Ignorance is bliss. That’s what they say. The more you know, the more you fear. 

Doesn’t really apply if you’re only pretending to be ignorant, though. 

The school still functions, if barely. Nearly half of the teachers have died, but a greater number of students have passed, too. It evens out, I suppose. 

What a morbid thought. 

Each day, on my way to the school building, I pass people on the street. People walking their daily walks to jobs they used to have, and some of them to jobs they still have. Some of them don’t talk. They keep their heads down and they walk, letting the breeze between us carry their pain so they don’t need to express it themselves. 

Others do talk. They greet me as if everything is fine in the world, as if we aren’t all dying one by one. They try to be ignorant. 

Problem is, it’s rather difficult to be ignorant when you’re aware that your world is slowly crumbling down around you. 

I can see it in their faces. 

The fear. 

The desperation. 

Forty people have died now. Will you be next? Will it be your spouse? Your siblings? Your parents? 

Everyone is counting down to the day that only fifty of us remain, even if they pretend not to be. They all hope against hope that the final ten people to die won’t be anyone they care for. 

The Prophet has done a fantastic job of giving everyone something to believe in, I’ll give him that. I wonder why he does it. 

Lust for power, probably. 

It doesn’t matter. 

In ten days, his deadline will arrive, and people will celebrate in ignorance of what will come the next day. 

In ten days, I’ll look up at him on his stage, and I’ll see through the lie he told to us. 

I’ll wish him death. But maybe he doesn’t deserve that. 

He’ll be providing us all with one day of peace before another forty-nine days of hell, after all. 

Maybe that counts for something. 

Not to me, but to everyone else.