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Writer
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Wales
Gender: Male
Posts: 43
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Playground Part 3 >.<
Edit: Sorry, erm bit of a daft thing to do. Sorry to the threads I pushed... >.< If a mod deleted these two I'd gladly post it all in one thread. I'll remember from now on.
Still too long....
4
We took a different route.
And no one spoke.
No one.
I'd occasionally stall the car. We'd swap and then Simon would drive. He'd nearly hit something so we'd swap again. It was automatic and obvious what would be done when something happened.
Get out, move object. If too big, assess size, if small nudge out of the way. If big, go back and find another route.
A whole day passed like this, food was thin on the ground but there was some here and there. We'd found berry fields once long ago and eaten ourselves red, it was bizarre because you just wouldn't have seen something like that ten years ago.
But Britain was turning back on itself.
It was like a clock, and I guess it scared me a little. We were dwindling out with it, there were about eighty thousand people left in Britain. And that was what it was supposed to be! I mean, really only six hundred thousand had met and been counted. It was hardly official, we'd all done what anyone would do. We played in our home towns and cities. What few people were left just stayed in their area if it wasn't diseased and played.
The world was now occupied by a total of six hundred thousand people. A total! We all had enough food and we all had made our perfect life. When we met up, we'd have kids. I had two, but I left them with the mother. She was French and I just couldn't understand a fucking word, but I liked her and she liked me.
She's wandering around Northern France with them now. I think another two women are with her, that was her wandering party. So far only the French and the British I can confirm with my own two eyes to have met, because of the tunnel. We've also heard of the Germans meeting the few French left.
And Africa! Well it's actually moving on better, that's what we've heard. Apparently, the northern countries moved to Spain for the fertile land. And the rest went into the jungle in the middle of Africa and went tribal. Which to be honest, is more civilised than all of us just wandering aimlessly for our selfish pleasure.
Simon and I happened to go to the same school, it was odd that by chance we'd survived whatever happened. We stuck together for ten years since the age of fifteen, we've got around and travelled in Wales. Being the few who survived there's enough room. We have hundreds of square miles of abandoned country and urban cities to ourself.
It's our playground.
One day, I say, there will be more men. They will be inbred, but there will be more. And the playground will shrink and how the children in there will slowly come to terms to the maturing pubescence of their existence I'll never know.
Sorry for being so philosophical, you've got to realise that it's just Simon and I for most of the time. There's no one else to talk to. So, I don't really need to use a big vocabulary or anything. I used to though. I used to read a lot, and I guess one day I will too. But for now, we just need to find a kind of life. Something to live for.
We finally arrived at Bristol. I remember, my Dad used to make that trip in an hour and a half. But for us, we had all the time in the world and we needed to find things like food and clean water.
Half our time used to be taken up by that.
But now we needed to find this tidal power thing. I can't remember much about it off the news, other than it was built to last about two hundred years and constantly made huge amounts of power. It was supposed to be the future, except it cost so much and it only worked in places with huge tides.
Like Bristol.
Well, it doesn't matter now. Because it was bound to produce enough power for us two!
We stopped though. A city on the horizon was something we hadn't seen for a few years. Certainly not a city other than Cardiff. It was amazing, because it was different. I guess it felt like we were exploring something new.
“Look at it,” Simon said, some buildings had collapsed and decomposed. It could have been diseased like no tomorrow but ten years should have maybe cleared it up. “It's beautiful. Look at all their lives, look what's become of it. Those office buildings and their houses. It's so beautiful to see lives, whole lives just stopped and frozen. You can really appreciate the silly things, huh?”
“Yeah....” I said kind of in a daze at the sight. We got out, knowing full well the car would never navigate the city. Not with thousands of derelict cars and possibly collapsed buildings. The walk was slow and uneventful, one by one more dead cars appeared.
Skeletons clutching at steering wheels, baby seats and each other.
Some had tried to clamber over the barriers on the motorway, some had tried everything not to die. This included attacking others.
Simon took out the ring in his pocket and slid it on his finger, all the way in he ran his thumb over and over it.
