Husband Found Out About My 2-Year Affair

DOLLY AND THE DAY THAT NEVER WAS

Written in response to: “Center your story around a character who can’t tell the difference between their dreams and reality.“

Victoria Crenshaw

Dolly Jameson had always been a woman of routine.

Fifty-two years old, single, with one faithful cat named ZoZo and a job she didn’t exactly love but did very well. Every morning, without fail, her alarm clock rang at exactly 6:15 a.m. She would rise, stretch her arms toward the ceiling, whisper a quick prayer, and then shuffle to the kitchen to make tea.

Her cat ZoZo—fat, grey, and full of judgment—would always watch her from the top of the stairs as though supervising. Then, together, they’d begin their synchronized routine: Dolly humming gospel tunes under her breath, ZoZo flicking his tail to the rhythm.

But on this particular Tuesday, something was off.

 

The Alarm That Refused to Ring

When Dolly finally opened her eyes, it was not to the cheerful blare of her alarm but to the soft patter of rain against her window. She squinted at the clock.

7:02 a.m.

“What in the world—?” she gasped, sitting up so fast she nearly toppled off the bed.

The alarm’s little red light blinked mockingly. Dead batteries. Of course.

“Oh no, ZoZo! We are late!” she cried, throwing the blanket aside.

ZoZo stretched, yawned, and then—deliberately, almost cruelly—began walking very slowly down the stairs. His plump paws took each step as though he had all the time in the world.

“Move your tail, you lazy creature!” Dolly shouted, hopping on one foot as she struggled to pull on her skirt. “You’ll make me miss the bus!”

ZoZo simply blinked at her. His slow descent continued, one paw… at… a… time.

By the time Dolly finally got past him and rushed out the door, the bus stop was empty except for puddles and the smell of diesel. She sighed, rain already soaking her hair scarf.

That was only the beginning.

 

The Day That Refused to Be Kind

Determined not to surrender to bad luck, Dolly ran back inside, grabbed her umbrella, and—without realizing it—left her lunch sitting right on the stove, the burner still on low.

As she stepped into the storm, the sky seemed to mock her.

A car zoomed by. SPLASH.

Cold, brown water drenched her skirt.

She groaned and wiped her face, muttering, “Lord, take me now.”

Then another car passed. SPLASH.

And another. And another. And another.

Five times. Five separate vehicles found her.

By the fifth splash, Dolly stood in the street like a drenched statue, glaring at the traffic. “You all planned this, didn’t you?!” she yelled into the wind. “You evil motorists!”

An old man under an umbrella stopped and stared. “Are you all right, madam?”

She turned sharply. “Do I look all right?”

He nodded solemnly. “You look baptized.”

 

The Hot Mess in Heels

By the time she arrived at the office, Dolly’s shoes squelched with each step, and her mascara looked like a crime scene. She ran to her desk, hoping no one would notice, but her supervisor, Mr. Banda, was waiting.

“Ah, Dolly,” he said, his smile too wide. “You’re finally here! The shareholders are waiting in the conference room. You are presenting first.”

Dolly froze. “Presenting… what?”

“The quarterly performance report. You did the slides yourself!”

Her stomach dropped. “That’s today?!”

Mr. Banda’s smile faltered. “Yes, Dolly. It’s been on the calendar for three weeks.”

She bolted for the restroom.

The mirror did her no favors. Her hair was a soggy bird’s nest. Her blouse clung in weird places. She looked like someone who’d wrestled an umbrella and lost.

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” she whispered. “This cannot be my life.”

She leaned forward, breathing hard. Her reflection blinked back at her—only, it wasn’t perfectly synced.

Dolly blinked again. Her reflection didn’t move.

“What in the—?” she whispered.

Then, suddenly, the reflection smiled—a slow, eerie smile that she hadn’t made.

 

Wake Up Call

Her heart pounded. She shut her eyes.

And when she opened them again—

She was in bed.

The alarm clock was ringing cheerfully at 6:15 a.m.

“Wait,” she muttered. “What?”

ZoZo sat at the foot of her bed, licking his paw.

She touched the clock. It was fine. The light was steady. The rain had stopped.

“Did I just… dream all that?” she asked aloud.

ZoZo meowed, a deep, throaty sound that almost sounded like a laugh.

 

Déjà Vu, or Madness

Trying to shake it off, she got out of bed and went through her normal morning motions. Tea, scarf, shoes.

As she descended the stairs, she noticed ZoZo again.

