The sun has just set when the prickling awakens me. In between one day and the next, I can’t suppress a shiver as the prickling in my fingertips swiftly makes its way up my arms and engulfs me. All thought is lost as the feeling takes over. I can’t make myself move but I also can’t make myself stop moving. The prickling in my limbs can’t compare to the tickling in my brain. The little mites taunt me with their light, skittering touches because they know that I can’t reach them no matter how much I scratch. I cry out in desperation for sleep to come again and relieve me from the misery of consciousness. In between one day and the next, the memories come back to me and demons hide in plain sight. I hate being in between.

A thought sneaks in and I feel Livi’s breath on my neck as she giggles, “Quit worrying so much.” I want to shake my head because I know she isn’t really there, she hasn’t been for three years. Indulging the illusion that I didn’t destroy the only light my life had only results in more pain. But even in my state, I know that shaking my head would be futile. Gathering my energy, I take a deep breath in of the stale air and raise myself to my feet with a slight cough that nearly knocks me back down. I can’t tell if the pungent smell is coming from me or the filthy room and the cramp that was residing in my stomach now represented itself as bile in my mouth, but there are more pertinent things in which to focus my attention. I’m stuck in between giving the memories permission to consume me and reaching out for the cure. I’m in between fixes.

I creep my way around unfamiliar room and obstacles in search of an exit. There is a muffled oomph as I trip over a body that I didn’t see and a sharp slap as my hands hit the floor to catch myself. I take the opportunity of solid ground under my hands and knees to stop the swaying and recenter myself. I don’t want to be here when the inhabitants of this grimy hellhole wake up, so I heave back up and reach for the door that looks as though it leads outside. Skidding down the patio steps, the summer night air caresses me but can not prevent the shivers that had commandeered my body and leave me quaking whenever they see fit.

I can’t handle in between. I’ll go get a smaller fix and just wean myself. I can go from user to non user in an instant instead of fighting the withdrawal symptoms in between. That will fix me, fix the mess that I made, fix what I have left. Change the voice in my memories from taunting to encouraging. The street lamps are far and few between but I don’t need them; I let the dark envelope me as I move on autopilot to my fix, my savior from in between.

I finally have my hands on the small baggie and a new limp to go along with it. Livi is whispering in my ear again, she is trying to comfort but her presence just makes my muscles more spaztic. I’m finally ready and as I stick the needle in she sighs, “That’s it, dear. You don’t have to worry anymore.” I drop the needle and reach out for her as she plops herself in my lap. “Let’s go on an adventure. We can leave the whole mess behind and never come back,” she implores. I’m nodding, one because it’s impossible for me to say no to her, to let go of her warmth, and two because she’s right. If anything, my family would be relieved if I left. I had already worn out the extent of their compassion by being imperfect so I don’t know why I expected them to be any different when I really needed them. Livi is my real family. She was there in the hospital, she was there when I dropped the charges, there through the panic attacks, and she was there when I found my cure.

The mites, shivers, and cramps disappear as my cure takes effect. Livi vanishes from my lap but I still feel her presence as I get up to leave the alley. We make plans for our grand adventure as the ground moves beneath me and I stumble with a giggle. I’ve always had to move quickly to keep up with her, but I know she won’t leave me behind for good. Borrowing strength from the wall, I curse my cigarette as it refuses to light. Turning it around so the filter is in my mouth, I flick my lighter again and see Livi staring back at me in the flame. She lights the cigarette and my inhale is like the sweetest kiss.

I don’t remember how I got onto my back, but the ground welcomes me with a hug and the stars are laughing with me. As I’m laying there, I realize that we are all in between. Living is in between your life and death, and Earth is in between whatever hell waits for us below or heaven above. I hate being in between and I can’t help but think back to the small pill bottle that I have on the floor next to my mattress. They can be my permanent cure. I can see Livi, in the stars, laughing with me, “Don’t worry,” I tell her, “I won’t be in between much longer.”

Earth, 2119. It’s the 100th anniversary of my death. It was a simple fall; something that I had been doing all my life and that my friends and family had always joked would be my demise. The face value of my death was so insignificant that you wouldn’t have read about it in the history books or heard about it on the news. When they said, “she died far too young,” and “her death is an unnecessary tragedy,” at my funeral they didn’t know how wrong they were. I actually died at the right time, in the right place for the right events to line up that prevented the pandemic that couldn’t be named. We were saved- at least for a little while.

--

If I hadn’t been there that day at that time, a mid-career biochemical engineer would have made it to the conference that they were scheduled to attend. The engineer would have been inspired by the ideas presented at the conference that would change the path of his career. The engineer would have made unprecedented advances in pharmaceuticals that were meant to ease the burden of lifetime ailments. The promise of such advancements would have caused unquellable excitement for those producing the drugs. The excitement would lead to an oversight in disposal safety. The disposal of the byproducts of these drugs would mutate to become the most dynamic and deadly disease that mankind had ever seen. It would move swiftly through the population and no one would be safe from it. The virus would mutate so fast that the defenses produced wouldn’t stand a chance. The time from the day that the virus developed to the day that humankind would end would have been 25 days; it moved so swiftly though the population that it was impossible to establish a name. In the following years, cities would have been overrun with weeds and wildlife. Earth would flourish and by year 2119 it would have almost been as though humans were never here.

--

On the day of my death, a young child flipped a coin into the fountain of a hotel. A biotechnologist that was scheduled to speak at a conference saw the child flip the coin into the fountain and was compelled to intervene. The biotechnologist fished the coin out of the fountain while explaining to the child that it was wasteful and that wishing upon things was not a scientifically sound process of making things happen. Water that was on the biotechnologists hand dripped onto the floor as the child looked at the coin in dismay. As the biochemical engineer was on their way to the biotechnologists conference, they witnessed a person slipping in a small puddle of water and falling to hit their head on the corner of the fountain’s ledge. The trajectory of the fall was at such an angle that the hit caused death almost instantly. The biochemical engineer missed the conference out of an obligation to speak to police about the incident that they witnessed. The inspiration did not occur, their career remain constant, the drugs were not created, there was no byproduct to evolve into the most dangerous disease man ever knew. Humanity was safe- or at least it was supposed to be.

--

Instead of humans being wiped from Earth, they continued on as they always had. There were too many people using too many resources causing too much strain on Earth. Over the following 100 years, famine, illness, and man to man brutality extinguished most of humanity. There are a few left sporadically around Earth- those who had prepared for this type of thing and have done everything that they could to fight for their little slice of Earth. They won’t last much longer, no one will.

Earth 2119. It’s the 100th anniversary of my death.