Member-only story
City of Mania
Where do we go from here?
The last train out of the city departed today.
The last actually meaning the last.
I watched from the roof of my old high school building as it trudged along into the fog. Who knows what’s out there. There may be nothing left. The only people who ever came back were the train operators, and they never told a soul what they saw beyond the barrier.
I would have gotten on the train myself months ago — but I didn’t pass the selection process.
In another world, they might have said my brain was not quite right.
In this one — well, I was a liability. They called it the Mania — this euphoric high that would overcome people with next to no warning, but there was no drug causing it. You could be there one moment, doing something as simple as putting bread in a toaster — and at the next hint of awareness you could be outside your home, watching it burn to the ground.
The people who were religious said we were possessed by demons.
The scientists said it was something wrong in our genetic code.
We never found out the answer either way.
Half of the people with the Mania didn’t last beyond a few months once they’d had their first episode. Another significant…
