Austin Moon or "Crazy-Lunatic-Boy"
Austin smiled a toothy smile to the audience who clapped for him. He had just stopped playing the piano and the teachers were wildly astonished that a nine-year-old boy could have such a remarkable talent! Austin feels immensely proud of himself as he scurries off of the school's performance stage and walks backstage where the other kids were lined up, waiting for their turns to perform. Austin hardly notices the cold stares they're giving him.
"Very well done, Austin Moon," said his music teacher, handing him a red sucker. Austin's eyes light up with joy as he takes it, tearing off the wrapper and sticking the candy between his lips. It tastes like raspberries, his ultimate favourite. "I think you might have won the talent show this year!"
"Thank you, Ms. Suzie!" Austin grins boyishly up at his favourite teacher. For the first time, Austin actually felt like he mattered! Like he was great at something! Music was definitely his forte and he wondered if he would ever become a rockstar. Oh, he wanted to so badly!
Ms. Suzie runs her fingers through the small boy's hair before she turns and walks off to make sure the next student is ready to perform their little heart out today! Ms. Suzie just adored these talent shows! She thought it was amazing to see how many young children had talents.
Austin is grinning wildly with the sucker's stick pointing out the side of his mouth. His lips are turning red from the candy. He's humming a melody to himself when he's suddenly falling onto the floor. He hits the hard flooring with a loud thud. There is a chorus of laughter that makes Austin's confusion turn to embarrassment. He picks himself up and peers up at a student who is towering over him. He's got dark hair and his lips are twisted into a cruel smirk.
"Sorry, Austin, my foot must've slipped," he tells the meaningless apology while glancing at the other students who haven't stopped their laughter.
Austin hesitates, "...S'okay..." he mumbles, coming to a standing position. His palms are aching and his knee caps are burning from the fall. He glances at the line up of students who are giggling or smiling at him. He wondered why they took joy in bringing him down. He recalled the day in kindergarten when he sang in front of the class and they had picked at him. After school, they had thrown their garbage at him and called him names. The names get updated every year: Freak, Teacher's pet, Dummy, Clown, Spaz, Angel, Astronaut(Which originated from his last name), Superstar, Loser.
Austin glances at Brooke, his crush, she's covering her lips giggling. He wondered why he bothered to take an interest in her. She was just as bad as everyone else. Yesterday she poured her chocolate milk all over him and told the teacher that Austin stole it from her and dumped it on himself. (Which was stupid really, why would he waste chocolate milk like that?)
Austin stares at the ground, shifting around the toes and ankles of the kids who want to trip him, too. Austin stuffs his hands into his pockets of his jeans that fit his waist in all the right places. He decides that being a nine-year-old is tough stuff. Who knew that loving something would give you so much hate? Austin always found himself juggling loneliness and confusion. He never had any friends; people thought Austin was the weird boy who enjoyed music too much. He was confused, because all the kids said those things but yet they were at this talent show to play music. Why was it weird when he did it and not them? He thinks he's growing to hate them.
Austin bumps into somebody, as if his day couldn't get any worse! He looks up and relaxes when he sees that it's only Ms. Suzie. Ms. Suzie asks if he is alright. Austin glances over at the students who are lost in their own conversations of excitement. He smiles up at Ms. Suzie, convincing her easily and tells her that he couldn't be any better. He lied a lot at school. He was never okay. Austin often wondered if he ever broke in the school, would anyone even hear him? He feels like a broken record that no one really wants to listen to. He hates that feeling.
When Austin turns to twelve, he is hiding under his bed. He thinks of song lyrics that he could never piece together on his own. How could he not write a decent song if he loved music so much? The question is beyond him! His body is trembling beneath that bed spread as he reminds himself that he cannot make a sound; an intruder was walking through his home.
Austin can hear the loud, stomping footsteps of the intruder. They are in his living room, doing only God knows what and Austin prays that he doesn't die tonight. Despite all the wishes he'd made to stars about dying, he suddenly realizes that he still has a life to live. He hopes the intruder doesn't find him under his bed. He knows he's a boy and maybe boys shouldn't be afraid, but Austin is terrified, trembling, shivering, and shaking.
Austin's eyes grow in size as the footsteps getting nearer to his room. His heart pounds so loud that, for a moment, he thought it was footsteps walking up and down his stairs. He finds himself breathing in shaky relief when the footsteps pass his room. He's suddenly guilty when he hears the intruder walk into his parent's room. He whispers a prayer to God, but God doesn't answer it when he hears two gun shots. His ears ring from the echoing noise that is repeating in his subconscious mind.
Austin forces himself not to panic and he stays under that bed. He does not get up from under that bed. He was lucky that he had heard the intruder crawl through the living room window. He would've considered that it was just the wind, but when he awoke from the shuffling sound of the intruder, he glanced out his bedroom window and he noticed a black mustang. His parents did not own a black mustang. With knowing that, Austin had crawled under his bed and now he wonders if it was selfish. Maybe he should have ran to his parents and explained to them that he thought somebody was in the house. But he didn't. This must be his fault.
His thoughts patronize him until they shatter with something in the living room. Austin gulps and suddenly hears the intruder exiting through the front door with a slam. The intruder did not know that Austin existed and Austin was slightly thankful.
Austin creeps out from under his bed. He glances out the window and watches the mustang flee. Austin sneaks over to the stairs and notices that the window and door are still intact. It was as if nobody had entered or left. The TV is smashed and the couch is flipped over. The cushions on the couch are ripped open and Austin wonders if the intruder must've been looking for something: perhaps, money? drugs? or maybe he was just ruining Austin's life? Austin went with the latter.
