Just so you know, this story is also uploaded on archiveofourown - feel free to read here or there. Here it's split into onging sequels, whereas there it's a whole piece. (dunno why i did that i'm a flaw)
Stale M&M's follows the show's arc. Non-cannon things are Oliver's addition, his impact on other characters, and a few time-stretches here and there.
I wrote this pile of trash because a family member came out to me, which, cool, but I was there all in the closet too but not brave enough to say anything and obviously we both couldn't be fukin gay so I wrote this to cope. I was 17 (2014). Nothing I did made sense so let's just try not to think about the obvious otherly angst between the lines (death of the author death of the author!) and instead think about how it took me a long time to put this character into a story I liked and wouldn't give up on right away, (thanks TWD). The story won't completely revolve around the characters' love-lives. I like to think I'm a better writer than that. Hope some of you enjoy.
And the story begins, with two brothers, a finger skateboard, and some stale M&M's.
"Dude," Patrick says, "they're stale."
He hands over the packet of M&M's and I stuff my mouth with colour. He's right, they are stale. But I'm too hungry to care. And I love candy. Chocolate especially. I love chocolate like I love comfortable silences and a good pair of socks. I love it like I love how it was back when people were alive and talking instead of dead and trying to eat us.
Flowers are blooming through a hole in the ceiling, which means it must be spring. My brother and I have been wandering the roads since last fall. Anybody we've met along the way have either left us or died or we've left them because they've wanted us dead. Nowadays we find places to stay where people won't find us at all.
As we head for the front, Patrick slings an arm over my shoulder, yanks, and suddenly I'm getting the worst noogie of my life. Eventually I shove him off. He laughs at my hair, which I can feel is the messiest jewfro in existence. I must look feral. Need a shower. Need something better than my finger for a toothbrush. And clothes that don't itch and food that's not served up either twitching or with a shelf-life older than I am. Except we don't get that anymore and it's not worth getting mad over so I empty the last M&M's into Patrick's palm and he eats every one.
We get done searching the store with none but a tiny finger skateboard and some Lego. No food. To cope, I ride the fingerboard with my middle and ring along an empty shelf and grind the edge like a rail. Being hungry sucks but at least being hungry and distracted sucks less.
Patrick says, "Catch," but I don't so a red Lego piece hits me square in the forehead. I clutch my face and kick him. Patrick trips and laughs and grabs his glasses before they fall off his face.
"Found more inhalers," he says. "Store's got a pharmacy." He grabs my shoulders and twists me around and empties the inhalers into my backpack. I check over my shoulder and count three, along with some pain stuff, allergy stuff, flu stuff, and band-aids. He glances at me and gives a small, heavy smile. I know he's thinking about a few days ago, when I'd had an asthma attack so bad I ended up collapsing. Pat put me in the recovery position but I don't remember that part. He said he couldn't do much but wait and hope. Paid off, guess, since I woke up the same evening with a headache and a hug. That part was nice, though.
Patrick lets me go and I turn to him. He's looking at me like he might hug me again. Like he thinks I'm going to die. Just drop-dead right here in front of him. And he's frowning. The frown. With an underbite so obtrusive it might as well be an underworldbite. First belonging to Grande-Nonno then Nonno and then passed down to us.
I'm not in the mood for hugging today so I push Patrick in the chest and he becomes my brother again.
He snickers and sighs and says, "I just want you to be okay," and I take my thumb and press it firm between his eyebrows and then all the creases in his frown flatten and disappear. He turns away. "Let's go."
As we go, I think about my lungs. This small part in the back of my head telling me I will die. That I will just drop-dead. I don't know. I try to believe there's a reason for everything like how animal crap fertilises and bees pollinate and horses die so we can use their tail hair for guitar strings, but out of everything in the world that I already suck at I can't think of one reason why I have to suck worst at breathing.
Coping, I grind more shelves with my fingerboard until Patrick smacks me in the chest. I gasp and he tells me to shut up and I do because I'm not a loud person. Patrick sometimes says it weirds him out. That I'm so quiet. I have to work on it. Not now though. Now it's shut up.
