She opens her eyes and sees him still crying, wondering if nothing it is nothing but a reflection of what she feels. She wonders if the voice she heard through the radio was real. Or just another figment of her imagination.
It was one of those days that makes her grasp on hope, but experience had made her fear on what might come after.
He finally opens his eyes and looks at her, cheeks red and eyes a bit puffy. Her existence is one of the things keeping him sane at the moment, for to be honest, not grasping even a bit of memory feels scary. He feels his hand shake once again, worse this time and as much as he wants to hold back, he tries rummaging once more for even a bit of alcohol left. At some point, he ends up sitting on the abandoned couch, closes his eyes once again and asks her.
"Can I rest here for a while? Just an hour or two will do."
She doesn't answer but she takes a book from the shelf attached to the wall, a horror novel it seems to be, and she almost laughed at the absurdity of the scenario. The world out there is scarier than the story she has at hand. No matter the quiet and calm that currently has taken over, death is imminent. Just not in a hurry. But it could easily take them when it needs to.
Right at their feet, the land waits for their return.
After a few pages she hears a subtle snore from the other, and she returns to reading.
Perhaps she could stay here for the night, though it's not the usual place she chooses. Staying is hard, but just for one night she'll break her routine.
Maybe it could slap some sanity back into her, the thought filled her mind.
And as her eyes grew weary from reading without stop, she tries to rest, but the images that fills her head every time she tries to sleep makes her want to stay awake.
In an empty room, a single bed I the middle that is drilled onto the floor, with white tiles covering both the floor and the walls, the ceiling gray and in ruins. But there's no way to reach that high to pull the boards and run away. Only a single metal door that's locked is the only way out, and no windows are present to give an idea on what's outside.
In the middle of that empty room sits a young girl, perhaps about seven or eight, but her health has deteriorated that it made her look smaller than what you'd expect to observe on someone at that age. She is dressed in nothing but a thin and tattered patient gown, ankle cuffed by a metal chain attached to one of the bed's legs. She stares on the wall and doesn't say a word. Not to anyone who might be listening. Not to the camera at the room's corner that covers the view of the whole room.
She kept her thoughts inside and kept on burying until she could shove it down and cover it with anything that would not make it resurface again. She still smiles though, but it looked odder as it doesn't reach her eyes at all. It's as if she's practicing how it should be done rather than feeling it normally.
And as she opens her eyes once more, she's back in the room where she had decided to stay, book still at hand and the other still snoring on the couch.
A few minutes, she decides, to sit at the porch and just look wherever her eyes allow her to.
Seems like it'll be a long night.
--
One step. Two steps. Pause.
One step. Two steps. Pause.
Again.
And again.
And again.
As if his mind is stuck in a loop. He has been doing it since he has woken up and by this time the sun is about to set and shadows are slowly eating up the city. His feet are bare and blood has been marking his trail, yet he doesn't stop. His nakedness doesn't make him shiver either. Soon, he reaches a seawall that looks partially destroyed but enough to stop waves from going over. The sea is calm today but he doesn't stop to watch it, instead, he walks straight into the path that extends to a point a bit past from the wall.
He walks. And walks. Until the edge not blocked by anything at all.
And as he doesn't stop he falls into the sea, his body flailing but not out of the need to breathe but what seems to be the need to go on. He doesn't change motion to swim instead, and slowly he sinks.
His companion who was following behind stops in his tracks and simply looks but doesn't run over to save him.
He could not be saved after all.
Not because he is not capable to do so, but because even if he manages to pull him back to shore, he could never pull him back into who he was before.
"May you find your peace, Allen."
He then falls into his knees, hands on his face while the stream of tears broke out like a river overcoming a dam.
"I will follow you soon. Wait. Just wait."
Looking at his swollen legs, he pushes his self to follow the path he took, stumbling in the process. With knees scraped and the pain that jolts up his spine every time he forces himself to stand up but as he kept on losing his balance, decides to just lie down on the road and catch his breath for a while.
He considers his self the weaker one, yet he's the one still alive. Pathetically alive, as how he describes himself. But alive.
"…Allen, if there is an afterlife, or a next life, I just wish that whatever happened in this lifetime and the things you did, you won't remember a thing. You shouldn't think about this at all… what the hell am I even saying, I don't even have a religion. Are you listening out there somewhere or you're just gone? Who told you to go first like that?!"
And he laughs while looking at the sky, with sparse clouds scattered on its canvas as if reflecting him, empty and vulnerable.
Then he notices someone else's presence, though not until the stranger's shadow blocks the sun's glare.
"How does it feel to be alive?"
He doesn't answer back, though he wipes down his tears and squints to see whoever it was that was trying to talk to him.
It felt odd, with the tone that seems like an old friend casually talking to him, yet all his senses were telling him to just stay silent and not move a single muscle, and he avoids the stare as much as he can.
"Why are you not answering? You're alive, are you not?"
"…why are you asking…that…"
"You still have the energy to respond, that's good enough."
For a moment, the stranger steps away, stares into the sea, walks ahead for a bit, before returning to where he was lying, stepping on the same trail where blood has stained the road.
"You're coming with me, aren't you?"
His sight gets clearer by then and the first thing he sees was the stranger's smile, though upside down with the figure now leaning over his head once again.
"Shall we go?"