SMNTY Fiction: Terminus Part 3 (Chapter 1)

The final part of the Terminus trilogy opens with Tilda at her lowest point. Her son Madison has been taken, and with him, her purpose and identity. As she struggles to move forward, she grapples with her new reality.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I'm come stuff. I
never told you production of iHeartRadio. And we're back with
our Sminty Fiction segment, which is a once a month
thing that we do. Currently it's an ongoing thing. We

(00:26):
are on the third of a trilogy, the Final Terminus,
so it is ongoing. I mean, if you want to
start here, go for it. But this is you might
be a little confused. This is a sequel. So, as
I've said before, I wrote all of these for National

(00:47):
Novel Writing Months, which oh my god, is right now? Wow? Well, anyway,
this one I was clear. I remember when I wrote
this one and I was in I wrote it in
like wild weekend when I was in Savannah. So I
don't edit these that much because I kind of like
looking at what was going through my head? Why did

(01:09):
I write this as someone who's never had a child,
and so much of it is about motherhood, But this
what this chapter? I was like, Oh, you were you
were running, you were trying to get the work out.
So I did edit this one a little bit more
than I typically do. Also, we're going to talk about
this a bit more at the end. This one has

(01:31):
a lot of I can tell what I was going
through during this time. It's actually kind of oddly appropriate
for what I think a lot of us are feeling
right now after the twenty twenty four election. It's a
very like you have you have just gotten beaten down?

(01:53):
How are you going to move on from this? So I,
for simplicity just calling this terminus three. It was called
Finite Children of Children, And again I remember a lot
of specifics about writing this. I have a friend who
loves music, is very moved by music, uh in a

(02:16):
way that I'm kind of as someone who's also moved
by a lot of things. I'm like, Wow, you were
feeling this really powerfully. It's often like tears involved. One
time I was at his place and I was telling
him about these feelings I was feeling, and he was like,
I have this song for you, and I'm going to
play it, and so he gets it out and it

(02:36):
was this song called Children of Children by Jason Isbel
and it has this line in it. I was writing
on my mother's hips. She was shorter than the corn,
all the years I took from her just by being born,
And that was kind of I think what I was
grappling with when I wrote this of just feeling guilty

(02:57):
about a lot of stuff that my mom had been through.
I felt somehow that it was my fault. So something
to keep in mind. I guess as we read this.
As we go through this, he did cry at the end.
It was a nice moment. I like it stood out
to me anyway. Content warning for non explicit suicidality at painkillers, injuries,

(03:25):
internalized shame, just a general hopeless vibe starting at the
top on this one. But yeah, so that's because it
ended in a pretty hopeless place. So so far we
have been following these two characters, Tilda and Madison, in

(03:45):
this world that is dying. Humanity is dying because of
this disease that you later find out was manufactured by
a religious group. But because of all of that, and
because the religious group called arm works with the governments,
there is a board for better parenting and they decide
where if a child is born in rare occasion, they

(04:08):
decide with the child goes. Tilda had her son, Madison, illegally,
and she they were going to take Madison from her,
so they've been she escaped with him, and they've been
on their run for eight years at this point, and
they find out they find a resistance is trying to

(04:29):
make a vaccine that turns out the resistances of what
they quite thought it was. And then they find out
that the leader of arm the leaders are Madison's grandparents,
and so there's a big confrontation that they have, and
then Tilda gets a vaccine and gives it to Madison

(04:53):
as one of only two, and she escapes after broadcasting
over their national broadcast system about what happened in the
truth of where this came from, and they've been on
the run ever since, and there's been a lot of
questions of do what do we do now that Madison
has been given the vaccine and kind of Madison wrestling

(05:17):
with that and feeling guilty, and Tilda feeling guilty because
she doesn't know what to do, hearing her mom over
the system telling her like, please come back because things
are different now, and not trusting that. They had a
pretty dangerous encounter with a moving group of people, and
then they found another group of people that seemed like
they were nice, but Tilda was still unwilling to trust them,

(05:43):
and then as they parted ways, Tilda and Madison were
attacked by people in tanks and Madison was taken from her,
and she was pretty brutally injured and shoved down a
hill to die. And she doesn't know what she's gonna be.

