Katie

She was running through the woods with the child she once swore to protect wrapped tightly in her arms. After the world changed, it became increasingly difficult to keep our children alive. They wanted them. All of them. They would not stop until they had each and every child on what was once our earth in their possession. At first, they came to our doors, demanding that we hand the children over to them immediately. If obedience was not immediate, then a slow and violent death was at hand. Once it started to get harder for the inhuman beings to separate the children from their parents, they started to use a more stealthy way of abducting them. 

They had plans to gather all of the children for reasons unknown to us. We had no idea if they were alive or dead. The last thing that most parents heard was the sound of their child's screams as they were ripped from their arms, never to be heard from again. You could ask them why they were taking our petrified children, but you would have no ability to comprehend the foreign words they spoke in response. Their inhuman words meant nothing to us. Running and hiding was an option some pondered, but it was almost as if they knew exactly who would attempt to escape the inescapable separation of their once-happy family. Few did make it out, though. She was one of those lucky few, if you could even consider such a position in life to be lucky.

 Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months. With no food and little water, it became harder to hide. Harder to keep silent and in the shadows. She knew she would soon be caught. Her child was ripped from her weak arms, and her body slowly ripped apart. She had seen so many others die. It was all the same. The child she carried became inconsolable. The hunger and dehydration were too much to bear. With limited options at hand, the woman knew she had to keep surviving. She could no longer survive with the child. 

She could no longer hand the child over without being brutally dismembered immediately after doing so. She needed—no. She had to have the strength to keep running and hiding. She hoped to outlive their stay in what was once our home, but after seeing their empires grow larger and larger over the months, she knew that they would outlive our human existence altogether. She knew what needed to be done in order to survive, and after being left with no other choice, she executed her decision. Hungrily eating her child, she wept, for she knew she would have to live with what she had done for the rest of her life. Now, with the strength to continue her silent fight to live, she stood from her spot, discarding the remains of her once-alive child onto the cold, damp ground. 

Her arms felt light, for she had no burden of a child to carry with her any longer. Pushing down her feelings of guilt and ignoring her grievances towards her now-dead child, she pushed on. She wandered back to her hiding spot for a final time, for she was unaware that the inhuman beings knew her whereabouts and had been following, watching, and waiting for her. Now that all the children were gone, it was time for them to do what they had come for. They stalked the women for days, making sure to leave behind faint clues of their existence. 

The inhuman beings showed signs of predation play many times while stalking the women. Their sadistic minds enjoyed filling us with fear and worry. The woman did everything in her power to stay alive. She had to keep surviving. After stumbling upon another survivor who was trying to escape that very same fate, she realized how she was going to keep surviving. Much like with her late child, the woman silently killed and ate the other survivor. Filled with the energy to continue on her way, she pushed her now cannibalistic urges out of her mind and silently made her way through the woods, for she knew if she made too much noise she would turn into prey herself. 

The inhuman beings continued to stalk her and slowly hunt her down as she made her way through the woods. She knew hiding was no longer an option. The inhuman beings were getting closer and closer to her every day that passed by. Their predation play was becoming less and less playful. Nudges turned into pushes. Pushes turned into scratches. Scratches turned into bites. Bites turned into broken bones. The women knew she could no longer escape them. 

She knew that she could no longer fight for her survival. Her hopes of outliving their unwelcome stay vanished with every painfully slow second that they spent hiding in the woods. As her final day on our taken-over planet began, she thought back to the time before these sadistic inhuman beings ripped the earth right out of our human hands. She remembered every detail of her child's beautiful face. She remembered her ten tiny fingers and her ten tiny toes. She reminisced in the comfort of her mind when she thought about how her child would giggle when she blew in her face. All the tiny details that she loved began to wash away with the image that had been burned into her mind after eating her child. 

With tears streaming down both of her cheeks and her mind repeatedly showing her the image of her child's dismembered remains laid over a makeshift fire, ready to be devoured, she closed her eyes. She knew the inhuman beings were close to her. She knew that they would soon get what they wanted. The extinction of the human race would not happen without a fight, but after exhausting all able-bodied skills, the fight was over. As she took her last breath, she called out to her child in hopes of finding her in the afterlife. She left this cruel world saying nothing more than "Katie"