Sometimes, Carl and his friends like to go into the vacant houses on the edges of Alexandria where not many people are. It's a huge community, but there isn't enough people to fill every single house, leaving many houses untouched to collect dust. Even so, most of them have been raided for supplies, leaving no food or medicine in the cabinets. But a bunch of things like clothes and family photo albums still remain, family in the photos most likely dead or turned and walking aimlessly outside the walls. Shoes remain near the front door like someone still lives there, coats hanging on a rack that'll never be used again. Fish and hamsters lay dead in their tanks, starved and left to rot, reduced to tiny skeletons after years of festering.
Enid has found many books in the empty houses, creating her own little collection in her own room, ranging from comics to actual novels. Though she does enjoy the comics a bit more, and shares them with the group. But she always expects to get them back, not wanting to lose them.
Mikey and Ron mostly search for video games. Just xbox 360 ones, though, because that's all they have. Only a few houses had games, and it was obviously ones where a preteen or teenage boy lived. They've found a bunch of Call of Duty and Modern Warfare discs, but sometimes they find gems like Assassin's Creed or Bioshock. When they do enjoy the multiplayer games to play together and face against each other, they do enjoy the story games and even if they're first person shooters most the time, they get invested in the story since there's nothing really to focus on in the end of the world. You either stare at a wall and over think until you go crazy, or you occupy yourself with games and books if you have access to them.
Carl has taken an array of things from the houses. He doesn't really look for anything in particular. He's found some cool comic posters that he took to put up in his own room, pairs of shoes that luckily fit his feet, and clothes. Winter and summer clothes, but mostly summer attire since the end of the world came in the summer, all winter clothes stocked away somewhere for the end of the year that never came.
They usually sneak off during the day, because Carl, Ron, and Mikey's parents want them to be home before the sun goes down. During the day, they still worry, but it's not as enforced. They tell their parents they're going to hang out inside the walls, and they trust them enough that they let them go about and do their thing. Since it's a big community, they could be anywhere. And anywhere is the empty houses on the far side of the walls.
Today they found a house they haven't been to before. A light blue, two story house with white accents. A dark blue car is still parked in the driveway, forgotten.
"Hopefully the front door is unlocked," Ron says as they go up the few stairs. He goes up to the door first, putting his hand on the handle and turning. Luckily, the knob turns all the way and the door opens with ease. "Nice!" Ron grins, and ushers the other three inside before going in himself and closing the door behind him.
The house is dark, all lights out. The only source of light is the sun streaming in the windows, only making the coating every surface and floating around more noticeable. Off to the right there's a living room with a fireplace. A big, tan couch sits in front of a television on a low pedestal, the screen pitch black. A coffee table sits in front of the couch, piled with magazines, books, and various remotes. A half filled mug of what seems to be coffee sits on the edge of the table, the liquid just pure mold. It looks like it smells horrible, but thankfully the smell doesn't travel that far. The kitchen is off to the left with the dining room behind it. Everything is either a shade of blue or brown. Obviously the people that lived here loved the color blue, but the mixture of colors and shades are relaxing and fit together nicely. Stairs are right in front of them, leading up to the second floor.
"It's nice," Mikey comments, walking into the living room. He runs his hands over the back of the couch before going over to the tv, searching through the drawers underneath, most likely searching fro games.
"Yeah, but dusty," Enid sniffs, bothered by all the dust in the air. She wiggles her nose to keep back a sneeze.
"Of course it's dusty, no one's been here for years." Ron goes into the kitchen, and Carl follows along. There's a bowl on the counter in the middle of the space filled with a brown, thick liquid that smells horrible. Carl thinks it could have one time been fruit, and he finds himself missing eating fruits like apples and pears. They're so hard to come by now that you're lucky if you find an apple tree. But there's a bunch of farms in Georgia, so there's the opportunity to find at least something.
"There's no food here," Carl says, obvious. "All cleaned out."
