The Story of a Mute Girl, a Warzone of a City, and Family II
Feb 20, 2015 23:22:17 GMT
Assault0137 likes this
Post by Admin on Feb 20, 2015 23:22:17 GMT
This one starts off with a change of point of view (in 3rd person), then goes back to our main brother characters and the soon to become mute. HAZARD: THERE IS STILL MILD LANGUAGE.
The man was cocooned in half a dozen blankets and covers in an effort to keep out the cold of the city night and push back the disease that raged in his body.
If only I didn’t have to be a dead weight, then those boys could have more of a chance. They’re young. I’m old and sick. And on top of it, I’m taking most of the covers, the man, Jay, thought to himself with regret.
Another wave of hacks racked his body without warning and caused the heap of blankets burying him to quake and shake. The rocking chair in which he lay, rocked backwards hard in response to his uncontrolled coughing fits. He just had to wait until the long series of sick coughs subsided. Maybe if his two nephews returned with medicine, he could get better and help them around the house. (If you can call three and a half walls and a part-caved in roof a house.)
The aging man wished to be well again. He wished to have neighbors that didn’t want to eat him. He wished to be able to stoke a roaring fire in the long empty hearth beside him. And he wished to have his religion back, because somewhere in the bombings, Jay had lost his faith. Away it flew, never to see him again. He tried to fool himself for a while into thinking that he still believed, but at the sight of his whole family, except his two nephews, dead, he doubted everything he once believed and loved. His God had left him.
Jay sighed as he turned his head to the boarded up window on the wall opposite of the hearth. The boards, hastily nailed and covering the glass, was just spaced out enough to be able to see outside and the sky above. The faintest sliver of moon was going in and out of the seemingly ever present wisps of smoke. In the distance, the tiniest flash of another bomb going off looked just like a blinking fire fly in a summer night back in the country. The accompanying echo, like thunder following faithfully behind lightning, was all but a dull thump to the nostalgic man in the rocking chair, rocking back and forth. Yet no sleep came to him.
That was when there came another sound, this time from the kitchen. It was the sound of the side door being broken down. Whoever it was obviously wasn’t Leon and Ryker.
There were several clomping footsteps and gruff voices from the adjacent room; they weren’t even bothering to be quiet about their deed. Robbers really were so confident and stupid. Jay reached weakly for the Beretta M9 on the table stand next to him. It was time for him to earn his keep in this house.
‘God, pardon me for the dark acts I am about to commit’ Jay prayed instinctively, his hand gripping the gun’s handle with his shaking right hand. …’ah, who am I kidding? I stopped praying a while ago. If I die tonight, I die alone.’
He attempted to first get up and take off the heavy blankets, but then settled for slowly rising from the chair with all of his covers still on. Robbers or not, the house was cold without air conditioning. At least he was able to make it to the door leading to the kitchen before another wheezing spell came over him and gave him away to everyone in the house.
As the soldiers spread through the dark aisles of the store, Leon, the girl and I were quick in going back the way we had come, which was the closest way out. We weren’t seen, and they didn’t know where to look. We had an easy, quiet exit.
The girl, still silent and eyes closed to the world, rested in my scarcely strong enough hold. Her head bobbed lightly up and down as I tried to be quick and quiet about our getaway. It was as if she were in a deep sleep. But why? I had just heard her talking to the soldier not a minute ago. She was defenseless, and Leon had been willing to leave her.
How did the factions cause the country to blitz like this? To the point where people are ready and willing to let others be raped and murdered all around them? What happened to us all? I thought with waves of sadness that I had been experienced for months.
And just like that, the late October night air hit us in the face again as we ran into the first rows of ghostly cars. Up we hiked through the middle of the two by two column of permanently parked vehicles. Low to the ground again, partially hidden. Hopefully, if the soldiers decided to look outside the shopping center to see if we had escaped, we wouldn’t be noticeable right off the bat. We would be in the clear in another block, maybe two. Then just a little further to Uncle Jay’s house. We knew the drill on how to ‘ditch a joint.’
We did so in quiet, the rest of the night undisturbed except for the occasional echo of an explosion popping off in another place the Emerald Emblem or the Black Banner’s bomb ships saw fit.
We passed a series of tree stubs that had once lined the road but now were chopped down and made into many civilian’s makeshift, rinkey dink weapons. Past an alleyway that required us to be wary of (because of past experience). Past the familiar street corner crater – it was just a random, old hole made by the b-word (bomb).
