The Effects of Plaster

(written for Writers' Workshop, Sophomore year)

The explosion reverberated throughout the room, smashing windows and causing the walls to crack in long, jagged lines. Tyler jerked awake, narrowly avoiding being hit in the head by a falling piece of his ceiling. “What the-” His words were cut off as more plaster came raining down. Letting out a stream of swearwords, he dove for the doorway, thinking he would wait there until the shaking stopped. A hole appeared in his crumbling walls, showing a man with a backpack strapped to him. He stood there, just a split second before the wall came down in a pile of chippings, sending powder flying. Coughing into his arm, Tyler waved at the air. Still struggling to breath, he tripped over to the place where his wall had once been, and looked out, hoping to catch sight of the mysterious figure that had appeared, but there was nothing to see but a bunch of rubble.
Shaking his head, Tyler looked around his plaster-strewn floor, searching in vain for the cloths he had slipped off the night before, prior to sliding into bed. When the search proved futile, Tyler hobbled over to his dresser, cutting his bare feet as he went, and pulled out a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Jerking the jeans on over his boxers, Tyler thought about the figure he had seen. Who would be standing outside a house in the middle of an explosion? The shirt slid over his head, catching on his ear, before resting on his shoulders.
“Where are my shoes?” Tyler muttered to himself. He looked around, catching sight of his ruined closet. Tyler wandered over, careful about where he placed his feet, attempting to avoid any more cuts. He failed, and even had to stop once as a particularly sharp piece of rubble embedded into his foot. Cursing, and fighting the urge not to hop up and down on one foot, Tyler continued his journey.
The closet was in ruins, and it took a good ten minutes before Tyler could clear enough rubble to even hope to find his shoes. The first was in the corner, the second more towards the front. Tyler pulled them on, and picked his way less carefully over to his destroyed wall.
His street was in shambles. Everywhere he looked there were houses crumbling, holes in walls, windows shattered on the street, and every step caused a new plume of powder to rise up and engulf his shoes. It was deserted. Not a soul in sight. Didn’t anybody know what happened? Wasn’t anybody else around? Figuring he may was well explore, and see if anyone else was alive, Tyler turned, and came face to face with the figure he had seen before.
The skin was pale, almost transparent, and the eyes held the haunted look of a person who had lived too long, and seen too much, but he couldn’t have been more then twenty years old. His hair was cropped short, nearly shaved, but it had a dead, dirty look to it, as if it hadn’t been washed in weeks, and was slowly rotting away. On his chest, there was a little “Hello my name is:” name-tag, and long, loopy letters had written in the name Phil. It was burnt around the edges.
Phil turned suddenly, as if annoyed with Tyler’s scrutiny, and glided down the street. His gait couldn’t be described as a walk. It really wasn’t one. There wasn’t the bobbing motion that comes naturally to humans, but instead an out-of-world smoothness, as if his feet weren’t really touching the ground, only floating over it. Frustrated with a growing sense of unease, Tyler hurried to catch up.
They walked for a while in complete silence, Phil as if he needed to find something, and Tyler wondering what was going on. After fifteen minutes, Tyler could take no more. “Where do you live?” He asked the pale figure next too him. Phil turned his head, and the look he gave Tyler begged for understanding, but he said nothing, and soon turned back to what awaited them ahead. Tyler, however, continued to study the young man next to him.
Where could he have come from? Tyler wondered. There wasn’t a spec of plaster on Phil anywhere, despite the fact that he had walked through the street, same as Tyler had. Even if he hadn’t been in a building that collapsed, he must have gotten some of the dust on him, but it wasn’t there. Not the smallest, miniscule piece. It didn’t make any sense.
Tyler had fallen behind Phil, lost in his own thoughts, and would have walked straight into him, had he not tripped over a spare piece of rubble in the middle of the sidewalk, and plummeted to the ground, landing just a few inches away from Phil’s right toe. Phil looked down at him, and Tyler could have sworn he saw amusement flickering in the back of Phil’s eyes, but it was gone so quickly there was no way to be sure. Tyler brought himself up with dignity, and turned, only to gape, openmouthed at what Phil was staring at with deep, pensive eyes.
A crater resided where the orphanage had once been. Glass was spread out in bits all over the street, and tiny pieces of charred wood could be found around the area. Tyler bent down and picked up a small gold chain. “Someone bombed the orphanage?” He asked in complete and utter horror. Phil only stared. He opened his mouth to speak and started beeping. Tyler looked on, confused before he jerked awake.
The piercing blue eyes remained vivid, but slowly faded as Tyler looked around the room, half expecting to find a hole in his wall, and plaster covering his floor. Instead, he found his room as clean as it had been, with his cloths from the night before in a line leading from the doorway to his bed. Trying to shake himself out of the dream, Tyler rolled out of bed and headed into the bathroom.
He was in front of the mirror by the time he realized he was fully dressed, and bits of plaster were sticking to his shirt.