"Obviously," Ron grimaces as he looks in the fridge, instantly closing it again because of the rancid smell.
"I'm gonna go upstairs," Carl turns around, already walking away. "Wanna come?"
"I'll be up in a minute, gonna look through the living room with the other two." Ron takes one last look around the kitchen before stepping out of it.
"Alright." Carl nods and climbs the stairs, hand instinctively on his knife in its sheath just in case there was walkers. He stops at the top few steps and listens closely. He hears no movement except for the other three walking around and talking downstairs, yet he still keeps his hand near his weapon as he goes fully upstairs just in case. You never know what could happen.
There's a few rooms, mostly bedrooms, but there's one bathroom. He chooses to go into one of the bedrooms first, the door already wide open so all he has to do is step in.
It's mostly floral patterns, faded from years of being exposed to sunlight and use. There's a queen sized bed pressed against the back wall with a large dresser with a mirror facing the bed. There's various little things scattered on the surface, but it's an organized mess. There's no television, just a bed with the dresser, a small closet filled with clothes neatly hanging with shoes in the floor, and two bedside tables next to the queen. It's pretty plain. It seems to be the parents' room.
He doesn't expect anything exciting to be in the room, but he starts to search around anyway. He starts with the closet, seeing if any of the men's shoes are his size. They aren't, and he's kind of disappointed. All of the clothes are mostly polo shirts and dress pants with some dresses thrown in. But there's a decent sized backpack on the floor in the back end of the closet, so he takes that. There's a few notebooks in it, which he shakes out and leaves on the floor, slinging the backpack onto his back.
He looks through the dressers next, finding more clothes that don't fit him or he's not interested in. There's nothing interesting on the top of the dresser, mostly hair clips and old letters.
He moves on to the last things in the room, the two bedside tables. He starts on the left one, but finding nothing but a few small books, a crossword puzzle book, and a pair of reading glasses with one of those strings on it. So he moves onto the next one, and he expects nothing interesting until he opens up the drawer.
He squints, picking up something fuzzy. It's a puffy tail like a cat's, but there's something attached to it. It's rounded, tapered at the tip and wider at the base. He furrows his eyebrows and puts it aside on the bed, looking back into the drawer to see what else he'll find.
Next he pulls out a pair of cat ears on a headband, brown, just like the tail. The ears are also very fluffy, soft to the touch. He turns it over in his hand, just observing it like it's something entirely new. He's seen girls wear headbands with little wires with rhinestones on them shaped like cat ears and it's cute, but he's never really come across something like this, never thought about it. He puts it aside with the tail.
Then there's a collar. A straight up bright pink collar with a huge yellow bell on the front with white rhinestones spaced around it that sparkle every time he moves it. There's a chain that attaches to it, a leash, hanging down from it. He places it to the side also.
The last thing in the drawer is a bottle of lube, halfway filled. He doesn't really know exactly what it is, but he puts it to the side with the rest of the stuff he found anyway. He closes the drawer with his hip and turns to the treasure he found, just staring at the pile.
Carl doesn't know what to do with all of it, but part of him wants to take it.
He thinks it over, cheeks pink, before finally giving in. He slips the backpack off of his back and stuffs everything inside, zipping it up and putting it back on. He takes one last look of the room before leaving and moving on.
"Carl? Oh, there you are," Ron smiled. "Find anything cool?"
"Uh," Carl's face is still pink, and he hopes that Ron doesn't notice. "Just a backpack. I already have one but, you know, just in case something happens to it. Besides, this one's bigger." He turns around for a second to show Ron the backpack, but doesn't reveal what's inside. Part of him wants to understand what it really is, but he has a feeling that it isn't appropriate for the time being. Or ever.
"Cool," Ron says, wandering into what looks like what used to be a teenage girl's bedroom. "Wonder if there's anything cool in here. Looks like all girl's stuff."
Carl followed closely behind, feeling a little odd being alone with Ron.
