Through Glass (13 page)

An overlooked plethora of nourishment had been around me this entire time, hidden in the linings of the discarded food packets that I had merely thrown on the floor over the years. I grabbed them without caring how old they were and ripped them open; my fingers shaking as I reveled in the dried bits of gruel.

I licked every packet I could find, letting as much food into my body as I could possibly allow. I don’t know why I didn’t think about this before, but it didn’t matter. It was in my stomach now while my belly was distending further and further the more I put into it.

Even though it wasn’t that much, I was already starting to hurt from overeating.

I didn’t care about saving more for later. The thought didn’t even cross my mind before I was surrounded by empty packets; each one licked clean and still no prospect of food for tomorrow.

Although, I wouldn’t think about that now. It wasn’t worth it to worry about tomorrow; today I had found food and that’s what mattered.

Right now I would focus on the uncomfortable pain from having eaten so much, the way my stomach stood out comically from my rib cage. It felt good to have food inside of me. I could already feel my body responding to it; not with energy, more just in comfort. I could sit and smile like a happy, fat man all day; except I wasn’t a happy fat man, I was an emaciated twenty-year-old. Either way, I was still comfortable and that’s really all that mattered.

I smiled and licked my lips, wishing I was tasting something besides the moldy gruel, yet savoring the last little bit that hit my stomach anyway.

I looked around me, partially wanting to search for more empty packets to lick, however I knew that, at the very least, I needed to save something for tomorrow. As much as I didn’t want to. Who knew, maybe they would come soon. Maybe then it wouldn’t matter.

I slowly pushed myself to standing, surprised at how quickly my body had regained strength. Granted, I wasn’t going to be running a mile or lifting weights anytime soon, but supporting my own weight was a start. At least now my body felt normal, well as normal as I could feel when eating moldy food in the dark.

I was torn between being tired and being bored. Part of me wanted to head up those stairs and take a long nap, while the other part wanted to read one of the same twenty books again for the eightieth time.

The book would have to win out, as much as my body felt like it needed to sleep, I didn’t think it was time yet. I don’t know what determined it as being time to sleep, but my body always seemed to know. As tired as I felt right now, I was pretty sure it just wasn’t time.

I had made it up about half the staircase when a small dinging hit my ears, the sound small and foreign like the bell of a small child’s bike, but growing to a high pitched shriek before it once again faded to nothing.

My shoulders relaxed at the noise, my whole body swirling with excitement. A shower. I had been waiting for so long to take a shower. At first the bell for water had rung every week, but slowly it’s been farther and farther apart, which was becoming a problem.

Not only did I stink, but water was just as vital to life as food.

I waited for the bell to stop before I continued my quest up the stairs. The loud banging and hissing echoing through the house as water began to fill the pipes.

I walked as quickly as I could into my bedroom and grabbed the two small laundry baskets I kept by the door; one full of dirty clothes, the other full of empty water bottles. I grabbed them firmly by the filthy rims and turned right around to drag them to the musty bathroom at the top of the stairs.

I left the door to the bathroom open, hoping to let some light into the already dark space, even though there wasn’t any light to filter in. It didn’t matter, I had become so used to the dark I could practically see through it now anyway. I was like those fish that lived in caves. For all I knew, my skin had turned translucent as well.

I pulled the laundry baskets into the bathroom before turning on the water all the way. The old, mildewed shower head groaned and gasped as the water made its way up the pipes. The clatter jolted through me and I jumped; it was the loudest sound I had heard in a while and it sounded like a firecracker in my ears.

My heart struck wildly in my chest at the noise, my pulse quickening in fear. I knew they wouldn’t come, but I wasn’t going to take any chances. I waited, wasting precious minutes with the water, until I knew I was safe.

I stripped down to my underwear quickly and threw my clothes into the bathtub, flinging the ones in the laundry basket in after them before I stepped in, my hands moving to unweave the dirty braid I always kept my red hair in. Even though, thanks to the dark and the gross soap, I don’t think my hair was red anymore; more like a dark auburn. Anne Shirley would be proud. Of course, she didn’t have to live in post-apocalyptic hell for hers to darken.

