ꜰᴏᴏʟ'ꜱ ᴍᴀᴛᴇ || ᴛᴡᴅ

119: ᴏɴᴄᴏᴍɪɴɢ

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Sami hated the dark. Though he never really knew why. 

He remembered when he was little, laying in bed, and checking under his bed before turning out his light, and then hiding under his covers, which made it worse because it was also dark under there. Some nights, he'd scare himself so much that there were people in his room that he'd stay awake until sunrise, sleeping for only a few hours before school, if he was lucky. 

When he got older, he stayed at a friends house. And there actually was a man in the room that time. He never learnt what the hell happened there. He just remembered waking up at 10 years old in his friend Lita's guest room, seeing a man at the end of the bed. His beady eyes barely peeking over the edge. Just watching. His eyebrows here high on his forehead, and Sami had been so frightened he couldn't move. He just pretended to be asleep.

He never found out what that was. He couldn't remember what happened. If he got up and went to Lita's room. If he fell asleep and the man was gone. But he knew who the man was. He saw him the next morning at breakfast, when he kissed Lita's mother's forehead, and made his way out of the house and to work. Sami swore he'd given him a weird look, one of those looks that are like speaking with eyeballs that he never understood. But he also may have imagined it.

Thinking of that man, as he crawled through the narrow spaces between the rubble, made him feel small. Like a child again. Vulnerable. He really wanted a hug. 

He saw Daryl through a hole in the wall, smashed through a small, and climbed through. Daryl didn't even look at him.

"The fuck're you doin' here?"

Sami shook his head to get rid of the bits of rock in his hair. "Dunno. Just one of those things."

"See this?"

He looked up, seeing that they were in a tunnel identical to the last one, only at some point people must have been living in here. 

Blankets were scattered all around, broken patio chairs sitting with cardboard signs upon them. Sami still found reading English to be a pain in the ass, but he could see a few easy words. Hungry. Homeless.

There were bedframes, though he wasn't sure what they were made from, since he doubted anyone dragged metal beds all the way down here. 

But the main thing was the feel. While everything was filthy, obviously abandoned or untouched years ago, there was a heavy feeling in the air. 

Something dreadful had happened here.

As they walked through the center, which had been left mostly clear so they could walk, they saw just how many things were stacked up, like a hoarders house, or like they'd just been thrown as someone ran past. Signs that said different things in different languages. 

And upon the walls, graffiti. Daryl shown his light on on in particular. 

ł₮ ₵Ø₥Ɇ₴ ₣ØⱤ Ʉ₴ ₳ⱠⱠ

And beneath it - a man, shot in the head, arm cut off, which was handcuffed to an open case of money. 

The body was old, but hardly old enough to be from the start. Who would care about money these days? Or maybe they thought there was something else in the case.

Daryl then looked at the painting up on the wall across from the man. In the center, the Washington Capitol, something crashed and burning in it's roof, though it was too smudged to make sense of. Behind it, a family clad in grand clothing, crowns upon their heads, the only color. And lining steps up to the building, was pair in fights, one of each pair with a crown upon their heads.