Heavy Monsters

During our first years inside, we used to run through the halls, jumping over pipes and dancing in the hissing steam.

We would hide behind the old machinery, ready to jump out at each other and scream, shrieking through the halls. With everything going on outside, I don’t know why we craved the rush, but we did. Sleeping all day to avoid the poisonous gas outside made us restless.

We used to steal candy along with canned goods when we went out with our gas masks, raiding the stores. It was sealed, so it was safe to eat, and we also loved the way it made us feel, the tingling sensation in our temples as we chased each other around.

It must have been October when the bombs first fell, because the stores were also full of costumes. We needed clothes, and being a superhero, a ghoul, a demon, was safer than being us, dirty kids with smudged faces in the rubble of an old building, sharing gas masks to go out and scavenge for food.

Most of us were too young to remember, but there must have been some kind of virus along with all the radioactivity, to create the monsters that lived outside the walls. Some of them were just corpses, ghouls in their own right, but we knew they couldn’t really hurt us. Others were still out there, their eyes glazed over, skin gray and waxy, shuffling through the streets, eating something from a can or staring at the sun. They were probably harmless, too, but they looked like the monsters imagined during the time before, when such monsters needed to be created.

As we grew, we still scavenged for food, always bringing the gas mask, grabbing candy and canned peaches. We still craved the sweet feeling of chocolate in the back of our throats or the crunch of sour fruit candy, but we craved something else, too. Other survivors like us were older and had already discovered another rush before the bombs fell. We would trade our cans for alcohol brewed in an old bucket used for laundry, crudely grown cannabis plants from their warehouse, and something else, something white and powdery that they said used to cost more than both put together.

And there were still costumes. It must have been customary for adults to celebrate, too, because we found all kinds of things: a bright, red, flashy thing with sequins glistening in the sun; just a leotard, great for showing off legs, a cape; and a huge gorilla costume, another thing that was good for the frights we still craved. There was makeup, lipstick, wigs, even hair dye, although we wondered how safe that was.

As we grew older, we still went running through the steamy halls, hiding from each other and jumping out, but this time we planned ahead. Those we traded with became our guests, and we flipped our mattresses across the wall and adorned the old rusty pipes with spiderwebs and sequined bats from the store. They brought the drinks and drugs, and we brought the candy, setting it out in dishes, secreting it in our pockets for later in the night. We all smell a little sweet, and we always have candy on our breath.

I still remember the night we brought out the most candy, when the halls of our warehouse were the most full. There was someone in every corner, slumped over, drinking or smoking, laughing in clusters, or wrapped in an embrace. I danced through the halls, hiding behind every corner. I was wearing red velvet with sparkles across my face.

I first saw her sitting behind some old pipes, softly crying and eating Starbursts on the floor. She would unwrap one, look at it closely, and then nibble on it, all while tears ran down her face.

I asked her what was wrong, and she said they tasted of childhood, like memories. She said she remembered her father unwrapping them for her after a night of going door to door collecting candy when the world was safe. I closed my eyes and tried to remember my father, or my mother, or going door to door to get candy, but the only memory there was the one that was always there, a little girl alone and crying, holding a gas mask, outside the doors of the factory.

“They just remind me of filling up on candy before bed when it was cold, but maybe that’s better,” I told her. “Take some home with you.”

When we kissed, it was like an explosion behind my eyes, like the first time someone jumped out and scared me inside the warehouse and I knew it was just for fun, the first time I ran as fast as I could and slid on the cool metal ramp that led down to the room below, the first time I tasted a strawberry Blow Pop.

We both had glitter on our faces. When her tears were dry, we got up, and, hand in hand, went to look down at the street below. The grey people shuffled past, moaning, some eating out of cans, some groaning, others too sick to walk and slumped on the sidewalk. Why that wasn’t us, I still wasn’t sure. Maybe they had purposely put the children into a place where we would be safe? Maybe we ran and hid from our families?

She leaned her hand out of the cracked window pane and tossed down the Starburst wrapper, watching it wind its way down to the ground like a fall leaf. I pulled a handful of glitter out of my pocket and tossed it after her wrapper, watching it slowly fall against the grey-black sky.

Her eyes looked like the night sky, pink glitter set against smoky smudges made darker by tears. She was still sniffling a little, but she was also smiling.

“Let’s go find some more candy.”