A Thousand Endings

We didn’t talk after that, we just kept on walking, kept our heads up, our eyes open, and our breathing quiet, hoping that we’re not alone in this war torn world.I held my breath as we approached the speck that was now a city laid out before us, empty and haunting.As I stepped onto a layer of ash, I noticed that the air felt heavier inside the city boundaries, you could tell that something bad had happened here.My mouth gaped open as I gawked around at the high rising buildings all around me.All these structures looked as if they would collapse at any moment, and they were so tall that you couldn’t see pass them.The silence was so strong it was almost a noise, it felt like the eerie quiet was blaring at me from all directions, I didn’t feel safe here.After a while the ash of burnt buildings decreased until it stopped completely.
Finley and I walked among the wreckage, old rotted pieces of wood and dry wall from fallen buildings crunched under our weight. I tripped every once and a while from the uneven ground, and occasionally had to climb over a large piece of stone or wood.I was sweating bullets from the now hot sun and all the work of climbing by the time we had traveled a couple blocks.This was a large city, it went on and on, I felt too uncomfortable going inside the buildings so we just scanned the area as we went.
I began to mindlessly hum something I had remembered from the prewar times, my head bouncing from side to side sort of dancing to the tune.My humming suddenly stops and a scream begins as a small rock slips out from under me and I find myself in a deep hole.It’s small in width but jagged pieces of stone point out above the hole making it hard to see Fin.
“Hayden!” Fin yells while reaching out for me, like that would do anything.
I calm my breathing and will my muscles to move so I could sit up and try to get out of this fucking hole, I think I broke a rib on my way down.My left eye stings and the vision blurs, I shakily lift my arm to inspect the cause, I lightly touch above my eye and am greeted with an intense pain.
“Damn”, I mutter under my breath, I must have smashed my face against some stone in the tumble.
“Hayden!? Are you alright?!”
I ignore him and slowly sit up, I breathe out a pained gasp and force myself to stand.I have completely lost my left vision due to all the blood, leaning against the side of the hole for support I peer up at Fin estimating my best way to get out of here.
“Just… stay calm! I’ll get you out!” Fin yells.
I sigh at his stupid display of concern and ignore him again still angry from yesterday.As I begin to climb I bite my lip to stop myself from yelling out in pain,and slowly make my way to the top, a piece of stone I was using as a handhold drops out from where it was sitting.Only holding on with one arm I clench my jaw and push through the fog of pain.I hang on desperately to the top of the hole and pause, my upper body is in no way capable of pulling myself up, I can’t even do one pull up let alone a pull up with a broken rib.
I feel hands roughly wrap around both my arms, Fin.He pulls me up and out of the hole, I catch a glance at his worried eyes before I close mine.Laying on my back I breathe deep, thankful for getting out, but not thankful enough to forgive him.He fusses over all the blood, making a bigger deal about it than it really is, he leans down quickly and hugs me tight.
“Ouch!Don’t touch me!” I yell out while hitting him away.
He yanks his hands back looking hurt, then concern fills his brown eyes again, my heart flutters a bit, but I have no clue what that means. I’m still angry with him so I decide it means nothing… for now.
Fin leans down and looks into my eyes, his face serious.I turn away, refusing to meet his stare.
“Hayden?... What is it?” He’s not really as concerned now, it seems more like cold curiosity.
“I broke a rib”, I say flatly while getting up with a grunt.
“But…” he begins but stops when he sees I’m not sticking around for an answer as I stomp away like I didn’t just fall in a fucking manhole and break a rib.
We stumble along in silence again, though we go a bit slower considering my injuries.I’m trailing a little ways behind Fin when I hear it.I stop, snapping my head in the direction of the… thing that I heard, I’m not quite sure what it was.Fin stops too when he doesn’t hear the scuffling of my shoes against the ruble, he turns around confused.Just when I’m about to start walking dismissing it for wind, I hear it again. Fin hears it too, it… it sounds like a…. cry.A child’s cry.
There it is again, it sounds mournful, alone.An image of my brother slowly closing the door to our cellar flashes in my head, I suddenly run in the direction of the cry, I carelessly sprint, but trip in the ruble.I lift my head as another cry sounds out, I quickly get up and adjust my path a little and start running again, this time more carefully.For some reason I want to protect the owner of the cry, I want to make the owner feel safe, I know what it’s like to feel alone and left behind, I don’t want someone to go through that, not when I can stop it.