(06:05):
Her whole life has been defined by Madison, so she
doesn't know what she's gonna do or be or anything.
So that was where it ended, and that is where
we'll pick up right now. The world fell into place

(06:33):
in pieces. First was the smell mildew and leaves heavy
Intilda's nose. Then the cold in the air and in
her clothes and in her skin, in her bones, apart
from her hot and swollen face, throbbing pain and pulsing
agches permeating every part of her body. Her right knee
pulsated with agony, her left ankle pounding, her wrist throbbing

(06:57):
with every heart beat, her ribs tight, fiery, her throat
burned from screaming, her nose surely broken and impossible to
breathe through. Memory came last, and when it did, it
was like a live wire being placed against the base
of her spine. She jolted up and instantly regretted it,
crying aloud at the soreness Madison. They'd taken Madison. She

(07:24):
didn't know who they was, but her mind had a
ready supply of dreadful possibilities. The force they'd used to
take him did not lend her to be optimistic. Panic
ballooned inside her so rapidly she struggled to breathe made
more difficult by the mess of blood clogging up her nostrils,
spots erupting in her vision as she fought to hang

(07:47):
on to her only recently one grasp on consciousness. Clumsy
legs collapsed when she bolted to her feet, and she
fell gracelessly into a heap of heaving flesh and bones.
The sharpness in her chest was to such a degree
that for a moment she thought she might die, not outright,
but slowly, as she was nowhere near medical care. A

(08:10):
broken rib could be inching its way towards her lung,
and there would be nothing she could do about it.
While the thought frightened her, what truly scared her was
the relief the idea of death gave her. No more
struggling every day, no having to figure out how she
was going to find Madison and save him. One frail
young woman against what appeared to be a small infantry.

(08:36):
But that was cowardly, and Madison needed her, so she
sucked in several bracing breaths, and gradually, this time pushed
herself to her knees, wincing as her pack pulled at
her shoulders, resting there for a moment and combating the
blackness at the edge of her vision. When Tilda had
regained her hold on the world again, she slid one

(08:57):
foot out from under her, wincing as she placed it
on the forest floor. With herculian effort, she hoisted herself
up her other foot, clumsily stumbling out to the side
to catch her weight. For a moment, she swayed, panting
with her eyes closed. Her arm came up to block
out the light. When she squinted open her eyes her

(09:18):
shoulder blades. Screaming in protest, she choked back a sob
of pain, hopelessly looking at the hillside she'd rolled down,
leading back up to the road. Desperate, Tilda search for
another path back to the road, one that didn't involve
her much abused body climbing up a hill she'd only recently,
if the light was anything to go by, fallen down

(09:40):
when she barely had the strength to stand. But of
course there was none, not one that she could see.
Swallowing with difficulty, with almost comical carefulness, she pivoted on
her heels to examine the woods behind her, looking for
any other alternate path, But all she found was a
tangle of trees and h Reluctantly, she turned back to

(10:03):
face the hill in the darkest parts of her mind,
wondering if it was possibly worth it, What were the
odds she'd ever be reunited with Madison again. Here was
a guiltless out, as ugly as it was. Madison would
never know, and nor would anyone else. But then she'd
have to face herself, something she hadn't had time to

(10:24):
do since giving birth to Madison almost eight years ago.
Not only that, she'd had to find a way to
live with her decision, and she doubted she had the
strength to do it, which meant she had to find
the strength to climb up this hill. Concentrating on putting
one shaky foot in front of the other, she approached
the incline, her breast loud and harsh in the silence.

(10:48):
Her shoes, long without tread, slipped instantly at contact with
the incline, and she fell to her hands and knees
with a pain to shout. Long seconds passed where she
could only think of dragging one agonized breath in after another,
her tenuous hold on reality tunneling in and out. Madison
the only thought anchoring her, the purpose to pull herself

(11:11):
out of the gray world of non being in the
back of her mind that she so wanted to retreat
to the thought of standing again was laughable and simply
out of the question. So instead she did what was
left to her and crawled forward on her hands and knees.

