Depression is fun

[You just turned on the television to record some funny street videos you used to upload to the internet. But emergency news filled your living room instead of the typical urban scenes. "Multiple cases of a strange mutation that is turning people into violent and uncontrollable creatures are reported"

A loud knock on the front door startled you. "Who is it?" You screamed with a shaky voice, but there was no response, only more hits.

You looked for your phone and dialed your mother's number. "Mom? Mom, are you okay? Please," she answers.

The familiar ringtone of her cell phone reached your ears, coming from the entrance. You turned your head in that direction and shouted, "Mom, is that you?" The knocking on the door intensified, becoming louder and more insistent.

Terrified, you threw the phone on the ground. At that precise moment, you wake up with a start in your bed]

Sitting on her bed, a young woman with tousled hair prepared her small digital camera. She checked the memory card, and the battery level, and cleaned the lens with her shirt.

"Perfect, it's ready to record," she thought.

At the top of her backpack, a portable tripod and an external microphone stood taller than the girl. She left her house and boarded the Metrobus towards the Historic Center of Mexico City. She looked out the window, thinking about what she would say today in front of the camera.

Upon arrival, the sun was beginning to set. Delilah walked through the Plaza de la Constitución looking for a good spot to record. She chose a bench in front of the Cathedral and began setting up her equipment.

"Hello everyone! How are you? I'm Delilah, welcome to a new video for my channel," she said in front of the camera, smiling with her whole body.

She walks through lonely streets, describing the colonial buildings. On his face, the serene attitude changed to one of doubt.

"Wow, there's absolutely no one around here. Not a soul, how strange... well, at least I won't feel intimidated recording, hehe," Delilah joked.

She turned her camera towards a series of screams coming from inside one of the buildings. Delilah ran and pointed her camera toward the slightly open door but she didn't dare to enter. A splash of crimson painted the adjacent wall. "Come in, don't be afraid."

"I think... I think I'd leave better."

And she stopped recording.

She walked until she reached Reforma Avenue, turning on the camera again, she recorded brief scenes in all directions.

"This is madness... people are attacking each other right in the middle of the street."

The avenue that was usually filled with cars was now a scene of total chaos. People running, the sound of breaking glass, cries of pain. Delilah focused her camera on a man who was savagely biting a woman's neck.

"My God, what's happening here..." Delilah murmured, stepping back.

A man without an arm lunged towards her. Delilah let out a scream and started running along with others fleeing in terror. The man was close behind her.

"To the Angel! Run to the Angel of Independence!" shouted a woman.

Delilah ran, dodging abandoned cars and jumping over bodies on the ground. She focused her camera on the Angel of Independence. There was a military contingent there. Further ahead, there was a barricade blocking the way.

She kept running with the crowd, looking for a way to bypass that barricade. The undead kept coming by the hundreds. Suddenly, a bus broke through the barricade, creating a gap for people to squeeze through.

Delilah ran and got on the crowded bus. The soldiers opened fire indiscriminately at the crowd. She recorded with trembling hands as people were shot and fell bleeding.

The bus continued its journey, running over the infected and making its way through the chaos. She crouched in her seat, protecting her head while continuing to record. She couldn't believe this was happening. She had to document it.

The bus abruptly stopped a few blocks ahead. Delilah peered out the window. There was a huge crater in the street blocking their path. They would have to continue on foot.

She got off the bus, still holding the camera in her hand, but one of the soldiers aimed directly at her head.

"No, don't shoot, I'm human!" she screamed in terror, then raised her hands.

The soldier approached, still aiming. The girl stepped back but bumped into something. When she turned around, an infected bit her neck.

She screamed in pain. The camera fell to the ground, focusing on her feet. The soldier's shots were heard, then a dull thud.

The camera lay on the floor, recording the scene. The soldier's feet walked towards Delilah's lifeless body to confirm her death. Blood gushed from her neck, staining the pavement.

Then, the putrefied corpses of the infected began to crawl over the lens. The recording was filled with static and finally cut off.

Delilah prepared to record another of her street videos as usual. 

When she checked the memory card of her camera, she found some video files she didn't remember recording.

Intrigued, she copied the videos to her laptop and pressed play. She watched the chaotic scenes of death someone had recorded in first person.

"What is this? How could I have recorded this if I have no memory of it?" Delilah thought, feeling completely disoriented.

She decided to follow the route shown in the mysterious video, to try to find some clue of what had happened.

When she arrived at the Historic Center, everything looked normal, people walking calmly like any other day.

She kept walking towards the points where attacks and massacres had been registered in the video but found no traces of anything.

She returned to the Historic Center to record her new video as planned. She turned on her camera and started with a big greeting and a positive attitude.

"Hello everyone! Welcome to a new video. Today I want to talk to you about overcoming depression," she said, looking directly at the camera.

She walked through the square explaining that the first step is to recognize that one suffers from this illness and not feel ashamed to seek help. She sat in one of the gardens in front of the Cathedral and set up her camera on the tripod to focus on her.

"For me, admitting that I suffer from depression was the hardest thing. I felt weak and ashamed. But it's a disorder like any other, and little by little I've been learning to live with it," she continued with a deep look.

After several minutes of sharing hopeful advice with her sparse audience, she smiled at the camera and said, "Remember, you are not alone in this struggle. Together we can overcome the darkness."

She turned off the camera and took a deep breath.

After recording her video about depression, she decided to relax a bit and bought an ice cream as she walked around the center. She turned on the camera and recorded some clips of herself enjoying her favorite dessert.

Several helicopters flew over the Plaza de la Constitución. She focused her camera; they were military helicopters evacuating the president and his cabinet.

