CHERNOBYL SAINT .Part One.
APRIL 26TH, 1986: CHERNOBYL, UKRAINE
It started out like any other day. People were taking their children to school, walking their dogs, playing in the park. Nobody knew that that morning, at around 1:23 am, something had happened that would change their lives forever.
On the 25th, the staff working in the nuclear power plant were instructed to shut down reactor four for maintenance. Not only was that to be done, but an experiment was on its way to test the reactor's emergency cooling system. Unfortunately, this experiment failed, causing the reactor to shut down, with all the control rods fully inserted, and explode. Multiple explosions began a fire, which in return sent off a massive cloud of radioactive material into the air.
Nobody as part of the Soviet Union would admit to the crisis. Soon after the explosion, the radiation lever alarms went off in Sweden, at the Forsmark Power Plant. People panicked, but nothing wrong with the plant could be found. It was soon discovered that the radiation from Chernobyl was so strong, that it had set off the alarms four countries over. At around 2:00 pm, on the 27th, evacuation began around Chernobyl, including the city of Pripyat. On May 2nd it was decided to evacuate everybody within a radius of 30 km from the Chernobyl Plant.
MAY 7TH, 1986: CHERNOBYL, UKRAINE
By this time, Chernobyl, Pripyat, and every bit of area surrounding Chernobyl within 30 km had been evacuated. This didn't include the poor animals people forgot, or the stray animals on the street, or a small, three person family, who's refusal to leave brought a great many consequences.
On the border between Pripyat and Chernobyl, a couple lived in a small house, one of the first houses to be exposed to the radiation. Within the first day after the explosion, they began to feel ill, with major headaches and the feeling of wanting to throw up. At first, it was only the woman feeling these feelings and due to her pregnancy, believed it to be only that. But after hearing about what really happened in Chernobyl, and after her husband began to get ill, they realized the situation was far worse than a stomach virus.
By the time the evacuation began, it was too risky for the woman to move to a new place. The stress could kill her, and it would surly kill the sick child she carried. They hid in their storm cellar so they would not be found when the buses stopped at their house to evacuate them. By May 7th, they were alone. They had their own city. They kept hidden in their house while workers worked through the plant doing everything they could to stop the radiation from continuing its spread.
The woman was in their room, buried deep under the blanked. The man repaired for the worst. There were no doctors left, and both of them were mortally ill. The man knew he'd be the one delivering the child, who somehow continued to kick the woman from the inside.
At around 11:30 that night, the woman began to moan. She sweat out tears over her whole body. The man, who hadn't slept a wink all night, jumped up and migrated to her side of the bed, ready to do everything to save his wife and child from a painful death. When she knew it was time, she called for her man, who at the time was in the kitchen getting her some ice. He rushed to her side, and helped her position herself to give birth.
The man helped his girl through everything. He kept her calm. He allowed her to squeeze his hand while she gave birth to her beautiful child. She stared into her newborn son's blue eyes as they sparkled in the moonlight. His fur was a think white. His tail was long and wagging the whole time. His ears were large and fuzzy. He would have been all perfect, but his radioactive mutations to his ears and fur made him all but perfect. Still, his parents loved him more than any parent has ever loved their child.
They taught him to speak Ukrainian, as well as English as it was his parents' home language. He was near deaf, but managed to repeat words to his parents quite well. His grandmother had come from Ukraine upon a trip to America for studies, she fell in love with a man who she ended up marrying. Together they had a child who was now the boy's father. When he grew up, he married a young American woman. By then, his grandmother had moved back to Ukraine with her husband. She grew very ill, thus her son and his wife went back to Ukraine together to attend to her, only to end up living there as she needed around the clock care. Evidently, the new child was born in Ukraine two months later, the worst place to be at the time.
As the boy grew older, they began teaching him out of out-of-date school books. There were no teachers, thus no schools. The boy learned everything his parents didn't know in current times the way they had when they were young. The boy learned fast however, and was able to solve multiplication problems by the time he would normally be in first grade. Unfortunately, the boy's ability to learn fast was going to put him to the test.
FEBRUARY 13TH, 1993: CHERNOBYL, UKRAINE
Living where there with no people around proved to be a challenge to the boy before he even turned seven. The radiation was poisoning his parents and slowly killing them. It had been since he was born and yet had somehow not affected him at all besides his physical appearance. By February, both his parents had been bed ridden. Their bodies were sore, and their limbs didn't work much. Their hair was falling out in clumps. They spent the day puking up everything the boy made for them. It wasn't much either. It was rare to find any sort of berry or fruit, and most the animals left were uneatable or dead. The only animal the boy and his family had any contact with was their horse, a young black stallion, who the boy took out of town to search for food. On occasion, the boy would find a small shop. A gas station or a little corner store. But the food there wasn't much beyond chips, sodas and cakes. Not much of a healthy meal, or any meal for that matter.
On February 13th, the empty city of Chernobyl got two people emptier. His parents' conditions with the radiation, plus the lack of food, had finally done them in, and the boy was left to live on his own with his horse. He had the option of leaving Chernobyl in search for some help, only to realize he couldn't do it. He couldn't leave his home, or his parents. With the help of his horse, he took his parents out to bury them, then returned inside his house with no intentions of leaving his home behind.
JANRUARY 13TH, 2010: CHERNOBYL, UKRAINE
It is now January of 2010. I am 23 and have still not left my Chernobyl home. My name is Alek. In Ukrainian, Aleksander apparently means Savior of Mankind. I have suffered everything a person could suffer in life and I will still continue to refuse to leave. This is my home.
