Victoria's Journal

June 7th, 2020

I found this journal today.

Bright green. Sealed tight, water-proof, like someone expected it to survive everything the world could throw at it. It was lying on the side of the road. The road is cracked, weeds sprouting from the gaps. Dust and ash float in the air. I don’t know if it’s from the burned-out truck nearby or from everything else that’s dead around here.

The truck… it’s destroyed. Burned, Metal twisted into shapes that don’t make sense anymore. The blackened frame sits at a crooked angle, half-buried in dirt. I can see inside through the mangled door. Two shapes. Two bodies. I can’t tell faces, can’t tell who they were. But I know. Somehow, I know.

This journal belongs to them. Victoria Daniels and the little girl, Robin. The two of them. Together. Until the end.

I picked it up carefully. The bag was intact, miraculously. I almost didn’t want to touch it. I felt like moving it might break something fragile inside, like disturbing the quiet remnants of someone’s life.

I opened it.

The pages smell faintly of smoke and something sweet, like the paper soaked it up from the fire. The writing is tight, neat, sometimes slanting as if the hand that held the pen was shaking. There are lists. Notes. Thoughts. Fears. Small details that tell me how they survived, how they feared, how they kept each other going. I haven’t read far yet. I don’t want to. I want to, but I don’t. I want to keep it all in front of me, hold the weight of it.

I am John.

The weight of this knowledge presses down in a way that makes my chest ache. I am alive. Somehow. But not yet free of what’s left of them. Not free of seeing this. Not free of knowing they were real, human, scared, alive until the fire and the blood took them.

I don’t know how long they’ve been here. Days? Weeks? I can’t tell. The smell of smoke is heavy, lingering. Ash coats the truck and the ground. Their bodies are burned and blackened, but even that doesn’t hide the shape of them. A small hand, a curve of a skull, the outline of a girl pressed against what I think is an adult.

It hurts to look. I close my eyes.

And still, I can’t put it down.

I will write here. I have to. There’s nothing else to do. Maybe if someone finds this journal after me, they’ll know. They’ll know Victoria Daniels and Robin existed. They’ll know the world didn’t erase everyone instantly. That someone cared enough to record it.

I sit on the cracked asphalt. The wind scratches across my face, carrying dust and ash, carrying the smell of burned metal and burned lives. I can hear the distant groan of something moving, probably scavengers. Maybe not human. Maybe not even alive. I don’t know. I don’t care. Not yet.

I trace the edge of the journal bag with a finger, trying to make sense of it all. Trying to ground myself in something solid while everything else is falling apart.

I don’t know how long I’ll survive. I don’t know what comes next.

But I’ll write. Because I can. Because this journal existed once. Because they existed.

And because, if I am the only one left to remember them, I will not forget.