(11:32):
The hill became an insurmountable mountain in her eyes. For
every painfully earned foot she slipped backwards, almost equally as
much and as painfully as much. Tears pricked her eyes,
but she refused them. Frustrated with her lack of progress
and unwilling to give up so quickly. Tilda's fingers dug

(11:52):
into cold dirt, tore into dead leaves, the toes of
her shoes buried into the dirt. Each push forward up
the hill care carefully calculated, and braced forlor into sheer
force of will. Ever so slowly she made her way
up the slope, the pain numbing her body, her breast
coming in a high pitched breathy gasp. A little after

(12:15):
halfway up, her arm muscles gave out, and she slid
down several feet, losing a lot of ground. Tilda pressed
herself against the earth, afraid of slipping again, on the
verge of hyperventilating. For a long time, she listened to
the sounds of the woods around her, the chirping of birds,
rustling of leaves, her own raspy breathing, Willing some strength

(12:36):
to return to her arms. Her eyes closed as she
summoned the trigs of her energy and pushed herself forward,
locking her gaze on the road at the top of
the hill, on her goal, and she strove for it,
not thinking of anything else. With the placement of her
feet the grip of her hands, Tilda almost sobbed with

(12:57):
relief when she pulled herself up over the sprawling out
onto the road. Out of the corner of her eye,
she saw the unmoving, crimson splotched body of Scout, and
she shuddered. Though she refused to look, she could not
ignore it, a carcass fighting for her full attention. For
a long time, she lay there, her whole body trembling

(13:19):
with effort and heaving with whistling breaths. Her mind went blank,
her only focus on sucking in each agonizing breath after another.
Her hand reached out blindly along the cool asphalt, searching
automatically for Madison, before remembering with a terrible rush that
he had been taken from her. Adrenaline shot through her

(13:40):
and jilted her upward, but the pain almost instantly caused
her to curl in on herself, wrapping her arm around
her middle, as if abruptly finally realizing something that had
been there obvious all along. Everything was hopeless. Madison was gone,
and she had no way to find him apart from

(14:00):
a general direction. She'd been stupid to ever think she
could protect him. It had only been a matter of
time before he was taken. For who knows what purpose
would his captors put together that Madison was the child
whose return came along with a hefty reward that the
resistance was actively seeking and broadcasting about, and if they didn't,

(14:22):
perhaps the last chance humanity had of recovering from the
edge of extinction at creating a viable vaccine could be
badly used or possibly even killed. It crashed over her,
almost overwhelmed her tild it brought her hand up to
her mouth and bit into it to hold back the
tide of grief, the never ending, bone deep cries that

(14:46):
threatened to rip up her throat and never stop until
she was nothing more than a corpse, the victim of
lack of will to go on. But because there was
nothing else to do other than wasted away on the
side of the road, Tilda stood shakily, wobbly, fighting for

(15:06):
her balance and for her thin grasped on consciousness. After
a time, many factors more than what it usually took,
Tilda was upright, body warped like a tree alone in
the desert for one hundred years. With terrible caution, she straightened,
one arm still braced around her midsection down the road.
Hazel eyes searched, her stringy hair whipping in front of

(15:28):
her face. The asshalt stretching in front of her gave
no clues as to Madison's location or what lay ahead
on it desolate. What would she do when she got there,
if she ever did, She did not want to think
about it, because if she did, she feared she would
not continue the truth. If she dared face it was,

(15:49):
she had no real chance of rescuing her child, unless
she somehow found a stash of weapons or some other
kind of equipment between now and wherever he was. If
she ever found it, Tilda did not linger on the thought,
knowing she did not have it in her to withstand
an onslaught of unrelenting realism, no matter how much wiser

(16:10):
it would be to deal with it now instead of
before she started what was sure to be a perilous journey.
Maybe I'll die before then. The thought surfaced again hazily
as she took her first painful, lurching step, followed by
another and another. As she stumbled forward, breathing harshly through
clinched teeth, appearing like a zombie, one of those walking

(16:33):
dead she'd seen on the covers of books and magazines
over the years. A raspy laugh bubble passed her lips,
rapidly turning into a cough. Tilda felt hyper aware of
how loud she was being, her scraping steps, harsh, panting breasts,
walking exposed down the middle of a slab road she
knew was used by violent people. Her wandering mind replayed