He was watching her, tail swishing. Only this time—his mouth moved.

“Don’t miss your bus, Dolly,” he said in a calm, gravelly tone.

She froze mid-step.

Her cup of tea slipped from her hand and shattered on the floor.

“ZoZo?” she whispered.

The cat yawned. “Hurry. You’ll be late again.”

She stumbled backward, grabbing the railing. “Oh no, no, no. I’m still dreaming. I have to be.”

ZoZo tilted his head. “Do you want to test it?”

 

The Second Storm

Dolly pinched her arm. Hard. “Ow!” she yelled.

“Did that hurt?” asked ZoZo.

“Yes!”

“Then maybe it’s real.”

“Or maybe pain exists in dreams!”

ZoZo shrugged—if cats could shrug. “Either way, you should go. The bus will be gone in one minute.”

Panicking, she dashed out the door.

The rain started again. Exactly the same. Same dark sky, same cold drizzle.

The five cars passed, one after another, splashing her in perfect rhythm.

By the fifth splash, she screamed, “I refuse this nonsense!”

The old man appeared again, same umbrella, same look. “You again?”

“What do you mean again?”

He frowned. “You shouted the same thing yesterday, madam.”

 

The Mirror’s Game

At work, she ran straight to the restroom this time. She looked at her reflection and waited.

“Come on,” she whispered.

Her reflection blinked out of sync again. Then it spoke.

“You’re late, Dolly.”

She gasped. “Who are you?”

“I’m you,” said the mirror. “Or maybe you’re me. It’s hard to tell these days.”

“This is madness,” Dolly said.

“Is it? Or is the madness outside the mirror?”

The fluorescent lights flickered. Dolly backed away.

“I just want to wake up,” she whispered.

The reflection leaned closer, lips curling. “Then close your eyes.”

 

Loop Two

She did.

And woke up—again—in bed.

6:15 a.m.

Alarm ringing.

ZoZo sitting at the foot of the bed.

Only this time, the alarm display flickered between 6:15 and 7:02.

ZoZo purred. “Which one do you believe, Dolly?”

She grabbed the alarm clock and shook it. “I’m not playing these games!”

The numbers scrambled. 8:45. 3:10. 11:59. Then blank.

Her hands trembled. “God help me, I’m losing it.”

ZoZo hopped down and began walking—slowly—down the stairs.

Each step echoed louder than it should have. Dolly followed, her heart racing. The air felt thick, like she was underwater.

When she reached the kitchen, the stove light was on. Her lunch pot was simmering.

The smell of burnt rice filled the room.

“I left that yesterday…” she murmured. “Didn’t I?”

 

Time Folds

She checked her phone. The date read Wednesday, June 12.

She frowned. “It was Tuesday a moment ago.”

ZoZo leaped onto the counter. “Time is flexible when you don’t believe in it,” he said.

“Cats do not talk!” Dolly shouted.

“Neither do clocks that lie,” said ZoZo.

“Stop!”

“Make me.”

Her hands gripped the counter until her knuckles whitened. “This is just stress. That’s all. I’ve been working too much. Maybe I fainted. Maybe I’m in the hospital.”

ZoZo licked his paw. “And maybe the hospital is dreaming of you.”

 

The Presentation

Her phone buzzed. It was Mr. Banda.

“Dolly! Where are you? The shareholders are waiting!”

She looked down at herself—still in pajamas.

“But… I thought I did that presentation.”

“Dolly, please. Don’t embarrass me today. Hurry!”

She stared at the phone. “If this is another dream…”

“Then make it a good one,” ZoZo said, hopping off the counter.

 

The Third Awakening

When she blinked again, she was standing in front of the conference room projector.

Her slides were on the screen. Everyone was watching her.

Her boss smiled expectantly.

Her heart thumped.

She tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. Her throat felt heavy, like cotton.

The shareholders started murmuring.

Suddenly, all of them turned their heads in perfect unison—toward the window.

Rain poured outside.

A bus splashed past the glass, spraying water across it.

The room went silent.

Then ZoZo’s voice echoed faintly: “You missed the bus again, Dolly.”

 

The Hospital

She screamed—and everything went black.

When she opened her eyes, she was in a hospital bed. Tubes. Machines. A nurse adjusting her blanket.

“Oh thank God,” she said weakly. “I’m awake.”

The nurse smiled. “You’ve been asleep for two days, Mrs. Jameson. You fainted at work.”

Relief flooded her. “So it was all a dream.”

