01-30-2018, 12:38 PM
Trigger warning: death, illness, vomit, mature language.
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<center><font color="white" style="font-family:times new roman; font-size:9pt; line-height:12px; letter-spacing:2pt;"><i>
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife</i></font></center>
<font style="font-family:times; font-size:12px; letter-spacing:1; line-height:normal; color: #D0D0D0 ;">
“Hello? Is anyone there?”
The banging on the bunker door shocks Alex from his half doze, he stumbles up and off the cot, peers at the video screen. The girl at the door is a mess, clothing torn, hair matted. Something’s streaked on her cheek, and Alex can’t tell if it’s dirt or blood. He pushes the buzzer and speaks into the mic.
“Are you clean?”
“I haven’t seen anyone in weeks. No fever. No cough. No wounds.”
“What’s on your face?”
He watches through the screen as she lifts her fingers up, touches the blotch there. She spits on her hand, rubs it against the stain again.
“Killed a squirrel the other day. Made a fucking mess of it.”
“No open wounds?”
“None. Look.”
She’s spotted the camera now, looks at it dead on. She lifts up her filthy hair, shows her neck, each arm. Without hesitating, she strips. Her skin is dirty, but no fresh injuries. There’s a tattoo on her forearm and winding down her wrist, a cartoonish tree and a boy, arms outstretched. It looks familiar, but Alex doesn’t remember how he knows it.
Without him prompting, she balances on one foot, than the other, steady as a beam.
***
The virus – called Captain Trips by some, for the way its victims stumbled, zombie-like, before collapsing and bleeding out through their various orifices. It hit too quick for anyone to do much about it – other than baptize it with a ridiculous name – and everyone was dying before they really knew there was a problem. A few symptoms were common enough that the newscasters managed to shout them out before everything went to static. Like some fucking nightmare hybrid of flu and Ebola – fever, nausea, fatigue, ataxia. And bleeding, of course. Out of eyes and ears and nose and every place you never wanted to see blood. It hit quick, at one week a quarter of the world was reported dead.
At two weeks, at least half.
At three weeks, well, the people doing the counting were dead, too.
Alex was lucky (not that that words means much, these days). The houses out here were few and far between, and kept well-stocked, since the nearest town with anything resembling a proper grocery was a 45 minute ride along roads that set your teeth on edge.
That alone might have saved him, but the kicker was his father, who’d built the place with his bare hands and fever dreams, and had added in the bunker. It wasn’t much larger than the basement in the house, but the door sealed and there was video outside. The place itself was stocked with rations, water bottles, everything you might need to live out your post-apocalyptic fantasies.
The great irony, of course, was that his father didn’t live to see Captain Trips – he’d keeled over of a heart attack when going to slop the pigs, and it was several hours before Alex found him, and, by then, well--
Pigs will eat anything. They’re opportunists. Alex was convinced it was the worst thing he’d ever seen, his father’s body in the pen, the sounds of the pigs taking their meal. He’d had to take his gun out, fire into the air to get them to move away so he could drag his dad’s corpse out and call 911 for an ambulance that was as useless as – well, as useless as lipstick on a pig.
***
Alex knew he should turn away. Shouldn’t listen to whatever she had to say. He had no way of knowing this girl was uninfected.
But almost three weeks in this fucking bunker, with nothing but a handful of books and crosswords and short jaunts outside to empty the slop bucket, and he was going fucking insane. He thought he was used to solitude – even with dad on the farm, they hadn’t interacted much, and after he died Alex had moved through the house like a ghost himself.
But this – being trapped in the small, confined space, nothing to do, while the world collapsed around you – that was a different kind of solitude. And it fucking <i>sucked</i>.
He went to the keypad, typed in the code: <i>0919</i>. His mother’s birthday. She’d passed almost five years ago, a nasty pancreatic cancer that burned through her like a wildfire. Dead not six months after the diagnosis. It was her death that had really sent Alex’s father into the spiral, convinced the cancer had been contracted at her job (a government position, working on weapons to be used in far-away countries, all whilst unaware of the weaponry unleashed in her own body).
