"Alike"

It's usually the loved ones that we lose fastest. The ones that take so much time to build your trust up are the ones that betray us. I hate it.

I hate the smell of flowers.

My mother always used to bring flowers home when it was summer. She absolutely adored flowers, the look of them, the smell of them, the fresh feel of them.

Our cat, Kosmos however really liked destroying them. He used to hop onto the table, pulling petal by petal out from the flower in the vase, and always got scolded by my mother because of it.

"Put it down. It could be poisonous." Felix said, and I gently put down the flower I plucked up.

The scavenging group, that made the 5 of us, me, Felix, Daniele, Anna and Gilliard. We were scavenging around the city nearby the place all of us stayed at.

Felix and Daniele were really good hunters. They were good with using weapons like knives, and bows.

Anna and Gilliard were good at finding things. They had a good eye when it came to finding a thing that we wanted.

And me?

I was good at..

Running away like a fool.

I walked behind them. I kept silent, mostly.

“Come on, we’ll have some rest here.” Felix said, stopping in his tracks, sitting down by the ruin.

Hours passed by. We rested, it got really dark. The coldness that always hit after the heat felt so refreshing yet so shitty.

I rested my head by the cold concrete wall, I hummed a melody carving a small design into the wooden handle of my pocket knife.

Felix walked over to me, leaning by the wall next to me.

“What are you up to?” He glanced down at my hands, I was busy with carving a design into the wooden part of the knife.

“Carving a small design. Here. Want to have a look?” I looked up, and he gave me a small nod. I handed him a knife, and he leaned himself to the wall, brushing his finger on the design.

He stared at the handle for a couple of minutes and handed it back to me.

“I wonder how will you put this skill to use.” He walked off.

I scoffed. He was a rude grumpy asshole, sometimes. But I didn’t care much. As long as he wasn’t going to hurt me or cause harm to me in any way, I was good with him being an absolute asshole.

I mean, of course, sucked a little because he would be rude towards me, but I didn’t mind.

I looked down at the knife again and leaned by the wall. Gilliard approached me, tapping me on the shoulder.

“Uh.. Daniele said to give it to you. It’s dinner.” He spoke quietly as if he felt shy or uneasy around me or speaking to me.

I looked up. My eyes locked with his, and I gave him a side-smile.

“Tell her I said thank you,” I said, and he looked at me for a split second, giving the two of us awkward silence, and nodded, walking away.

Friday 15th, June 2029

And it felt as if my whole heart sunk into my chest. I messed up that badly that I didn’t know what to do anymore. I didn’t know if I should regret even making that choice or not.

“Hey. You did good, don’t blame yourself for it.” Annette patted me on my back, and I breathed out. I was stressed, she was rubbing her palm on my back, trying to calm me down.

“I mean 86% is good, right? We needed at least 68% to pass, you did more than good. So why so worried?” Hayes smiled, washing the dirt off his hands, he held a shovel and leaned by it once he finished.

We were seated in his grandfather’s garden, he was helping with planting the roses his grandmother longed to get since long ago.

“I guess,” I muttered. We all grew older. Aaron went to study in the university in the city next to ours, and just the three of us, Hayes along with me and Annette stayed. The others studied abroad or in other cities. I mean, there wasn’t much that we could choose from. Annette wanted to study design, but she couldn’t move.

“Well, you’ll move then? When?” Hayes asked, he wiped his sweat off of his forehead.

“I’m not sure. Next month, maybe?” I wiped my lips off, I had some leftover jam on my lips Hayes looked down at my bottom lip, and he noticed.

“You still got jam. On the left corner of your bottom lip.” He said, I looked up at him.

“Huh? Where?” I asked, I tried finding it, but didn’t find anything. He leaned in, gently wiping the jam off my lips, and I smiled.

“Ooh! Thank you, thank you.” I grabbed the glass that had lemonade in it and drank it up. I put it down.

17th of September, 2033

I sat in silence. I hummed a small melody. It was a song my mom used to listen to every time we went to the beach. My mother and the beach were like a mix of happiness and of course, wet clothes and sandy flippers and towels.

I always wanted to visit the ocean after the accident. It felt like that would be my go-to safe place, my comfort even if it was the most dangerous thing I had to do. My mother loved the ocean. And so did I. It always was a place I could find my peace at.

The world could fall and crumble to peace behind me, but I’ll always feel safe by the sandy beaches, that maybe aren’t so beautiful and bright now, just filled with shallow, toxic, and contaminated water, and remains of people still there at the bottom of the ocean floor.

It feels upsetting. It was our fault. We ruined this world. What happened to humanity? What made us lose it all? How desperate have we been?

Where did all our “We can do this” went to? What happened to us?

I still question it all to this day. How ignorant I was. No one thought something like this could’ve ever happened. That almost everyone would get wiped out like it’s nothing. Like a piece of dust that got brushed off someone’s jacket, or a broken mirror that someone tossed away.

We don’t pick up the shards that we broke. We just scatter them around and break them into smaller pieces. We’ve done it for hundreds of years. And the reality comes into the worst outcome ever. It ends up passing the suffering someone went through to someone else.

We normal people, us casual civilians didn’t deserve it. To die out like rats, or be slaughtered like we were put in a slaughterhouse. The thought of it makes me sick. Just because someone was mad, they decided to make this their future. I mean, lucky those with their luxury bunkers. But then, everyone sort of knew what was going to happen.

And I guess they weren’t lying.

The drops of rain dripped down the roof. My eyes felt heavy, but I didn’t wish to sleep yet.

Felix stood in the rain, he lifted his head up and looked up into the shallow dark sky, the rain soaking him and his clothes, he just stood there, as if he was desperate for something. But for what, I didn’t understand. I felt like Felix also wanted something.

But yet again, I bet he didn’t know himself. He looked so strong yet so weak within him. Like an ugly duckling in a swarm of swans.

Doesn’t everyone feel like the ugly duckling sometimes? Like you just don’t flow with the same tide like everyone else? How shitty must that be? Like you’ll never be on the same path as everyone else.

I agree we lost a lot of things. But then we learned so many. Always, there’s something that comes with a certain price. Knowledge comes with a price. Value in life and value in things does too.

He lowered his head and looked in my direction. I stared at him, and he lowered his gaze and shifted it on mine.

I understand you, Felix. Maybe we’re more alike than we both think.

Maybe we both understand each other without saying a single word.

The sun was rising behind us. I opened my eyes, the sunlight hit my face. Felix turned to me. He got me off of his back, and I fell, falling to the ground.

“Ow-” I hit the ground, muttering. I got up, dusting off my clothes, running to catch the others.

Carter’s POV:

I messed up this time.

And it was the only time I actually got something right.

“CARTER! GET BACK HERE!” He shouted, I stood in the locker, holding my palm over my mouth, trying to keep it silent.

(Hello! I wanted to quickly apologize for such short last chapters. I've been really busy and I didn't have much time to write them. I'm trying to keep it up as I can, and I'll try to write longer ones. - SK)