Adrian was swimming. He was certain of it. Unquestionably. Weightlessness disinhibited his body while coolness washed over him in waves. He drank it in, this moment that was like ecstasy, as if he was gradually dipped and merged into it. I deserve this he thought subtly, and he was pleasantly surprised by how easy the thought came.
As quickly as if it disappeared by the bomb explosions, he had forgotten what peace of mind had been like. True serenity. True contentment with no strings of stress attached. There was never a realization that the sensation was gone, nor did he go through any stages of grief at the death of his tranquility. He allowed himself to sink into it further, and it reminded him of slipping gently under warm bath water.
Suddenly his veins were replaced by circuitry, the inside of him jolted with electric cold, but this ripple passed and simmered. He calmed, not confused but content and relieved. There wasn't a trace of curiosity in him nor any signs of awareness now, and later on he could only describe the process as, "I was floating, swimming".
He missed his mom and his dad, but it was a thoughtful longing for days gone by. He often thought of them, grieved for them mostly. When he had called to warn them of the bombs, they hadn’t received him well, but had understood that the message he had tried to get across was beyond the petty family resentment they both shared for him. Still they didn’t listen, even when he made a personal appearance (one of very few in the past year). It was difficult to talk to them. After Adrian and Douglas agreed to stay out of each other’s lives, their parents passively took his brothers side. Maybe it was favoritism, Adrian wasn’t sure but he was disheartened more and more after each visit, noting disapproval and spiteful questions in their eyes. It was like spilling ink on old family photos. He didn’t know how it made Douglas feel.
Spreading like cracking glass he again convulsed with alarm. It chewed and burned before the feeling resided, an afterglow remained. But he was calm, and swimming, he knew. In a way he didn't think he could relate in words just now, Adrian also missed Douglas. Weird pangs thrummed in his heart, bearing a whirlwind of emotions that was stirred and turned by each beat. He felt the shadow of an eclipse traverse through his bones, its presence oddly emotional and not at all physical. The actual sun still remained set somewhere over the horizon. For so long had Adrian been used to the companionship that Douglas provided that he had unconsciously thought that they were extensions of one another, benefiting the other. The absence of a lifelong partner was so foreign that he, even now, still expected to see him sometimes when he woke up groggy or was lost in old daydreams.
His pulse was quickening, so he swam away without using his arms or legs. The cool breezy feeling flowing by him was soothing and he quietly slipped further under the water’s depths, feeling more than seeing the surface disappear. The shadow of the approaching alarm he felt moments ago was already a forgotten memory. Adrian laughed, joyfully. It came at first as a rough bark, an almost hacking in his throat (not unlike a choking cat). It turned into a low rumble, and transformed into something gleeful. He tried to remember where he was before this, but couldn’t. So he laughed harder, each guffaw racking his ribs with remembered labour. Now he tried to remember when he last laughed like this. It was a while ago, he had been at home. Or around home, more correctly he had been in the swamp a few miles back of his home…
With great impact, Adrian slammed face and body first into a wall he couldn’t see. Freezing cold snaked its way into his now-shaking body, spreading like color into water. His laughter stopped with nervous bursts, not as quickly as his swimming did. Slowly, Adrian groped for the wall that he had just crashed into. His raised hand fell straight to his side as he swiped gingerly ahead. There was no wall.
Swimming again. Sideways swimming… no wait. Now he was spinning, not swimming. Adrian was slowly revolving, as if his limbs were in orbit to his waist. He was frightened, the deep cold growing and thickening, emanating still from the impact area as if Adrian was lying on cold steel. His alarm was returning, his heartbeat not unlike the steadily uprising tempo of a galley drum. Wasn’t there someone nearby? Someone he just saw? He recalled nothing.
Wait. No. He remembered running. Running by, someone else running by. Like a spinning cog in reverse, the chill of electric anxiety spread backward and out of his system. Someone was running by, maybe he was at a sporting event? He couldn’t think right now. It was really hard for him to swim and think about this at the same time. Or spin. But he remembered running and feeling that overwhelming sensation, that emotional-felt-physically kick in the gut.
But as quickly as these pieces came, they flew away. Adrian imagined himself swiping for straws while swimming. Frustration festering, he floated and strained. Strained to recall anything pertaining to why the fuck he was swimming, when he needed so urgently to… what?