Austin flinches when he remembers the gun shot sounds and he races into his parent's bedroom. He freezes in his steps. His mother was still curled against his father, her head tucked beneath his chin and his hand was around her back. Austin doesn't even have time to cry when he hears the sound of sirens heading down the street. His neighbor must've heard the gun shots, too.
Austin is in shock as he slowly walks towards his parents that are bloody. His father had a bullet to the head and his mother had a bullet to her chest. The blood trail leaking down his father's forehead, tangled inside his eye brows, and dribbled down his nose, lips and chin. Austin can't recognize his face from the red mess. He notices the blood and dripped onto his mother's head. She has a wound to her chest and Austin isn't stupid; he knows that the bullet was in her heart. There was no way they were alive. They were dead. Austin was alone.
Shakily, Austin creeps over to his parents bed and he notices something black on the bed. He picks it up with confusion. The gun. The intruder had left the gun behind. Why would he do that? Was he trying to get caught? Austin didn't know. He looked at his mother again, trying to ignore all the blood that was smothered over her chest that used to be stained with the scent of lavender perfume.
Austin thinks about the intruder. How could somebody just walk in and kill two people? Who would think of that? Austin still hasn't cried yet. He doesn't know when he'll be able, too. He still hasn't wrapped his mind around the fact that his parents are dead and he had been in the house when they were killed. He reenacts the event that must've gone down, trying to piece it together in his mind. He stands with his feet apart, his eye brows furrowed. He holds out his arm straight, pointing the gun at his parents. He sees that it must've been so quick for them. Just as he was about to lower the gun, the door bursts open.
Police only see Austin, standing in front of his bloody, dead parents with a gun pointed at them.
Austin doesn't talk or deny their suspicions. Carefully, police have approached the blonde boy and told him he was under arrest for first degree murder. Austin isn't stupid, he knows what that means: he was going to jail. Austin still doesn't deny anything. He can hardly move. He's stiff when the police push him forward, only glancing at each other with confusion on what would make a young boy shoot his parents. They silently agree that Austin is crazy and needs mental help.
News of this tragic story spreads through the city: Twelve Year Old Boy Shoots Parents. Austin still hasn't denied it and he takes the sentence to jail. Everything is loopy for him; he doesn't quite remember what went down in that house, but he does remember the gun shots. He can't explain to detectives that he didn't do it, instead he admits to it. Numbly, he tells them: "I did it." They ask why, Austin only shrugs. His eyes are lifeless, tagged in with grief that hasn't yet hit him. Austin knows that he will never be a rockstar.
Austin is okay being in jail, because maybe going to jail would take him away from the attackers at school who murder his mind with nicknames and batter his body with their knuckles, knees, and feet. The teachers are so appalled when they are given the call from police that Austin will not be attending school anymore because Austin shot his parents.
Austin learns all kinds of things in jail: How to pick a lock, how to fool somebody, how to gamble, how to smoke, how to fight. Austin is totally different. He hasn't forgot how to play a piano or strum a guitar, but he has forgotten about the rockstar dream. He belongs in jail. It was the one place where he felt like he fit in.
Present day, Austin is now eighteen. He still has never admitted that it was really the intruder who killed his parents. Austin feels more comfortable with people thinking that he did it. Austin earned a new nickname from his jail mates and the people of the city: "Crazy-Lunatic-Boy". Because, really, you would have to be a crazy, lunatic to want to kill your parents despite how wonderful they treated you. Nobody asked Austin if he missed them, nobody asked him if he loved them. The answers would be yes to both of them but Austin doesn't have time to think about all of that junk.
He has become a boy who sits with a cigarette in his mouth while staring at a concrete wall blankly and if he wasn't doing that, he was stealing keys from the jail guards with a smirk plastered to his lips. Jail has really shaped him from his perfect edges and made him into a list of imperfections with psychosomatic issues.
He's thrown into a time of isolation after shoving a jail guard into the fence outside while he, and his other inmates, were doing some intense yard working. But really, Austin didn't care that the guard had been watching him too much, Austin was just tired of being outside and Austin never knew that this witty mistake of being thrown into isolation would save his damn life.
Austin sat in isolation, counting the lines on the wall. Isolation wasn't very fun: it was just sitting in a cold room, no windows, a metal door, concrete walls. You are shut off from everything outside. Austin's isolation normally lasted only a day. He falls asleep on the floor on the cold, cement floor.
He's been awake for a while and Austin knows that it has most definitely been twenty four hours, so get him the hell out of there! He was getting bored and his stomach was growling. Austin opened the small slider that gave him the opportunity to peak outside the door. It was dark. He couldn't see anything. Austin wondered if he was still asleep, but as he searched around with his hands he realized that he wasn't asleep. The electricity was out.
"What the hell," Austin grumbled under his breath. He banged on the door, hoping to get somebody's attention but there was nothing. He realized how eerily quiet it was. Generally, you could hear the creaking pipes or the shouts of something going on in another department of the jail. But not right now. Something wasn't right.
Austin slips his hand through the sliding hole and his hand slaps onto somebody laying on the ground. He jumps back. The body was quite cold. He blinks twice before he reaches out again. He knows that it could only be a guard. His hand searches the guard and finds his belt in the dark. He snatches a set of keys. Austin reaches up towards the door handle. He feels and inserts every key into the lock. It's the second last key that works and the door creaks open. He felt unsure. He had never made it that far before. Somebody always noticed him. Then again, it was very dark in the isolation department.
