EMPTY EARTH

  Empty Earth

  Jacqueline Druga

  Copyright © Jacqueline Druga 2022

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission from the publisher.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No affiliation is implied or intended to any organisation or recognisable body mentioned within.

  Published by Vulpine Press in the United Kingdom in 2022

  Cover by Claire Wood

  ISBN: 978-1-83919-207-4

  www.vulpine-press.com

  Thank you all to those on my Patreon that walked the Empty Earth with me.

  ONE

  NOT DEAD

  Sometimes death is better.

  It isn’t always the easy choice, but often it’s the only choice. The only choice we think we have.

  I wanted the pain to stop. Not a physical pain, although it had manifested into that as well. A part of me didn’t even want to die, but I felt it was what I needed to do. I really couldn’t live with it any longer.

  Was it the quiet that stirred me, the smell, or just the fact that I had been out of it?

  What was that smell?

  But I woke up.

  Alive.

  I wasn’t supposed to. That wasn’t the plan. My eyes were heavy, hard to open. I had to blink several times to see; they were dry, as if they’d been open the entire time.

  Was I alive?

  I truly felt dead.

  My body was in a weird position on that couch. Legs twisted, one on the floor, the other tucked under my backside My chest was flush against the cushions, one arm dangled downward, the other bent awkwardly behind me. Cheek pressed against the rough fibers of the fabric, top of my head smashed into the arm of the couch, I tried to move.

  My back and head hurt, and my mouth was so dry, when I tried to move my tongue, it felt like there was something lodged against it, bits and pieces of something, then I realized…there was.

  I spat something out as I tried to lift my head, my cheek was glued to the couch with my own dried vomit.

  That was what was in my mouth. Dried vomit.

  I’d regurgitated in my passed-out state. Had I been on my back, I probably would have died.

  Then again, that was what I was aiming for.

  It was gross and disgusting. I scraped off the vomit from my cheek and as I sat up fully I knew that wasn’t the only bodily substance that had been released from my body.

  Yeah, that smell was me. I was the reason for it.

  I was a mess.

  I cringed because I failed.

  The prescription pill bottle was on the table next to the pint of vodka.

  I wasn’t supposed to die. I was meant to face my consequences.

  There would be no pity for me, not even in my state.

  I didn’t deserve pity.

  My phone rested on the table.

  The sleep screen was on.

  I thought back to when I took those pills. I thought it was enough, certainly washing it down with vodka should have done the trick.

  But it didn’t.

  I wasn’t trying to take the easy way out, I just wanted out.

  I reached for my phone; I was alive, and I needed to at least right a wrong. I had to let Louis know I was okay. After all, he was the one and only person I texted.

  I put in my passcode and opened my phone. I saw I had nine missed calls from Louis. All in a row and all after my ominous text. I remembered a couple of those calls coming. Wanting badly to answer, but not wanting him to talk me out of it. It was too late anyhow, when I sent him the text, I had already swallowed the pills.

  It was a matter of waiting.

  I opened my messages. His text message thread was first.

  Louis: my soon to be ex-husband.

  When I opened the message thread I stared at the last text I sent him.

  Five words.

  I just can’t. I’m sorry.

  That was it.

  His reply as just as short, ‘Viv, WTF’

  And that was before he started to call me.

  I thought about what I wanted to text him now. Maybe something like, ‘I was an asshole, hope you aren’t upset.’

  What I wanted to write was that I was sorry, and I needed help. But I knew that would be taken as me making some sort of excuse. I was certain his girlfriend was probably telling him I was just vying for attention.

  I wasn’t.

  I just wanted someone to know I was done, and I was sorry.

  He was all I had.

  The only person on the earth that cared enough even though we had split up.

  In the middle of texting him I saw it. The message date-stamp right by my last message to him.

  Sunday, April 4. 10:04 pm

  It didn’t say ‘yesterday’ which it should have, considering in my mind it was no more than twelve hours since I sent the last text.

  I closed the messaging window and looked at the home page of my phone.

  The left corner of my phone displayed 7:32 AM. Then my eyes shifted downward to the calendar icon.

  Tuesday, April 6.

  What?

  Not only had I been out of it for nearly thirty-six hours. It was D Day. The day I didn’t want to face, the day I wanted to die before I faced.

  Death had eluded me; I had to face the music.

  There were two and a half hours remaining for me to clean up and get downtown for my hearing.

  I stood from the sofa, everything stiff, from my legs to the clothes I wore. There wasn’t much time to clean up, I wasn’t even sure I’d be coming back. It could be the last time I’d see my house.

  Coffee was all out, I had to get myself together and meet my lawyer at nine. I would stop at the convenience store for one.