Something. Something that was becoming fleetingly more and more unimportant as each second glided by. The feeling of the uncertainty of an item questionably lost lingered in his bowels, the fingers of his mind frantically searching its own person for what that item may be.
He remembered when he was six years old, they took him into the hospital. Adrian’s parents took him into the hospital. For… for surgery. An apicoectomy, if he was truly remembering anything correctly right now. Tooth surgery. The endodontist had used an anesthetic called sevoflurane to put his tiny, terrified child body into anesthesia for the operation. It was standard procedure, but they would of suggested it even if it was optional. His mother and father had brought him into the hospital with difficulties. He was a snarling mess, along the car ride Douglas had filled him with terrible stories of what was in store and what could go wrong. All brotherly lies, that Adrian had bought for full price.
“They need to take out the bottom right side of your jaw, Adrian.”
“...what?” he had said, taking off his second snow boot and letting it fall carelessly on the floor of their mini-van.
“They’re taking out about six of your teeth, mom just never told you.” Douglas casually said, waiting for Adrian’s outburst.
Which inevitably came. He even still remembered the rush of fear, flowing from the cracked dam Douglas had broken. Adrian earnestly wanted to believe his brother was every inch the role model he had made him out to be. His own flesh and blood wouldn’t lie to him, surely. Thinking back on the realization he could still feel the lash and pangs of young heartbreak. But now, as he slowly swam or spun, that memory was akin to minute annoyances.
And so Adrian floated, more and more content by each passing second. Each one stretched on indefinitely, or maybe time was whizzing by faster than he could comprehend. It didn’t matter at all anymore, Adrian had not been so tranquil in nearly a year. Without prompt, he racked that section of his mind, a quick shake of his apocalyptic survival, like the sifting through the tips of a book’s pages with your thumb. Like a blip of life before your eyes, only Adrian didn’t think he was dying. No, not yet.
His heartbeat’s tempo was as steady as a metronome, each thump pulsated tightly and fiercely. It was stuck in his throat and reverberated off of his eardrums. He thought it such a profound and strong force that it should make ripples in the water. He checked foolishly. Everything was black, had been black. It had been that sincere absence of color or anything that you see when you simply close your eyes. But Adrian was swimming… he was certain of it.
Without warning his body shifted with something that felt relative to top-heaviness. It formlessly, slowly and dramatically lurched. Adrian realized, with sudden dismay, that there was no water around him and he was in fact not swimming. In the manner that it spreads, his head began to feel foggy and swamped with disorientation. He no longer felt that he was weightless, either. Instead his weight came creeping back like winter cold seizing the wings of a bird in mid-flight. He was falling. It was dark and he was falling and oh Jesus why was it so cold? Keeping a straight line of thought became impossible.
---
On the sidewalk, Adrian was drooling. His eyes, rolled up into his head, were shaking back and forth with fervor. In a semi-formed fetal position he was experiencing what he could only describe to feel like floating or... swimming. His jaw seized and released. Repeated. Breaths came in short, fast rasps that were choked out as often as they passed normally. A witness to the event might of noted he giggled hysterically once or twice, but violently convulsed and spasmed much more often. Kevin took no such notes, consumed with the effort it took to keep breathing shallow breaths that were comparably calmer than Adrian’s.
Somehow Adrian had managed to loosen off a securely fastened and impressively knotted boot, standing upright with its toes holding down a torn shred of newspaper that looked like it hadn’t traveled anywhere in a long time. The wind blew but only Adrian’s clothes ruffled in it. Amongst his own shambling puffs of air a groan was given birth to, slowly growing until even Kevin gave a shudder. He shut and shielded his eyes, pressing in on his eyelids with aimlessly placed fingertips.
The groan warbled, rolling out in waves as his chest began to heave and swell like a rough ocean tide. Feebly, he propped one knee and calf under him and then the other. His forehead rested painfully on the cement, a rough rectangular patch of skin now bleeding near the temple where it scraped during his roll. Tears rolled out, as if all they needed was the proper flow of gravity. Adrian made phlegmy, wet sobs. Spittle spattered and dripped; pained guttural noises left him like fleeing phantoms. A shooting star that absolutely no one saw blinked in and out of existence up above, and then another moments later. Adrian continued to cry.
