The Eden Projects (EDITING)

Chapter 14. Between the pines.

The world blurred past in whirling wisps. The branches of long overgrown trees teased at shedding their cloaks and tugged at the vehicle's sides. What foliage had fallen from them blanketed the ground in mottled coverings that slopped along the roadsides. The leaves were pressed en masse into the old brick and mortar roadways in slimy tendinous bands of foul smelling gunk.

The trees saw everything. 

Tilting and cracking, seemingly held up by nothing. Oh how they wanted to fall, their stilts wouldn't let them. They wanted death, but life had more for them. One more secret, the leaves had one more thing to hide. 

It was coming...

and there it was.

The car breezed down the road with ease, much smaller than the truck, it was less of a boat to maneuver. It shuffled through passing towns in a quiet crawl and skittered over littered pavement. The trio never left lasting impressions on places they passed through. Though many people had. Street signs everywhere were covered in poorly worded graffiti with no regards to the wealth of whatever area they stood in. The rudely eclectic decor was spattered on cars, walls, and anything flat and porous. Kasper could never sort out how anyone had enough time for art projects when life sucked as much as it did. It was all part of the whole that made up their apocalypse.

But it was there, so Kasper admired it still. 

This group of theirs, and all its ramshackle felt just like that graffiti. Rude, eclectic, and terribly illegible. 

Zak by nature saw little value in anything and wanted for everything still. His was always a yes when it came to experiences, it didn't matter what it was, they would die in the end so he had a need to taste everything at least once. 

Archer, was the resident rationalist. He prioritized reason and found peace in the structure of what was. He dwelled in the obvious and most "logical" way of doing things. He reined in Zak who in turn reined in Kasper. 

But Kasper... oh Kasper...

Kasper was a shadow, and no matter how much he wanted to be able to trust those he followed, in the end, only he knew best. Only he could make sure he was cared for. However much he wanted to "do good" he knew his goodness was driven by a want to belong. His own desire, his own unmet need. So he was selfish. Kasper was a black hole. 

He could hear the generator whirring over his head. The wind knocking against the vehicle as they went made him think of the truck. His safe place amongst the bags. Everything about the whispers the breeze wove into him. He missed the noise. The wires to this cars radio were damaged and left them without a peep to bide their time. It was making for a long drive. So he sat, tucked against the door and their piled belongings. His face pressed against the window, watching their surroundings bounce about in his breeze. 

...Nothing...

Kasper sighed with relief. Hi Adam. The quiet was broken. 

Hearing "Adam" again eased the drive. Adam suited what he was. He welcomed it back and realized how reliant he had become on its presence. He needed it, and it needed him. Today, he questioned whose voice he heard— did naming it give it power, or him? Was that voice his own, or an echo of his father's. Sometimes, when he was feeling ambitious, he'd try to understand his father, but making sense of things years gone was a fruitless endeavor. Why was he so angry... He needed answers. He could never have them. So he turned on himself.

He knew this much.

It was simple. The more of it, Adam, he used—be it strength, prowess, or rage—the less of himself there was to hold on to. That had to be the drawback. Each exertion siphoned away a part of his essence. His eyes were proof of that. The way his skin changed worked as a meter. It always tainted his fingertips but it could go further. He just knew it could. It would swallow him whole if he let it.