Coined Terms

[TW: War]

Real life in a besieged city has never sounded like a fun idea for me. Life in a besieged city within a video game, however, was something I could sit down and enjoy for hours on end. This isn't a video game, though. But it is real, and much like the character in the video game, I'm all alone. My father was killed by a missile while out scavenging for food last year, and my mom.. well, she passed away when I was four years old, way before America collapsed after entering its second civil war. I'm 15 now, and as much as I want to end my life to escape this nightmare, I must keep going. It's what Mom and Dad would've wanted for me.

I tossed the last of the fire wood into the bonfire, got the fire going, and then slowly eased myself onto the dirty, rotten, and broken couch staring at the bonfire to sleep for the night. A few moments of shut-eye later, I hear a few startling knocks on the front door, each one louder than the previous. Without a second to spare, I rushed for the rusted iron fire pit poker and slowly approach the door with the poker aimed at it while the knocks rapidly continue.

"Who are you," I shouted at the top of my lungs, aiming the fire pit poker at the door like a lance.

"Elijah! it's me, Indy," The voice shouts back. "let me in!" I quickly drop the fire pit poker and gallop towards the door to open it. after removing what felt like a million wooden planks, the door finally creaks open, but the force Indy used to run through cause the door to collapse off of its hinges. "Oh god," Indy starts, panting intensely. "Hopefully, those people don't find use here."

"I thought," I uttered before Indy cut me off. 

"Oh, I know. I thought you were dead, too. How have you been? It's only been a year," Indy says.

I fell back on the wall behind me, sliding down into a comfortable criss cross position. Indy kneels in front of me.

"You know, I would be mad at you for ghosting me if we weren't living out our childhood in the middle of a war," Indy announces to me. "I'm sorry," I say. "Way too much has happened throughout the last year for me to even think.

"You don't think it's been the same on my end?" Indy stand back up and begins to pace around the shelled apartment living room.

"I entire friends circle just disappeared on me, I just wanted to skip my math class. Then bombs go off, bullets start flying, and I was already being told to hide in the girls' bathroom by a random janitor I watched get his brains blown out of existence by God knows what was used by some tall kid an hour before!"

As Indy goes on and her voice continues to quaver, I launch up from my sitting position to hug her, wrapping my arms around her shoulders tightly. Despite her still crying, she manages to calm down surprisingly quickly. Indy looks up at me, sniffling.

"Do you have any food?" She asks.

"No. I do not. I have to scavenge for it tonight."

Indy and I make our way toward the upstairs area, where a bunch of doors are blocked off by giant piles of rubble and old belongings that were left behind by people who likely couldn't pack them in time. While I pink a random pile to dismantle, Indy decides to climb one, hoping to make it inside the blocked room that way.

"Hey, be careful," I hollered. "I am the absolute best as being careful!" Indy hollers back. "I'm still alive, am I not?" 

"You got a point," I muttered under my breath.

After half an hour according to my pocket watch, the pile I tirelessly swiped away at has finally disappeared, revealing the entrance into a small, seemingly untouched bedroom. I figured I could snoop around to see what I can find, knowing well that there wouldn't be food in this neat but dusty room. I take a few careful steps inside before noticing a metal looking circle on the window sill, shining ever so bright under the sun light. Upon a closer glance, the circle turned out to be a half dollar. 

"What do we have here?" Indy suddenly chirps, scaring me nearly to death. As I pick the coin up, Indy peeks over from my right hip, eyes widening in joy. Before the war, she made up a game called Coined Terms, which was a game that, weirdly enough, started with a single round of rock, paper, scissors. The way the game worked was that the RPS winner decided the alternatives that lie within both heads and tails, and regardless of what side it landed on, we had to do it, even if it lead to a journey across the city several hours after curfew. I didn't realize it until the war happened, but the game taught me a surprising amount on how to navigate through town. I only remember that game now because there's no other known reason her face would be stretching out so much from smiling.

"Let's play Coined Terms!" Indy whisper yells into my right ear. 

"I knew you'd ask!"

"Please, please, please, please play Coined Terms with me!"

After Indy repeats "please" a thousand more times, I finally break.

"Alright! Jesus," I yell. 

"yes!" Indy triumphantly sings, snatching the half dollar out of my thumb and index finger. "You already know the rules, raise your hands!"

Indy and I immediately get into the rock paper scissors part of the game.

"Rock.. paper.. scissors.." We both mutter in unison, raising our left fists for the final slam.

"Shoot!"

We both slam our hands down. I chose paper. Indy, on the other hand. "Scissors always cuts paper, any day of the year," states Indy. I never had the luck in this friendship of ours.

Indy places the coin on the nail of her thumb, her index finger pinning it down.

"Alright," Indy starts, smirking. "If it lands on heads, you get to pick where we go in the search for food, and if it lands on tails, I get to pick."

Indy sends the coin spinning in the air, high enough that it hits the ceiling before landing on the floor in between her and I. As we both got a closer look, the coin reveals itself on the heads side of the coin.

"I don't wanna play anymore," Indy says in a fake mopey voice with a forced frown before immediately laughing as I playfully punch her left shoulder on my way out of the room to prepare my backpack for the night ahead. "You should get some sleep. Since I get to choose, we're going to Tal-Mart at midnight."

