What We've Become

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Arrow's eyes widened as he stared at Ellie. The child continued to point at him. "Mommy, it's Arrow. He's standing right there."

The lady turned her head, a painful sparkle of hope in her eyes as she stared directly at Arrow. "Ellie! Quit playing around with me!" The woman snapped bitterly. "I know that losing Arrow and Terrence has been hard. It has for all of us! But playing games like this is not going to bring them back!"

Arrow breathed a sigh of relief as the family began to walk away, all of them but the little girl. "Arrie... Are you really there?" She asked, her high pitched voice soft and quiet.

Arrow nodded his head, offering his hand to her. She tried to take it, though, her hand slipped right through it as if he wasn't there. Tears filled the small girl's eyes, tears of understanding.

"Come with me... I'll show you the truth," Arrow said, his voice gruff and sorrow-filled.

Ellie nodded, trying to grasp his hand again.

"Eliza Jane! Lets go!" Her mother snapped from farther down the sidewalk. "I've already lost one child, I can't bare to lose another!"

Ellie sighed and hung her head before darting after her mother and brothers. Arrow watched them disappear into the crowd of people.

When Ellie was gone, Arrow sighed and turned and continued down the familiar path. Eventually, he came to a ill-kept yard with  a small, decrepit house in the center. He walked up the familiar, cracked sidewalk towards the hanging screen door. He peered inside through the window of the main .door. Inside was a wreck, as it usually was. He could hear a muffled sound, that of a person. He went to open the door, but decided against it, as he knew that there was a chance that the people inside couldn't see him and would get freaked out. Instead, he hurried to the side of the house and slid down into a window well where he crawled in through a broken window.

A small, sad smile spread to his face as he peered around his room. It was exactly as he had left it, his bed a tangled wreck and his few belongings picked up and sat on his single dresser. He slowly walked to the door, nostalgia punching him hard in the stomach. Slowly and quietly, he unlocked the door and pushed it open. He followed the old familiar steps up to the living room. Stopping at the top of the small stairwell, he peered around. For once, the living room was picked up for the most part, as there wasn't used cigarettes strewn all over the floor along with bottles and cans of random alcohol. On the worn couch sat a familiar figure for him. A lady, who was more skin than anything else, wearing baggy clothes was perched there. Her face was in her hands, her dyed hair covering it from view completely. Usually, Arrow would have ran and hid from the pitiful figure of his mother, though, this time he stood there, watching her in silence. 

Sobs seemed to resonate from deep within her chest, and for once, Arrow wasn't afraid of her. Slowly, he walked towards her. The sobbing only grew louder as he approached her. He sat beside her on the floor, leaning his head back onto the couch, right beside where she was seated. He closed his eyes for a bit.

When she moved, her hands uncovering her face, Arrow opened his eyes to look at her. Her blue eyes were bloodshot, and her cheeks were stained by the trail of countless tears. Despite looking so sick due to her addiction, she had a beauty to her. It was clear that before she lost her mind and grew to have her sickness, she had been a pretty girl.

"Mom..." Arrow whispered.

She perked up, looking around the room, her eyes huge. "Arrow? Honey, is that you? Please come out..." She begged, the desperation in her voice painful.

Arrow threw himself backwards away from her, his eyes just as wide as her's.

She acknowledged me... She called me 'honey'... She's not... high? Arrow's shock consumed him. He had rarely ever seen his mother clean. She hadn't been nice to him since he was three because of it. He looked into her eyes, which were usually glazed as if she were a robot, which she was when she did those terrible drugs. She was a computer that was controlled by their nasty powers; consumed by their hypnosis. For once, her eyes were clear as day.

"Arrow, I know that you're scared of me... You deserve to be... I don't deserve to be your mom, but please. Come out and let me know that you're okay... Please tell me that the officers were lying. I couldn't go see you... And I'm so sorry..."

She rambled on and on, and Arrow stared at her in shock. He had never felt love before, though he always knew that it was there, despite his mother's harsh words. And there it was...

He stood up, walking over to a table and picking up a chair, trying to tell her that he was there.

Her eyes shot open wide as she stared at the floating chair. "Arrow..." She whispered, reaching her arm out for him. He sat the chair down and walked towards her and grabbed her hands. Though he went right though her, the motion was there. "Oh Arrow... I'm so sorry... I'm better now, but I know that its too late for that..." She said quietly.

He touched her face, and on impact, she shuttered, goosebumps rising on her skin. "You're dad... He blames me for everything, and it is my fault... I should have watched you. I should have been your mom. While they were searching for you, he paid for me to go to rehab... I'm better now, Arrow... I wish you could stay and see..." She went on. "And then, when I got home, I had hope, but they found... Part of your body..." She gagged, going pale as more tears fell from her eyes like little rivers. "W-what happened to you?"

Arrow looked around the room, knowing that she couldn't hear him, or at least hear him well. He spotted the dust covered box TV that they had never used, and he rushed to it. He began to write his mother a message in the television's dirt coating.

'The dead men killed us. Beware of the dead men.'

"The dead men?" she asked quietly. "What's a dead man? Like a gang?"

He sighed, know that it would be difficult to understand that they were killed by zombies until people saw them first hand. He underlined what he wrote, trying to get the point across that that was what happened, sure to box in the word 'dead'.

His mother stared at the message, trembling. Arrow sighed and shook his head, sitting down beside her again. They sat like that in silence after that for a few hours. 

As time flew by, and the sun was setting once again, Arrow noticed something moving in the kitchen. He stood up, ready to defend his mother for the first time ever.

"So you are who I thought you are," a low gruff voice growled.

Arrow glared at the figure as he came into the light. It was another spirit. One that he had bumped into only once. It was the man who attacked him while he was sitting in the woods.

It was Zack...