"Hear that?" he whispers.
I do hear it and I cuss.
"Don't cuss."
"Cazzo."
"That still counts!" He hits me in the chest and I'm going to hit him back but we hear that thing again. Groaning. There are biters outside. Not urgent. Patrick still looks uncomfortable. I pull his sleeve towards the backdoor. Clear skies outside from what I see as I open it, only then I jump back as a rat suddenly scurries in through the ajar door and under our feet.
"No," Patrick mutters to the air and the air says back, Yes. And we're coming to eat you. One biter comes through and then a wave of them. Jaws stretched wide. Ready to drown us.
"Pat..."
"Oliver!"
I forget to exist for a second. And then a switch flicks on in my brain and time is frozen. I move hyper-speed. I grab Patrick's arm and then we're running for the front. Biters shriek. I can barely hear myself think. The stench, you never get used to it.
"The window."
"It's too high!"
A cold rotten hand sneaks around my sleeve and loses its grip when Patrick slices it off with his machete. He pulls me by the collar. I'm strangled and swung up onto a shelf and climbing. We jump across to the next shelving aisle while other aisles fall behind us. We rush and leap and scream and repeat and then there's a wall and the window above us and the shelf under us. Sneakers squeak. We argue because we're terrified and we don't want to leave each other and then I scream "GO!" in Patrick's face and he does. Climbing. Straddling the window-ledge. Leaning out. His clay-brown face turns to ash.
"It's a long way down..."
The shelve under me sways.
"Pat!"
"I can't do it! There's more out there."
I try to climb up. Patrick's hands are cold and sweaty and hard to cling to. The shelf collapses under me. I'm hanging. Fingers wrap around my ankle. Pulling. Patrick screams. I've never seen him this scared. Pulling. He's going to fall too so I let go and the floor and I collide like a battering ram. I'm grabbed and pulled and all I can do is kick and scream and somehow I pick myself up. Somehow I'm strong and scared and fast enough to knock some biters back and slip past. One grabs my ankle. I fall. Another has me staggering and hitting a cabinet so hard I think I'll black out.
"My machete! Take it, dude!"
I can't count how many there are. Enough to kill me. I hear the machete's metal blade clatter to the floor ahead of me and I seize the red handle and slice through skulls. Cold blood smatters my face and clothes. Patrick's yelling and I yell back, "Go!"
"Not without you!"
I'm sprinting through the store to the backdoor. Backpack slapping against my spine. Chased. I skid on the rat carcass and fall and hit my head. Heaving. I swivel round and see past the biters coming after me Patrick sitting in the window. Looking for me. When he finds me he screams, "Behind you!" I hear the growl and feel the cold rotten hands on my neck and as I twist around blood is spit in my face. My foot comes up against its chest. Its head. As it collapses I grab my machete and raise it above my head and drive it down and through. Then I'm running. Flying. Through the backdoor into the blinding sun. Windpipe swelling. Choking. I stumble along the alley. Out through the parking lot. Clothes sticking to my skin. Biters are everywhere.
"Patrick!" I see stars. I run through the parking lot and into the woods, gasping for air. Run and run and soon my legs give out and I hit the dirt. Dust clogs my throat. Coughs wrack me. I choke into the earth. Roll over. Pull my backpack off my shoulders and find my Ventolin inside. I must use up the whole cartridge. It makes me shaky and light-headed and sick. Sick everywhere. Yacking across my knees. But, finally, I can breathe.
They're coming, so I get up again and run.
~five months pass~
Patrick never showed. I never found him. He's just gone. I hate that word. Hate it like I hate the word dead. Beanie is a better word. I found one. It's dark grey. I found a dog, too. She was nice. But she attacked me over food and I had to strangle her. Cried like a baby, too. She was just hungry. I was, too. I even thought about eating her, but I buried her instead.
...Hey.
What?
You gonna get up yet?
