It was still dark outside when I woke, and the temptation to roll over and go back to sleep was overwhelming. The truth was that I didn’t have any pressing reason to get out of bed. Each day has been the same as the last, for God knows how long. However, something made me feel restless today. Groaning, I rolled out of bed and pulled on my pants.

Dawn was going to break soon, and whenever it did, it illuminated the sorry state of this house. It was something I have been desperately trying and failing to ignore. I got dressed and dragged myself down the stairs, careful to avoid the stacks of magazines permanently situated on the steps. Nothing in this house was in order anymore.

Where there once was order, there was chaos. Dilapidated homes lined the streets of my formerly idyllic suburban neighborhood. This house and that street out front had been home to many of my firsts, like the first time I rode a bike. I had hit a snag and fallen. My mother had scooped me up and kissed my scrapped knee. Those were better times.

My house was now the only one still mostly intact. It sat dead center on Main Street, and it was the last place left where I still felt safe. Under normal conditions, it would have been nothing to brag about; it was simple and modest. The humble two-story house had white walls, a brown-colored roof, and a formerly green front lawn.

The house now leaned to the side and sagged at parts where the holes in the roof had let water in. I had never patched them, and when it rained, it poured. The front door had been knocked off its hinges a long time ago as well. I could have tried to replace it, but that door had served me well, so I had simply propped it back up over the entryway.

Out front, the streets were now covered in craters and littered with items hastily left behind in the scramble for cover; many of those were singed and deteriorating themselves as well. There was one particularly strange reminder that children used to play here. It was a handlebar from a purple kids’ bike hammered into the middle of the road. I think it used to belong to a little girl from down the street, the one that was trouble. Every street had a kid like that.

The handlebar had faded to a dull purple, and its colorful streamers had become tattered with time. Still, they continued to blow in the wind. When the light hit it, it cast long, thin shadows on the ground. The shadows moved with the sun, and I used it like a sundial. It was my only way to keep track of time.

All of this was a gift from the war, the war that I knew nothing about and played no part in either. Life was cruel like that sometimes. The people who paid the most were the ones least likely to benefit from it. There were rumors of involuntary conscription. Maybe if I had been a bit older, I might have been drafted, but I was only seventeen at the time, so it wouldn’t have affected me.

Instead, I was left to my studies, where everyone around me scrambled to prepare for the worst, my mother included. It was all anyone could talk about for months. Every time someone opened their mouth, words like bunker, food stores, and shelter would pour out. I remember getting rather sick of hearing about it.

It only got worse when the air strikes were announced. I remember how they were boldly emblazoned on every newspaper headline. News anchors would avidly share the newest and most alarming details on television broadcasts. Everyone was frozen stiff with terror, and you could have cut the air with a knife.

It was suffocating, and all of it felt like someone else’s problem. I didn’t even know what the war was for or what would happen if we won. However, I did know what would happen if we lost – disaster. That was something anyone could understand, and it was what everyone was afraid of.

I think I might have been afraid of it too, but I’m not sure anymore. It was a long time ago. Everyone around me had been busy shoring up supplies and sheltering for cover in their basements. They were running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Meanwhile, I was distracted. It seemed unreal and far away, and I had more pressing problems to worry about, or so I thought.

I’m not sure what I was doing when the bombs finally fell. Maybe it was just that time had corroded my memories, but I wish I knew sometimes. I think I was in my bedroom, but it could have also been any other room of the house. The only thing I was sure of was that I had been at home while my neighborhood was being blown to bits. If there was anything I had ever been good at, it was blocking out the rest of the world.

The world had gone to hell, and I was just… fine. I was fine. My mother had saved up quite an impressive hoard of food in the period leading up to the air strikes, and there had been boxes upon boxes of meal replacement bars, canned goods, and water in the basement. Of course, I had run out of clean water years ago and now had to rely on the rain barrels instead, but it was a small price to pay for survival.

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The sun had risen while I was lost in thought. Over on the far side of the house, sunlight was now faintly streaming in through the gaps in the boards over the windows. They cast stripes of light on the floor. The floorboards creaked as I walked over to peer through the slates. It was a part of my daily routine; it was the most essential part of how I started every day.

Maybe I was just keeping busy. Maybe I was trying to alleviate my fears. I didn’t really know. For a while, there were monsters, and for all I knew, there might still have been. There used to be banging. There used to be screaming, scratching, and wailing. Most of the time, it came from outside, but sometimes I swear I could hear it coming from that one room upstairs that I didn’t dare enter anymore.

