“My name is Alejandra.” she whispered.
“My name is Alejandra.”
Skinning the Freshy
I. FRESHIES & ROTTERS
1. Half of the players are designated Refugees and represent the living. Refugees can basically do as they please and are bound to no special handicaps.
2. The other half are Rotters. Rotters can only stagger after the refugees and are not allowed to use tools or anything that would denote a higher intelligence. The job of a rotter is to pursue the Refugees through the muddy streets of Free Town and try to catch them.
3. If a Rotter lays a hand on a Refugee, then that player becomes a Freshy. Freshies are allowed to sprint after the remaining Refugees as quickly as they can. However, they can only run for the amount of time it takes to count, out loud, to thirty. After reaching thirty, the Freshy becomes a Rotter and must shamble along with the rest of the undead team.
4. The game continues until the last Refugee has been cornered and changed into a zombie.
I spent God knows how many hours playing this game as a child. And I was good at it, too. Whenever I was on the refugee team, I would always be the last one left alive. So much so that some of the other kids began demanding that I always start out as a Rotter. I declared it wasn’t fair that I should always be undead just because I was good at running; they would argue back that they wanted to know what it felt like to be the last person left alive and that I was ruining the game for them. Sometimes, it would even come to blows and we would scuffle the ways boys will, fighting over something that really doesn’t really mean a damn in the larger scheme of things. But to me it was important: I loved that silly little game more than anything else in the world.
I remember the feel of the mud squishing through my bare toes, the smells of shit and piss and boiling roots that wafted from the shanties and lean-tos, the constant coughing and hacking as dark smoke curled from barrels aglow with crackling flames. Free Town was the only world I’d ever known and I was enamored with every soot stained nook and cranny of it.
Some of the kids would lean against the wall that encircled our little city and press their ears so tightly against the bricks that they would leave bloody pucker marks when they finally pulled their heads away again; they would try to listen for the world beyond the wall, for the scratching of the corpses we knew were just on the other side. Tommy Ballister used to stand like that and daydream about exploring the wilderness beyond our home, of hacking his way through the undead horde and discovering cities hidden in the undergrowth of forest; and Sarah Thompson would be right there with him because, as she so often reminded us, her Grandpa had taught her everything she’d ever need to know about surviving in the outside world. They wanted to be adventurers, to find the artifacts and relics of a world we had never known. A world some of us doubted had ever really existed. But me? I was happy with my family’s tent, with the mouth-watering aroma of roasted rat on Sundays, with life inside the wall. The other world held no interest for me: let me do my chores, let my mother teach me to read and write, let me play Freshies and Rotters until it was time to bed down for the night. I was perfectly content.
Though it was never put to us in this manner, I can now see that Freshies and Rotters was basically a parable game. And the lesson it taught was the lesson of life outside the wall: in the end, you can’t win. Everyone becomes a freshy or rotter sooner or later; the undead team will just keep coming after you until there’s no refugees left.
Maybe if someone had explained it to us like that things would have turned out differently. Perhaps there would have been more fear of what waited out there in the dark. Or maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference what-so-ever. Maybe we would’ve thought it was just another made-up story to scare little kids like the Boogeyman or Charlie Manson. But atleast we would have had the facts. At least we would have
II. RETURN TO INNOCENCE
Sometimes, I awake in the darkness with tears still warming my face. I listen to the chirping of insects in the underbrush, to the distant call of an owl who sounds so forlorn and alone that he could very well be the last of his species. I awake with the feeling that something inside me, part of my soul perhaps, has collapsed like a sinkhole during my sleep, leaving nothing more than a dark, empty pit.
I curl into the smallest ball possible, pull my knees practically up to my chin, and wrap my arms around my legs. I try to tell myself that it’s only to help trap my body heat, to ward off the damp air that seeps into my flesh with a chill that penetrates the very marrow of my bone.
But I know better.
For some reason, laying like this makes me feel less exposed, less vulnerable. It doesn’t matter if I’m in some old structure with wood that smells of mildew or some cramped cave with its army of gnats and mosquitoes. I can never make myself tiny enough to escape from myself.
So I lay there and cry, all the while listening to each snap of a twig, each rustle of undergrowth, to ensure my soft sobs haven’t garnered unwanted attention.
The dream is always the same. I am small. So small that people tower above me like gods, their faces shining down benevolence and love but far too distant to ever touch. I’m with my mom and dad and they are on either side, each with one of my little hands entirely folded into one of their own. Above us are monstrous buildings of steel and glass; they gleam in the sunlight like the swords of angels and cast long shadows over the throngs of people who pass below.
And there are so many people, more than I ever thought possible. Men and women and children of all ages, all packed together shoulder to shoulder, some smiling, some talking into these weird little boxes they press against their ears. No one is running. No one screams or looks frightened in the least bit. They simply walk by, well-fed and clean, as if they are the only ones who exist. As if a crowd of rotters could be sidling right up beside them and they would never know.
In the dream I can feel a flutter of excitement so strong that it almost makes me nauseous. My parents and I are going to something called dizzy knee on ice and I am jabbering on and on about seeing the giant mouse and the duck who gets so mad you can’t understand what he’s saying. My parents laugh and squeeze my hands softly as they look at one another with a smile.
It’s one of those dreams that feels like a memory and maybe that’s why I always wake up crying afterward. But I know how absurd this is. For one, ducks can’t talk. Plain and simple.
And mice don’t grow to the size of the one we were going to see. But there’s this small part of me that feels this tugging: like there’s these little strings attached to my heart. And I want so badly to be pulled back into that surreal landscape of my dreams. To be in that place and never have to wake up from it.
I’ve thought about this a lot. Which really shouldn’t be any surprise. Other than scavenging for food and water and hiding in the shadows, there’s not much to do out here. I just try to stay alive and my mind turns over the dream again and again, picking it apart piece by piece.
I think what I’m really missing is Free Town and those huge buildings represent the security and safety I felt behind its walls. My parents and all the other residents, obviously, are still there in their little tents and shacks so that explains their presence and all the other people in the dream as well. As far as I can tell, the mouse and duck are just odd little things my mind threw in for reasons I’ll never be able to comprehend. But I definitely know why