The nurse checked her chart. “You must have been very tired.”

Dolly sighed. “You have no idea.”

Then she noticed something—the nurse’s name tag: Zozo.

Her eyes widened. “Excuse me… your name is Zozo?”

The nurse smiled. “Yes, after my mother’s cat. Why?”

Dolly’s hand gripped the blanket. “No reason,” she whispered.

Outside the window, rain began to fall.

 

Return to Normal?

Two weeks later, Dolly was back home, trying to rebuild her routine.

Her doctor had recommended rest and light activity. So she brewed tea, brushed ZoZo’s fur, and told herself over and over: That was all just a dream.

Yet, every now and then, she’d catch ZoZo staring at her, eyes gleaming too intelligently.

One night, unable to sleep, she heard him whisper something. Just one word.

“Again.”

She sat up in bed. “What did you say?”

ZoZo was curled in his basket, snoring softly.

“Nothing,” she told herself. “I’m imagining things.”

 

Tomorrow That Never Comes

The next morning, her alarm blared at exactly 6:15 a.m. She smiled. Normalcy. Finally.

She turned to look for ZoZo. He wasn’t on the bed.

“ZoZo?”

A faint sound came from the stairs.

She stepped out of bed and saw him—walking slowly, deliberately, one paw at a time.

Her smile faded.

“No,” she whispered. “Not again.”

She looked at the clock.

7:02 a.m.

Her breath caught in her throat.

“No!” She grabbed the clock and shook it. “Wake up, wake up, wake up!”

The clock beeped. The rain began.

A horn honked outside.

Then—SPLASH.

Water sprayed across her face.

But she was inside her bedroom.

She looked up. The ceiling was leaking—rain pouring directly into her room.

ZoZo spoke again. “You’re late, Dolly.”

 

The Final Scene

Dolly laughed. Hysterically. “Fine! I’m late! Who cares anymore?”

She walked downstairs, soaking wet, her slippers squishing.

The house was full of mirrors—every wall, every surface reflecting infinite versions of herself. Each reflection moved differently.

One Dolly was crying. Another was brushing her hair. Another was giving the presentation confidently.

“Which one is real?” she asked.

ZoZo jumped onto the kitchen counter. “All of them. None of them. You decide.”

“I want to wake up.”

“Then sleep.”

She stared at him. “And if I’m asleep?”

“Then dream better,” he said.

 

Epilogue: A Dream That Never Ends

The next day—if there was such a thing as “next” anymore—her neighbor knocked on her door. No answer.

She tried again. Still nothing.

When the landlord finally opened the door, the house was spotless. Tea cup on the table. Lunch neatly packed on the stove. Alarm clock blinking 6:15 a.m.

And ZoZo, sitting calmly on the stairs, eyes bright.

He looked at the landlord, tail swishing slowly, and said in a soft, almost amused voice:

“She finally caught the bus.”

The End

Police Step in When Creep Rapes Girl At The Mall

https://youtu.be/omPk4P-d9Fs

 

Sir Whiskerton and the Poo-litzer Prize

Ah, dear reader, prepare your nostrils for a tale of high-tech hubris and low-brow commerce! Today’s adventure involves a scientific breakthrough of questionable merit, a capitalist scheme of undeniable stench, and a melting disaster that united the farm in fragrant solidarity. So, grab a clothes peg for your nose and join me for Sir Whiskerton and the Poo-litzer Prize.

It all began in the laboratory of the ever-ambitious Professor Quackenstein. The duck, wearing goggles made from bent bottle bottoms, stood before his latest invention: the “Chromato-Crap-O-Matic 5000.” It was a bewildering contraption of whirring gears, bubbling beakers, and a large, ominous funnel.

“Vith zis device,” he announced to his skeptical assistant, Doctor Notoriouso the lab rat, “ve shall transform ze most base of biological byproducts into a palette of pigment! Vaste shall become Vonder!”

His first volunteer was Bessie the Tie-Dye Cow. After consuming a special “color-charged” feed, she ambled up to the machine. There was a rumble, a flash of light, and out plopped a perfectly formed, vibrant cobalt blue patty. It was, undeniably, spectacular.

“Groovy!” Bessie murmured, peering through her rose-tinted glasses. “It’s like my soul is… manifesting.”

Next was Porkchop the Pig. With a gleeful snort, he gobbled down his portion. The machine whirred and clanged, and out shot a pile of fluorescent orange droppings, so bright they practically glowed.

