Before I never smoked anything except my head on a pole, drank anything except water and fruit juice, snorted anything but a pixie stick, and injected anything but a flu shot. That all changed when the world ended. We had nothing better to do than to do drugs, or people.

I met Skud on a rare sunny day (the world was perpetually cloudy about 330 days a year). Was walking aimlessly downtown like I do most days, looking for anything worth looting. I hadn't seen anyone I knew in about three months. I assumed that anyone I really knew had died, and I had no parents to worry about since I'd been an orphan.

Was in a mall, security gates were broken for most stores, the walls had already been covered in graffiti, everything was these days. We had nothing to rebel against anymore, yet we still rebelled. Turned a corner and walked right into Skud, though I didn't know his name at the time. Was rummaging through a pile of clothes I assume he had collected, holding stuff up to his body and glancing at his reflection in the glass. At the moment it had been a silver dress shirt with grey stripes.

"Not even man, makes you look like a spaceman." I had said. He looked up at me.

"Yeah? Yeah." He tossed it. And that's how we met.

"Where we going?" I ask, narrowly avoiding walking into a burning trashcan that some people are cooking sausages over. I'd call them bums or hobo's, be mean and degrading, but no one has much of a higher class then hobo. The highest is probably squatter, for those who've got buildings to sleep in.

"Sister's place. She managed to find half decent digs." Skud replies.

Half decent turns out to be a two story house with half the walls missing, a hole the size of a dinner table in the ceiling and a flight of stairs that creak so badly that you think you're going to fall through. Skud leads me to the living room, or I think that's what it was Before, and what it is meant to be now.

There are two couches, both wrapped in plastic, this is to keep the bugs out and so that they don't soak when it rains. Most people do this with their furniture, those who have some anyways. The walls have peeling wallpaper and cracked picture frames with no pictures. More graffiti covers the walls. There is a coffee table with three legs, the one side is held up by a baseball bat duck taped to it. The table is covered in stains, some leftover food and a plastic serving tray.

The tray has six lines of what I know is cocaine, and a bag full of what I know is weed. The girl who just cut up the coke looks up.

"Whose she?" Her teeth are yellow and her nose is red. Hair had been shaved; eyes are surrounded by shiny blue makeup. Make-up is no longer a vanity issue. No longer bothered by idea of beauty, it's done to keep us sane, to pretend that at least one thing in our lives is still normal. I don't bother.

"Fashion police, apparently I looked like a space man."

"Neat, d'you want some?"

I shake my head, Skud nods and goes over to the table to sit beside her. I stand, not knowing what to do.

"Over here." Says the other girl on the couch. She pulls up a wooden chair, "Sit." She tells me. I do, no other option really.

She looks at me when I sit down, really looks. She's examining me, so I do the same to her, incognito. People these days are either really interested in you, or really don't give a fuck.

She has a scar on her left check and it looks fairly recent. It starts near the bridge of her nose and goes diagonally down her face, ending near her jaw bone. Her eyes are slightly sunken in and she's skinny, but then again most people are. Her hair is brown and shoulder length, scraggly. She's wearing clothes that are too small for her, probably from the kids section of some store, and her cheeks have circles of rouge.

When she's done looking me over she taps me on the nose,

"Dolly. What are you called?"

No one really uses their real name anymore, it's useless. It's useless to have an identity because now everyone is the same, equal in darkness. If you want to be called something in particular, you tell them, otherwise people give you names or refer to you as 'hey you' or something like that.

I think, what do I want these people to call me? Since Before I've been Chilli, Rita, and Scarlet.

"I'm Girly."

"Well you certainly aren't Boy." She winks and smiles, and hands me a joint, "Smoke Girly." It could have been a question, but she say's it as a demand.

I've never even smoked a cigarette, but it takes me about five seconds to realize that my whole 'straight edge' mindset doesn't really work in a world where you breath more carbon dioxide than oxygen with each breath you inhale.

So I smoke.

And I cough.

And I fly.

Dolly lets me smoke the whole joint to myself, "New girls' prize."

The room is fuzzy. The smoke makes shapes. A dragon, a flower. I can hear Skud and the other girl snorting coke, it sounds disembodied because from where I'm sitting, I can't see either of them.