I have endured the worst. I have many conditions in which I suffer due to major doses of radiation to my body. My ears were born mutated, and because of that I am half deaf. The right side of my face was born with a large scar-like skin disease which has run through my eye and has left me near blind in that eye as well By the time I was ten I was full grown. The speed at which I grew left me 5'9" when I was nine. I grew another half an inch or so within the year and there I remain.
I haven't a clue if I'm sterel or not. Most people who were exposed can't produce children anymore. I have high expectations that my lower half doesn't work much anymore.
One of my worst problems is the lack of ability for my fur to grow. My fur falls out at the same pace any dog's would, except it grows back at about a third of the pace normal time. I don't get a winter coat, thus winters are harsh on me.
Growing up was difficult. Once my parents were out of my life, I didn't have much to live for in an empty town. I had spent my whole life caring for them, but now there was nothing to care for. When the warm days approached, I took long trips out with my horse, Bogdan. The people next door had given him, nameless, to my parents when they moved. He remained nameless until I had begun helping my parents. He was the only one there who could help me anymore, so I called him Bogdan, a gift from God.
I took Bogdan with me on all my trips. So much was out there that I had never been able to visit when my parents were alive. The couldn't take me anywhere, much less did they want to. We couldn't be seen by anyone who may try to "save" us from home. Now that everyone was gone, nobody could take me away.
I took a lot of trips through Pripyat. I had a spot there. A spot that has now been seen by anyone in search of pictures of abandoned amusement parks. The famous "Devil's Wheel" was my 'happy place', if I really did have one. I spent hours way up in the top car, looking over my home as it soaked up its death. I had once found an old camera with some film left inside and took it to the top with me. I didn't ever think of how I'd get them developed. I also liked to take my art supplies and draw everything I saw around me. It wasn't much however, and I usually fell asleep.
I had another problem facing me as I grew older. Eventually Bogdan and I had cleaned out the whole area of land of food. I began to get so starved I started eating the grass alongside him, which didn't do much for my health. Soil soaks up radiation like it does water. Eventually, we had to take long journeys to other towns in search for food. Sometimes we took bags and bags full of grass, berries, and leaves of plants back home. By then I had also found my dad's old .22 rifle and began teaching myself how to shoot. It wasn't long before I realized I should have spent my bullets practicing on animals rather than a target. At least if I woulda managed to hit the animal I woulda had a day's worth of food. At this point, a day's worth was half a sandwich bag of grass and leaves.
A year came and went. I could start to see Bogdan's ribcage stick out enough to look like separate fingers. I didn't need dearly as much food as he did. Soon, he was too weak to go on the long trips and I had to start going alone if I wanted either of us to survive. The midst of winter was brutal. Bogdan got severely sick from the cold and lack of food that I even brought him inside the house to warm him up. I cared for him like my own child. I fed him out of a bowl, and let him drink water from an old baby bottle. But it wasn't enough.
My best friend quickly began to decompose. The radiation, although it had never done much to him before, was now eating him up inside. His body was as thin and my own, and he couldn't walk anymore. I began to fall down the same path he had, and I finally realized what he had been going through. At night he cried sounds I never thought a horse could make. I couldn't sleep. I made a decision that night as my stomach cried with him.
The next morning I woke up at 7:00. The wintery air sent a chill through me that I had never felt before. The fog hovered low over the dead grass and was cut by the sharp points of the barbed wire around the back of the house. I managed to nudge Bogdan into a crawl out the door to the back. He got there and collapsed. The five yard crawl out the door was more than he could handle. Much more than the pain I was about to feel. Strapped to my belt as the hunting knife my dad kept in the garage. The one foot blade had only been used twice and it shined my bony reflection back at me. I sighed as I looked into the eyes of my best and most dear friend. His eyes were glazed over and sunken in. He looked at me and I could hear him say he was sorry.
"???? ?????" I'm sorry too.
He closed his eyes and at that moment I plunged the knife into his barely beating heart. He didn't do much more than flinch a bit, sigh, and remain still. I pulled the knife out, wiped it on the ground next to me, and put it back in it's little carrier. I went inside to warm up.
It's a horrifying feeling to know that you are eating the one thing that cared more about you than anything in the world. There wasn't much of him to eat by the time I had made my decision to help him. I ate quietly. I tried not to think about anything, but all I could think of was of Bogdan divided up into pieces into little baggies with the days of the week written on them.
I sulked. A lot. I was alone in an abandoned town, but every time I thought of leaving, I felt sick and ended up throwing up. I even tried once, but there was an invisible chain welded around my waist, and I couldn't break it with even the strongest hammer of will power I had left. So I stayed. I had no friends. I had no family. Nobody even knew I existed. I wasn't even sure if I had the strength to survive. I thought of giving up. I spent a week just laying in my bed waiting to die. I gave that up too when my stomach started crying ridiculous noises that prevented me from the sleep I ever so terribly didn't want to ever wake up from. After half a year of trying to give up, I gave up on that. I failed at failing at life.
I went on the long walks for food as I had done before the death of Bogdan. I came back with much larger bags which I rolled back into town on a wagon. I sat up in the ferris wheel while I ate, enjoying the warmth of the sun beating down on me. When I wasn't doing that, I began taking walks through Chernobyl and Pripyat looking for anything to do that would keep me busy for longer than five minutes. If I saw someone in need, mostly just small animals which had fallen through some old piece of flooring or into some hole, I would save them. I began to collect things like old newspaper articles, abandoned dolls, old clothing... anything that seemed like there were a lot of. I started bringing a backpack to carry back the items in on days I went into the old schools.