“Well, I’ll be,” Porkchop mused. “I’ve finally become a work of art. Eat your heart out, Picasso.”

News of the colorful excrement spread faster than a fly on a sugar rush. Genghis, ever the opportunist, saw not art, but opportunity. But his ambitions were small-time compared to the feline who received the news.

Bigcat, from his command post on the neighboring farm, saw a chance to expand his empire. “Colorful, odorless feces?” he rumbled to his general, Catticus. “It’s the perfect currency! We shall trade with Catnip. He is a cat of… peculiar tastes.”

A neutral trading location was agreed upon: the open field on Sir Whiskerton’s farm. The day was set, and it dawned hotter than a dragon’s breakfast. The sun beat down without mercy.

Sir Whiskerton watched the proceedings from the shady porch, a paw over his nose already. “This,” he stated to Rufus, “is a catastrophe in a slow cooker.”

The trading began. Bigcat, flanked by a sweating Catticus, presented his wares: shimmering emerald green from a goose, brilliant sunshine yellow from a chicken, and a deep, royal purple from who-knows-what.

Catnip, sleek and suspicious, arrived with his rodent henchmen, Bonbo and Grumbles. He inspected a magenta coil. “The hue is acceptable,” he hissed. “For this, I offer one slightly chewed feather duster and my… temporary neutrality regarding your southern flowerbed.”

But as the two feline mobsters negotiated, the sun worked its terrible magic.

The vibrant cobalt blue patties began to soften, sweating little pools of indigo.
The fluorescent orange droppings started to sag, their glow dimming into a messy, neon smear.
The entire rainbow assortment began to melt.

A once-proud pillar of lime green slumped into a puddle. A sparkling pink turd dissolved into a frothy, strawberry-scented nightmare. The field, once a canvas of color, was becoming a Jackson Pollock painting of putrescence.

And the smell. Oh, the smell. It was a thick, sweet, and deeply unnatural stench, a perfume of a thousand spoiled fruit baskets left in a hot car.

• “My olfactory sensors are in revolt!” Doris the Hen shrieked, fanning herself with a wing.

• “Revolt! It’s an assault on decency!” Harriet added.

• “Assault! Oh, the humanity… and the felinity!” Lillian wailed, and fainted directly into the farmer’s watering can.

The heat intensified. The puddles of color began to merge, creating new, horrifying shades like “putrid puce” and “gangrenous gold.” Rufus, who had initially been fascinated, took one curious sniff and started sneezing uncontrollably, each sneeze glowing a faint green.

The final straw came when a fat, lazy fly, buzzing over the magenta puddle, suddenly dropped dead, its legs twitching in the air.

Bigcat and Catnip, their fur matted with sweat and their pride melting faster than their currency, stared at each other in stinky, silent understanding. This was a lose-lose situation. With synchronized looks of disgust, they both turned and fled the scene, abandoning their colorful, liquefied fortunes without a second glance.

The farm was left with a field of oozing, rainbow sludge that stank to high heaven.

The solution, as it turned out, was simple. The farmer, wondering what all the fuss was about, came out with his wheelbarrow. He took one look at the technicolor mess, shrugged, and simply shoveled the entire, stinking, melted rainbow onto his compost heap.

“Best-dressed compost I’ve ever seen,” he muttered to his scarecrow, before going back inside for a glass of lemonade.

---

The End

---

Moral: Just because you can turn something into a rainbow doesn’t mean you should. True value isn’t about how things look, but what they’re actually worth (and how badly they stink when they melt).

Best Lines:

• “It’s like my soul is… manifesting.” – Bessie the Cow

• “This is a catastrophe in a slow cooker.” – Sir Whiskerton

• “The hue is acceptable.” – Catnip, the serious art critic

• “Best-dressed compost I’ve ever seen.” – The Farmer

Post-Credit Scene:
A month later, the compost produces the most vibrantly colored, strangely sweet-smelling vegetables anyone has ever seen. Porkchop takes one bite of a radiant purple zucchini and burps a tiny, shimmering, rainbow bubble.

Key Jokes:

• Professor Quackenstein’s overly-complicated machine for a very simple (and silly) purpose.

• Bigcat and Catnip trying to be serious business partners while standing in melting, stinky poop.

• Rufus sneezing glowing green snot.

• The fly dropping dead from the smell.

• The farmer’s complete and utter non-reaction to the entire disaster.

