Allison Hewitt Is Trapped Read Online Free PDF Page B

of the undead, and it looks like it should be Susan but it’s not. It’s my mom and she’s wearing that fucking shirt with the sloppy, little kid handwriting …
    WORLD’S BEST MOM .
    I can’t move. I can’t stop looking at her face but I want to run, get away from those hollow, glaring eyes. They’re not my mom’s eyes anymore. Her hands are clawing at me, the flesh gone, showing the gleaming bone beneath. Her skull is peeking through the sagging holes in her face. She’s bald, of course, the chemo took her hair months ago, and there are garish purple spots all over the top of her head. Her fingers are ripping through my shirt. She’s tearing at my skin but there’s nothing I can do. I can’t kill her, I can’t swing the ax at her neck, I just stop and wait and let her rip me apart.
    I wake up in a cold, shivering sweat. There are little beads of moisture on the counter and the backs of my hands are slippery and wet. The monitor flickers and shifts for a minute and then the camera fixes on Susan’s headless body, still there, still wearing the T-shirt.
    It’s after that, after the dream ends, that I can’t sleep.
    And now, writing this, my hands are shaking because I can’t control my nerves. My eyes hurt and they feel sandy, filled up with grit and blurry from hours and hours spent in the dark, wakeful night. I’m clammy all over and I know it would go away if I could just rest, just sleep for an hour or two but I can’t. Something in my brain won’t let me. I think about sleep constantly and I try to read to stay distracted, to keep my mind off the fact that when evening comes nothing will happen; I’ll close my eyes and feel perfectly, horribly awake.
    It has to stop. If I go on like this much longer I’ll be useless, weak, dull and sick.
    It has to stop.
    COMMENTS
    Isaac says:
    September 23, 2009 at 10:33 pm
    You’re not insane. Stay alert, try to create a routine and stick to it. It’ll be easier on your body if you can find a rhythm. Don’t let your immune system get too weak.
    Mel says:
    September 23, 2009 at 11:20 pm
    Boat leaves today and I’ll be on it. We saw a few of the creatures in the water but they looked slow. I think we can make it. You won’t hear from me again, Allison but I’ll be thinking of you. Goodbye.
    Allison says:
    September 23, 2009 at 11:55 pm
    Good luck on the waves, Mel. Send us a postcard from Cuba and some rum. Lots and lots of rum.

September 25, 2009—The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime
    Knock, knock …
    (Come on, say it.)
    Fine. Who’s there?
    BLAGRRUUGGHHEEEFGH.
    “You’re fucking losing it too, aren’t you?” That was Ted’s enthusiastic response to the joke. I think he laughed though, later, in secret. “First Phil and now you? Do you like stay up all night thinking this shit up?”
    “No,” I replied sheepishly. “Not all night.”
    Sorry. That’s the kind of moronic shit that passes for humor around here these days. It’s bleak. Somewhere between my twentieth bag of Lays and my tenth SoBe, I must have started to get a little depressed. Yes, it’s official. We’ve lost that loving feeling, our chutzpah, our joie de vivre. Not that we were ever chipper about being holed up in a beige corporate break room, but at least there was no complaining, no dull, empty staring.
    I never thought it would get so bad so fast. Janette and Matt have lost their taste for cards and spend their days playing nonsensical word games and endless rounds of Would You Rather. Phil literally will not come out of his office unless it’s to use the bathroom, which brings us to our most recent situation: the house of unspeakable horrors that is our bathroom.
    There is no running water, limited toilet paper and no working ventilation. I’ll let you imagine for yourself what the smell is like because if I try to describe it our tête-à-têtes will come swiftly to an end as I destroy my laptop beneath a fountain of neon orange Dorito vomit.
    Really, we