bambam "death trap" ramshackle | d2 | 8th

My brother lost the war and I lost my freedom. That's fucked up, right? When I complained about the nerve he had to come home five years later to play parent, he waved a family photo in my face. Like I'm supposed to care about dead strangers because we had our picture taken together in matching blue jeans. I couldn't stand to look at him — not thirteen years old and holding me in his arms, not twenty-three and acting like he knows me now as well as he knew me then.

That was the day I moved out. I knew you couldn't let me crash on your couch, but we found that overturned supply truck nestled into a barrier at the bottom of the hill. The engine had been ripped out, the wheels and tires were nowhere to be found, and nothing was left of the cab — not the radio, not the steering column, not even the windshield — but the graffiti-covered trailer was technically four walls and a roof. Somewhere the spring rain couldn't rot the stack of cardboard I pulled out of the dumpster behind the mercantile to use for a bed.

I still have that blanket, you know. The one you snuck me. I never figured out where you stole it from — I've been keeping an eye out for years and still haven't found fleece that soft anywhere else in Shear Hill. I know you still have the spare key for the padlock we stuck on the back, too. Yeah. I know that for a fact.

I liked living there. That spring felt too short — I guess it always does — but it was nice waking up with the miners, making an alarm clock out of the ANFO booms that echoed off the quarry walls below. I liked watching the symphony of mining blasts out at the far end of the quarry sending up a shower of dirt and rock and smoke, leaning against the barrier, pretending it was our own private box seats for a stage play about the war even though we both knew we were in the nosebleeds.

It was fun for you too, right? Throwing stones down there and bullshitting each other about how far they were going, absolutely certain that we'd manage to hit one of the buildings that had just sprung up? Bickering over whose rock made that big splash in the retention pond, even though we both knew that those ripples were from a goose taking off? Joking about tossing each other over the edge for cheating?

When the summer rolled around, the uninsulated metal box got uninhabitably hot. Just — absolutely fucking sweltering. That first day I woke up dying of heatstroke, I rolled all six of my possessions up inside that blanket, tied it up with my left shoelace, stuck it on Death Trap's handlebars, and peddled my ass up to the bingo hall just to hang out somewhere out of the sun. I thought for sure one of the grandmas would adopt me on the spot, or at least pity me enough to let me stay, but I guess they could smell the hooliganery on me. Bingo is serious business. Miscreants not welcome. I didn't know where else to go; I stashed my bike back in the truck and curled up in the bushes behind your place. Did you know that? I was always too embarrassed to tell you.

You were absolutely fucking fearless at ten. What happened?

It used to be me wussing out when we'd play pin the tail on the whitecoat, or getting antsy trying to nab some less-shitty shoes left along the shore of the quarry lake, or who needed the heckles of encouragement to squeeze between the fence posts that time we went prowling through Highland, sticky-fingered and hungry-eyed. Sometimes I wish we never went. That would've done a lot for my anger issues, I think — not knowing that everything being denied to us lived right at the top of the hill. Would've kept me out of a lot of trouble.

You remember that day, right? Our recon mission didn't last very long — I guess that's when I realized that Shear Hill trash was splashed all over us, pungent and permanent. We only made it four streets from the gate before that wannabe-peacekeeper with the peach fuzz on his chin and the rifle in his hand sniffed us out. Where did you go when we split up to get away? You know he caught me by the collar and dragged me out of my hiding spot — a hedge cut to look like a giraffe — and screamed at me for climbing the topiary. (Who the fuck has topiaries? War shortages, rationing, scrapping, and scrounging were our whole lives. These fuckers had time to sculpt their bushes? What a waste.)

He frog marched me right back to the gate — past houses that didn't look scorched or shelled or blown to bits — and threw me out on my ass. (And stay out!) What did you do with that brass eagle finial you pinched before you got home? You must've sold it. I'd've kept it as a souvenir. A trophy. But you know me — I'm sentimental like that.

L△LIA hesper hart 🐺 d9f done, ty for the extension <3