“we might, Probably.” I told her. She seemed happy about this, I guess she must have found peace of mind with us. Anybody could tell she was hurting inside and had been for a very long time just by talking to her. But now she seemed happier, less worried. When we first met she was in pain, not only from the gash in her leg but also in her head. Her face was sunken down and her eyes held no laugh. But now she seemed happy. Her eyes were lively and she smiled more often. And I think it was because of us. Perhaps she was lonely. Whatever the reason was, one thing was certain: her mood had lifted while she was with us.

  “I hope you do.” She answered. She rubbed her elbow and I could instantly see she wanted to say something more but didn’t dare to. “Ayla, could I tell you something?”

  The question took me by surprise, I had taken freedom of speech for granted with her. Perhaps she hadn’t, or maybe she was afraid of what she was going to say.

  “Yes, yes of course.” I answered.

  “Before I met you I was in a very dark place mentally. I had just lost my brother and everything was going to shit all around me too fast for me to process. I was ready to give up completely in fact. That gash in my leg wasn’t a shard of glass, it had been a knife I made. I wanted to give up, to not wake up. I wanted to see my brother in the afterlife. But then you came along. You gave me hope. I know it sounds weird and dovey, but its true, I saw myself in you, I saw what I wanted to be reflected in you.” She made an attempt to continue, but she broke down in tears and sat down again. She threw her hands up in frustration. I held her hand then. “Now you probably think I’m crazy.” She said.

  “Not at all. When I saw you I also felt something. I don’t think you’re crazy. But I do think you’re trying to be something you’re not. You are stuck in your head and you keep telling yourself you’re not good enough, not worth it. But you are worth it. You’re going through a hard time, and it will be over with time. And I want to be with you until you’re over it and then further.” I knew how she felt, I could connect with her. This was something that had to be discussed more but not then, so I decided to try and lift the mood. “Wanna hear something gay?” I asked her.

  She looked at me weirdly. Completely justified by the way. I guess she either thought I wasn’t taking her seriously or that I was trying to cheer her up. “Sure.” She said.

  “I’m kinda into you.” I told her.

  She smiled. “Wanna hear something gayer?”

  I nodded.

  “I like you too.” She said.

  This was a great weight off of my chest. I found her really attractive. Her charm was like a drug to me. Every second I spent with her made me think that everything would be ok. Her blue eyes were a labyrinth I loved to explore. I squeezed her hand and rubbed it a bit.

  “I wouldn’t want to be an asshole and interrupt you two, but its time to go get wasted.” My brother surged through the doorframe. As always he appeared in the most important moment to ruin it. But I was kinda relieved by it. Mary probably didn’t reciprocate my feelings anyway, or at least not in the same way I did.

  Mary blushed and looked away from me shily, I think I too went red in the cheeks. “Yes, lets go.” Mary said. My brother left to the front door and Mary got up and held her hand out for me. I took it and she helped me up.

  We left the house and took the risk of trusting my brother with the key to the house. I say risk because when it comes to serious situations my brother is sharp as a knife, but the moment everything relaxes he turns into a careless chap. The sun was setting over the horizon, thus concluding the first day in dongle town and beginning the first night for us. The street lamps were not on and it was a small wonder they didn’t light up. It was already enough of a feat to have electricity and running water, but asking for enough to power street lamps was a wish too much. Not that they needed them, the town had no cars and no hazards for its people at night. The road had been repurposed for foot traffic and everyone came out of their homes now that the summer heat had led way to the cool of the night.

  The nightclub my brother had talked about turned out to be a strip club, but only on Thursdays and Saturdays, the rest of the days it was used as a standard nightclub. But there were still topless women, only they were part of the crowd instead of the show. They had some buff looking dude be the guard that let people through. After showing him our ID’s he let us through without issue. The inside had a main stage where everyone danced, there was a DJ booth at the front of the stage with two pairs of lights above on each side. The ambience was dark and purple with pink beams of light flashing and moving. There was a fast paced electronic beat with some hard vocals to go along playing loudly. The place was probably the best local to get smashed at, between the lights and the noise, you already became disoriented just by being there so drinks and drugs were just a bonus to feel high. The bar had about five or six of those high stools that revolve on a black rock counter top with some turquoise underglow and a handsome bartender with a esmoquin suit.

