Life is Sweet
Music Inspo: Life is Sweet - Alexander Lewis
When the world is stripped down and taken for granted, sometimes all you can do is wander and think.Victor called it scavenging.
Today, in Year Five of the Spill, his listless scavenging drifted him towards a fenced-in, run down building with a large hole in the ground. It took him far too long to realize that it was what remained of a community pool. Even before the Spill, it had been years since he had been to one, but now it was yet another breath of life lost to time and the miasma that clouded the world. Still, it was more or less intact. There was unexplainable grime everywhere and the tiling in the pool was so cracked that the dirt could be seen beneath it, but the pool chairs were still in place, only touched by time, as decrepit looking as they were, and umbrellas were still open to shield from the sun. It would’ve been useful if the sun could penetrate through the thick smog. It made him miss warm summer days.
He was careful with his investigation, adjusting his mask to sit more comfortably as he toed his way in. He needed to be careful of raiders, or worse the Buzzards. Either were prone to kill, but raiders were a little more lenient if they could just take your things. Buzzards were beasts who took humans for parts.
The silence was eerie, but it was reassuring as he made his way to the pool closet connected to the showers. To his surprise, a lot of the accouterments were still there. There were a few sturdy lifeguard floats, dozens of deflated pool toys that could have been useful for the plastic, a pair of unbroken sunglasses that wouldn’t do much good thanks to the face mask and lack of bright light, and the jackpot, a storage bin on wheels carrying most of it. “Can’t believe no one cleared this place out.” He mused, testing the wheels of the storage bin. Him and his partner could make use of it somehow. He wasn’t usually the ideas guy as much as he was the find it and fix it guy.
If it helped them head northwest, it was useful. There was a rumor that the higher altitudes and frigid temperatures in Alaska cut through the miasma and people could breathe easier there. It may have only been a rumor, but it was better than nothing.
He continued to look around, a little more eager as he heard the steady drip, drip, drip of water running nearby. Water was always a good sign and a resource he needed to capitalize on before it was snatched away or hoarded. His excitement dulled slightly when he realized it didn’t come from the communal showers. He tried the rusty knobs, most loose and useless, before trying to follow pipes to find the well that the water came from.
To his dismay, a stray, deflated pool toy tangled around his feet and sent him crashing to the ground. Or at least, there was supposed to be a ground. He felt his mask get knocked loose and soon he was tumbling forward into darkness, unable to figure out what was up from down. The fall felt much longer than it should have been and his only logical thought was that if this was how he died, by way of a hole in the ground, it was disappointing to not have Kai, his partner, close enough to find him. The next thought was that at the very least, it was grave sized.
Smell hit him first to deter his thoughts of death. There was a sharp, pungent odor, the smell of pool water mixed with chemicals. Sight nearly blinded him, even with his eyes closed. It was suddenly much brighter and warmer than he remembered. His eyes had adjusted to the soft haze so much that when he woke up to find himself resting on a pool chair, he had to rapidly blink the tears out of his eyes. It felt like his heart stopped when his vision cleared.
People he had known for most of his life, who were bright and cheery, all inhabited the pool area, laughing, playing, living. Unsure of what to do, Victor stumbled out of the pool chair, balancing himself as kids rushed past. They smelled like sunscreen. And when he heard a woman yell, presumably their mother, he watched the kids flinch and turn their run into a speed walk towards the pool’s stairs.
A blur of color smacked him in the face with a soft ‘tonk’. He opened his hands to let the plastic beach ball fall into them, listening to the people in the pool yell and laugh at him. It felt so real in his hands. But… of course it was real. He was here for… someone’s birthday, right? He held the ball long enough that the haze of confusion was interrupted by indistinct yelling. He heard them loud and clear, but for some reason he couldn’t understand them. It was probably from the water in his ears when he got dunked into the pool earlier.
Everyone gestured to his face and when he reached to touch it, his brow furrowed. He knew a lot of practical jokers, but he didn’t think he was a heavy enough sleeper to get a mask put on him. Before he could question, across the pool, waving at him with an excitement he felt he hadn’t seen in ages, was the birthday king himself, Kai, urging him to jump into the pool. Ah, of course he had thrown this party for Kai. He loved to swim.
It didn’t take much to convince Victor to join in, but the moment he began to pull his mask off the world… fractured. Kai was wearing a mask but everyone else in the pool was floating face down. Victor stumbled away from the pool’s edge, only to blink and for them to disappear, replaced by an eerie haze. With another blink, he was in the water, flailing and drowning, grabbing for darkness. Before everything could go dark again, a hand slapped his mask back onto his face, securing it with urgency. Victor gasped, falling into Kai’s arms, as his words became less and less muddled.
“You could have died! What were you thinking–– of course you weren’t thinking. You scared me half to death!” Eventually Kai settled, his expression furrowing into worry. “I can only imagine the horror you saw…”
Victor gave a strained laugh. “They’ve got it all wrong… Horror isn’t addictive. Freedom is.”
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