As I run the cries get louder, good, that means I’m going in the right direction.I come to a dead end building, there’s a fallen hotel sign with a crack down the middle, and the letters are faded.I peer up at the tall, crumbling building, it’s like twenty stories.I look through the large crack in the fallen hotel sign, only large enough for me to recognize two glass double doors sitting behind it, out of my reach.
Fin has caught up to me by now, he’s just standing there looking as if he was a zombie drained of all emotion and energy.I push against the sign, laying all my weight on the rusty piece of metal.It doesn’t budge.Grunting I push even harder, still nothing, I kick the sign out of frustration.The crying seems to have died out, I wonder if they know I’m here.I back away, my hands clenched into tight fists, crouching a bit I get ready to bulldoze into the sign.I take a deep breath and run into it with all my might, it shifts a little.
“Help, me” I grunt out to Fin still pushing against the sign
I keep my eyes on the ground but the sign begins to move with Fins help, soon it has moved enough for me to fit through behind it and get to the double doors. I release the sign and dash between the space we created, spreading my hands out on the cold glass of the doors I push, locked.I quickly grab a small brick-sized piece of stone and smash it into the glass, shattering the old material I knock out enough for me hop through.
Once inside the hotel I look around, Fin joins me silently. It’s musty and dark in here, gives me the creeps, yesh.
“You go that way”, Fin says pointing to the right hallway, and pointing the left hallway says, “And I’ll go this way”.
I nod, though he can’t see me, and briskly walk off down the right hall, I think this is where the crying was coming from. I searched through all of the first two floor’s rooms, when I got to the third floor a couple rooms down I heard whimpering.
“Hello? Is anyone here?” My question was met with silence.
“I just heard you crying and wanted to… help” I heard something rustle.
“I’m not going to hurt you… I-I’m a friend, I promise” I said the last part softly.
I was just about to speak again when a small head peeked out from behind a closet door.Large green eyes sitting in a round face framed with black hair peered up at me with genuine curiosity, her face was splotched with red and her cheeks glistened from newly fallen tears.Her shoulders shook as little sniffles erupted from her tiny body, she couldn’t be more than four.
“Heyyyy…” I quietly said while crouching close to the ground and reaching my hand out to her, almost like you would to a stray dog.
“What’s wrong?”
She turned away, hiding her face behind her hands, I stayed where I was so as not to frighten her again, after about fifteen seconds she couldn’t resist peeking up at me between her little fingers. I smiled welcomingly, hoping she’ll see I’m just trying to help her. I wonder if there’s anyone else here.
When she doesn’t move I sigh and fully sit down, I look around inspecting my surroundings for the first time.A large breeze is blown into the room from a large hole in the wall, it looks as if someone had shot a bazooka gun at the hotel.All around the room are strewn about papers, I look more closely and realize they’re drawings, rough child drawings.One is of three stick figures, a middle sized figure was wearing a pink triangle shaped dress, and then two identical small figures, wearing green dresses. I’m guessing one of the small drawings is of her, I glance back at the little girl, she’s wearing a loose, dark green dress riddled with holes that leaves one of her shoulders bare it’s so big on her.The skirt of the dress is ripped up, it almost looks like someone shredded it and removed some pieces, god she’s so skinny, that can’t be healthy.I need to help this girl.
Remembering my pack I pull it off my shoulders and dig through it until I find the almost empty milk jug of water, my throat burns just looking at it but instead of drinking it I smile at the little girl and offer it to her.I can tell she wants the water by the way her eyes got big and how she licked her lips, but she stubbornly stayed still. Sighing again I look away at the drawings, this time I’m looking at just the twin little girls, their eyes were drawn extra big and they sat holding each other.Black crayon surrounded the scared figures, so I’m guessing they were hiding in a dark room.
I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and felt a small hand wrap around my ankle, I looked over and saw the little girl sitting half into my lap and using her other hand to reach out to the water.I did a gasping/smiling thing with my face and handed her the water, she gulped it down quickly, drips running down her chin.When she was done she smacked her lips and handed me the empty jug, she looked up at me and smiled wide making her nose crinkle, she had to be the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. In fact, her face was oddly beautiful for a child, it was almost uncomfortable.
She climbed the rest of the way onto my lap and patted my knee.
“What’s your name?” I asked softly.
She acted as if I hadn’t spoken, strange.
‘I’m Hayden, but you can call me Dennie”, I said but she remained silent.
I looked to the drawings again, this one only had one twin, she was laying down with her eyes closed, a man armed with a large knife stood over her, it was very disturbing for a little kid to draw something like this.
“Is this you?” I asked taken aback while pointing to the little girl in the drawing.