Austin slips out of the isolation room. He trips over a body and crashes onto the floor. He still can't see. Austin reaches along the guard that he's sure he just tripped over. He feels something cylinder. He searches it with his fingers before a light flicks on. He's holding a flashlight.
"Sick," Austin grins. He moves the light around and points it towards the guard. The guard's face is blistered and pale. Austin frowns in disgust. He wonders what happened. "Almost must happen in a day," Austin mumbles to himself. He shakes his head and looks around with the flashlight. It seems that he had been the only inmate in isolation today.
Austin finds the door and leaves the isolation department. He travels along the empty halls and he still hasn't been caught by any jail guards. "No way," he grins wider. Was this his ticket to freedom? Despite always having to have fit in jail, he did always want to get out of there. Jail isn't a fancy place. You don't exactly want to live there forever.
Austin notices four prison guards on the ground. He frowns again, noticing that they also had blistered and pale faces. They were also dead. "Five dead prison guards..." Austin whispered to himself. He found his way around the jail, running into more dead bodies. Things were looking odd. Austin makes his way around the entire jail. It's taken about an hour and he's starting to get confused. He hadn't seen one person alive. They were all dead. What had happened?
Austin finds his way outside and he drops the flashlight, his lips parting in shock. It's looking like midday, the sun is beating down on him but the wind that blows along his milky skin is making the day slightly cold. The clouds are lumped together in a deathly look and everything outside is destroyed.
The trees and bushes have been shriveled and burned. The ground is dusty with ash, dirt, and gravel. Austin stiffly steps outside, looking around. He makes his way around the entire jail. His inmates, friends, and the guards are dead. None of them had survived whatever had happened out here. It looked like an atomic blast.
Austin slowly looked around. He glanced up at the sky. Blue, beaming sun, grim clouds. He could not believe what had just happened. He looks behind him and sees the jail building still standing, but there were marks all over it as if a fire had just eaten it with its flames.
Austin makes this his ticket to get out. He walks forward and he's damn sure that nobody is alive. Is he alone? Eventually, Austin sheds of his orange suit and he steals pants and a t-shirt from a prison guard. It feels good to be wearing black pants and a white shirt again. Austin knows that he hates the color orange now.
Austin leaps out into the world and decides to explore around. He decides to search for answers: What had happened? Why didn't it affect him? What was it? Why did it happen?
Ally Dawson or "The Mental Girl Who Lived Under Floorboards"
Penny Dawson had beads of sweat gathered on her forehead. In her arms, she held her newborn daughter. Literally newborn: Penny had only given birth moments ago. She ponders her thoughts before her index finger strokes the soft cheek of the child, "Allyson," she whispers softly. The infant sleeps soundly.
"What are we going to do?" questioned Penny, looking over at her husband who was staring at his daughter. They were hidden in a dark room and only praying to God that their capturer didn't walk in on such a precious moment.
"I don't know," Lester Dawson whispered. He was newly married to Penny, nearly only eleven months now. Their wedding was beautiful on a sandy beach with waves crashing behind them as they said their vows. But things never go the way you plan them to; they had planned to have the picture perfect wedding, which they did, and then have a flawless honeymoon, which they didn't.
Literally only being married for four days, they decided to take a walk in the night. A silver car comes racing up beside them. Somebody has tasered them both. They wake in a hollow building with a capturer who finds the fun in drugging this couple and torturing them. He doesn't want much from them, just their lives. He hasn't seemed to take it yet. He must live to watch suffering.
Suddenly, they hadn't seen their capturer in days. Lester and Penny decide they want to love each other completely before he returns; they give love to one another and Penny conceives a child. When Penny makes this discovery, they are pale-faced afraid. Penny hides her pregnancy from their capturer. Penny never grew too big, Allyson was a small baby. Penny manages to hide her tummy with a baggy shirt and a blanket which was provided by the capturer. He never finds out.
Penny and Lester oath that he should never find out about her pregnancy, so when her water breaks, Penny makes herself comfortable in the corner, bites down on the blanket and gives birth to Allyson without making a sound. Lester was astonished by this act of bravery, but it doesn't last long when he gets lost into the grey eyes of his daughter. He couldn't believe they'd made a life.
It was hard to hide Allyson once she was born: she cried, whimpered, gurgled. The new parents had hid their daughter in blankets and behind the small cabinet that their capturer always failed to look behind. They had created a small basinet out of towels and blankets. Ally seemed to like it back there.
It was the most horrifying day when Penny is gently holding Allyson in the middle of the night and Allyson begins to cry. Tears stream down the chubby cheeked child and Lester is frantic, hoping to shush Allyson's sobs by delicately rubbing his thumb against her cheek. Penny bounces her lightly because it used to calm her down. Allyson calms slightly. Penny smiles softly. She pulls out a pen that she had kept with her since the night of their kidnapping and gently starts writing Allyson's name on her chubby arm. She writes A-L-L-Y but never finishes when the door comes swinging open. Their capturer is stunned and confused. He sees an infant that is a month old.
His green eyes darken. He slowly approaches the couple. Their hearts are pounding and not because they are desperate to be outside again, to see the world after being locked away in this room for so long. "What's this?" he growls, he snatches the baby from Penny's arms. Penny cries out and Lester stares up in horror. Their capturer is not gentle with Allyson, he holds her with gripping fingers. Allyson cries a little bit louder.
He cradles the baby in his arms suddenly, holding her tightly. Her cries hush and she stares up at him with furrowed brows as she concentrates on an evil man's face. Penny and Lester keep quiet, watching with horror as he steps away from the couple and slowly places Allyson down onto a set of blankets. He turns around and walks towards the married couple.
