by Shaw, Matt
Food-wise - we ate well. Looking back, it was silly really. We should have rationed what we had. Tried to make it last longer than it actually did. I think we managed to eat well for just over a month, maybe longer but not by much. When Father realised the food supplies were diminishing quicker than anticipated - he did start rationing but, of course, by then it was too little too late. Our meals had been reduced to nothing and we were living off the smallest of portions, all of us getting hungrier and hungrier.
I think I miss shortbread biscuits the most.
And real steak.
The slices of meat we got to eat before this happened.
“What did happen?” Sister would occasionally ask Father.
He’d sit next to the open fire - burning away logs we had collected from outside with an old axe we found in the garage next to the house - and tell us bits and pieces of what led to the bomb being dropped. To this day I’m not sure if he was telling the truth or simply using his imagination to give what happened a reason.
The summary: one man’s greed led to the end of the world.
Father told us how he saw the mushroom cloud billow up into the air and the bright, near- blinding light of the explosion. He described how the bang vibrated his guts to the very core making him instantly queasy and fearful that something important was going to rupture. Again - I’m not sure how much of it was truth and how much of it was fabricated for our benefit; a little bedtime story to tell the children.
Soon enough the day that we feared came by. The food was practically gone (other than a few crumbs here and there) and our stomachs were rumbling.
“We need to leave the house,” Father told me as I came down to a non-existent breakfast one morning. “We need to see if we can find some food before we all starve to death.”
I didn’t argue with him. I knew if we didn’t do something (and soon) then his words wouldn’t be as melodramatic as how they sounded. I didn’t even question whether it was worth one of us staying behind, at the house, with one of the women whilst the other woman went out with Father. That way, there’s a man outside to find food and a man inside to defend the property.
Chauvinistic thoughts?
Before the bomb went off and things changed, I’m sure women would have been just as capable as men (in some ways more so) but now - in this new world - I couldn’t help but feel that way. No doubt something to do with all the tales of looters Father told us during the cold nights.
Armed with a knife from the kitchen, an axe from the garage and a torch - Father and I left the house in search of supplies. We didn’t know what we were going to come across. Perhaps some wildlife wandering the woods with the same goal as us? Perhaps some other survivors? Perhaps some glimmer of hope? Whatever it was - soon after leaving the property we realised just how bad things actually were and that nothing would ever be the same again despite our hopes for a rescue party plucking us away from the destruction to some safe haven we could learn to call home.
* * * * *
The first time Father and I left the house, we had been walking for what seemed to be hours. In reality it was probably no more than thirty minutes but - of course - it was impossible to tell.
My first impression was that everything seemed normal. It just made it that little bit more heartbreaking when you realised it wasn’t. Despite the way it looked, the world was ruined and chances were we were breathing in radiation with every breath. An invisible killer.
Father was the first to hear it; the sounds of branches snapping nearby to where we were. He held his finger up to his mouth as though to silence me before I even opened my mouth. I did as his gesture suggested and kept quiet. If there was a chance for a meal, at the end of this, I didn’t want to be the one responsible for scaring it off.
I held back as Father went forward with the axe in his hands - poised ready to swing it at the neck of whatever he stumbled across. I had the knife in hand - not that it was going to be of much use. Or so I thought. Looking back, I’m glad I had it. Had we left it back at the house, had we not bothered with it, then I’m pretty sure things would have been different.
“I thought you were a deer!” my father said.
I couldn’t see who he was talking to. Not from where I was standing. I remember getting my hopes up though. The thought of him talking to another person. It showed that, despite how it appeared, we weren’t alone. For a minute - I’d felt a glimmer of hope.
It was around that point that Father had sworn. He even took a step back from where he was standing. Something he’d seen had knocked him off-guard. I called out to him, quietly, to see if everything was okay but he didn’t reply to me. He just raised the axe in the air and told - whoever was there - not to come any closer. His voice filled with threat. His body defying his tones and visibly quaking with fear.
I think I called out for his attention a couple of times but he didn’t reply either occasion and then - from the other side of the tree - I saw why.
Present Day
The meat was stirring again bringing me back to the now. I noticed Father was looking directly at me. He was chewing his food and seemed bothered that I wasn’t eating mine. A quick glance to Mother and Sister - they were staring at me too. Wasting food is sinful.
“You aren’t hungry?” asked Father.
His dark eyes looked as though they were slowly turning black. Something which happened when he was angry. I tried to ignore it. Could just be the dim light of the candles making them appear that way.
“Sorry!” I said. “Drifted off for a moment.”
“That’s okay.”
