Another day in paradise.
Except this day was a little different.
Thom had found a new cream-coloured friend among the heaps of dangerous yet familiar steel and iron rubble. He haphazardly rummaged through it and...
Sure enough, it was some sort of limbless medical training dummy. There was no disappointment from the boy despite the lack of humanity or even life.
It bore scratches that revealed the metal interior under the rubber lining but was still upright as if barely clinging to life. Its "mouth" wide open upon a head tilted towards the clouds of grey soot and tar that painted the sunset sky. No realistic hair, only a poor attempt at a slicked haircut from the very same material its skin was made of.
Thom didn't mind. He decided to name it Carl.
Carl had just barely fit in his beat up backpack with all the other treasures he had found today, but he wouldn't be able to zip it fully. That was alright, just as long as everything stayed in place long enough for him to get back to the fort, or "Temple of Doom," as he liked to call it.
His name was Thom.
That much he knew about himself, though there was not much else he could recall. He always wrote it with an "h" perhaps out of rejection of his past life or out of spite from the fact he couldn't remember.
Either way, he knew he was Thom.
Besides- he would reassure himself - why would anyone want to remember what their life was like before, before the endless freedom of the scrapyard? And anyway, now he had a new friend to keep him company.
He couldn't wait to show Carl all his favourite tapes he had found for his cassette player that he had cobbled together using spare parts of a Walkman and other devices. He couldn't wait to play those same songs to Carl on his scavenged, splintery guitar that badly needed restringing.
He walked as carefully as he could manage across the jagged hills of metal, plastic, and rebar but stopped at one of the peaks to admire the beauty of the oranges, reds and crimsons above him. All tied together with that magnificent ball of supreme light on the horizon.
Gazing at the sky during this time was always one of two highlights of his day, but it was also a reminder he had to return home before the sun truly fell, otherwise he wouldn't live to see the next one.
YOU ARE READING
Daydreaming
Adventure"Dreamers, they never learn." Thom is a young boy who loves his life in the rusted wastelands of corrugated iron. He has everything he needs to survive: food, water, his guitar, his Walkman, and an imaginary band. Any links to real people are purely...
