Badlands (Camren)

3. NOHOMOSAPIENS

Camila

There was exactly nine hundred and fifty steps from her house to the store. Camila had counted.

If she were to guess, she'd also say it had been a week since she had got here.

Maybe tomorrow she'd try to find a watch and time how long it takes to get there.

Wow, she was pathetic.

She already knew that of course, but sometimes it would just hit her again.

In other news she'd cleaned the house. It took her a few hours at most, she went back to the gas station store and gotten some cleaning supplies, she found an old vacuum in the closet which thankfully still worked.

She'd also started furnishing.

She'd wondered around, not straying more than two thousand steps from her house. Yes, she'd counted that too.

She took things from the other houses, particularly this one house that she really liked that was two houses away.

They had really nice and colourful furniture which was a pain to heave, but she took long breaks, sometimes even leaving them in the middle of the street and returning after a few hours of rest to keep moving it.

Sometimes she'd stare at the house and wonder how the people living in it were like. She'd even construct little stories about them and conversations she could have had with them. She really hated the silence.

One thing that struck her awe every time was the horizon. In the beginning, she thought it was the sunset that streaked the skies pink but no, beyond wherever she was staying was a place with a pink ground.

It fascinated her so much, that every morning when she climbed up the her roof after she was done with her daily furnishing jobs. She stared at it until the sun dipped beyond the horizon and the sky began to darken.

The next morning, she packed up her travelling backpack, the one with survival food and two sets of clothes and set off to find new furniture. She'd woken up quite late so technically it was afternoon really.

She went to the house next to the one she liked this time, having taken enough from there. This house was different, it had memories.

Unlike the last few houses, this was the first to have any pictures of anything.

There were frames pinned on the wall of two little kids. They had dark hair and bright eyes. The kind of eyes that made you think they would have a hopeful future.

Where were they now? Camila wondered. There were more pictures of them. They were laughing in all of them. Suddenly, Camilla needed to know more.

Who were the parents? How did they disappear? Any little information that could betray their personality would be enough for her.

She was suddenly struck with a maddening urge to investigate. Her eyes found the other walls in the house as she discovered more photographs of the children as toddlers and as babies.

She was losing hope of finding one of the parents when she spotted a frame of the mother and father proudly holding up the babies at the camera.

They were so young, maybe around twenty six. It hurt her heart to think they might be hurt, they looked like good people. And the world definitely needs good people right now.

She looked into their bedrooms. The children had shared one room, their room was a bright yellow with cartoons of animals painted onto the wall. Camila absentmindedly traced them as her eyes burnt a hole into the toy box.

She continued into the parents' room which was painted cream coloured. They had clothes in the closet. She pulled out a pretty navy blue dress and held it up against herself. It would probably fit her. And bingo, there was an album.

Camila settled into the unmade bed, still holding onto the dress and started to flick through the photos.

The parents were just as adorable as the children. There were countless pictures of the couple in their more younger years, in different countries doing the most ballsy things. There was one photo of the father bungee jumping and one of the mother skydiving.

She continued to look through the album when the images began to scramble. The pixels on the photos started to move. Scared, Camilla dropped the photo album. She looked at it on the floor and and all the pictures had ERROR 101: NO LONGER IN USE on them. The closet door slammed.

Camila didn't give her actions a second thought, she promptly sprinted downstairs, practically barreling though the front door, still firmly gripping the dress.

The house she swore, sizzled. When she was inside she'd turned the lights on when it was darkening outside. The lights were turned off and it looked dark inside. She could feel the sudden darkness that intruded the house. Even the air felt tainted. The house sizzled again, and Camila began to run.

In her panic running- which she seemed to do a lot lately, she realized longer after that she'd run in the opposite direction of her house. She'd have to go back across the house to her own. Angry with herself she stuffed the dress into her bag.

She needed to go through the next street because there was no way she was going near that house again. She walked past more houses trying to find an alley the led to the next street, she didn't dare go inside any.

It was starting to get dark and Camila was getting more paranoid. She would glance over her shoulder almost as often as she blinked. Finally, Camila spotted an alley and jogged towards it.

She took a turn into it and was immediately hit with a sinking feeling.

Something was off, before she could back out she found something staring back at her.

It was a girl.

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A/n- It's Tuesday bitch. And I'm bAck. Enjoy this chapter and happy PLL day!

I can actually feel my arms now, cute update: it feels like death.

They burn when I make the slightest movements and it's the worst. I wish they gave me less morphine drips, it makes me really sleepy and did I mention I'm missing two months of college? Pray for me please, thanks.

AND PLEASE LEAVE ME COMMENTS, ESPECIALLY INLINE ONES I LOVE THEM AND THEY MAKE MY DAY SO HELP YA GIRL OUT ❤️

- Tay x