He forked the last of his own meal into his mouth and swallowed it down before asking the awkward question, “So what has everyone been doing today?”
When things changed - after the first meat we ate - Father often asked this question. Of course he knew what we were doing with our days. The house wasn’t big enough to hide our activities. Not from anyone who really wanted to know what was going on anyway and Father was definitely that sort of person. He had to know what was going on. He made it his mission. If he knew where everyone was and what was happening within his four walls, it gave him a little more control over the situation. It led to fewer opportunities for things to go wrong. With that in mind - when he asked the question - he didn’t want to know the truth. He didn’t want to know what we were really doing, just as we didn’t want to discuss it with him.
He wanted a lie. Perhaps - considering what (or who) was stretched out on the table in front of us - he wanted the chance to feel normal again. Even if it was a lie.
* * * * *
“What have you been doing today?” Father would ask us.
Our first answers were that we had been watching out of the window for them.
“Don’t tell me that,” he had stopped us, “tell me what you would have been doing. On a normal day. That’s what I want to hear. Your mother and I. That’s what we want to hear.”
* * * * *
“I met this guy,” said Sister. She was looking directly at the meat who was continuing to slowly come round despite the blood loss. I’m surprised. Normally they don’t wake up again once they fall unconscious. “He’s just moved to the area from up north. For some reason he took a shine to me and introduced himself to me before introducing himself to anyone else in the class. It’s funny,” she continued, “we’ve only just met but we have so much in common. We like the same television shows, we both want to become doctors, both have a love of animals...He’s really nice. We’re going to meet for lunch tomorrow. You never know, I might get asked to the end of year dance yet...”
“And why wouldn’t you? You’re beautiful!” Father smiled.
Father was right. She was beautiful. Brilliant blue eyes that dazzled like precious stones despite the dim light offered by the candles dotted around the room. Long eyelashes. The blondest of hair and full, kissable lips. A perfect size eight although I’m not sure whether that’s because she’s naturally slim or becaus
e of the lack of food. I suspect, given the rest of her features, it’s the first of the two options.
To this day I still don’t understand how such a creature could come from Mother and Father. Neither of them were skinny, neither of them had blonde hair (both had dark) and neither had blue eyes (Father had dark brown and Mother had green eyes). Other than the weight (I’m pretty slim too) at least I appear to have inherited the same genes as Mother and Father with the dark eyes and dark hair. Thankfully I got Father’s height - the pair of us knocking on six foot two inches.
The meat started to get more vocal as it realised it hadn’t been dreaming. We did our best to ignore it as Father looked to me - expecting my answer to his question. I hated these questions. It was hard to remember what I enjoyed doing before the bomb, before all this. Did I do normal activities before any of this? I don’t remember them. Did I play computer games with friends? Did I like to go out drinking and dancing? Was I even social? I don’t feel as though I may have been. I feel as though I could have preferred my own company. Maybe.
“Well?” Father asked.
Mother sensed that I was struggling to think of something that would be deemed satisfactory so she chipped in with her own day, “I went shopping!” she said as she took another bite of the fleshy mess upon her plate. She licked her lips.
“Oh?”
“I found the most beautiful dress. It was long, flowing...”
“What colour?”
“Red.”
“Matching shoes?” Father was getting into Mother’s scenario with a smile on his face. He relished the chance to escape to a different (better) world.
“High heels. Admittedly, I don’t have anywhere to wear the clothes but I was hoping that - when you saw me in them - you’d want to take me to...”
Father interrupted, “The finest restaurant! There’d be a piano in the corner of the room. A pianist effortlessly playing a quiet tune as the diners - on surrounding tables - enjoy the finest cuisine from around the world. The low murmur of happy chitter-chatter from the patrons as staff busy themselves making sure everyone is catered for. The occasional chinking sound as wines glasses come together to toast various celebrations. I’d have the fish,” he continued. “What would you have?”
Mother’s eyes lit up at the prospect of fish. We hadn’t had fish since all of this kicked off. Not real fresh fish. The original owner of the house had some fish fingers in the freezer, which we ate, but they’re not the same. “I’d have the fish as well!”
“And then, as we enjoy our starters - I’d have pate by the way - I’d tell you how beautiful you looked in the dress.”
“And I would thank you...”
“And then I’d ask whether it was purchased with my credit card.”
“And I’d smile innocently and flutter my eyelids.”
“And I’d have my answer,” he laughed. He sighed as he picked up the carving knife from next to the top end of the meat. “Anyone for seconds?” he asked as he ran the blade across the neckline of the meat causing blood to spurt across the room.
Waste not, want not.
