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________________short stories
My World
The sky was an overhanging firmament of a desert murder, the dying day stained with a Saharan gold and streaked with spatters of clay red, blood pigments left to saturate the dusk. The dust still hadn’t settled from the explosion. It had been three weeks since the last radio broadcast fell away into an unending chasm of static. That was when he knew that they were truly alone, ashamed of the sadistic exhilaration that ran through him when he reached the revelation. He remembered reading Lord of the Flies as a class assignment in high school, right next to Jackie Crusoe who rowed through a constant flow of homosexual gags to pass the period, which was pretty easily done considering all those preteen boys being on a deserted island by themselves. He ignored it mostly, finding a little more distraction in agitating a restless spirit, a consensus among freshman boys, enflamed in the fantasy of possessing so much power over one’s self and thinking “If only, if only..”
He hadn’t heard from Jackie since, only just then reminded of him since the alarms were cut off. He had to climb the tower manually and disconnect the cords from the power source a week and a half ago, so sick of that high pitched scream after a few days. He missed it now. He had heard the phrase “a deafening silence” before, but he hadn’t understood it until those fog-horn intercoms faded with a crackle on that twelve-story tower, the dying whine being swept away into the wind. The silence was almost unbearable. The only thing that saved him from madness was the subtle conversations of the others. Yes, there were survivors of the bombing, but not many. Each he had found while roaming the streets, many of them not in their right mind after a few days of sheer isolation.
Now he stared back into the dim recesses, watching the silhouetted bodies walk and interact amongst each other, talking quietly and in comfort. He understood why he fared a little better than the others when he found them, taking them under his care. He was the sole son of a very successful and political mother and father, working abroad while maintaining him in a prepaid apartment a mere 15 minute walk from his high school. Solitude had become a life style. The fact that most of them were of the general same age as he was what perturbed him. An equal number of all ages must have been decimated in the blast, covering various now-cratered parts of the city. Who didn’t die from that must have died from drinking the polluted water, unaware that toxic particles from the bomb makeup had made the water undrinkable. He had been in US History just the day before where Mr. Bailey was discussing the tainted water problems after WWI. “The explosive residue that dispersed into the air upon impact eventually settled into the soil and water of the area’s residents and, as the war ended, several hundred cases of lead and nitrate poisoning came forward to hospitals which at the same time were rebuilding themselves, making for quite a situation.” He could remember thinking about his internship at the government contractor that was supposed to start that weekend, hardly paying attention but none the less picking up the occasional tidbit. He now felt a little numb to the fact that these tidbits may have very well saved his life, many a time tempted to take those last few drops of water pressure from the street-side faucets. He wondered if Mr. Bailey took his own lecture to heart, if he survived.
“Tobias?” A soft voice called out to him from the dark haze. Tobias turned his head and gazed over the expanse of dark from his perch in the window, about mid-height between the ceiling and the floor, barely reachable from the makeshift scaffolding that for whatever reason was not touched by any of the sonic gusts. His face was silhouetted by the thick red glare of the atmosphere.
“Sorry. Who is that?”
“Marissa. May I?"
“... What?”
“Come up there. Looks like you could use some company.”
“Oh, uh, sure. But I’m alright.”
He had found Marissa trapped in a concrete wine cellar down on 21st street, a good three mile walk from the siren tower. She had been gagging on the stench of the two other dead children for a few days, assumably her younger brothers who unfortunately never lasted through the first day of the onslaught. As her clumsy movement caused the scaffold to clatter and creak under her weight, he gazed back out into the expansive skyline, one which would have not have seemed so large hadn’t the city been so completely leveled. The scaffold rocked as she settled herself. She didn’t seem so old now, he concluded, recalling how the dirt and blood matted onto her face and into her hair made her age thirty years in that particular instant. The process gradually reversed itself over the course of several days, now looking more of the pre-teen 13 year old that she was intended to be.
“What’cha lookin’ at?”
“Nothing really, I was just thinking. How is everyone?”
“We’re fine. James is still a little shaken up though.”
“James?”
“James—the bigger kid you and Francis found at that factory thing.”
“Oh. Well I’d assume that much, I mean.”
There was a beat of silence. Tobias pulled a ripped portion of his neon yellow and green jacket closer as a breeze gusted through the small pore of the window.
“We wish you’d come talk to us more. You just seem so distant all the time.”
“Do I?”
“Yeah. I mean, I was wondering,” she said, gesturing her hand out to the broad expanse of the warehouse floor, “you made all this for us and you don’t ask for anything in return, not even some company. What’s your deal?”
“I don’t have one. I just don’t ask a lot from the wounded, that’s all.”
“…”
“And anyway..” His voice lowered a decibel, coherent to just about a murmur, his volume lost in the confused abyss of his thoughts. “Have you noticed there are no older people here?”
“Older?”
“Yeah, like, over 19 or 20. It’s like all the adults died first in the explosions. For the first few days I could think up rational explanations for it. The natural rebound of younger kids, water poisoning, stuff in the lungs suffocating people.. but now it’s just too much of a coincidence, you know? Whatever happened to those people?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t really noticed.”