One day I stopped by the post office. So many letters and packages that had never been opened. I began opening them. One was a birthday gift to a small child, apparently named Jon. It was a stuffed dog. He was clean, never taken out of the plastic wrap he was so carefully wrapped in. The other thing I opened, which bothered me most terribly, was a note from a man to his beloved. It wasn't in English, but it read somewhat as such:
Alyona,
I have missed you so much and wish so terribly to get back to you. You are still my darling and I hope you have not given up on me, because believe my heart and soul, I have not given up on you. I want you to know that I will be home soon, and when I am I promise, Dear Alyona, that you will be in my arms again, and I will protect you like I used to all those years ago. Please, please, don't let me go just yet, and I promise I won't let you go in return.
Your Dearest Yuri
Along with the letter was a small key with a heart shaped handle. It was so called the "key to the man's heart". I folded up the letter and shoved it back into the envelope and did my best to reseal it. It was the one letter I shoved into my bag with the rest of my things before searching all the undelivered packages for any useful items. I came back that night with nothing more than a small switch blade and a box of video tapes.
I was 16 when I fell in love for the first time, on June 4th, 2002. I had spent every day pondering for around ten minutes how I survived another day weighing around 105 pounds and having sever radiation problems. It started on an ordinary day, just like the rest of them. I had spent all morning rocking back and forth in the little ferris wheel car and watching the sun rise up over the town before falling back asleep. I was tired, and had no plans for the day besides the usual walk through town. I never expected my usual walk to be interrupted by a new situation.
I woke up to the first noise I had heard in nearly eight years that wasn't made by me or the construction workers who had building a huge wall around the power plant. It was a screaming sound that pierced my ears like nothing else. I nearly jumped from the top of the ferris wheel to the little wooden platform below and began darting through town towards the sound of the noise. It got louder as I entered into a small water tunnel that went under the street. It was a short tunnel, tall enough to walk through and short enough I could see the light through the other side. Near the opening was a girl who looked a lot the same as me despite her not having any deformities.
She yelped in pain at her foot, which was caught under a fallen, metal pole with edges like broken glass. The cuts in her legs suggested she had tried already to pull her leg out multiple times, thus the screaming. She heard me walk up to her ans shot her head around to face me. The horror in her eyes showed no sign that what she saw was any sort of beauty. She eyed the skin defect on my face. She took a long glance at my ears and the places where my fur was abnormally cut due to it falling out. It must have been the muscle in my arms that scared her the most. She passed out when the realization came to her that was here to eat her from the inside out.
I stared at her for a moment. Her clothes were muddy and went from falling into the water in the tunnel. The had torn her pants and part of her sleeve, which was a little bloody where it had shredded. Her hair was an utter mess of fiery red braids. I knelt down to her and lifted up the metal pole with ease. I carefully lifted her from her certain death and carried her, cradled in my arms, back home.
She woke up, several hours later in the dark. She looked at the fireplace, and around the room until her eyes met with my face. I stared at her from the corner of my eye as I took a damp rag to the wound on her arm. By then I had already bandaged her leg up and had, without thinking about it, changed her clothes into some of my own which had originally been my dad's. The clothes she had come in wearing were hanging over the back of the rocking chair by the fire. I had hand washed out the blood and laid them over the chair to dry.
She dug through her pocket, looking for something in particular. When she removed her had from her pocket, she was holding a little, gray electronic.
"Fuck." She said with an angry tone towards the little phone. "I killed in in the water." She looked at me, looking scared half to death, and spoke with trembling words. "Hey, do you have a phone?" She asked. "I have to call someone." I pointed to the kitchen.
She got up and picked up the phone as she began spin-dialing the numbers. She stopped half way through and glared at me, almost confused. "No dial tone?" She asked, sounding almost accusative.
"You asked if I had a phone, not if I had a working one." I said without looking at her. I almost giggled for the first time since before my parents died. She slammed the phone down and came back over to the couch. She sat down, put her knees up, and scrunched herself deep into the corner of the pillows.
"What's wrong?" I asked, still not looking up at her.
She ran her fingers through her red hair and sighed. "I'm fucked, aren't I?" She asked.
I finally looked up at her. She sure did cuss a fuck ton. "Why do you say that?"
"Because I'm trapped here now."
"You got yourself here, you just gotta go the way you came in." I enjoyed being a smart mouth. It let off a lot of steam I had been building up over the years.
"I don't know HOW I came in." She informed me.
"Why are you even here? I mean, this is the Devil's Playground. He even has his own ferris wheel." I was beginning to et curious. What WAS such a pretty girl doing out here in the middle of the most radioactive city on the planet.
"I'm studying. Kinda. I came back here to visit my grandmother's old house." She finally looked over at me as she calmed down.
"Back?" She wanted to come back? "How old are you?" I asked, wondering if she had lived the same traumatic effect I had.
"I'm almost seventeen. I was born a month before the accident here. My grandparent's got separated from us during the evacuation. I had to leave all my belongings behind because my mother only let me carry what I needed. All I got was an old doll, which I lost on the bus." She explained while desperately trying to hold back her tears. I couldn't help but to feel for her, but I didn't want it to show. I was the bad ass rebel here, not the cute little puppy who gives in to tears and sad eyes.
"Listen, would you stop whining if I helped you find your grandmother's house?" I asked her.
"Would you really do that for me?" She turned her body as though she was about to tackle me out of my seat. I was right. When I nodded she lunged at me and squeezed me so tight I thought I'd be a human replica of a toothpaste bottle with my ass as the opening. I tried not to breath in.
"We should go now!" She jumped up and began grabbing her belongings. I didn't move. "C'mon dude!" She tried to rush me. It took her until she opened the front door to realize she had slept the whole day.
"Dinner will be ready in ten." I said as I got up and walked out of the room. She returned to her spot on the couch and threw her stuff down again.
