The Trio - Cal

Clinging onto the ledge and hanging for dear life, I manage to snatch a piece of bread off the display and swing myself back up the ledge using my legs. 

I then climb up the rusty ladder.

A piece fell off. The people below me stir.

Panicking, I scramble up the creaky ladder, cutting myself in the process. It’s a very deep cut, practically ripping my entire palm open.

I bite back the urge to scream a curse word and finally make it to the top of the roof. That’s when I hear them.

Ducking under a platform, I hold my breath as they get nearer.

I say ‘they’ because I honestly have no clue what their names are. They look like giant insects, except you replace the wings with sawblades and the pincers with chainsaws. And the chainsaws are on fire. And both of the blades are poisoned. And the things can fly. Did I mention they’re ten times larger than a human? 

One climbs over the platform I’m on. I hear it’s jumbled up voice speaking to it’s other…friends? Companions? 

Don’t speak, don't breathe, don't make a sound.

It begins to crawl off, then stops, screeching so loud I lose the ability to hear for a few minutes. My left ear recovers first, but I touch my left ear and when I draw it back, under the dim sunlight mostly obscured by the thing, there’s blood.

Fighting the urge to just expose myself and be done with life, I draw my hand back to the damaged ear.

Keep cupping it, I’ll be over soon.

I try not to cry out, as the hand I ripped open climbing up the ladder’s blood started dripping onto my lap. It hurts more than when I got shot, and that’s something.

At least my ear feels better than it did when that horrible thing burst it

I should be used to this by now, I think to myself.

I gently hold the bread over my head so it doesn’t get soaked with my blood. People don’t like eating half-moldy bread with blood on it. I figured that out pretty early in my escapades.

The thing bangs it’s head on something again. Below, I hear some random stranger yelling profanities at it.

You stupid pitiful bastard. Must be new around here. Well, you won’t be here anymore.

The building- and my hiding place- shutters as an insect-bot thing leaps off it, attacking the person. He doesn’t even manage to scream.

New record for how fast they can kill something.

The bot roars in triumph and jumps back onto the battered building for the second time. I held my breath as the force of it almost knocked me out.

I see blood on it’s jaws. So, so much blood. I’m too busy trying to close my eyes, I don't notice something falling on my lap.

Interesting.

I pocket it and wait for everything to be over and try not to vomit.

I fail at that task, sadly. Luckily I was mostly silent, and it was mostly water. I’m already skins and bones anyway.

It’s half past one when I finally get to move again.

~~~

“Oh. You’re back.”

I roll my eyes.

“Thank you for giving me such a nice welcome.”

He punches my shoulder.

“Where were you? It took three hours for some berries and…what, a damn piece of bread?”

“Shut it, you spent all night on two apples.”

He clears his throat to snap back at me, but someone stops him.

“Now now, no need to get annoyed with each other.”

The girl beams at me. I swear she likes me, but I don’t like her. Go figure.

“Shove off.” The boy orders her. She shoves him instead, and he flips her off. I tsk-tsk-tsk at that and give him a little kick. 

They’re related, but you wouldn’t know when you first saw them. The girl has dirty blonde hair that she tried to dye herself- emphasis on tried. She wears a tattered dress, which she made herself out of the meager supplies we have. It’s a rather bold dark mauve color. Lord knows where she scavenged the wool from. On her hair is a flower pin, a lilac. From what I know, her mom gave it to her before their house was blown up. Her brother, older than her by ten minutes, has navy colored hair with a white streak running through it. He wears all black and covers almost every inch of his body with something. Fingerless gloves, a barely functioning watch, a black long-sleeved shirt, long black pants that were torn on the bottom, socks that his sister knitted for him(they were brown but he threw coal all over them so that they looked black- if you didn’t look so close) and boots with heels. He didn’t care that they had heels, and neither did I, to be honest.

I call them Sister and Brother, Sis and Bee for short. They call me Cal, which is short for Companion. I know, very imaginative, but we don’t have names in this world. No one does. Which is why we need to improvise.

After changing my vomit-stained clothes into a ‘fresh’ new pair(which was really just secondhand jeans from Bee and an oversized t-shirt, hence the sarcastic ‘fReSh’), I start bandaging my hand, winching a little as I go over a sensitive spot. I see Sis preparing to help me fix my ear, and I distract her before it’s too late.

“Sis, can you get the tea before it boils over again?”

“Ohh, of course!”

She smiles and walks off, but not before blowing a kiss at me. I shiver, but thankfully she doesn’t notice.

Bee does, though.

“If what she does pisses you off then tell her to stop!”

“I’m not you, Bee, I can’t just say ‘Stop it!’”

He sighs.

“You can. You can say it. I’ve seen you say that to her before.”

“That was different.”

Another sigh. Then silence.

“Pass me the black nail polish.”

Bee is the total opposite of his name. When you think of ‘Bee’ you think of a cheerful and upbeat fellow, but my mate Bee is a sarcastic and glass half empty type of guy. Meanwhile, his sister, who we helpfully called Sis, is way too happy, always optimistic, and glass all the way full person.

Sis walks back with the teacups. She hands me mine first.

“Here, because you were so brave and cool today! I even sugared it.” She smiled at me, showing off her perfect teeth. I resist the urge to kick her under the table.

“Yeah…thanks.” I say. Bee shoots me a look. I make a zipping motion with my finger, and he rolls his eyes and roughly snatches his cup of tea from Sis’s hands, spilling some on her and himself in the process.

I sip from my cup, ignoring the fact that I don’t even like sugar as the two twins start another row. Opening a small leather book, I leaf through the pages, stopping at the bug bots I wrote down myself.

As I read through it one more time, I gingerly touch my right ear.

Damnnit, still no sound.

Bee wordlessly sits down next to me and keeps painting his nails. Sis comes to sit down too, and we all quietly drink our tea and do our own stuff.

Above us, something explodes. I hear a bug bot-I figure that’s their name, in this nameless world- tearing something apart.

Up there, we risk our lives, taking turns stealing food from the rich idiots that live safe in their houses, while the poor have to hide and many get killed every day.

But our bunker is safe, too.

For now, anyway.

Then there’s something scuttling down the ladder, and before the three of us can do anything a girl with light green hair jumps from the ladder to greet us.