LJ Idol Prompt 7 — hikikomori

[flipflop_diva]

The food supplies are dangerously low. All that’s left now are a few cans of baked beans, a box filled with a hodgepodge of ramen and a stash of hard candies that were probably collected back when Halloween used to be a thing. If he’s lucky, he can make it last another two or three weeks, but it will be rough. He’s already lost so much weight, if anyone were around to see him they would barely recognize him.

Luckily, the water is still working, dripping slowly out of the leaky faucet into the barrels he dragged down here months ago. Even with most of them lined up against the wall, they take up considerable space, but it’s worth it.

The electricity is flickering. It stopped working correctly weeks ago, but it usually comes on long enough for him to use the small coffee pot that he considers his most prized possession. His container of Folger’s is also running low, and he’s more worried about losing that than he is the food.

He finishes the last bite of the beans he is eating, using his finger to swipe around the metal edges to make sure he gets every last morsel. He can’t afford to waste anything anymore. Once he is done, he stands up and makes his way across the small bunker and stands beneath the trap door.

It is silent up above him, as he expected it to be. The silence has been there now for days. Weeks. Maybe even months. He’s losing track of the time, even with the scratches in the wall where he makes a mark every time he wakes up in the morning. Or what he thinks is morning. There are no windows down here, no outside light. Just the flickering bulbs when they work and his own internal clock.

Sometimes, when he lies down to sleep at night and he lets his eyes close, he sees them. His family. His mama, his papa, his bossy older sister and his funny younger sister. He tried so hard to keep them safe. He tried so hard to warn them.

“I’m telling you, Mama,” he had pleaded, the night before it happened. “The end of the world is coming! We can’t stay here!”

“Oh, dear boy,” his mama had replied, stroking the hair back from his forehead, just like she had done when he was a baby. “You’re being ridiculous. The world is just fine. And even if it wasn’t, we are not fitting a family of five in the tornado shelter.”

“That bunker is our best change for survival!” he’d said. “Please, Mama!”

But she had laughed — laughed so easily, so lightly, like what he was saying meant nothing — and he had known then there was no hope. Instead, he’d done the only thing left that he could. He’d reached for her, giving her the tightest hug he possibly could, and tried to engrave every piece of that moment into his brain. The feel of her soft skin. The smell of her lavender perfume. The tickle of her graying hair. The warmth of her body. The feeling of safety he always had while in her arms.

He had left the only home he had ever known before dawn. The world had been a black canvas, but he could already hear the explosions in the distance and see the occasional flashes of light from the war that was headed their way. He’d known then he had no other choice, and it is that knowledge that keeps him going now, even when it all seems so bleak.

During those early days down here in the bunker, he could still hear noise from the outside world. First the ear-piercing booms and then the screams. Sometimes he thought he could make out an animal — maybe a wolf or a bear or even someone’s dog — trying to escape with its life. But there was no escape, and soon the silence fell.

He’s not alone though. Not exactly. There are other survivors out there. This he knows. For the first few days after he barricaded himself down here in his bunker, the internet would still work. His phone still held a charge. He spent those days talking to others like him, the ones who were prepared for the world to end, the ones who also had to leave their families behind.

It was nice, those first few days, to feel like there were other people out there somewhere who understood. Now it is just him. But he knows — he believes — that there will come a day when he will be able to escape this bunker, when he will be able to venture out into the world to see what has become of it, and on that day, he knows— he believes — that he will be able to find the other survivors, that they will be able to rebuild a civilization and one day he will have a life back. Not the life he had before, but a life all the same.

He realizes he is still staring up at the tightly closed trap door, as if he can see through it to the world above. He sighs, pushing away the thoughts of the life he once lived, and heads back across the bunker to the sleeping bag that counts as not only his bed but as his couch and kitchen table too. But as he goes to sit down, he hears something.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

He frowns and automatically reaches for the bat that is lying beside his bed. It’s possible that he’s starting to hear things, but it’s also more possible that something has found his secret hideout.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

He grips the bat tighter and moves back toward the trap door, debating what to do. Hope it just goes away? Push open the door and try to fight whatever is on the other side? He stops right underneath the door, just where he had been moments ago.

There is another noise beneath the tapping. It sounds like … but it can’t be … but it sounds like a voice. A human voice.

It’s a mistake. He knows it even as he finds himself leaping for the rope that’s tied to the trap door, even as he tugs on it to release the ladder, even as he races up the ladder rungs to the world above. But he can’t help it. It’s been so long since he’s heard another human voice, and he needs to see where it came from.

He bursts out into the world with his heart pounding wildly in his chest and his breath coming in uneven pants. It’s incredibly bright up here, like the sun has been intensified while he was below ground.

He blinks, realizing how vulnerable he is just standing out here like this, but then a figure moves in front of him. A human shaped figure.

He blinks more, rubs his eyes, and lets his vision clear.

He shrieks at the sight and rubs his eyes more. It’s not possible! It just isn’t.

In front of him — in front of him — just inches away is his sister. His sister. His incredibly annoying and beautiful older sister.

“Jessica,” he whispers, and his voice is hoarse from lack of use. “Is it really you?”

Jessica’s eyes narrow and for a moment he wonders if she recognizes him. Or worse, what if she has been replaced by some other sort of being?

Fear grips him, but then Jessica rolls her eyes, a move so familiar he instantly wants to cry from relief.

“I can’t believe I’m seeing you again after all these years,” he croaks out, moving forward for a hug.

Jessica rolls her eyes again. “It’s been two days, you idiot. Mom says you need to come home now. You have chores.”

She turns around and stomps off toward the house. He stares after her, then turns to look back at his bunker.

In this distance, he hears her shout. “Now, you doofus!”

He grits his teeth and grinds his shoe into the dirt. The end of the world sure can’t come fast enough.







Fiction.



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