He yanks Lester from the floor. Penny cries out and tries to attend to her husband, but their capturer as knocked her to the floor. This can't be happening! But it is.
Lester has fallen to the floor, a knife surged through his guts. He is bleeding externally and internally. Lester passes away after smiling gently at Penny. Penny is weeping loudly. Small Allyson can feel the tension in the room and she knows that something is not right. She begins to cry for her mommy. Her mommy doesn't appear as the capturer grabs Penny and wraps his large hands around her thin neck. He strangles her until the blood vessels in her eyes pop. She drops to the floor, coughing and wheezing. The capturer takes the knife that was in Lester's abdomen, tears out the knife and sinks it into Penny's chest. It's quick and Penny doesn't even have time to blink when her heart has already stopped. The infant in the corner cries louder.
Breathing heavily, the capturer takes swift steps towards Allyson. He picks her up and doesn't cradle her. He is not gentle. His fingers are tight around her small body. The infant feels so mistreated. She is being mistreated. Especially when the capturer walks for a while until he sets Allyson beneath a tree. It's raining outside. Allyson is left to die in the rain.
But there is another man walking through the rain in the middle of the night. He grumbles to himself. Why had he chosen to take a midnight walk? He's walking, walking, walking, walking, walk-stop! There is the faded sound of an infant's cry in the distance.
The man follows the precious, broken sound until he's led into the middle of a woodsy area. He frowns. But there's nobody around? He follows his instinct and keeps walking. His eyes grow large when he sees the infant lying there next to a tree. Her cries are loud and he runs to her.
"Oh, Dearie," he coos, cradling her into his arms. He hides her beneath his jacket. Allyson can feel the warmth of his body and cuddles towards his chest. He knows that she must be getting sick. He ends his midnight, rainy stroll and heads for his home. He lays her down onto a warm bed. Allyson had never felt so comfortable before. She was used to blankets and hard floors. This was nice. He cleans her up from the cold wetness and smiles down at the name scribbled onto her arm. "Hello, Ally," he whispers.
He's so glad that the infant pulls through the next few nights while being very sick. Soon enough, she is well again and she's quite a pleasant to be around. She watches his movements as if she's reading a novel: maybe she's going to be a reader or a writer, the man thinks to himself.
Ally grows and she's a little bit bigger. He's the first person she's ever smiled at. Just a sweet, six month old baby that he cradles in his arms and sings soft lullaby's to. He'd always wanted to be a father. He considered Ally his daughter.
The man knows that if anybody were to hear of Ally's existence they would take her away. He keeps her hidden from anybody. He and Ally live together in a small cottage by a lake. The man's name is John. John isn't exactly father material - he's a fisher, barely making it by on his own. He has to leave Ally at home alone a lot, he's always worried about her but like hell would he let anybody take her away from him. She had become his favourite thing in the world. Ally always seems to sleep through the time periods that he is away and if she wakes and he is not around, she forgives him when he returns because he gives her automatic, unconditional love.
Ally gets bigger and bigger until she's six years old and she's begun to understand John's circumstances. He has mentioned a story that he found her in the woods and that he is not her real father. Ally barely understands but knows enough that she has never met her parents, though she has always wanted to. Ally is very good at keeping herself a secret, John had also mentioned that nobody needed to know about her because they would take her away. Ally doesn't ask why they would do this, but she obeys and stays out of public eye. She swims in the lake like a fish and teaches herself how to sing when she's by herself. John likes poetry, so he taught her a couple things. When John teaches Ally how to read and write, Ally writes endless poems every day.
Ally has become amazing at faking an identity. At seven, she's very convincing about her existence. She has fooled the city that she is homeless and they buy it every time. "Who is that young girl playing with those boys over there?" people ask and others respond, "Oh, she's a homeless kid. Cute kid, though." And just like that, life moves on.
But when Ally turns nine, things have speculated about her. She moved along, faking her homelessness but when had she started to exist? They hadn't seen her until she turned seven. Where had she been these last seven years? There are no traces of this young girl. Who is she? Where does she stay at night? Nobody has seen her at the homeless shelter. No homeless man or woman have admitted to this child being their daughter.
"Ally..." John has tears in his eyes. Ally was writing a poem about wanting a puppy when she looked up at John. "I have a situation..." he murmurs. Ally frowns, leaves her sheet of paper and walks towards John. She stands in front of him, studying his face. Why was John so sad? "I can't keep you anymore."
Ally backs away. "But John." she whispers, tears fall from her coffee-colored irises. John nods his head.
"Come here, kid," he whispers, he hugs her tightly and doesn't want to let go. He explains himself: there is no way he can go on taking care of her because he's losing the cottage, they will find out about Ally, he can hardly pay for food, Ally might go hungry, and he doesn't want Ally to live in a foster home so he has an idea.
John knows people. He explained Ally to them and they swear to take care of Ally on their life, but John never realized that people break their trusts. The people that John gave Ally to two doctors working an asylum. John never studied the asylum. He never knew that this was the worst asylum in the city.
These doctors keep Ally as a patient but Ally is not mental. At least not when she gets there, but Ally knows that when she leaves that place, she definitely will be mental. Speculations wander around the asylum, too. But nobody must know about Ally Dawson's existence! Ally wonders why. Ally wanted to be given to a family, but they said no. The doctors told her it was all a part of finding her parents. But even as a nine year old, Ally knows they are liars because they shove her under the floor. They told her that she's not supposed to exist, which is funny, because Ally recalls feeling her heart thump against her ribcage and tasting the rain on her tongue.
