Going Back Home

Liam

Getting Penny back into the car had been an ordeal and a half amidst all of the ongoing panic.

I had spent half an hour slowly guiding her only mildly responsive body through the slowly emptying mall after my initial panic. Other men had also realized that they could get their loved ones to safety and had begun to carefully move them away from the chaos. At least I hoped that all the men I had seen were guiding the women they knew to safety, but I could not risk going back to check. It might be selfish, but the safety of my sister took priority.

I carefully adjusted her body on the enger seat, her blank face still staring straight ahead at nothing, mouth slightly open, just as it had been for the past forty minutes or so, ever since this whole… event I guess, began. I gently secured the seat belt across her body, my hand grazing her breast as I did so. I inhaled suddenly, the panic of the situation mixing inside of me, and creating something else. I finished securing Penny and made my way across the car to the driver’s seat, closing the door with more **** than I intended.

I sat there for a few minutes, breathing hard. The parking lot continued to slowly empty out. By now, I figured the only cars that remained belonged to women. Who were probably frozen and unresponsive, just like my sister and every other woman in the mall and in the streets.

I thought of my mom and Ashley, back in college. Her campus was not too far, but the city was in chaos and mom was alone at home. What if she had been doing something when she had frozen? What if she had fallen, or cut herself or was cooking something? My mind began to spiral as I thought of the endless possibilities, each one worse than the previous, as a police cruiser raced down the street, sirens blaring and ing the cacophony all over the city.

I took a deep breath and held it in, centering myself.

Right. I couldn’t keep panicking, my family needed me.

I looked at Penny once more and, stretching my arm, checked to see if her seatbelt was locked once more. My hand brushed against her breast once more, causing me to jolt back my hand as if I had been burned.

I froze after a moment, breathing heavily as I tried to calm myself once more. As I sat there, trying and failing to pretend everything was normal, I finally looked at Penny, truly looked at her. Saw her as she was right now.

Her soft lips, on her slightly open mouth, a little bit of drool gathering on one side. Her wide, and completely blank, eyes, staring at nothing, no sign of life or intelligence behind them at the moment. Her chest continued to rise and fall softly, the only sign that she was alive at all. Right now Penny, and it seemed every other woman in the city, maybe the world, was, for all intents and purposes, a doll.

I looked around the empty parking lot and, once I was certain, I gently cupped one of her breasts. She, of course, didn’t react.

“Just a doll.” I whispered under my breath as my hand gently caressed her mindless body, my other hand ed in, slowly moving downwards and into the front of her denim shorts.

Just as I was starting to get into it, a firetruck screamed by, interrupting me and knocking some sense into me.

I quickly drew back my hands, shame and guilt gnawing at me as I forcefully grabbed the steering wheel. What the fuck was I doing? My sister had been helpless for less than an hour and I was already taking advantage of it? What the hell was wrong with me?

Shame continued to burn inside of me as I turned the ignition and drove out of the parking lot. I glanced at Penny’s body every once in a while as I carefully drove through the city, the phantom sensation of her body under my hands tempting me as the car moved carefully through the now almost empty streets.

All around were frozen women, some stood in the middle of the street, others inside idling cars. All of them had the same blank expression, eyes wide, staring at nothing, faces slack. As if there wasn’t a single thought inside of their heads.

A little further ahead, I could see a pharmacy. Through the window, I saw the clerk frozen behind the desk, clad only in her underwear. Long black hair cascaded down her back, slightly mussed up. I tried not to think about it.

A tall redhead stood at a bus stop. Her sundress clinging to her insensate body as she waited for a bus that would never come.

I stopped the car at the intersection, carefully looking every which way before I continued. No need to risk a car accident, especially with Penny helpless beside me.

I still needed to decide where I was going. To the right was a slightly long drive to Ashley on her college campus, she was probably with her roommate when… this had happened. Straight ahead was the road back home, where mom was currently alone, possibly in the middle of some mundane activity that could become dangerous if left unsupervised. I knew she had been having an online meeting earlier in the day, but who knew what might have happened after she was done with that.