Monsters

Chapter Four

"Right, I know a place nearby." She went on to say and I looked at her in question. She rolled her eyes in response. "Just follow me alright? We don't have much time." I sighed before giving in and following after her as we made our way out of the woods. We'd found ourselves in a small, abandoned neighborhood. It looked run down as if no one had been here for a long time. I was confused as to where she had been leading us. Why here?

She slowed her pace as we come up to a house near the end of the long stretch of houses in the neighborhood. We stopped on the sidewalk just before the trail leading to the porch and I analyzed her face and the sift in her body language. "I had no plans of traveling anywhere because I never travel far from..." She trailed off, pausing for a moment. "...my home. I just couldn't bring myself to leave it. So I've only ever stayed here." I saw the heartbroken expression on her face for only a moment before her guard went back up.

She turned to me with a cold expression. "I hope that answers your question." She zipped her hoodie back up as a cold breeze drifted passed us, a result of the sun slowly setting behind a distant mountain. "Let's get inside where it's safe." She mumbled as she walked forward and up the path. I felt my heart clench as I swallow hard before doing the same.

As we reached the door she lifted the welcome mat, picked up a key, and put it into the lock before turning. "It's dark so watch your step. And please don't touch anything." The way she asked it made me want to do everything I could out of respect for being a guest in her home.

"Should I take my shoes off?" I asked, the manners my parents instilled in me getting the best of me. Yet, saying something like that seemed to have caught her off guard in a good way and she let out a short chuckle.

"It's the end of the world and you're worried about tracking mud on the floor?" She placed the key in a cup, not out of necessity, but out of habit. I watched as her further movements were done out of routine and comfort rather than intention. She started to trail her hands along the wall as she found the staircase and began to ascend with me following her shortly after. Reaching the top of the stairs she turned right and opened a door at the end of the hall. I went in after her and gently shut the door.

My eyes adjusted further to the darkness as I looked around and examined the room I had assumed to have been hers. There were some band posters and a bookshelf filled to the brim with books. It was like stepping back in time to before everything became the mess that it is now. Her room looked as if it was unchanged, hadn't been touched, since the world ended. I looked to her desk to see what looked like school homework half-finished as well as class textbooks stacked in a pile beside it. There was also a photo of a younger version of the girl before me with what I assumed were her parents.

Out of respect for her privacy, I looked away from it as my eyes were drawn to the ceiling where there were glow-in-the-dark stars hung. Most of them had faded as barely any of them exuded any real light. If I closed my eyes for a moment, just one quick moment, I could pretend nothing had changed. I could pretend that this girl is a new friend I had met at school and I was here to hang out with her as we did homework normal kids hated but I secretly loved. I could imagine that I was fourteen again and that the most difficult thing going on in my life was achieving the best grades to make my parents proud of me. That my annoying siblings had pulled another prank on me to get under my skin and that I couldn't wait for them to go off to college so they'd stop bothering me.

Life wasn't like that anymore, simple, and it was never going to be the same regardless of what I wanted or wished or hoped for. I'd give anything to go back; to see my family, to see my friends, or to just simply be back in a time before all of this. But I couldn't go back to then. All I had left was to move forward, just keep moving, and finally reunite with my family. It is all I had ever wanted since Edric and I set off together and since we lost track of each other. I still have hope that he is alive and out there searching for me and everyone else just as I have been.

I snapped out of my thoughts as the world around me fell back into place. I watched the girl before me as she placed her bag next to the bed before she sat on the edge of it deflating. Her elbows laid on her knees as she held her face in her hands and her shoulders fell. I stepped up next to her, placing her bat by her bag before falling to sit beside her looking down at my hands. "I'm sorry I got upset with you," I spoke softly in the silence between us.

"It's okay." She replied much the same. We then stayed like that in our heads for some time. "You should get some sleep. You haven't slept properly in days. I'll keep watch, okay?" As she said this I realized how tired I was.

"Fine, but you better wake me up so that you can have some sleep as well." She didn't respond as I shifted back on the bed to lay down. As soon as my head hit the pillow I felt myself drift off and knowing that I wasn't alone my body allowed itself to relax fully. The last thing I remember in my sleep-induced haze is a blanket being laid over me as I drifted off.