“No.. No, didn’t think you would.”
He pivoted his hips as he casually dove into his back pocket, letting the crumpled cigarette cartridge roll around in his hand. He glanced only momentarily at the complacent young girl, implying the end of the conversation as the rolled tip lighted up. The smoke rippled through the silhouette of the dying sun.
He thought of the others as a post-mortem cross cast an eclipse effect upon the face of the sun, inflicting a black scar as it drowned itself into the far hill. Not the ones in his flock, nestled just some feet below him around a large pit fire. There were other groups of people who managed to get by, fighting off the radiation poisoning for the first few days before developing an immunity. Tribes, if you will. He made no effort to contact them on his own group’s behalf, as he had witnessed their growing savagery in the weeks following the bombings. At first it was simply the vicious thrashings of animals, leaving their potentially-nutritious remains to rot in the thick humidity. No purpose or reasoning behind the attacks. It was just because—and he didn’t question it.
It escalated into the murder of refugee families, sprawling their insides around the lot of them like some sort of morbid, intertwined puzzle piece. He didn’t know these families, he just heard through the badly compromised grapevine that they existed, nothing more. The younger children gathered around their surrogate mothers and wondered if, perhaps, many of them could have been victims of such manslaughter.
The sun intensified, so much so that it cast a detailed shadow of his body upon the opposite side of the warehouse wall, traveling over the concave chasm without any regard of the “distortion over space” concept. He turned away. His eyes throbbed. The sickening ache reminded him of the empathic heads of unfortunate martyrs staked onto thin wooden spires, resting upon the other side of the hill. It was the final, perturbing offense of that “tribe”. They were all adults who had the displeasure of surviving the fallout. The smell of the slowly baking flesh clawed the inside of his lungs and created a piercing pain behind his eyes. Thankfully, he had come alone. There were only 4 others at the time. In the following weeks, the spires became more numerous. He wondered where they were finding these people.
The scaffolding creaked as he eased himself out of the large window space and down the zigzagging rebar ladder to the warehouse floor. The clap of his worn gray sneakers echoed into the hollow air and the others’ quiet chatter stopped abruptly. He could feel eyes watching him.
“Toby, are you going somewhere? Why don’t you eat first?”
“I’m fine.” He waved his hand dismissingly, as if the notion were a curious moth that he was swatting away. “I’m just taking a walk. My eyes need to rest.”
“I’ll go with you--!”
“No!”
Tobias turned on his heel and the blonde, blue-eyed boy, one of the oldest of the children, slowly drew back and sat down in his previous seat. Their eyes remained locked upon each other in a primal challenge until the light-haired boy dropped his daring glance in defeat, presenting his submission to the other. Tobias continued with an about-face on the balls of his feet. The warehouse doors were locked and barred, with two children standing guard at the lower level windows with pistols they had found abandoned in the streets. He pushed towards them slowly.
“Why do you have to do that all the time?”
“Beg pardon?”
He stopped and empathically peered back over his shoulder. It was the light-haired boy, standing again. A bitter prospect had sheathed his features in the time that he took six steps towards the main aluminum doors. He stopped walking shortly after, turning around entirely with the discovery of a rekindled ferocity that seemed to be emanating off the other.
“Why do you have to do that all the time, huh? Act so tough like you don’t need anybody?”
“Thomas, please—“ A voice pleaded from somewhere amiss the fireside bunch.
“Well, news flash Tobias!”
Throb
“You need us as a lot more than we need you!”
Ache
“So step off and stop being such an arrogant prick!”
That’s what I wanna see..
Thwack.
A scream cried out from the smaller group of children as Thomas fell into the wood planks, sliding across the expanse of a few before coming to a halt, clenching his face. A groan and he peered through his fingers up at his assailant, who was rubbing his knuckles.
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Those little cannibal bastards are a hell lot faster than me. You would be dead by now.”
“...”
“Walk with me, Thomas.”
Again, he began to walk towards the aluminum doors. Thomas scrambled up clumsily from the splintered floor boards and began to pursue the other. The guards pulled back the iron guard and allowed the doors to swing open.
Thomas had becoming increasingly confronting in the past days. At first he seemed a danger to his leadership, feeling an underlying obligation to the “pack”, a metaphorical dominant male if you may. Thomas was fourteen, going on fifteen, and the oldest beneath him. A flood of clay red light washed over them like a Mediterranean red tide. He remembered talking about the phenomenon in Biology three months before. It was when the native algae become bloated with the tiny red seaweed particles they fed from, dying and being washed onto the beaches of the Mediterranean. The sea is described to turn as red as blood. Ancient Romans and Greeks feared it as an omen from the Gods that they had displeased them. It made him feel eerie to feel like he was constantly bathed in blood, as it made him feel ruthless. Desperate. He contemplated what he was to do with this boy.
