1 The Calm

"Ahhhhh" I call out waking myself up out of sleep. I gasp for air remembering the dream, except ot isn't a dream. It really happened. Two years ago everything I knew, everything the world knew changed. The governments banded together to change the modern world. They really just wanted to decrease the population and get rid of the weak and released a disease. Instead there were those who were affected in the opposite way and it caused the person to have amazing health and long time youth. The problem was that it caused a need for energy from other human beings. Their touch could now take the energy of a person and feed off of it leaving them either in a horrible state or dead. There were some who kept a certain few and would take small enough amounts to keep them alive and continue to use them but not many wanted to go through the trouble. Apparently the feeling of extracting someone else's energy was like a drug and could basically make them feel high. Quite a few of the rich and powerful were able to take a drug that made them have this same effect but it was so expensive at two million dollars a treatment. Hundreds of thousands died, many more just fell ill for a while and recovered, and then the elite appeared. They made up a small fraction of those infected. My father was taken by the disease and my mother took everything we had trying to get herself the treatment when she became ill. My little sister and I have not seen her for over a month and have been left on our own.

I come back to my senses, feeling the tears as I remember it all wash down my cheeks. "Aiya..." I hear the soft whisper from my little sister and look over to see her standing in the doorway. Her long blonde curls are going everywhere. Her once bright and innocent green eyes are dull instead of shining and her small frame looks so much more tiny from lack of food. She wants to sleep next to me. "Madeline come here it's alright." She crawls into the bed and cuddles against my back. We are only three years apart but I have tried so hard to shelter her from what has been happening the last few months. Mom didn't know about my savings I had for college. I started it when I was fourteen. Now at nineteen I had enough to keep us long enough to figure things out. Jobs were hard to come by now. I knew with my dark brown hair, pale skin, and blue eyes and frame of my body I could be a donor but after once or twice your risk for the disease doubled. The money could sustain us for a year but if I were to get too sick or die I wouldn't be able to support Maddy. At sixteen she was old enough to donate herself but I wanted to keep her away from it as long as possible, myself as well. Madeline's breathing is calm and steady as she sleeps. Slowely I drift off just happy to hear the sound. If only I knew what the day had in store for me.