| abstract | - I think we might have left her place in the early morning, but it was impossible to tell. I hadn’t seen a working clock since my phone died sometime early yesterday in her apartment… fucking Android phones never seem to last more than a day and a half before they die. Regardless, the smell of cool morning dew hung in the air with a hint of smoke as I tried to make out the surrounding world with the little light I was given. I looked straight up to see a dark gray sky, nearly uniform everywhere, shifting slowly towards the east. There was no sign of the sun. It felt like ages since we felt it’s warmth. As we walked across Route 1, Nicole grabbed my arm and held me close. Despite the situation that we found ourselves in, I felt a warm sensation shoot through my body and into my head. Her need to be close to me was comforting beyond words. “We’ll be at my apartment soon,” I said, trying to sound soothing. She gazed up at me, confusion behind her blue eyes, it nearly broke my heart. I needed to make her feel safe. I needed it to give me hope. Two stimuli, rather lack of stimuli, stood out to me as we passed the old McDonalds and headed farther down the backstreet towards my apartment. There was no wind… and there was no sound. I couldn’t quite make out what I was hearing, but it wasn’t the normal ringing that you hear sometimes when it’ s completely silent in a room. You know, that noise that you can simulate by biting down really hard when you’re in a relatively quiet space? No, that noise would have been much more comforting. This sounded almost like a dull, soft moan echoing through my ear canal and penetrating through to my sanity. It didn’t help that the trees appeared as if they were tilted to one side facing east, almost as if they were caught mid gust and frozen in time. The nearly black branches of the trees contorted out of their usual stance, contrast to the dark gray background that was the sky scared me more than my discovery inside of Nicole’s bathroom. It was probably this feature that made me realize that whatever was happening and whatever had happened was far from natural, that it wasn’t some odd weather phenomenon. I decided it would be best not to tell Nicole about this, the poor girl was already scared enough without me pointing out more twisted oddities about the surrounding world. We were here. I put my magnetic key up to the door. “Well fuck…” I said, looking at my key ring with disgust, “the lock is off.” I don’t know why I didn’t realize this knowing the power was out. I really cannot function without electricity, seeing as I constantly kept checking my phone and tried to get electronic stuff to work despite the widespread blackout. Nicole stepped back, and I had a stupid idea. I don’t know why I still felt the need to impress this girl, I mean it’s not like I was really competing against anyone. With a smug expression, I took one step away from the door, and braced my core. Taking one deep breath in and putting an angry look on my face, I lifted my leg up in front of me, bent ninety degrees so that the sole of my shoe was perpendicular to the ground, and thrust. My foot hit the glass door with such force, but the damn thing didn’t give way to my triumphant kick, sending a painful shock up from my leg to my core and throwing me backwards onto the ground. It really was stupid. It wasn’t even a full year ago that I had to have hardware put into my leg due to a broken fibula. I felt the screws tug on the bone, sending wave after wave of sharp pain all the way up from my leg to my neck. I couldn’t tell which hurt more, the stupidity of what Nicole had just witnessed, or the stinging that was radiating from the side of my leg. A glass fucking door, I thought, you have got to be kidding me. No, I couldn’t look stupid in front of this girl, get up with confidence and smash the shit out of the glass with a rock, my mind told me. Frantically, I stood up without looking anywhere near Nicole’s direction and headed towards the little garden that was to my left. Every step I made took an immense amount of effort to not limp. I couldn’t let her see that I was hurt. Instead, I ignored the pain, picked up the nearest stone, and hurled it at the glass door. Thankfully, this time the glass broke into a thousand pieces and I was able to reach my arm in and turn the knob from the inside. I turned to Nicole and put on what I believed to be the stupidest smile of my life, but as I was turning back I felt another sharp pain come from my right forearm. “Mother fucker... you’ve got to be kidding me,” I said through clenched teeth as I had realized that I sliced my arm wide open on a shard of glass still attached to the door frame. Slowly, I pulled my arm out of the hole that I had created. Blood was gushing out of the cut, and I could feel a slight sense of nausea overcome me. “Quick, wrap that up with something!” Nicole exclaimed. She seemed more worried about it than I did. Without thinking, I took off my shirt and wrapped it tight around the cut. For some reason, the only thought that went through my head was that I was glad I had an undershirt on so it didn’t seem like I was trying to pull some Taylor Lautner stunt. Honestly, I couldn’t explain to anyone why I was having these random thoughts during a serious situation like this, but it was happening. I felt like a high school freshman trying to get his first girlfriend or something, it was weird and I didn’t know how to deal with it. Shit, I felt my face flush every time she looked at me, and I started to get cottonmouth when I wasn’t sure about what to say to her. I felt like a loser, but still we had to get to my room. We still didn’t know what was out there waiting for us, I mean we didn’t even know what got into her room last night while we slept or how it was able to sneak into the locked room without waking up. It was a disturbing thought, and maybe it should’ve bothered me more than it did at the time, but I decided to keep my calm as long as Nicole was with me. As we headed up the stairs, I began to smell something rancid.
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