the pocket at his groin and pulled out his wallet, searching for something with a name.

"Jacob..." I whispered, my own voice coming out of me as if I'd never heard it before.

I had to try. I had to kill him knowing that I'd tried to save him. At least then I could go on in my solitude knowing that I'd tried to end it. That there was a part of me that had wanted to know what it felt like to hold a conversation with another for one last time.

I tied his shoelaces together and took one of the sturdier looking sticks from the fire wood pile and wound it around the laces. Pulling it through the overgrowth that I had tried to avoid, his body trailing behind me over rock and fern until I reached the gravel path towards my dwelling. The weight of him sending shockwaves of pain through my shoulders and arms, rendering me weak and wearier than I had ever thought possible.

How long had it taken? An hour? Possibly two? The rain refused to stop pouring and the wind continued to howl. The mist remained on the forest floor like a blanket of cloud that did nothing to soften his journey. But somehow, I made it. Trembling against cold and fatigue, I pulled this lifeless body up the porch steps and into the sanctuary of my Grandmother's home.

I thought I would have felt something as I stared at him. But within the confines of my familiarity, it was like seeing him for the first time all over again. And I was flushed with fear anew. The questions I so desperately needed answering screamed at me from the back of my mind, not knowing what it meant that someone else had been left behind, too.

There would be time enough for that. I silenced the echoes of my intrusive thoughts and ripped the front of his shirt open. The true extent of his wounds becoming apparent as I ran my hand down his sternum. There was no way of knowing if he was bleeding internally, or if his breakages were life threatening but I was bolstered by his ability to carry on breathing as I ran for my supplies.

I was lost in a flurry of muscle memory as I fitted a canula to the back of his hand. Fixed the saline drip on the stand and managed to get a pillow beneath his head. I gave him a shot of morphine to keep him sedated and wrapped his torso in linen bandages to keep his ribcage from falling apart. I cleaned up the blood from the wound at his temple, stitching it up against the tendrils of long brown hair.

And then I sat.

There was nothing left in me to give. I sat and I stared at him. Taking in the cupids bow of his lips and the strict line of his jaw. The mole on his right cheek and the tiny, almost indiscernible pock scar on his left. I took note of his deep set eyes behind closed lids, the thick brows above them and the way his teeth sat just behind his mouth as his breathing began to settle into a regular pattern.

And then I began to wonder about what sort of man he was. If he was good and kind or if he had a terrible temper. I wondered what stories he had to tell, or if he would want to leave without telling me any of them. I wondered if he had been alone as I had. If his solitude had driven him mad or if he wanted nothing more than to be alone in this empty world.

I wondered if he would try to hurt me. To take my food and my body. And the thought that he would regain his strength and try to force himself upon me was one that made me physically move back from him. Every danger receptor in my body alerting me to something that was entirely perceived.

He was just laying there on the cold, wooden floor. On the flatweave rug that was faded and frayed that had been there since my early childhood and was now tainted with blood stains. He wasn't a threat. There was too much morphine in his blood stream. But still, I found myself concocting a menagerie of thoughts about his character as he laid there, unconscious.

I nervously moved around, building a fire with the last of the wood and cursing myself for not going back for the pile I'd left at the side of the road. I made a pot of tea and kept a watchful eye over him as it brewed. Sipping on it thoughtfully as I sat at the kitchen table, unable to focus my attention on anything but his half naked body.

Eventually, I gave in to the shock and fell asleep with my head propped against my forearm. The gentle crackle of the fire fading away as it burned to embers. And the rain continued to lash against the window, until day turned into night.

Day 392 ~ Jake

The ghost in the mist haunted me. The sight of her in the thickening fog, watching me with those doleful eyes. A dream that wouldn't release me. Repeating over and over until all I could feel was unbearable pain shooting through every inch of my body.

I didn't think ghosts could hurt me. But she was standing over me with a hand on my chest, running her fingers down my throat and ripping my clothes to shreds. I could hear my name on the wind, being whispered somewhere beyond my comprehension. And then there was nothing but eternal darkness. My only sense of reality was the smoke in my lungs that smelled like burning rubber and it would not relent no matter how hard I tried to breathe.

