Shadow of Nevermore

by Lilly Black

  I placed his hands on my head so he could control me, and though he was gentle at first, as I began moving my fingers faster inside him, he started to pull my head down harder on his cock. I kept time with my right hand wrapped around it, and I'd never seen him react with such intensity or become so verbal.

  "Oh, God! Oh, fuck! Don't stop! God, Olivia, you're fucking amazing! Don't stop, baby! Fuck. Oh, fuck. I'm going to come. I'm going to...oh, fuck!"

  I needed the warning. I was suddenly downing in him, struggling to swallow it with his cock in my throat as I felt his body writhe and convulse, and he didn't stop talking, continuing to praise me in broken English with a heavy sprinkling of fucks and gods until he finally went limp all over. For a moment, he sat slumped in the chair, totally immobile, so spent and sated until like the killer in a horror film who's never really dead the first time, he suddenly sprung back to life, throwing off the blindfold and leaning forward as he took my face in his hands, kissing me and speaking at the same time.

  "Oh, my fucking God, baby," he breathed. "Oh, my fucking God."

  I giggled as I stripped the glove off, turning it inside out and dropping it on the floor just before he rose and picked me up, tossing me onto the bed on my back.

  "I'm going to make you fucking come until you beg me to stop," he threatened, and those words were not an empty threat. By the time he came again, I was so high, I barely remembered my own name.

  Day 60

  "What the fuck is this?" June demanded as she came flying into Olivia's office with an empty pill box. She slammed it down flat on the desk in front of her.

  "Apparently, it's a box that once contained Misoprostol," Olivia said calmly. She knew what June was getting at, and she was in no mood.

  "And do you know what Misoprostol does?"

  "Yes, June. I do."

  "And you're okay with this?"

  "I am," she replied.

  "Murderer!" June roared, and Olivia sighed, pinching the skin between her eyebrows. Perhaps she should have expected this, but since they were in the apocalypse with only the most rudimentary of medical care, she had hoped June would see the wisdom in it.

  "Fine. I take full cosmic responsibility. Are we done here?"

  "No, we're not done! If you're going to allow this, you can find another nurse. I will not work in a medical facility that kills babies!"

  "Okay. I'll find you another job. Would you prefer scavenging missions among the dead or shoveling horse shit in the barn?" Olivia asked with a smirk.

  "I'd prefer to continue as a nurse in a place where we value life!" she shouted.

  "Done. You are now officially in the same fucking job you were in thirty seconds ago because that is exactly why you found empty boxes of Misoprostol," Olivia said, her voice raising as she stood. "The women who came here pregnant from prison are in no physical condition to give birth and no mental condition to give birth to the babies of their rapists! Then there's Serena. That girl is twelve-years-old! Giving birth to a full term baby under our current circumstances would be a death sentence for her! How is her life less important than a mass of cells in her uterus that can't even breath outside of her body?" Olivia glared at her disapprovingly, and June's face reflected the same.

  "That is for God to decide, Olivia, not you!"

  "So, you're saying I'm more powerful than God?" Olivia asked, and when June rolled her eyes incredulously, Olivia explained herself. "You said that by allowing Serena to take the abortion pills, I'm taking the decision away from God. How do you know that God didn't allow medical science to develop these pills in order to save Serena from a death her father chose for her when he impregnated his twelve-year-old daughter in the apocalypse? Did you ever think of that? Continuing the pregnancy is likely to kill Serena, so you're placing the value of the mere potential for life over a living, breathing child."

  "The baby's life is not more valuable, just equal, and if Serena doesn't survive the birth, then that was God's will."

  "So, if I pull out a gun right now and shoot you because I simply cannot tolerate another conversation about how you think your interpretation of the mind of the supreme creator of the universe is superior to mine, is that God's will as well? No, it isn't. It's my free will, and if I die and it turns out that the decisions I made with my free will were wrong, I'll be the one punished for it, not you!"

  "But I am part of this community, and if we condone abortion, it's the same as condoning abortion myself!"