Ally lives another nine years, pretending that she doesn't exist. She lives under the floor of the asylum. The walls and "her ceiling" are concrete, but the floor is wooden. There is a small lamp the runs on batteries in the corner. They give her new sets of batteries every month. At least they were thoughtful of light. She hears the creaks of feet above her when they walk over top of her. Why don't they just walk over her heart? Maybe it would be less lonely. She sits in the corner, only entertaining herself with the loose threads on her clothes that are wearing down, or pulling at the tangles in her hair. Her only friend is the spider that crawls across the ceiling once in every blue moon. Ally is only thankful that the doctors fed her regularly and properly.
Ally never forgot poetry: in fact, her poetry became music while she lived down in this cold, under floor room. Her nails are brittle and rigid from her scratching lyrics into the wooden flooring beneath her. Her fingers burn and ache, they're blistered. Ally sometimes scratches the lyrics in until her fingers bleed. But they never gave her a pen and her thoughts and feelings are way too loud for her mind to bare.
Present day, Ally Dawson is eighteen. She's sitting on the floor, picking at her nails that are cracked. Maybe she should ask for a pen, she wonders, and some paper too! Ally loses herself in wondering what it would be like to live like a normal kid. To not hide her existence, to be able to walk through malls with a couple best friends, or even better, to play an instrument. Instruments sound nice.
Ally is fully engaged into her thoughts when she feels this force bounce from the concrete wall behind her. She lurches forward and sprawls out onto the floor. Ally pulls herself up from the floor. Her eyes are wide. She hears screaming above her, things crashing, and she can literally feel the pulling force of gravity clawing at her body but it doesn't quite reach her. The ground is shaking. Is this an earth quake? She wonders to herself. She folds up in the corner, holding herself with fear.
It goes on forever. The screaming of agony. Ally is trembling all the way to her bones. It sounded awful. She closed her eyes and covered her ears, trying to shut herself out from all of this. When it's finished and it's just dead silent. Ally is too afraid to move. She stays in her comfort zone beneath the floor. The comfort zone that she prayed she would get the chance to leave.
Her prayer was answer. The next day, Ally isn't so fearful. It's quiet and Ally hasn't heard cries, conversations, or footsteps since whatever blast went off the other day. Ally gulps and crawls toward the small, wooden hatch. She pushes on it but it doesn't let up. Ally punches it, then winces, holding her hand. That idea wasn't very smart. She lays down onto her back and starts kicking the hatch until it springs open. Ally waits for somebody to get mad but nobody approaches.
Ally swallows hard and dusts herself off, despite the fact she looked like she had just been thrown into a washing machine for too long - her clothes were worn down. She hoists herself out of the floor. It's dark. There is no electricity. Ally wanders around and maneuvers around bodies that are laying on the floor. She is confused by the deaths around her, not scared. Ally was right: She is mental by the time she leaves this place.
She makes her rounds through the asylum and there is nothing. No life at all. She is entirely alone. Ally notices light peering through. She follows it and realizes that it's sunlight. Ally's eyes widen and she dashes for it. Nine year without sunlight? Yes, you will be running for it.
Ally makes it towards the window and the light burns her eyes. She holds her hands to her face and stumbles until she hits the wall. She slides down and tries to console herself. It really hurt. She peers through her finger tips and it takes a moment before her eyes are completely used to the incredible amount of light. Ally stares in shock. She looks around. Still nobody. She gets up from the floor.
Slowly, Ally walks towards the door. She opens it and she walks out; she's free. Ally looks around and smells the air. It's beautiful and fresh as it caresses the insides of her lungs. She finally notices something different about the outside. She hadn't forgotten everything. One of the things she didn't forget was that it was not supposed to look like this. Cars were tossed over each other, some were smoking, some engulfed in flames with their alarms sounding. Ash covered the ground as did dust. But Ally's lips curl into a wide smile as she sees the sky. It's blue. The clouds are an off white. She doesn't seem to mind how different the earth looks. She starts her walk, praising God for being able to walk outside. She spreads out her arms and feels the wind along her skin. People have told her that she's not supposed to exist, it must be a lie, because why else would she be here?
But when she pulls herself together. She wonders something: What happened? What was that blast?
Dez Worthy Or "Anti-Social Computer Master Mind"
Dez remembers it every day: the sound of his mother groaning and crying out for God's mercy. He stumbles up the stairs to see what the heck is going on. His mother has wrapped her body in a blanket, her lips are turning a pale grey. Dez held onto his nose. His mother had vomited all over the floor and now she collapsed on the couch, moaning about how tired she was and she just needed some sleep. Dez knew something was right. His eyes looked to the coffee table where he sees two pill bottles. He stiffly steps forward and reads the words on the pill bottles. With lots of his struggling, his eight year old mind registers that the label reads SLEEPING PILLS. He looks at his mother. It doesn't matter that he was as young as he was, he knew that you weren't supposed to take all of the pills. Especially two bottles. He was used to it though. It wasn't odd for his mother to grab her phone with shaky hands and dial his father's number while she cried out that she must've taken too many pills. She was too weak to call his father today. Dez didn't know what to do. He stood there, feeling a little bit numb.
Her arms have dots all over them from where she'd constantly went for her vaccinations. Well, she told Dez they were vaccinations but he doesn't remember his flu shots making him act the way she always did. He was wondering what kind of vaccinations hers were. She used to grin at him on Saturday Morning's and tell him that she enjoys doing coke lines. Did she mean Coca Cola? Diet Coke?