I cringed as the water hit my bare back, hating the frigid temperature, though loving the feel of water against my skin and the clean that would come after. When I first started having to bathe this way, it always made me think of that “Forefathers” stuff they throw at you in school.

Pioneers trekking across plains, paying for water, hunting, wars over liberty and freedom. That’s what I thought it would be at first. Wars until everything got better. People standing up to the monsters.

Yet, even when people had stood up against them, they were squashed down quickly. I had listened to the first battle in the dark and for almost a year after that I would watch from my window as others would try again.

Old men, lonely and crazed, would rush out of their house while wielding handmade weapons and screaming for freedom. Depressed mothers, trying to get their children to a safety that no one knew existed. Small armies wandering through the streets only to be picked off one by one as the car they traveled in was torn to shreds.

I still held out hope that someone was still trying, somewhere, but with only primitive weapons and instant death waiting, there was nothing I could do. I wasn’t dumb enough to run out into the street and expect to defeat them. At the very least, I would like a little hot water, however.

I grabbed the bright yellow bar of soap and ran it over my skin and through my hair as I jumped and hissed at the ice water that ran over me. One quick run over with soap and I moved to my clothes lathering and squeezing and wringing in an attempt to get them at least partially clean.

I wasn’t sure I had gotten them all, but it was better than nothing. The water continued to hit my skin as I grabbed the water bottles, filling them one after another before the water could shut off. It had already been at least ten minutes, most of that wasted waiting for a screech and I didn’t have much time. The water would shut off any minute and then I wouldn’t have enough water for drinking.

I had learned that lesson the hard way. Taking a twenty minute cold shower wasn’t the best idea and having no water was even sillier. Filling water bottle was now a priority. I hadn’t gotten to the point of filling water bottles at first the way Cohen did; I wanted to feel clean at least a little bit. Even if I was eating mold I still wanted a shower and clean clothes, probably more so after the mold thing.

I reached for the last three bottles and began filling them, my pace increasing as I heard the bell in the distance. My time was gone. Even though I had more than ten filled, I would need every last one. I set two down and focused on the bottle in my hand, my pulse increasing as I moved faster with my desperation to get the last of them before the water would shut off.

“Come on, come on, come on,” I hissed and shook the water bottle underneath the shower of water, as if the movement would help them to fill faster.

The last bottle was almost full when the strength in my hand gave out and the water bottle slipped from my grasp, shooting itself through the air and toward the toilet. I flailed as it sped away from me; my arm shooting out to grab it, swinging through the air. I had almost caught the bottle when my feet got tangled in the clothes piled at my feet. They held me in place and I lost my balance, falling sideways out of the shower as gravity pulled me down.

I kept the screech of fear locked in my chest as I fell, my hands fumbling through the air in an attempt to stop me as I searched for something to grab onto. I reached for the porcelain of the toilet, my hands clawing at the slick surface in a frantic search for friction, but found nothing. My already wet hands slipped against the saturated surface and I continued down, the edge of my eye ramming right into the hard corner of the sink.

The scream was out before I could stop it. The pain in my head too deep for me to be able to restrain it. My hands reached toward my head as the searing pain radiated, burning through my eye and right to the back of my skull. I tried to put pressure on it to take the agony away, but it only grew the harder I pressed into my head. The pain surged into a throb of fire that shot through me. My teeth clamped against my tongue, my lips pursing in a desperate attempt to cover my mouth enough to keep the scream inside. It didn’t work. Pain continued to pulse through me and everything kept coming.

My body writhed as I tried to control the scream, tried to get it to stop before it was too late. I couldn’t, though, everything hurt too much. The pain was too strong and the scream only grew until a shriek louder than my own hit my ears. The pain no longer seemed as important as what was coming. I writhed as the pain throbbed, my own scream building as the other did. I clenched my hands to my ears as I howled and the screech that would herald my death filled my ears.

They were coming for me.