  “Ready to have fun?” Asked Donn as he shuffled his way to the bar. He had a grin on his face that was to remain unbeaten for a long time in terms of sheer creepiness.

  But now to the important stuff. I had to play these hours strategically and tactically so I could bag me the baddest bitch in town, I started out with a head start as she had interest in me already, but i still had a while to go before she was completely mine. I had to get her tipsy and happy before I could make my move. So that was the first thing to do, to get her drunk.

  “C’mon Mary, lets not let him beat us.” I smiled mischievously at her, a smile she reciprocated warmly. We quickly made our way to the bar where we found Donn losing a verbal battle against the bartender.

  “No money, no drinks. Now get lost before I get you kicked out of here!” Shouted the man in the esmoquin.

  “Dude, cant I trade you something else?” Pleaded my brother.

  The bartender seemed disgusted and offended at the same time. “Fuck no! This isn’t the paleolithic, you either have the dough or you don’t. Now get lost.” He said.

  “Cut them some slack, they saved our asses today. You three, all your drinks are on us tonight” Said a voice behind us. And out of nowhere completely unexpectedly, my brother’s saviour came to the rescue to prevent him from remaining sober. Who could it be but the staggeringly (unfeminine) strong commander Sofia Briggs. Who could have ever seen that coming? definitely not me.

  Now with the blessing from the tomboy, our livers would not remain safe.

  “Hey, good to see you guys.” Said my brother.

  Briggs’s squad was there too. Cooper and Firstimosa. I hadn’t really had time to. See their faces before clearly but i instantly found Firstimosa too old for me and cooper was just too hot for me. He could probably get any woman he wanted effortlessly with that absolutely gorgeous face of his. If my sights hadn’t been set on Mary then i would have been fighting over this guy. The squad ordered their drinks and left to find one of those sort of cubicles where the strippers would usually give private lap dances and such, but today they would only be used as private hang out spots where people would just talk about anything with their friends, which was exactly what i was going to do.

  After ordering what my brother ordered (which glowed light blue for some reason and tasted like lemons with a sweet berry of some sort. All in all it was exquisite.) i headed to one of these cubicles with Mary and my brother.

  “It was great luck Sofia’s squad pulled up now, wasn’t it?” He said in a way that made me think he wanted to put attention to the fact that she had pulled up. I wasn’t going to judge his tastes, but c’mon, she was a tank of a woman. She could crush a skull between her absolutely ripped thighs (probably my brother’s fantasy) and to be honest she wasn’t attractive at all. Her face was chiselled crudely, almost like the sculptor had forgotten about curves and smooth surfaces. Her jaw line was more pronounced than my brother’s, which was itself very clear and well defined. But to each their own. There’s probably people who beat it to slugs so a tomboy is not that weird. But where does that leave me? What is my taste then? Am i gay? (Yes, definitely yes) Was Mary gay? Was the world Gay? Nah, probably not. Would be weird wouldn’t it? To see straight people as straight people saw homosexuals in the seventies. Anyways, enough rambling, back to the story.

  Sofia was also jacked up, her arms were thick as logs and her abs could probably be used as cheese graters. My brother had never really had any real romantic experience before. Truth be told, he did have a girlfriend before, about two years ago he had met her at school and from how they talked and acted i could clearly tell that she had been the one trying to make the relationship work right from the beginning. She had made my brother happy though, but at a great cost for her. Her name was Amy, she had jet black hair and was rather pretty. In the end they had to end it after she was going as a transfer student to another country, but the breakup was quite dramatic for her. My brother did shed a tear, and i counted it. I did keep in touch with her over the phone because she was quite the nice person, and when we spoke she said that she missed my brother but that she wouldn’t go back with him.

  But this time he really seemed to have gotten the bug for this girl-thing-tomboy. I leaned in to Mary’s ear to whisper something to her.

