“What are the symptoms?”

“Were you bit?”

“Is everyone ok?”

“QUIIIIIEEEEEEET!” A voice rang out. The heads turned to the yeller as silence spread over the crowd.

“Now let's get one thing straight!” The man shouted. He towered over all the heads around him, the man next to him’s hair was barely able to give his chin a tickle.

“We’re not gonna die and we’re not gonna go back out there.” He brandished a finger, pointing at the glass doors that now separated them from the outside world. Figures were emerging, moving slowly towards the newly locked glass doors.

“EEEEEE!”

A yell came near the back of the crowd.

“This is no time to panic.” The large man spoke again. This is the perfect time to panic, Jamie thought to herself. Nowhere left to go. Stuck in some Verizon store with eight complete strangers. Some macho man who thinks he is in charge. This was a recipe for a cake she did want to make.

Scratch… Scratch… The figures were at the doors. Peeling away the lining around it. The locks were holding. For how long? Who knows.

“Relax everyone,” a Verizon employee said “these doors have held out some of the largest black friday crowds known to man, there's no way they’ll give way to these, these, things.”

His stutter did not help his cause.

As if on cue the entire door frame gave way. It was too late for those by the door. Jamie had already scampered away to a back closet. She shut the door. Crying and pleading came through, but she ignored it all. It sounded like a bar fight, screaming, yelling, she even thought someone was playing music. Finally, the noise began to die down; only a distant cry could be heard every couple minutes. She pushed the door a needle’s width open, trying to make out what was still left in the store. Nothing stirred. The store looked like it had hosted a buy one get one sale for iphones, it was torn apart ceiling to floor. She knew this was her chance. She waited another second, then flung the door open to flee.

“OUCH!” The door had slammed right into someone walking by it.

“Oh my god I’m so sorry,” said Jamie, although she didn’t feel too sorry. She stepped out to meet them. As she emerged they let out a scream similar to the kind you hear at amusement parks from the people riding the big roller coasters.

“AHHHH!” The person took off, like a hundred meter sprinter, in the opposite direction.

Confused Jamie touched her face. Why does it feel so wrinkly and old? She rushed to the bathroom and flicked on the light. In the mirror there wasn't a Jamie anymore. There was a thing. A thing with the power to divide a world. A thing that could ruin humanity. She fell against the wall, stunned at her sudden change in appearance. Tears began to wet her cheeks. She slowly lifted her head to look in the mirror again. Looking back at her was a face… Not her face… But a face… the gloriously grotesque face of our 45th president, Donald Trump.

--News reports have documented the spread of the unknown virus has, in fact, become airborne. All citizens are expected to --

​

Maya turns off the TV and sighs. Stupid News Outlets, all they want to do these days is cause fearmongering. She walks to the fridge and grabs a can of cream soda and returns to her desk to get to work.

​

She stares dully at the dual monitors, tapping her pen against her desk. She was dreading this doctorate thesis but it won't write itself, as much as she wished it would.

​

Maybe some music will help since the TV didn't, she thinks.

​

She opens a new tab in her browser and quickly signs in to her favorite pandora channel and presses play on the screen. A delightful upbeat bass starts the opening rifts to one of her favorite songs and she smiles.

​

This is much better, she says to herself.

​

She begins fleshing out her outline of her thesis; The Long-term effects of airborne pathogens. She looks over her research, back to the first date of the first noted outbreak of the most recent pandemics. She skims over the notes.

​

-- In the beginning, there is mass hysteria which helps to radicalize the general population into spreading it further, faster. She looks up from her notes and adds onto the already bare-bones outline, making special stylized notations on where she'll expand on the theory, and where the first pandemic example to use will go.

​

An emergency siren alert blasts Maya out of her thoughts as she finishes up that step in the outline:

​

WE INTERRUPT THIS MUSIC TO BRING YOU URGENT NEWS FROM THE WHITE HOUSE.

​

Ugh, she thinks. Again? They've already had at least two 'Urgent' news briefs this week. She rolls her eyes and turns the volume up. There may be something here she can use.

She only halfway listens to the broadcast, for there are no new developments that she cares about at the moment. Just the same ol' confusion and delay...people holing up in their homes afraid to come out, people eating other people to survive, etc.

​

She finishes all the bullet points of this part of the topic as the news brief begins to recap for anyone just joining in and pushes herself back from the desk and stretches in her chair. She rolls her shoulders and gets up to a side table where there is a beaker over a Bunsen burner in a glass enclosure. she puts on the full face mask lying there beside the thick glass box and pulls it snugly over her head and shoulders, making sure that nothing is exposed. Safety first, ya know? She then puts on a glove that goes into the glass to where she can stir the terrible concoction that is brewing.

​

She smiles cruelly under the mask. Once this has fully matured, she can start the research on the next part of the thesis: What happens when there is genetic mutation and modification for more widespread destruction.

She finishes up and takes off her mask. The light from the computer monitors illuminate the grotesque and shriveled parts of her face; permanent scarring from the first pandemic looking even more disfiguring and revolting in the blue-tinted shadow.

​

Soon...she smiles again to herself. The Joker-esque grimace that passes as a smile for her now could sour milk. I will have my revenge on the scientists that did this to me in the first place for trying to stop the first pathogen being released.

~*~*~*~*~

​

Sorry guys, long time lurker but first time writer: I'm super rusty and I don't normally do such realistic prompts so please go easy on me D:

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I awoke to a horrible headache. Reaching for my glasses, I hear them fall from the table to the floor. I swear as I bend over to pick them up. The headache causes me to fall from the bed. I'm too miserable to get up so I lay on the floor, drinking in the coolness of the linoleum floor.

I tried to remember if I went drinking last night. I came up with nothing after making sure my alarm was turned off. Slowly, I realized it was Saturday morning, and I had probably caught something. What was that thing the TV said was hitting everyone? Filo - something? Sibling to Ebola or something like that. I take a deep breath and force myself to my feet, shuffling to the bathroom.

I do my morning essential. I get in the shower, and as the water runs down my face, I close my eyes. Something felt off. I felt my head, and there wasn't the soft poof of hair there. My brain came to sudden alertness and I looked at the floor of my shower. There was hair everywhere! I suddenly shut the water off. I looked through all my shampoos and conditioners....None smelled any different. I hadn't used any of them yet, but I still didn't think I had spread myself with Nair in my sleep.

I dry off, noticing all of the hair on my body is gone. Not even near my genitals. I flinch as I peer into the mirror. A pink-skinned horror staring back at me. Even my teeth looked different. Somehow brighter, and not the yellowish brown I was used to. And my eyes! No longer the slits I had seen as a child. Now they are large and round...and have white in them.

The room started spinning and a black tunnel began closing in.

I awoke sometime later, my head on the floor and my feet wrapped around the toilet. I knew I had the Filo disease, whatever they were calling it. It was horrible. I had lost all of my hair! My skin had lightened, and my teeth and eyes were so foreign. I planted my face in my now-pink hands. I felt a little stubble on my jawline. "Perhaps I'm overreacting," I hoped. Looking in the mirror, I saw some hair growing on my face. Not the normal, soft, flowing brown I was used to. It was a thick, black, scratchy thing. This disease was merciless. I was no longer the same Sasquatch I had always thought myself to be. I was something new, and I hated it.