---
Time moved on as Adrian couldn’t compare to, although he drifted through stages of consciousness and eventually found himself awkwardly nestled up to Kevin. The numbness he hadn’t known he was feeling fought to remain but passed before he woke. In total, Adrian laid prone on the sidewalk curb of that intersection for three hours and forty-five minutes, but to ask him of his opinion he would of told you it felt as if no time had elapsed at all. He didn’t dream, fits and spurts consumed him but each was weaker than the last. He was pale, more so than the sidewalk. His own blood made dry stains on the cement, caked on his forehead, but more would pour when he shifted his weight and reopened the wound. It had smeared around his eyebrows and it would be matted in his hair if he had any.
It was mere luck that nothing or no one encountered him as he endured his trial, even when considering that the non-existent jogger was never a physical threat. Though it was the dead of night there was no real curfew any longer, socially or officially. Adrian had heard people muttering as they walked passed the Croteau’s some nights. Once a woman and a man, another time two teenage boys. They continued on and didn’t return to scavenge the house, but in the moment Adrian remembered the anxiety that brewed in his belly while he crouched below the window sill.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
By a watch’s time it was three o’clock in the morning. A normal time to find himself asleep, even in this day and age. Although people seem to wander at all hours of the clock now, Adrian maintained a Monday-to-Friday work week lifestyle, utilizing the best and brightest part of everyday to learn, craft, find or obtain something of benefit. He slept a few hours after the sun went down and awoke a few hours after it arose. It was one of a few small handles to grip on to reality with that he had.
Adrian opened one eye and inhaled a shaky, dry breath. He had meant to open both, but blood had smeared and trailed its way down to congeal and then crust over the outer corner of his other. He coughed. Coughed again. Lying on the frozen cement in awkward positions for hours had left Adrian’s ribs, back, ass and calves sore and aching, which he sensed for the first time as a whole fit of coughing overwhelmed him. The other eye cracked open, loosening it’s maroon debris. Adrian wheezed his body back into his control, and by this time he had managed to get to a slouched, not-fully-formed lotus position. He felt anything but zen.
An ocean roared with stormful might in his head. Dread overwhelmed his panic, his common sense even. Adrian consciously thought about how dangerous this was, to be sitting here. To have been lying here. He sniffed. Wiped his nose. Dry blood flakes rubbed off as well. Adrian searched for the pair of gloves he had brought. God dammit he thought as lazy fingers performed unmotivational movements. The glove slipped from his grip as he jerkily pulled it from his inside coat pocket. It slapped gently against Kevin’s face.
“..woof” he meekly replied. Adrian, wide-eyed and stunned, laughed. He laughed hard. Exasperated bellows bounced around and left echos. Kevin didn’t find this exchange as funny, but Adrian was suddenly on his back, an ear-to-ear grin and making enough noise that a pair of nesting pigeons took flight from their nest and flew away. Adrian’s head felt close to splitting like a hatching egg with the force raging inside it. He tensed and his laughter became short lived, but now he knew how much this dog had grown on him, even though he had only known him for the span of a two or three block sprint and one violent exchange. Plus a four hour nap together under the stars.
Adrian made to grab for his boot, getting both gloves on first to warm up his extremities. The boot scuffed a piece of paper off of the sidewalk. He examined it closely and saw the headline of an article:
NEW REGGIE’S BOASTS “ALWAYS-STOCKED” SHELVES, OVER 35 AISLES...
The half-a-page article was just a blurb of the owner’s plan and comments, mixed with local perception and the author’s own opinion. What caught Adrian’s eye was the date that this had been posted. October 27th, 2029. A very short time before the bomb went off. His heartbeat skipped before it doubled. He needed to go. Surely this would have been looted, but it was a great lead in this city he was still unfamiliar with. Was it really so much to hope the looting that had been done was only light? He scanned the article and found the exact location of the store. It was only an hour walk!