Dez jumps back with his blue eyes wide when she starts to shake uncontrollably. Her eyes are rolling back and he sees blood running down her chin from her lip. He cringes. Why was she shaking like that? Tears fill his eyes because he doesn't think it's normal for his mother to shake that way. He also doesn't think it's normal for somebody to bite on their lip so hard that it bleeds like that. Something was wrong. Suddenly, her convulsion stops. It takes four minutes before she's awake.
"Mom," Dez murmurs, coming closer. He notices that her forehead shines with beads of sweat. She's wiping her hands at her face, complaining that it's so hot. But Dez shivers because the house is cold. It had been all week.
"Don't call the hospital," she slurs but Dez doesn't understand what she's saying. She is grasping at her stomach, complaining of how bad it was hurting. He's holding his hands tightly towards his chest, he is stiff and awkward. He wonders when his dad will be home because his mother looked really sick. "my legs," she grumbles to herself, her breathing starting to get a little bit heavier, shallow. "Can't feel them," she mumbles. Dez looks down at his legs. He pats his thighs. He could feel his legs. Why couldn't she feel hers?
He stands there, as an awkward-wide-eyed child and he watches her drift, drift, drift away. Her life slips from her own finger tips. When Dez doesn't notice her chest rising and falling, he lays a palm on it. It felt very hollow. Why did it feel hollow? He glances towards her eyes and they are opened slightly so he jumps back. They didn't look right. They didn't have a sinister glint anymore. They were a faded blue, a clouded blue, a dead blue.
Dez's father had returned home that night. Dez hid in his room and pretended as if he never noticed what had happened up stairs. His father yells at him that he should've told him because he knows by the look on his son's face that Dez was there when she passed away, when she over dosed. It wasn't abnormal for his wife to take drugs and it also wasn't abnormal for his son to be so awkward.
Dez's father gulps back a beer after his wife's body was sent to the morgue. He tries to get the image of her out of his mind but it's impossible. He drinks until he's drunk. The beer bottle slips from his finger tips and he lays passed out on the couch. Dez crawls up stairs and peers at his father. When he sees that he is asleep, he knows it's safe to come up for some snacks. Dez helps himself to some candy and chips. He goes into his room and grabs the home phone. He takes it apart, puts it back together, takes it apart, and puts it back together. He repeats this for three hours until his feels like maybe his heart doesn't hurt so much. He knew that his mother had gone away and despite knowing that she wasn't very good to him, he missed her. She used to take him out to candy shops while she met up with her friends.
When Dez is nine, his father doesn't talk to him much anymore. Dez preferred it that way. If he spoke to his dad, his father usually yelled and Dez hated when his dad yelled because, well, it was annoying and it made him feel angry. He runs upstairs and see's his drunk father on the couch, unconscious. Dez reaches across the living room and grabs the DVD player. He takes it apart and puts it together again five times until he is not angry anymore.
When Dez turned ten, his father didn't come home anymore. It was a week before his Aunt called the police with worry. Dez is relieved that his father hadn't been home for a while, but he does get a little sad. It was his dad after all, despite that he hardly talked with him, Dez liked it when his dad would smile at him and let him take his wristwatch apart and put it back together. He used to tell Dez that he was going to be a real help someday. Dez grinned when his father would say that. He loved to help.
Dez was angry that they took him away from his home. He liked that house. His room was big and he had drawn Iron Man on his wall when he was seven and he still liked to look at it. Everyone was very nice to him but they also looked at him oddly when he would only sit in the chair as a huddled mass, picking at his finger nails and avoided talking to anyone. He wasn't very good at talking to anyone. He just shifted his eyes a lot and tried to smile, but his smile was always lopsided. He asks for the police's walkie eventually and he starts taking it apart. The police takes it away from him and doesn't give Dez the chance to explain that he would put it together again. Dez sighs.
When Dez arrives at his first foster home, they are concerned. He doesn't like to talk a lot and he sits awkwardly at the dinner table. The principle calls the parents and explains that Dez left the classroom without asking and that they needed to teach him to start speaking up. Dez murmurs to his foster mom that he was only going to the washroom. Dez didn't know the big commotion, he never had to ask to use the washroom before. He had been homeschooled by his Aunt. Why couldn't he stay with her? child services hadn't allowed it.
By the time Dez is twelve, he has obviously learned how to sit in a desk and ask before leaving the classroom. The teacher's love Dez because he sits quietly and never disrupts the class, but they notice that he doesn't interact with the students and at recess time, he spends the hour on the computer looking at different programs and teaching himself how to fix internet connections. He was a smart boy, but not at social things.
The kids never picked on Dez, but they weren't very nice to him either. He tried to avoid eye contact because when he did make eye contact, people accused him of being the 'weird kid who won't stop staring'. How long do you make eye contact before you look away? They say that it's difficult transitioning from homeschooling to public schooling but that kids will eventually learn how to socialize, Dez never did. He was never awkwardly mute, he did talk every now and again, but he struggled with connecting and/or cooperating with students. Somehow he managed to get the students to dislike him or feel uncomfortable around him. He decided to take apart his calculator and put it back together again. He smiles when his teacher applauds him. She tells him he'll be a great help. It reminds him of his dad and instead of having horrible memories, he remembers with joy.
When Dez is fourteen, he's been through eight different foster homes. Finally, he's staying at one that was easy. He had a sibling named Peter. Peter had autism and Dez found it relaxing. Peter would sometimes act out but Dez could connect with him because Peter also had trouble being in social situations. Dez's foster parents noticed Dez's kind behavior towards Peter and they adopt him legally. Dez is happy in this home. They treat him nicely and they don't push him to socialization. Dez hated being anti social.
