Alternate (Phan)

26*Creatures

Phil

I heard the pounding rain against the soot-covered walls of the office building as I pulled mine and Dan's equipment together. I tightened a backpack of necessities onto my back, storing the rest in a crook of the building's walls. It would be safe there, since the building looks desolate enough; people don't have time to rummage round an appearing-empty building in hopes of the off-chance they'd find a couple of bags of supplies. What were even the chances of coming across anything at all?

I tucked Ev into the material Dan and I shared between us to carry him attached to our chests, only to discover he'd grown too large to fit his limbs through the holes anymore.

'Shit.' I sighed, pulling him to my body with my left arm. I shook my head, in disbelief at the world as I pushed open the once-automatic doors of the office building, sliding them shut as I returned myself to the lame excuse-of-a-world's rain.

I felt sick, sick to the gut with the feeling of stepping closer to the hunters. My body's instincts were screaming and yelling at full velocity to walk away, but my heart spat on their cries.

Despite the chances, I had nerves about leaving all of our equipment back in the building, but I couldn't carry it all and I was only building up more worry for my brain to handle. I can't believe how long we stuck in that building, it was dangerous, it was crazy. But I am a crazy, that's why I've survived. Maybe if we'd left sooner, Dan wouldn't be missing right now. But the world's full of 'what if's which everyone contemplates, no matter their mental state. Sometimes you could mistake a crazy for a good, but wait until the trauma swims in waves to the forefront of someone's unexpectant mind. Watch the look on their face as they switch to whatever form they take when they're flooded with every negativity to ever exist. People who are crazy are so individual in the way that they switch.

Hostile, angry, tearful, depressed, manic, empty, guilty, anxious, suicidal, self-destructive, fearful, clingy. You're a real crazy if you're all of the above at the same time. But I doubt any of them survived, because I certainly know I wouldn't have wanted to live with the knowledge that I would return to feeling that shitty repeatedly at any unexpected moment.

But, because everyone is so unique in their flips, you have to trust them. If they tell you that to get them to return, they just need a hug. Trust them. If they tell you to lock them in a room or tie them to a chair (mind's going kinky, but I guess that might work to bring some people back to themselves - I won't judge). Trust them. If they tell you to rapid-fire every memory you can think of, no matter how traumatising. Trust them. If they tell you to stroke their hair and comfort them, reminding them they're okay. Trust them. If they tell you to shoot them in order to protect the ones they love most. Trust them.

Because if you don't trust them and they've gone to an extreme in their flip, there's no telling what they'll do. No matter who you know them as, they are not that person when they have switched. You have to be strong to remember that. And most importantly, you have to want to remember that.

The sickly feeling in my gut hadn't left. I wrenched over, hands on my knees as I felt my face become pale.

Come on, Phil. Focus. Focus for Dan.

I couldn't even bring myself to imagine the position Dan was in as I trod along the soaked, white blades underneath my boots. My jacket was pulled above my head, my sleeves wrapped over my long fingers, protecting them from the cold.

Hunters hunt. Survivors survive. Losers lose.

What do I mean 'hunt'? I mean cannibalism. I mean torture. Hunters are all bad.

That's how you tell a good crazy from a bad crazy: a bad crazy harms another person in every way they physically can, a good crazy harms themselves in every way they physically can. Either way, someone ends up dead. Someone innocent and someone who deserved better.

I drummed my hands against the top of my thighs as I walked, pulling my connector to my face. Only a couple of miles left to walk. I moved my hand up from my thigh, tapping my hip where my belt sat against my torso. I played with it, checking it's mobility as I practised slipping it away and hastily moving it in front of my face. In the end, I settled for keeping it tightly in my fist: prepared.

Your body's instincts take over as you knowingly near a dangerous area. Your steps lighten, breathing shallows, heart quickens and legs crunch, ready to run.

A sound erupts, my body flinching as my arms dart towards, pulling the trigger and taking out the movement. A chicken. My face drained of blood as I approached the bleeding animal, but I'd killed it smoothly with one shot. The guilt clawed at me, knowing I could have spared this guy's life. You can't eat these guys, any creature of the world for that matter, because you don't know what they've eaten, so therefore you don't know what's rotting inside their skin and through their veins. The next disease to wipe a population out, that's what. Honestly, any good person who survived the war until this point wouldn't want to take an animal's life just for food anyway, even without the almost guaranteed inevitability of disease and death. They'd seen enough pain from death already, an abandoned corpse rotting on its own in the streets, occasionally being chewed at by a nuked creature of some sort, maybe their own loved one. The good person knows that the animal is just as deserving of a life as a human, they've done well to survive until the point they have, so why destroy that with a bullet for a couple of meals? The animal has experienced just as much trauma as the potential killer, just as much relief as the adrenaline from a dangerous situation drains out of their system. A good person would feel sick to the gut that they killed that creature, just as much as they would if they'd shot a human.

A bad person, they are the ones that stick to the belief people need meat. They are the ones that say that they need meat in their diet because it tastes nice. So what meat is almost guaranteed to be harmless to consume? Humans. It's not that humans shouldn't be eaten over a creature, because we're all animals at the end of the day with feelings and life, it's just...

Dan's a human.

And they have Dan.