He made to stand, but too much rust had developed in his gears as he had lain idle. His muscles seized and he grabbed for his cane. Kevin’s blood had dried on the toad baubles crest, and noticing it made his stomach flip. He had caused so much pain. This animal had known a whole life before these two third’s of a year had changed its nature, teaching it to no longer be a pet but a predator. It was a stupid decision to investigate that noise, he thought in retrospect. It did him no good.
Without thinking of it as a burden or a responsibility, he had taken this dog. Perhaps he had felt both burdened with and responsible for taking care of him in that moment. It was he who had swung and hit Kevin. Was he not responsible? It was an act of self defense, against an attacker. Is this not another burden to carry on in an already overloaded burden-wagon?
And in that moment, Adrian felt the feeling he had so rarely felt until this year. Uncertainty. It’s shadow left him dumbstruck as he stared at the dog. Kevin’s chest was still. Hope and despair flushed within him but didn’t mix, it felt awkward. What had he had been hoping for, that Kevin would take care of himself? Adrian was a strong man, and the swing he had hit Kevin with was a doozy. He wasn’t a doctor or a veterinarian, but the seriousness of the injury had never crossed his mind. Clearly, damage had been done.
Gingerly, he knelt and patted the dog’s dirty fur. He probably had fleas, too. Has fleas, he realized, as he felt the slow but steady rise of Kevin’s chest. Hope and despair flushed him again, he gulped. Adrian glanced at the moon, locating it behind a cloud, and immediately knew that hours had passed. Kevin was in a coma. Or dying out slowly, or something. Being unconscious for this long was not a good sign
He wasn’t going to do it. This animal was a token now, the representation of how dark and cruel this life can make even a peaceful man. He couldn’t wake up everyday to such a grim reminder. It wouldn’t be hard to look after him, admittedly… Adrian knew basic first-aid but to save him was out of the question. This fight was Kevin’s. The question was whether or not he would have it here or back at the Croteau’s.
As it normally would, his mind imagined the preparations necessary to accommodate a newcomer in the Croteau’s space. A comforter blanket resting in the corner, a fluffed pillow to prop the damaged head. He could find a bottle of multivitamins and crush half of one in water to moreorless spoon feed to the dog, but that was the most that he thought he could do. Was that enough? Could dogs even have vitamin tablets made for humans? He didn't know, and he would be committing himself to watching his own drawn out murder if he was wrong in either case.
Kevin yelped, or woofed or something. The sound was just another part of a current collection. Blood thrummed his ear drums with the passing seconds. Wind whistled with absolutely no melody unless gentle persistence is considered. Crickets chirped, and although Adrian hadn’t heard the noise in months, maybe even since this shit had begun, he took no notice of how beautiful he thought it was. Vaguely, he registered a noise that sounded like “pchitttt”, then a very fast rattling, but this was very far in the distance and still just another part of a symphony.. He stood up on drunken legs.
Adrian swiveled with a teetering force but maintained his balance. A clammy hand grabbed a chain link fence that stood only three feet away. He leaned on it but held his balance before jerking his head away from his body and retching. There was nothing left for him to puke, but the dry heaving lasted for a while as he suddenly felt that he was.. swimming. Strength momentarily left his muscles, but his grip left thin indents on the skin of his fingers against the cold steel to help him stay up. As he stopped gagging, he saw Kevin lying exactly where he had been this whole time. That fucking dog hadn’t moved an inch. It made him want to scream. It made him want to cry. It made him want to disappear. He didn’t want to feel like swimming anymore, he wanted this to end. His vision dimmed, a black circle grew around Kevin and then faded away just before swallowing him. Still the gentle feeling of weightlessness surrounded Adrian. The expression on his face churned from discontent to ethereal, visible signs of stress or anxiety leaving in a flush.
A crow on a low hanging and nearby branch cawed, Adrian flinched. Kevin offered no response. A wild gust of wind blew by with bad timing, overlapping and overwhelming a noise Adrian only thought he had heard. He ignored it, preoccupied with this swimming problem. This dog problem. That crow or his friend, yes… he assumed about the noise, incorrectly.
Through experimentation he discovered he could stand on his own again. He let go of his iron clad grip, the fence resumed its normal position with bouncing momentum. A cold sweat was developing across his brow. The toad bauble glared at him from the ground, so he sheathed it. His stomach still wished he had had a proper supper to throw up right now. With the back of a hand he wiped the sweat, and went to kneel by Kevin. Weak knees hit hard cement.