I gripped nothing. I didn't have a girlfriend, I'd always wanted his. Worst of all I hated that we didn't visit my mother's house. Up until that point I'd never thought about it, but looking at him touch the ring made me want something of my own.
I started to cry half way there and so did he. We both walked to the city with tears running down our faces and not a word on our lips.
Eventually we reached the outskirts, there were houses and hundreds of dead bodies. Clutching desperately at anything, and I kept imagining myself gripping that lamp post.
I cried more.
In the end I stopped and fell to my knees. Simon sat on a car bonnet, over ten years we'd done this all the time. Breached insanity and just cried and cried and cried.
It was awful but wonderful.
Outside of these moments we never talked about what actually happened,
I squealed the words,
“What happened..?” and Simon looked at me. He was crying too but not weeping like I was. He ran his hands around his eyes to clear the moisture and he spoke,
“I don't know man,” And he laughed a wet and exhausted laugh, “I don't know. No one does. People just died,”
“It's so fucking horrible. They were just taken for no reason! We don't even know why!? Just taken...taken in four minutes with no explanation.”
“No man, no we don't know why do we? I remember the countdown, the news telling us that the sweeping...sweeping thing was coming. Four minutes we had. People just dropped dead. It rippled out didn't it? Just from a central point in Asia or Australia. They couldn't tell because they didn't have time....” He laughed again, “They couldn't tell us, they couldn't tell themselves. We couldn't tell ourselves. No one could tell anyone. It went white for everyone and everyone just dropped dead.”
I continued to cry,
“Except us, huh?” I gurgled almost inaudibly.
“Don't know, we dropped like everyone else and then woke up...”
“Not me!” And I choked at the effort at shouting, “I was knocked out by a fucking car! How lucky am I man, that it didn't even hurt me.” And I leant back and put my arms to the air laughing, “ How lucky am I huh? How screwed would I be if I'd needed a doctor.” I shouted and slowly started to stop weeping uncontrollably.
Don't get me wrong, I was still crying.
Just not like a madman.
“Mate, c'mon calm down. Me and you, yeah? We're gonna go inside that house and calm the fuck down, okay?”
“Yeah, man. Yeah...” I replied and got up. I put my arm around him and we both hobbled to a garden wall. It was low, knee height, and had started to crumble. It was weak and when I sat on one stone, I tumbled slightly and threw my arms like a windmill to stop me falling.
Simon laughed and I looked at him like he was an ass, and then I laughed. I shuffled over to another stone and even though it was loose, I balanced it and managed to sit without falling.
A rain drop fell on my head, I ran my hand over it and rubbed the water between my fingers. Another one fell between me and Simon and then in front of us. Another and another and another. Finally, within seconds the rain was pouring down upon us and we were soaked.
I looked at Simon and laughed again.
We laughed hysterically and sat in the soaking wet for fifteen minutes. It was when we started to shake from the cold we got up and wandered past the garden wall and into the garden and then into the house. The door was locked but we kicked it down, and then stood inside.
There were large white and small black diamond shaped tiles on the floor. A kitchen was in front of us and the patterned floor had become a mucky shade of grey from dust and mud and there. Even the walls were covered in it. There were plates and rotten food and forks and knives on the kitchen table.
There were three cob web covered skeletons sat on the table. All three had their hands held together and were praying. I found this funny because there wasn't a cross in sight and no signs of religion.
“No atheists in foxholes!” I spoke aloud in an observation.
“No....clearly not. Do you wanna stay here? I mean...it's a bit...”
“Macabre?” I interrupted....
“Yeah...” He nodded, “Pretty fucking macabre.”
I turned my head to look outside the door, the rain was so heavy I couldn't even see,
“Let's chill out here for a few minutes. Until the weather calms down...” I said and started to wander around. Through a door and there was the living room, the T.V. was massive but covered in cobwebs and the screen had coloured bubbles in it that looked like the glass and the black film covering the back had separated. The sofa was old and brown and full of holes with springs popping through and another skeleton was clutching at a briefcase. “Odd,” I muttered and pulled the thing out of it's arms.