Starring:

• Sir Whiskerton (The Prophet of Impending Doom)

• Professor Quackenstein (The Mad Scientist of Muck)

• Bigcat & Catnip (The Melted Mobsters)

• Bessie & Porkchop (The Living Art Studios)

• Doris & The Hens (The Chorus of Disgust)

• The Farmer (The Unflappable Clean-Up Crew)

P.S.
Remember, if someone offers you currency that can melt in the sun, it’s probably a crappy investment.

First Time Hearing METALLICA – WE FINALLY GET THE HYPE | Enter Sandman Reaction

The Rare Earths trade war just got complicated: Chinese industries need them here

China’s factory sectors require massive volumes of Rare Earth materials and magnets to fuel their domestic needs.

Some industry insiders now insist that Chinese demand has caught up to supply, and export restrictions are necessary to keep domestic industries well supplied.

There are obvious national security issues involved, if Chinese officials allow the export of materials that eventually end up in foreign weapons systems.

But it also represents a huge opportunity cost to Chinese factories and households, if those minerals and magnets are sent elsewhere.

Low-cost vehicles, electricity, and consumer products in China’s domestic economy also are dependent on the same inputs as Pentagon weapons makers and foreign factories.

Why Some Americans Are Looking to China’s Model | Socialism’s Global Appeal| FED UP WITH CAPITALISM?

A fascinating shift is happening in some corners of American political discourse.

As disillusionment with certain aspects of capitalism grows, a segment of the U.S. population is looking abroad—and pointing to China’s rapid development as a potential case study for a different way of organizing society.

This video compiles TikToks and online commentary that explore this complex and often controversial perspective.

• We examine: The “China Model”: What specific aspects of China’s economic and social system are being praised by some Western observers?
• American Discontent: The frustrations with wealth inequality, healthcare costs, and political gridlock that are leading some to question long-held assumptions.
• A Global Ideological Battle: How China’s rise is being framed as a challenge to Western liberal democracy and a potential beacon for alternative systems.

The Celebration of Figures Like Mamdani: Understanding why certain intellectual voices that critique Western imperialism and champion Global South perspectives are gaining traction.

This video is an exploration of a global conversation, not an endorsement of any single political system.

It aims to understand why these ideas are resonating now. This is a complex topic.

We encourage respectful and insightful discussion in the comments. What are your thoughts on this global ideological shift?

The rising

Written in response to: “Start or end your story with a character looking out at a river, ocean, or the sea.“

Alexander Colfer

2034

Saharah pressed her small hand against the car window, watching the ocean shimmer beneath the afternoon sun. Four years old and this was her first clear memory, the way the water stretched forever, blue meeting blue at some impossible distance. Her father had driven them here, to what remained of Miami Beach, so she could see it before it disappeared entirely.

“Remember this, Saharah,” he said, his voice tight. “Remember when the sea was beautiful.”

The beach was narrow now, barely twenty feet of sand between the seawall and the waves. Her mother held her hand as they walked, and Saharah felt the warm water rush over her toes. She laughed, delighted, not understanding why her mother’s grip was so tight, why her father kept checking his phone with that worried crease between his eyebrows.

The water tasted like salt when a wave splashed her face. She would remember that taste for the rest of her life.

 

2041

The military trucks arrived on a Tuesday morning, rolling through Atlanta neighbourhoods with loudspeakers announcing the mandatory evacuation. Hurricane Zara, a Category 6, though officially they still only acknowledged Category 5, had stalled over the Gulf, pulling moisture from waters that now averaged 87 degrees. The storm was three hundred miles wide. The flooding would reach Atlanta within forty-eight hours.

“Take what you can carry,” the soldiers said. “One bag per person.”

Saharah was eleven. She chose her clothes, her phone, and a small stuffed dolphin from that day at Miami Beach. She left behind her books, her guitar, the journal where she’d written her first poems about the sea.

They marched in lines, thousands of them, heading north on I-75. The highway had been cleared of vehicles, turned into a pedestrian corridor. Soldiers flanked them, rifles visible but not raised. This was order imposed on chaos. This was survival.

The heat was crushing. September in Georgia, and it felt like July used to feel, before the climate broke completely.

By noon, Saharah’s water bottle was empty.

“Mama, I’m thirsty.”

Her mother shared hers, tipping it to Saharah’s lips. Half the bottle, maybe less. Her mother’s hand shook.

“That’s all we have until the next checkpoint, Saharah.”

“When’s that?”

Her mother didn’t answer.