“Look, Leon, I think we’re good,” I broke the silence nervously, sensing the strong disapproval he’d been holding in since the heroic stunt I pulled.
“No, we don’t have those canned peaches or dried green beans or canned anything we needed. Thank God we were able to get the antibiotics for Uncle Jay,” he replied without looking back at me. He looked both ways down the streets, then motioned for me to follow behind. “And keep up the quiet a little longer won’t you? That’s the rule about going out the front door.”
Right. Rule #8 – keep your pie hole shut while outside.
Then, breaking his own rule once more, he whispered, “You still got the girl?”
He hadn’t even looked over his shoulder to see if I had ‘lost her’.
“Yeah. Where else would she be,” I said with a touch of bitterness, hoisting her up one more time as she was slipping from my arms. It seemed as if she was getting heavier in my arms every second - like a limp bag of sand.
“Ryker,” Leon spoke again, and stopped walking for a brief second as if he was debating whether or not to officially kick her to the curb. But he resumed quickly and I followed. “You know we can’t sustain four people. We just don’t have enough to-“
“-So why don’t we forget that other people exist in this damned city. According to you, we’re the only people worth keeping alive-“
“No more. We’ll talk once we’re back. Not another word now,” he said, officially closing any discussion and continuing on the double. I followed on the double, reluctant to do so.
We were able to get all the way back to the house with no immediate problems. In fact, the first signs of early morning were showing up in the dark sky as we came into view of Uncle Jay’s house. We had made it another day. With less food, but at least with medicine. Medicine that would hopefully drive out the sickness that should not have been as rampant as it was in this city. The war had brought back a variety of diseases that arose from unsanitary conditions.
He really was going to make it, wasn’t he? Uncle Jay, the one other family member I had besides Leon. Jay had been the one to get us out of our blasted home and to his less war torn estate which was situated on the edge of the city where the last large houses and apartments gave way to the mazes of suburbs outside city limits. And so it had remained as our kind of safe and secure abode for the months following our parent’s deaths and the first massive faction raids.
Part of the roof was fallen in. Half a wall had been taken with it. The almost endless shakes from further in the city had weakened the aged estate’s foundation. Electricity was forever off. And we had a series of ditches in the backyard instead of toilets. But it held up surprisingly well for being so old.
The brown lawn welcomed us.
It was the house, not Leon and my house, but it was a house just the same.
And as we walked around the fence and to the gate that led right to the front door, for which Leon had the key, I could even hear the slightest stirring from the girl, as if she was trying to talk in her sleep but couldn’t for some reason.
We strode right up the creaky porch steps to the nice lion knocker on the front door, and Leon reached out to knock it once, pause, and then knock it twice more (to let Jay know it was us and only us). Leon unlocked the door himself.
We were all okay. We had made it and so would Uncle Jay. No more plague for him. And we had someone to take care of for a day, maybe two, before she could go back to wherever she came from. Everyone was going to be okay. I thought about her again as we all entered into the large, safe house foyer and Leon closed the door behind us.
Maybe this girl even has a mom or dad, worried to death right now. When she doesn’t return from the store, will her parents panic? Or does she not even have parents anymore, like Leon and me…?
My thoughts died off, not just from the returning, ‘parentless’ sadness welling up in my throat, but from a feeling - a sudden feeling of vertigo and foreboding. It was just as I was about to ask Leon where to put the girl down that I saw him stop in his tracks.
Leon was just standing in the empty dining room, at the entrance of the kitchen. He had stopped. And he was looking at the sight of something that sent my heart into overdrive. There were cleared out cabinets and flung open pantry doors everywhere. Our pots and plates scattered the floor. And at the center of the mess, a body lay on the floor, bled out onto the tile. A dead robber.
The sight caused me to nearly drop the girl and gasp. And suddenly, the smell of death in this house hit me like a ton of bricks. The reality set in coldly.
We had been robbed? And Jay, where was he…?
“…Jay? Un…Uncle Jay?” I said, my voice just barely over a whisper.
Leon slowly walked into the kitchen, and took a left to the door that led into the room Jay had been resting in when we left for the store. I just stood there, unwilling to move from the spot. I only heard the creaking of floorboards in the other room and the sound of Leon gasping out a, “Oh God.”
