Fallout: Part III of The Journal Series

Chapter Two: How Could You?

May, 1996.

When I finally got the balls to open the front door, something was...off.

The house was completely dark but for sunlight beaming in through the open blinds, forming bright yellow and shaded stripes upon the floor and couch. It was completely silent. Chester, Chloe, and Barney didn't greet me at the door, nor did Max. It was like I'd walked into a morgue: cold, dark, and isolating. 

I wondered if Duff wasn't home. Usually he was with the horde of pets to meet me the second I strolled in, but if he was gone the TV would've been on for the dogs, or if they were in the backyard I would've heard maniacal barking. Not that day. 

For a second I thought I'd get lucky. That I might, per chance, have time to shoot up before he got home. To save my ass with a little emergency shot and then conveniently fall "sick." But I was wrong.

My sneakers barely made a squeak upon the reddish saltillo tiles, but through the deafening silence I heard a sound, a small sigh, I thought, coming from the kitchen.

And when I glanced that way I saw flickers of light. Candlelight, I realized.

My senses kicked in on overdrive, like paranoia likes to do, all my faculties sharp and aware to danger.

I saw candlelight.

I smelled food. Good food. Home-cooked food. Something spicy that I couldn't put my finger on.

I heard nothing. Well, maybe something akin to a sniffle, but for all I knew it could've been Max because he came padding around the corner from the kitchen, the same happy, rather tiny tom cat he always was, to yowl ecstatically for me to pick him up in my arms and love on him.

I stooped down and scooped him up, cradling him on his back like a baby while he purred and purred. He was always very tolerant of belly rubs, and did nothing but vibrate and slowly blink his happy, enormous green eyes, his front claws kneading the empty air above my hand.

"Hey, buddy," I forced a grin, my every nerve on edge and my hair on end. "Where's Duff, huh? Where's daddy at?"

Maximus did not answer, but instead carried on like a small, furry, pitch black lawnmower.

It was at that time I noticed a stiff movement from the corner of my eye. A shade moving in the light from the kitchen.

I promptly dropped Max, who fell to the tiles with a subdued poof. He landed nimbly on his feet and pranced away, leaving me with no other choice but to investigate.

In seconds, and several steps with the tension, stress, and pain of a man being forced to walk barefoot on searing coals, I discovered the source of the soft sounds and suspicious movement.

It was Duff.

He sat at the kitchen table, nothing around him but for an overflowing ashtray, a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, two thin pillar candles burned about a quarter of their full height, and something wrapped in foil.