The keypad flashes green and there’s a <i>click</i> as the door unlocks. He swings it open, catches the girl as she finishes pulling her shirt over her head.
She stumbles into the bunker, and he realizes he can smell her, body odor and dirt and something else, something deeper and rank. He wonders what he smells like. Lord knows. It’ll go away soon enough, like the monkey house at the zoo. You can get used to almost anything.
“I’m Alex,” he says. He doesn’t offer to shake her hand, nor does she look for it.
“Lauren,” she says. She’s still looking around, taking in the bunker – the shelves of canned food and bottled water, the cot wedged in the corner. She looks at the radio, currently off – he turns it on, sometimes, runs through the channels. Mostly it’s static. Once he heard a man praying. Once he heard a woman’s voice, asking <i>hello, hello, is anyone out there? I need help, my kids need help, please --</i>
He’d shut it off, after that.
Her eyes go back to the shelves, wide, and he takes the hint.
“Want something to eat?”
“If you’re willing to share.”
He walks to the shelf.
“We’ve got corned beef, beans, chili, tuna – can’t warm any of it up, really, the gennie doesn’t give me enough power for the microwave--”
“Chili’s fine.”
He grabs a can and the can opener, hands them to her. As she opens it he hands her a spoon. They sit at the small table in silence, and she eats eagerly. When she’s done, she scrapes the edges of the can.
“Fuck, thank you,” she says, “I haven’t eaten in days. I broke into somebody’s house, a week back, took what I could, but the <i>stink</i> of it – been loath to go into any of the houses. Or stores.”
“Bad out there?” he asks. A stupid question. To her credit, she doesn’t laugh.
“A fucking nightmare,” she says, “roads all jammed. Most of the cars have bodies in them. People out on the sidewalks. Like they had to have an audience. No dignity. Couldn’t crawl off peacefully to die like most animals.”
He thinks of his dad, face down in the mud. The snuffling noises of the pigs. There’d been no dignity to that, either.
“You been here the whole time?” she asks.
“Yeah. As soon as news broke I pretty much took cover in here.”
“You been preparing for something like this?”
“My dad was. He liked building things. Liked being prepared.”
She looks around again. At the one cot. He answers the unspoken question.
“Heart attack. Two months ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
He laughs. It’s not funny.
“Seemed like the end of the world at the time. Trips puts that in perspective, I guess.”
“Guess he saved your life, though.”
He changes the subject.
“What about you? You’re the first living thing I’ve seen in weeks.”
She looks past him.
“Seems I’m immune. I was with my family, when it hit. Never touched me. Guess I’m <i>lucky</i>.”
She spits the word like a curse.
“Luck’s all relative,” he says. She laughs, and the noise sounds high and dangerous, razor’s edge from a sob.
***
“There’s not much to do,” he says, as she peruses the bookshelf, “I threw some stuff in a suitcase, but that’s about it.”
She grabs a crossword book, holds it up.
“Do you mind?”
“Be my guest. I’m garbage at them.”
She flips through; glances at his attempts, each one screwed up as he wrote in the wrong words and fucked the whole thing up. She wrinkles her nose.
“No kidding.”
They sit in silence at the table, her pen scratching at the pad. He has a book, but it’s one he’s read a half-dozen times already. He mostly watches her. She’d accepted his offer of baby wipes without any scowl, had wiped some of the dirt off.
“Six letter word for disaster?” she asks.
“Trips,” he replies.
“That five letters.”
“Write bigger.”
“Very funny.”
He glances up. She’s looking down at the page, but she’s smiling. He feels a tingle on his skin, a touch of heat. He doesn’t say anything else.
***
“I’ve got a treat,” he says. It’s grown dark outside, the bunker more contrasted in its shadows. He doesn’t know exactly what time it is – his circadian rhythms are thoroughly fucked up – but he can get a vague sense of time. From the top shelf – the one where his gun is kept – he pulls down a bottle of Jameson.