A Trace of Humanity
I was sitting on the edge of my bed in darkness. I had left the candle with Sister. Just as food had been rationed, so had the candles been. One per bedroom. Those were the rules put in place by Father and it so happened Sister and I were forced to share rooms (no choice really, given that there were only two bedrooms in the house). Even if there had been more rooms, Father would have still insisted that we shared. Safety in numbers; he was ever paranoid some lowlife scum was going to creep into the house - in the middle of the night - and slit our throats whilst we slept. Less chance of that happening when we all share rooms. Sister and I in one room, Mother and Father in the other.
Sister had stayed downstairs with Mother and Father; talking of times gone by as only they could imagine them (shopping, trips to the pub, going out with friends - the usual). She was giving me my space. I hadn’t asked her to but she knew, after a meal, I liked a little time out to myself. A little bit of quiet time to try and forget about what we had just done. By that I mean the person we had just disposed of.
They all knew I struggled with my thoughts after a big family meal. On some level I’m sure they felt the same too. I guess they just handled their thoughts better than I handled mine.
My thoughts?
Not so much my thoughts that I struggled with.
It was my guilt.
Father helped with the thoughts of course. He’d say, “If it wasn’t one of them on the table, it would be one of us tied there and one of them sitting at the head of the table with the carving knife.”
He was right too. We all knew it but it didn’t matter. It still played on my mind. They were still a person after all.
“No - they’re not. They’re meat. Nothing more and nothing less. Remember that!” Father had shouted the first time I tried to make the family see we couldn’t live as such.
I had told them we needed to make a run. We needed to leave the house. We needed to try and find a city - some camp at least. I had told them we were there living as savages and for all we knew there was civilisation right around the corner. Some kind of rebuilt society living in the wreckage of the cities which once stood. Father had an answer for me though. He always had an answer.
“They’re out there. We won’t make it through the first night!” he said.
When he said that, I didn’t argue with him. There was no point. He was right. Of course he was right. They were out there waiting for us. When it was just one of them and my father and me - we struggled to keep it back. And when we saw more on the horizon we knew that we didn’t stand a chance against them. They would have torn us apart, limb from limb. Mother and Sister wouldn’t stand a chance against them. No way. Father was right. We wouldn’t make it through the night.
The door opened and my sister walked through the door clutching the candle in her hand. She smiled at me sympathetically. She knew what I was going through. She had gone through it herself after all - just like Mother and Father. I don’t remember much but I remember the look on everyone’s face the first evening we sat around some meat. Everyone looked repulsed by what we had come to do. Father’s hand - steady on the knife nowadays - was shaking like an autumn leaf hanging onto the branch of a dying tree.
“Are you okay?” she asked. She walked over to the sideboard and placed the candle in one of the waiting holders before coming over to sit with me on the bed.
“Do you ever think about whether there is anyone else out there? I mean other than them and the odd survivor?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you ever think there are families living out in the country living their lives as we live ours?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Maybe? Why?”
I didn’t say anything. I knew that - if I did - it would only turn into an argument between the household and I couldn’t be bothered with that. Especially when I knew it was just the post-meal guilt speaking. By tomorrow I’d be fine. By tomorrow I’d be back to doing anything and everything just to survive; the reason why we ended up going down the road we were traveling in the first place.
“Come here!” she pulled me close and tenderly kissed me on the mouth. Her hand snaked its way down my chest to my jeans where she - no doubt - expected to feel a bulge starting to strain against the fabric. She was in for a disappointment. She looked at me as though to ask what was wrong.
“You mind if we leave it tonight?” I asked her.
“You owe me!” she hissed. She rubbed my crotch harder, in an attempt to kick start the beginnings of an erection, before unbuttoning my jeans. She moved off the bed and onto her knees in front of me where she ripped the jeans down around my ankles. I should have known the kind caring sister wouldn’t have been there for long before the animal took over. Her warm mouth wrapped around my flaccid penis as she started to bob up and down - clearly determined to force me to an erect
ion.
I shuddered. Not because what she was doing was painful. It was actually fairly pleasant despite my best intentions to ignore it. I shuddered because of what she has turned into because of the state of the world. I shuddered because of what we had all turned into. We had gone where - before the bomb - none of us would have ever dreamed of going. As the days and months continued to dissolve before us, all traces of humanity were going.
With my sister’s hand and mouth actions it wasn’t long before I had an erection. She got up and pushed me back on the bed. Without any words, or anymore foreplay, she removed her own jeans and pulled her knickers to one side before impaling herself on my shaft.
“And you’d better make me cum!” she demanded.