(16:58):
the events leading up to Madison's capture, first with fuzzy detail,
and then with brutal clarity. She couldn't help but wonder
with morbid curiosity why they hadn't killed her or made
an effort to capture her as well. Maybe they'd assumed
the fall had killed her. Maybe they considered her not
worth the effort. Maybe they were conserving bullets. The landscape

(17:20):
of her thoughts was wild and out of control, random
memories surging to the forefront and quickly fading away again
and being replaced by something else. Little was on her
mind other than the singular focus of pushing onward out
of habit. Her eyes swept from left to right, hoping
she'd be able to recognize something she could use. But

(17:42):
on the one side was, of course, the hill she'd
only so recently tumbled down and climbed back up, the
hill that almost killed her. She hurled at it wordlessly
and bitterly. The other side of the road was sparsely
populated with drab buildings and overgrown grass. Nothing that looked
from for a hidden weapons or food cash. She swallowed dryly,

(18:04):
the need for water barreling to the forefront of her
body's many complaints. Though her neck protested painfully, she swiveled
it to judge how far she'd come, and very nearly
groaned aloud at the embarrassing lack of ground she'd covered.
In the distance, she could still clearly make out the
dark shape of Scout's body, which she wrenched her gaze
away from again in revulsion. Slowly and awkwardly, she maneuvered

(18:28):
her pack from her shoulders and undipped it, retrieving a
cold bottle of water, and, after a frustrating expenditure of
energy opening it, did her best not to guzzle it
all down. The liquid burned down her throat and settled
uneasily in her stomach, but it did help her sluggishly
assuming thoughts chaotic and sickening in their own right. Feeling

(18:50):
as though she'd run a long race and would like
nothing more than to collapse, she slid the pack gingerly
back into place on her shoulders and stiffly started forward
once more. The people she was tracking how to tank,
she thought, with sudden fury. How the hell was she
going to catch up with that? She wished with fierce
concentration for something to help her. A random memory of

(19:13):
Tilda's mother answering with simple assuredness Tilda's question of how
stories seemed to work out despite all odds, almost magically
so that they had to. The author wanted them to,
the readers wanted them to the God machine, a phrase
that stuck with Tilda as something menacing, perpetually watching lying
in wig toster things up if they got boring or

(19:35):
people got complacent, for its own entertainment, but at the
same time as its purpose. That's what made them stories,
Leonarova told her daughter. But this wasn't a story, Tilda
reminded herself despairingly as her dragging foot tripped over a
ret in the road and sent a flare of panes

(19:55):
spiking up her ankle. If the God Machine existed, she
figured it was broken down now and no longer properly working,
instead only churning out more and more misery and nothing
to fix it. Pointless, pointless, waste all of it. In

(20:16):
a daze, she contemplated turning around and searching out the
group she split ways with on their way to DC,
asking for help from them or the Resistance. But still,
her exhausted legs carried her towards Madison, thinking of him,
scared and alone, cringing as he was yelled at, wringing
his hands as the sun sank lower in the sky.

(20:38):
She approached the outskirts of a town at the seat
of a range of blue mountains called Shawsville, she'd have
to stop. Even though now she'd hit a stride, if
it could be called that of shuffling robotic steps, she
felt she could keep going forever that stopping and hoping
she could find the whole to start again was more misguided. Nonetheless,

(21:00):
a wound in her side had started to bleed warm
blood trickling over the fingers she was using an attempt
to stem the flow, and if she even gave a
passing thought to the pain in her ankle, she nearly
passed out. Tilda had become accustomed to the flavor of
agony associated with keeping it in constant motion, keeping it
still it conshindoed into something much less manageable, But she

(21:22):
knew she must be doing more damage to it, and
thus hurting herself more in the long run, as well
as undercutting her ability ultimately to be of any use
when it came to rescuing Madison. So as on savory
as it was, she needed to find some shelter for
the night to deal with her wounds, all while the
people who had taken Madison got further and further away.