He usually hangs out with all three of them at once. It's rare that he's one on one with someone, especially Ron. But when he's alone with the sandy haired boy, he feels his chest get tight and feels butterflies in his stomach. He doesn't really know what to think of it. He's had a crush before when he was younger, but it was such an innocent crush, and it never would have happened. It was Beth, when his group was at the prison. He liked the way she sang and the way she took care of Judith so carefully, so filled with love and kindness that is so hard to find in the wake of the apocalypse.
But now there's Ron. He didn't even know he liked guys, but here he was, trying not to act like an idiot around his close friend and one of the only other teens in the community.
Ron opens up the drawers on the fancy looking dresser, snickering when he opens up a drawer filled with bras and panties.
"Look," He giggles, holding up a pair of lacy underwear. It's a light pink color, almost see through, with a little white bow and white lace around the edges. He holds it up to his hips. "Think they'd fit me?" He jokes, raising an eyebrow at Carl.
"Heh, I think they're a little too small," Carl laughs. He has a passing image in his head of Ron wearing the panties, and he does his best to push that thought out before it can go any further.
"You're right," Ron puts the panties back in the drawer, closing it. "It's worth a try. Maybe Enid would like them. I think they'd fit her." He smirks, going through the other drawers and finding regular shirts and pants. Carl also gets an image of Enid wearing the panties, and he hates himself, because he finds both the image of Ron and Enid wearing the panties both pleasing.
"Yeah, maybe," Carl chuckles nervously, fidgeting with the straps of the backpack on his shoulders. "Did they find anything neat downstairs?"
"Enid found more books, of course." Ron shuffles through the closet, finding more clothes, shoes, and random items. The room is a bit of a mess, so he has to step over piles of clothes and notebooks. "Mikey tried to look for games, but there's nothing. Just a bunch of movies, but nothing interesting. Mostly romcoms."
"Boring," Carl makes a face, taking a few steps forwards, closer to Ron, so he can look through the closet.
"Totally," Ron scoffs. "They didn't even have any Marvel movies! I would kill to see Captain America or Iron man. I wonder how many more movies they would have made if...all this didn't happen."
"I wanna know what happened to his friend. What was his name?" Carl thought hard, but the name escaped him. It was on the tip of his tongue.
"Bucky," Ron told him, wandering over to the computer desk in the corner. He sits down on the chair, scanning the top shelves. "He fell off the train, right? I read a little bit of the comics, I think he becomes some sort of super soldier like Cap. Enid would probably know." He opens up a laptop that's on the desk, pressing the power button even if he knows it won't turn on, fiddling with the keys and typing out random words that don't show up on the black screen.
"Probably," Carl shrugs, watching Ron type aimlessly.
"Always thought Cap and Bucky were a little gay for each other, honestly," Ron chuckles, closing the laptop and turning in the chair to face Carl, putting his elbow on the desk and resting his head on his hand, looking tired. He always looks tired, Carl notices; dark bags under his eyes.
"Really?" Carl raises an eyebrow. He's never really thought about it, but he kind of likes the idea.
"Yeah, don't you notice? They're so close."
"I mean…" Carl thinks for a moment. "Yeah, actually, I can see that." He laughs. He thinks about the two characters kissing, and finds it adorable.
"We should check out the other bedroom then go back downstairs." Ron gets up, heading towards the door. "Nothing in here I want to take."
"Nothing I want to take either." Carl takes a look at the dresser, kind of wanting to take the panties. But he doesn't go for it.
Both of them go into the last bedroom, which looks like a pre-teen boy's. It's plastered with posters of video games, a huge Minecraft poster being one of them. There's a medium sized tv with a big, bright green bean bag in front of it, which Carl goes over to and plops into. It's also a mess, clothes everywhere and some garbage and plates that weren't taken back down to the kitchen.
"This is so comfortable," Carl sighs, sinking into the bean bag. "I've always wanted one of these."
"Then take it," Ron says, crouching down to look under the tv by the xbox 360, a few games stuffed near it.
