Protective

The boy

Some people say that they'd rather be physically hurt than emotionally, because for them they can just place a band aid on their wound, but not on their heart....... For Janessa there is no difference. It's come to a point where she wan confidently say that 'it doesn't hurt anymore' that 'she's used to it'.

"I never figured out what killed the human race, but..."

Janessa awoke to the muffled voices of a boy and a girl. "I did find something else, the date it happens" the boy continued.

Janessa opened her eyes slightly to see the foggy scene of a living room. The apartment was very simple, it had a certain charm, she kind of liked it, it felt safe and warm. More or less of what she thought home should feel like.

She was too distracted by the look of the apartment that she didn't quite hear what the boy had mumbled.

It sounded as though he said 'the world ends in eight days' obviously she had misheard him. Right?

Janessa rolled over, to get a better hearing range, but fell right off the couch onto her back with a loud thud.

The boy quickly turned around to face Janessa.

Her face scrunched up, almost as though she was trying to make herself disappear into the hardwood floor.

The woman next to the boy had a concerned look on her face, she looked hurt. Janessa could see that she was trying to hide the pain that overwhelmed her life, she knew that face all too well. As she sees it in the mirror every day.

She drew her eyes away from the woman's face and over to the boy, he had a bored expression, but this was the first time Janessa had really looked at him.

He had glossy black hair that could otherwise be described as coal like. Green eyes that were alarmingly vacant, she knew that she would get lost in them for days at a time, without having the decency to notice.

His body structure was something else, almost like a model fit with muscles but he wasn't quite there yet. She thought.

Her internal surveying was interrupted by someone clearing their throat. She had been caught staring. Janessa snapped her head away, embarrased, not that she was staring but that she was caught.

The boy turned back to the woman and continued talking to her.

"I survived on scraps... canned food, cockroaches, anything I could find." The boy chuckled to himself. Janessa had no clue what was so hilarious about surviving on inedible foods.

"You know that rumour that Twinkies have an endless shelf life?" He continued.

The woman stayed quiet waiting for an answer, "well that's total bullshit."

Janessa chuckled quietly at the boy's odd statement.

The brown haired lady turned to look at Janessa, with an expectant look in her disturbed brown eyes.

Janessa slowly pushed herself off the ground onto her elbows. With the dull ache on the back of her scalp, she wanted to pinch her arm just to feel any other sort of pain.

"I can't even imagine-" she started.

"You do what ever it takes to survive" a sound differentiation itself between a laugh and a scoff escaped his lips, cutting the lady off. "Or you die." He continued.

Janessa had no idea what was going on, she didn't even know where she was, who these people were, and why they were talking about Twinkies and dying in the same sentence.

She made an effort of clearing her throat. "I'm really sorry to interrupt, but can someone tell me what is going on?" She said with a meek voice.

The boy gave Janessa a monotonous expression and ignored her question.

"I don't mean to be rude, please tell me what is going on." She urged again. To her, her voice sounded nothing like the way she felt inside. On the inside, she was enrarged, confused, and sad. On the outside, she was just a fragile looking 17 year old with no family. She didn't dare raise her voice at anyone, no matter how infuriated she was.

When Janessa was little, about 6 or 7 years old, her neighbor (her late bestfriend and Angelo's mother) invited her for dinner. When she was playing with her dolls. Her bestfriend's brother came into her room and picked up one, Shelby her name was, and ripped the head off.

Earlier on that day, she had slightly raised her voice at him, and that was the price she had to pay.

The boy scoffed, turned around and said, "The world ends in eight days, and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it, unless I find the owner of this eyeball." He held up a glass eye.

There was silence.

Tick.

Tick.

Janessa froze. She heard him right the first time, the world was really ending.