  "No, it's the same as doing nothing. It's the same as minding your own business. You can't go to hell for minding your own business, June," Olivia spat.

  "How do you know that? Suddenly, you're the authority of the mind of God?"

  "No. I don't have a clue, but I know what my gut tells me is right and wrong, and it's wrong to sentence a little girl to risk dying to bring a baby created of rape and incest into the world. Nobody wants to be the product of rape. I can assure you that."

  "And now you're an authority on what a person who won't even exist would have felt?"

  "I know someone who would not exist if his mother hadn't been raped, and he struggles with that knowledge every day of his life," Olivia said.

  "Well, at least his mother did the right thing."

  "Who are you to say it's the right thing, June? The Bible says one thing about abortion. One! And it's a recipe for a potion to cause a miscarriage in a woman suspected of cheating on her husband, which I assume you know nothing about because that verse doesn't support your cause, but you know what the Bible does say that we can both agree on? Judge not...yet here you are."

  "I'm not judging you. I'm trying to save you," June said, and feeling desperate, she pulled out the ace in the hole that her parents always used so successfully against her. "You'll go to hell for this, Olivia."

  "Fair enough," she said flatly.

  "Did you hear what I said?" June asked, showing genuine concern.

  "Yes, June, and it's all I ever wanted - the freedom to go to hell in a hand basket of my own choosing," Olivia said, and for a long moment, June stared at her in disbelief before turning on her heels and leaving as Olivia opened the drawer where she kept the ibuprofen.

  June spent the entire day pissed off. She returned to the infirmary, where she tried to discuss it with Amina, but she grew even angrier when Amina said she would happily take over any duties June had that she was religiously opposed to until she could be replaced because if she was incapable of doing all of her job, it wasn't the right job for her. Besides, now that the survivors from the prison had joined them, they would have a physician's assistant and two actual doctors.

  By the time June got home that evening, she felt like the whole world was against her, and it didn't get any better at dinner time when she sat down with her sons and Ravi and told them about her day.

  "Perhaps Amina is right," Ravi said. "If you are having difficulties with the position, you'd be happier someplace else. You're the best cook in the whole community. Perhaps you should be our head chef...as long as you don't make baklava." He added the last part hoping to lighten the mood, but she was not amused.

  "It's not about that, Ravi. It's about the babies they murdered. I found six empty boxes of abortion pills! They gave them to a twelve-year-old little girl who isn't even old enough to make a choice like that! Does that not bother you?"

  "Of course, it does. That means there were six women who came from that prison who had to make one of the most difficult decisions of their lives, but it's their decision to make."

  "Really? I thought a Muslim would understand," she grumbled, and Ravi looked down and sighed.

  "Why? Because all Muslims hate women and want them to suffer in childbirth because some long-dead allegorical woman ate an apple? My religion doesn't matter. Your religion doesn't matter. It isn't our decision," he said, then he turned toward her and took her hands in his. "Look, June, you're a kind person with a good heart. You care about people and want what's best for them, but you can't expect the lea
ders to make rules based solely on your religious views because others may not share them. What if somehow you had ended up in a community where the majority of the survivors were a different religion? What about me? Is it fair to make me follow your religious rules when clearly that is not what I believe?"

  "I understand that, but this isn't religion. This is killing babies."

  "We're talking about a stage of development when they don't even have the appropriate nerve receptors to be aware of what's happening. So, your feelings are based on your religion or personal opinion, not science. It is not fair to force anyone to risk death based on that alone. Surely after spending so much time with someone of a different faith, you can see that."

  "Ravi, I've had four children. I've felt them growing inside me. I've felt them move. They're alive," she said, pleading with him to understand even though she hated him in that moment. She believed that the religion he practiced was more rigid than her own, yet he was able to reconcile the issue while she was not. It frustrated her. She had been hoping for someone who had her back, but instead, he was the voice of reason. Then Noah spoke up.

  "Mr. Chatterjee is right," he said. "We have to let people make decisions based on their own beliefs, not yours or mine."

