ingbird:Feet On The Ground
By Jessica Kylie Nichols-Vernon aka HawlSera
Anti-Piracy Warning: If you pirated a book that is literally given out for free, you are a weird person.
Special Thanks to Charles Matthias for help with coming up with the concept and inspiration for the character Isaac.
To my dear sweet lover Michael "Fawkes" Goode and my ex-girlfriend Erin Irving
And to Phil Geusz and Robotech_Master for inspiring me to write a story for a more mainstream audience.
In the not too distant future….
My only solace in this world is knowing that hundreds of people are dying daily, and I may soon join them. There are a multitude of reasons, first allow me to start with what I have to gain from death. I’m a pre-op transgender woman, pre, yeah, pre, only because I think if I admitted that the surgery I need will never to come to pass I’d have gone completely insane by now. I’m also a spiritualist with a strong belief that there’s an afterlife, and maybe in that afterlife, just maybe, I can be granted a form far more befitting a girl like me. A new form with huge breasts, long hair, a feminine face, and a vajayjay. Now there is a reason I’m putting so much focus on this right now, and that’s because I don’t even want to begin to think of the world I see outside my window. A strange world where the skies are oddly colored with various manmade chemicals and all the leaves are dead, I think I know precisely what I mean when I say it’s the apocalypse. The year is 2065, the month and day aren’t really factors but if you must know, the day is the fourth and the month July. In the olden days, the days of my youth back when I last saw the sun and the moon, we would shoot fireworks into the sky to celebrate the independence we had won from being British Colonies hundreds of years ago. No one does things like that anymore, the acid rains are too unpredictable. Under a decent roof you’re fine, but it’s not worth the various burns it’ll do to human flesh. It won’t kill you no, but you’ll wish it had.
The hospitals aren’t open anymore, well, maybe one or two, so we watch ourselves very carefully. Thanks for the Single Payer Healthcare Democrats, I just wish we hadn’t destroyed the fucking world so we could make actual use of it. The Hospitals luckily weren’t shut down until after the factories when it became absolutely too dangerous to work in one, the rich tried to argue that they were the job creators and thus deserved waivers to keep their businesses open. Congress took one look at the poor fools caught out in the acid rain and laughed. We finally learned our lesson about letting the rich get away with murder and punishing the poor for the crime of non-possession of money. If only we realized that years ago when Mother Nature put the gun to our heads as opposed to after she fired the bullet. At least we can focus on what jerks we were to each other as our species bleeds out onto the floor.
Well there was no fighting it, I had to start another day in hell. I took some of my estrogen tablets on the mini-fridge next to me, some progesterone for breast development, and spironolactone to block the testosterone created by my testicles. I’d have cut those monstrosities off myself if there wasn’t the chance of me bleeding out and dying. Yes I have a death wish, but I can’t be the cause as that would cast me into eternal damnation. Afterwards I put on a t-shirt of a hummingbird sitting on a log looking up at the full moon, I miss the moon, in addition to some yoga pants and decided to find out what trouble I could get into today. Out the door I went with my hand radio, a phone, and an acid proof umbrella. A lot of the cell phone towers had been severely damaged, only a few of them were able to get repairs and acid proofing. It was possible to get a signal and access the internet if you knew where to look. The radio I kept as it was easier to get radio signal than cell phone signal. It was the only way people really kept up with current events anymore. The internet was the real gold as posts were placed there about where the food and drug trucks were going to be and usually before the radio broadcasts. I was hoping they’d have the American classic this time, a burger with some fries. They normally give out one hot meal, ice cold water or milk, and a bag of canned food for storage. Last time it was salmon, I hate salmon so very very much. Since it’s the Fourth of July I imagine grilled foods will be the hot meal as they do like to keep the festive theme of Holidays.
I began my trek through the wasteland that was my home remember to avoid the acidic puddles from the previous rains, I once saw a guy who hadn’t had fresh water in so long that the dumbass actually burned right through his throat attempting to drink it with his tongue hanging out the hole in his neck as he bled to death, trying to cry for help but couldn’t. I’ll never forget that day as it was the first and only time I’ve ever killed a man. I couldn’t just leave him there suffering and splashing more of the acid water on himself in a panic and making things worse. So I found a huge rock and threw it on his head. I wish I could tell you that I managed to end his existence on this foul Earth the FIRST time I had done. The first blow with a rock resulted only in bleeding and a minor concussion the man definitely must have cursed my name for that one. It took around four times to part him from the mortal coil. I’ve been saving up food rations for a proper machete incase I ever have to kill again. After all, I am a pretty young woman with a house, electricity, and plenty of food. The next time I strike someone dead it may to prevent myself from being raped, robbed, or harmed.
There was a small gathering spot I knew of where every week I met with the few friends of mine I trusted enough to share the location of. It had a large lake with water still safe to drink. The acid rains meant it wasn’t completely safe, but, that didn’t matter. We were all infected with what we had dubbed the plague, no human wasn’t, any of us could drop dead at any second and hundreds did on a daily basis. As long as the food or drink wasn’t completely inedible we filled our belly. Even if we so much as managed to find a bag of overly stale chips from six years ago it could be our last supper. When I said I was a pretty young woman I was speaking relatively. My right arm had two tumors I’d been trying to remove, another reason I wanted a machete, and the left half of my face had been destroyed by a rash. I was even nearly blind in that eye. I wore half of an old deer mask to cover that. Both of my legs from just below the knee were prosthetics as I had to have them amputated back when the hospitals were still around, the only reason they didn’t on the third leg was due to a lack of people with that expertise who still lived. I fear my arm will be next with the tumors I have on it. This gathering spot wasn’t too far off, but it was hidden in a pathway obscured by dead trees and dead animals. Many searching for radio and internet spots tend to try and avoid it from the stench alone. I have never had a good sense of smell, and it’s even worse now given that the rash had basically disintegrated half of my nose. The deer mask I wore was frequently washed as I had been using it as a replacement for my missing skin. Thus only I and those I told could use this pathway. Seeing the corpses never got easier, I think the worst part of it were the dogs and cats who had collars. Somehow seeing a dead pet struck me worse than seeing a dead human being.
I reached the spot and found one of my friends was already here, having set up a blanket with some food and his own radio. Among his food was an old pack of beef jerky I helped myself to. My friend himself was named Isaac and he was a diehard catholic man who had used his faith to light the dark times our species had found itself in. He was next to the lake with a Douay-Rheims Bible right next to him, in his one hand there was a fishing pole, the hook replacing the left hand he lost to the plague was hovering over the reel.
“Hey Isaac, catch anything?” I asked him, making sure to speak quietly as not to spook the fish.
“I just started. My deer.” Isaac responded. It was a joking nickname he had for me based on the ma
sk I wore, it was in no way intended as a flirtation. After all, Isaac had a wife and daughter and ontop of that he saw me as a man not as a woman. We had quite a few differing opinions on what kinds of folk should be allowed to get married and whether prayer or surgery was what sufferers of gender dysphoria required, but we never let that stop us from being friends. Of course it helped that he was tactful about his opinions and called me not by my birth name, and that I made sure only to bring up subjects if I was prepared to deal with the ensuing debate. “So Michelle, what have you been up to?”
“I woke up, then I came here. Glad you brought food, I’ve got nothing that doesn’t have to be prepared. Ironically I can’t cook, like, at all.” I confessed to my friend.
“Something I wish you had mentioned before we put you in charge of cooking the catfish last month.” Isaac chuckled at my expense.
“Yeah, maybe you, the Mrs., and the little one can come by one day and fix some of it for me, I’d let you keep the