An old man collapsed ahead of them, his body crumpling like paper. The soldiers pulled him to the side of the highway. Saharah watched as they checked his pulse, shook their heads, kept moving. They didn’t have time for the dead. No one did.

Her father took her hand. His palm was slick with sweat.

“Don’t look,” he said.

But she did. She saw the man’s face, slack and grey. She saw the wet stain spreading across his pants. She saw the flies already gathering.

They walked for three days. At night they collapsed in designated rest zones, parking lots, fields, anywhere flat enough for thousands of bodies. The sky stayed grey, heavy with Zara’s outer bands. Rain came in sheets, warm as bathwater, and Saharah opened her mouth to it, grateful even as thunder crashed around them like artillery. The lightning turned the world white, then black, then white again. No one slept.

On the second day, a woman went into labour. The soldiers radioed for medical support that never came. The woman screamed for hours. Saharah pressed her hands over her ears but she could still hear it, that animal sound of agony. When the screaming stopped, the soldiers carried the woman away on a stretcher. Saharah never saw what happened to the baby.

On the third day, her father stopped walking.

“I can’t,” he said, sitting down on the hot asphalt. “I can’t anymore.”

Her mother knelt beside him. “We’re almost there. Just a few more miles.”

“You go. Take Saharah.”

“No.”

“Please.”

Saharah watched her parents, not understanding. Her father’s face was red, his breathing strange and shallow. Her mother was crying without making any sound.

A soldier approached. “You need to keep moving.”

“He needs rest,” her mother said.

“There’s no rest. You keep moving or you stay here. Those are the options.”

Her father stood up. His legs shook but he stood. They kept walking.

 

2048

The Tennessee Valley Relocation Centre sprawled across what had been farmland outside Knoxville. Rows of prefab housing units, each one housing eight families. Communal kitchens. Communal bathrooms. Communal everything.

Saharah was eighteen now, thin as wire, her childhood softness burned away by years of rationing. The sea level had risen another metre since her last glimpse of the ocean. The Gulf Coast was gone. Florida was an archipelago. The Eastern Seaboard had retreated fifty miles inland, leaving drowned cities as monuments to hubris.

She worked in the camp’s vertical farm, tending hydroponic vegetables under LED lights. Twelve-hour shifts, six days a week. The pay was camp scrip, worth less every month as inflation spiralled. Food shipments from the Midwest had become unreliable as the breadbasket dried up, as the Ogallala Aquifer finally ran dry. Everything they’d been warned about came true with mathematical precision.

Her father had died two years ago, heat stroke during a work detail. Her mother had followed six months later. Pneumonia, officially. Grief, actually. Grief and exhaustion and the slow realisation that the world they’d known was never coming back.

Saharah lived alone now in a corner of a housing unit she shared with seven other families. She had a mattress, a blanket, a plastic crate for her possessions. The stuffed dolphin sat on top, its fur matted and grey.

The scrip ran out three weeks into every month. Always three weeks. The rations were calculated for survival, not comfort, and they assumed you had nothing else wrong with you, no extra needs, no medical issues, no bad luck.

Saharah had bad luck.

She got sick in March, some kind of intestinal infection that left her unable to work for a week. No work meant no scrip. No scrip meant no food. She spent five days in her corner, dizzy with hunger, watching the other families eat their rations and carefully not look at her.

On the sixth day, a guard named Torres stopped by her corner.

“Heard you’ve been out sick,” he said.

She nodded, not trusting her voice.

“That’s tough. Real tough.” He looked at her for a long moment. “You know, I could help you out. Get you some extra rations. Medicine, maybe.”

She knew what he meant. She’d heard the other women talking in whispers, late at night when they thought everyone was asleep.

“What do you want?” she asked.

He smiled. “I think you know.”

She thought about the hollow ache in her stomach, the weakness in her limbs, the way her vision had started to blur at the edges.

“Okay,” she said.

The first time, she left her body. That’s what it felt like. She floated somewhere near the ceiling of Torres’s quarters, watching this thing happen to someone else, someone who looked like her but wasn’t her, couldn’t be her. When it was over, he gave her a week’s worth of rations and a bottle of antibiotics.

She went back to her corner and ate half the rations in one sitting, her stomach cramping with the sudden abundance. Then she threw up in the communal bathroom, retching until there was nothing left.

She stared at herself in the cracked mirror. Same face. Same eyes. But something had changed. Something had broken or maybe just bent, reshaped itself to fit this new world.