(21:45):
Shawsville was a small town, as with much of this
straight and flat highway they'd been traveling on. Tilda could
see much of what lay ahead, and thought she could
see all the way to the other side of the
town as she passed the sign population one thousand, three
hundred and one. Most of the town seemed to be
concentrated into square to the right of the highway, so

(22:05):
Tilda turned that way her hazy vision, skimming signs for
the Red Cross that indicated medical supplies. She came to
a four way stop. A precursory look at all the
options had her turning left further into town, with its
buildings with shingle roofs all faded, whites and browns and blacks,
Strings of lights criss crossing across the street, big red bows,

(22:27):
now brittle with weather and age, tied around iron lamp post.
A banner slumped with missing letters hung across the middle
of the square reading Welcome to Shawsville. It was all
very quaint and sad, and the emptiness left behind by
a town that Tilda was sure had either died off
or migrated to somewhere else. With more supplies. She hoped

(22:50):
that that didn't mean there were no supplies left. Her
stomach somersaulted with the anticipation of relief when her eyes
landed on a small pharmacy, over praying that it was
by some miracle unlocked or the windows already broken out.
As she got closer, she saw the glass door was open,
which was both a good and bad thing. It certainly

(23:11):
did not bode well that the supplies hadn't been raided.
The worn down soles or her shoes slipped on the
crushed glass like sand in the doorway as she stepped
carefully into the darkness of the pharmacy, ears perked for
any sounds of life. As her eyes adjusted, she hovered
in the doorway, the pain in her body climbing as
she stood statuesque and waited for her vision to clear. Eventually,

(23:36):
the darkness distilled into shelves, many lopsided, hanging only by
a few screws on one side. Some collapsed entirely, but
though they had obviously been picked through, they weren't cleared,
and the pharmacy was larger on the inside than she'd
first expected. Being careful not to slip over her glass
or old coupon papers that had practically melded into the

(23:58):
floor with time. Because another would probably do her in.
At this point, she walked down the first aisle, snatching
up a bottle of pain killers she spotted way in
the back of the shelf, some caffeine strips, the few
remaining granola bars, and crushed packs of candy. Her arms
whole supply, she was forced to slide off her pack

(24:18):
and dump them in the front pocket, abandoning all pretenses
of organization in her current state. The next aisle produced
much less, mostly cheap electronics that no longer had any purpose,
and souvenirs she had difficulty fathoming were popular even before
HSV five had decimated the population, a small selection of
toys that made her stomach clench and worry. Over one

(24:43):
aisle was a mix of cold and sinus medicine, which
was almost completely cleared out, and a plethora of stomach
ailment remedies. Tilda swept whatever was left indiscriminately into her pack.
After that was a row of feminine hygiene products and condoms,
which seemed laughable to her now she had not a
period in years, and as for condoms, it was almost sad.

(25:04):
How wonderful a concept to ever live in a society
that would need those seemed to her. The only reason
she knew what they were was out of a curiosity
of reading the back of the package many years ago,
when she had first started out her life on the
road and on the run with Madison. At first, she
thought she'd misread the instructions the designated use, or that

(25:24):
there must be a mistake at misprint, But several inspected
boxes and packets later she confirmed that there was no error.
What a relic these were now a true representation of
how life was different after HSV five, the line before
and after which separated two distinct sets of worries, til

(25:44):
to skip this row and too much pain to spend
time down an aisle dedicated to useless but fascinating throwbacks
to an extinct way of life. At the pharmacist counter,
she found a few things that might be of use.
While almost all the prescription medications were gone, she did
find muscle relaxans. Down the second to last aisle, she
located a handful of bandages and brace wraps, some antiseptic

(26:07):
and rubbing alcohol, some creams that promised muscle relief, as
she suspected, the long defunct cooler along the back had
been emptied out save for some spoiled milk based products
and energy shots. The last row she quickly deemed is useless,
one side dedicated to makeup and hair, the other degreeting cards,
another reminder of a time long gone. Every part of

(26:31):
her now clamoring loudly for her attention. She located the
bathroom in the back corner, which thankfully had a small
window to allow in the rapidly waning light. Tilda folded
down the baby changing station. What an unimaginable concept that was, too,
and spilled out her spoils, grimacing at the pain in
her side. There was a stool in the back corner.

