The Weston Chronicles

“She left me,” Eric said, his voice quiet against the roar of the streets of downtown Weston. In the face of this trauma, nothing mattered. He’d lost his home, lost his job, cut off ties with his family, but none of it had mattered as long as he was with her. His friend Gina rattled on, generic words of comfort, but none of it mattered.  She would want him to go home, lie down and be safe, make sure he didn’t do anything stupid...but all he had was stupid ideas right now. His phone fell from his hand as he started walking, its clattering barely registering in his mind as cars flashed by fast enough to seem like a blur. He thought he was walking toward his house, its now empty rooms mocking him even from this distance, but the scenery was vaguely unfamiliar. In a small town everything looks the same. The same people. The same houses. The same streets. Except for Baxter Street, no, Baxter Street stood out no matter what part of it you were on or how you got onto it.  Baxter Street was where they put those new “Sleep Inducers”, massive towers that helped the population sleep after massive waves of insomnia had hit the town like a tsunami.  “That’s a joke,” Eric said, his voice loud against the echoing emptiness of the Baxter forestry. Elle had been everything to him, his whole world, his rock, and maybe most importantly, his reason for living. She’d saved him...and in the end it had meant nothing. If he wasn’t with Her, what had it all been for? Nothing. No house in the mountains, no big marriage in the chapel to the east. There was nothing left for him. He wandered for hours, for days, maybe weeks, he wasn’t sure; time meant nothing when she wasn’t there when he woke up to mark the days. What was morning? What was night? The passing of time was only a reminder of losing her, of the days and hours spent without her. What did he have to do now? They’d spent their waking moments planning their future, planning their now. Baxter Street took his pain and made him empty, left him a husk that none would recognize. He watched his body walk, its fingers dragging across the grass and dirt. How was he hunched so low? A sound began, distant at first, but rapidly getting louder...it was her. Her voice. Her gasps. Her moans. Gina’s eyes widened beneath him, her nails digging into his skin as she begged for more, desperate for what she’d been denied for far too long. He was hers and now he always would be now that Elle was out of the picture. She’d always wondered what he’d seen in her, but when she’d picked him up off of Baxter Street, he was practically catatonic. Her mother had warned her, but she knew Eric better than anyone, certainly better than mom or that girl Elle. He was harmless. Her last thought. Her last thought as she felt his hand reaching through her. If she had been able to think, to process this betrayal, she might have wondered who would watch her pets. She might have considered the crimson stain left on her sheets. Her final thought of trust matched up with his final concern that the animal he’d just cut down for food might have had a family. It didn’t matter. He had to eat. He had to eat to survive. If he didn’t eat, he couldn’t live. If he didn’t live, he couldn’t win Elle back. If he didn’t win Elle back, what mattered? As he fed, he wondered how many of these strange animals he’d cut down. Elle’s voice rang out through his mind, louder than its screams, louder than his thoughts, “It doesn’t matter.” The meat and blood of his newest kill, the most recent in weeks of wandering and feeding, barely caught in his throat as he whispered, “Nothing will stop me.”