"So...wha'd you think?" He asked. 

He was breathing quite heavy, as though he'd carried a body on his shoulder up a mountain. He waited a minute, thinking he hadn't spoken. Thinking there was a possibility that he had asked the question in his mind. He was quite nervous, you know. A minute turned to two. Two turned to three. On the fifth, he looked to his side and asked again. 

"I said wha'd you think', didn't you hear me?" He tickled the snow on the ground, not meeting her eyes. 

She was beautiful to him. He fancied her. An antique. Something he wished he could place on a shelf and look at for the rest of his life. Her toes, feet, her legs, thighs, hips, her stomach, her chest, her weal, frail arms, her hands and elegant fingers, her long neck-- enough space for him to hide his eyes, her crooked chin, her skinny lips, her trail of freckles leading to her brown eyes. 

He looked up wanting to see them. She was looking back. She looked down to her lips. He had forgotten the duct tape he placed before they left. 

"Oh, gosh. Sorry." He laughed. "I forgot about that. Never be too careful, ya'know." 

He positioned her back against a tree, and took hold of her cheek with his right hand. With the concentration of a surgeon, he took a corner. He couldn't go too fast or too slow, he had to go at the right speed, or else he'd hurt her. He didn't want to do that. 

"Pain is temporary. It goes away." He said. 

She looked at him, and tilt her head. 

He shut his eyes and yanked. 

Silence. 

Kneeled in front of her, with his head resting on her chest, he felt her lips. She rested her head on his. 

"Wha'd you think?" He asked for the final time. 

"Of?" She said. Her voice was steady. Deep. Humorous considering the position she was in. 

"The silence."

"It's nice."

"You don't like it."

"I do like it."

"It took me months to find it."

"it's perfect. Just like I imagined." 

"Really?" He asked. So surprised, he hit his head on her chin as he got up to look at her. 

"Yes."

"The tress and the sky? Even the amount of snow?"

He was asking the impossible. But to soothe his soul, she told him what he desperately wanted to hear. 

"I'm impressed. Even the scent brings me back." She said. 

He stood and paced around the area, and started to laugh. An exhausted, worrying laugh. The kind that comes from a man who's been working for years without rest and was finally told he had days of vacation. 

"Poor him." She thought.

He had a healthy body. A man who ate potatoes, meat, and a salad for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. His thighs could squash watermelons. He had sausages for fingers. And a fighters back.But his eyes...they looked restless. His brain was probably rotting. 

"You're very secretive. And you have one friend-- she was a hassle, by the way. You carry a flip phone and only take work emails.  Do you have any idea how hard you were to find?" He kept laughing. 

The place he chose was exceptionally beautiful. They were surrounded by pine trees, except for an opening in front of her with a view people pay thousands to see. She felt like an eagle, looking straight ahead, wondering what would happen if she threw herself from the peak, would she spread out wings and escape this wonderful, terrifying man? But she was tired, and covered in bruises. It was a pain to move a finger, and her eyelids carried 10lb. dumbbells. 

"I want to make those steady eyes nervous, and that voice yours scream." He said. 

She closed her eyes and waited for whatever he had planned. Of course, she knew. She had written the ending, and how funny that it turned out to be hers. 

"Show me how a heart beats again." The little girl said to his father. 

"Here, give me your hand" He placed his bear-like hand over hers and brought it to his chest, "repeat after me." 

"Boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom." 

This was forbidden. Talks about the world of the past always end up with the 'criminals' heads on a stake, but the poor man couldn't deny his daughters' curiosity. Death, to him, was more bearable than watching his daughter mold into the boring kids she called her friends. 

"And how did the belly go when we needed the invisible thing." She asked, her voice getting louder. 

Her father looked around the street. They had to be careful, her excitement was starting to show. 

"Shh, remember to whisper. This is a secret...okay?" 

She hid her lips and bobbed her head. She placed her hands on his stomach and tapped twice, urging him to get on with it. 