  “Somebody is in love” I whispered to her and I pointed at my brother.

  She gave me a devilish grin. “Very much so it appears.” She was going to say something more but stopped herself.

  “Maybe we could help him?” I asked her. “You know, get them closer and that kinda stuff.” I said.

  She smiled again. “I think we should, it would be quite the spectacle, wouldn’t it?” She said devilishly.

  “Very amusing indeed” said my brother. The lack of light in the nightclub had made it so that we couldn’t see he was listening to our conversation, which unfortunately for us meant that our plan had been spoiled even before being made. “I’m not in love and I will never be, specially for a woman like her.” He tried sounding disgusted at her but he was never a good liar, and it showed.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  I then got the urge to leave this uncomfortable talk and have a little dance, given as the DJ had just put on one of my favourite songs and was mixing it perfectly. The song was the Carpenter Brut cover of Michael Sembello’s Maniac, and the DJ was also adding bits and pieces here and there to improve on the already perfect beat of the song.

  “Mary, may I have the honour of a dance?” I said as I got up and vowed at her and lent her my hand. She took it.

  “You may.” She got up and we left the small private space to go to the dancefloor. We were slightly tipsy, so our footsteps as we danced were not the best. We also bumped quite frequently against other people and trodded on their feet, which had the side effect of everyone leaving us a good space to dance, like if we were being isolated. It was fun letting go of my worries for the time then. Nothing to worry about right then, so refreshing. If the zeds didn’t kill me then the nerves would surely have ended up being my doom. Between the thought of surviving to the next day and having to think every step you took in fear of committing a single mistake every day took a toll on me that was now being relieved.

  As I continued moving, I felt the world slowly disappear around me. The music was the only thing in my mind besides Mary. Its wonderful what music can do to you. The alcohol in my blood probably helped with my trance, but not too much.

  I only had eyes for her. The way the strobe lights flashed on her hair that was flowing like the wind whenever she moved. Her worries were gone too, and for the first time i saw her having real fun, it was mesmerizing. She must have been aware of the fact that I was oogling at her as she laughed and did a retracting motion with her finger, signalling me to get closer to her.

  Now the song that was playing was fire inside, by Gemini. I’m still trying to find a song with a beat drop that hits as hard as this song’s.

  I got closer to Mary and we danced together closer. Whenever she leaned back I would lean forwards, always keeping the same distance. Our choreography was pitiful but it was ours, and that made it special to me. After a long while, we both had to catch our breaths and we went to find my brother. He wasn’t at our private little space when we searched there. We eventually found him with Sofia’s squad and her. They invited us in with them.

  “So you guys didn’t trust our radio messages?” Asked Cooper, smiling with his perfect white teeth and absolutely gorgeous lips.

  “No, not at all. We had had some encounters with other ‘societies’ and they weren’t the most enticing idea ever. The first one we found named themselves thunder clappers as they had the electrokinetic mutation. We barely made it out of there alive and I think that’s where my brother got his power. They were slavers.” I explained. The three of them were paying close attention to my words. “So of course when we heard you guys we thought that you too were slavers.”

  Cooper smiled at me yet again. He could make any woman get flustered just with that face of his. And his voice was like listening to a dream, his body was shaped by the gods. “Small wonder why. Give people no rules and they turn monsters. Not us, no sir. The first of Cody’s Kin is a society built on trust and worth. People here live just like they did before the fall. and in the capital they are making efforts to restore internet servers and sustainable power.” He said.

  But that made me think. How did a group of people manage to build so much in such a short time? It doesn’t make any sense.

  “What blows my mind is that in just two months they’ve managed so much. Its astonishing.” I exclaimed.

  Firstimosa was the one to speak now. “It wasn’t two months here, just one. It took a while for the disease to reach here. And we knew what was going on through the news and the lame attempts of the government to stop it, which were all televised. So a bunch of people in the city of White Wall took over the city hall and right before the infection reached them, began F.U.C.K. and thanks to that they managed to seal off the historic centre of the city, there were a lot of casualties but in the end they saved a lot of people, including us. Then it was just a matter of surviving with these different outposts.” He explained.

