stampede, stampede i say! // mirela

"Oh, wow, that's not what I meant to grab," Nick says to himself, scoffing at the frozen left leg in his hand. Honest mistake, really, he makes his way back upstairs -- good thing he also forgot to microwave it. He tosses it back into the freezer with a heavy THUD... thud thud pitter patter as it rolls from the icy shelf onto the creaky floorboard. 

With everything going on, he had been a little mentally preoccupied, if you know what that means. Lots of silly mistakes, ridiculous and stupid and when it comes to Nick- that's a pretty dangerous thing to be. He was already slightly mentally unstable, just this morning he had been screwing the nuts out of his desk to save them for the nuclear fall out coming in five years. Part of Nicholas had always wanted something apocalyptic to happen, and now that it was him and Matty and Fern in it together, he's never been more excited for the world to fall. 

He thought about it over breakfast, pulling the waffles out of the toaster and eating them straight. Father's voice memorialized in his gut, he hadn't ate anything sugary in years. No syrup, no chocolate, he was convinced it'd rot his teeth straight to his brain and it'd all turn to goop. Fall out his eyes and all, he tossed the waffles between his two hands as he walked downstairs again. "Whew, whoo, hot hot hot-" it saved forks this way. 

Matty was getting tired of the dish pile up. 

But that's why they had Fern! Matty would take the shot gun and Nick would take the pistol, and they'd shoot looters and zombies through the skull, and Fern would be throwing- I dunno- kitchen knives from the second story. She'd be in her wheel chair by then, and Nick made a mental note to make a trigger for the wheels to shoot spikes out. That way she could run over crowds of zombies at a time, they could start with the damn Theft twins for practice. 

She'd be a riot machine! See, it was all coming together. And everything would be fine, just the three of them in a lopsided wooden house; Nick had to check the trips again. Electricity breakers out by the fence, he had to reassess how they held up every so often. It was a procedure he liked more than taking his hrt shots, getting shocked by the wires and the breakers was at least something he didn't have to wait for. 

Needles fucking suck, he'd started taking it personal whenever he killed mosquitoes. They had it coming, Nick thought as he locked the door behind him. Over sized boots slapping his ankles, the flaps never tightened completely down -- he still had so much more to grow until he could really wear his pops' clothes.  

He locked up behind him, closing the door after a "I'M GOIN' TO THE FENCE, TELL LOGAN I LOVE HIM-"

"GOOD LUCK, IDIOT," one of them yells back, and he snickers to himself. Nick flips the key ring around his finger, twirling it as he whistled and he tried not to overthink the path way. You see, this is how most people get lost in life- they see the path in front of them, and they think and think until they're left rotting in their own skins. They die before they ever take that first step, that first mistake, and Nick never understood it. Life's just a rat in a bomb field, a broken rear view mirror on a land mine. 

Except, watch your step, step wrong and you will actually lose a leg in here. 

Like Fern! 

Nick walks straight, around the right side of the house. That's where most traps are, most break in's occur from the right. You get stabbed in the ear? It'll be your right one, people are partial to the right side often times. Probably because more people were right handed in district three, it's the safe side, the familiar side. He stuffs the keys in his pajama pockets, singing some show tune that had been on the telly he walked past in the morning. Things just found a way to get lodged in his brain, often enough. 

He's always focused on something- don't ask him what, but Nick's never been one to get lost in his own emotions. Just fantasies and day dreams, he didn't worry much -- that's pussy talk for second guessing yourself. And in all the ways Nick was smart, he always knew it was best to trust yourself, lest you miss out on all those small little things. 

Like the afro he sees, peaking over a car hood. 

Bobbing and overturning junk as if she belonged in the pile, Nick didn't think much of it at first. 

Cool, he thought, the junkyard's coming alive! Like the apocalypse had started early and it would be the machines that did it all end after all, he can't say he's surprised. He never liked the way the ceiling fans were always above him, like they looked down on him for being so human. 

"Wait a min..." said with a squint, twirling the keys into his palm with a cha-chonk and wielding them between his fingers. He remembered that, sometimes, people come along and go through his shit, and that he hated the way they'd judge his things. Almost offensively, why would somebody break in and not steal his things -- were they not good enough? Fuck that, his shit was dope! He made them himself, and he was proud of all the accumulation that littered his house and yard and poured off into the desert ends of district three. 

He cleared his throat, throwing a rock at the window shield the girl dug behind, "AYE, THIS SHIT'S NOT FREE Y'KNOW," maybe Matty would hear it and cock the bazooka out of the upper floor window. Just kidding, they don't have any bazookas. 

Yet.

"YOU BEST TIP ME FOR WHATEVER YOU'RE TAKING!"

Ridiculous, utterly- the nerve of some people. If only they were all as respectful as Nicholas de Rolo.