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¹³ THE LAND OF THE LIVING
❝ Show me what you're hiding. ❞
―Son Lux, Flickers
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THERE WAS A THIN LINE between fear and love. Novacaines for pain, it was confounding how both cut knife-deep, roused the numbed, and healed the hurt. They watched Maggie ingest the fear and love to the heart like poison, teetering upon that fragile string. Her sobs echoed across the tightrope as she screamed at Lori. She latched onto the pharmaceuticals in the paper bags to pitch them into the dirt.
But the blood on her shirt pardoned her unsober belligerence.
"I warned you. You should have taken me." Harlene huffed an air of disapproval. She pitied the confusion on Lori's face, almost as much as the realization Maggie had gone through: The world had ended. "They have no idea how it is out there. They don't know how to handle it."
Glenn's shoulders sacked, "I thought it was safe."
It never was.
The incident unfolded as a bitter lesson, whether driven by madness or sadism. Harlene believed gambles were the crucible of enlightenment, pushing them closer to death and heightening their awareness.
"And here's your abortion pills!" Maggie hurled a box of morning-after pills with a scornful cry and spat at Lori's feet. Without waiting for a response, she stormed away, urging Glenn to chase after her, who abandoned Harlene alone to console the aghast mother.
But bafflement became a stone upon Harlene's shoulders at the sight of those Plan B pills. She picked the box up and locked eyes with Lori's ashen visage, "You're ending your pregnancy?"
The heart-wrenching question wasn't easy to hear. Lori wouldn't sugarcoat her loneliness. If anyone were to swallow how weak and afraid she felt, it would curdle their blood. She believed not even her husband would understand, and it was evident in her eyes.
