Julius Dorsey

Julius was born into a middle class family in the suburbs of Maryland. He was diagnosed at a young age with a learning disability which hampered his schooling. He was not limited mentally, however, but rather he was exceptionally bright. He just didn’t fit the usual mold and he acted out, demanding attention, and so, he was put into special education.

He dropped out of school at the age of sixteen, bored to death with it, and took up writing short stories for a local publication. His stories were well received and while he wasn’t paid well, his mother and father took care of him because they had never really expected too much from him, giving his ‘mental state’.

Julius, however, believed there wasn’t anything ‘wrong’ with him. He just wanted to do things his own way and school was far too rigid for his imagination. By the time he was twenty, he was a published author and while he was never on the best seller list, he was known in his field and once in a blue moon even recognized in public. That was how he met his wife later, when he was twenty-eight.

A mousey, quiet twenty year old girl named Claire followed him around, thinking he was just the greatest writer to ever walk the earth. She was so blinded by her love for him that she failed to notice he was moody, needy and inflexible. She also overlooked the fact they rarely had physical contract. His parents were so happy he finally found someone (and that he’d be moving out of their house) that they paid for the wedding, a small affair on the beach.

Claire and he were rather happy at first. She left him alone to write and adored his quirks, but tolerating being pushed away whenever he felt creative started to wear on her nerves. He wasn’t loving or affectionate, he rarely even touched her. She didn’t want to leave him, because she did honestly love him so he came up with another solution – she moved out. She got a place of her own and insisted that he and her go out on ‘dates’ like they used to when they first met. She still kept he house tidy and made sure he had food in the cupboards. This strange measure saved their marriage and Julius knew, in his heart, even though he was completely unable to verbalize it, that she was amazing. He loved her so much, but he couldn’t quite ever find the words to say that. He’d write her stories or poems that said it, but when speaking, words were so difficult for him to find. Their relationship was strange and at times it was more like a brother and sister than husband and wife.

Still, somehow, the odd pair came to the conclusion that it was time to have a child. By now, Julius was thirty-five and he felt, despite his ‘issues’, that he was ready to be a father. Claire moved back in with him and the two had just returned from the doctors where they’d learned she was with child when the news reported that a tsunami had crashed upon the eastern shore and that flooding was beyond belief. They were suggesting everyone in Western Maryland move further west as soon as possible because unexplained tornadoes were occurring in irregular patterns.

Being in Western Maryland, protected by mountains, helped Claire and him survive the flooding and the twisters but every fruitless call to his parent’s house was leaving him sick to the stomach. He wanted to go to them, to find out if they were aright. Claire, ever the long suffering wife, agreed. As they packed up a few things, she started to feel ill. Tired, achy… within a few hours she could hardly stand up.

In what might have been Julius first unselfish act, he carried her to bed in his house and ran out to the store to get medication. Unfortunately, the medication was all gone. Of those that survived, it seemed almost all the women were sick. A lone man at the local store told him that people were dead all over the country: earthquakes, tidal waves, irregular weather patterns… it was as if the earth was revolting. He said Julius was the first person he’d seen in days and he asked the man to get his wife and come with him westward, away from the coast, but Jul was afraid to move Claire fearing that Claire might lose the baby or he might lose her.

Instead, he rushed home and stayed with her. The phone lines were down and the hospitals were vacant, no doctors or nurses to be found.

By New Years day, Claire was dead… he buried her in the garden she kept up for him, behind his house. Having no idea how to do anything on his own, he went back to the store, seeking out that old man… but he was gone. And it seemed, so were all the survivors in the area. Julius is not equipped mentally for any form of disaster, let alone of this scale.