"It was called air. And it went like this." 

He flexed what was left of his stomach and repeated the bittersweet motion. Oh, how he missed doing this. He missed the taste of fresh air-- the taste of anything! The breeze and the heat, the col, sweat and tears, the necessity to be careful or else you'll face a risk and get hurt and feel pain, he even longed for the sight of blood.

He opened his eyes and outline his daughters chapped lips. 

"Would you look at that? You're kind of smiling." 

"I can't, I wish I could see it." 

"I can show you once we get home." His excitement was showing too, and their walk soon turned into a pitiful run to return home. 

"Really? How?"

"With a mirror." 

"A mi-roar." She repeated. 

"Close your mouth or your teeth will fall out. LEt's go home, we're too obvious now." 

"Will you tell me everything?" She asked, sensing the opportunity. 

"Yes, yes. Now be quiet and listen... The world used to be filled with colors, green, red, blue, brown, white, and they were on everything. And, and, everyone knew how to laugh, cry, and shout. People had hair everywhere, and there fat and skinny people. There were other living things too. We had things called animals, and they could have zero legs to 1000 legs, and necks that could reach the height of two of me. And we had things called jobs. Things people had to do to get a green piece of paper called money. And with money we could buy things we wanted and needed. Like clothing. And--" 

"Animals and clothing? Slow do--" 

"Yes, yes, I will show you when we get home. Clothes were things we used to cover ourselves with, sweetie. Now, shush and listen. We needed to eat and drink, and if we broke one of the rules we would be punished--"

"Like now?" 

"Yes, but we weren't killed just because we talked about things. We were sent away for some time and then we would be set free (hopefully). There were people who would move their body to sounds and there was a lot of noise coming from everything, from cars and bikes and planes. And with planes we could go to other far away places and see other people with different sounds and clothing and animals. There was a giant circle up in the sky called the sun that would give us light, and when it got dark, like now, there was a grey circle called the moon.  And people walked there too but they traveled with a rocket. Things were hard and easy, fun and boring. And when we like someone else, a lot a lot, it was called love. And then you would eat together and laugh together, but none of that happens now. None of it. It's all gone." 

He stopped in front of their doorstep. His two feet gone and her daughter' mouth open with a missing tooth. 

"A sun and a moon." 

"Yes."

"Animals."

"Yes."

"Colors..."

"Yes, sweetie. Yes."

"And we don't have that now?"

"No. We don't" 

"Why?" 

"Because there were people called scientists who were forced by a group of people who had power over other people called the government. And the government told the scientists to work on something in a room called a lab and they accidentally made something very bad and let it out of that room. And now we're here. And the government we have now rules over us with our ignorance and fear. And we can't do anything about it because apparently there's nothing wrong. And the people responsible for this shit hole can't admit that they fucked up." 

His daughters' attention was on the cracked ground.

"Used to be a street." He thought.  

"Dad, can you help me look for my tooth?" 

Defeated, he knelt. He looked around and saw a person walk repeatedly onto a wall. A little girl pulling what was left of her mother's hair. Multiple heads on posts. The dome that was built in less than a day. His neighbors from seven years ago. If he thought hard, he could still smell the steak on the grill and the taste of the beer on his tongue. But none of that now. If he thought too much, he could show it. He practiced his expressions in front of the mirror while his daughter slept. 

"Found it!"

"Hm?" He turned to look at the pebble she called her tooth.

"That's good, sweetie." He said as he patted her scalp. 

"Show me the mirror now." 

"Close your mother's eyes and fix her head, it's tilted. I'll show you everything in a book of pictures. We used to have that too." 

"Okay."

The father and his daughter walked into their beat up home. This was a world full of black and grey, while policemen with masks stood with machetes, and mothers and fathers sewed their kids limbs bacon, and the elderly played with cards. Music wasn't played, food wasn't needed. Cars were hidden, there was nowhere to go and nothing to see. The world was nothing but boring and dead.