“I was saving it,” he says, “for a special occasion. And I guess another survivor is as special as it gets.”
He pours the whiskey into two glasses, hands one to her.
“What should we drink to?” she asks.
“To luck,” he says, “to survival.”
“To luck,” she replies, tipping her cup to his. They drink. The whiskey burns in the best way, heat radiating all over him. It’s warmer, with another person in the bunker. He’s no longer sure how to share space, especially in such small confines. She seems unaffected by it, only high spots of red on her cheek from the drink, blooming like roses.
“You know what’s lucky,” she says, “is I have a food over my head. Food in my belly. And I’m not fucking dead.”
“Amen.”
He pours another drink. Another. He’s buzzed, soon, and the room tilts in ways it oughtn’t. He ends up on the floor, boneless, looking up at her. She’s ringed in the fluorescent glow of the light, haloed like a goddess.
“Lauren,” he says.
“Yes?”
“Your tattoo…”
“Which one?”
“On your arm. The tree. What’s it from?”
She looks down, at the drawing. A tree, a boy, an apple falling. She smiles.
“<i>The Giving Tree</i>,” she says, and he remembers. How could he have forgotten? It was one of his mother’s favorites, she’d read it to him over and over again. The tree, giving pieces of itself away, again and again; until it had nothing left to give. Until the boy was an old man, sitting on the tree’s stump. One final gift.
“And the tree was happy…” he murmurs. Lauren smiles, surprised.
“Exactly,” she says, “it was my girlfriend’s favorite story. Mine too. We joked it was fate.”
He waits for more, for her to talk about her girlfriend. To give that piece of herself. But she’s quiet.
“You miss her,” he says. A stupid thing to say.
“I miss a lot of people,” she replies.
“I’m sorry.”
***
He doesn’t remember falling asleep – passing out on the damn floor like a frat boy – but he wakes up with his stomach churning. Fucking Jameson. Lauren’s asleep on the cot, and he doesn’t want to wake her in this particularly disgusting manner, so he keys in the number – 0919 – and stumbles outside before puking up the Jameson and corned beef he’d stupidly eaten for dinner. He leans against the tree, breathing heavily. It’s the longest he’s been outside, and the air feels impossibly fresh and clean. He looks up to the stars, the haphazard skew of constellations. His mother had known a dozen, used to point them out, but the only thing he really remembers how to find is the North Star. <i>Brightest in all the sky,</i> his mother said, pointing, <i>and for centuries, it’s guided people home</i>.
<i>And what if you’re already home,</i> he thinks, <i>but everything’s gone wrong?</i>
Luck’s all relative.
Another wave of nausea overtakes him and he staggers further away. There’s not much left to puke up, mostly bile that burns at his throat. Something white in the dirt catches his eye. Still on his knees, he crawls towards it. He reaches out, picks it up.
It’s a bird’s skull, small and impossibly delicate, barely larger than a penny. He runs his finger over the surface, feather-light. He looks at the thing, there in his open palm, the curve of the beak and wide eye sockets. His fingers curl shut, the beak cutting briefly into his hand before the whole thing crumbles in his palm. When he tips it back out it falls onto the earth into a dozen pieces. He feels something wet on his cheeks, can’t believe he’s fucking <i>crying</i> at this.
The entrance to the bunker seems further away. When he rises to walk back, he stumbles again. Must still be drunk. He never was very good with whiskey.
***
He grabs and extra blanket and curls up on the rug. His stomach still shifts uneasily and the bunker’s still hot – almost sweltering – but he figures he’ll make do. His little jaunt outside was exhausting, and he resolves to figure out a better workout regime. Maybe Lauren will have some ideas.