  "Oh, so if there's someone out there who believes that rape and murder aren't wrong, we should just let them rape and murder people because we have to respect their beliefs?" she demanded.

  "I have every right to believe whatever I choose, but when my beliefs start to affect your life, that's where my right ends, so no, Mom. That's not a good argument."

  "What about that unborn baby's rights?"

  "The only baby in the case of that twelve-year-old was the girl herself. Does her life have no value because there is a fertilized egg in her womb?" Ravi asked.

  "And she's old enough to make that choice, Mom. If I was in her shoes, it's what I would choose. I'm not ready to die," Noah said.

  "Noah!" June snapped, her expression defeated. She couldn't believe her own son would think that way.

  "I'm sorry, Mom. It's true."

  "I don't know what you're so upset about," Isaiah blurted out. "We don't have enough women to go around anyway, so if six of them had abortions, then there's six more that will be useful soon."

  "What are you saying?" Ravi asked.

  "I'm saying this place is a sausage fest, so it's better if these new chicks aren't knocked up with other men's babies. Now, maybe they can find a man to take care of them."

  "They don't need a man to take care of them. They have the community," Ravi said. "And I suspect it will be a long time before any of the women from the prison are interested in becoming intimate with any man."

  "If they're not going to contribute to the sex shortage, what good are they?" Isaiah asked, and everyone at the table was stunned.

  "Please take your dinner to your room, little ones," June said to Jeremiah and Elijah, and they hurriedly picked up their plates and left, giggling because they knew their older brother was going to get it once they were gone. Then June turned to Ravi. "Give me your belt."

  "June, please let me speak with you before you act," he said, and though she was furious that her ten-year-old son was looking at women this way, she allowed Ravi to take her into the bedroom to discuss it. He tried to convince her that a spanking was not going to solve the issue and might only strengthen his budding misogyny since his only authority figure was a woman, but even though his argument was beginning to work, Isaiah did not get out of his beating. From the other room, they suddenly heard the sound of a fight and came out to find that Noah had taught his brother a lesson with both fists. As their mother approached, the boys stood up, their hands at their sides as blood dripped from Isaiah's nose onto the linoleum.

  "I realize I shouldn't have resorted to physical violence," Noah said. "I'm sorry, and I will accept whatever punishment you see fit."

  June nodded.

  "And what about you?" she asked her other son.

  "What about me?"

  "Do you realize what you've done wrong?"

  "Yes, ma'am," he lied.

  "I want both of you to go to your rooms and stay there until breakfast thinking about your attitudes," June said, and as Noah and Isaiah disappeared down the hall, June slumped down on the couch.

  "What am I going to do with those boys?" she asked Ravi. "One's becoming a communist, and the other...I don't know what he's turning into."

  "They're just growing up and exploring how they feel about the world," Ravi said. "I wouldn't worry too much about Noah at all, and Isaiah's only ten. He's probably overheard some things he shouldn't have, but with a good mother like you, he'll come around."

  "I hope you're right," she said, and he was right when it came to Noah. Noah had chosen Alek as his father figure, and even though June couldn't see it yet, his views were changing for the better as he stopped judging other people and began to take responsibility for his own actions. Isaiah was a different story. His views hadn't just come from overhearing some of the men talking. He'd been spending a lot of time with Gary, and though no one else in the community knew it yet, Gary was a self-proclaimed incel whose desired vengeance against women for not sleeping with him was only eclipsed by his desperate need for love and acceptance. And Isaiah had been hanging on his every, hateful word.

  Day 61

  Ravi led a scavenging mission early in the morning, and Jax decided to tag along at the last minute since Dani had a special request. As they drove, Ravi asked around, trying to see if anyone knew where Isaiah might have come across his newly developed chauvinistic views, and while no one could think of anyone at the Deadfall who fit the description, Jax suggested that it had probably come from his own father.

  "According to Dani, the guy was a misogynistic prick," he said. "Now, that he's gone, the kid may be putting him on a pedestal. If you're patient and just don't push him too hard, it'll probably pass."

