Never Tell a Hungry Man Not to Eat

Finding the First Pages

Walking across a pile of bald tires, mirrors, leather seats, and other car parts, as well as broken glass, paint masks, and spray paint, Xé stared through the fog across a half-missing and crooked bridge that looked like it was a miracle it could still stand. He was looking for some kind of sign that his husky was still alive and didn't fall over the bridge or got stuck in the rubble. The bridge was broken in two, both sides slanted in opposite directions, with random pieces replaced by empty space. He didn't hear any splashes, so the dog couldn't possibly have fallen over anywhere.

Xé's lips were dry so he licked them and tried to whistle, letting out a faint windy sound. He tried to whistle again, taking a step forward, but tripped over some lime wire (which was a form of tough string made from lime peel and iron shavings, used as improvisation trip wire during the third World War) which resulted in him cracking the driver side window with his forehead. He panicked. The fresh blood would attract flies towards him. He hated flies, especially when they invaded his face, so he decided to look for a cloth he could discard.

Xé looked around for something hard enough to break through the second layer of glass. Modern-day car windows were made of two layers of glass, the first layer being the fragile glass. With the fragile glass it would appear that just a little push more could make the window shatter into a million pieces, deceiving those in favor of a car theft. The first layer was designed to take the force of an impact and return the force right back with double the intensity. The glass would crack and be pulled apart, and immediately be pushed back together to flow the momentum outward. The second layer, behind the fragile layer, was made of a form of flexible plexiglass that would bend and unbend in the case that the head of the driver or a passenger would make contact with the window in an accident.

Having hit his head against the driver's side window of the sedan to his right, Xé felt that it wasn't just a hit against glass, but also as if the glass scrunched his forehead for a second and let go. He found what appeared to be a tire iron bent out of shape. It felt heavy, so he used it to swing against the window. It gave out a loud bang, but the second layer wouldn't break, so he gave it multiple hits, which left his ears ringing. He got through it after the seventh hit, his strength not being what it used to be. Xé searched the car for his valuable piece of cloth or some kind of paper towel to rid him of the bloody disaster on his forehead. He didn't have the desire nor patience to use any of the seat covers, especially since he had no idea how dirty they were or what kind of objects made contact with those seats. "People do some pretty sick things in car seats," he thought to himself.

Searching the center console of the car provided him with no luck, so he checked for a container under the car seats. Unfortunately, it hadn't had such a commodity. Finally, Xé looked in the glove compartment and immediately used some crumpled papers he found to relieve himself of the mess on his face.

He decided to straighten out the papers immediately after, out of curiosity for their content. Taking a quick scan with his eyes, he realized these weren't just some papers. They weren't just some useless insurance papers, but paper with someone's handwriting on it. It could be anything - notes, thoughts, poems. It could be some history that could tell him of the past and explain how and why the world became this lonely and trashed.

He gasped, thinking "This could be a piece of history and I just smudged my blood on it." He hastily straightened out each paper and pressed them against the driver side car seat, trying careful not to smudge the ink and preserve as much as he could. He looked around the glove compartment to see if there were any more papers like this, but found half a bottle of Hydrogen Peroxide in a Medical Kit that also included cotton balls and a box of bandages. Along with the kit, he found some USB wires, a 9mm pistol with no ammunition but a single bullet in the barrel, the useless insurance papers, a wallet, and a cigarette box that had been stuffed with gum wrappers which smelled like cinnamon -- not that Xé had remembered what cinnamon smelled like. He dulled his sense of smell after a science experiment gone wrong back in high school. Little did he know it was a prank his science lab partner pulled on him, replacing Xé's Helium cartridge with a Nitrogen one.

"High school. They never let me finish high school." he thought to himself.

Deciding to clean his forehead, Xé dabbed it with a cotton ball he filled with Hydrogen Peroxide. He looked in the mirror and examined the severity of the wound. Apparently, it was very shallow, but more skin was taken off than he expected.

As clumsy as he was, Xé spilled half of what was left in the bottle mostly on himself, but partially getting the papers. He panicked, draining the spillage off those papers before tending to the clothing he wore. He firmly pressed the papers into another part of the driver's seat. Then the idea hit him. What if he used the H₂O₂ to get the blood out of the papers? It always worked for cloth.

Xé decided to give it a try, only to discover that it also rubbed off some of the ink as well.

"No worries," he thought, "I can still make it out if I can see most of it."

Back in junior high be decided to train himself to be able to read upside down, right to left, and to be able to make out even the worst handwriting he could come across, including partial words and letters, imagining himself being some kind of super spy in his adulthood or late teen years.

"Thank you, young me." he muttered to himself while he dried out the papers and and then proceeded to read the writing:

"Before I tell you how I got here, I'll start with where I'm at. I'm at the only bar left in this town, trying beer for the first time. Now what kind of 38 year old man never tried beer? This is America, after all. They had beer before the war, and plenty of it during the war. I don't know what people find so great about beer, but it's almost as bitter as coffee. Back in PRISM* I almost killed the man who handed me my first cup. It was the most deceiving thing I had ever wrapped my tongue around. The smell was the most amazing ever, like pizza but better. Yeah, when I tried pizza, it tasted even better than it smelled. But the coffee tasted like mud and ash.

What brought me here to this bar was that I heard alcohol can help you forget things for a while. I had a whole lot to forget. But after trying all different kinds of drinks, I felt like I was spinning and just fell asleep on the couch.

After I woke up, I started remembering everything all at once, and I felt so mad. I just wanted to get it all out of my head. Kyle told me it helps if you just write all your thoughts on paper and burn the paper. That your thoughts get burned and you forget. But I hate fire. Especially since my dad died by fire. Instead I want to tell a story. I never told a story before. So I want you to read mine. My head is still spinning but I'll try hard to let you know everything.

I rememeber I was four or five, an old lady, about 60 or 70 years old, came into the house I was living in and told me I needed to come with her. She told me my dad said it was gunna be okay. I clutched the cheese in my hand and followed her, and saw some other kids, about 10 of them. They all looked like they just came from a mine or somewhere dirty.

It was only later I realized she was taking us to a place for homeless kids. But I wasn't homeless, cuz we just left my house; well, my dad's "

"Dad's house?" Xé asked as he fumbled to see if the sedan contained any more papers to continue this story. Knowing he'd searched the entire interior of the car, he looked for the button that opened the trunk. He pressed the button repeatedly, forgetting that no electronics would work after the EMP bursts throughout the city of Tonnepay - his city.

Out of pure fatigue and frustration, he grabbed the misshapen tire iron and used it to kick the trunk open. He gave out a loud power cry, which made his husky, Lungstrom, bark in excitement.

In the trunk, Xé found the dead body of a man who seemed to be in 40s, bald, with a brown beard. The man had two dry red spots on his chest, what appeared to be gunshot wounds. There was a horrid stench coming from the body, and Xé immediately covered his mouth and nose. The trunk also contained a container with gasoline, plastic grocery bags, an empty glass bottle which he would decide to wash later, a pair of cracked binoculars, and a scoped hunting rifle with no ammunition.

*PRISM: Prisoner Retainment In Secluded Monuments

(Bridge photo by Ivan Kash)