He sleeps, fitful, and when dreams come, they come strange. He dreams of his father, his mother, of the bird turning to dust. He imagines carving pieces of himself and handing them out. <i>Here, take this. Here. Here. Here</i>
<i>…and the tree was happy…</i>
He wakes up and his cheeks are wet. Must have been crying again. He lifts an arm up – it feels oddly heavy – and wipes at his cheek. The light in the bunker is dim, but not dim enough to obscure the fact his palm comes away dark.
The realization comes quick as a heart attack.
He drags himself to a sitting position, wipes at his face again. As if there might be different results.
His hand is covered in blood.
He tastes it now, too, and it tints his vision, turning the world an almost pinkish hue. Like rose-colored glasses.
There’s a noise, as Lauren rises, her voice calling out.
“Alex? Are you – oh, <i>fuck</i>.”
“Go,” he says. Speaking feels almost impossible. A marathon to move the word out.
“Alex…”
He tries to stand. He’s not sure why he bothers. Perhaps some distant, foolish part of him is convinced that if he can stand it’s a sign he’ll get better. A triumph. He almost makes it, but then she’s holding his shoulder, guiding him. She has something in her hand. Something she took off the top shelf. More whiskey? No…
“I’m very tired,” he says. As if this explained it.
“Sit down, Alex. Sit down and rest.”
And Alex did. Something cool presses against his head.
(<i>and the tree was happy</i>)
***
He never even heard the gunshot.
<center><font color="white" style="font-family:times new roman; font-size:20pt; line-height:12px; letter-spacing:2pt;">sleaze</font>
<font size=2><font color=white> cancer x garbage</font></i></font>
</font></a></center></font></tr></td></table></tr></td></table></center>
Word count: 2500 exactly (yikes)
Required elements:
- Whiskey (Alex & Lauren drinking Jameson)
- A children’s book (tattoo of and allusions to The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. PDF can be read <a href=http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/35C1809B-B30D-450E-AE7C-1F399C7CA5AF/155278/TheGivingTreePoem.pdf>here</a>)
- Skeleton of a bird (Alex finds a bird skull outside)
<center><table bgcolor=black width=500 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td><center> <center><table bgcolor=black width=500><tr><td>
<center><font color="white" style="font-family:times new roman; font-size:9pt; line-height:12px; letter-spacing:2pt;"><i>
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife</i></font></center>
<font style="font-family:times; font-size:12px; letter-spacing:1; line-height:normal; color: #D0D0D0 ;">
“Hello? Is anyone there?”
The banging on the bunker door shocks Alex from his half doze, he stumbles up and off the cot, peers at the video screen. The girl at the door is a mess, clothing torn, hair matted. Something’s streaked on her cheek, and Alex can’t tell if it’s dirt or blood. He pushes the buzzer and speaks into the mic.
“Are you clean?”
“I haven’t seen anyone in weeks. No fever. No cough. No wounds.”
“What’s on your face?”
He watches through the screen as she lifts her fingers up, touches the blotch there. She spits on her hand, rubs it against the stain again.
“Killed a squirrel the other day. Made a fucking mess of it.”
“No open wounds?”
“None. Look.”
She’s spotted the camera now, looks at it dead on. She lifts up her filthy hair, shows her neck, each arm. Without hesitating, she strips. Her skin is dirty, but no fresh injuries. There’s a tattoo on her forearm and winding down her wrist, a cartoonish tree and a boy, arms outstretched. It looks familiar, but Alex doesn’t remember how he knows it.
Without him prompting, she balances on one foot, than the other, steady as a beam.
***
The virus – called Captain Trips by some, for the way its victims stumbled, zombie-like, before collapsing and bleeding out through their various orifices. It hit too quick for anyone to do much about it – other than baptize it with a ridiculous name – and everyone was dying before they really knew there was a problem. A few symptoms were common enough that the newscasters managed to shout them out before everything went to static. Like some fucking nightmare hybrid of flu and Ebola – fever, nausea, fatigue, ataxia. And bleeding, of course. Out of eyes and ears and nose and every place you never wanted to see blood. It hit quick, at one week a quarter of the world was reported dead.