Not only was this dog a dark token, a grim reminder that he would be bringing home to his sanctuary.. but it had tried to kill him. It didn’t have the compassion he was showing it. It had lost that ability over the two third’s of a year it must of spent without its former owners. It certainly wouldn’t crush up vitamins for him.
What in the holy fuck am I even thinking right now? Stay sane, Adrian. Snap together. With a dazed look drawn on his face, Adrian absently grabbed his canteen and tried to unscrew the top. It was too tightly closed to open without proper grip, and suddenly his focus shifted, jaw tightened, nostrils flared slightly and he saw clearly as his thoughts started to unclog. He proceeded to open the top and poured the water over his head, draining the bottle carelessly. Water in his eyes made him blink profusely.
Kevin had managed to look even more innocent than before, somehow, and that’s when Adrian made two decisions: One was that Kevin was his responsibility, through life and death. It was a decision. This was who Adrian was, he knew. Still is. It wasn’t because of guilt and it wasn’t because of any sense of responsibility. He felt passion and caring for this animal, it was helping him feel soft surges of feelings that had long ago been repressed. He felt this with clarity and made the choice, right or wrong. The second thing that he knew was that he needed to get moving, and now. At the same time he made his first realization, that rattle and pchittt noise came again, and that lead to his second realization. That noise was a spray can. Someone is nearby with a fucking spray can.
That’s all it took. Adrian’s fire was lit. He screwed the top of his canteen back on and stashed it. With both hands he flung water off of his face. He scanned the area and decided he hadn’t dropped anything. Even with delicate movements, it took Adrian mere moments to cradle Kevin once again. He smelled like garbage and something like mold. Adrian thought he might not smell much better himself. He coughed, wiped sweat off on the shoulder of his shirt. The dog’s weight was awkward, so he shifted it. It’s nose nuzzled into his armpit. Run, you moron. Time was so precious, he knew. Pchittt. It was closer than before.
The noise was from behind him but he didn’t stop to think about how he hadn’t come across the supposed graffiti artist while bringing Kevin from Point A (the scene of the fight) to Point B. His eyes were quickly scanning in front of him, now the sides. He saw a clothesline with a sheet that had hung there for sometime, it was stained with mud and greenish-black specks that Adrian, from this distance and travel speed, couldn’t tell were dead insects. The sheet was whipping playfully in the breeze on the other side of a fence, but it blocked a good portion of his field of vision. Adrian looked over his shoulder, saw it was clear, and continued running as quick as he could while carrying a nearly one hundred pound dog.
Fortunately, luck abides, and the area between Point B and Point C (the Croteau’s) was calm and/or clear. Adrian, while sputtering out hacked coughing breaths like a bad car’s engine, soon found himself running up the steps -- those steps that seemed like the stairway to Heaven right now. He barged in, forearms aflame with the strain of a deadweight dog. It only took five quick strides to get to the couch, and he put Kevin down gently despite the impatience his arms was shouting with.
With the deed finally done, Adrian relieved what he assumed to be the biggest sigh of relief he had ever had. It was done, he was safe. They were safe. Almost. His stomach rumbled, but as he thought of food he was reminded of the raw, sour burning feeling in his throat from a couple of fresh puking sessions. He looked at Kevin and felt lost at the idea of feeding him. It was a problem his brain couldn’t comprehend, Adrian now nearing the end of his rope, exhaustion overcoming him like thick poison. It was only by habit, or maybe some sense of better judgement that he remembered there was something necessary to do before the day was done.
Adrian walked toward the front door, drunken left foot after drunken right foot. He wiped sleep out of his eye and then reached up to the key holder hung by the door, an ornament in the image of a branch colored burgundy, the key hooks were craftily designed outward branch arms. He grabbed the remote control sensor that electronically locks the door, and that was when Adrian’s last straw had been had.
Exhaustion made him too feeble to exert anger, but it bubbled beneath the surface like an inactive volcano. He wore astonishment like a strung-up sign, and disbelief like a crown. Like a wounded man, Adrian slumped to the floor.
He had forgotten the gasoline. So now he would sleep, and dream.