"I can't carry this across town."
"Why not?" Ron asks, picking up a case labeled Mass Effect. He puts it beside him, continuing to examine the cases.
"My dad will wonder where it came from. He doesn't know that we do this."
"My mom doesn't know we do this either. I mean, she found out about Mikey, Enid and I's little hang out spot in the attic that's now your house and she was a little upset, but it was so close by that she came to terms with it. It's inside the walls, so it's not like we're gonna run into any of those monsters. As far as I know, this whole place is cleaned out." He places another case on top of the one beside him. "I haven't seen one of those things inside the walls in a long time. I saw one once, and it was pretty scary, but it was taken care of. Don't know how it got in, though."
Carl thinks it over. His dad is better about him going off on his own now, obviously letting him roam inside the walls freely with his friends. He always has his knife on him just in case anything did go south, and he's pretty good with offing the walkers quickly and efficiently. He remembers when it was just him and his dad after the prison was taken over, and he wandered off by himself and got into trouble with a walker inside of another house, ending up losing a shoe. But at least he found all the pudding, even if he felt sick after eating the entire can.
"Maybe my dad would be cool with it," Carl says, taking handfuls of the bean bag and squishing it, feeling the little balls inside. "But I just don't feel like carrying this."
"Lazy," Ron laughs, looking up at Carl for a moment before going back to looking at the games. He gets tired of kneeling and sits down with his legs crossed instead.
"Any good games?" Carl asks.
"Something called Mirror's Edge." Ron holds it up. The cover is a close up of an Asian woman with a stylish bob, intense eyeliner, and a city that's all white in the background. "I read the back, seems pretty neat. You get to jump across buildings and shit."
"We should try it out later," Carl suggests.
"Of course." Ron nods, holding up another case that reads Left 4 Dead. "This one's about zombies, ironically. Seems cool though. We should try it out."
"I guess," Carl chews his bottom lip. They're already in a world where there's monsters walking around them and killing their loved ones. There's death all around them all the time, and it's devastating. To make a game out of it seems insensitive, but of course, when the game was made, they had no idea all of this would happen.
"Picked out a few others, but not much multiplayer stuff. So we'll have to take turns." Ron stands up, gathering up the games in his hands. "Ready to go downstairs?"
"Give me a second. This is just so comfy." Carl takes a few moments before he pushes himself to his feet, sighing.
He follows Ron down the stairs, and finds Enid and Mikey sitting on the couch and talking. Enid is a girl of very few words, but they seem to be in an alright conversation, Enid holding a few books in her lap.
"Hey, you guys find anything?" Mikey asks, turning around to face them. Ron and Carl come up behind the couch, Carl placing his hands on the back of it.
"Carl found a backpack and I found a few new games." He held the games up his his hands.
"Nice! Lemme see." Ron hands the games to Mikey, who starts to read the back of the cases.
"Mostly one player stuff. But it's still games." Ron shrugs.
"That's fine, it's still something to do."
"Yeah," Ron agrees.
"Books," Enid says simply, patting the top one.
"You already have so many, how are you going to read all of them?" Ron chuckles, joking.
"Well, we have a lot of time," Enid says, opening up the top book and just flipping through the pages, loving the way they look falling onto each other. The smell of the book wafts up to her nose, and the smell makes her relax, even slightly happy.
"That's true," Ron shrugs.
"We should start heading back before it gets dark," Mikey gets up, tucking the video games under his arm.
"You're right, let's go," Ron motions for them to follow, and all three of them trail behind the blond out the door. They all walk home talking about random things, mostly about the shit they found. When they reach where they have to split up, the sun is beginning to set.
"See you guys tomorrow," Mikey waves. "Here, Ron, take the games, you have the xbox." He hands the games to Ron.
"Thanks," Ron nods. "See you guys tomorrow!"
They all wave goodbye and go their separate ways. Carl's house is right there so he doesn't have to walk too far.
