Dream On Sunshine

chapter 4 - cardboard boxes as a bed

The taste of the vile food was still stuck in the back of my throat. When Kobra told me the stuff was disgusting, he really was not joking.  In fact, he may have been making an understatement. The food was  worse than I thought. I didn't understand how even dogs ould eat that. It was vile. 

I scanned the room, observing each of the others. Adrenaline Revolver, extremely intelligent, fast thinking realist, was laughing at some really  corny jokes being cracked by Fun Ghoul. Fun Ghoul, relatively intelligent, sneaky, killjoy, was the one cracking the really corny jokes that Revolver was laughing at. Kobra Kid, extremely intelligent, quick-thinking, master of karate, was fiddling with the lock on a cabinet at the other end of the room. Party Poison, the most intelligent of us all, the leader of the Killjoys, was standing at the grey/black tinted window, looking out. He seemed distracted but was still watching us out of the corner of his eye. He was alert but daydreaming. The kind of always - awake you are even when you're asleep after not sleeping for days if you've ever experienced that. He was somewhat like that but a tad more awake.

The only one I couldn't see was Jet Star. Standing up, I moved towards the door. Before I could go anywhere I felt a hand on my shoulder... yet again. Why couldn't these guys just stand in front of us to stop us leaving? Like, really? I turned around, pretty p**sed off that someone was yet again in my business. "Where the heck are you going?" I heard him say. No, you're wrong in assuming Party Poison had got to me - he was completley oblivious to the two of us talking. It wasn't Party Poison. It was Kobra Kid.

"Where do you think? I need air."

"What the hell? The window's open and there's an air vent straight from the fan." he pointed at the air vent, then at the window.

I sighed. "Fine. I'm going to see where Jet Star is."

"Okay. 1. He's out the back fixing the Trans-Am. The wheel  sticks sometimes. And 2. Why?"

"Maybe I can help. A little while back I would help the family in the house numbered 76 on the street where I would camp out with their car fixing business, before they had their minds controlled and I ditched the streets."

"Why in fudge's name wouldn't you have taken one of the cars or trucks, presuming they had those?"

"They did, but the morning BL/ind managed to poison their food pills, the people jacked the car wheels making them immobile. Which sucked, because I couldn't even figure out how to even start moving the clamps. So I legged it out of there... and I met Revolver around the time shortly after I left the camp and the cars."

"Sounds like you've been running a long time huh?"

"Yeah." I swallowed. Trying not to bring up the memories of the millions of times we almost got ourselves, caught and captured, killed or poisoned by BL/ind. Revolver and I made a good time. Most of the time. But sometimes we let our guards slip and that's when s**t went down. Hadn't happened in three months, so we were good. But we could never tell.

"You should really be careful who you befriend you know. You could have stolen a car and have been out of there in less than two weeks..." 

"Yeah, that's easy for you to say."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"You know don't you? You know where you fit in, you know who your friends are and you know where you belong. I don't, I never did. I never had the chance to know. And you did. And it's difficult to accept that I never had the childhood I thought I needed. I had cardboard boxes as a bed, I had grass as a blanket, I had raw meat and stolen vegetables for dinners. I had nothing. You can't tell me what I should and shouldn't have done." That was it. I'd snapped. I'd lost my temper. And I shouldn't have because I'd forgotten that Kobra Kid was more sensitive than the rest.

"Yeah. Of course. Just remember that life isn't peachy for everyone else either. I'm not calling you self centred in any way, I can see where you're coming from but you really need to watch your temper. You can come across ass really offensive and if I didin't know who you two are, I would've either shot you or kicked you out by now." he said, his tone of voice clearly indicating that he was hurt. And it was my fault, it was. I'd screwed things up already. Congratulations me - you b--ch.

I sighed, slanking back against the wall, catching glances over at Fun Ghoul and Revolver every so often, just seeing how well they would get along. I hit my head on the back wall. I needed to make friends with these people and I'd just gone and offended Kobra Kid. Well done me. I flicked my gaze to the window, where Party Poison was now talking with Kobra Kid. He was looking directly at me, clearly trying to catch my eye. And it was that moment, I knew I screwed up. He seemed annoyed. Maybe (in all honesty) it was a bit of an understatement. He seemed furious. He came marching over, grabbed my arm and pulled me up to make me stand and not sit. "What the hell was that all about? You think you're better than us? Huh? You think just because you never had a family that you can just walk all over my brother with that attitude of yours? Because if you do, just get out now. I really don't want anything to do with you, or Revolver, but he," Party Poison shoots a deadly glance at Kobra Kid to indicate who he means, "he is making me let you stay. For you, thank god he is because I didn't like you from the moment we found you on those streets. And that's why I put the gun to your  head and not her's, not Revolver's because I knew you had a sh--ty attitude from the very beginning and..." he stops talking. He cuts off mid sentence and just stops. He stands there for a little while, not moving from the space he was when he first started yelling at me. His expression changes to just unreadable. I can't tell if he's annoyed and for the first time since arriving I feel threatened. I put my hand on my gun, just in case things turn... nasty. And then he blinks. And he shakes his head and he just took a deep breath and he just looked me in the eye and told me to "Watch what you say, because smartmouths are never going to survive out here." and honestly? For the first time in a while, I felt like I truly knew what human feelings genuinely felt like again. And if I'm 100% honest, it didn't seem anything like I thought... Ugh... Feelings? Feelings are weird.