Through Glass(21)

Maybe they even got to leave their houses and smell the air. Maybe somewhere there was still a sun.

It’s what I told myself anyway. It’s the hope that I clung to.

I said it over and over. It made it easier to understand why Cohen and I were left alive. Without it, it didn’t make any sense.

I rolled over on my bed toward my nightstand, the surface littered with odds and ends that I had used in my attempt to get my flashlight working. I had tried in the beginning anyway. It didn’t seem to matter anymore.

I looked past the forgotten clutter to the small pillow I covered the wind up clock with—the only thing I had been able to get working—only to find the hands stopped.

“Not again,” I growled and pulled the thing toward me. The heavy clock cold against my skin.

I had found this clock weeks after the attack and had been using it to track the brief times I was able to see Cohen ever since. At first, it worked perfectly, however now it seemed to be giving out more and more. I would wake up to it slowing down or, more often than not, to it having stopped completely.

I reached under my pillow and pulled out the small wrist watch I had found in the laundry room a while ago. The band was ripped off and the face was cracked, but somehow it still worked. It wasn’t good for much, only setting the alarm, but at least it worked consistently. After all, I needed something to help me keep track of how much sanity I had left.





2:30


Only an hour left.

Of course, I had no way of knowing if it was the middle of the night or the afternoon. It was always the same grey light that filtered over us, the absence of the sun putting us in an endless night; everything as dark as the inky black sky.

Light was mostly non-existent. Not like I hadn’t tried to create it, the flashlight graveyard was enough proof of that, my hope of using it as some form of a weapon was dashed as life after life around me was taken for the same reason. The Ulama kept their promises. If you broke the rules, they would kill you.

I reminded myself of that every day.

I moved the pillow back over the now functioning clock before they would hear the ticking and then I slowly stood. My pants were loose again and almost slid off my hips before I caught them and tightened the braided fabric belt I had made when all of mine had gotten too big. I tied the ribbon quickly and made my way out of my room. My stomach already tightening in want of food.

I had left everything in the house the same as it was the first day. I wouldn’t touch it because there wasn’t any point. They would just come and ransack my house again.

They did it every month; the screech of the Ulama would fill the air and the door to my house would open. The monsters would make their way through my house, tearing it to bits in search of who knows what, and when they left, only one thing would be unchanged. The large, white box would sit in the same place, the surface dull in the darkness.

It would sit in the middle of the kitchen floor, taunting me. I couldn’t ignore it, not unless I wanted to starve. All the food and supplies I would need for a month were inside.

At least, that’s what the monsters thought. My clothes were now only bags on my emaciated body and the tasteless gruel I was provided with only got moldier and moldier. Yet at least it was something.

I skirted around my parents’ door that still lay in the middle of the hallway and made my way down the dusty stairs toward the kitchen. My bare feet slipped on the heavy layer of dirt and dust as I walked, the gritty texture uncomfortable against my bare skin.

I don’t know how dust accumulated in a world without wind. Every morning when I woke up, there always seemed to be a fresh layer. It covered everything, making the already dark world even darker.

I tip-toed through the now familiar trail of garbage as I made my way through the kitchen, my stomach growling both in expectation and dread for what I was about to do.

I didn’t let my eyes focus on anything as I grabbed the dirty bowl off the counter, the surface as dust covered as everything else. I had started storing it upside down to keep the dust out, but it always seemed that some would seep inside anyway.

I cleaned off as much of the dust as I could and reached up to grab one of the remaining brown packets that lined the last usable shelves.

The food was almost gone. They would come again any day now.

Part of me begged to ration what was left, to make it last in case they didn’t come, but they always came. As much as I didn’t want them to.

“Good morning, Frances,” I mumbled under my breath as the large, brown spider looked at me from her perch.

I could barely make out her glistening eyes as she looked at me, the frustration at my having, once again, invaded her space evident on her itty bitty face.

“Don’t give me that look, Frances. I told you when you started building your web there that it was a bad place, that the chandelier would have been better, but you didn’t listen.” I smiled at her as I pulled the packet down, my hands moving to rip the top off in one swoop.

I knew it was borderline crazy to talk to a spider, however, I didn’t have much of a choice. It was either talk to a spider or forget how to speak. After almost having done the latter, I think I would rather talk to the spider.

At first, I had been creeped out by the mass amount of spiders that had suddenly tried to take refuge in my house from the blackness outside. I stomped and swatted and cringed as I attempted to keep them away.