When he gets inside, Rick is in the kitchen.
"There you are," Rick says when Carl steps into the room. "Have fun with your friends?" It feels so nice to say the word 'friends.' He's so happy Carl has people around that are his age so he doesn't feel so left out and alone anymore. Even if he is very mature for his age, the world around him shaping him and making him mature much faster than usual, he still needs people his age, still needs friends to keep him company.
"Yeah," Carl smiles, leaning against the counter. "Is that dinner?" He points to the two plates with corn, peas, and chicken on them.
"Yeah, just finished before you got here. I'm not the best cook, but it's something." He pushes a plate towards Carl, and hands him a fork and knife. They both sit down at the table and eat together, mostly in silence. They don't really talk too much, but Rick tries to make conversation. There's really not much to talk about, with no news being on, no tv shows airing, no internet. So they have to scramble to find something interesting, something to spend time on and bond over in the end of the world. They don't want to talk about the horrors they've seen, so they have to grasp for something moderately positive which is so difficult to do.
They finish dinner pretty quickly. These days, food is so little and so hard to find that when they have it they're so thankful, but they're so hungry that they eat so fast when they don't mean to.
"I'll be in my room, I'm tired," Carl says after they're finished, rubbing his eyes.
"Alright." Rick nods, putting away the dishes in the sink. "I'll be down here if you need me."
Carl nods back, making his way upstairs and into his room. He closes the door behind him and drops the backpack to the floor, plopping down on his bed and laying down. He closes his eyes, but he doesn't intend to sleep just yet. He just lays there, relaxing.
He almost forgets about what he found earlier, but it all comes back to him suddenly and he blushes.
He sits up, unzipping the backpack and pulling out its contents. First he pulls out the tail.
He just holds it in his hand, feeling the soft fake fur. It's so soft, and he can't stop petting it. It's fur is a mixture of browns, and looks very natural. It's kind of long but also very fluffy. He's still confused about the bit on the end though. He doesn't really know what it's for. He tries to think about it, and a thought comes up that makes him a little uncomfortable.
Tail. Tail is near the butt. That thing...goes in someone's butt.
He winces at the thought, not touching the end of it. He wants to wash it off, so he gets up and peeks out of his room to check if Rick is around. Not seeing him, still downstairs, he jogs to the bathroom and closes the door behind him, locking it.
Carl turns the sink on, making the water a little warm before running the tapered, blunt end attached to the tail under the water; using a little bit of soap on a washcloth to thoroughly clean it. He cleans it over and over until he feels like it's not dirty anymore, until it's shining. Wringing out the washcloth, he hangs it over the side of the bathtub to dry and uses a dry towel hanging on a rack near the toilet to get any remaining water off of the surface. After, he's done, he just stares at it for a few minutes, thinking about his realization.
Why would someone put this in a place like that? He's seen people wear tails on their belts on Halloween (and some people wearing them not on Halloween), but why this? Why not just wear it on a belt? It seems much more comfortable and, well, appropriate. Obviously you couldn't wear something like this out because it's not really socially acceptable to show off your entire ass in public, even if girls wear really short shorts sometimes and Carl's seen a little too much.
He huffs and unlocks the door, checking again if Rick is nearby before jogging back to his room and locking the door. He sits back down on his bed.
Before he looks at the other things, he changes out of his clothes and into his pajamas; a loose t-shirt and sweatpants with bare feet. Now that he feels more comfortable, he sits on his bed and pulls out the other three items from the backpack, laying them in front of them on his bed as he sits with his legs crossed.
He pets the fur on the ears. It's the same brown color as the tail, but the inside of the ears are a light pink with white tufts of fur poking out. They're really cute, he thinks, even if it's a little weird. He places them on his head and leans over to look in the mirror on his dresser across from him, just staring at his reflection.
It's still weird, but at the same time, it still looks kind of cute. Even if the headband fits him perfectly, the ears are still a little big, drooping on his head. He reaches his hand up and pets them again, now sort of relaxed at the feeling of the plush fur under his fingers.