Dez teaches his twelve year old brother Peter how to fix a computer software. Peter doesn't quite understand, but Dez smiles because it's okay. Peter gets bored and walks away. Dez focuses on the laptop that his adoptive father had gotten him for his birthday. He picks it apart and messes with wiring. He puts it together again and his computer works a little bit faster. Dez grins with satisfaction.
Present day, Dez is eighteen. He has locked himself in a concrete building. He is concentrated on the computer screens in front of him. This was his happy places, surrounded by technology. Technology had always interested in him. Dez smiled wide and laughed happily when he fixed a hacked computer. "Nobody will get into the system now," he mumbled.
Dez sits back in the comfortable chair when he notices that the concrete room has gotten ten times bright. Alarmed, Dez turns to look out the shatter-proof windows. His eyes go wide and his jaw nearly drops as he looks at the ball of fire that has come out of no where. It's bright, but not bright enough that he needs to look away. He watches with horror. He glances towards the sky where he's figuring it must've come from. It's a meteor. A huge one. One that he's never remembered being taught about. How the heck was it so big as well? It could melt the whole city.
And that's what it does.
The meteor's reflection is inside Dez's oceanic irises. There was an iridescent ring around the glowing, fiery meteor. It looks nearly like an invisible force and he watches it as it takes a moment before shooting out like a laser. It wipes out the entire city. He's sure it stretches out for miles. Maybe even farther. He yelps as he crashes to the ground when the force his the building. Everything shakes and the electricity goes out. It's dark but the window allows in the sunlight that has not disappeared yet. He's scared that the windows will shatter and he's surely going to die but they don't. They remain intact and the concrete building he is in does not fall apart. He's safe in here.
When the shaking comes to a stop, Dez picks himself up from the floor. He reaches for the computers and starts hitting the keys and buttons, trying to get the computers to come back to life but they don't budge. He takes himself away from the computer and walks towards the windows.
Dez presses his palms up against the glass and he immediately jolts backwards, yelping as he clutched his hands that are now stinging. He looks outside. Dez knows it's not safe out there. Not yet. He might just have been the only person to survive that meteor blast.
"It's a damn apocalypse," Dez huffed out, shocked. He peers out the window, careful not to touch it. He's now aware of the heat radiating from it. He knows there must be toxins in the air and it's best not to go outside for most likely a day or so.
There is fire and smoke everywhere. He sees dead bodies along the streets. He's horrified. So many deaths at once. He sees a few buildings that weren't strong enough and had plummeted to the ground, taking the lives of many people. He watches as people walk out from other buildings that had survived this destruction and they immediately start grabbing at their skin and faces before they fall to the ground. It doesn't take long for them to stop moving; they die. Dez nodded slowly. There was definitely something still in the air.
Trish De La Rosa Or The Angry Girl With a Pocket Knife
Trish is six when her father calls her into his office. Trish peers inside, smiling at her father. He grins over at his curly haired daughter and motions with his finger for her to come closer. Trish obeys and walks to him. "I have a gift," he tells her and searches his pocket until he finds it. "You need to be careful with this."
Trish confusedly looked at the rod. Her father chuckled. He took it back and showed her how to flick it open. Her eyes go wide and she gasps. He grins at her and sets it into her palm. "Daddy, it's a knife."
"I know that," he says, "It was mine when I was a boy and you're brother is still too young to be handling it. Mom thinks you are too, but I know you are a special young lady." Trish grins at her father when he tells her that. He always made her feel special. "But...I don't want you using this against anyone. Somebody might get hurt badly. The only time we use this is if somebody is hurting us. But I like to carve with it."
"Carve?" she echoed. He chuckled and nodded. He picked up a wooden object. It resembled a starfish.
"This was made out of a woodblock by the lake. I saw a starfish in the ocean as a boy and it came to mind. I made this. Carving helps keep me calm when I am frustrated, it's also a good way to keep busy." he says. Trish slowly nods, staring at the carving before he puts it away into his pocket.
Trish loves the pocket knife. Her father teaches her a few moves of self defense and teaches her how to swing the knife and how to seriously injure somebody with it. He teaches her how to move the blade along an object when she wanted to carve something. Her mother is against this and instead teaches her how to slice fruit and vegetables with it. Trish uses it for all of the above.
Trish eventually puts the knife down and only plays with it at night time when she can't sleep. She doesn't take it to school but she's starting to wonder if she should because the boys at school keeping calling her "chunky" and "fat". Trish knew she wasn't as thin as the pretty girl in her class, but she never used to think she was fat. Trish was hurt. She told her mother and her mother tells her that she used to get it all the time while she was in school as well, but she needed to ignore it and stick her chin up.
When Trish is eight, her mother and father are called for a meeting with principle because Trish had brought the knife to school and flashed it in the middle of class. Her father is upset when he hears that she had threatened a boy with it. The principle is understanding because of Trish getting bullied, but she tells the De La Rosa's that Trish needs to be taught not to use violence.
It doesn't get any better. When Trish is nine, she beats up a little girl. The little girls run into the school with a bloody nose and busted lip. Trish is pleased with her knuckles when the principle is helping her wash them in the school sink. She scolds Trish and tells her that she causes too much trouble. Trish likes being trouble, she thinks it's fun.
"Do you know how to fight?" Trish asks her little brother. JJ looks up at her and shakes his head. He's eight and Trish decides it's time that he learns to fight. "Always curl you fist like this," she demonstrates and he nods, practicing on his own fist, "Always tuck in your thumb, otherwise you'll break it when you hit somebody." JJ takes notes in his mind. "See this," she showed him her pocket knife.