She went back to work the next day.

Torres came by every week after that. Sometimes he brought food. Sometimes medicine. Sometimes just scrip. She stopped floating away. She stopped feeling much of anything. It was just another kind of work, another kind of survival.

At night, she climbed to the roof of her housing unit and looked south, towards where the ocean was. She couldn’t see it from here—she was still two hundred miles inland—but she could feel it. In the humidity that never broke. In the storms that came with increasing fury. In the news reports of new evacuations, new camps, new lines of refugees marching north.

The sea was coming. It was always coming.

 

2055

In July, the temperature hit 135 degrees Fahrenheit.

Saharah was twenty-five and looked forty. She’d survived two cholera outbreaks, one riot, and countless nights of hunger. She’d learnt to fight for her rations, to sleep with one eye open, to trust no one completely.

The heat wave lasted three weeks. The power grid failed on the fourth day. The cooling centres went dark. People died in their sleep, their bodies simply giving up. The camp had protocols for heat emergencies, but protocols meant nothing when the infrastructure collapsed.

Saharah survived by going underground, into the maintenance tunnels beneath the hydroponic farm. It was cooler there, maybe ninety degrees instead of 135. She brought water, food she’d saved, a torch. She stayed for five days, listening to the rumble of trucks hauling bodies away.

When she emerged, the camp had changed. Half the population was gone. Some dead, some fled. The soldiers were fewer now, their uniforms dirty, their eyes hollow. The government was retreating to the Canadian border, to the northern territories where it was still possible to live. The centre couldn’t hold.

Torres was gone. Most of the guards were gone. The system that had exploited her had collapsed, and she felt nothing about it. No relief. No satisfaction. Just the same hollow numbness she’d felt for years.

She packed what little she had, some clothes, a water bottle, a knife she’d traded for. She left the dolphin behind. It belonged to a different person, a different world.

She walked north because there was nowhere else to go.

 

2071

The march through the drowned South took two years.

Saharah moved with a loose group of survivors, the composition changing constantly as people died or split off or simply disappeared. They followed old highways, now cracked and overgrown. The South was emptying out, becoming uninhabitable. Temperatures regularly exceeded 120 degrees. The humidity made breathing feel like drowning.

They passed through what had been Chattanooga, water up to their waists, moving through streets that had become canals. Fish swam through living rooms. Snakes coiled in trees. The sea had reached Tennessee, pushing inland through the river systems, turning the landscape into a vast delta.

Saharah tried to remember that day on Miami Beach, tried to recall the beauty of it, but the memory was corrupted now. The sea wasn’t beautiful. The sea was a monster, patient and inexorable, swallowing everything.

They ate what they could find. Snakes, mostly. Rats when they were lucky. Sometimes nothing for days. A woman named Running Bear taught her which insects were safe to eat, which plants wouldn’t kill you. Running Bear had been a botanist before, in the world that was. Now she was just another refugee, her knowledge worth only slightly more than ignorance.

“You ever think about before?” Running Bear asked one night as they huddled under a highway overpass, rain hammering the concrete above them.

“No,” Saharah lied.

“I do. All the time. I had a garden. Roses. Can you imagine? I spent hours worrying about aphids.” Running Bear laughed, a sound like breaking glass. “Aphids.”

“What happened to your family?”

“Dead. Yours?”

“Dead.”

They sat in silence, listening to the rain. In the morning, Running Bear was gone. Saharah never saw her again.

The group reached Kentucky after eighteen months. They’d started with over a hundred people. Twelve remained.

The Kentucky camp was worse than Tennessee had been. Overcrowded, undersupplied, violent. Warlords controlled sections of it, demanding tribute for protection. The soldiers who remained were indistinguishable from the warlords. Everyone had guns. Everyone was desperate.

Saharah found work in the medical tent, such as it was. No real medicine, no equipment, just people dying of diseases that had been eradicated a century ago. Typhoid. Dysentery. Measles. She cleaned wounds with boiled brown water, held hands as people died.

The sea level had risen three metres since her birth. The maps were redrawn constantly. The coasts were gone. The river valleys were flooded. The Great Lakes had expanded, swallowing cities. Chicago was Venice, then Atlantis.

She was forty-one and felt ancient. Her hair was grey. Her teeth were loose from malnutrition. Her lungs were scarred from breathing smoke, the fires came every summer now, massive conflagrations that burnt for months, turning the sky orange, the sun a dull red coin.

