Chapter 1, Lion's Skull.

1.

    Today is the last day I'll live to the fullest.
    Every day I pray to God to give me the answers to life, beg and plead to just know "why me?" and every night I listen and hear silence. I binge on thought processes that send me into overwhelming depression and strive to know what man has asked since we first arrived here, when the sun cracked through the skies and we still had no efficient memory of our ancestors. We've never known and never will, and yet I churn my brain in circles in hopes that a ray of hope will pop free from the space between thoughts and give me a direct answer. I've gotten situated on accepting the ringing of a noiseless room as proof of hopelessness over faith.
    The rooms we stay in rotate bi-weekly, rebelling against any thought of a stable camp ground. The words 'broken home' sing familiarity, as well as 'broken window', 'broken door' and 'broken dreams', but they all have one thing in common for us; Pressure. Pressure to push forward, to strive for better, to actually give a damn. I often stare at the cracks in my many, many walls and pretend I've been here long enough to have caused them. Whether it be from anger towards a cheating spouse or just from living here too damn long, I wish I was the one who broke the plaster.
    But the sad fact is I'm not the cause of destruction, and never will be. The people who bunkered here first are too damn lucky, and they probably don't even realize it.
    Nobody ever asks to be thrown into a life of chaotic neutrality, fending for yourself day and night. There's more to fear in these buildings than just roaches and sleepless nights, there are people like us in the world. Killing our own mental fortitude, depriving our souls of the sustenance they so dearly crave, plotting to thicken the hatred of the planet.
    We work together, the four of us, because we're all we have left. Nobody to guide, nobody to follow, nobody correcting the punctuation at the end of the sentences. Just us.
    Only us.
    But then there's her. Member number two. The one I've saught after since my first lifetime, she's finally materialized herself from my subconcious after a millenia of blood, sweat, and slaughtered calves; broken bones and shattered homes. Hope of another day seemed bleek until she stepped foot into the traincart and joined forces with the dark side, her hair whisping from side to side in a tathered frolic, jeans almost non existant from being worn for weeks on end.
    She had other decor to don, but like me, was a conservationist.
    Given her standings as an early-20-something, highstrung, loosefit female, she did an absolutely wonderful job of being a caregiver. Taken aghast at how well she handles the hangovers of others, I knew she was meant to stick around. Stroking my hair every morning-after, heaving into a slightly cracked toilet, telling me I'll be okay with a brilliant smile plastered on her face. Holding the back of my head up on her theigh over the break in couch cushions, kissing me softly on my forehead. We all could tell she felt more for us, and we all could tell she felt more for me.  Pretentious, I am not, but I do feel I complete her, as she does I. But this is more than a soppy love story of two lonely souls merging to an infinite bond, albeit that's how it feels at times. Life hits the bottom of a sunken trench and there she is to discuss how I matter to the universe, to aid me in the battle of my own wits; my own personal Rhiannon.
    All good things are meant to come to an end, but I hoped to God that this wasn't one of those endeavors. We formulated plots on how to fend ourselves for the coming nights, the four of us bonding together as a wall of impenetrable perserverance, pushing towards a common goal of "getting the f**k out", as Noah would say. He would go on and on for hours, foul mouthed and bad breathed, giving us the morale we needed to move on. "Make a stand for yourself! You may not be much to them, but you're more to us than you'd ever imagine!" Maybe it was to actually be a help; maybe he just didn't want the blood on his hands of one of us hanging ourselves while the others slept, no money to even pin a note to our shirts to say we're sorry.
    We stay up late nightly, stomachs aching for food, heads yerning for a shred of pillow to bunk our skulls on. Sometimes we can scrape enough cash together to send Felix the liquor store to help us all forget about the torture we've endured.  He's the only one with a small enough record to still have a valid ID. You may ask yourself, 'If they have no money, why don't they utilize the dollar menu or something instead of wasting cash on booze?' My answer to you, 'F**k you.' Stealing a selection of snacks from a gas station isn't half as problematic as escaping the watchful eye of an ABC store attendant. The woman behind the counter in the corner store doesn't give enough of a f**k about her minimum wage pay to risk getting shot over the merchandise she doesn't even own. Unfortunately for us, there's only one store in this town with the black label liquid gold we saught after.
    Although our stomachs are warm with liquor, our bodies double-clothed with the GAP store shrapnel, the holes in the sheets still aren't small enough to fend off the cold gust from the cracked window. The snoring of the dirty homeless boy across the derelect apartment burrowing into my eardrums, high wearing down, dirt finding it's way into my shirt under every shift of muscle, I'm beginning to get agitated. But alas, this is all I can do, and all I've ever been able to do. I used to imagine being an adult as having my own house as feeling like a king, but life has thrust me to the pit of being a jester.
    It's the times like this that've forced us to build a plan for survival, construct a theoretical trojan horse to take on existance. An idea leads to an action, an action warrants a response, and a response either ends in success or death. Take your pick. Those are the only two options we've left for ourselves it seems.
    Like I said, today is the last day we're living to the fullest and god damn it, I'm making this one count.