by Ryan Colley
I moved away from the funny memory and continued to look around her room. Her bed was against the far wall, the furthest possible distance from the door, covered with a humped section of bedding. Part of me hoped Alice was hiding under it and all would be okay. I knew that wasn’t the reality I was in, but I couldn’t help but wait for Alice to poke her head out and say she loved me.
I pulled the bedding away expectantly, only to be met with disappointment. A disappointment I knew was coming but was still difficult to face. So what next? I simply didn’t know what to do anymore. No sign of where anyone was or where they had gone. No sign of Alice. No sign of her family.
The undead still pounded on the door below, and I wondered how long it would be before they finally broke in. I no longer cared if they did. What was the point in carrying on at that point? I had no leads. Nowhere left to go. Alice and her family were probably one of the many bodies or undead in the Great British countryside. My family was probably dead or undead also. I was lost and alone in a dead world. My situation? It was all my fault.
“What the hell now?!” I screamed to the heavens. “Just give me a sign! Just tell me what to do!”
No response. No God or sign to tell me all would be okay. My voice felt strained. A lump had formed in my throat.
“What do I do now?” I whispered to myself, begging. Desperation welled up inside me. I could feel tears creeping into the corners of my eyes. I suddenly felt weak. Tired and exhausted. Drained and empty. I so badly wanted to sleep.
I climbed on to Alice’s bed, feeling numb, physically and emotionally. I propped myself up against the wall. I was ready to die. Life was just so … difficult, and I didn’t think death could be harder. I faced the door. If I was going to die, I wanted to see it coming at least. Feeling how I did, being dead didn’t sound so bad right about then. I pulled Alice’s blanket over me, her smell engulfing me. I imagined she was here. I could smell the coconut shampoo she always used, the light touch of her perfume. I wrapped the blanket around me, only my head exposed. I just wanted a minute with her before I finally slept.
I just stared at the wall and door opposite. Moments passed. I felt it again. That tick that something was wrong. I furrowed my brow and thought about following that feeling. But I didn’t. My expression softened. I didn’t care anymore. So I closed my eyes, thought of happier times, and listened to the rhythmic sound of the pounding on the door downstairs.
It wouldn’t be long …
CHAPTER 3
It was my and Alice’s first date. Although, it wasn’t really a date, yet it kind of was. We had been best friends for more than a year prior to our first kiss, and it was weird to go on a date. Not because it was an unfamiliar territory. Not because friends shouldn’t do that. Not even because we were mostly dating anyway. It was weird because we already knew almost everything about each other. So why have a date? We didn’t need to learn if we were compatible through awkward small talk. We already knew we were. We had spent all our time together being best friends. That’s pretty damn compatible. Yet there we were, sitting on either side of a table in a pizzeria, not sure what to say.
“Well, this is awkward,” I said. Alice laughed awkwardly at my observation. Why was this happening? Why was it so difficult? Was it an unspoken biological rule that once you began dating someone you both become idiots? It was frustrating. Here I was, soon to finish my university degree, and I couldn’t speak to a girl I’d been speaking to for over a year! Don’t fail me now brain!
But fail me my brain did. I was a very logical human, who always thought with my head and never my heart. Yet here I was letting my heart lead the way while my brain was on vacation.
We sat there, silent and just looking around the room. Then we began making small talk about the restaurant. How nice it looked and such, even though we had both been there before. Finally the pizza arrived. At least that would break the weirdness. I picked it up and began munching.
Wait! said a voice in my head. This is a date dammit! Use your goddamn knife and fork! Be a gentleman!
So I picked up my knife and fork and began to cut my pizza into smaller pieces. I was staring at my hands. Was I cutting my food right? I didn’t remember how to use a knife and fork! Did my hands always look that weird? They were so veiny. I sighed and put the cutlery down. I looked at Alice eating her pizza, oblivious to my obvious moron-ism. She was eating with her hands, so should I? I picked up the first slice of pizza and bit a piece off. I hadn’t been shunned out of the restaurant for bad manners. Alice hadn’t thrown her glass of water in my face and stormed out. It was going fine! I took another bite. Was I crunching the crust too loudly? I looked at Alice’s face. She didn’t appear to notice. This is a lot easier than I thought! I laughed aloud.
“What?” Alice asked smiling. Her eyes twinkled. She looked amazing. I relaxed.
“Nothing,” I replied, a smile continued to linger on my face. Then I thought about it. We had been friends for so long and I may as well tell her! I leaned forward and said, “Just laughing at why we are being so awkward.”
“I know, it’s so silly isn’t it!” Alice laughed. We both smiled at each other, the awkwardness gone. We continued eating, and talking about rubbish. The same rubbish we would always talk about. We finished up our food and left for the cinema.
The cinema trip was less awkward and more fun. We didn’t have to talk, which I was thankful for. I don’t remember what the film was, but I do remember that part way through the film, Alice grasped my hand and interlocked her fingers with mine. I was holding her hand! It was so simple but so nice.
