Chapter 2

“Life shrinks and expands in proportion to one’s courage.” - Anaïs Nin

 

Chapter 2

 

The year I turned fifteen, the unknown future became less daunting then the pointless present. I wanted to be around people, to live in the world. The frustration had been building for years, and I couldn’t stay locked up in the house one more day. Father was gone and wouldn’t be back for weeks, so I was free to come and go as I pleased.

I owned a disguise, which was a necessity for the females who remained. The outfit included a beard, wig, and shoes with four inch lifts. The hair on the wig and a short beard were a nondescript brown. The clothing was formless to hide feminine attributes. The outfit allowed me to fade into the background, too ordinary to notice.

In the late afternoon I walked towards the business district. So many things could go wrong and I stopped to take a deep breath. Unless I wanted to spend the rest of my life inside the house, I needed to take this first step. I touched the ring around my neck for courage and continued walking. I needed to remain calm. I was just a man among men.

The sidewalks were cracked and tall weeds grew in many places. I walked as if in a maze trying to avoid the larger plants. I could see the town center and although most of the stores were closed, some stayed open. Much fewer people frequented the business district, most had moved to a city-state.  

A man walked in my direction, then passed without incident. His indifference gave me courage. A few more men went by and I looked at one. The man returned my gaze, then looked away. I smiled.            

I walked passed the movie theater and saw it was open. I hadn’t seen a movie in a theater in many years so I walked over to the ticket booth.  

"Can I buy a ticket?" I asked the attendant in a practiced male voice. Talking was nerve-racking. Did my voice sound manly enough? Was it too high or low? 

“Thirty dollars,” the man said without giving me a second glance. Most people see what they expect to see, but I would come to learn that a few saw much more.

I put the amount of the ticket on my itronic and transferred the funds. Inside there were no concession products and no one had cleaned the building in years. Small parts of the building had caved in and there were bricks on the floor.   

Seven men were scattered around the theater. Four were together drinking alcohol from glass bottles, the others were alone. The film was a twenty years old love story. Every time an attractive woman appeared on the screen the men in the group had a reaction.   

“Take off your shirt!” one of the men in the group shouted at the screen halfway through the movie.

“Give us our money’s worth!” another yelled. One of the men in the group threw a glass bottle at the screen and it shattered into a million pieces. Going to the movies had become more of an interactive experience than when I was here last.   

One of the lone man kept looking in my direction. We were seated ten feet away from each other and he watched me more often than the film. The unwanted attention made me uncomfortable. When he looked away I got up and left the theater.  

Outside the light had faded into dark, but I didn’t want to go home. Instead I strolled down a residential street to find abandoned houses to loot. Most homes had been abandoned after the virus swept through town and sometimes valuable objects were left behind. I hoped to find food, books or any other useful items.

I stuffed a flashlight in my backpack before leaving the house and used it to light the way. A few blocks down I found an abandoned home that wasn’t completely destroyed. A tree had fallen into the side of the building causing some damage. Every visible window was broken and the jagged edges looked like teeth.  

The porch had an old lawn chair next to an end table. There was a glass sitting on the table along with gardening gloves. The scene was so ordinary looking as it sat frozen in time. I found it disturbing. Was someone sitting in that chair the moment their world fell apart?

I walked to the window and looked inside. Everything the flashlight illuminated was in disarray. When I tried to open the door it wouldn’t move, an object blocked the entryway. Using all my strength I pushed the door, it opened and I heard something fall and break.

A cat jumped off a table and ran into the darkness. Dead bugs made up the majority of the occupants, but other pests had come and gone leaving a fecal trail.

Remnants of an old life, a good life, were all around. Pictures of family members still hung on the wall and a piano in the living room looked well used. There was a grill on the back porch and a pool that contained brown goop. Imagining what used to exist in this house gave me comfort and occupied my mind. I made of a story out of trying to figure out who they were and how they lived.   

The people who lived here were happy once upon a time. They would grill hamburgers and hotdogs on the grill while the kids played in the pool with floating toys. The children would practice halting notes on the piano while everyone else in the house tried to tune the noise out. I saw a dog bowl on the ground. The dogs name was Max and he was a mutt with a lot of fur.   

The smell of something wretched assaulted my nose as I walked down a narrow hallway. I turned into a bedroom and flashed the light. When I looked on the bed, a partially decomposed body was laid out. The sight was gruesome and I turned away feeling my stomach turn.

The corpse had been male and the room was turned into a shrine. There were pictures close to the body and items with sentimental value. One of the objects was a small stuffed bear holding a heart. Shriveled flowers were placed on top of the man and a few burnt candles stood on a table next to the bed.

The objects indicated someone lived here when he died, someone who loved the man. Where did the person go? Why didn’t he bury the man in the backyard? I didn’t search for anything in that room and backed out cautiously as if the body would come alive and attack.

I walked towards the stairs. “Crap!” I yelled accidently running into a table. The sound made me jump and I stopped for a moment to recover my courage, then walked up the stairs. 

The three bedrooms upstairs once belonged to children. There were toys, small clothes and games scattered around. In the first bedroom, part of the floor had collapsed. The safety risk wasn’t worth searching that room.

The second bedroom contained a gutted mattress and overturned furniture. A painting hung on the wall of a little girl swinging from a tree. She smiled carelessly with blonde ponytail braids and shoeless feet. The painting would have been sweet in a different setting, but the streaked walls made the room look as if it were crying. 

The third bedroom was the messiest. There were more windows, all of them broken. A curtain rod lay on the floor and the curtains hung half out of the window. The material was ragged and blew in the wind. Stuffed animals were on the floor in various states of shabbiness. The life that existed in these rooms was long gone along with anything worth taking.

When I finished searching the bedrooms, I considered whether or not to go into the basement. Basements in old houses scared me. They resemble dark, damp medieval dungeons. After a quick deliberation, curiosity trumped fear and I went down. 

The well-worn stairs made loud screeching noises as I walked to the bottom. When I looked around, I saw that the space contained dirty, mildew smelling, old junk. There was flood damage and rats scurried around. Seeing the basement heightened my fear.

“You can get through this,” I said suppressing the urge to run upstairs. I couldn’t let fear control my life. I had to be stronger. 

A few boxes sat in a corner. Most were filled with holiday decorations, old appliances, damaged clothing and other useless objects. Furniture was piled against one wall and a washer/dryer were next to each other alongside another. The space gave me a strange feeling, something wasn’t right. I attributed the sensation to my inherent dislike of basements.

Nothing of interest existed from a quick visual inspection and I wasn’t interested in being meticulous. I walked up the stairs and felt proud for conquering my fear. When I reached the top, I dropped the flashlight. It rolled down the stairs eventually hitting the concrete floor with a loud thud.

I considered leaving the flashlight, but it was too valuable. I slowly walked down the stairs and felt fear move over my body like a thick fog. Something was wrong, I could feel it in the deepest part of my being. I bent over to grab the flashlight and looked under a chair that stood against a wall. There was a light. It came out of a small hole in the wall.

“What the…” I whispered.

I picked up the flashlight, ran upstairs and quickly went home.