Unlikely Friends: Volume Two

Chapter Ten

Before

It didn't take long for Pando to figure out how to retract his looming wings. He preferred to draw as little attention to himself as possible considering he was set on exploring the abandoned buildings around him. His shirt had been torn apart due to the wings' sudden explosion from his body and its remaining material hung loosely around Pando's neck. He hoped he'd be able to find a new outfit with any scarce food he managed to find. 

The city smelled like death and Pando's new nose seemed to not send him recoiling in disgust for the first time. He sniffed the air, recognizing the putrid scent but it seemed like almost a censored version of it. He wandered towards its direction and stood on the steps of an old building with boarded up windows. He heard soft sobs from inside and was reminded of the broken mother he met seemingly a lifetime ago. It had been long enough for the bombs to stop dropping but the toxic smoke still returned each night. Pando knew that life wouldn't go back to normal any time soon. A majority of the world's population were mutated now, himself included, and it was only a matter of time until the rest transformed as well. So really it didn't matter much if Pando walked away from the sobbing man.

He knew it wouldn't be the same as the last time he searched out people in need. Just as the bombs had stopped destroying cities, the painful pink glow that would appear around moments of love had completely vanished. As if it never existed. Pando wondered if he imagined that entire scene. Maybe the dark voice within him had grown strong enough to create even darker scenarios. Despite his instincts screaming at him to not enter the building, Pando found himself climbing the steps and walking inside. "Maybe I can just fly away if there's trouble," he joked to himself in an attempt to ease his nerves. Upon stepping through the door he saw a man sitting on a torn, dusty couch with his head in his hands, sobbing. Aside from the normal ransacked mess these days, the room seemed fine. He didn't see any blood anywhere like last time.

"I wasn't quick enough," the sniffling man mumbled to himself as he pulled at his own hair. "I knew I shouldn't have trusted her with it," the man said to nobody im particular. Pando's gaze drifted from the man to a dark hallway. Trusted her with what? He questioned, noticing the scent he was chasing now stronger. Is this where the strange deathly smell is coming from?

Pando carefully stepped over piles of trash and broken picture frames. The sobbing man was too lost in his misery to notice as the mutated boy snuck past him and down the hallway. Pando swallowed nervously as he made his way down the narrow passage. All of the doors he passed were shut except for a single room at the very end. The boy slowly inched closer and approached the last room. He inhaled deeply as he entered, sure this was the source of the mysterious odor.

He wished he wasn't correct. He immediately stumbled backwards into the hall again, staring horrified at the sight before him. A young woman was slumped over in a bathtub, blood staining her blond hair. Behind her the wall was caked in more blood and strands of hair. Skull fragments and brain matter painted the gruesome scene before the petrified Pando. He noticed she still held a gun in her limp hand.

Pando squeezed his eyes shut, cursing himself for intruding on another broken family and traumatizing himself all over again. He wanted desperately to block all of the horror he had witnessed these last months out of his mind. No! He wanted to block them out of existence. He opened his eyes and the scene had changed. The bloody mess had vanished in the blink of an eye and the blond woman now stared down at her hand in disbelief. Pando sighed in relief, he had imagined it after all. Maybe he really was going crazy.

And the woman certainly was losing her grip on reality as well. "No, no, no" the woman frantically shook her head, the memories of her dying flooding back to her; the deafening sound of a gunshot, the splintering of her skull. Her earsplitting screams alerted the man in the other room. The man shoved his way past Pando, charging towards the woman just as she raised the gun back to her head. Pando squeezed his eyes shut just as his ears rang from the sound of a gunshot. The man immediately dropped to his knees in front of the blood splattered tub, witnessing his fiancés death all over again.

Pando's heart beat erratically as he kept his eyes closed with his back against the hallway. I could just fly far away from here right now, he told himself. He could run away and bury this memory as deep as he could. But he was so tired of running. The boy blindly took deep breaths, trying to calm himself. He was just going crazy. None of this was really happening so none of it mattered. The woman was dead, he reminded himself. "And then she was alive," a voice inside him said.
 
"Okay yeah but I'm pretty sure she's dead again," Pando argued back at himself, definitely certain at this point that he had gone insane. Something inside him urged him to open his eyes again and Pando struggled as he fought to resist it. He didn't want to see the traumatized man kneeling in a dead woman's spilled brains. He raised his hands and pressed the palms against his eyes as he wildly shook his head back and forth. "I'm losing it," he thought to himself. "Or maybe you can do it again," the voice suggested. Do what again? Block out the memory? Pretend he never saw anything obscene? It was a ridiculous notion but something inside him pushed him forward.

Pando slowly opened his eyes and the scene had changed again. The broken man on his knees looked up at the sound of the woman gasping for breath. She looked at her hands, the memories flooding back once again. "No!'  the man cried as he stumbled to his feet, intending to lunge for the gun she was once again raising. Pando held his breath when the woman looked past her partner and met his red eyes instead. She held Pando's gaze with the gun pressed to her head as she spoke in a bitter tone.

"Just let me die."

Pando closed his eyes again just as her finger twitched, moving to pull the trigger. "Change it," the voice ordered.

The boy flung his eyes open, willing the gun out of existence. However, the gun remained to Pando's dismay, he had seemingly only managed to change its color. It had gone from black to a light blue. He watched helplessly from the hallway as the man reached out his arms just as she successfully pulled the trigger. Pando held his breath, anticipating the loud shot but none came.

All that shot from the gun was a stream of water.