Chapter 6 - A message for you.

Could David's mind be getting worse, read on to see what Stuarts thinks of his new friend...

Chapter six " A message for you.

It has been three days after me and David walked of into the sun set like nothing was wrong and everything was all fine and dandy, if only we knew how wrong we were. The first day we just wondered the streets to see if there were any people who were left behind like David and my homeless people, we did not find anybody. I feel safe with David as he is older than me and he seems to take a lot of leadership when ever we make decisions or do anything. After all it did not take long until we had to do something very important. Eat. So with every one gone including parents and any older person to look after us we had to get our own food. Now since it was our first time looking after ourselves it would be hard for us to forget it, so this is what happened in my three days of solitude so far…

 

Day one;

“So Stuart. What do the homeless people tend to eat? I better get used to this seeing as I am homeless now.” He attempted to sound content with becoming a homeless person but as he finishes the sentence his voice slowly became quieter and more shameful. I then thought for a second, what did us homeless people eat? Then I remembered my last meal and wasn’t sure what it was but I did know where it came from.

“We ate from homeless shelters and then we would either take our food to where ever we were staying or eat it at the shelter, we never made our own food.” I looked up at his face and what seems like a positive look on the food situation suddenly drops. Then almost instantly he looked as if a light bulb had lit up in his head and he suddenly blurted out…

“I guess you may not have done this for a long time since you have been on the streets for a while, but let’s go food shopping!” Then he started to set of again but this time a little bit faster than what we were going at before.

 

It was about eleven at night when me and David finally settled down inside a corner shop with a pot noodle each and a loaf of bread. The pots were still sealed as we had no idea whether the water still worked let alone the electricity to boil the water, by the way both of us were sitting here doing nothing I guessed neither of us wanted to try it. People may think we were crazy if there were any people watching us but by all means I wanted to try it, but David said he was scared of losing hope if say one of either the water or electric or both did not work. So I spoke up confidently to David.

“This is stupid David, how can water and electricity both go as soon as the world turns bad, that would be too much of an inconvenience to us or any other survivors out there. Plus if we find that the water does not work, plenty of shops if not all sell loads of bottled water and all it takes is for us to just take one since we do not have to pay any more. Then all we need to do is start a fire to heat up the water to then add to our pot noodle, job done” I looked at him and he just stared with out any hesitation to my voice or just about anything, he just stared. If that was not scary enough for me I remember how he had his rifle always clutched to his chest like a baby. I was scared that at the very moment I say or do something wrong he would strike, or the moment he got paranoid.

 

Day two;

On my second day I woke up but could not see anything as I still had my eyes closed, I wanted to relish in the moment of the silence and relaxation between being asleep and awake. After about five minutes or maybe fifteen? I did not know how long I had been lying there after I woke up, but after a while just before I opened my eyes I decided to call for my best friend.

“Randaaal… RANDAAAAAAL!” Even after the pause and raising my voice I do not hear him coming then as I turn my eyes from the ceiling, there was an actual ceiling! I looked around the room, I saw why I was under a ceiling rather than under the sky in an alleyway that morning. I was in a hotel room and then everything flooded back and a tear runs down my face because I remember that I am alone. The night before when I was with David he never spoke and just cradled the rifle he seemed to love, every now and then pointing it at the wall taking aim and then lowering it again. I had enough of his disturbing company so decided to take a walk to fully understand what trouble I am in now, but when I returned to the corner shop, David had left. So I decided to gather the food that David had left me, since half of it was gone I assumed that the left over food was for me, and went off looking for some where else to go where I can have a nice bed and make a sandwich. Since I had fully remembered what happened I think to myself, ‘nothing like a bit of amnesia before you start the day’. Not long after remembering I got up and headed to the café area I noticed as I went to find the room last night, it had been too long since I slept in a hotel, let alone a bed. Then it hit me, what the hell was I going to do for god knows how long, days? Weeks? Year’s perhaps? All I knew is that if I kept doing the same old thing everyday on my own then this is going to get boring, I chose to leave those questions for a later time as from a rumble of my belly I knew I was hungry.

I strolled to the toaster and made a silent plead to God that the electric was still working, I finally got within touching distance to the toaster and pulled the latch part down. I looked down the slit where the toast is supposed to go and I always remembered since I was a child that I should be seeing strips of mettle go red hot. About a minute passed since I first started to check the inside of the toaster for those infamous ‘red strips’, but I saw nothing. All I did as a reaction to that was just stand silently, mind blank. All of a sudden this early morning anger rushed through my veins and I swatted the toaster aside, it fell to the ground.