Unfortunately, my best accommodation was soup made from the gross fish in the lake by the power plant. I feared feeding her anything that was possibly filled with radiation, but I wasn't quite sure what restaurant she was planning to locate out here anyway. She ate it all however, and took to sleeping on the couch under a wool blanket and her jacket.
I sat there in the rocking chair, watching her while she slept. Part of it was trying to keep her warm which meant the fireplace was to remain burning through the night. The other part was my strong, visual magnetism to her. I didn't want to like her. When she left, I'd be all alone again. If I spent time becoming her friend, every hope I would have built on myself would have fallen. But nothing could compare to the feeling of and angel, fallen into your life after never seeing another human being for nine years. I watched her, almost stalker-like. If she would have woken up, she would have hit me.
By morning, the fire was out, and so was I. I had fallen asleep in the rocking chair and had a huge cramp in my ribcage when I woke up. The girl had removed herself from the couch and had gone missing. I stood up, making the old wood on the chair creak. The girl then popped her head around the corner of the kitchen doorway and smiled.
"Mornin'." She greeted me into the day like she hadn't a care in the world. I, on the other hand, had many things to sort out before I began my day, so I walked into the kitchen and sat down in the chair.
"What are you doing?" I asked as I rubbed my face awake with my hands and ran my fingers through my hair.
"I'm heating the leftover fish from last night. You don't have much else."
"I haven't left here since I was born." I informed her. Her face dropped a bit when she had realized all the horrible things that could have happened to me over time.
"Why didn't you evacuate?" She demeaned to know.
"I wasn't born yet. My mother was sick, she couldn't move or both of us would have died. She we hid ourselves."
"Where are your parents now?" She asked.
"Are you gonna burn the fish?" I asked, trying to divert her attention back to breakfast.
She turned back quickly and noticed the fish starting to burn. I almost wanted to laugh when she went scrambling to find a spatula to flip it over with. At the same time i felt utterly annoyed. I pointed to the little drawer by the old, gas stove. She grabbed the spatula and flipped the fish before it caught flame.
"So, um, how did you get here, I mean to Chernobyl." I asked, trying to keep her mind away from my family.
"Well, I have been saving up to come here for a few years now. I finally got enough to take a plane out here myself and go on a tour of the place. I figured they could get me as far as the amusement park and then I could find my grandma's house from there." She explained. "My sister used to tell me about how she and her friends would sneak out of the house and go to the smusement park through the pipes to avoid being seen. I thought maybe it would help me remember instead of going all the way around. Plus, nobody would see me sneak away if I went that way."
I shook my head. Her stupidity was befuddling. Because of her own actions she was wounded and lost in the pit of death.
"Listen, if you can take me to her house, I'll leave as soon as I get what I need." She stated.
"As soon as we finish eating, were going. You can't stay out here this long."
We ate the fish quickly. She was determined to finish every last bit in a matter of seconds. I finished and went off to shower. I couldn't let her shower. Every bit of water flooding out the pipes was dripping with radiation. I trusted her to not steal anything, as if there was anything useful to steal. She just sat in the kitchen, gazing around my house while she took very, in-depth notes. I grabbed a new pair of pants from my dad's old wardrobe and walked them, with a pair of boxers, to the shower. She seemed very intent on watching my every move as I rummaged through my things. She could see me down the hall, my room was at the end of the hall with the door open. I grabbed my things, went back down half the hall to the bathroom, and shut the door.
I unbuckled my pants and let the slide down my legs to the floor. I removed my dad's army dogtags from my neck and let them drop as well. I turned the water on, and jumped in. No need to wait for water to warm up in a place where warm water doesn't exsist without self boiling it. By then, I was quite used to everything being cold which made the water seem oddly warm. I leaned into the fountain of water and let my hair soak up as much as it could on its own before messing it up with my hands. After nine years of living in a deserted town all alone, soap wasn't even required, nor did it even exsist. Thus, I had to spend much time digging out every bit of dirt and earthly substances from my fur. It never came out completely white the way it should have, but it seemed to come close enough compared to all the other "white" things I owned. I stayed in the shower for a moment to enjoy the water running down my chest to my feet. I let my head fall back and allowed my eyes to close. I was perfectly relaxed. If it wasn't for the girl knocking vigoursly on the door, screaming at me to hurry, I woulda spent the whole day in there.
I got out of the shower and shook off before grabbing the towel. I rung out my hair and slowly began drying my fur out. It took me forever to get ready in the mornings. Once my pants were on, I grabbed a washcloth and began scrubbing the gunk off my teeth. No toothpaste, not even a paper towel. As I did so, I spent my time in my room grabbing all the shit I'd need for the day. First, I always grabbed my knife. It was the one thing I always needed and on days I forgot it I somehow always became totally screwed. Next was my shoulder bag where I kept everything I found, plus my lunch. I expected I'd have to pack dinner today as well if I was going to be out all day finding a stupid house. I walked to the kitchen, still cleaning my teeth with the washcloth, and grabbed some fish out of my shitty fridge. The problem with the fridge was that the connection cable was broken. The only way it would connect properly was if the fridge was at a perfetc 67 degree angle with the floor. After an hour of dicking around, I was finally ready, enough. Even after my first step out the door I knew that day would be one of the longest days of my life.
As soon as I shut the door behind me, and locked it for some reason, she bagan talking up a storm. She began asking me questions about my life that even I didn't know the answers to. Finally I stopped walking, just seeing how long it would take her to notice I wasn't next to her anymore. She stopped about ten seconds later and turned around to face me.
"What?" She asked, followed by her first breath in five minutes.