I could get used to this, I thought, truly relaxed for the first time in a while. And get used to it I did get. Best friends becoming more than best friends definitely worked. We were happy together for such a long time.
CHAPTER 4
How long had I been in Alice’s room? I became aware of my surroundings again and looked up. My head was groggy, eyes tired and moist. Had I been crying? I couldn’t be sure. I looked around. Compared to when I got to the house, there was very little light pouring through the window. It was getting dark outside, and in a few more hours it would be nightfall. How much time had passed? I was pretty sure I hadn’t fallen asleep, but I don’t think I had been entirely awake either.
My body ached and clicked as I moved. My injured leg burned intensely. Had infection set in already? I looked down and there was fresh blood seeping out of the poorly wrapped wound. The wound wasn’t going to heal by itself, and I didn’t know how to deal with it. My back was tender and stiff from being pushed against the wall for so long. Nothing had changed in the room and I was still alive, which was a surprise.
I was vaguely aware that the undead had broken into the house sometime in the last few hours. I recalled hearing the door crumble as the dead finally fell through. I’d been expecting death’s cold embrace the moment the door collapsed and for what felt like hours after that. I had hoped for it, yet it didn’t come. The undead must have broken through the door and just forgot why they were trying to get in. One-track minded. They were probably still wandering around on the floor below or in a dormant-like state until they met another stimulus.
I wanted the death that I deserved, and I was impatient about it dammit! How dare I be kept waiting from what I wanted it. I wouldn’t be denied the long sleep I craved. Rage surpassed the all-encompassing sadness momentarily, and I liked it. I was going to storm downstairs and face them head-on. If I died, so be it. If I lived? I would just have to find another encounter with the undead, and another and another. I would fight until I died! Just because I wanted to die didn’t mean I would go out easily! A warrior’s death.
I stood up, blanket still around me. I was reluctant to leave it behind so soon. My leg felt weak, and I stumbled. As I did, I knocked a photo frame off the bedside cabinet and it hit the floor with a clatter and smashed. Glass flew in every direction. I was annoyed. It was a nice frame after all. Then again, it didn’t matter anymore. This d
isturbance would probably lure the undead to me, if my elephant sounding footsteps didn’t.
I dropped the blanket and bent down to pick up the frame. It was face down and I wondered what photo was in it. Was it of me? I hoped so. I really hoped it was. I turned the photo frame over. No photo. My face contorted in confusion. Had it fallen out? I looked around the floor, looking to see if there were any photos on the ground. Nothing. Like it had just vanished. In fact, I hadn’t seen a single photo in Alice’s room.
I raised my head cautiously. There was normally a photo collage on the wall opposite Alice’s bed, with pictures of her friends, her family and other pieces of her life. It was no longer there. Cogs began to turn in my head.
“Whoa, whoa,” I said as I started connecting the loose threads of the situation. Had … had the photos been taken? I didn’t think looters would’ve taken them. That wouldn’t make sense. Why would looters want a photo collage? The only people who would take photos were … Alice’s family or someone who knew the family. Had Alice’s family got out in time? Surely, if they had time to pack photos they had made it?
I moved to the collage wall. There were marks from where wall putty had been used to stick the collage up. Definitely taken down intentionally. Hope began to rise within. I didn’t want it to blossom because I found hope often lead to disappointment. There was only one way to tell, and the answer would be in the spare room. I raced there, leaping over the mess and shoving the bookshelf on the landing out of the way, not caring about the noise I was making. My leg made it difficult to manoeuvre, and I was sure I was leaving blood everywhere. I didn’t even collect my machete from Alice’s bed. I was being careless, but I suspected that most who had gone from suicidal intent to survival in the space of a few minutes would be the same.
I stood in the doorway and scanned the room. With the mess, I couldn’t find what I was looking for. I stumbled into the room and then dived into the centre of it. I began throwing stuff around, checking under things, looking inside of other things. I even moved the drawer set out and checked down the back to see if it had fallen behind. I couldn’t find it, and that filled me with relief!
They weren’t here! If they weren’t here, then the Kingsleys had gotten away! With that revelation, I grinned and couldn’t stop. I could feel the dried blood caked on my face cracking and splitting as my grin spread ear to ear. I probably looked like some psychotic clown. Not that clowns didn’t look psychotic to me anyway.
“They’re not here!” I cheered. I looked around, desperately wanting to tell someone. Anyone. Even the undead would suffice. Joy rippled through me, chasing away the cold depression that had set in. I shouted, “They got out safely!”
I was so happy I could feel myself a few seconds away from dancing a little jig. But a lifetime of social anxiety and incidences of public embarrassment couldn’t be set aside just because of something as silly as an apocalypse. I refrained from dancing and stayed as cool as someone who had probably already lost it could.
I probably seemed like a madman to anyone watching or listening. Completely crazy. Suffering from a severe case of insane-atosis. Gone off the … you get the point. And for all I knew, I may very well have lost it. I had never been the most levelheaded of people as it was. The world had fallen apart and there I was hooting and cheering. But my exclamations of joy were justified. What had put me into fits of such hysterical joy? The Bogs were missing, of course! How could it not have been so obvious before? That was what hadn’t felt right. That’s what seemed out of place and missing from the house. There were no photos. There were no soft toys. There were no personal touches which made a house a home. Most importantly, and the greatest clue of all, there were no Bogs!