"What is she called?" I ask Dolly.

"Mrs. Clean."

It takes me two minutes to get it, then I start laughing.

"Ahahahahahaha, ahahaha, ahahahaha, ahahahahahaha. Fuck that's clever. Do you have any food?"

Dolly pulls out a bag of peanuts from her raggedy purse, she also hands me a beer, "You're going to need that."

"What for?"

Peanuts really stick to your tongue and cheeks. I almost choke, cough, then gulp down the beer. Never drank that before either, it's bitter but I like it.

I want to get up, but I'm melting into the chair. I'm ooze, ooze-woman, the Oozinator. And the Oozinator is enjoying her peanuts.

Munch.

Crunch.

Munch.

Crunch.

Peanuts are the fucking bomb.

Slurp.

Munch.

Crunch.

Slurp.

"Do you want to see your new room?" Dolly asks me, pulling me upright so that I'm floating instead of oozing.

"I have a room?" But I'm really not surprised, and also relieved. This place is way better then the room I was sharing with four other people. People invite others to stay with them all the time, there's no room for greed in this world.

I'm petrified walking up the damn stairs. I cling to the railing that's attached to the wall, noticing for the first time the distinct smell of wet dog that perforates through the house. I'm not looking forward to the daily walk up and down these stairs that I'll need to do. My new room is the first by the stairs, and it is already being occupied by a black guy with dreads, sleeping on a mattress on the floor at the moment.

"That's Marley. Bob's 'biggest fan'. That's what he likes to think anyways. Great guy. You get to sleep on the top bunk Girly."

I look over at the bunk bed, it's almost as rickety looking as the stairs, but it's got a dry mattress and a pillow and even some covers (all covered in plastic wrap), so I know I'll welcome it with joy. Dolly seats herself on her bunk, looks up at me, and giggles,

"Do you like girlies?" She asks me, eying me coyly.

"Never thought about it." She's biting her lip.

"I think you're cute." She smiles, showing me she's only into me if I'm into her. I blush.

"Thanks, you're cute too."

"Come sit."

I do.

In a few minutes we're giggling and making out on the bunk, Marley obliviously snoring. She smells zesty, probably washed recently. That's good to know. There's running water and soap in the house. Her skin is soft and I melt under her fingers. I havn't been intimate in so long. I forgot how good people feel. Her lips are soft and press gently on mine, her tongue moves in an out of my mouth. I chase it, vaguely thinking on the back of my mind that what I'm doing is 'naughty'. I giggle into her mouth, she looks up, bats her eyelashes and then snuggles into my chest.

"It's nice to hug, don't you think?"

"Yes, you're cozy Dolly." Everything is cozy, my eyes, and feet, and brain is cozy. Suddenly she sighs, deep, long, and sad.

"What's wrong Dolly?"

She doesn't answer for awhile, so I just feel her breathing against me. She shifts to look into my eyes,

"Where you ever in love?"

The question surprises me. I haven't thought about love for so long, not since I heard Mitch died. He was my boyfriend from Before. In fact we broke up the night of. I had loved him. He had loved me. But after four years he didn't want to marry me. He wasn't ready. I still cry pitifully over it sometimes. Then three weeks After I heard from a mutual friend that she saw him get shot by police. He was stealing fries from an Ice-Cream truck.

"Yea, a long, long time ago." I answered.

"Before?"

"Yes."

"I've never loved anyone before."

"Your lucky."

"Am I?"

I thought about it. I remember laughing together; I remember getting our dog, our first kiss, our first fuck. I remember the brand of his cologne, though I haven't smelt it since then, I remember dancing on the boardwalk, and snow-angels, and Christmas presents, and birthday presents. I remember feeling safe. I remember Love.

I also remember our first fight. The first time he slapped me, and the last time. I remember our yelling matches in the Laundromat. I remember calling him names and punching him in the stomach, and crying, and sobbing, and losing my trust in him I remember telling him I wished he never existed. I remember Hate.

"I don't know."

She snuggles deeper into my chest after kissing me quickly on the lips, "I don't think it matters anymore."

"Neither do I."

And with thinking that, I don't know whether to laugh or cry, so I just fall sleep, wondering what tomorrow will bring.