Kenopsia

Uncommon Death

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It was not uncommon to see the scattered remains of decomposing bodies across the roadways. Skulls and unidentifiable bones were frequent in buildings, roads, sidewalks... Once you'd found a house, there was bound to be a nearly complete skeleton still laying in the moldy mattresses of a once lively society. Occasionally, you'd find the saddening image of a child's skeleton, scattered across the road close to their supposed parent's skeleton. And, of course, you'd find the skeletons of all sorts of animals. Dogs, cats, horses. Frequently, these animal skeletons would have meat on them. The animals lasted longer than almost any humans did.

Animals continued to roam, breed, and die, even with the unfathomable conditions of the current world. Thus, it was not uncommon to find a non-decomposed animal body. However, it was uncommon to find a human body with any flesh left on it. If it was a human body, then it should be nothing more than a skeleton. This is a great factor as to why it was so incredibly unsettling for young Spere, who is rather used to seeing skeletons and remains of bodies and animals and overall was unfazed by death, to find a nearly non-decomposed, complete corpse of a human. On the floor of the small, once-been grocery store building, was a corpse. The corpse of a teen girl, no older than Spere, lying face down in a pool of her own blood on the dirty tile floor, unclothed.

Slowly, Spere rose a dark hand to her face, and covered her mouth, fighting back the urge to make any noise. As quietly as she had entered the building, she began to carefully, slowly step back outside, walking through the doorway that, at one point in time, had automatic sliding glass doors. Spere adjusted the heavy backpack on her shoulders, and then began walking down the empty city street, trying to comprehend what she had seen. She'd seen thousands of skeletons in her short life, but never had she seen a fresh body or thickly pooled blood.

She moved the black facemask down from her face, and vomited on the side of the road. The smell wasn't what bothered her; in fact, she hardly even had a sense of smell anymore, if any at all. Just the sight of the young, dead girl alone was enough to make her stomach churn. She would have to tell her group about this, she decided.

A murder. Spere'd never really used the word, and hoped it was the right word. But, from what she could tell, she had seen a murdered girl. Spere quietly moved her gator neck back up and over her nose, the way a surgical mask would. With so much ash in the grimy air, it was important to keep the mask on, even though breathing was like hell.

She wore three hoodies, layered on one another, but still, it wasn't enough to stop the painful cold from biting at her fingers. A light snow layered the ground, and she could just barely make out her small footprints. She shuffled her feet, hoping it would make her trail less noticeable, but if anything, it made her trail even more visible. She noticed a light trail of cat paw prints in the snow alongside her. She wondered where the cat had gone. The footprints faded as she walked.

It only took about twenty minutes of her fast-paced shuffle for her to find the nearly collapsed building that she called home. The cement structure was in better shape than most buildings on the block, but the roof was mostly non-existent and the paint had worn off decades ago. The entrance was an open doorway. Maybe at one point in time there had been a real door, but now, it was just a hole in the grey brick wall.

Spere stepped into the building quietly. She peered around the main room, and nearly jumped at a voice.

"Spere? Back so soon?" It was a quiet, muffled girl's voice. It was a woman, just a few years older than Spere. She walked into the main room from a dusty hallway, wearing layered clothes and a mask similar to that of Spere's. However, unlike Spere, this woman had blonde, wavy hair that was held up in an elegant pony-tail. Spere, on the other hand, had short-cut, messy black hair that was hidden underneath a grey beanie. She would cut it as close to her scalp as possible. To Spere, hair was just a nuisance. Especially since someone of her ethnicity was likely to have thick, frizzy, and uncontrollable hair. Not that she would know if hers was like this; she would never let it get long enough to tell.