I had attempted to seal the windows and the door to that single room to dampen the noise. To my surprise, one day it all just went away. Suddenly, the house had fallen silent, and even my breath seemed unnaturally loud. The monsters, or whatever they were, seemed like they had come and gone in the blink of an eye. I should have been relieved, but instead, I felt uneasy. There was something eerie about the silence, like it wasn’t meant to be there.

Part of it nagged at me; I felt like I was forgetting something. Birds sang from that stubborn tree behind my house, the one that refused to die, and it pulled me back to reality. My eyes coasted over the front lawn. It had certainly seen better days as well. Wherever the grass wasn’t dead, it was yellowed and nearly two feet tall. However, the lawnmower had been broken for ages, and despite my best efforts, it still sat pathetically nonfunctional in a pile of endless unfinished projects.

My mother had loved her projects as well, and they were all consuming to her. No matter how many she cleared away, there were always more. It felt like the more she worked with them, the more they grew. I rubbed my temple with my thumb and index finger. That was enough of that; thinking about all of this was making my head hurt.

Instead, I redirected my thoughts to making myself a cup of coffee. Wedging myself between piles of her treasures, I worked my way to the back, where the kitchen sat. On my way, my foot caught on the corner of a cardboard box. It tumbled unceremoniously to the ground.

I would have just left it there, but a hint of a worn red cover caught my eye. A pile of albums peaked through the open flaps. I pulled it out and shook off the dust. Large, colorful foam letters were glued to the front. The familiar lettering read, “Victor Lewis’s Great Big Art Book!” and I scoffed; it was one of my old art books from back when I was still a kid. Of course, my mother had saved it. She saved everything.

I had never been very gifted in the arts; the book was filled with an assortment of crudely drawn dragons. The messy crayon drawings were barely discernible, and they sported a smiley face whether they were turned to the front or the side. Let it be known that whatever I lacked in ability, I made up for in enthusiasm. Even I had been an excitable boy once.

I let the book fall from my hands. It clattered noisily and kicked up a cloud of dust. That was enough of that too. This day was proving to be filled with more memories and unnecessary things than I cared for. Gratefully, I arrived in the kitchen. The coffee machine sat on the counter. It didn’t quite work right anymore, and I’d had to get creative to keep brewing my daily morning mug, not that it really mattered.

The only coffee I could brew was both bitter and bland. Sometimes I wondered if I was punishing myself by continuing to drink it, but there was a bit of comfort in following a routine. I plopped down in my regular spot at the table and sipped coffee from my steaming mug. This was also something I used to enjoy. A newspaper still sat on the other side of the table, in front of the seat my mother always used.

All the canned foods and box mixes had run out ages ago. Now, I had to force down horribly monotonous meal replacement bars across from the two other seats at the table, the ones that always sat empty. If I could, I would have stopped eating entirely. Every bite was a chore, and I cursed the way my stomach growled when I ignored the pang of hunger.

Around noon, I watered the plants; they were my mother’s. Maybe some of her sentimentality had rubbed off on me too. After all, the only reason I still bothered with them was for her. Watering them was a ritual I performed for her sake. Considering how often it rained, I didn’t need to bother at all, but it felt wrong not to, so I always did.

It was one of the great many things I always did. One does what one must, or so they say. There was the way I read the same book after lunch every day – the one I had memorized by heart. There was the way I would tinker away with odds and ends and unfinished projects, hoping that this time it would be different and the completed product would actually work. There was the way I made the same stupid joke every day, like the next time it might make me laugh.

It was about my mother, who had simply disappeared at some point and never came back. Internally, just like clockwork, at least once a day I’d repeat it to myself like a mantra: “If she ever comes back, I’ll have to let her know how I feel about her taking such a long time to get the milk. I haven’t had a proper bowl of cereal in ages!” Then I’d thank God that at least I still have a sense of humor.

At night, I went to sleep in my bed, and I thought that I heard the faint sound of banging come from that one room across the way. It was the only room I had barred entry to. It was the only room I still feared for reasons even I didn’t know. It was the only room that seemed to call my name like it was desperate.

I almost crept my way over to it and peaked inside, but instead, I ended the night the same way I did every time. I pulled the sheets up to my neck and stared at the ceiling fan that no longer worked. I reminded myself that I was happy. It’s true, I tell myself the same lie every night. I tell myself that I am happy and that everything is fine, but when I go to sleep at night, my dreams tell me the truth—I'm afraid.