At two weeks, at least half.
At three weeks, well, the people doing the counting were dead, too.
Alex was lucky (not that that words means much, these days). The houses out here were few and far between, and kept well-stocked, since the nearest town with anything resembling a proper grocery was a 45 minute ride along roads that set your teeth on edge.
That alone might have saved him, but the kicker was his father, who’d built the place with his bare hands and fever dreams, and had added in the bunker. It wasn’t much larger than the basement in the house, but the door sealed and there was video outside. The place itself was stocked with rations, water bottles, everything you might need to live out your post-apocalyptic fantasies.
The great irony, of course, was that his father didn’t live to see Captain Trips – he’d keeled over of a heart attack when going to slop the pigs, and it was several hours before Alex found him, and, by then, well--
Pigs will eat anything. They’re opportunists. Alex was convinced it was the worst thing he’d ever seen, his father’s body in the pen, the sounds of the pigs taking their meal. He’d had to take his gun out, fire into the air to get them to move away so he could drag his dad’s corpse out and call 911 for an ambulance that was as useless as – well, as useless as lipstick on a pig.
***
Alex knew he should turn away. Shouldn’t listen to whatever she had to say. He had no way of knowing this girl was uninfected.
But almost three weeks in this fucking bunker, with nothing but a handful of books and crosswords and short jaunts outside to empty the slop bucket, and he was going fucking insane. He thought he was used to solitude – even with dad on the farm, they hadn’t interacted much, and after he died Alex had moved through the house like a ghost himself.
But this – being trapped in the small, confined space, nothing to do, while the world collapsed around you – that was a different kind of solitude. And it fucking <i>sucked</i>.
He went to the keypad, typed in the code: <i>0919</i>. His mother’s birthday. She’d passed almost five years ago, a nasty pancreatic cancer that burned through her like a wildfire. Dead not six months after the diagnosis. It was her death that had really sent Alex’s father into the spiral, convinced the cancer had been contracted at her job (a government position, working on weapons to be used in far-away countries, all whilst unaware of the weaponry unleashed in her own body).
The keypad flashes green and there’s a <i>click</i> as the door unlocks. He swings it open, catches the girl as she finishes pulling her shirt over her head.
She stumbles into the bunker, and he realizes he can smell her, body odor and dirt and something else, something deeper and rank. He wonders what he smells like. Lord knows. It’ll go away soon enough, like the monkey house at the zoo. You can get used to almost anything.
“I’m Alex,” he says. He doesn’t offer to shake her hand, nor does she look for it.
“Lauren,” she says. She’s still looking around, taking in the bunker – the shelves of canned food and bottled water, the cot wedged in the corner. She looks at the radio, currently off – he turns it on, sometimes, runs through the channels. Mostly it’s static. Once he heard a man praying. Once he heard a woman’s voice, asking <i>hello, hello, is anyone out there? I need help, my kids need help, please --</i>
He’d shut it off, after that.
Her eyes go back to the shelves, wide, and he takes the hint.
“Want something to eat?”
“If you’re willing to share.”
He walks to the shelf.
“We’ve got corned beef, beans, chili, tuna – can’t warm any of it up, really, the gennie doesn’t give me enough power for the microwave--”
“Chili’s fine.”
He grabs a can and the can opener, hands them to her. As she opens it he hands her a spoon. They sit at the small table in silence, and she eats eagerly. When she’s done, she scrapes the edges of the can.
“Fuck, thank you,” she says, “I haven’t eaten in days. I broke into somebody’s house, a week back, took what I could, but the <i>stink</i> of it – been loath to go into any of the houses. Or stores.”
“Bad out there?” he asks. A stupid question. To her credit, she doesn’t laugh.
“A fucking nightmare,” she says, “roads all jammed. Most of the cars have bodies in them. People out on the sidewalks. Like they had to have an audience. No dignity. Couldn’t crawl off peacefully to die like most animals.”
