The Junk Drawer

The Hideaway Project (2)

No one here knows what day it is.

Actually, we don't even know if it is "day".

For all we know, it could be endless night.

And we would never even realize.

There aren't many of us down here.

There never has been.

We live peacefully, because we'd be dead if we didn't.

We aren't family, but that doesn't matter.

We survive together. We don't live.

Surviving isn't the same as living, so we survive together.

We drink the dew that leaks through the rock and earthen walls, and eat the animals that live within our underground home.

Of the thousand of us, there is only one who remembers "them".

We don't know who "they" are, but we believe they are the cause of everything.

The cause of everyone and everything dying.

***

"Would you like some dew, Everette?"

I clasped my hands together, rubbing fiercely to add some form of warmth to them.

I was in the Common, the center and main base of the Underground, where we do most of our eating, trading, and socializing.

I was at Mataya's stand, where she often had trinkets worth digging through and many stone cups full of dew for giving out.

"No thanks, Mataya. I'm just here to pick up the shells you promised me."

Mataya was an old woman. Older than old actually. Almost ancient.

She was in charge of distributing dews to all the Hideaways. Mataya, being so old, had plenty of goods to trade, so I spent much of my free time trading and talking to her.

"Alright, Everette, dear. Here you go."

I wrapped my cold hands around the smooth clam shells. I'm not sure how they were able to keep their shape. Being underground, we Hideaway's don't get many things that are whole. We use everything completely, recycling old things and turning them into other things.

As I bade Mataya good bye, the crowds of people in the Common began to wither away, leaving only me behind.

I was cold, so I left the Common, clutching my shells. It wasn't as happy and busy as before. More eerie. I walked along glancing at the many dwellings that sided the main dirt path we used. Could this really be all in this life? I thought. Surviving, not living, underground, away from what could be a life? I don't remember arriving here, and I don't remember my family, if there was one. All I remember is screaming and light, and then falling. I woke up in a bed and began my surviving. Surviving as a Hideaway...

No one remembers their pasts. Not one of us. We just continue these lives as if we've lived them forever. How we got here is unknown also. People say we were drugged and sent into hiding as a saftey precaution. The world above was more dangerous than anything your mind could wrap around. We just call it the Above now. It used to have a real name. Earth.