  In the bathroom, I guzzled water from the tap before brushing my teeth. I still felt dizzy, I knew it wasn’t from the pills. There was no way they were still in my system. I charged my phone while I was in the shower. Not that it would make that much of a difference, but it would give me enough power until after my hearing.

  Seeing how I was such a hot mess, I did my best to look decent.

  Washing the crud from my body took longer than I expected.

  I never imagined that on the last day that I might see my house for a while, I would be racing out.

  Yet there I was, a quarter after eight, grabbing my purse and keys as I rushed to the door.

  Reaching for the handle, I froze. My hand shook out of control, and fear took over my entire body.

  This was it.

  How long would I be gone?

  My reckoning.

  It took nearly a year to get to the point I was at. A year of torture, trying to forget, unable to get it out of my mind.

  It would never leave my mind. No matter how much I tried or paid, the punishment was forever living with it.

  Perhaps that was why I so badly wanted to die.

  TWO

  RECKONING

  When it happened, I was in such a horrible space, I blamed everyone. Louis, the traffic light, a blind spot.

  It was crazy how your mind goes into self-defense, looking for reasons that could explain what happened. That would justify why my mind screamed out, ‘No, not me, this isn’t me.’

  But it was me.

  Louis hadn’t come home again. The third night in a row, he stumbled into the house in the early morning and passed out on the couch. He kept saying he was done, it was time to move on. But how do you just do that after twenty years together?

  Just…move on.

  In hindsight it was a lot longer than those three days, but in my mind at the time, it was all new, all fresh.

  That morning, before I left for work, I lifted his hand and used his finger to open his phone. He didn’t even know. He was out. I knew snooping wasn’t good and I undoubtedly would see something I didn’t want to. Sure enough, pictures of him and Renee all through his phone. Text messages of love and other things.

  I didn’t know her name at the time, or who she was. Just that she looked as if she were barely old enough to drink.

  I tried waking him to argue, but he didn’t care. He was nonchalant, almost relieved that I knew.

  I stormed out of the house, in some dramatic fashion: crying, screaming, acting like an idiot.

  “How could you do this to me? Why would he do this to me? Why? Why?”

  I wasn’t even halfway down our street when I picked up the phone and called him. Three rings and it went to voicemail.

  I turned left onto Murken Avenue and dialed again.

  Not even a ring.,

  “Are you kidding me!” I shouted. The anger, the hurt. How could he not even want to talk to me?

  Six more times over the six blocks on Murken, I unsuccessfully tried to call. Then I commanded my phone, “Send a message to Louis.”

  I rambled and ranted, forgetting punctuation.

  Send.

  Then the moment came.

  I replayed it, you know, over and over. Wanting badly to have something different happen. A different outcome.

  No amount of replaying it would c

hange it.

  I was driving on West Lincoln Avenue. The main drag in our little borough. Four lanes during rush hour. Two lanes with street parking when it wasn’t. A hot spot at night for young college kids to hang out. Lots of bars and restaurants all down the road.

  The stoplights were every block and if I paced it right, I never had to stop. I caught every green light.

  I had driven that road to work for eight years. The speed limit was twenty-five, it was rush hour and I was going thirty.

  Thirty wasn’t fast, right?

  Bleep.

  My phone alert went off.

  It rested on top of my purse, and I shifted my eyes to see it was from Louis.

  I didn’t know what the message said; I swiped my finger to read his two words.

  ‘Just stop’

  How fitting. How ironic. What if I would have taken those words verbatim at that second? I freaked out when I saw it and started texting my reply. I had my eyes away for a split second … a split second.

  That was enough.

  When I looked up, I saw her.

  She was right there at the hood of my car; I swore her eyes connected with mine and she knew. She knew before I did.

  I wasn’t even fast enough to hit the brakes at that second. Not that it would have mattered. I did more than strike her, I plowed through her. She flipped up cracking the windshield and rolled over the top of my car. I could hear the thump of her body as it careened across the roof.

  My foot didn’t even slam down on the brake until she was over my car. By that point I was thirty feet away and she was a body in my rearview mirror lying limp on the road.

  My immediate reaction was panic. It didn’t happen, it couldn’t have. Begging in my mind that it wasn’t real, I peered in the mirror again. A crowd had gathered around her.

  I lifted my phone and called 911.

  “What is your emergency?” the operator asked.

  “I just killed someone.”

  That moment, that precise moment was the most honest I was for a long time. I kept trying to deny it. Make excuses.

  I was so blind by my own selfishness and rage. Blinded by what happened and how it was going to affect my life, I never thought about what my reckless actions took from others.

  Stephanie Miller was her name, she was nineteen years old.

  A full life ahead of her and I stole it because I couldn’t keep away from my phone.

  I robbed her mother of a child.

  I felt guilty at first, then camera footage showed that the light wasn’t working. Stephanie had the crossing signal at the same time that I had the green light.