He thinks of his dad, face down in the mud. The snuffling noises of the pigs. There’d been no dignity to that, either.
“You been here the whole time?” she asks.
“Yeah. As soon as news broke I pretty much took cover in here.”
“You been preparing for something like this?”
“My dad was. He liked building things. Liked being prepared.”
She looks around again. At the one cot. He answers the unspoken question.
“Heart attack. Two months ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
He laughs. It’s not funny.
“Seemed like the end of the world at the time. Trips puts that in perspective, I guess.”
“Guess he saved your life, though.”
He changes the subject.
“What about you? You’re the first living thing I’ve seen in weeks.”
She looks past him.
“Seems I’m immune. I was with my family, when it hit. Never touched me. Guess I’m <i>lucky</i>.”
She spits the word like a curse.
“Luck’s all relative,” he says. She laughs, and the noise sounds high and dangerous, razor’s edge from a sob.
***
“There’s not much to do,” he says, as she peruses the bookshelf, “I threw some stuff in a suitcase, but that’s about it.”
She grabs a crossword book, holds it up.
“Do you mind?”
“Be my guest. I’m garbage at them.”
She flips through; glances at his attempts, each one screwed up as he wrote in the wrong words and fucked the whole thing up. She wrinkles her nose.
“No kidding.”
They sit in silence at the table, her pen scratching at the pad. He has a book, but it’s one he’s read a half-dozen times already. He mostly watches her. She’d accepted his offer of baby wipes without any scowl, had wiped some of the dirt off.
“Six letter word for disaster?” she asks.
“Trips,” he replies.
“That five letters.”
“Write bigger.”
“Very funny.”
He glances up. She’s looking down at the page, but she’s smiling. He feels a tingle on his skin, a touch of heat. He doesn’t say anything else.
***
“I’ve got a treat,” he says. It’s grown dark outside, the bunker more contrasted in its shadows. He doesn’t know exactly what time it is – his circadian rhythms are thoroughly fucked up – but he can get a vague sense of time. From the top shelf – the one where his gun is kept – he pulls down a bottle of Jameson.
“I was saving it,” he says, “for a special occasion. And I guess another survivor is as special as it gets.”
He pours the whiskey into two glasses, hands one to her.
“What should we drink to?” she asks.
“To luck,” he says, “to survival.”
“To luck,” she replies, tipping her cup to his. They drink. The whiskey burns in the best way, heat radiating all over him. It’s warmer, with another person in the bunker. He’s no longer sure how to share space, especially in such small confines. She seems unaffected by it, only high spots of red on her cheek from the drink, blooming like roses.
“You know what’s lucky,” she says, “is I have a food over my head. Food in my belly. And I’m not fucking dead.”
“Amen.”
He pours another drink. Another. He’s buzzed, soon, and the room tilts in ways it oughtn’t. He ends up on the floor, boneless, looking up at her. She’s ringed in the fluorescent glow of the light, haloed like a goddess.
“Lauren,” he says.
“Yes?”
“Your tattoo…”
“Which one?”
“On your arm. The tree. What’s it from?”
She looks down, at the drawing. A tree, a boy, an apple falling. She smiles.
“<i>The Giving Tree</i>,” she says, and he remembers. How could he have forgotten? It was one of his mother’s favorites, she’d read it to him over and over again. The tree, giving pieces of itself away, again and again; until it had nothing left to give. Until the boy was an old man, sitting on the tree’s stump. One final gift.
“And the tree was happy…” he murmurs. Lauren smiles, surprised.
“Exactly,” she says, “it was my girlfriend’s favorite story. Mine too. We joked it was fate.”
He waits for more, for her to talk about her girlfriend. To give that piece of herself. But she’s quiet.
“You miss her,” he says. A stupid thing to say.
“I miss a lot of people,” she replies.
“I’m sorry.”