"Why would they have to evacuate them like this?" she asked aloud, recording the scene.

The Square was crowded with confused and frightened people, looking up at the sky.

Minutes passed, and Delilah continued filming the crowded Square, looking for any clues as to what was happening.

An intense light coming from the north caught everyone's attention. Seconds later, a shockwave swept through the square. Delilah was thrown into the air until she crashed into one of the government buildings, breaking through several concrete walls.

Despite the impact, she still held her camera in her hand. In pain, she sat up enough to focus towards the north. She managed to film a huge mushroom-shaped cloud rising in the distance.

"... it's a nuclear explosion," she whispered.

In her last breath, she dropped the camera to the ground. The lens remained fixed on the sky, where the gigantic nuclear cloud expanded.

Delilah woke up startled in her bed, with no idea of what had happened. For her, it was a new day, and she didn't remember anything from the previous recordings.

She got ready as usual to go out and record another video on the streets. When she checked her camera's memory, she found several video files she didn't recognize having recorded.

Intrigued, she copied them to her laptop and played the first one. To her surprise, they were chaotic scenes of a zombie invasion. The second video showed what seemed to be the explosion of a nuclear bomb.

She recounted a total of 7 chilling videos that she couldn't explain how they had ended up on her camera. All recorded by her in the Historic Center, documenting horrific events of which she had no memory.

"How could I have recorded this without remembering?" She felt increasingly confused and terrified. It seemed like she was reliving traumatic events over and over, trapped in a cycle from which she couldn't escape.

Before leaving, she wondered if her depression was already driving her crazy. Then she saw several razors lying on the floor of her room, which puzzled her even more.

"No, I refuse to believe I'm losing my mind," she said aloud to herself. She turned on her camera and started recording from the moment she left her house heading to the bus stop, this time without introducing herself or saying anything.

During the journey, she continued recording in silence, observing the people around her. Were they real? Could she trust her own senses? She got off the bus in the Historic Center and continued walking among the crowd, feeling like a stranger.

A thief took advantage of her distraction and snatched her camera.

"Hey, give it back!" she shouted, chasing the thief. But she couldn't catch him.

Panting, she stopped and began to cry in frustration. She went to sit on a bench, feeling defeated.

"Don't worry, miss, we'll catch that criminal," the policeman said.

"Hah! I don't trust you," she reproached. Without saying more, she got up and walked away towards the gardens in front of the Cathedral.

Taking a seat on a bench, she wiped away her tears. Now without her camera, she felt even more defenseless.

She took a deep breath and took out her spare camera to start recording another video. She put on her best smile and cheerful attitude in front of the lens.

"Hello friends! The second step to overcoming depression is to communicate it to your loved ones."

"I remember the first time I told my parents. It was when I failed the university entrance exam. I felt like my world had ended," she recounted.

"But it wasn't. The support of my family was crucial. So don't be afraid and talk to your family, they love you and will help you," she continued, maintaining her positive attitude.

After saying goodbye to her audience, she turned off the camera and her expression changed, filled with exhaustion. She lay back on the grass, looking up at the sky.

The moon exploded into a thousand pieces before her eyes. She took her camera and focused on the luminous debris dispersing.

People in the Plaza screamed and pointed at the sky in dismay. Huge fragments of lunar rock began to fall to Earth. One of them crashed into the Monument to the Revolution.

Strange metallic sounds were heard approaching amidst the chaos. She focused her camera, expectantly. Then a creature about 7 meters tall appeared, armed with an energy weapon. Without a word, it began to shoot at the crowd, disintegrating everyone.

She ran in terror trying to find shelter, but noticed that gravity was decreasing. Her feet lifted off the ground at times, floating in the air.

She found refuge inside the Cathedral, gravity still decreasing. Several objects began to rise, as did she, floating in the air.

She kept recording and focused on her face, narrating in front of the camera:

"In the previous videos, my death is seen at the beginning of each end of the world. But I can't find the logical connection. There are also razors in my room. And the strangest thing is that all the recordings have the same date."

"There must be another Delilah, in some parallel timeline who is about to experience this. So I say to you, my other self, don't go to the Historic Center tomorrow. Stay home where you're safe."

At that moment, the playback cut off.

A new Delilah finished watching the 76 videos of herself dying at the beginning of the apocalypse, realizing that each video was about 10 minutes shorter than the previous one, as if the time between each event was shrinking.

"I will get to the bottom of this, no matter what it takes," Delilah said to the camera.

She inspected every corner of her room for clues. Upon entering the bathroom, she saw a reddish liquid on the floor. Fearfully, she opened the shower door and then closed it again, bringing her hands to her mouth.

She had just found her own lifeless body, wrists slashed, floating in a sea of blood. The razors on the floor made sense now.

She fell to her knees, processing the traumatic sight. Her mind couldn't accept it, but everything indicated that she was committing suicide before each apocalyptic event. She needed to stop that, but time was running out.

Summoning courage, she opened the bathroom door. She examined the scene, glancing over her corpse several times. She noticed another small door in the back that she didn't remember seeing before.

She opened it and found stairs descending. She descended the creaking steps and reached a kind of secret basement. At the end, there was another door, which she pushed open.

Inside were 10 people of various nationalities and historical periods. They all looked equally concerned.

Another door materialized on the wall.

One of those present opened it, and on the other side was a beautiful garden where a young woman was having tea at a large table.

"Welcome to Heaven, I've been expecting you," she said, looking at them from the other side. "Please, sit down, we have much to discuss."

Delilah and the others looked stunned at each other. Were they dead? Was this some kind of purgatory? Cautiously, they sat around the table, eager to get answers.