The Underside

By Bea E

Bright. My eyes couldn’t focus on the white in front of me. There was nothing to see, nothing to discover, just white. My heart pumped life back into me and I felt restricted, I had to leave, run, I… couldn’t. My arms were bound to whatever I laid on. I tried to scream but my voice was gone. Then I looked to my side, left and right, and saw something to focus on.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781365350566

Book preview

The Underside

Acknowledgements

For my husband.

You are the waves guiding me home.

ISBN 978-1-365-35056-6

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Entry 001

Entry 020

Entry 090

Entry 030

Entry 091

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 1

Sometimes on the open stretches of road I think about it. When the wind whips through my hair, undisturbed by scissors and time, I think about what it used to be like. Open stretches of road weren’t riddled with stalled cars on a hot summer day, or snow that lay sleepy from a morning storm.  It was different now, and some how pure, as if the world had been cleansed. Steam towns had popped up and fallen just as quickly as they sprouted, when the winter months came and the food supply ran out they crumbled. These towns ran entirely off of steam and coal. The people alone had seen hard lives, and their bones and skin could tell you of their struggles and their fear of the harsh Terra winters. I had learned to stay on my own, at least this way I had food; I didn’t have to struggle like the others. But I knew as time went on I’d have to learn how to live with another human again.

When my husband and I became separated in a terrible blizzard and our clan had been pushed to the brink of death, I learned to hunt on my own, skin animals on my own, and make my own clothing. I wondered if he and my daughter had learned the same. I knew they would be alive, but still when I slept, the thought that I may never see them again crept through my dreams.

Often times when I dreamt, I was always running in a tundra, no snow just the sun beating down on me like the in the summer. When I would finally get within arms length of them, the ice would crack below and I’d drift away. Summer would come, the snow would melt and I wouldn’t have to worry about drifting away. I knew this much. 

I kept a single material possession on me (from my old life, before the ice age) a book on the world. I always liked to look at the photos, the colors, how green and vibrant the world was. I wish my husband never mowed the lawn, and I wish he never cut the ivy from our house siding. I wanted to live in a world of green, with spiders as big as my hand, and bobcats cuddled up in grass beds. I wanted that more than I wanted anything. Something tangible-- something pure. Sometimes I thought that because I wished so hard for it, maybe that was why all this had happened.

I knew somewhere that deep below the crust was a facility that had all my old neighbors and my family – I just had to find a way in. I had heard it was way north in the mountains, and then I heard that it was south towards the sea.  Often times I found myself going from north to south to east and west and wound up in a circle. I knew I shouldn’t listen to anything anyone had to say, especially when they created these dying towns with cannibalistic people and false hopes of finding anything remotely worth investigating. 

We stopped using the melted ice for baths, and drinking water when we found it was contaminated with nuclear fall out.

When had there been a nuclear war? I couldn’t recall. This was something I’d have to consult my book on the world about.  At some point, there was war- there is still war- but at some point it involved nuclear weapons. My first thought was if there was a base around the area I stayed at, then there had to be electronics and a functional city.  When I traveled to these pop up steam towns, they called it the Underside or Underbelly. I suppose if you were to look at a large puddled, you’d see the other side of where you stood. My daughter,