Wheat

Wheat was from a group of worms who used to live like the picture on the wall in the basement of a house near SuperPlus. Riding horses under a blue sky. But today, she was alone. Her and I talked at length about our stories. She was close enough to my age. A little older, but we shared a similar perspective on life. I’m not sure what convinced her to help me, or me to trust her but we were there for each other in that moment. Then it clicked. “I need to find my mom before it gets too dark.” I shivered at the thought as it shook loose the memory of her yolk and shell spilling, dripping.  

Reader, I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t vomit. She assumed it was my concussion. I let her believe that. She offered to join me to find my mom and I declined.  

She shrugged and accepted my answer but took a moment to explain where she would be staying. She was back in a bunker under the shed of one of the homes on the street I saw the poster in. Though, presumably not the same home. I don’t recall that one having a shed. I wished her luck and told her I would join her as soon as I could. Then I tried to find my way home.  

It took all evening to find my way home. A numbness took over me as I dug into the Earth with my hands. I placed each piece of her into the dirt and buried her as deeply as I could manage. Finally, exhausted and depressed, I stood in silence. I watered her grave with my tears for an hour or more. When darkness had fallen heavily over everything I snuck back into my home and packed again, then I slept and had nightmares about needing to scream and having no air.  

I made my way over to Wheat’s house and arrived just after dawn. I paused to watch two half-dead birds labor across the sky. She answered her door promptly and ripped me into the bunker. I hit the ground with a thud and looked up to realize she just threw me down a 10 or 11 foot hole. I yelped when I landed which spooked her. She dropped down and scooped my head into her lap. “Oh gosh I’m sorry! I didn’t intend to pull you down like that! I forgot to tell you to grab the ladder!! Are you okay?” I sighed and tried to steady my vision so the earth would stop tilting so much. “im alive.” Was what she said I told her. She cared for my wounds while I took in her home. It had a couch, and a voice was coming from somewhere singing  soft music. With the voice was a sound I had never heard. It was I describable. The closest match I can think is like a large metal plate scraping another metal plate, but it sounded beautiful. Like a personification of peace. She had a table with six chairs at it and a room with cabinets, counters, running water, and.. some things I’m not familiar with. It seemed like noisy magic boxes. Machines, I’m sure. Then the building squeezed its walls around a hallway with 6 doors spotting the sides. It was comfortably warm inside. She helped me to the couch and, I believe I began hallucinating. I stared at a picture frame on her wall with moving images and sound coming from it.  

I watched as the painting twisted into a story about an off color dog and three immaculately drawn pigs. They built houses independently and the dog attempted to destroy the houses with nothing but lung power. I felt a warm dampness on my head, followed by cold wind. I looked up and saw Wheat over me with a pink rag and bowl of pink water. I turned back to my hallucination in time to see the dog fall down into a pot of water over a fire.  

The next story began with a mouse of some kind and a cast of characters I couldn’t begin to describe. They went on to try to topple some kind of economic structure. Every so often I felt the pinch of a needle in my flesh and would turn to see Wheat sewing me up. Once she had cleaned me up and stitches me back together she wrapped my wounds in clean gauze a d sat with me. “What sort of drawing is this?” I asked her as she leaned her head into me. “It’s called television. It's a machine from the past, and it tells stories from the past. It runs on electricity. Every single building you have ever set foot in used to have one, and ran off electricity too in the before times. I wanted to hear her explanation but I lost consciousness again.