***
He doesn’t remember falling asleep – passing out on the damn floor like a frat boy – but he wakes up with his stomach churning. Fucking Jameson. Lauren’s asleep on the cot, and he doesn’t want to wake her in this particularly disgusting manner, so he keys in the number – 0919 – and stumbles outside before puking up the Jameson and corned beef he’d stupidly eaten for dinner. He leans against the tree, breathing heavily. It’s the longest he’s been outside, and the air feels impossibly fresh and clean. He looks up to the stars, the haphazard skew of constellations. His mother had known a dozen, used to point them out, but the only thing he really remembers how to find is the North Star. <i>Brightest in all the sky,</i> his mother said, pointing, <i>and for centuries, it’s guided people home</i>.
<i>And what if you’re already home,</i> he thinks, <i>but everything’s gone wrong?</i>
Luck’s all relative.
Another wave of nausea overtakes him and he staggers further away. There’s not much left to puke up, mostly bile that burns at his throat. Something white in the dirt catches his eye. Still on his knees, he crawls towards it. He reaches out, picks it up.
It’s a bird’s skull, small and impossibly delicate, barely larger than a penny. He runs his finger over the surface, feather-light. He looks at the thing, there in his open palm, the curve of the beak and wide eye sockets. His fingers curl shut, the beak cutting briefly into his hand before the whole thing crumbles in his palm. When he tips it back out it falls onto the earth into a dozen pieces. He feels something wet on his cheeks, can’t believe he’s fucking <i>crying</i> at this.
The entrance to the bunker seems further away. When he rises to walk back, he stumbles again. Must still be drunk. He never was very good with whiskey.
***
He grabs and extra blanket and curls up on the rug. His stomach still shifts uneasily and the bunker’s still hot – almost sweltering – but he figures he’ll make do. His little jaunt outside was exhausting, and he resolves to figure out a better workout regime. Maybe Lauren will have some ideas.
He sleeps, fitful, and when dreams come, they come strange. He dreams of his father, his mother, of the bird turning to dust. He imagines carving pieces of himself and handing them out. <i>Here, take this. Here. Here. Here</i>
<i>…and the tree was happy…</i>
He wakes up and his cheeks are wet. Must have been crying again. He lifts an arm up – it feels oddly heavy – and wipes at his cheek. The light in the bunker is dim, but not dim enough to obscure the fact his palm comes away dark.
The realization comes quick as a heart attack.
He drags himself to a sitting position, wipes at his face again. As if there might be different results.
His hand is covered in blood.
He tastes it now, too, and it tints his vision, turning the world an almost pinkish hue. Like rose-colored glasses.
There’s a noise, as Lauren rises, her voice calling out.
“Alex? Are you – oh, <i>fuck</i>.”
“Go,” he says. Speaking feels almost impossible. A marathon to move the word out.
“Alex…”
He tries to stand. He’s not sure why he bothers. Perhaps some distant, foolish part of him is convinced that if he can stand it’s a sign he’ll get better. A triumph. He almost makes it, but then she’s holding his shoulder, guiding him. She has something in her hand. Something she took off the top shelf. More whiskey? No…
“I’m very tired,” he says. As if this explained it.
“Sit down, Alex. Sit down and rest.”
And Alex did. Something cool presses against his head.
(<i>and the tree was happy</i>)
***
He never even heard the gunshot.
<center><font color="white" style="font-family:times new roman; font-size:20pt; line-height:12px; letter-spacing:2pt;">sleaze</font>
<font size=2><font color=white> cancer x garbage</font></i></font>
</font></a></center></font></tr></td></table></tr></td></table></center>
Word count: 2500 exactly (yikes)
Required elements:
- Whiskey (Alex & Lauren drinking Jameson)
- A children’s book (tattoo of and allusions to The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. PDF can be read <a href=http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/35C1809B-B30D-450E-AE7C-1F399C7CA5AF/155278/TheGivingTreePoem.pdf>here</a>)
- Skeleton of a bird (Alex finds a bird skull outside)