Indy didn't seem to hate that choice since she used to love going to the store whenever she got the chance. "Okay. Can I take that couch in front of that fire?" Indy asks as I walk away with both my thumbs up in the air.

The time is midnight. As the fire in the pit fades into complete, chilly darkness, I approach Indy to shake her shoulder in a successful attempt to wake her up.

"Coined Terms?" Indy asks, half asleep.

"Coined Terms. Come on." 

Just before I leave the apartment entrance, Indy follows behind, stretching and yawning the entire way. I begin to sift through my backpack to find the few pocket knives I've been collecting off corpses since the war started, as well as my handgun, also looted off of a corpse.

"Alright, if it lands on heads, you get the gun while I keep the knives," I tell Indy. "And if it's tails, I keep the gun, but you get the knives," I declare just before tossing the coin into the air, letting it land on my left hand before slapping it down on the back of my right hand. Once I got a look at the coin, I was immediately disappointed. The look I gave the coin prompted Indy to slide the gun out of the backpack. "Don't worry, Eli. I can see the safety's on. I trained for this." Indy and I begin to trek the vacant streets of our city for a solid hour, en route to Tal-Mart, having to hide inside a few cars to avoid being spotted by any military and bandits along the way. After a smooth walking journey, we eventually reach the supermarket to begin our search for food. Indy unexpectedly runs in through the shatter sliding doors, forcing me to run in after her. "Hey, wait," I yell as she continues to run towards the food area of the store. She eventually stops in the empty chips aisle to catch her breath, allowing me to catch up to her.

"You idiot," I snapped. "You could've been killed by literally anyone in here, running like that!"

"Well I'm sorry, I just wanted to get in. Besides, I can smell meat and some other smells"

"Stay close, we will find whatever you smell"

We both slowly walk through the aisles. No luck on any food in sight, but the smell just won't go away no matter how far we go into the store. It's like a mixture of chips, cold meat, and frozen boxes.

"There!" Indy whispers, pointing at the row of lit up fridges in the far back.

"This better be good," I hoped, jogging alongside Indy towards the lights.

Before we could get near the last aisle, the voice of a mumbling man can be heard, as well as a bunch of boxes and bags. One of the worst things I learned during the war was that if I absolutely needed to, I have to selfishly kill in order to get by, and right now, it looks like there's no other way to get the food from the unknown man but to fight him for it. I have been starving for nearly two weeks, if I want to live, I have to do this.

"What do we do? He's got all the food in that basket," Indy says. 

Indy's face gradually fades into a feared look when I take the gun from her. "We have to kill him," I said. "What?" Indy quietly exclaimed. "You want to eat, right? Create a distraction on that side of the aisle," I demand, pointing at the other side of the aisle with my right hand on Indy's shoulder. Indy reluctantly nods and quietly gallops out of sight with the coin in her hand while I creep out behind the man, my gun aimed at his head. Indy bangs a metal shelf, getting the man's attention, and without a second to spare, I pull the trigger. "What?" I panicked at the realization that not only did the gun jam, but the clicking sound it made was loud enough to get the man's attention.

"Seriously?" The man loudly asks, pushing his basket off to the side and yanking his old, antique revolver out of his bomber jacket. 

"Trying to murder me in cold blood just because you're hungry? Well look around you, everyone else is starving equally, and I have a badly wounded son to feed, we're all screwed up by this senseless fighting," the man voices, gun still aimed at me. Indy books it into the back room behind the fridges, grabbing the man's attention long enough for me to rush in and push him. The man was knocked back, but it was not enough to do anything. He bashes my right cranium with his revolver, leaving me stumbling backwards to where I was when I was being held at gunpoint.

"I'm sick of this crap!" the man yells, pulling the trigger on me. Just before the bullet could hit me, I felt an object land in my shirt's left chest pocket before the bullet hit me in the exact same spot, knocking me on the ground and causing me to lose my grip on the gun. The man tries to shoot once more, but realizes he's out of bullets. Upon realizing this, Indy dashes past the man, dropping and sliding on her knees towards the gun before turning the safety off and opening fire on the man, killing him and destroying some of the food packages in the basket. As I try to get up, I begin to feel chest pains, but no gunshot wound. I checked my pocket to see what the other thing I felt was, only to find a coin with a bullet smashed into the tails side.

"Are you okay, Eli?" Indy exclaims, lifting me up from the ground.

"Forget that, how did you get the coin in my pocket?"

"I just tossed it out. What did it land on?"

When I pulled the coin out, it shocked Indy to see that the man's revolver bullet hit the coin almost perfectly in the center.

"What side didn't get hit by the bullet?" Indy asks.

"Heads," I said. Since there where no alternatives tied to this particular coin flip, Indy made one up.

"If I win this last match of rock paper scissors, I get to pick what part of the food is mine, but if you win," Indy reveals, getting her hands up for the final match. 

"I don't get to pick."

"Can we please do that when we get back to the hideout?" I ask politely, holding the area of my chest that hurts.

"Absolutely," Indy says, smiling at me.