As I jumped down the staircase, falling step by step, I couldn't help but recall how tiny I still was. I was twelve years old and still had trouble getting up the set of stairs. It wasn’t a complete struggle, but I did have to stretch my legs at an uncomfortable height to manage to reach the top. It didn’t help that the thing itself was already steeper than need be.

I let out a satisfied huff as I hopped off the last step. I glanced up as I saw something moving at the side of my vision. My mother walked in, bouncing lightly, with her red hair blowing about her beautifully freckled face. She adorned my baby brother in the crook of her arm and tickled his nose. The baby squirmed and made strange gurgling noises. My mother cooed and her face lit up with joy.

I personally thought that babies were weird, ugly creatures.

The thought crossed my mind as my mother handed me the disgusting thing. “Take care of Ed for a sec while I finish making you breakfast, okay?” She strolled out of the house, her curls bouncing after her. I nodded and looked down at Ed as if he was some sort of writing that was ripped down the middle, right through all the important stuff. My nose took a moment to unwrinkle itself and I turned the babe around in my arms and rested him safely on my hip. He stared up at me with dumb, vacant eyes.

“Why do people like these things?” I laughed after realizing how terrible that sounded. I may not like babies, but I knew someday I'd come to love this thing. It was my little brother after all.

I could already picture it. The ideas and dreams came from how Ivan and I used to play when we were younger. We were closer to the same height then instead of him being a near whole foot taller than me. We would play war and the other ancient children's games that most children didn't even know existed. I looked at the parcel of flesh and drool and took to daydreaming again. I pictured him growing into a thin boy with soft brown eyes playing hide and go seek through the house and out in the smog, hiding behind the rocks. I pictured pretending that I was a vicious monster and chasing after this boy so I could gobble up my prey. I pictured teaching the child how to read…

I caught myself staring at the soft brown eyes in my arms. Funny how only a moment before I thought they looked so empty and dull. I made a small face of disgust and told him how he’ll look so much better when he was older.

Finally, my mother returned to take Ed from me, her curls bouncing all the same. She pulled the baby away from me and spoke that childish high-pitched voice to the baby that mothers for some reason do. “Food’s on the table,” she said over her shoulder without even looking back. Her eyes were glued to the newest child that she brought into this world.

Then Ed coughed.

It was quiet and short, but my mother’s face turned into panic. I couldn’t tell what was going on, but I watched as she simply stared at Ed until her face broke. It was filled with grief and fear. My gorgeous mother had put on a face that sent shivers down my spine. Almost like reading a suspense novel. She then tried her best to recover and put on a small smile before looking at me. “Go on and eat your breakfast, hon. You should eat something before having to work today.” She tried once again to smile at me, but that face was more terrifying than the last. She then ran down the hall into her bedroom, hugging Ed into her chest.

I was shocked. I had no idea what had just happened… But I knew my mother. I wasn't going to get any answers from her. Besides, I was hungry having smelled the food in the kitchen. I grabbed my food and scarfed it down before rushing out of the house with my mother’s twisted and scared smile chasing after me.

~

I was hovering over the pigpen in our makeshift barn, looking down at the three pigs below me. The barn was made of a shack in the back of the house with two wooden doors that reached almost to the peaked ceiling nine feet above me. It was probably painted a long time ago, but the weather wore it away. There were all sorts of holes and nails in the wall that hung a strange assortment of instruments whose uses were foreign and lost in some forgotten time. The place smelled of dry seed and soiled hay. It was a terrible stench, but I didn't mind. It was familiar. That and the squealing of the hogs who never seemed to shut up.

My attention turned back to them as one sniffed at my hand and tried to bite it. Each was barely large enough to be considered a suitable size for the slaughterhouse. We needed two pigs to stay alive so they could breed and make more meat for us.  With that in mind, I would have to choose which one of the pigs would go to the pit. Which one would go to where I’d have to shoot them and cut them into pieces.

We had two boys and one girl. That made the entire situation harder. If it were two girls, I’d leave the mother alive since she knew how to handle the piglets and her pregnancy. If the mother was too old to give birth again, I would choose the younger sow and leave it at that. There was a system. There was no system for boys. I just picked one.

It made sense to choose the thicker one for our family, but they were virtually the same size. I couldn’t go off of that. I looked between the two, deciding which was more likely to survive. I could pick the older one. He has had longer in this world, but that only meant that he was more deserving to live in it. He fought to stay alive this long. The younger one deserved the opportunity to fight for life as well though. Besides, he wasn’t done growing. Who knew? Maybe he’d grow larger than his father had.

