It might be Tuesday today, it might not. Tuesday matters more than other days, but calendars don't matter when food is all you can think about. I look up at the Moon, and try to pick out which of it's craters my parents must have escaped to. I wonder how they're doing, and why they haven't come back. Hunger brings me back to Earth, and I spit out the smooth stone I was trying to convince myself was edible. There would be food in the ruins nearby, however dangerous they are. So my eyes leave the Moon and with my thoughts suspended I return to a familiar animal state. Walk. Hide. Hunt. Gather. It's almost comforting, the routine, except every so often I get hurt. The pain brings clarity, and clarity brings memory.

It was Tuesday when the world ended. I was little then, smaller than I am now at least. I don’t remember much except the feeling of it. Of shining steel becoming suddenly very dangerous, artificial helping hands becoming vice grips around my neck before going limp in electric death. I remember clutching my mother's necklace as it was shoved into my hands. Then fire, smoke obscuring the Moon. Rockets roaring overhead as missiles ripped tears in the sky. Faint talks of escaping to God's Kingdom. I was separated from my parents then. I don’t remember how, only that I woke up in darkness with a sudden, inexplicable feeling of being alone.

I'm in the ruins now, tucked away among the shadows of overgrown supermarket shelves, hidden like I used to hide with my parents before they left. My eyes find the Moon again through a hole in the roof. God's Kingdom. It can't be on Earth, since the metal men have taken that. The only other place I know is the Moon, so that must be where my parents are. I see faint beams of light in the distance, mechanical droning replacing the screech of cicadas. The metal men. I tuck myself deeper in the yawning darkness of the shelves, squeezing my elbows against my ribs, ignoring the ache of my belly and my dry eyes. Crunch. Crunch. The sound of their lustrous boots gets closer and closer. Rage rises in me. My betrayal. The betrayal of the world. I want to jump out of the shelves, run at them and break them as they broke me, but I can imagine exactly how that plan would pan out. So I hide. A blackened plastic wrapper lies near my face so, wincing at every sound, I open it; every crinkle a gunshot fit to shock a bomb into silence. Out pours a dry brown sand and I consume it readily, tearing up at the familiar taste of a protein bar. The threatening mechanical drone of the patrol outside becomes the hum of a working home, the malignant searchlights become the eyes of a friendly servant. The only metal man I had ever trusted.

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The world had broken before I first drew breath. Father told me all the other humans had left and were waiting for us in God's Kingdom, a place where everyone is happy and you never go hungry. My earliest memories are of running and hiding, starving and scared, but I had never been alone. I was loved in those days, and I was confident in the strength of my protectors: my mother, my father, and the metal man with blue eyes. When the Sun fell and the Moon rose, we wouldn't hide in damp pits of mud - we lived in the death of ruins and brought them alive in light and sound and love. Our servant would ward away the other metal men and we would sleep happy. Then I guess our servant got tired of being below us. Maybe he was lonely, and wanted to be a part of the other metal men. The ones who hate humans. One night he walked alone into the silence and came back with wrath and fire.

The droning of the patrol outside stops suddenly, shocking me from my reverie. I do that a lot now when I'm hungry. I dream of better times and the present slips from my clenched fist. I can't see the Moon anymore, and there is a faint hint of light from the East doorway. It reflects off of polished steel and glassy eyes. The eyes are empty, yet they stare right through me. Perhaps in shock? My mother told me they hate us because they envy our emotion, but maybe the metal men have learnt how to feel in the time it took me to grow up. Emotion doesn't stop the focused ray of heat from carving a hole in my side. The shelves collapse around me, and I see the edge of the Moon peeking from the hole in the roof. Despite the pain, I still try to find the Kingdom on that pale grey orb. I think I see my parents' faces.