I do not own I Think We're alone Now.
It is just absolute perfection and I love it.
Home Becomes You
Grace is Fireworks, Del is Midnight Sky
And it had gone like that.
For months.
Long months.
Years.
Over two, in fact.
And it had been fine, it had worked for him, this steady, regular routine he'd worked out for himself after the initial shock of everything had worn off.
He had developed, honed it.
Improved upon it and clung to it.
The manual labor'd strengthened him, he'd found muscles he never even knew he had.
He'd eventually lost the gag reflex, the ability to cringe away from the moldering corpses of the dead.
It helped when they stopped looking so human from decomposition.
He'd learned about leverage and patience.
And when to stop before he passed out on top of them.
Which had relieved him from waking up to nasty shocks.
He'd learned to siphon gas without sucking it from the nozzle.
And he'd learned . . .
"Fish? Again?"
"Yes."
. . . how to fish for his supper.
All these things he'd done and learned and lived in the long days and weeks and months and years following the end of the world for everyone but him.
And to a certain extent, he'd found he really rather enjoyed it.
And then, in the relatively comfortable deep state of his post apocalyptic life as the last man on earth, when the world before began to seem as rather an unpleasant dream, she went right ahead. . .
Bang!
. . . and woke him up.
It had been like a dream.
He'd awoken with a start, crept from room to room, trying to figure out what made the sound.
The fireworks at the edge of the lake had been loud, abrasive, unexpected.
Impossible.
And undeniably. . .
. . . beautiful.
Relics from a bygone age when townspeople gathered together at the edge of the lake, beers and lemonades in hand.
Burgers and dogs and fights and makeups.
And makeouts and crying babies and howling dogs and dirty-faced children.
And leftover wrappers on the ground and muddied tracks and smoke over the water.
And togetherness and family and friendship and patriotism and cheering civic pride.
And Del.
Separate and apart.
Scorned. Not understood.
Looked down upon.
Literally.
Anyone older than an elementary school child.
There was them and their lives.
And there was him.
His mother had always told them to push past it, get to know them.
Let them get to know him.
And he had scoffed.
Why?
What was the point?
They'd disliked him and he'd disliked them and that was all there was to it and to hell with it all.
And then they were gone and he was left alone in the quiet and still.
And he could still . . .
Bang!
. . . hear the echoes of their Fourth of July cheers.
Long after the fireworks . . .
Bang!
. . . burned themselves away.
Bang indeed.
;)