  I didn’t run a red light, she didn’t cross against the light.

  I had an out and I was taking it. But then the guilt came back when I saw her mother in the courtroom, a look of agony on her face that would never go away.

  Enough was enough.

  The truth was, I was at fault. Had I been going the speed limit, not looking at my phone, I would have seen her.

  The moment I admitted to texting and driving, it was like a lynch mob. Every person that knew Stephanie stood before the judge and talked about how my selfish, reckless behavior caused them grief and they’d never be the same.

  I got it.

  I felt it.

  Every single day I saw her face, I heard that sound when the car hit her. It played in my mind constantly, waking me from dreams.

  My sentencing hearing was about to take place and my judgement was at hand.

  No amount of jail time or punishment was enough.

  Guilt over what I had done consumed me.

  Yet, I stood at my front door terrified to leave.

  Finally, I did.

  My insides trembled and my heart raced out of control. It would be over soon.

  I turned onto Murken and that was when I knew something was wrong. It was rush hour and the streets were empty.

  At first, I thought my phone had been wonky and maybe it was wrong. Where were all the cars, the steady stream of traffic?

  It was a six block drive from Murken to West Lincoln and in addition to the lack of traffic, the stop lights were flashing. Still on automatic.

  Thinking that maybe I was wrong, that the pills had caused some sort of residual delusion, I pulled over right before the turn on West Lincoln.

  Since the accident, I kept my phone and purse in the backseat.

  My plan was to check my phone for the date, then call my attorney and tell him I was on my way. I put the car in park then reached back for my purse. When I did, my fingers grazed the strap and I knocked my purse to the floor.

  Shaking my head in disbelief, I opened my door and stepped out.

  I took a second to look around because it felt weird. No sounds, no cars. It was so strange. A part of me felt I was dreaming or maybe I had died and I was living in some sort of strange hell or purgatory.

  Reaching for my back door, I paused to close my driver’s door, just in case a car came, and that was when I saw him.

  A man laying face-down in the beginning of the crosswalk at the intersection of Murken and West Lincoln.

  It looked as if he just dropped over.

  Hurriedly, I opened the back door, grabbed from my phone and raced his way.

  He just lay there, a take-out container with spilled food was by his head.

  “Hey!” I cried out to him and immediately called 911.

  It rang and rang.

  No answer.

  “Are you kidding me?” I ended the call and dialed again. It was ringing when I arrived at the man’s side. It was then I noticed that the spilled food looked old and smelled bad.

  Phone to my ear listening to the endless ringing, I crouched down and reached to him and that’s when I realized the smell wasn’t the food, it was him.

  His body was hard, and what I could see of his face was purple and splotched.

  “Help!” I screamed out and stood. “Someone?!”

  The line rang.

  Racing out, I believed my answer was West Lincoln. It was a main drag, it was rush hour, someone had to be around.

  Ringing. Ringing.

  I wanted to throw my phone.

  Why wasn’t anyone answering?

  It took only stepping onto West Lincoln and I knew something bigger had happened. It went beyond the man on the street.

  The man wasn’t the only one.

  Several bodies were strewn across the road, some on the sidewalk. A car had driven straight into the front window of Bethe’s Bar and Grill; under the rear wheels were two more bodies.

  Another car had struck a telephone pole and beyond that it looked like a chain reaction smash-up.

  There were no sounds.

  Dead silence.

  Dead everywhere.

  It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. I stood on that street in a complete state of shock.

  “Please dear God, let me be dreaming. Please let this be a dream.” I muttered to myself.

  I knew it wasn’t.

  THREE

  BACKTRACK

  It had to be me. What I witnessed, what happened around me could not be real. It had to be a product of my imagination.

  I was either still sleeping or having a hallucination. It was also completely possible that I mentally snapped.

  My life had been a roller coaster for ten months. The last few, after admitting my guilt, I faced not only Stephanie’s family but myself with the truth, and it wasn’t freeing, it was internally damning.

  But I deserved it.

  We lived in a small borough outside the city, and everyone knew nearly everyone.

  I couldn’t go to the store without someone staring, watching me.

  I started going to the next town for something as simple as gas.

  I couldn’t, nor did I want to, show my face.

  Friday had been the victims’ statements. It was all day; I couldn’t believe how many people made statements. From teachers, employers, to friends and family. The only family members that didn’t make an impact statement were Stephanie’s grandparents.

  Stephanie’s father made sure he mentioned them. How the grandfather would die of a broken heart because Stephanie was his lifeline.

  Every statement, short or long, was like getting struck with a baseball bat to my chest.

  My lawyer wrapped it up by reiterating I was a good person that made a mistake. He told the court how I had lost my job of ten years, my friends, and even my husband.

 

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