Joshua Gayou - Commune - The Complete Series - A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Box Set (Books 1-4)

He sat down next to the boy on the couch, pulled the coffee table a bit closer, and asked, “You ever do a jigsaw afore?”

“No.”

“Well, looky’ere, it’s easy. This’ere picture on the box is what yer tryin’ for, okay?” He opened the box and carefully spread the pieces out over the glass table top so that none fell over the edges. “Now here’s the puzzle. They’s a itty-bitty piece of that there picture painted up on them pieces, an’ it’s our job to get ’er together.”

He searched around a few minutes, picking out hopeful edge pieces. When he found two of them that looked right, he fitted them together on the table and then held them up against the box top so the boy could see how it went.

“Okay?”

“Yeah!” the kid said. He put his bony little ass up on the edge of the couch cushion and set to work.

Pap settled back into the couch, poured a glass, and then corked and set the bottle of whiskey on a side table. He drank the first glass in silence as the kid worked away at the puzzle. Pap could see only the back of the kid’s head poking out from the blanket in which he was swaddled; a perfect crown marred only by his hatchet job with the sheers. He smiled, reached forward, and rubbed his hand over the kid’s head, being feather light so as not to disturb or frighten him. The kid seemed not to notice; only continued to work along quietly at the puzzle.

He threw his legs up on the table, poured another glass, and thought about his daddy and the campfire. He drank whiskey in the low candlelight while the kid labored away and missed the people he once knew. Before long, despite the nap he’d taken earlier, his head dipped, and he slipped away again, forgotten finger of whiskey still swirling gently in the glass he clutched atop his thigh.

The big man’s snoring distracted him from his work sometime later. He didn’t know what the noise was at first. Looking back over his shoulder, he wondered if the man was dying somehow. After a moment of watching him, the boy understood what it was. He watched the man quietly and wondered.

The smell of the man’s feet propped up on the table drew his attention. The smell was unpleasant but hardly the worst thing he’d ever encountered. He still wore his socks; they were almost a blinding white, stretched over impossibly large feet, wide like pontoon boats, though the boy didn’t know what a pontoon was. He would have recognized a pontoon boat if he’d seen one most likely; a buried memory tickled up out of a hidden past. Most of the things he remembered were like this, and half the time he couldn’t be sure if what he saw inside his mind was a memory or a dream. But something about the man’s socked feet propped up on that table, their largeness, and that familiar musty old smell… it tickled something in the boy’s mind. Before that point, he’d counted on waiting for him to drift off—and then he would drift away at some point himself and never come back. Now he wasn’t so sure. He thought maybe he was supposed to stay there, pulled either by a memory or a dream.

Carefully so as not to wake him, he took the glass from the man’s giant hand and placed it up on the little table next to the bottle. Then he found an extra blanket and pulled it over the man’s body. He snorted in his sleep, shifted, and was silent.

The boy moved along the room, blowing out candles as he came to them, and then found his way back to the couch by touch in the darkness. He curled up in his blanket and went to sleep instantly listening to the snores of the giant man.

When he awoke later, he was alone on the couch. Looking around the room, he could see that it was light out. The curtains were pulled aside to let the daylight in, and the front door was open. There was some sort of scraping, brushing sound issuing from just beyond. The kid tumbled from his blanket, stood barefoot on the chill floorboards, and padded quietly over to poke his head out onto the porch.

The big man was sitting on the steps with his back to the door, mountainous shoulders hunched over, and his elbows stuck out from his body, sawing back and forth violently. The kid stepped out and walked around to his side. The man’s hands came into view, and the boy saw that he was passing a fat brush over the top of one of his boots.

“They’s a toothbrush and paste for you down yonder bathroom.”

The kid didn’t understand what any of this meant, so he remained silent. After a few more swipes of the brush, the man looked over at him, closed one eye, and said, “Y’all know how to brush yer teeth?”

The kid shook his head.

“Hell, that ain’t no good. Best come on, then…”

He set his boot down next to the other, lurched to his feet, and stepped back into the house. The boy looked down at the boots a moment, pondering the dried flecks of mud, and then followed.

He found the man at the door of the bathroom from the previous evening. He said, “Wait thar,” pointing at the sink. He went further down the hallway and came back a moment later carrying yet more things that tickled a memory in the kid’s mind.

“H’watch…” he said and held up a tiny version of the brush he’d been using to knock the mud from his boots a moment before. In his other hand was a white tube; he removed the cap from this and squeezed out some of its innards onto the brush. Then he pointed down at the sink with the tube. The kid looked and saw what was to be his own brush and tube on the countertop.

He uncapped the tube as the man had done, lined it up, and squeezed. A runner of goo came rushing forth from the neck, piling up in the sump like a multi-colored turd. The kid laughed, surprised.

“S’alright. Don’t squeeze it s’hard. Try ag’in.”

He did, managing to get it right this time. The man tapped him on the shoulder so he would look, and then he stuffed his brush into his mouth and started running it over his teeth like they were a pair of muddy boots.

The kid followed along, felt the sudden tingling coldness all inside his head, and was immediately bent over the sump trailing his tongue between his lips as though he couldn’t stand the thought of pulling it back into his mouth. He began to grunt and moan as he scraped his tongue along the edges of his teeth and spat.

“Hold on, there, son, Jesus Christ! Calm down! Just calm… hell—”

He disappeared up the hall and then was immediately back with a cup of water.

“Here, damn it! Take a mouthful! Warsh ’er out an’ spit!”

He did, swirling it around inside before dropping his mouth open to let the water burble down his front, soaking the nightshirt. He took another mouthful and did it again. The man took the glass, sighed, and went down to his hands and knees with a towel to mop up the mess.

When he’d finished, he stood up and said, “We’ll try ’er ag’in. Reckon I shoulda warned you. Didn’t know you’d take on so. It’s gonna feel like that, okay? It’s s’posed to; that means it’s cleanin’.”

The boy eyed him suspiciously. It hadn’t felt like cleaning at all. It felt more like his mouth was burning.

“Look, boy, it didn’t mess me up none, did it?” He put his brush back in his mouth and resumed scrubbing. Through a mouthful of suds, he said, “Goan…”

Cautiously, the kid fit the brush back in between his teeth and began to scrub. That icy intensity returned, but it wasn’t as horrible the second time around; that or he was just ready for it now. He brushed slowly at first, then with more confidence as he discovered things wouldn’t get any worse than what they currently were.