It felt like I had died. And when finally I opened my eyes, I wondered if I'd stepped over the threshold into the place beyond. If I had, then surely I was in hell. All I could see through blurred vision were flames licking high in a roaring fireplace. The heat of it making me sweat. I could feel myself shrouded in something, a blanket? It felt itchy against my skin. I wanted to shuffle free of it but couldn't move. The torture of my body not doing as I willed it was surely a punishment that should have come to me a long time ago.

The ghost of my dreams appeared to me through the flames. Her hand clammy and cool against my brow, her voice soft and low as she soothed my aching moans. I couldn't see her face, only the outline of her as she stood above me. Angel or demon, I couldn't decipher. But I knew I had died. There was nobody left in the world I'd left behind.

"Jacob?"

It was like my head was being lifted out of running water. The muffled drum of my own heart seemed to beat loudly in my ears and then suddenly it was like I'd stepped onto dry land.

"Jake." I mumbled, a habit I'd developed whenever anyone called me by my full name.

My mouth was bone dry. I could feel my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and my lips covered in a sheen of dried saliva as I tried to speak. My head snapped up, panic rising in my chest as I realised I wasn't in my own clothes. I was stitched up and laid out on an old couch in front of a stone fireplace. My ribs felt like porcelain as I tried to sit up, only to find that I couldn't.

"Don't try to make any sudden moves."

She wasn't a ghost. She wasn't a spectre in the mist. I could see her concern laced in her unwavering eyes. Blue as the sky I hadn't seen for days and red rimmed from tears she'd no doubt shed at my expense. Her nose wrinkled as she tried to fluff the pillow behind my head. Heaven nor hell could have prepared me for this. The reality that I had survived.

She placed a glass of water to my mouth and let me drink until the water ran down my chin. Until my parched mouth was satisfied. And then I watched as she retreated to the chair beside the fire, sitting on the edge of it as if my presence made her nervous. Her hands wringing in her lap and a fearful expression on lips she couldn't help but bite.

It had been so long since I had seen another living soul that I was struck by the same uncertainty. Perhaps I would have been more gracious if my body had allowed it, but all I could do was lay there and wonder if me looking at her was the wrong thing to do.

"Where am I?" I asked, my eyes still adjusting to the sombre fire light.

She was considering my question. To be specific or to give me just the right amount of information. Her distrust of me was a little off putting, considering I'd only been unconscious in her company thus far. It felt as if she didn't really want me there, but neither could I simply get up and walk out.

"A few miles outside of Roanoke." She confirmed, "You don't remember anything before the accident?"

I could have lied. But she wouldn't have been comforted either way. It was my presence that was scaring her, not whatever I had to say. I could see her knees bounce up and down where she sat, her chest rising and falling beneath an oversized flannel shirt as she breathed a little harder than usual.

"I remember." I replied, wincing as I tried to shift my weight.

She flew to my side. Despite her fear, she opened the shirt that I was wearing that didn't belong to me and ran careful hands over my bandaged middle. Her touch settled on the fabric, my flesh beneath it screaming out to be held.

"Where does it hurt?" She asked plainly, inspecting me like a book she had never read before.

There were freckles on the bridge of her nose.

"Just my ribs." I replied, trying to keep my voice as calm as I could muster.

"Without access to imaging machinery, I couldn't decipher the extent of the wounds." She said, buttoning up the shirt a little higher than I would have usually worn it. "After I was able to get you out of the car, I had to drag you through the woods. I wasn't sure if you'd sustain more injuries. Luckily, the front of the car took most of the impact. Your body just shattered in the reverb, from what I could tell after I examined you. I was concerned about internal bleeding, but after the first 24 hours I could see that your bruising was from multiple bone fractures. I don't know the extent of those either, but at a guess I'd say there's a fair few. You hit your head pretty hard, too. But I managed to get it stitched up. You just needed fluids after that, and I gave you some sedatives to keep you still. Just in case..."

She traced a finger over the dressing on the back of my hand and peeled it off. The sensation of it drew a swift intake of breath. She rubbed at thumb over the puncture wound where something had been and walked away. Nobody had touched me in what felt like a thousand lives lived in complete solitude. And I almost felt the sting of tears betray me.

"What are you, some kind of doctor?" I jested, although she didn't smile.

"Medical student." She corrected, "I was a few months away from graduation when..."

She didn't seem to want to say it out loud. She lingered in the space between the couch and the chair, eventually throwing the dressing she'd taken off my hand into the fire and stoking it with a heavy looking iron poker that looked out of place in her tiny hands.