  It was quite the surprise, I hadn’t thought of the time it had taken the disease to spread as the key to their survival. It makes you wonder if there are still places in the world where they don’t have it at all. Maybe some small islands had been spared the demise that we had suffered.

  “That’s pretty cool.” Said my brother, his face was lighter than usual.

  Yeah I guess it was, but more than cool I think it was a life saver the fact that the city had survived and in turn had allowed us to find a somewhat normal society. But i didn’t say it aloud.

  I took a sip from my drink and felt the ice cubes hit my mouth as the last of the liquid went down my throat. I had finished it and I wanted another one, so I got up to go and get it. Mary saw me and also got up. We went outside the little space and headed to the bar.

  “Its weird, I felt out of place in there.” She told me. I also felt out of place with them, they were a close friend group and I felt alienated.

  “I know, me too. How about we down two more drinks quickly and leave the place?” I asked her. The loudness of the place was beginning to hurt my ears a bit. And besides I felt tired after a long day.

  She smiled and nodded. “Yeah, lets do that.”

  Obviously we couldn’t get the drinks to go because that would be theft of glassware so we had to down them quick. So now slightly drunker than before, we made (stumbled) our way back to the apartments where I could hopefully play it well with Mary and maybe get some action going.

  I succeeded in opening our door and we both went to the living room to maybe see if the tv worked. After pressing the big red button, the thing turned on and displayed static. The only way we would be able to use it was with DVD’s or other disks. However I did notice that on the table where the tv was there was a sort of lighter patch where something had been for a very long time, and by the looks of it somebody had stolen the videogame console from our apartment, which was a shame but it was to be expected. I decided to look around to see if i could find some movies but all i found were crappy romcoms or kids stuff, like learning their ABC’s or stuff like that. However there was one thing on the shelf that caught my attention. Whoever the owner of this house had been, he definitely liked old anime, the good ones. So me and Mary settled on watching Akira for the night.

  So there we were. Us two laying on the couch together, really closely together. Watching an old movie alone. It was oddly romantical.

  “Ayla, I think I know now how to repay you for helping me” said Mary.

  I didn’t want to have this conversation, not then, not ever.

  “Mary, not now. Let’s just enjoy the movie.” I said.

  “Please, I need to do it.” She stood up. “Ayla, please” she was serious about this. Her tone was pleading and hard.

  I also stood up. “Mary, you don’t need to...” I tried speaking but she silenced me with her hand.

  “Ayla, I know you told me time and time again that it’s not necessary, but I need to do this. Just please don’t say anything, especially don’t say no, please.” I think she was at the point of tears, but the lack of light didn’t let me see. She grabbed my arms, both of them, and we swayed gently together. Then she closed her eyes and stood on her toes and her mouth was inching closer and closer to mine. I closed my eyes and pressed my lips on hers. Her lips were soft. They were slightly chapped, but I didn’t care. She tasted sweet. This moment probably only lasted a couple seconds, but it felt like a blissful eternity to me. I felt like I could melt into her at that point, and I didn’t want anything other than that.

  I pressed her body to mine. I felt her warmth, she was almost too much for me.

  But it all ended when my brother came in and found us like that. He didn’t say anything, he just had a face of slight surprise. He didn’t say a word to neither of us and he went straight to bed. I don’t know whether he was just too drunk to process what he had seen or he didn’t care. Regardless of the impact and trauma it had had on my brother, the fact that he had barged in had completely ruined the moment for us. She let go of my arms and backed away from me like if she had just realised what she had done.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t I-i...” She was trying to speak but she was stuttering and couldn’t get a word through.

  I placed my finger on her lips to silence her. “Don’t apologise, I enjoyed it. And consider your debt to me repaid” i smiled at her, hoping to see her mood lift.

  “You don’t understand, I didn’t mean to do this, not like this.” She said.

  It caught me off guard, after all it had been her who started the kiss. “What do you mean by that?” I asked her.

  I waited for her to answer but she was at a loss for words.

  “Did you do it only to please me?” I asked her. She shook her head, almost crying.

