Tabula Rasa(9)

Kudzu crept over everything. Statuary was broken with a stone limb here, a random nose there. Strong storms had come through, I could tell from the slant of things, the uprooted bushes and smaller trees, and the way they leaned. I took a closer look at the trees. With the Kudzu and humidity, definitely the south. But there were a few palms as well.

I bent to take a handful of dirt in a spot where the sidewalk had broken apart. The texture was a bit sandy. Could we be near an ocean? Not near enough to smell the salt, but hurricanes definitely could have blown through.

If storms had blown through, how long ago? It must have been before the world ended unless we had the luckiest set of solar panels in the world. And how long had it taken for the well water to be okay again? If it even had been harmed. I wasn’t sure about that. I grasped for information just outside my supposed specialty to no avail. What I wouldn’t give for an Internet connection and more information right about now.

Trevor hadn’t exactly been the most forthcoming tour guide. Hell, I didn’t even know what he’d done for a living before the solar flares.

As I moved farther from the castle, I could see shop windows had been broken, and on the main strip at least some looting had taken place. It was easy enough to see the bare walls and shelves through the gaping holes in the glass.

Maybe the drawbridge of the castle had been up when they came, and it hadn’t been worth it to try to scale the walls. Maybe that was how Trevor and I had found such a livable environment amongst these modern ruins.

On one wall near an arcade, with what looked like a fortune teller’s tent, someone had spray painted something about the fortune teller being dead and her services no longer being needed. It sounded like song lyrics. I was sure it was song lyrics. I strained to try to pick out a memory of the song in my head, a melody, more lyrics, anything, but everything was a blank. Maybe it was just clever, if not morbid, graffiti. Just because it rhymed, didn’t make it a song. Maybe it was some kind of street poetry.

Many of the rides already showed signs of rust. A few of them looked as if they’d been beaten with baseball bats—some hopeless youth taking out aggression at the world for not staying the way it was supposed to, maybe? I wished they’d left the bats so I could take a few swings. It would have been cathartic.

A wooden cut out of a man welcoming people to the park had been painted over so that he looked like a monster—a ghoul or a vampire or a zombie. It was hard to tell which one they had been going for. Covering the sign in black spray paint were the words: “Abandon all hope.”

What a cheery place to live. Somehow I couldn’t imagine any version of myself that could have ever been excited about this. And if I had been, God, how bad had my living conditions been before we found this place?

As I reached the end of Main Street, the park began to branch into different themed areas. On my right was a giant vampire head, his mouth wide open to form a door. Guests were meant to walk right in between those huge fangs to get to... above his head was a sign that once lit up with individual letters. It said “unhouse”. A large F was on the ground near a cluster of wildflowers that grew in abundance throughout the park.

Not my kind of fun. Or “un” as the kids were calling it now.

Just past the fun house, haunted house, and creepy clown-themed rides and stores, were the kiddie rides. The chickens started clucking as I approached. A few of the hens sat on nests, while others pecked at the bugs and worms through large cracks in the sidewalk. A rooster gave me an aggressive stare as if to say he’d peck out my eyeballs to keep his harem intact.

I held up my hands to let him know I had no intentions toward his girls and wondered if such a gesture even translated across species. How had Trevor managed to get the eggs with that rooster lurking about? I backed away slowly until he lost interest in me and went back to eating.

“Oww, Fuck!” I gripped the side of the kiddie ride as a sharp low abdominal cramp hit me. Oh shit. My period. What was I going to do about that? What had I been doing about that? I was too embarrassed to bring it up with Trevor. It didn’t matter if he was my husband. I didn’t know him.

I was relieved at least to have a passingly plausible explanation for my feelings of weakness. Maybe it was just hormones. And I was sure the heat and humidity weren’t helping matters.

As I wandered the park, an idea hit me, and I went in search of a ladies’ room. I shrieked when a long slinky rodent zipped past me inside the first bathroom I came to. Of course creatures would be nesting in here. But on the wall was just what I expected: one of those machines with feminine hygiene products. Fantastic.

The machines were intact, so unless someone wandering past had a bunch of quarters on them, I might be in luck. I took apart the pipe on one of the sinks and used it to break into the machine. It was a lot more difficult than I expected, especially given how the metal box on the wall was rusting out.

When it finally broke, feminine care products rained out like candy from a pi?ata. I gathered everything that had spilled out like I had just found a hoard of gold and continued on my way. I stopped in one of the gift shops. Looted. Almost picked clean.

Whoever had been in the park before us must have been guys or the tampons would have already been raided. Despite the shop being savaged, I found a large shopping bag behind the register. I put my bounty from the bathroom machine into the bag then went and collected everything out of the other ladies’ rooms. A few of the machines were running low or empty but most were still full.