I slid to the ground, practically dropping the girl out of my arms and onto the floor in front of me. Leon reentered a few minutes later and sat down by me on the freezing bare floor. He wordlessly brought me into a tight embrace. He wasn’t able to cry and I wasn’t able to cry either.
The man was cocooned in half a dozen blankets and covers in an effort to keep out the cold of the city night and push back the disease that raged in his body.
If only I didn’t have to be a dead weight, then those boys could have more of a chance. They’re young. I’m old and sick. And on top of it, I’m taking most of the covers, the man, Jay, thought to himself with regret.
Another wave of hacks racked his body without warning and caused the heap of blankets burying him to quake and shake. The rocking chair in which he lay, rocked backwards hard in response to his uncontrolled coughing fits. He just had to wait until the long series of sick coughs subsided. Maybe if his two nephews returned with medicine, he could get better and help them around the house. (If you can call three and a half walls and a part-caved in roof a house.)
The aging man wished to be well again. He wished to have neighbors that didn’t want to eat him. He wished to be able to stoke a roaring fire in the long empty hearth beside him. And he wished to have his religion back, because somewhere in the bombings, Jay had lost his faith. Away it flew, never to see him again. He tried to fool himself for a while into thinking that he still believed, but at the sight of his whole family, except his two nephews, dead, he doubted everything he once believed and loved. His God had left him.
Jay sighed as he turned his head to the boarded up window on the wall opposite of the hearth. The boards, hastily nailed and covering the glass, was just spaced out enough to be able to see outside and the sky above. The faintest sliver of moon was going in and out of the seemingly ever present wisps of smoke. In the distance, the tiniest flash of another bomb going off looked just like a blinking fire fly in a summer night back in the country. The accompanying echo, like thunder following faithfully behind lightning, was all but a dull thump to the nostalgic man in the rocking chair, rocking back and forth. Yet no sleep came to him.
That was when there came another sound, this time from the kitchen. It was the sound of the side door being broken down. Whoever it was obviously wasn’t Leon and Ryker.
There were several clomping footsteps and gruff voices from the adjacent room; they weren’t even bothering to be quiet about their deed. Robbers really were so confident and stupid. Jay reached weakly for the Beretta M9 on the table stand next to him. It was time for him to earn his keep in this house.
‘God, pardon me for the dark acts I am about to commit’ Jay prayed instinctively, his hand gripping the gun’s handle with his shaking right hand. …’ah, who am I kidding? I stopped praying a while ago. If I die tonight, I die alone.’
He attempted to first get up and take off the heavy blankets, but then settled for slowly rising from the chair with all of his covers still on. Robbers or not, the house was cold without air conditioning. At least he was able to make it to the door leading to the kitchen before another wheezing spell came over him and gave him away to everyone in the house.
As the soldiers spread through the dark aisles of the store, Leon, the girl and I were quick in going back the way we had come, which was the closest way out. We weren’t seen, and they didn’t know where to look. We had an easy, quiet exit.
The girl, still silent and eyes closed to the world, rested in my scarcely strong enough hold. Her head bobbed lightly up and down as I tried to be quick and quiet about our getaway. It was as if she were in a deep sleep. But why? I had just heard her talking to the soldier not a minute ago. She was defenseless, and Leon had been willing to leave her.
How did the factions cause the country to blitz like this? To the point where people are ready and willing to let others be raped and murdered all around them? What happened to us all? I thought with waves of sadness that I had been experienced for months.
And just like that, the late October night air hit us in the face again as we ran into the first rows of ghostly cars. Up we hiked through the middle of the two by two column of permanently parked vehicles. Low to the ground again, partially hidden. Hopefully, if the soldiers decided to look outside the shopping center to see if we had escaped, we wouldn’t be noticeable right off the bat. We would be in the clear in another block, maybe two. Then just a little further to Uncle Jay’s house. We knew the drill on how to ‘ditch a joint.’
We did so in quiet, the rest of the night undisturbed except for the occasional echo of an explosion popping off in another place the Emerald Emblem or the Black Banner’s bomb ships saw fit.
We passed a series of tree stubs that had once lined the road but now were chopped down and made into many civilian’s makeshift, rinkey dink weapons. Past an alleyway that required us to be wary of (because of past experience). Past the familiar street corner crater – it was just a random, old hole made by the b-word (bomb).
“Look, Leon, I think we’re good,” I broke the silence nervously, sensing the strong disapproval he’d been holding in since the heroic stunt I pulled.