"I thought I was the only one left."

My confession drew her back from the fire. A look of intense pain that she couldn't speak of in those blue eyes. She was the reason I was laid up like that, unable to move. I couldn't tell her that, though. That her appearing to me like that through the mist had made me swerve, that she was real and not a figment of my imagination had brought me crashing through the trees.

There was so much I wanted to say. And none of it that I could easily spit out. And she, in return, could not speak to the thing which had brought us to that moment. There was a mounting sadness which seemed to be shared. But she wouldn't let me dwell in hers, I was an outsider.

"You must be starving." She surmised, snapping out of her melancholy.

My stomach ached for food, but I didn't want any. The way she stormed across the room, as if the act of bringing me food was a welcome distraction made me feel a strange sense of guilt.

"No, wait..." I lifted my arm, felt pain shoot through my chest and put it back down.

She stopped at the foot of the couch. Ready to tell me that I wasn't strong enough to be making such bold movements yet, but she remained silent. The look of uncertainty still there, like a third person was in the room with us.

"What can I do for you, Jake?" She asked, so sweetly I almost relinquished myself to the pain just to sit up and get a better look at her.

I settled on the way she looked at me, instead. "What's your name?"

Something she could freely give me. Something she already had of mine that she could reciprocate. Just a simple name, and she smiled right before she gave it to me.

Day 1 ~ Amelia

Christmas never felt quite right in California. I longed for the morning dew of the appalachian woods where the rest of my family were celebrating. The fireside mulled wine and ridiculous conversations that my Mother would have with her Mother. My younger brother fighting with my elder brother over the last cookie, or something equally trivial that never would have been a point of contention if they'd been at home.

At Grandma's cabin we always became children again. That steady tone of her voice as she admonished us was a comfort in adulthood. That I couldn't be there had made my Mother cry, and I couldn't shift the memory of her wiping away tears as my Dad put a careful hand to her shoulder. Only he understood why. And I knew, as I stood clicking my pen at the 4th storey window of UCSF Fresno, that he would be comforting her in my absence.

Dad came from a world of surgeons and lawyers. His family were big on careers, whereas my Mom had grown up the child of appalachian homesteaders. Or doomsday preppers, as Dad so affectionately called them. The two of them colliding at the 1991 birth of Lollapalooza.

It was easy to live in privilege around my Dad. The way he walked me into the most prestigious residency I could have ever dreamed of was not something I could give up just for Christmas. But my Mom was always there to remind me to be humble. That nothing worth having meant a damn if you didn't work for it, and I was determined to work for this place I had found myself in.

"Doctor?"

I slipped my pen back into my coat pocket. As I turned, I caught sight of the little old man standing at the foot of his hospital bed in a mint green gown. His little legs were trembling, his eyes sunken so deeply I could barely make out the color of them.

"Mr. Matheson, I thought I told you to stay in bed?" I tutted, helping him into the chair before his legs gave way.

He was quite adamant that he wasn't getting back into that bed. Pulling me down to meet his milky gaze, the paleness of his cheeks somewhat whiter than they'd been a moment ago.

"I don't feel quite right, Doc." He fretted, batting away my attempts to check his vitals.

"That's because you have liver disease, Mr. Matheson." I replied, keeping my tone accustomed to the teasing manner this particular patient enjoyed. "You remember? You're in the hospital in Fresno."

He would usually spare me a toothy grin. Tell me I was the prettiest Doctor he'd ever seen. That I reminded him of his late wife, except she didn't have freckles on her nose. When he sat there silently, staring through me like I wasn't even there, I took out my pen light and waited for him to follow the glow.

It was as if he had vacated his own body.

"Mr. Matheson?" I chimed, curling my hands around his shoulders in order to shake him back into himself. "Mr. Matheson, can you hear me?!"

He never ate much. He was barely keeping his bones together with what little flesh he had left. He seldom slept. The disease ravaging his body had caused red welts to appear across his flesh, painful to the touch. I swept my hand across his forehead, something which usually caused him to wince in pain. But there was nothing. Not even an errant blink.

"Ok, you're scaring me now." I confessed, hitting the call button with my fist as I laid the old man out on the floor.

Nobody came. The alarm sounded out over a silence I hadn't noticed. There were no clamouring footsteps, no hurried voices.

