Through Glass(61)

I froze, my eyes darting from the cement roof to the red tray of food that still sat in front of me.

“And what do I want to know?” I asked, hating how much my hunger mixed with my curiosity to rebel against me.

“Everything, Lex. You want to know everything. About the charter and the Tar and why you were spared. You want to know about everything that has happened in the past eight years.”

My head snapped up at her voice, at what she had said. Confusion cut through me and I felt my breathing try to pick up, the pain surging through my spine at the quick movement. I could hear her laugh trickle through the microphone, her humor at my reaction rippling over the cold grey walls.

“Eight years?” I repeated, my voice low and airy in confusion.

“Yes, Lex, eight years. Eight years since the sky went black, since the French dropped an atomic bomb on us in an attempt to keep the Tar away and since the war began. Eight years since the world changed.”

I was standing, staring at the ceiling. I didn’t remember standing, I didn’t remember moving. I stared at the ceiling as her words tried to seep in, as my mind rebelled against them.

“Two years,” I corrected her, knowing before the words even left my mouth that it was pointless.

“I know it feels that way to you, Lex, but it’s been eight years since the blackness came. May 8 2014. The sun was setting for the last time that we would ever see it…”

“No.”

“…when the Tar escaped from the underground prison the American government had kept them in…”

“No!”

My voice rippled around the room, the intensity of it growing as it bounced off the cement walls. Her words stopped the moment mine broke free, the silence in the room stretching as I tried to control my breathing; as I refused to hear what she was trying to say to me.

I refused to hear the logic behind it because then it would make it real.

I didn’t want it to be real.

“I am telling the truth, Lex.” Her voice came again, the sound soft and hesitant through the crackle of the speaker. “And, if you eat that food, I will tell you everything.”

The speaker popped as she cut off her microphone, the sound echoing before it was gone, leaving me in silence.

Eight years. I couldn’t believe that. I couldn’t. I went to sleep, I woke up. I marked the calendar for every day, every month. I was so careful, obsessive in my tracking, in my endless countdown until when I would escape. Until I would be with Cohen again.

Yet then there were days. Days when I woke up and the clock had stopped. Days when the dust had grown an inch deep overnight. Even with that, though, I didn’t look different. I didn’t feel like almost a whole decade had passed.

I lifted my hand, the boney fingers stretching before me as I stared at them. I didn’t look like anything. I didn’t look like I could be almost thirty. I looked like a skeleton. I turned my hand over, a small red dot from where they had taken blood the only thing that stood out against my clean skin.

The world had changed and obviously it had changed around me. While I had stayed locked in my home, these people had fought and created something real. Now, that tray of food in front of me was the only path for me to find out what. To know that I wasn’t the last person alive. As much as I feared them, I still wanted to know about them.

I stared at it, knowing there wasn’t any other option, but hating the loss nonetheless. I couldn’t wait.

I slowly slid myself forward, the fabric of my pants rubbing against the cement as I scooted toward the tray. The smell of the food seemed to grow as I moved, the saliva in my mouth increasing.

I clutched the plastic spork in my hand and dipped it toward the mashed potatoes. The plastic split the potatoes before I raised it to my mouth. I eat and she tells me everything. I exhaled deeply, my breath running over the food I held before me and bringing the scent right back to me. I needed to know everything. I needed to trust them; the only survivors I had found.

I didn’t question myself anymore; I only closed my eyes and took a bite.

It was better than the cold stew, better than the green beans. The luke-warm mash hit my tongue while the sweet tang of the gravy increased the flavor of the potatoes. I sighed at the taste and the heat against my mouth; something that was so foreign I had forgotten how it felt, how it increased the flavor.

I greedily scooped another heaping mound and shoved it into my mouth. The scoop was so big that it drizzled down my chin. I moved it around my mouth, letting the taste hit every bud on my tongue and increasing the heavenly taste.

I scooped, I ate and I slurped until the spork couldn’t do it for me anymore and my fingers worked better. I ripped apart the turkey, shoving the meat into my mouth with greedy, little fingers.

In the back of my head something begged me to slow down, to use the spork, to be respectable, but I didn’t care. All the fickle worries of before were lost in the taste of the food.

Before I was ready, it was gone, only the roll was left. I ripped it apart and sopped up the bits of gravy and mashed potatoes that had hidden in the corners of the tray with the squishy bread, using it as a sponge in my desperation to eat everything. I licked my fingers from my disgraceful eating, the smooth texture of my skin odd against my tongue.

“Feel better?” Her voice echoed around the room the second I was done, her voice light and calm as she pacified me.