(26:53):
She wasn't sure what it had been used for, but
she was glad it was there. Tilda dragged across the
floor and situated it in front of her mind makeshift
work area. She did a double taking gasp, catching sight
of someone in the room with her, but it was
only her reflection in the grimy, rusted mirror. Slowly the
tension left her muscles, and she exhaled deeply several times,

(27:15):
staring at her ghastly appearance. Her face was one massive,
bloody bruise, her nose and the left side of it
swollen to about twice their usual size. Blood turned black
with age and exposure to air, covered much of her skin.
One of her eyes was ringed with dark purple, the
white of it stained with red. Her jacket was stiff

(27:38):
with dried blood, as well a splotch of dark on
her right side. Streaks of it painted her hair and
her fingers. Tilda's throat tightened as she looked away, inexplicably. Ashamed,
she rummaged through her pack and dug out some antiseptic wipes,
perching uncomfortably on the stool to give her feet an
ankle some relief, which unfortunately translated to a nodiating swell

(28:00):
of pain. Swallowing back bile, she extricated herself from her jacket,
shivering at the cool air, and began the laborious process
of wiping the blood off her arms her face, going
through several wipes before she even got to her midsection.
She tried to figure out a way to proceed with
her shirt on, but could not, so she wriggled out

(28:21):
of it, gasping with the lancing pain in her shoulders.
And ribs as she did so. The fabric was disgustingly
crusty and hard as she laid it out on the
changing table on top of her jacket. Next, she slid
off her boots and her blood filled socks, almost swalling
out of her chair at the sudden agony this caused
from her right ankle. No longer being braced, it was

(28:43):
comically terribly swollen. Groaning, she stood, keeping her weight off
her right ankle as much as possible by balancing with
only its toes as she shed her torn and dirty jeans,
knowing she'd have to inspect her throbbing knee and place
them on top of the jacket and shirt. Taking several
steadying breaths, Tilder wiped the blood from her feet and

(29:06):
her middle, more than a little disheartened when she could
scrub at a particular stubborn patch, only to discover it
was just a bruise. It suddenly occurred to her that
now would be a good time for some painkillers before
she started going about man handling and trying to set
sprains and potentially broken bones. A shaky hand deposited three
pills into the palm of her other one, and she

(29:26):
popped them into her mouth, swaking them down with a
large gulp of water. Doing her best not to dwell
too much on what she was about to do, she
probed her ankle with gentle fingers, experimentally rotating it with
not much success, but several curse words. Biting her lip,
she flexed it, Determining it was sprained and not broken.

(29:48):
She grabbed from her pile of supplies a brace wrap,
struggling for several minutes with the packaging. Once she finally
opened it, she set about wrapping her ankle, wondering how
she possibly could fit this back in her shoe. It
took a few times of rewrapping for her to achieve
the proper level of tightness so that it stuck but
was not cutting off her circulation. From there, Tilda worked upward,

(30:10):
examining bruised calves and a green and purple swollen mass
that surrounded her knee. Unsure of the best way to
handle a bust of knee, she cleaned the ugly sice
along the outside of it with antiseptic and yet another
string of curse words and breath hissed through her teeth,
then tested the muscle cream on it, which at first
was uncomfortably cold, but then suddenly warmed and became soothing.

(30:31):
This she rapped loosely with bandages. Next, she tackled the
explosion of purple and blue and red that was her
left side. Touching it gingerly had her whipping back her
hand in pain and bending over, robbed of all conscious
thought as the pain demanded all of her attention. Not good. Tentatively,
she straightened again, wheezing tears, squeezing out the corners to

(30:55):
her eyes. The light was fading. She had to deal
with this now. With her fingers. She examined her ribs
for any brakes, but did not discover any. That didn't
mean she was free of fractures, but there was no
way of testing that that she knew of, not without
some equipment. That she was missing. A deep cut just
above her hip bone was the source of the blood.