The ceiling has a crack stretched across it that spells SUP.
"You," I tell it.
Eventually I need my inhaler enough to get up. I find it under the curtain which I'm using as a bedsheet on a cardboard box. After medicating, I toss the cartridge in my backpack, then get up and go to the bathroom which is the window. I wait there to pee and watch the street for biters but there aren't any today. I start to pee. The stream splits two ways two storeys down and hits two garden gnomes square on their pointy green hats.
Gross.
There are worse things.
A crow caws overhead. I watch it, finish up, and adjust my beanie.
Why do you keep that hat, anyway? It smells almost as bad as the biters.
"I like it," I say to say something. Still working on not being too quiet, which is more useless now than ever. I collect my things, with nothing to do today but look for candy.
While walking across a big, dead cornfield on my way to the local mall, I daydream about what sound colours make. I think blue makes a splash and green makes a rustle, unless it's a vibrant kind of green then it would make a zap-zap! noise. Pink goes bling! and yellow just sounds like the word yellow but with an emphasized 'looow'. I daydream what noise people would make, too. Like a soul sound. Like, I think my mother's would've sounded like whatever the sound of a blooming flower sounds like. I bet it sounds soft and smooth and feels like getting your hair played with. Nonno's would've sounded like a newspaper page turning. My father's like a stapler. The boring kind of stapler though not the cool ones that fire across rooms. And my soul sound is silence. Absolute silence. A kind of silence so quiet you think you don't exist in it.
What about Patrick's?
His... would sound like knuckles cracking or a soda bottle cap popping, or that snap Lego pieces make when you connect them together.
"The kind of sound that's gone too quickly..." I sigh and shake my head, realising I don't like to daydream. Not all the time. I like to daydream when I daydream about comics and skateboarding and playing ukulele and listening to David Bowie. I like to daydream about what it would be like to dress in a suit and tie, or dress in a dress, because I've never done either of those things before. I haven't ever eaten sushi or been to Australia, and I haven't seen a zebra in real life even though I think zebra are really cool, and I won't ever either, just like I won't ever do a lot of things, like I won't ever get taught how to drive a car. I won't ever see a music concert or grow old, probably. And I won't ever see my parents again. And I won't ever find my brother.
Anyway, wearing suits and ties and dresses seems like an appropriate place to start. Not today though. Today, candy.
The mall's parking lot is empty when I arrive, debris and trash scattered everywhere. Surrounding the parking lot are all the stores. The candy store is so colourful it sticks out like a sore thumb. I head over, watching over my shoulder, then wrap my fist against the window and wait. The world stays silent. Not a nice silent either. I don't get any nice silences anymore. Not even my own silence. I think that's why I talk to myself.
When I push the door it's already been kicked in and I stop and stare at it. Bad feeling. Still, sweet tooth needs a fix so I make my way inside. Machete drawn. I smell dead things and stale candy and find what's left of whoever last came in here for it.
I'll get some and go.
The place is almost bare. But not completely. Forgotten and kicked to the side under one isle near the back are a few candy bars. I take them all.
If you end up getting tooth decay, don't say you didn't warn yourself beforehand.
"I brush," I say, mouth full. There are M&M's. The wrapper crackles in my hand and I decide I'm done here, stuffing my mouth with M&M's as I turn to leave. A shadow moves. I get this instinct feeling. Run. And then a crossbow is being aimed right between my eyes. I reel backwards and land hard on the floor, throwing the M&M's across the room. The chocolate rainbow scatters like insects and the crossbow handler flinches as they bounce off his waistcoat.
I snatch for my machete.
"Don't, kid."
He's dirty and sweaty and has bags under his eyes. I don't argue with him. Instead I continue our staring contest and then something makes a noise behind me and there's a woman standing there holding out a katana.
Just for a second, my sound becomes a splatter.
"You got a name?" she asks.
I do but I forget to say it.
"Name, boy..." the guy asks.
I nod.
I say, "Oliver."
Notes
Happy reading.