suburbia paranoia

one

Eddy has been walking for days now, going from broken township to broken township in search of something- anything. Everywhere he goes, all he sees are ruins, of disheveled houses and disheveled stores and sometimes, in the midst of all this mess - a decomposing corpse. Initially he had thought that he would get used to all this but that change didn't seem any close right now.

His last noteworthy human contact was made 6 days ago, a boy named Ryan. Eddy had wanted them to stay together for a while, after all, in these days, strength was in numbers, but Ryan had wanted to go. He had said that he had to go on a journey, a journey which he had to take alone, and so, Eddy was left alone again, in this huge, vast and hideous world.

Eddy wanted to sleep;sleep till his lungs gave out; sleep till his heart stopped beating; sleep till this world disappeared. But sleep was hard to come by these days, it was a luxury he couldn't afford most of the times, and when he did, the nightmares wouldn't let him have peace anyway.

He decided to pitch in a hopefully empty house for the night. He chose one of those houses with a distinct suburban look and let himself in through the blessedly unlocked back door. As he always did, he checked all the rooms of the house and then the kitchen and basement to make sure there was no one else, before lying down on one of the beds. After a lot of turning and fumbling around, he finally managed to fall asleep.

~

When he woke up, he was covered in cold sweat. His dream hadn't been scary at all, in the literal sense, that is, instead he had seen all of his happy, nostalgic memories being replayed. But turns out, these were the real kind of nightmares, because, somewhere, in the back of his mind, even in his sleep, he knew that all these things were in the past now, away from him. He had seen his mother in his dream, with her good natured face that would sometimes scold him, and he had seen his sister who used to tell him how even the simplest things in life were enjoyable and had meaning. But all this was away from him now, in the far past. He didn't remember when he had last met his family. Heck, he didn't even know if they were alive . After the apocalypse, hardly any form of communication worked anymore, with the exception of radio, but that was probably just about it.

The apocalypse. It had changed so much, everything in his life. One day he was a normal 18 year old worrying about his grades and which colleges to apply to, and the next he was a person fighting to stay alive in this hellscape of a world.

~

When he walked to the basin in the kitchen to wash his face, he remembered how low he was on food. A quick look around the kitchen found him nothing, except an ancient looking tea cake which was mostly just fungus. The people who used to live at this house must have taken all the food along with them , or wanderers like him must have.

He would have to go to one of the ruins of the departmental stores now, and see what he could salvage from it. God, he hated going to those stores. Since they were probably the only sources of supplies and food( mostly old and expired food but still),
they were always either occupied by gangs of much older and much sharper people than him or by madmen experimenting on God knows what. In conclusion, walking into an occupied store hoping to salvage something was basically suicide either way.

But was Eddy afraid of death?

Now that he thought about it, he wouldn't even care if a madman or a gang killed him, he'd probably welcome the death instead. It's like there was no purpose, no reason to live anymore. He probably would have been dead by now if there wasn't his natural primordial human instinct keeping him going.

In conclusion, all thoughts aside, he was going to be reckless and go raid a store anyway.

But little did he know what treasure this store would bring him.

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Thank you for reading and I would really appreciate comments!!( Please don't be a silent reader. Please lolol.)