"Can somebody get in here please?!" I called, damned if I was going to leave this sweet old man on the floor like that. "Hello?! Is anyone there?!"

There had been Christmas music playing from the nurses' station. Visitors coming and going all day. The gentle realisation that there was only the alarm I'd set off myself sounding out sent a blood curdling chill down my spine. I felt it spill like ice down from the nape of my neck until my fingers tingled with it.

I felt a wave of nausea. My body began to feel irrepressibly cold. The essence drained from me.

"Please..." I begged, my voice coming out so thinly it was barely audible. "I need...someone...to help..."

I hit the ground before I finished speaking. My body listless and paralysed. My mind urging myself to move to no avail. I could only stare up at the fluorescent light above, buzzing and flickering on the white painted ceiling. I thought, perhaps, I had worked myself into a psychotic frenzy. That my perception of time was off and that it had only been a second since I hit the call button.

They'd be here any moment, wouldn't they?

The light swallowed me. Rendered me blind. Time lost all meaning. My own heartbeat the only reminder that I existed at all. The tell tale sound of my own breath, like my head was under water, rushing in and out as I tried to move.

I couldn't see my own body. As if I was shrouded in darkness, but where the void should have been black there was only white. Not smoke, nor mist. Not something I could place outside of myself, it was within. And yet, it was beyond me. I could feel it trying to drag me away. Like it wanted me to let it consume me.

I thought that I was screaming. I knew my mouth was moving but there was no sound coming out. I knew that I was fighting something that wanted me to remain still. It wanted me to submit. And it felt as if, for a moment, that I should.

Just let it take me. No more pain. No more struggle. No more life. No more waking up each day alone, the hours of my life dwindling down at a job that was making it hard to find love. No more missed celebrations, seeing the look on my Mother's face when I couldn't be there. Whatever it was that wanted me, let it have me.

My heart began to beat faster. Thrumming harder and harder against my chest, threatening to beat right out of my body. Until all I could hear was the deafening roar of it. Certain that I was dying, I accepted my fate. I stopped fighting it. And the moment I did, everything became abundantly clear.

I opened my eyes. Breathless. Drenched in sweat. Christmas music echoing down the corridor. Every muscle, every sinew robbed of it's strength. My eyes were streaming, like I'd been crying but couldn't recall what it had been about. Utterly broken. But I couldn't remember why.

For the briefest moment I was numbed with amnesia. The sweetest, most pure moment that kept me safe from what I was about to recall. I picked myself up slowly, gathered my composure. A headache pounding away behind my temples that hadn't been there a moment ago.

And Mr. Matheson was nowhere to be seen.

Day 2 ~ Jake

The bottle of tequila my brother had left on the counter was still sitting there, half of it spilled down the kitchen cupboard. As if he'd been pouring it and simply wasn't there to hold it anymore.

The TV was playing static. My parents had been sitting on the couch watching an old movie, their positions still moulded into the scatter cushions. There wasn't a single thing out of place. Even the cars parked in the driveway signalled that no one had left.

Except I was alone. So irrevocably alone that I had burst into the houses nearby in a blind panic, looking for signs that anyone was still there. Every house in a state of eerie abandonment. Like Christmas had been happening until the moment it somehow wasn't.

Music playing. Food left on tables. Spilled drinks. Toys scattered across the floor, wrapping paper littering the space beneath Christmas trees. Like children had been playing with them only a moment ago, until they were inexplicably taken.

And I couldn't bear it. One minute I'd been standing on my parents' front porch, sharing a smoke with my girlfriend after we'd eaten a good meal, feeling content as we talked about our plans for the new year. I thought she was just playing at first, collapsing down the porch steps into a heap at the bottom. I was blinded by the light before I could reach her.

I never did reach her. It was as if I blinked and she was no longer there, the light dissipating into a world void of others. I screamed their names. I ran from house to house, I tore them apart. I told them to quit messing around. Only silence responded.

Like the Marie Celeste. Floating on the sea without a crew to steer her. Warm and inviting, a meal set to be eaten. But none to eat.

Nothing but the remains that they had once been there. And now there was only sadness and a fear I knew would choke me, if I let it.

@thewritingbeforesunrise @takenbythemadness @katuschka @its-interesting-van-kleep @lvnterninthenight @writingcold @jakekiszkasbuttsweat @edgingthedarkness @velveteencatch

#bunny’s reading list

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