the wanderer #3

his eyes bit into the back of his skull as they violently tried to recoil the first sight of the sun in months. realizing how long it had really been since he saw natural light suddenly made him take measure of all that he had become over the last half of a year. going into "the den", he was a scared, fresh-faced boy in his early twenties. not really knowing what life was all about & still desperately relying on the wings of his older brother. now, as he caught his image in the smeared reflection of a rotting city bus, he saw something completely foreign. a man stared back at him. a man he would never have expected to know in his previous life; but now, in the wake of all that had occurred, a man he had watched hatch from the green flesh of a frightened boy that had to start the world over way before he was intended to. he closed his eyes. if he could still cry, he would, but he knew that that part of him had been stripped away. he had cried when he realized he may have lost everything on the surface. he had cried when the two from New Sydney had left to look for water & never returned. he had cried when he stopped hearing the faint rhythm of civilization above him, and he cried when he woke & found his brother, hanging with his belt around his neck. that was the last time. the tears shut off after that.