Watching the two pigs, I could see each detail that made them so different from each other. They were both black and had sorrel eyes the size of saucers. (I wasn’t quite sure what a saucer was, but books have taught me that they were round and large.) The younger one had only half of his right ear from a fight that happened earlier in the moon cycle. The older one had a large spot on his back that was a filthy white color from all the grit that blew in whenever the doors were opened.

My eyes began to water as the two boars watched me with their naïve expressions. The younger one twitched his half-ear to flick off a bug. The older one rolled in some filth. I raised them. I fed them from a bottle. I remember weaning them off their mother’s teat and teaching them to eat solid foods. I could still picture how awkward they looked when their ears were bigger than their face and could cover those round, naive eyes. I felt a tear stinging the top of my cheek. I raised a hand to it and brushed it away.

‘I can't do this. I won't do this.’

I considered the pen again and heard the familiar sounds of rumbling. We were one of the few fortunate ones that had a vehicle. It was ‘the family’s most prized possession’. I hated it. I was constantly ill whenever I rode in the thing. My mother told me it was a truck, but I doubted that the heap of scrap metal was worthy of even a solid name. My mother was greeting someone out front. She sounded chipper and excited. I could hear the way Ed cried at the wind that surely swept at his tiny face.

It was my father.

I had to choose, and I had to choose now.

I pushed the doors open and leaned out to peek where my father might be. I couldn't see much, but then again, I didn't know why I expected to be able to. There wasn't much to look for anyways. I could hear the front door slam shut as my parents and Ed had undoubtedly taken refuge inside. I squinted through the dirt-orange haze to look at the horizon. The outline of our town was barely noticeable. Living on the outskirts, you’d expect it to be, but we were only fifty feet away from our neighbor. I hated the smog. I turned my head in the other direction to try to look at all the abandoned buildings and the distant tree line. Even on a good day, you couldn’t see it, but I knew it was out there nonetheless. A memory of cans I found three months ago came back to me.

The storm was thick as ever and I had decided to do some exploring. I also wanted some new books. Even though my mother told me about all the “nasties” that used the smog and deafening howls of the wind to hide in, I was hardly afraid. Exploring was what kids do, and reading was what I do. I didn't listen to her warnings and I wandered about in the storm and plains to find a small house like our pigpen. When a noise exploded from outside, I hid. After it had passed, I went to run home, but found my foot stuck in a hole. After a harsh tug of my leg upwards, I had come to realize that my foot planted itself into a trap door where a staircase was underneath. Grabbing a railing, I wandered down to find a large room with shelves lining the walls. One wall of shelves had crumbled and only a hand could be seen under the rubble. Due to the smell and the fact that half of the flesh on the hand was gone, I took a safe assumption that the character was dead. I remember bringing home a good twenty cans wrapped up in my shirt and arms with my pockets stuffed. How much I was praised!

Then I remembered that there should still be more. No one in town knew about it (I had no friends to tell), and I knew that twenty cans was barely a dent in the treasure trove.

I had to go back.

I risked a glance back at the farmhouse and grinned as I heard my mother cooing about her “two special boys taking a nap.” I looked back out to see the dust swirl strangely again. That sold it for me. I wanted whatever was out there. Besides, I had time. Plus, I wanted life for these pigs. If I found food, that could cut it. At least for a month or two. And at least I wouldn't have to be the monster when it came to it. I grabbed the pistol from the blood pit (which was a corner of the pigpen with a flimsy, sleek curtain hung around it where we would slaughter the pigs), and headed out of the building into the open.

I was meandering through the haze for about an hour before I found the place. The wind and swirling dust had left plenty of new scratches and bruises on my arms that would send my mother into a frenzy. I laughed at this. Then, I hummed to myself. It was a vicious habit. I loved the sound of music that seemed to pulse through my very body. I wanted one of the players I have seen in one of my children’s books. It was a rounded box with holes on either side where it said that the precious music escaped from. When I asked my father if he could find me one…

My hand drifted up to the side of my face, and I almost stopped walking. I shook my head to get rid of the image and skipped into the little shack. My humming grew quieter as I realized that the door that stood so gallantly against the wind before was destroyed at its lower half. The edges of where the door was broken were serrated and splintered in a random order as if whatever did it wasn't thinking about anything but getting it.

My breath caught in my throat at the thought that maybe whatever did this could still be here. My arms tensed at my sides and I began to shake slightly. The habitual flapping of my arms slapped at my sides before I took a second deep breath to calm myself. Why would anything still be in there? I reached for the door and opened it, mentally begging it not to creak. It didn't. I hefted my pistol in my hand once more and took a nervous step inside.