"Dad told you not to bring that anywhere!" he told his bigger sister, eyes wide. She smirks.
"When Dad doesn't know won't hurt him," she says sinisterly. JJ doesn't know what else to do so he laughs because he's got a cool big sister! They're walking alongside the road while she's entertaining him by showing him how to slash the knife and how to hold it properly. He tries a couple times before she takes it back and puts the knife in her pocket.
"Do they still hurt your feelings at school?" questioned JJ. Trish smiled over at him slightly and nodded slowly. She didn't like being soft, but it was JJ, he was the only one who would ever see her get soft. Not even her parents saw her soft side anymore.
"I don't let them bother me anymore, because..." Trish trails off when she's the headlights coming for them in the dark. Her eyes get wide and she's only ten so she doesn't exactly know what to do when the driver swerves towards them. She jumps out of the way, she reaches for JJ but she misses and to her horror, she watches her little brother's body collide with the hood of a red car. Her hands cover her mouth as her eyes are wide and fat tears jump down her cheeks.
JJ De La Rosa lays on the side of the road. He isn't moving and there's a lot of blood. The car pulls the car into a screeching reverse and takes off into the night. Trish doesn't know what to do. She starts to sob as she runs for her brother. "Maniac," she mumbled through her tears as she searches for the car but it's long gone. She looks down to her brother. "JJ.." she shakes him but he doesn't respond. His eyes are slightly opened and they have a lifeless look.
Trish holds him on the side of the road, her shirt is getting bloody as he bleeds onto her and there's so much of it that Trish knows there is no way her brother's heart is still beating. She's breathing heavily, feeling as if she can't get enough air to flow through her lungs. She just lost her brother, her best friend.
It's maybe an hour before a driver driving steadily notices two small kids on the side of the road and her eyes widened as she noticed the little boy and the crying little girl. She stops the car on the side of the road and runs to them, calling 911. Trish weeps. She shouldn't have let him stand so close to the road.
The family grieves heavily for the loss but when noticing Trish's vulgar behavior, they toss her into deep counseling. She was violent before and she is more violent now. The other day, somebody mentioned something about her brother dying and she held a knife against their stomach. It was unbelievable, a ten year old pressing a knife against another ten-year-olds abdomen. Trish De La Rosa has anger management issues.
Even with counseling Trish only ever gets worse. School may have gotten a little bit better, but the bullying was now passive aggressive. They only started to like Trish because she carried that pocket knife with her and always completed the best dares that nobody would think to do. She doesn't listen to the teachers and lives on her own free ticket of doing what she wanted, when she wanted. Mr. and Mrs. De La Rosa are embarrassed by her.
The arsenal of names keeps growing in a thicker dictionary, but Trish ignores it with a smirk and flashes her pocket knife. She sits in the back of glass, playing with it whenever she can and sometimes gets sent to the office for not putting it away. That never bothered her, she continued playing with it and even got asked to like the school grounds because they were nervous around her.
Trish seems to one-up everyone whether it was the students at school, the teachers, or even her own parents. The fights at home got louder and more violent. Her father grabbed her and shoved into the wall one time for Trish flashing the knife at her mother. Trish never meant to flash the knife, it was just something that became a habit. It was her defense mechanism. Trish gets more disobedient as times goes on. She is sixteen when her parents ask her not to come home anymore. They make sure she knows that they love her, but Trish thinks: If they love me, why would they abandon me?
Trish stays on her own, clutching her knife. She stays with friends, with cousins, and then casually sneaks her way into bars. How she always got in was beyond her. Nobody ever approached her and asked for her age though. Of course they wouldn't, she always had her knife on display.
Present day, Trish is eighteen. Her hide out is in a storm cellar across from an abandoned highway. It's more like her home now. She got a job as a waitress and she worked there for a while, earning herself some money to buy food and a mattress. Trish is miserable and angry with the entire world.
Trish is laying on her mattress when she rolls off of it due to the ground shaking. Trish's eyes widened. She hides in the corner of the storm cellar. The small light bulb that often hung from the ceiling goes out. It's completely dark. It's a good thing Trish kept a flashlight. She grips it and turns it on. She wonders what is going on out there but doesn't think to ask herself about it.
The ground eventually stops shaking and she doesn't have the courage to go outside. Despite how angry and daring she is, she isn't going out after what she'd just felt. She curls up on her mattress and forces herself to sleep. She drifts away into a soft slumber.
When she wakes again, she senses the light peeking through the storm cellar door. She creeps up the stairs and opens the door. It's extremely hot today. It feels nice on her skin. Her eyes widened at the abandoned high way. It was cracked and lumpy. What the hell happened?! Trish ventures out into the world, noticing how destroyed everything was. The area was practically vacant as she travelled towards the city. Was she the only one still alive?
Trish pulled out her pocket knife for comfort and continued walking. She wondered what was going on. What had happened? Why had it happened? When had it happened? She recalls the shaking in the cellar. She knows whatever happened, it wasn't good.
LONGEST CHAPTER I HAVE EVER WRITTEN, DEAR GOD.
So, yeah, chapter one is an introduction to our main characters...I wanted you to know the background of them and how they experienced the "destruction". I know I have three other stories going on but who the heck cares? I don't. My mind is exploding with thoughts and sometimes I gotta write them out. So, I figured I'd go for an apocapyse story because they interest me..
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P.S. This wasn't proof read. I don't know why I still mention it, but yeah.