"If you are going to talk like this all fucking day, I swear you will be finidng yourself quite lonely." I swore. She gave me a sort of sad look and then looked down. "Ok, we have to slow down to I can understand you. Let's start with something simple. I dun even know your name."
"Pripyat." She replied, sounding like she was trying not to cry.
"Pripyat? Like here Pripyat?" I asked sounding a bit surprised.
"Yes, like here." She said, afraid to say anything else. I waited for her to continue however. I was quite curious as to what her parents' intentions were upon naming her after a town. "My parents loved it here, until the disaster happened at least. The just wanted to keep some of their memories alive when they moved."
"When they moved?" I repeated.
"It's why I know English. My parents moved to America because my dad's research job required it, but right before I was born, my grandmother got really sick. I ended up being born here, a month before the accident."
I staread at her for a moment. Her story very well resembled my parents' story about my father's mother. I shook it off. There was no way. I began walking again and when I caught up to her she came with me.
"So, did the radiation affect you at all?" I asked her. Nothing seemed to be wrong with her. On the outside she was beautiful.
"I suffered from radiation sickness. A lot of my hair fell out in large clumps, and I threw up a lot. For a two month old baby it was pretty scary for my parents to watch. Even the doctors were amazed I survived. But here I am." She sort of laughed to herself and smiled. "What about you?" She asked.
"Meh. I'm half deaf. One of my eyes is nearly blind..." I began. It was then, it seemed, when she first realized the huge scar across the right side of my face, going right through my blinded, glazed over eye.
"That eye?" She asked, pointing towards my right side. I nodded. "What's that from?" She asked, acknowledging the scar.
"Radiation ate away my skin there. It scared over now, but it's the reason I'm blind. The skin disease travled down my face, and upon meeting my eye, it ate away the cells in that too." I explained in a sort of meloncholy voice. She took that in and threw me an apologetic look.
"I'm real sorry." She said, not looking at me as she spoke.
"It's alright. It wasn't the wort thing that has happened to me." I shrugged.
"Was it your parents?" She tried to ask me again.
"What do you think happened?" I asked. "I mean, what makes you think something bad happened?"
"Because when we were in the kitchen you blew them off when I questioned you. Besides, you are living in the home you were born in."
"Yah, so what if they gave it to me?" My voice was beginning to raise and I had stopped walking.
"Did they?" She asked, sounding a bit frusterated by this point. She stopped walking too and swung around to meet my eyes.
I sighed and pushed past her. "Look, if we keep stopping it'll take us a week to find this place."
She didn't say anything after that. I heard her footsteps, and her breathing, but that was all.
We walked down the lonely, abandoned streets, looking for all the places on her maps that were supposed to help us, but nothing was the same after sixteen years of abandonment and radiation corrotion. We didn't speak much for hours. She was too afraid to talk, and I didn't want to answer her.
Finally, someone had to break the tension. It was quieter now than it had been before she showed up. I pulled her aside to a little park bench and asked her if she was ready for lunch. She nodded.
I pulled the fish out of the backpack and set it on the bench between us after tearing it in two. It was still a fish. It still stared at her. And it creeped her out. My half had the bones in it. I tore them out and started picking at the raw fish like a lion on a deer. She stared at me in horror as I ate the poor fishie inside out.
"You have to eat it or you are going to be starving until I offer you the same thing for dinner." I said, not removing my mouth from the fish.
She shuttered at it. "Does it have to be raw?" She whined. I raised an eyebrow.
She spent an hour trying to start a fire, caveman style. It was kinda funny to watch. After this many years of living with a stove that rarely worked, raw food was my norm. But for her, this girl who had never tried to survive on her own in her whole life, was trying to start a fire with two sticks. It was like watching one of those shows about the rich girls who have to move to the country.
"Maybe, if you take it to the power plant, you could burn it with radiation. Yum yum!" I joked. The look on her face was indication enough that she didn't find me nearly as amusing as I did. "It comes with a very unique seasoning." She sighed and dropped the sticks. Her hands were red and bleading slightly. It took self mutalation on her part to eat raw fish. Finally, she raised the fish to her mouth and took a bite. The discusted look on her face began to diminish as she chewed, slowly realizing her fire effort wasn't really that needed.
I nearly fell asleep waiting for her to finish eating. It took her twenty minutes to eat half a fish. Once she was done, she laid down in the bench, leaning slightly up against me. It was a small hint I didn't want to acknowledge. We watched the birds stupidly fly into the town and peck at the moss. This was the moss you didn't want to step on. It burned with radiation like the plant did. I wondered how long it would take before the stupid birds killed themselves. Besides their little tweeting, the air was quiet. She watched the clouds, while I... wacthed her.
Something about here made me feel something I had never felt before. Like a child hitting puberty, I felt a shocking sensation go through my whole body that I couldn't explain. I didn't know what to do, so I nudged her up and told her we had to continue.
We walked down the lonely streets towards the amusment park. The last place that would help her find where she wanted to be. We chose it as a last resort only because so many tours went on during the day to the park. It was one of the main reasons I spent whole days up in the ferris wheel when I did take my trips there.
We huddled up together in some trees on the side of the park opposite our destination. Just as I had thought, a tour of people was coming towards us just waiting to pull Pripyat away from me. I began to feel a jealous feeling inside me at the thought of them touching her. She was my responsibility and if anyone touched her I'd tear them apart.
I shook my head wondering how on earth I could ever think something so violent. I snuck around the gate, pulling Pripyat along with me. I wanted to stay exactly opposide the group all the way around the park giving us enough time to dart for the water tunnels. We circled the park until we were clear of tourists then took a mad dash across the old parking lot. We got to the tunnels as a second group was passing the park. I led Pripyat through the tunnel, jumping back and forwth over the little river of water running through the circular tube.