  "Here's hoping," Ravi sighed.

  The scavenging party gathered everything they came for, and before returning to the Deadfall, they stopped at a fabric store for Dani. It was free of the dead and full of options, and in addition to filling her request, they decided to send a truck back later to take everything in the store. Meanwhile, Jax brought back Dani's bolts and thread along with red, silver, and midnight blue fabric and tassels that could be used to create banners with the Bloody Queen symbol Penny had created, hoping John's wife was skilled enough to make them to hang over the walls at the entrances. Lastly, he spray painted the sigil on the door of the store along with a warning to keep out in order to scare off anyone who might have designs on the loot they had to leave behind.

  When they returned, Dani was not-surprisingly waiting on the porch of the lodge because she had been with Jax the entire trip, watching over him like she always did these days. She was the air he breathed as well as the wind that had blown several purple silk fabrics she liked into his peripheral vision so he would come home with the right ones.

  "They're perfect!" she chirped, giving him a warm hug. "I love you."

  Excited to get started, she hurried up the hill carrying the bolts under her arm, but before she made it home, she ran into Frisco.

  "Whatcha got there?" she asked.

  "Just fabric," Dani said. "I'm making a dress."

  "Awful fancy fabric."

  "It's silk."

  "Silk, huh?" Frisco snorted. "So, what are you going to do with silk in the apocalypse? That pretty, pale queen got you making her clothes now? Yessa, missa queen. I sews it up real good for ya!"

  "What's your problem?" Dani demanded, her eyes narrowed as she noticed that despite what Frisco was saying, she was taking full advantage of the luxuries provided at the Deadfall. Her clothes were clean, and the side of her head was freshly shaved. "Olivia's been nothing but good to you."

  "Never said she wasn't. That still doesn't change the fact that the only other sister in this place is as white washed as the picket fence on the life she'
s trying to pretend she leads."

  "Look, I don't know what you're getting at, but if you're trying to start some racial bullshit, I'm not interested. There are three kinds of people in this world now. Good people, bad people, and dead people, and if you don't fall into the first category, we're going make sure you fall into the last. It doesn't matter how much pigment you have in your skin."

  "Nah, I feel ya," Frisco said. "You misunderstand me. I'm just saying that you are a beautiful African queen, but you're hiding behind a façade from your white hair to your white name. If you don't care how much pigment is in your skin, why you so white?"

  "Go fuck yourself, Frisco. I don't need this from you or anyone else," Dani scowled as she turned away and continued up the hill, muttering to herself under her breath. Frisco was out of line. She knew nothing about Dani and had absolutely no right to attack her like that, but there was something to what she was saying, something she couldn't possibly have known. Dani's entire life had been whitewashed from the moment her mother died.

  As she unfurled the purple silk on her bed to start cutting it into the pattern inside her head, she tried to push her encounter with Frisco out of her mind, but it continued to resurface, bringing with it flashes of a past that she had repressed for years. She recalled her aunt spending hours putting chemicals on her hair to make it as straight and shiny as possible. She recalled her uncle making her sit in the corner saying the word ask over and over again each time he heard her mispronounce it. Then she recalled the day they had changed her name, finding herself suddenly lost in a vivid memory she didn't even realize she had as Jax entered the bedroom, having distributed the rest of the goods they had scavenged.

  "Adanya!" Dani cried. "My name is Adanya!"

  It was the name her mother had given her, and it was a name that made her proud, a Nigerian name meaning "her father's daughter." Her mother chose it because her father had been killed by a stray bullet before Dani was born, and five years later after her mother died from appendicitis, her mother's older sister and her husband had taken Dani in. They had worked hard to get themselves out of the projects where Dani had lived with her mother, and in the suburbs, her aunt had eradicated every trace of her impoverished beginnings. As such, Adanya was not the name of a child they wanted to raise. When they legally adopted her, they changed her name to Danielle, choosing it because it also worked with her nickname, but even at five, Dani had fought hard for her history.