The Beginning

January 5th, 2017

Pizza rolls may be the only snacks I'll eat for every meal of every day. The pepperoni ones, at least. I'm not a fan of combination or any other sack of flour that tries to influence my taste buds with its chunky and less than apt flavor.

I hear a shuffling behind me like someone going into the fridge. I ignore the shuffling until it sounds like a possum decided to rummage through the leftovers and knock anything breakable it could onto the floor. I turn around and see Eric holding the fattest dog I have ever seen in his arms with a phone in his mouth, reaching his long arm into the fridge.

I felt like face palming but figured the more time I take to do something, the more things will get broken by Eric's necessity to create chaos. "What do you think you're doing?" I ask smartly.

Just because he's older doesn't mean he's smarter. I'm obviously the one in charge here or else I wouldn't be the one who cleaned the kitchen only a few minutes after I let my second plate of pizza rolls cool down. Whoever cleans the kitchen owns the kitchen and right now I am the owner of the kitchen and totally not okay with him making a mess of it. "Hey; I'm talking to you." Getting up seems like such a drag, but I do it anyway in spite of my mental protests. His shoulder gets tapped by my finger, giving him no excuse to say he didn't hear me. Unless all the nerves of his body have gone completely numb, he's answering me when I speak to him.

He finally stops clamoring about in the fridge and turns his butt around, hitting me in the face with the head of the fat pug and it snorts like a pig, it's squished face probably smiling at my impending annoyance.

The phone in Eric's mouth falls to the floor with a resounding clack, leading me to believe he's going to blame that crap on me and get me in trouble. The stupid jerk.

He smirks and his whole face crumples into a hurt and mean expression. "Dad, Shay broke my phone!"

"No, I didn't." I say lazily, knowing the couple can hear me just fine. Why would I have reason to break his phone? I am nothing if not logical, alright?

The television in the living area is paused and Mr. Michaelson walks into the room followed by a stretching mother. I hear her back pop more than five or six times, her eyes widen, and she says, "Oo, that was a big one. Did you hear that honey?" She says, referring to her husband dressed in clad pajamas. He looks like the kid from home alone but old and wrinkly.

He looks back, smiling warmly, probably forgetting his son is a liar, carrying the neighborhood dog around the house, and making a mess in the kitchen. Not in that particular order.

"Yes, dear. You should have mentioned if you were uncomfortable." She gently touches his shoulder and they touch noses. I'll admit that one of the nastiest things I've ever seen in my life are the stomach worms from health class and even that can't top the nastiness of what I was seeing now. Mr. Michaelson turns around, suddenly businesslike. Doesn't he know that parenting isn't business? "Now, ladies first, what happened here?" I'm glad someone is seeing reason.

"I was eating my pizza rolls and heard clattering and stuff breaking behind me and turned around and I saw Eric digging in the fridge, knocking stuff down because he decided to bring a flea covered dog into the house. I called out his name and he didn't answer, so I went over and tapped him and then he turned around and hit me with the dog in the face. Then he dropped his phone on the floor and is blaming it on me."

Eric points at me, eyes clouding over with fake tears. The kids a good actor, I'll give him that. He puts down the dog and clenches his fist, looking angry with the fake tears only magnifying his actions. "She hit me—!"

"I did not!" I yell at him. "He's lying, I tapped him to get his attention."

Mom looks at me sternly, "now, Shay, it's not polite to interrupt people. He didn't interrupt you on your turn so show him the same courtesy."

I lower my voice down to a whisper, "but mom, he's lying." She glared at me and I shut my mouth, waiting on Eric to continue his stupid charade of mister perfect liar.

"She hit me and it startled me so I turned around. I really didn't hear her calling my name, so I turned around really fast and accidentally hit her in the face with Puggles. He really is big. Then she took my phone and threw it on—!" Suddenly a large burst of light shattered through the sky and I was blind to my surroundings for a moment. My mom screamed and I reached outward with my arms, trying to find something to grab on to. The light quickly went out and when I came to, I was lying on the floor. I had fallen to the ground. The whirring of the A/C had started to dim down and I noticed the lights were off.

Oh no. My pizza rolls. I leaned up to find my meal and found them on the floor along with a broken plate. When the light struck, it shook the ground and must've made the plate fall, me along with it. I suddenly wish I could go back in time and ignore Eric digging into the fridge so I could eat the last of my delicious pepperoni pizza rolls. I'm drooling at the thought.

I think someone must've said my name multiple times because I saw a hand in my front vision and watched, almost in slow motion, as the finger snapped. I reached up and grabbed the hand, wondering where it came from and how it got there. A floating hand. I get jumped out of the slow mo moment when I'm whacked across the back.

"Oh, right, what?"

I see mom in front of me, asking if I'm okay. "You spaced out there for a moment."

"Oh, sorry. What was that light?"

Mr. Michaelson pushes us into the empty room under the stairs where we find plenty of food, water bottles, and blankets.

"I'm going to go check out what that was. You guys stay here for a moment."

And so we did. I dug through my back pocket to find my phone and pulled it out, going to the news page. It was probably just a lightning strike by the house. I hope everything is fine out there.

The first thing that popped up was the headline: "Explosions At Every Corner: Lightning?" I clicked on the heading and it brought me to live footage in Denver, Colorado with a woman in the rain around fires of all sorts with people raging, running through the fires and I swear one woman stabbed a man in the neck. I do hope this is fake news.

"This is Teresa Wreckage reporting live from Denver, Colorado. Some say it is an act of God and others say it's the mother of all nature at work, but people have begun to explode. After sending in bomb experts, nobody at all knows quite what to make of this. We're at 4 hours of the explosions and people have turned against each other after surviving and murdering anyone they see. Others who have survived and not been crazed start to glow and then explode as well. The explosions reach as far as a ten or twelve block radius, so if you're watching this, stay clear of people because this could very well be a terrible dise— oh my god what's happening?!" Without realizing it, Mom and Eric had scooted extremely close to me to watch the news as well, probably realizing what I was watching is happening right now and it is most definitely not fake.

It must have been the cameraman who screamed because it was male and directly after the scream, the camera fell, only showing the tan legs of Teresa the reporter glowing. "What's happening to me?!" She glowed steadily brighter until I couldn't look at the screen anymore, and all three of us looked away. All we could hear was: "Oh god! It's hot! It's too hot! Ah—!" Before a ringing sound exploded into my phone and the camera went black.

I turned off my phone, knowing Teresa Wreckage News is no more.

Eric was clenching the blankets, mouth quivering and muttered: "oh, fuck."

I think the reason mom didn't knock him upside the head for that is because he might be right. Either that, or she just doesn't want to mother a child that isn't hers and I don't blame her.

I know, however, that wherever Mr. Michaelson is, I hope he doesn't explode because he is most definitely nowhere near ten to twelve blocks away from us.

I cover myself with one of the blankets and try to sleep, ignoring the fact that I am shivering and it's not from the cold.