The other side was filthy. Under the growth of small treed and plants you could see a small hint of the train that once was. By then it was about the thickness of a bike tire. We climbed the rocks to the sidewalk on the other side and faced a neighborhood. Straight ahead was a small, metal playground, corroding from the elements. It was on kindergarten property; the kindergarten Pripyat would have gone to had she stayed a few months longer. She pulled out her camera and headed towards the little kindergarten building.
"Prippy..." I grabbed her arm and stopped her. She turned and her eyes met mine with a strange stare. I looked at my hand, still on her arm, and sighed. I released her and lowered my head a bit in embaresment. "Please be careful. I don't want you have to rescue you again."
She turned back and walked straight for the door to the school. I followed behind her slowly, trying to keep my distance after that one. She pulled at the door, pulsating it to push the dirt out of the way that kept if from opening. I grabbed onto the handle and pulled it open with ease. She looked at me like I was God and looked at my arms.
"Jeeze." She said in suprise as she realized the muscle buildup in my upper arms. I shrugged.
The school inside had a erie feeling. I had never even thought to check inside and witness this sight before Pripyat had arrived. It was almost as creepy as the amusement park. It was once a place where young children played with dolls and marbles and toy trucks. Now, dolls rested abandoned on the floor. Some were missing pieces of their clothing as though they had been disintegrated by the radiation. There were some with missing arms and patches of hair. Their lack of voices made it impossible for them to be saved.
So many things had been left behind by children who once loved them. I looked over at my girl, who stool staring blankly at the horrifying sight. I thought she was going to cry. Suddenly, she turned towards me and slid her arms around my waist. She pushed her head into my chest and let out a small cry.
"My whole life comes back to this nighborhood. This used to be my home, and now it's... this." Tears began to fall from her eyes and onto my fur. The hug and surprised me at first, but I slowly relaxed and was able to wrap my arms around her shoulders and rest my head on the top of hers. I had never had any kindness to anyone other than me since Bogden left me. I didn't want to. But standing here, holding this girl who made me feel so different, made me feel so increddibly happy that I could be there for someone who needed me.
She pushed away, and stared into my eyes for a moment. She smiled out of the corner of her lips, and let out a small laugh from her throat.
"I'm sorry." She said, staring at my chest and wiping her tears from my fur.
"Don't be." I smiled back.
"I bet you think I'm retarted now huh?"
"Not at all. You have every reason to be crying right now." I put my hand up to her cheek. She blushed a little and turned around.
She began taking pictures to avoid me seeing her blush even more, and to change the subject all together. I leaned against the door frame and watched her intently, making sure she didn't get hurt. She picked up some dolls and inspected them quite throughly before setting them back on the floor gently. To her, they still had a soul. They could still feel. And they knew secrets that nobody else did.
She spent nearly an hour looking over things. By then I was sitting down, leaning against the door frame. She walked up to me and looked down, staring deep into my eyes. "Okay, I'm ready."
I hopped up after she stepped over my lap, and began following her again down the street. We passed an old, metal playgroud near the school, which was now worn down by weather. The paint had been rusted and chipped off, and I didn't dare go near. But Pripyat did. She walked up to the swingset and stared at it. The little wooden seats were covered in dirt and cracking through. None the less, she sat down and began rocking herself back and forth.
"I have pictures of this playgroud. I have one of me, one month old, sitting on this very swing with my mom stanging right behind me." She smild and ran her hands up the chains. "Push me."
"I don't think it's too safe..." I began, but she just smiled.
"C'mon. Please?" She begged.
I walked around to the back of the swing and put my hands on the chains. I thought for a moment, trying to decide if I really wanted to endanger her of a ten foot fall. I sighed and pulled te swing back by the chains and let go. She swung forward, her hair flowing right begind her in the cool breeze. Upon her return, I placed my hands on her waist and pushed. She flew forward, kicking her legs out for more height.
Once I got her as high and she could go without flipping over the top bar, I stood next to her pendulum's path and watched her. She closed her eyes and spread her arms out like wings when she flew forward. She looked like an angel. The sun caught her red hair in a golden glow that made her look like she was descending from heaven. The golden tint that the sun reflected on everything made me realize the time. It wasn't late, but the sun was on its way back down again.
I approached the back of her swing again and reached out for the chains. I grabbed onto them and slowly let Prippy fall. Once the swing was stopped, she turned to look at me. She smiled, and in return saw me smile my response.
"Stay there." She said. She reached into her bag and pulled out her camera again. She held it out in front of her and took a picture.
"Hey, we gotta go if we want time to find this house." I said to her.
She grabbed my arms and pulled them around hers. "Okay." She said.
She got up and brgan leading me down the street once again. We passed by the middle school. One of three in the whole city. We spent a little time in there too. I took a seat in one of the old desks and began looking at all the posters on the walls while Prippy took more pictures. There were still things written on the chalk boards. There was homework lying aroung the floor. I can only imagine the children's excitement when they were told they got to leave school early. They had no idea they would soon be on the verge of death.
We didn't spend nearly as much time here was I thought. We walked through the building, taking pictures down the halls and in some of the classrooms, but she got bored fast, and we continued on your journey. She decided to take a quick stop at the old stadium. I tried to persuade her against it, but she, like always, insisted.
We walked through the main enterance, which didn't really matter because the old fences wern't even in existance anymore. I followed her down the stairs aligning rows and rows of rusted out saets. She stopped at the second to last rown and sat down. I took a seat beside her.
"Look at how pretty the sun is." She said, smiling. "Look how it turns trees into just black, lifeless silouettes."
"Mmm." I nodded. "It makes everything look twice as dead."