The screech grew as I heard the front door to my house grind open, as I heard the quick click of talons against the floor. I tensed, everything tight inside of me as I tried to fight the cry that still flowed from my mouth. I clawed at it, my ears tuned to every sound as I listened, waited.

No.

This was not what I had chosen. This was not what I had fought for. I hadn’t fought hunger, starvation, darkness and loneliness only to end up like all the others; a circle of ash in the darkness.

This couldn’t be happening.

I wouldn’t wait. I couldn’t let this happen.

“No!” I yelled in fear and pain as the screech attempted to incapacitate me, however my voice was barely able to make it above the sound that filled my house.

I pulled myself up, trying my best to ignore the weakness of my body and the pain in my eyes as the scaly feet of the monster that had come to kill me stepped into view. The clawed toes clicked against the slick linoleum.

“NOOOO!” I screamed at him, my voice rocking as I screamed in its face. Its eyes looked at me from behind the sharp, black spines that covered it, the obsidian of them dark in anger.

Do not defy us
.

I could hardly see how that mattered anymore. How the rules mattered. They didn’t and I wouldn’t let them.

I glared at the thing with all the strength I could muster in my gaze, my teeth grinding themselves together with each pulse of anger I felt. I didn’t care that I had just broken another rule. I didn’t care if it was here to kill me. I wouldn’t let it.

It raised its hands, each finger a large, golden talon waiting to dig into me. I squared my jaw as I looked at the ugly half-human being in front of me. Determination thrumming angrily through me.

My heart beat heavily in my ears, my pulse quick through my body as the fear that was threatening to take over met with my anger and swelled into something tangible. It rocked through me and I screamed.

It wasn’t a scream of fear, it was a battle cry that ripped out of my tender vocal cords until I tasted the blood that now lined my throat. I didn’t care if it was useless, I wasn’t going to end like this.

I refused.

“NOOO!” I screamed again as I rushed it. My tiny body running into the heavy torso of the Ulama. The screech of the monster increased in confusion as I made contact with the razor sharp feathers that covered its body. A million points of pain and pressure cut into my skin as I collided with it. The sharp point of each spine cutting into my skin and seeping warm, wet trails of my own blood out of my body.

I ignored the pain, I didn’t care. I would not just let him win so easily. It was my life and I would fight for it. I screamed as I pushed against the Ulama, my hand moving into a fist as I swung blindly through the air until it impacted with the glossy black jaw of the monster.

My fist made contact as another scream rippled out of my throat. The hundreds of bones in my hands enflamed in agony at the contact. The steel-like jaw of the creature in front of me didn’t so much as move, the pressure reflecting back through the bones of my arm.

I howled as the pain shot up my arm, the call of the creature growing as its mouth opened in a screech, the jaw stretching unnaturally.

I staggered back a step as the noise hit me, the pain strong in my ears. My head swelled as the noise grew, its usual attempt at control attempting to cripple me. The thing moved, its arm swinging through the air as it brought the large talons down on me, the glint of gold attempting to signal my end.

“No!” I screamed again as the gold flashed before me, my feet stumbling backwards in my attempt to get away from its attack.

I felt the smooth backside of the talons press against the skin of my stomach, the cold pressure of death surging through me. I would not die like this, I couldn’t. If I could just get past him, I could grab a banister from the pile of weapons in my room. Then at least I would have a chance. I could fight back.

I rushed the monster again, lunging forward as I attempted to move past the thing and make it to my room. I pushed the creature back a step at the impact. Our bodies stumbled backwards together before the human arms of the monster lunged forward, shoving me back into the bathroom in an attempt to get me away from him. I hurled through the air, my back hitting against the wall of the shower where I slid down to land on the soggy clothes that littered the bottom.

A deep groan of agony escaped me at the impact that sent a ripple of agony through my weak body. Of course this wasn’t going to be easy; even with a weapon the chances of me coming out unscathed were slim to none. Without a weapon… we had come to that. My chest heaved as I gasped for breath, my pain filtering away from my body. I had felt pain before. Pain was nothing new to me now. I lifted my head to face the thing in front of me, willing it forward, daring it to end me.