(31:17):
Carefully she cleaned it, crying out as the antiseptic burned
like acid. Her tight throat made the already annoyingly difficult
task of breathing even harder. Tilda patted the wound, which
had begun bleeding again a small eruption of bread, but
it quickly stopped, and she had fixed a bandage over it.
Sitting as straight as she could, she awkwardly set about

(31:39):
unspooling a length of bandage around her mid section, the
whole thing in exercise and discipline. The diminishing of the
light infused everything with urgency, which made her slow progress
all the more tortuous, her fingers clumsier, sloppier. She ran
out of the white gauze before she would have liked.
A second layer of wrap would have been preferable, but

(31:59):
she she didn't have much left, and she still had
a wrist to rap, so one layer would have to do.
Tilda gave an experimental twist of her wrist, wincing, touching
it with gentle fingers, and concluded that it too was
more likely sprained than broken. Overall, she'd been lucky, she
thought grimly, a stark recollection of her reflection swimming to

(32:21):
the surface of her thoughts. The wrist was more quickly
wrapped and with just enough bandage for a secure fit.
Tilda wrinkled her nose at the dirt and blood jammed
underneath her nails, reluctantly turning her attention to the mirror
and the dregs of the remaining light. She inspected, her face,
now free from all of the blood, but not much
improved in appearance. Her nose was visibly broken. With cautious fingers,

(32:45):
she tested the swollen fixture, wondering if she could set
it herself, pop it back into place, or if the
pain was even worth it. With all the swelling, it
was just impossible to tell how much her appearance was
truly impacted. But if it was just a superficial thing,
bit she care, what did she care for? One more
corcos added to a face that already did not meet
the standards of conventional beauty. Still, she pressed against it,

(33:09):
trying to write it, gasping in pain as she did so.
Blood gushed out suddenly, and she halted, reaching for the
paper towel dispenser above the changing station and pressing the
material to her nostrils, pinching the bridge of her nose.
Just another memento given to me by another, she thought,
no big deal, But she could fill her eyes glossing

(33:29):
over at the injustice of it, even as she told
herself it would do no good to think about it.
By the time the bleeding stopped, the bathroom with sheathed
and darkness for a very tragic moment. She debated if
she should trash her clothes or put them back on,
but in the end she found herself sliding back into them,
wincing at both the hardened fabric and the tunging it

(33:50):
caused when it came into contact with her bandaged wounds.
The socks she changed, tossing the old ones, soaked through
and stiff with blood, into the trash. They did not
change shape as they sailed to the air and hit
the side of the bin. Tilda fished into the bottom
of her pack and produced another pair of socks, unrolling
them and inching them on her feet. Her right shoe

(34:12):
would have to stay off for now, she decided. She
also pulled out her flashlight and replaced the item she'd
collected into her bag in a less haphazard manner, pausing
at the bottle of muscle relaxant, but deciding it'd be
better to save that for whenever she found a place
to sleep for the night somewhere nearby. She didn't have
time or the energy to search too far. As she

(34:34):
exited the bathroom, afraid the beam of her flashlight would
catch the gleam of someone's eyes, she turned down the
aisle she so quickly rejected earlier of hair and makeup,
inventorying the products for anything that might help her get
blood out of her hair, picking up something called dry
shampoo near the end of the row, promising no water needed.
She also grabbed a brush, sliding both into a side

(34:57):
pocket of her pack, and stepped back out into the
to the square, made eerie by the new darkness. Illuminated
by a cone of white light emanating from her flashlight
sticking to the sidewalk, she read the signs as best
she could as she headed deeper into the town center,
hoping to find a hotel or bed and breakfast. She
did her best to keep her right socked foot and

(35:18):
minimum contact with the cold asphalt. Tilda took her right,
limping her way down the main thoroughfare, her breath fogging
in front of her. The feeling that something was missing,
like a phantom limb, was unshakable. Without Madison by her side,
she turned down a residential street dotted with small houses
painted with what must have once been flamboyant colors, now overgrown,

(35:41):
long sporting dilapidated signs and decorations. Ornate mail boxes posted
at the end of every driveway. Tilda picked one a
little further in on her right, making her way up
a stone path and to the door, ridiculously raising her
fist and knock on it before sheepishly lowering her hand
and testing the knob, powerful relief surging through her like

(36:02):
a drug. When it swung open with a loud, whining sound.
She stepped into the foyer, listening, shutting the door behind her,
shining her light around her surroundings. It was just as
small as it appeared from the outside, one story, three rooms,
not much warmer than it was outside, till the thought