She shook her head no, and pointed to another drawing.It was another one of the twins except one was sitting on her knees on the ground, on one side of her was her other twin with closed eyes, and on the other side was the middle sized figure wearing a pink dress with closed eyes as well, blue tears were sprinkling out of the first twin’s eyes, and she was holding both of their limp hands.
“Chrysanthemum”, came a weak, and high voice pulling me out of my thoughts.
I looked at her confused.
“My n-name is Chrysanthemum”, she explained with a nervous stutter.
“Oh… Chrysanthemum?Are… you here alone?”
She looked down, a couple tears fell, I wrapped my arms around her frail body and pulled her close, squeezing her tight.I felt like she needed this, we, needed this, we’ve both had too much time spent alone.
Chrysanthemum hugged me back just as tight, we spent a few minutes like that as she cried, this poor girl has been by herself for I don’t know how long.She pulls away so I let my arms drop.I looked at more drawings of things like sunrises and crumbling buildings for about fifteen more minutes before I remembered Fin.
“We better get going” Chrysanthemum looked confused “Oh yeah I forgot, I have a friend with me, he should be waiting for us down stairs”.
Her eyes sparked with excitement, I got up to leave and started walking, I checked behind me to make sure she’s following, as we walked I felt a hand work its way into mine, looking down I saw Chrysanthemum was skipping slightly beside me while holding my hand, it felt like the most natural thing.
Once on the first floor I saw Fin waiting in the lobby, Chrysanthemum looked up at me and smiled. As we neared, Fin turned around, he looked surprised but I could sense a little uncaring in his attitude, he just wasn’t acting like himself anymore, serves him right.
“Who’s this?” Fin asked in a high voice like he was talking to a baby as he crouched down to her level.
“I’m Chrysanthemum”
“Hello Chrysanthemum, I’m Finley.So, have you been here by yourself?”
Chrysanthemum nodded, and Fin looked sullen.I crouched down as well, she turned to me so I held both her hands.
“Chrysanthemum, can you tell us what happened to your family?”
She was quiet in thought, then spoke.
“When everyone started to leave, my Mommy and Daddy said they had to go take a vacation, they said while they were gone that my sissy Charlotte would take care of me and my twin Lily… they… they never came back for us.We always heard loud booms and things falling, Charlotte said we had to stay inside, that we couldn’t go out and play, I didn’t know why. I wanted to go outside and play so bad, Charlotte never played with us any more, she always stayed in Mommy and Daddy’s room, she said she was doing her homework.One day it was so warm me and Lily had to go outside to play.Everything looked really funny, we ran into a scary man and went back”.
Chrysanthemum paused, then started again.
“We knew we were bad girls so we told Charlotte what we did and who we saw, she got really worried but we didn’t know why, she said we weren’t safe here and had to move but nothing more. We were still hearing loud noises so we hid in the basement. One day she got us up really early and said we were leaving, we couldn’t take anything but food and water, but I sneaked paper and crayons along, me and Lily liked to draw.When we left everything looked broken, all the buildings and sidewalks, all the trees and houses too, we didn’t see anyone, I think they all went on vacation, like Mommy and Daddy, I wonder why they didn’t take us with them, we went to this old hotel, it’s so scary in here, I hate it, the loud noises got worse, someone set the city on fire, a lot of things burned, this city is so big and the fire went out before it could reach the whole second half, one day Charlotte said we needed more food, that she was going out to find some, I don’t know what happened but she came back really scared, she said something about how she thought she lost him and that it was safe to come back, I think the “him” was the man that broke into our hotel,Charlotte tried so bad to hide us, that she didn’t have time to hide herself, the man hurt her, Lily screamed and ran out to help Charlotte, the man hurt Lily too.I was… too scared to help them, I couldn’t help them, the man left, I left the room and came to the one Dennie found me in, I brought our food with me, we didn’t have a lot of food though, I ran out of food yesterday, the man came a week ago, I’m really hungry, and I’m glad you found me Dennie”.
I was shocked, I kind of just sat there like a potato as Fin gave Chrysanthemum the rest of our water and food.The only thing I could think about was my dream, or nightmare I should say, of the little nine year old girl that died gruesomely by the hands of secessionists.I felt paralyzed, I know Fin can tell that I’m thinking about the dream,
“Chrys..anthe..mum?” I slowly and quietly asked.
“Yea?” She answered with a mouth full of dried out crackers.
“How old was your sister Charlotte?”
“Nine”.

Notes

Hello Lovelies!
Sorry I didn't update sooner, it's so foreign to me to force myself down and write, I hope your not disappointed though.
Don't let the frost freeze your spirit.
-May