She left the camp when the food ran out completely. Just walked away one morning, heading north with nothing but the clothes on her back and the knife in her belt.

She didn’t know where she was going. Just north. Always north.

 

2087

Saharah found herself in what had been Ohio, though borders meant nothing now. The government had collapsed completely. There were warlords, petty kingdoms, zones of control that shifted like the weather.

She survived by scavenging through the ruins of drowned towns, pulling copper wire from walls, finding tinned goods in attics that had become ground floors. She traded what she found for food, for water, for safe passage through territories controlled by men with guns.

The world had become mediaeval, brutal, short.

She travelled alone now. Companionship was a liability. People would kill you for your shoes, for a tin of beans, for nothing at all. She slept in trees when she could, in abandoned cars, in culverts. She kept moving.

The sea level had risen four metres. The ocean had pushed up the Mississippi valley, turning it into a vast inland sea. The Appalachians were islands now, their peaks jutting from the water like broken teeth. The coasts were memories, stories told by old people like her, though there weren’t many old people left.

She was fifty-seven. She’d outlived almost everyone she’d known from before.

One day she came across a settlement, twenty or thirty people living in what had been a shopping centre, now half-submerged. They had a garden on the roof, rainwater collection, some semblance of order. They let her stay for three days, fed her watery soup, asked her questions about the outside.

“Is it true about the Rockies?” a young man asked. He couldn’t have been more than twenty. “That the rich people are up there? That it’s like paradise?”

“I’ve heard that,” Saharah said.

“You ever try to get there?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

She looked at him, this boy who still had hope in his eyes, who still thought there might be something better somewhere else.

“Because they’d kill you before you got within a hundred miles,” she said. “The military protects them. Drones, automated guns, minefields. You can’t get there. Nobody can.”

The hope died in his eyes. She felt nothing about it.

She left the next morning.

The jet stream had collapsed years ago, and now storms came from impossible directions with impossible fury. The temperature swung wildly scorching heat that killed in hours, followed by freak ice storms as the climate system spasmed and convulsed. Nothing was predictable.

Saharah kept walking north until she reached Lake Erie.

The lake had merged with the ocean, saltwater pushing inland through the drowned river systems. The sea had reached the Great Lakes. The sea had won.

She found a shack made of scavenged materials on what had been the shore, now just another piece of the endless waterline. No one lived there. She moved in.

She was too tired to move anymore. Too tired to care.

 

2094

She was sixty-four and starving.

There was no food. The fish were gone, poisoned by the warming water, by the pollution, by the toxic algae blooms that turned the sea green and made the air smell like rot. The birds were gone. The insects were gone. Everything was gone.

She’d eaten the last of her supplies, a handful of dried beans three days ago.

Today she’d found nothing.

She sat on a piece of concrete that had once been part of a building, watching the water lap at the shore. It was higher today than yesterday. It was always higher.

Her body was failing. She could feel it shutting down, system by system. Her vision blurred at the edges. Her hands shook. Her heart beat irregularly, skipping and stuttering. She was cold despite the heat, her body no longer able to regulate its temperature.

The sky was yellow with smoke from fires burning somewhere to the west. The air was thick, hard to breathe. Her chest rattled with every inhalation, a wet sound that reminded her of her mother’s last days.

She thought about that day on Miami Beach, sixty years ago. The blue water. The warm sand. Her father’s hand on her shoulder, heavy and reassuring. Her mother’s laugh, bright and unselfconscious. The taste of salt on her lips.

The water had been beautiful once.

She tried to remember her father’s face but couldn’t quite grasp it. The details had worn away, leaving only an impression. Kindness. Worry. Love.

Her mother was easier. She’d looked like Saharah, or Saharah had looked like her. The same eyes. The same stubborn chin. The same hands.

Saharah looked at her own hands now, skeletal and scarred, the skin hanging loose. These weren’t her mother’s hands. These were a stranger’s hands.

She watched as a wave rolled in, higher than the last, reaching for the concrete she sat on. The sea was still rising. It would never stop rising. It would swallow everything eventually—the ruins of cities, the bones of billions, the memory of what had been.

Another wave. Closer now.

The water touched her feet.

It was warm, like bathwater, like tears.

Her heart stuttered, paused, beat once more.

The water rose around her, patient and inexorable.

Saharah’s heart beat its last, and she let the sea take her home.

 

11-Year-Old Girl Reveals Her Dad’s Horrifying Secret

https://youtu.be/lkAEZnAnAyw