  “I meant it was too short.” She said with a second wind of determination. She quickly stepped to me and forced her mouth on mine again, this time she used her tongue too, which was a bit weird at first. I never had been in a relationship before and so i had never done a proper French kiss. Sure i had kissed (and regretted it later) some cute boys, but this was a completely different thing. If you think about it, a tongue kiss is absolutely disgusting. But i never thought it would be so pleasant. It made me feel closer to her. I too began prodding in with my own. Her taste lingered on my mouth as we parted mouths. This time i could see she was satisfied.

  “Thank you” I told her. She seemed puzzled by this.

  “I’m so sorry I acted like that. I just got so nervous from it that I couldn’t think straight. I’m sorry if I made you worry.” She needed not say more for I understood perfectly what she meant. She wanted to kiss me, to love me. But she didn’t know if I too wanted to do it and she must have been treading a razor thin wire between letting her fear get to her and having the courage to do it. It was simply what was happening to me.

  “Yeah I understand. I’m so glad we both feel the same.” I told her. She smiled, and just like that our little problem was fixed.

  Her eyes were still glistening as we decided to go to bed. I didn’t dare make any further advances that night because I knew that Mary was still getting used to our sort of relationship and I didn’t want to push her too quickly.

  But I still felt good inside feeling her warmth against me. She was a treasure to me, and now she was my treasure.

  That night I had a wet dream, but I’m not going to explain further.

  In the morning I was tired because I had gone to sleep very late and woken up way too early. My brother’s biological clock and mine were still used to having a very strict sleep schedule, which is kind of a pain in the ass when you don’t need it. Mary was still sound asleep, she looked so peaceful that I couldn’t bring myself to wake her. She was sleeping on her stomach, her hand close to her face. The rays from the sun that made it through the curtains came to rest on her hair, giving it a copper shine. After oogling like a moron I got hungry and went to the kitchen. I checked the fridge and the various cupboards in search of breakfast but found only spoiled and rotting food, which somewhat alleviated my hunger as I lost all will to eat after seeing it. After throwing out almost all of the food, I got on with the task of making something with the stuff that was left. I decided to try and adapt a recipe for a mug cake by switching out the milk for water and instead of it being chocolate flavour I would just have it be really sweet, like a donut. The ingredients were as follows: flower, water, oil (if you want) and sugar. Normally there would be an egg in there but we didn’t have any and that’s about it. You then just throw whatever measurements you want into a mug and put it in the microwave for enough time. Whilst I was waiting for it to stop smoking from being overdone in the microwave, I made myself a cup of coffee, something which I hadn’t had in a very long time. The way I always liked it was with the beans having a very strong flavour, but never bitter. I only added a wisp of sugar and that gave the earthy flavour I loved.

  As I was eating, my brother decided to bless me with his presence.

  “Morning” he said with one eye open. He wanted to say something more, but he didn’t and I think I know what he wanted to say.

  “Morning. You sure stayed late at the club” I answered.

  He smiled sheepishly. “Yeah, I did.” And not a word more was spoken about it.

  He made himself breakfast, which was some biscuits he had hoarded from three days ago in the mall. It didn’t feel like the mall was so long ago. It barely felt like a day since i met Mary but the dates don’t lie.

  Then there was a knock at the door, which I decided to take.

  I found the crazy guy from yesterday, Plague was his name I think. Along with him were two guards.

  “Top of the morning lads, we are here because we really need you for something.” He said.

  “For what?” I asked.

  “Something.” He answered.

  “No shit sherlock, but could I at least know why you’re taking me away?”

  “Nope, at least not here. Too many people that could hear it and we don’t want that. Now come with us now.” He said. The guards came closer to me in an attempt to take me.

  I knew I didn’t have a choice, but I had to tell Donn and Mary I was leaving.

  “Could I at least explain to the others that I’m leaving?” I asked.

  He paused before answering.

  “Yeah, go ahead.”

  So I went back inside and told my brother I was going out. Then I went to my bedroom, kissed Mary on the forehead and told her I was leaving, though I don’t know if she heard it.