She leaned against me and put her head on my shoulder. "What is it like? Living here all alone"
"Lonly." I joked. She let out a tiny laugh, then relazed back to her monotone mood.
"Where are they?" She asked. I didn't really have to as 'who' she was referring to. She had been trying to get me to asker this question all day.
I sighed a bit and she sat up, hoping I'd finally answer her. I stared down and the floor between my feet but I could tell she was staring deep into my face.
"They died." I finally let out. "Seven years after the accident. Seven years after I was born."
Prippy sighed. I figured she had already knew the answer, but when I confirmed it, she didn't know how to respond.
"My mother was pregnant with me. She couldn't evacuate with the rest of them because it would surly mean the death of us both. So her and my dad hid in a storm cellar so they wouldn't be forced to leave. But the radiation killed them both, and I refused to leave them." I felt my eyes ready to cry. I didn't know why I told her. I was supposed to be the tough one.
I put my face in my hands to try to keep the tears from coming. I felt Prippy put her arm around me and pull me to her chest.
"Aww baby." She said. She rested my head against her heart and ran her hand down my face. "It's alright. I'm here for you now."
I closed my eyes and listened to her heart. It was the only heart I had even heard beat that wasn't my own in eight years. I began to relax to the feeling of Prippy's hand running across my neck and over my chest. I knew she'd have to leave. As soon as she found the house, she'd have to leave like the rest of them.
I sighed and sat up again. Prippy stared deeper into my face than she had before, and this time, I stared back. I felt horrible for thinking this. I had known her for one day, and the bond between us had become more than just a tour guide and his follower. And I felt, like she had become more, than just a friend. I hadn't seen another girl besides my mother, and this girl, sitting on the bench next to me, made me feel things I had never before felt in my life. I didn't base my choices off right or wrong. I based them off the speed at which my heart was beating, and off the instincts it was sending.
I leaned towards her, and to my suprise, she mirrored me. I stopped. Frozen. Unable to think. I closed my eyes and waited for something to hit me on weather or not to play out what I had started, but it never came. I was glad something did though. I felt the soft touch of her lips meet mine and I then knew what to do. Instinct. I opened my mouth and allowed her to brush my tongue with hers. I raised my hand up to her face and brushed her hair behind her ear. She raised her hand up and touched mine.
She pulled my hand away and then looked down. "I'm sorry." She said, staring at the ground.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because, I shouldn't be doing that. We've only known eachother for a day and..." She began.
I cut her off. "It's okay." I smiled. "I forgive you."
Prippy looked back at me and smiled. She even laughed a little before resting her head on my shoulder again.
"You think we should get going?" She asked.
"Yeah." I agreed.
She stood up, grabbed my hand, and led me back out of the stadium.
We spent the rest of the day, going from house to house, taking pictures inside each one, and following to the next until we found the house we were looking for. Of course, we didn't find it that night. The sun began to set, and without electricity in the neighborhood, it was hard to see inside the houses enough for it to be safe to go inside. However, the night was quite warm, and we descided to spend the night in a little park in the center of the neighborhood.
We stopped as the sky was turning a purpley gray and the sun was only a a thumb from the ground. She was about to sit in the grass before I warned her against it. The grass in this city collected the memories of the accident so it could share it with those who sat in it. I pulled a little blanket out of my bag and laid it on the grass where we could lay side by side and watch the stars. There we more stars here. There was no light to scare them away. Even the Milky Way came for a nightly visit on a clear night.
I started a little fire with a little triangle pyramid over it to set food on and begin cooking dinner. I laid down on the blanket while I waited for the food to cook through, hoping Prippy would join me. I held my left arm out so she could use is as a pillow and patted the spot next to me before placing my other hand behind my head. She layed down on her back and put her hands on her chest, staring up at the sky in awe.
"There's so many I havn't seen." She sighed. "The stars don't come out all at one where I live."
"Where is that, exactly?" I finally asked her. I couldn't figure out why I hadn't asked before.
"Denver." She smiled. I gave her a puzzled look. "It's the capital city of Colorado." She replied to my puzzled look. I raised an eyebrow. "Colorado is a state, in the United States..." My puzzled look turned into an 'Ooh' look. Prippy giggled.
We sared at the stars for a bit, pointing out things we saw in them and trying to determine them from the planets. Before long however, dinner was ready.
I took the fish off from the little triangle I had made and pulled the skin off. I tore the poor fishie in half, ripped his skeleton out, and handed one side of him to Prippy. She seemed much happier about the dinner than lunch seeing as this time it hadn't come raw out of the water. She tore it apart with her fingers and ate it in huge bites. I watched her eat, quite messily, with a strange look. She caught me staring at her, giggled a little bit, then swollowed. She continuted to eat, but in smaller bites.
We finished our fish and laid back down. Prippy took her camera out again and held it up into the sky facing us. I bright light flashed into my eyes, leaving me a bit blinder than I already was. It only lasted seconds though, and soon I could see the picture in the little digital display of a boy and his only friend, laying side by side in the moonlight.
It was at that moment that she snuggled up to me. She laid on her side and put her head on my chest. She closed her eyes, and sighed at the sound of my heartbeat. The feelings in my stomach came back. The ones I had never felt before meeting her. I felt my whole body heat up. I felt parts of me tingle that I didn't even know could. And then I did something I wasn't sure I even knew how to do.
Dogs are different than humans. We don't need much time to make friends with one another, or even fall in love. However, it's not that we aren't really "in love", it just doesn't take as long. I lifted her head up off of my chest with one hand under her chin. We stared for a moment, deep into eachother's eyes like we were trapped in their gaze. She pulled herself up until her lips met mine softly. The Angel's kiss. My hands slid down her sides and onto her hips in the midst of our kiss. Her tongue slip deep into my mouth and I could feel her body temperature rise with mine.