“No, we don’t have those canned peaches or dried green beans or canned anything we needed. Thank God we were able to get the antibiotics for Uncle Jay,” he replied without looking back at me. He looked both ways down the streets, then motioned for me to follow behind. “And keep up the quiet a little longer won’t you? That’s the rule about going out the front door.”
Right. Rule #8 – keep your pie hole shut while outside.
Then, breaking his own rule once more, he whispered, “You still got the girl?”
He hadn’t even looked over his shoulder to see if I had ‘lost her’.
“Yeah. Where else would she be,” I said with a touch of bitterness, hoisting her up one more time as she was slipping from my arms. It seemed as if she was getting heavier in my arms every second - like a limp bag of sand.
“Ryker,” Leon spoke again, and stopped walking for a brief second as if he was debating whether or not to officially kick her to the curb. But he resumed quickly and I followed. “You know we can’t sustain four people. We just don’t have enough to-“
“-So why don’t we forget that other people exist in this damned city. According to you, we’re the only people worth keeping alive-“
“No more. We’ll talk once we’re back. Not another word now,” he said, officially closing any discussion and continuing on the double. I followed on the double, reluctant to do so.
We were able to get all the way back to the house with no immediate problems. In fact, the first signs of early morning were showing up in the dark sky as we came into view of Uncle Jay’s house. We had made it another day. With less food, but at least with medicine. Medicine that would hopefully drive out the sickness that should not have been as rampant as it was in this city. The war had brought back a variety of diseases that arose from unsanitary conditions.
He really was going to make it, wasn’t he? Uncle Jay, the one other family member I had besides Leon. Jay had been the one to get us out of our blasted home and to his less war torn estate which was situated on the edge of the city where the last large houses and apartments gave way to the mazes of suburbs outside city limits. And so it had remained as our kind of safe and secure abode for the months following our parent’s deaths and the first massive faction raids.
Part of the roof was fallen in. Half a wall had been taken with it. The almost endless shakes from further in the city had weakened the aged estate’s foundation. Electricity was forever off. And we had a series of ditches in the backyard instead of toilets. But it held up surprisingly well for being so old.
The brown lawn welcomed us.
It was the house, not Leon and my house, but it was a house just the same.
And as we walked around the fence and to the gate that led right to the front door, for which Leon had the key, I could even hear the slightest stirring from the girl, as if she was trying to talk in her sleep but couldn’t for some reason.
We strode right up the creaky porch steps to the nice lion knocker on the front door, and Leon reached out to knock it once, pause, and then knock it twice more (to let Jay know it was us and only us). Leon unlocked the door himself.
We were all okay. We had made it and so would Uncle Jay. No more plague for him. And we had someone to take care of for a day, maybe two, before she could go back to wherever she came from. Everyone was going to be okay. I thought about her again as we all entered into the large, safe house foyer and Leon closed the door behind us.
Maybe this girl even has a mom or dad, worried to death right now. When she doesn’t return from the store, will her parents panic? Or does she not even have parents anymore, like Leon and me…?
My thoughts died off, not just from the returning, ‘parentless’ sadness welling up in my throat, but from a feeling - a sudden feeling of vertigo and foreboding. It was just as I was about to ask Leon where to put the girl down that I saw him stop in his tracks.
Leon was just standing in the empty dining room, at the entrance of the kitchen. He had stopped. And he was looking at the sight of something that sent my heart into overdrive. There were cleared out cabinets and flung open pantry doors everywhere. Our pots and plates scattered the floor. And at the center of the mess, a body lay on the floor, bled out onto the tile. A dead robber.
The sight caused me to nearly drop the girl and gasp. And suddenly, the smell of death in this house hit me like a ton of bricks. The reality set in coldly.
We had been robbed? And Jay, where was he…?
“…Jay? Un…Uncle Jay?” I said, my voice just barely over a whisper.
Leon slowly walked into the kitchen, and took a left to the door that led into the room Jay had been resting in when we left for the store. I just stood there, unwilling to move from the spot. I only heard the creaking of floorboards in the other room and the sound of Leon gasping out a, “Oh God.”
I slid to the ground, practically dropping the girl out of my arms and onto the floor in front of me. Leon reentered a few minutes later and sat down by me on the freezing bare floor. He wordlessly brought me into a tight embrace. He wasn’t able to cry and I wasn’t able to cry either.