CHAPTER 5
See, what you have to understand about the Bogs is that they’re essentially members of the Kingsley family. So what are they? They’re soft toy bears, but don’t you dare call them just soft toys! They’re the Bogs. Long-armed and legged teddy bears. They’ve been in the Kingsley family since Alice was young, and they’ve grown up with her. They all have a personality and their own way of thinking, voiced by all the family.
So what are they like? They like to dress up, eat chocolate, and they love to swear. In a household where swearing wasn’t allowed, the Bogs could get away with anything. It was a way for all the Kingsleys to express thoughts and feelings in a way they wouldn’t normally get away with. They wanted to express anger? The Bogs would voice it.
They were also a way for Alice to deal with fears she had as a child. There was Sparkle, the bear who chased away lightning. Thundy, the loud one who told thunder to go away. And there was Doggone, the one who protected young Alice from scary dogs. It was a unique and weird idea, but they weren’t original when it came to naming them. Knowing how much the Bogs meant to the family, the Kingsleys wouldn’t leave them behind, in the same way they wouldn’t leave another family member behind.
The Kingsleys were the sort of family who would name possessions, including their cars. I found it strange, but it was something I had to deal with because I would have to live with it forever once Alice and I lived together. I would have to love the Bogs as much as they did. It was always hard to make people understand the Bog’s significance to the Kingsleys, so I used a certain story from our relationship to explain it.
It was my first time meeting Alice’s parents. We had travelled all the way from Bristol to Essex. It was a long journey, filled with a stress-induced bickering. I was wearing a shirt, jeans and new shoes for the occasion. I’m not a shoe man or a shirt man. In fact, I was barely a clothes man if I could get away with it. But I was most comfortable in a pair of old trainers, a video game t-shirt and faded jeans.
“Do I look okay?” I asked Alice for the thousandth time. She told me that I did, for the thousandth time.
I was nervous about meeting her parents, but it wasn’t her parents I had to impress. It was the Bogs. If I was allowed to meet the Bogs and their crazy personalities, the parents would like me. If I wasn’t even introduced to the Bogs, well, I probably wouldn’t be welcomed back into their home, Alice had told me. I almost didn’t believe her at first because it sounded like the words of a crazy person. Luckily, I did meet the Bogs and won them over easily. I handed them a packet of chocolate buttons and I was their buddy. All was well. I had played their game and showed them I could be weird too.
I came to realise that even though the Bogs were mostly Alice’s, they definitely belonged to the whole family. And twenty-plus years later, the Bogs slept in Alice’s bed to keep her safe at night. Even though the Bogs were all loved equally, Thundy was Alice’s most prized possession. This was because, even as an adult, she was still afraid of thunder. Thundy wasn’t allowed to leave the house in case he got lost, but they would never leave him to fend for himself should they have to abandon the family home.
With that tale told, you can see the importance of the Bogs not being in any of the rooms. No one would take the Bogs while looting. They held no value outside of the sentimental kind. So that left one option. The Kingsleys had escaped with enough time to take the Bogs and other non-essentials with them. They’d made it out in time, and I had to find them.
CHAPTER 6
I climbed out of the spare room, through the massive amounts of debris which had once made up the Kingsley’s life, and ran straight for Alice’s room. I ran like the hounds of hell were at my heels. I didn’t have a direction, but I had a purpose again, and I would not be stopped before I’d finished my quest.
I snatched my machete off of Alice’s bed and gripped it. The fire of intent flowed through my veins and arteries, filling me up with power and life. I felt unstoppable. I almost stomped out of Alice’s room and down the stairs to fight, what I imagined to be, the hordes of undead waiting for me. But I stopped. Something peeking out from behind the door caught my eye. A little fluffy head. A head I recognised. I pulled the door away and saw Thundy hiding away, alone and terrified.
“Oh, Thundy,�
� I picked him up, dusted him off, and held him close to my chest. “How could they leave you behind?”
He didn’t reply, which was lucky because that would mean I was losing it big time. He was just a soft toy after all, but I wasn’t going to leave him behind because of what he stood for. Alice’s innocence and childhood.
Thundy was just as lost as me, and him being left behind brought tears to my eyes. Everything about this world was wrong. The dead were walking. I was alone. Alice was missing. And Thundy wasn’t with the other Bogs to take care of her. I needed to return Thundy to her. He would always keep her safe.
I decided that Thundy was coming with me on my journey. I would return him to Alice’s arms, even if it meant walking through hell to do so. I tucked Thundy through a belt loop, with his head holding him in place and his body hanging loosely through the bottom part and bouncing against my leg when I walked. I felt overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by what to do. Overwhelmed by emotion. Overwhelmed by everything. Emotions that I had locked down began to leak through the barriers I’d built up since leaving home. I wanted to see my family. I had to try and find a way to contact them.