It was all instinct from there on out. My hands rose back up her body, this time burying themselves in the fur under her shirt. I pulled her body on top of me so I could reach every part of her without any akward reaches. We continued to kiss as her shirt came off. Her part was easy, I hadn't worn a shirt since we met. Instead, she took the liberty of unbuckling my belt. The look in her eyes must have told her something I didn't need words to speak, because she smiled and lowered herself down to speak in my ear.
"Be calm baby. It'll be alright." She whispered before rising back up.
Now, I hadn't taken part in what I had a good feeling was about to unravel, but the things I did know had been on VCR tapes in my Dad's "Do Not Go There" section of his closet. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why I wasn't supposed to go there. I soon realized I should have followed his rules, even if he was dead. I was ten years old when my innocent mind slowly began to disintegrate into the small brin that is a teenager's.
The girl sitting in my lap began the process of unbuttoning my pants. I watched her as she did so, so slowly and carefully like they were made of paper. Once she had done so, she slid her hands down, under my boxers, and slid everything off my body together leaving only my boots and my necklaces left. She laid down flat on top of me and allowed me to repeat to her what she had done to me. It wasn't long until I had a hot, naked girl laying on me, and I didn't know what to do. And she knew it, I assumed, because she kissed me on my neck, right under my jaw, and whispered to me to relax.
Things happened that night which I could not explain in words. The things I felt had no words to explain the extent of how good it was. I don't know why she did it. I don't know why I let her. I just, couln't stop her... We fell asleep there, rolled up naked in the blanket we were laying on. It was warm, and I felt a feeling of happiness I hadn't felt since my family had left me. This time, I wasn't letting go.
We woke up the next morning still wraped up tighly to one another under the warm sun. Her chest pushed against mine as she continued to sleep as I opened my eyes. I smiled and began running my fingers along her cheek to wake her up peacefully. Her eyes came open, shining like I had never seen before. She looked at me and smiled instantly as she stretched out her arms. Her arms came back, crossed over my chest, and she set her head on them and stared at me.
"Morning." She said through another small yawn.
"Morning." I replied. "You think we should get up and eat?"
She nodded.
She rolled off of me, stood up, and stretched out her whole body. I remained on the ground, watching her straighten out her whole body. She came back to a normal stand and noticed me staring, so she covered herself with her arms and giggled. We both got dressed and I began the fire for breakfast. Of course, it was more fish, but neither of us seemed to have cared if it were horse dung. We were too happy to hate.
After we ate, we packed up our things and began walking some more. We'd talk and giggle and push each other back and forth. At one point, she even wrapped her arm around my waist, so I rested my arm over her shoulders.
It didn't take long to find what we were looking for. A couple blocks beyond the park was a sreet that turned towards the edge of town. We walked down the abandoned street as though it wern't abandoned at all. Like we were just a couple taking a walk on a nice day. I was too preoccupied in our happiness to notice the street was quite familiar. Towards the end of the street, Prippy looked forward at the exact moment needed to spot the little, rundown, wooden house covered almost entirely by trees and dying plants.
Prippy pointed at it with a huge smile and almost jumped out of her clothes. "Look!" She squealed before darting as close to it as che could without being mauled by a tree. She pushed brances out of the way and began looking for an address to confirm her discovery. Sure enough, she was correct.
"This is it! We found it!" She said, calling back to me.
I stood there. Frozen with my mouth hanging open a bit. My stomach began to feel sick and I began to feel like I was going to collapse. I leaned down with my hands gripping onto my knees to hold me up while I began panting furriously, but my arms gave in, and I passed out...
I was shaken awake moments later. The fur above my eyebrow was sticky and when I sat up, a small drop of blood dripped from it to the ground. My head hurt, my eyes were blurry, and my stomach felt worse. It was hard to breath thus I continued to pant. I felt scared, but I didn't know why. I looked up at Prippy. Behind her was the house. The green window pannels, that I helped paint, hung by a hinge off the house. The flowers in the front yard by the door, that I helped plant, were dead or trying to come back from the icy winter prior. The fence, that I helped build, was rotting and falling over. The white paint had been washed away by the elements, and only patches of it remained. This is when I knew, I had made a terrible mistake.
I looked down at the ground in frot of my outstretched legs began to feel light headed again. My eyes began to roll back as though I was going to faint again before Prippy shook me a little and brought me back to life. She sat between my legs facing me and stared deep into my eyes.
"What's wrong?!" She began freaking out at me.
"Uh... Uh..." Was all I could say. I couldn't speak a word. Nothing on my body worked, like the blow to the head had fucked up my nerves.
"Alek!" Prippy near screamed at me.
I looked up at the house again and blinked my eyes tight to clear them from the blurryness. "My... my grandmother lived..." I began, but it hurt to talk, so I just pointed to the house.
"What are you talking about? This is my grandmother's house. That's what we've been looking for." She tried to help me remember, but I hadn't forgotten.
"Last name." I stuttered. Finally starting to get my body moving again.
"Huh?" Prippy stared at me confused.
"What is your last name?" I demanded.
"Florentino." She said quickly. "Why?"
I froze again. What. Had. I. Done? "Prippy..." I began. "I... I'm in love..."
"With who?" She asked.
I took a deep breath and stared Prippy straight in the face. "My cousin."
Prippy stared at me for a moment with a look of pure discust on her face. "What? That's sick." She whined at me. I looked away from her at the house.
"My grandparent's lived in that house Prippy." I explained again. And this time, she finally got it.