7/12/08 - AK-47

I sincerely apologize for not posting in over two weeks.  Really.  I just haven’t been in blog mode lately.  I’m sure it must seem like I’ve left teh Interwebs, but I’ve done no such thing.  Actually, it might seem like that again.  When I wake up today, I and my mom are leaving on our vacation, out towards central PA to a place that few people have heard of called Zook & Lyter’s.  I love it there.  My Dad and brother aren’t going; too hot & not enough time/too boring, respectively.

I’ll be there for a week, and there’s no Internet.  If we head to the McDonald’s one day for lunch then I’ll be sure to bring my laptop there and correspond.  This week will be very good for me.  I want to do stuff during it, like write.  In fact, determined to have something to post somewhere before I leave, I wrote this.

Oh, and what genre would you say this is?

The boy walked carefully around broken toys and piles of boxes as he made his way to the back of the basement. There, four large open crates were pushed against the wall, off to one side, the contents spilling over the tops onto the floor. The boy looked up at them through the airborne dust and flyaway cobwebs. He hadn’t needed to make a trip to the basement in months. He usually tried his best to avoid it. There was always darkness in the basement, dark corners where things could hide, shadows that made moving quickly amongst the rubble difficult.

The junk that had been stored in the basement was in complete dismay, busted into pieces and ripped to bits, spread about on the floor and tables and shelves. A depressing carnage of destroyed stuffed animals littered one particular area next to the boy. The head of a teddy bear stared up at him. It filled the boy with an intense surge of fear, and he suddenly became newly aware of the eerie stillness all around him. Dust covered everything and floated into the air like a fog. There was no ventilation in the basement, and the dust had become concentrated there like nothing the boy had ever known. It frequently made him cough and choke. He was determined not to when he first went down, but his efforts were in vain, and now he was sure that he possessed no stealth.

He continued on through the harsh cloud of dust and piles of debris to the crates in the corner. There spilling out of the large wooden boxes was an innumerable supply of magazines made for a Kalashnikov assault rifle. The boy looked down at the colossal store of ammunition only for a moment, quickly kneeling down and placing the three empty backpacks he had been carrying beside him on the carpet of dirt. He unzipped one of them and removed his own AK-47, one that had been of great use to the boy so far, and one that was currently stuck in its semi-automatic setting. He set it down thoughtfully next to him and poured the magazines into the bags, stuffing each one as full as he could, until he could barely zip them closed.

He then took up his firearm again and popped out the old magazine, which fell to the floor with a clack. The boy stopped and stared at the empty case. It had held his last cartridge. He remembered the horror that had come with losing his last defense, when he was forced to run instead of shoot. The horror he had felt began trickling through his body once more, but he shook it out. He grabbed the empty magazine, stood, turned, and hurled it far away into the basement. It whipped through the dust and disappeared out of sight, but made no sound afterward. The boy listened for when it would hit the floor, but the silence of the room remained intact. This made the boy feel uneasy.

The boy shivered. He turned back around to the vast hoard of magazines and picked one up off the dusty floor. It was absolutely the last one he could bring. He loaded it into the gun, then held the weapon at the ready for a few moments. He felt replenished, as if he had just restored an entire stock of food, and a lush bounty awaited him.

He kept the gun in his hand as he tried to pick up all three of the backpacks at once, an attempt that failed miserably. The backpacks weighed far more than he could lift. It was all he could do to drag them along towards the stairs on the opposite wall, no longer stepping carefully over the broken objects but rather walking headlong through them, inching the bags on behind him with his left hand, his right hand occupied by the Kalashnikov. The clamor he made was stifled in the dirty air, the silence imposing itself upon him still, except for the boy’s occasional loud choking.

Suddenly there was a noise. It came from around the staircase, on the opposite side of the room. The boy let go of the backpacks, and positioned his left hand in front of his right on the gun. He looked, but he couldn’t see through the air. The staircase itself was barely visible. Fear twinged in the boy. He shivered. A box fell off of a table to his left, causing a disturbing crash. The boy wheeled the gun around in that direction. Adrenaline coursed through his body. The pile of rubble on the floor burst and a shock of surprise ran through the boy, but he didn’t move. He had never had a direct encounter before. His finger wavered on the gun’s trigger. Slowly, up from the center of the scattered pile rose an inky black figure. It had no distinguishable features and it made no sound as it positioned itself atop the boxes, balanced as though it had no physical weight.

The boy didn’t waste any time. He lined up the sights and fired a shot at the creature. It fell back and dissipated into the air. He could hear more crashes by the stairs. There more of the shadowy, silhouetted monsters waited, and again the boy wasted no time. He pivoted ninety degrees back to face the stairs and took down two more. As the adrenaline raced through his veins and affected his body, he knew he had to use it. Stuck in that house, it was hellish trying to survive. Day in and day out, lurking though the house, living under fear of the encroaching evil presence. He had made his choice to survive in that house.

He took out another creature with a shot, wasting no bullets so far. Fiercely he whipped around to the backpacks and hoisted all three onto his shoulders with his left arm, sure to maintain use of the weapon with his right.

His choice was made to survive. He had to protect himself.

The boy began to walk toward the stairs, not even thinking about the objects in his path. More creatures rose up to block his progression.

This was what it felt like to fight instead of flee. The boy felt invincible, traipsing through the basement with enemies all around him. He felt strong, lifting the heavy backpacks, skilled picking off his foes with single shots. He kept on advancing, when the bags shifted on his shoulders, and one fell onto his right arm. With a groan, he heaved the bag back and took another shot at the creatures. Instead of hitting, the shot missed, and the creature lunged out at the boy. He dropped the bags and held the gun with both hands, taking the creature out, but provoking the others now, too. They all came out at him, ten of them, or more. He dove and rolled behind a table and rose behind a stack of boxes. But the creatures defied evasion, and one of them tore violently at his arm.

The boy screamed in pain. Blood gushed out just below his left shoulder. Thirsty for revenge the boy aimed the gun at the nearby thing and blew it away, unloading the rest of the rounds into its body, which evaporated mid-spray.

The boy stopped, and gazed at his gun. It had come unstuck, and the lever had been moved down to the “automatic” position. It had happened when he dived. The gun had caught the arm of a broken action figure, a soldier. The action figure had been destroyed by the roll, but the gun had merely been reset.

The boy smirked and ejected the magazine, then reached for another before realizing that the bag was some fifteen feet in front of him, behind a wall of darkness. A wall of darkness that was steadily approaching him.

In a panic, the boy fled, sprinting at the door. Fear once again flooded through him. When he reached the foot of the stairs, he gaped up in horror. The door at the top, which the boy had left ajar, was instead not even any longer a door. The passage was covered with jet blackness, and the boy didn’t bet that it was a good idea to go near it. With no ventilation, no other ways out of the basement, the boy turned and peered at the wall of shadows, which had shifted direction and was now approaching him at his new location. His option of flight was cut off. He had to try and take the evil darkness, the pitch-black, shapeless, weightless forms, which never died, but only disappeared like ghosts. These things that could be overcome, but that never went away.