He questioned too when the dust would finally settle. He was beginning to forget what it was like to see in any other shade but red. They walked down the expanse of the street extending out from the collection of warehouses. It was totally devoid of sound. Perhaps he shouldn’t have disconnected the siren after all.
“Thomas, I don’t expect you to be grateful to me. It was an act of being human that convinced me to rescue you.”
“I know.”
“You know I could have left you in that well, had I been any less of a living thing.”
“I know.”
“Then,” he said, eyeing him as they walked, “you should also know that being human means having emotion. I do want to keep you all safe, but that also means I must keep you all from being reckless. In doing so you endanger yourself and others.”
“How am I endangering anyone? I just wanted to come with you to make sure nothing happens to you.”
Tobias rolled his eyes a little. He seemed almost humored. Thomas seemed started that he took a sense of humor out of this situation.
“I’m quite alive, yes or no.”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s all you need to know. If I could survive, by myself, out here for a week before seeing another living being, I think you can trust me that I can take care of myself.”
“I guess.”
“So.” he dove deep into his back pocket again. He spat out the burning nub balanced between his lips. “Is that it?”
“What do you mean?”
“You seem like you’re really on edge lately. I don’t think you got so pissed off back there just over wanting to come with me.”
“No, really.. that was all. I just wish you would..”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Then go back inside. It’s getting dark. I’ll be back soon.”
The new tip lighted up as the crack of the aluminum doors crashing together echoed some ways behind him. The stick pressed between his lips, immobile, he cut through to a side street, one well lighted in the dusking sun. It didn’t seem so offensively bright anymore, disappointed that he bothered to move at all and risked exposing himself to new radiation. Albeit, he was outside, and so it was probably in his best interests to take a walk just so he wouldn’t have to go back on his conviction to do so. The chipped, rubble sidewalks gave way to large pieces of concrete, and like the yellow brick road, he followed it, casually kicking away large chunks of limestone concrete from his path. It was a simplistic means of passing the time. It did however pass time quite effectively, complimenting of a simplified society, a whole global empire falling to ruins in minutes and nothing to show for it but crumbled buildings and a tattered sidewalk, rattled with rubble and fresh car parts. Tobias took a last drag off his cigarette, throwing it into the side-winding chasms in the splintered rock mix. He hadn’t started smoking until after the incident. He found a full cart of them at a gas station over by 6th and he, with his new-found logic, decided “what better time than now?”. It was becoming a nasty habit, much like his affiliating soccer with kicking lumps of asphalt on his walks. The rocks colliding with brick walls, signs, and concrete all sounded like gun shots going off in a ghost town.
Tobias continued to walk, impulsively recoiling back his foot while taking aim at a particularly large and cannon-ball-esque rock.
Crack!
His leg remained suspended in mid air, the large lump sitting there silently, motionless and undisturbed. Tiny, paranormal hairs on the back of Tobias’s neck stood on end, feeling a pair of eyes, or many, burning into the small of his back. He turned, and no sooner had the child been noticed, looking no more than six or seven, it lunged at him and buried its teeth into the soft tissue between his neck and shoulder, tactfully chosen to sever an artery.
“AAAGGHH!”
His fingers clutched deeply into the child’s scalp and hair, pulling voraciously, with life-threatening urgency, and like an emaciated dog, its teeth embedded further with a driving force it could not comprehend. Blood began to trickle down his green and yellow neon windbreaker and he let out a scream as the puncture wound struck nerve. Suddenly, a wall seemed to approach him, for he didn’t realize he was running, incapable of any sort of rational thought as he turned suddenly and cruelly sandwitched the boy between the brick wall and his own body. He withdrew and charged again, hearing the crack of bone against brick like a familiar gunshot echo.
And again.
And again.
The grip released. The boy’s head nodded back and fell onto the pavement, stunned. There was blood on the wall. Frantically, Tobias rushed away, stopping at the curb and picking up the large chunk of concrete like a massively oversized softball. He moved in for the kill.
It was nine, and Thomas sat at the dying trash can fire with his head in his hands. It had been hours and he could not forgive himself, for something surely must have happened. He felt like crying, but a deep conviction dammed his panic and fear. The girls with the young children crowded into the far corner of the warehouse where the sleeping quarters were curtained off. A cry rang out from the guard.
“Oh man, oh man.”
“Tobias! It’s Tobias!”
“Someone open the gate!”
His eyes flickered dimly, cloudily. Tobias, clenching his arm, could only shuffle down the partially gravel walkway, his quickness hindered more by his anemia than the thick, uneven quartz and generic rock. A mass party flooded from the warehouse, swarming him like a mass of flies. The warehouse floodlights came on in an act of timid impulsion, fearing the assailants may still be nearby, baiting them. Tobias, in his mind, would have assumed that they would have planned as much, and yet there were no followers. How awkward. But wait—an eye? Two eyes. Two multiplied by many, screams and wails flooding out from within the darkness. Shots rang out, and he collapsed.
Even the hunter must be hunted, occasionally.
Such is the way of predator and prey.
"Animals strike curious poses."
~Mallory W.
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