I hate that damn manUpdated at May 12, 2021, 03:23
Tammy
It's the Remembrance Day, a sorrowful dent in everyone's life. The whole city has gathered around the blazing fire, some more willing to pay their tribute than others. A canopy of dark shadows encircles them all, displaying a ghoulish dance in the dim light. The guards are already in place, watching from above the rooftops and ready to keep the order by all means, especially today.
Rising from the middle of the scorching flame, a 150ft monument shoots towards the sky. The Endless Column looks like it is flowing to infinity, with its octahedral modules glowing in the flames. The "beads", as everyone calls them, symbolize the funeral stones of all the victims who perished from infection. The virus is ruthless and spares no race. It invades the brain, hijacking its genetic information and driving the host insane. Only death can end such an excruciating pain, yet no one has lived to tell the tale.
The official starts reading the names of the lost ones, the rhythmic sound bending thousands of heads in slow and harmonious waves. Tammy and her grandmother, Grace, sit in the same spot as they have been for the past seventeen years. This time Sesh, her best friend, decided to accompany them. It's either that or she would have ended up paying her respects to her deceased mother all alone. Tammy hates this day. If it was up to her she wouldn't have come, but Grace insisted and she would rather be present than to plant the seed of unwanted gossip and suspicion.