(36:23):
as another cloud of breath escaped past her lips. The
previous owners had taken down their photos, presumably to take
them to wherever they evacuated to, but other than that,
the place looked largely intact. Further into the house, Tilda
ventured slowly, sweeping her light around for any threats or conversely,

(36:43):
anything she could use, before she would allow herself to
lie down on the blue poofy couch she spied in
the living room. She had to ensure the house was
danger free, and also she wanted to check for any
supplies in case she had to leave in a hurry.
Opening doors along the main hallway. She first found the backroom,
searching the cabinets under the sink and the medicine cabinet,

(37:03):
but finding nothing of use. The next room was the
master bedroom, The closet cleaned out, apart from some articles
of clothing deemed unworthy of saving some ugly sweaters that
Tilda debated but quickly decided against, dresses what looked to
be business clothes. The room across the hall was a
child's room, outfitted with twin beds and blue and green

(37:25):
colored scheme. Tilda's heart clenched again, and she left and
shut the door behind her, not having the stomach to
search it. In the kitchen, she also found nothing of use,
so she stumbled back to the couch and collapsed onto it,
exhaustion permeating her aching bones. She saw the flashlight on
the table and dug out the muscle relaxanse, retrieving too,
and swallowed them whole, with a couple of gulps of water,

(37:48):
replacing everything. Once she was done, her stomach was too
unsettled to even entertain the idea of food, so she
switched off her light and curled up on her side
to ease the pain of her ribs and ankle, pulled
the company draped along the cotch's back down and snuggled
beneath it. Sleepiness and the need for her body to heal.
Overcoming the pulsing aches that threatened to keep her anchored

(38:09):
to consciousness. Tilda was asleep almost immediately, too tired to
be afraid. So that brings us the end of this chapter.

(38:39):
This was very much an introspective chapter of like, what's
going to happen, what's going to happen next, and her
trying to grapple with what's going to happen next, especially
when what do you do? You don't know where they went,
so her trying to deal with all of that and
being very very like at the lowest point of the

(39:04):
low And when I was reading back over this, it
did kind of I mean, this is a really grim chapter.
It did kind of make me laugh though, because and
I apologize to Christina because I kept being like, oh, yeah,
I remember that, but like it was it's a very like, oh,

(39:24):
it's that time I broke my ankle, and then had
to I was in the woods and I had to
keep going, oh it's that time I broke my nose.
Oh it's that time I fell down a hill and
couldn't get back up, like it's a very I remember
all of those instances. And then the town she like
goes into that is that's my small town, Like the
Christmas decorationss on the square. I mean, it's not unique

(39:45):
to my small town, but that is very much what
I was going for in my head. So it's strange.
That's one of the things that I've found interesting about
revisiting these is how clearly I remember, like where I
was mentally when I wrote it, but also these very
specific in this case, times of feeling like hopelessness or

(40:12):
I don't know what I'm going to do I don't
know what I'm going to do next. That it's very powerful,
powerful feeling. But this, this one, this this part of
the trilogy is the shortest part. So without giving too
much away, things will Things are gonna happen pretty quick.

(40:33):
So if you're like, oh God, I hope you don't
stay in this moment forever, it doesn't. It doesn't stay
like this. So I hope you enjoyed it. I hope
you come back and check it out. I'm excited to
get to the to the end and hear hear what
you all think. Here are any theories if you have them,
but yeah, in the meantime, huge shout out to Christina

(40:56):
as always who does these. These are extra work. She
makes them sound of me. And yeah, if you would
like to contact us, you can. You can email us
at stuff Media, mom Stuff at heeartmedia dot com. You
can find us on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast, or
on Instagram and TikTok a stuff One Never told You.
We also on YouTube. We have tea public store, and
we have a book you can get wherever you get
your books. And yeah, thanks as always too our super

(41:16):
producer Christina, our executive producer Maya, and our contribuer Joey.
Thank you and thanks to you for listening Stuff I've
Never Told You prodiction of Iyhart Radio. For more podcasts
from my Heart Radio, you can check out the heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.