rakathspseudonym | Writing - It's a Lonely World (Reply)

Since I failed to write a thing yesterday, you'll get two things today. One of which I technically wrote for class, but they count because... I wanna be lazy sometimes.

So this is one of the few writing things without any specific goals attached, it's just a story that had to be between 300 and 900 words. I went for a sorta surprise, trying to set it up and execute it within the short space I had to work, hope you all like it!

***

It had been a long night, and that wasn’t because it was fourteen hours between sundown and sunrise. I had thought I’d known the meaning of a long night before, but now… it all seemed so easy, I didn’t know why I compained.

“Didn’t sleep well,” Janet asked me. My on and off girlfriend for the past ten years. She insists twelve, because she talked me into marrying her, she provided me with a ring from a cracker jack box and everything. She was ten, I was twelve, and she’d had a control over my life even then. Of course, as a freshman she was an awkward looking thing, glasses, freckles mixed with acne. But she grew out of it and all the people that gave her trouble were jealous of us. She was thin, but not model thin, it was a more fit dancer’s body. Oh she loved to dance.

“Yeah… I keep thinking they got into the house, I keep hearing things…” Around three years ago a meteorite crashed into the northern Texas. A big one, the kind of meteorite that makes all sorts of problems. We didn’t notice the cosmic equivalent to cockroaches in the debris, too focused on the change to the planet’s orbit, magnetic poles, general upheaval... Once the bugs hatched and started eating people well… things became a bit less civilized after that.

“Just your mind playing tricks, it’s the isolation, it gets to everyone.” She kissed my forehead and went off to do whatever she picks to keep herself sane. Our bunker was one of the nicer ones in the world, we found it just as things got really bad. Plenty of cultivation tools, rooms, and exercise equipment to keep in shape under the Earth. But the best of amenities were the windows. We could see sky and sunlight, probably only a handful that could.

I’d thank the bastard who had this place built, but given how many of them would be happy if us ‘normal’ folks died they can rot. They probably are rotting, the riots before the bugs were pretty brutal for the richest. I headed to the entertainment room and set up the rally bike and the projectors. Need to keep in shape, letting myself go was a sure way to end up like Marie.

There were a dozen of us at first, but that was a year ago. The company, like the supplies, have dwindled since then. Some of them were like Marie, she just couldn’t handle things. I didn’t know her before we escaped the fall of Albany, but she was wound a bit tight. At first it did her good, she kept to her routine, and complained she couldn’t gossip over fashions in the malls. She defiantly acted like the world wasn’t hell. But… she started to break her diet, then she stopped doing her make-up. She started telling Jimmy she ‘wasn’t in the mood.’ Finally we found her and the pair of scissors she ended it with in the tub. She at least made it easy to clean.

I raced down a cycling rally in… I dunno, it seemed like a dream course as it had parts of France and Germany in it. Trying to push away the thoughts. But in this lonely world thoughts are all a man has. After Marie, Jimmy and some of the others heard news there was a secure settlement out in Quebec City, they wanted to die outside like we were suppose to, instead of living in a large state of the art coffin.

That thought made cycling feel a little less fun. I got up, washed off, and picked a book from the shelf to read. The main library was behind a door we couldn’t open. Some of the generators were damaged, and the air filters in that section were dead. CO2 poisoning was all that section had going for it. As soon as I sat down Janet straddled my lap. “It wasn’t your fault, it isn’t like you can predict sandstorms.” Her lips trailed over my ear and neck as her hands rested on my shoulders, light as air.

“I noticed the lights flicker, but there were other things I needed to work on.” This place was like the one cheerleader I dated in college, when Janet and I were ‘off’: high maintenance. Something always needed fixing. At the time of the sandstorm we needed the water purification array and rain dish protected. And I thought the power flicker wasn’t a big deal.

I could feel Janet’s hands on my chest, through my clothes, where her hands ended up many times in this position, “And that’s why it isn’t your fault. I know you wish you could bury the bodies in there. Treat those poor souls properly. But you can’t, you need to find other things to fill your day.”

It might have been my imagination, but I felt her grind into my lap like the first time we went this far. We were best friends, not even dating, but we wanted to know what it was like. It was… good, but awkward, and we didn’t do it again until Janet did a lot of research. “Why did you love that stupid library so much, and it’s books.”

In this lonely world thoughts are all a man has.