It stopped before actually landing, it had been saved from its crash by the wire that was still plugged into the outlet, then my eyes focused on the outlet and I started to feel very dumb. The switch was undeniably in the ‘off’ position. Red faced and sheepish I sat the toaster into its original position and carried on with the breakfast plan which was to simply have toast…

After I felt ready enough to leave the hotel I decided to head somewhere rather than travel aimlessly, after thinking about where to go I suddenly remembered that I had always wanted to go to a pier, so being near the beach I headed there.

About twenty minutes after heading to the beach I started to think about how it would take, probably a few hours my brain replied, normally I would not travel that far but no one is around and what else did I have to do around the area? I turned down a road and spotted sign pointing in a direction with, ‘sea front’ and ‘cinema’, although the ‘sea front’ was my target, cinema caught my eye without the pretty colours or flashing images.

 

I walked between the four blue pillars toward the door which I had every brain cell telling me it was locked shut. I tugged at the glass doors with every bit of strength I had, but it did not budge, now by brain was just having the time of it’s like look out me ignoring it and tying to go through a locked door. Then something about the door struck me, glass. I looked around for anything lose I could use to throw at the glass and hopefully break it, then I spotted a portable sign advertising some sort of furniture show, I knew it would have to do. From where I picked it up to the door of the cinema, about fifty meters, was enough for me to feel confident about having a good enough run up. With all my speed I ran toward the door and threw the sign with all my strength at the glass, the sign just bounced back pretty un-dramatically.

I remember cowering away from the bouncing sigh and shielding my face with my hands and arms, I looked up after a second and noticed the glass was still there, but severely cracked. I picked up the sign but with no run up this time and with a lazy swing I sent the sign flying through the glass shattering it completely. To my surprise no alarms went off, but then to my further surprise I noticed nothing was there, no advertisements for movies or sweets or cups for drinks. I considered that the place was far away from where I left David so perhaps the people got away before most other people around here and this cinema was closed down a few days before that day.

After getting into the abandoned cinema I decided to go to one of the screen rooms the view of all the seats in the dark was pretty eerie as I knew they would remain empty for a very long time. I walked up the stairs toward the back row which most people would agree is the best row and sat down staring at the blank screen, then decided to leave after it go too creepy.

On the road again I decided to head toward the sea front with no further distractions apart from food and water, for fear that any more abandoned places would  have creeped me out even more. Silence is a word I found myself constantly using to describe the area, absolutely no one was there and was not an exaggeration, I was starting to feel really lonely without the other homeless guys. Thinking about them raised the question, where had they gone? Even when I am writing this I wonder where they had gone and if I would ever see Randal or Carlos ever again, Carlos being my ‘step in’ dad. I started to cry and since no one was around I cried out loud and just let my feelings open up, that was when the danger of my situation became to clear.

I could die and no one would find me.

 

Day 3;

 

Walking up a hill on a country road would be the first thing interesting about day 3, the last day. I remember when I got to the top of this huge hill I could see the sea where it meets the land and that is what I saw something jutting out toward the sea from the land, the pier. My mood was a bit happier now after I saw that site, I began to have a bit more of a ‘kick’ in my step and I started to pick up speed.

Seeing the sea front getting closer made me walk even faster but then as I got toward the bottom of the hill, buildings from the sea front blocked my view and I found myself having to navigate through the jungle of concrete again. Every window on the front of these shopped used to be displaying something, but not today, today all of the shops had been cut off from the rest of the world by shutters and darkness. Looking at these no longer working shops started to creep me out like in the cinema, so I decided to keep my eye on the path and head toward the pier again, with a bit more speed this time.

I finally reached the start of the long pier and remembered looking at a sun dial knowing it was almost night, I decided to run along the pier to the building at the end which no doubt was full of rides and at least a shop with food and drink. When I finally reach the end of the pier on my little legs I found a bottle, a piece of paper and a pen and began writing this letter.

No one was here with me, no one will be here with me, and so why not write my thoughts down in the hope someone will find them. My name is Stuart Dales I will stay here now, at the Pride Pier, if anyone gets this message, please could you make your way to the pier to start a group or pass this message on.

With that I roll up the piece of paper and delicately place it inside the bottle, I then put the top back on the bottle and walk to the edge of the pier. I stare toward the horizon watching where the sea meets the sky, turn to look down the coast and throw the bottle as far as I can and watch it plummet into the sea. Now I wait.

Reviews

[Chaselyn]

Just finished reading all the chapters! You have to keep writing...

[Bradley Davies]

I know, I will, I will not leave this as an abandoned piece of work, especially not after all of the good things you had to say about it :) Thanks for your time and effort, it is greatly appreciated and does mean a LOT :)

[Chaselyn]

wonderful:))