“What?” Simon said from the other room.
“A brief case...”
“What's in it?”
“Erm...” I said, and then examined the lock. The plastic leather was rough and torn and so I fingered a tear until I could take it off around the lock. Finally I pulled one lock off and then wedged the whole thing open.
It cracked open with a loud bang and it's contents flew about, “Erm..” I continued, “Papers. That's it. Just papers..”
“What do they say?”
“Who cares?”
“I do...” He said and then walked through, he knelt down and looked at them and held them in his hands, “This guy,” He motioned at the skeleton, “Was the tax man. He must've come here to get money off those people when the four minute countdown started....”
“Like I said, who cares?”
“S'pose so. Just figured it might be something interesting.”
I looked outside and it was still raining heavily, we both sat down prepared to wait it out. Hours passed and the weather didn't let up, it just kept pummelling down without any mercy. I thought the already damaged roof tiles were going to come right off. One even slid down and fell outside giving us a right shock, I jumped up and ran around to see what it was frightened it'd be God knows what.
I walked back in and he was fingering the ring and looking at one of the dead bodies, he looked up at me and said,
“I wonder what they're doing now?”
“What?”
“Nothing mate, don't worry. Good night man,”
“Night...”
“Hey, I love you...” He said and I laughed.
“I love you too you fucking puff...”
5
The next day I found the place. I didn't bother going there. I drove in the car to where everyone meets. It wasn't time, but I hoped a few people would be there. It's by the euro-tunnel and I managed to get there.
A few people were there and they asked questions, because they knew me.
I didn't really feel like telling them, I still don't. I mean....it's not the first time....
It's not the first time someone's died, even if it isn't from disease. It happens. I just never saw it coming, others would've but I didn't. For fuck sake I still don't know why he did it.
He left me these two pieces of paper on the table. One was written on the back of one of the papers in the brief case. The other wasn't.
When I found him, like, laying there I was sick. I don't know why he did it, I'm glad he didn't do it sort of...I'm just glad he did it peacefully. It was so clean, it was like he knew he was going to do it all along. He just waited.
I looked at him and then at all the other bodies and it got to me real bad. My stomach went dead weight because I just kept thinking, that all these bodies and if someone ever came here.
He'd just be another.
I didn't want it to be like that. It seemed wrong.
So fucking wrong.
I looked at him lying there and I clumsily picked him up. You know, if you go there...he's still there. I made it so if anyone came in they'd notice this one, because he survived it. He wasn't a piece of the scenery. He was something special.
I actually dug a fucking grave. It was so weird, with so many dead bodies but I did. I dug it and then I threw him in. I put the ring in it, and one day. I'll go get her and throw her in there with him because I loved them both. They deserve it.
They deserve to sleep. But for now, I'm a bit preoccupied. I can't really stop right now. But I will one day.
The grave was in the middle of a street, sure there was concrete but it'd eroded so bad I just kind of levered a chunk off. It was already loose somehow and around about the right size so I did that. I did it because someone would know he died after the road did, and he died after every one else did.
I placed a large steel pole as it's marker and then I left.
The note that he wrote was this,
I found this note on her body Pete. I know it's weird but I did. She was beautiful and looked so peaceful, I believe her Pete. I believe what she's written. I know she's not beyond, that she's not left me alone. I know it man. I love her and I want to be with her. I hope you understand that there was no end. It was the future, what happened. And I want to be part of it, I want to be with her. She was gripping it and it looked like she was trying to put it where I was sleeping. She died lying on the floor, how would anyone know which side of the bed I slept? They couldn't. I don't know how. But she did. And I love her. And she loves you too man! Read the note, and you'll know it's true. You'll know.
I won't even tell you what the other note said. You won't believe it. I don't. Not because it's silly, but because it hurts to think this has all been left behind. This world. I don't want to leave it behind, I don't want to leave this place and all of it behind. Not yet, and to think that I've been left behind with it. It kind of gets to me. So that's why I don't believe what it read.
I can't believe it.
This world is worth having. I'll prove that.
Last edited by Wallis : 07-08-2007 at 02:07 PM.
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