He finally turns away and picks up the pink collar and leash, turning it over in his hands and examining it. It's a little heavy, smelling of leather. It's thick, and whenever he moves it, the big bell on the front of it jingles along with the chain, the little white rhinestones sparkling in the light.
He opens it up, slipping the buckle free. He holds it up to his neck, taking a deep breath before slipping it back into the buckle, getting the little spikes into the holes where he feels most comfortable with. It's tight but not too tight, but it still feels odd on his neck. He's worn necklaces before, but he's never had something like this on. He's seen girls wear little wire chokers, but this is nothing like that. He gets sort of rush from smelling the leather and feeling it tight around his throat, and when he looks in the mirror he's surprised at what he looks like.
It compliments his face and hair nicely, and paired with the fluffy cat ears, he looks even more adorable. Whenever he moves his head the bell keeps jingling, so he tries not to move his head as much just in case Rick was to come upstairs and hear it. The big bell on the front is sort of cartoony, but it's still very cute. The light reflects off of it and it shines.
He finally turns away from the mirror after staring at himself for God knows how long, turning back to the last item.
The lube.
It's only halfway full, obviously having been used a lot. It's in a bottle like a soap dispenser with the little pump at the top. The liquid looks thick but watery at the same time. It lays on its side and the liquid forms to the bottom, but it moves sluggishly. Little bubbles are all in the substance.
He contemplates squirting some on his hand, but he really thinks about it. But he finally goes "fuck it" and turns it upright, only pumping a very little portion into his palm.
He pokes at it with the index finger on this other hand, just pushing the liquid around. It's watery, but still holds itself together. It's like a gel. It's a little cold, and very slippery. He smears it around his palm, just playing with it. It's kind of fun to just mess with, but he doesn't really know where to wipe it when he's done with it.
He doesn't really know exactly what it is used for, since he never really learned about sexual things. When the apocalypse started, he was so young. When he was that young before everything went to shit, his parents didn't really let him use the computer that much, and whenever he used it, they helped him along with it and he mostly played stupid video games on sites that probably gave the computer viruses. He's seen dirty ads on the sides of websites before, but he never clicked on them. He just kind of passed by them, but he still found himself oddly uncomfortable whenever he saw a half naked woman or man. He didn't know it was arousal.
He's touched himself before, of course. He's a teenage boy, of course he's going to masturbate. But he never really put many things together. No one ever talked to him about the birds and the bees. There was never any time to sit him down and talk about it when all they had to focus on was to just survive. No one ever thought to explain to him how sex works and how to practice safe sex. He doesn't really know what a condom is. He's so out of the loop. But he knows what an orgasm feels like, but he doesn't know the word. He does know what cum is, because his friends had talked about it when he was young and in school and little kids are so immature and make jokes about everything even if they don't understand what they're saying. He's heard dirty jokes. From kids and from adults. But he never got exactly what they mean. He's so inexperienced.
The liquid starts to warm in his palm from his body heat, and he gets bored of pushing it around his palm, so he grabs a towel on the floor next to the bed and wipes it on their until his hand is as clean is it can be, still feeling a little slick afterwards, leaving a film on his skin.
He doesn't do anything with the tail for now, because he doesn't want to really think about what it's for. So he just stuffs it back in the backpack along with the lube. He takes off the ears and slips off the collar with a little jingle of the bell, and puts them back into the backpack as well and zips it up, placing it on the floor besides his bed. No one really comes into his room other than his friends sometimes, and even then they don't snoop around that bad. They know their boundaries and understand what it's like to have their privacy invaded, so they respect each other and keep to themselves when they're over each other's houses unless allowed to look through something.
By now, the sun is almost all the way down and the darkness is starting to take over. Carl rolls over to close his curtains by the window next to his bed before rolling back over, crawling under the sheets. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, ready to just go to sleep. The way to surviving these days is taking every day one at a time.