A changed world

The 2020 Corona pandemic was just the beginning. No one knew that, of course, but it was the start of the end of the world as we knew it. In the summer of 2023, the second pandemic hit, but it was just a flu. Much like covid-19, the 23-flu wasn’t anything big. A few million people dead, not a big deal in the grand scheme of life. But then the third pandemic hit in the beginning of 2024. We had barely gotten a vaccine for the 23-flu and not even a quarter of the world had taken it because most still had their silver hats made from the covid-19 craze. They were wrong. Covic-31 killed half the world. Almost 4 billion people died within months and by 2025, world’s population was under 3,5 billion. Of course, Mother Nature wasn’t finished. The ones she didn’t take during covid-31, she made sure to take the year after when the last deathly pandemic, covid-33, hit us in 2026. Four huge pandemics cut the world’s population from almost 8 billion people to less than a quarter of that in just six years.

It’s 2032 now and the world is trying to get back to some kind of normal even though we’re barely 2 billion people left. Governments are changing fast, and anarchy rules a large part of the planet. Civil wars are an everyday thing now, thanks to the weak government and the strong private gangs and mafias’ ruthlessness.

That’s why I moved here. London is one of the last somewhat stable cities in Europe, despite England in general being a country at war between two powerful mafias. But it’s not like I had anything, or anyone left to keep me in Sweden. My parents died during the third pandemic and the fourth one took my husband and our daughter. As soon as I had buried the last of my loved ones, I left. Left everything behind and ran for my life. My luck was to run into Veruca Kaminski in the airport when I arrived in London. She was there, saying goodbye to her granddaughter, the only one she has left after everyone else died in the pandemics. She saw my distress, maybe even my grief, and she asked me if I needed somewhere to stay, offering me her basement because it was empty now that her granddaughter wasn’t there anymore. I accepted, intending only to stay for a few days, maybe a week, but now it’s been six months and I’m still here. I don’t have any plans to leave either. I like my basement. It’s quiet and dark and lets me be alone to do what I love doing. Reading. And writing. I write novels and publish them online and I have people actually paying to read the shit I make up, how crazy is that? It’s always been a hobby for me, the writing, but now I live of it, which is awesome. I don’t have many friends, though I know a few people from the local library and shops that I regularly frequent. One of the younger women working at the library asked me to join her and some girlfriends for a drink, and at first I said no, but she was quite convincing and here I am. At a pub. A real pub, not the kind I write about. And to be honest, I don’t know what I’m doing here.

“Hey, you made it!” Janice exclaims happy as she comes nearer but she doesn’t hug me. We don’t know each other all that well, so hugging would be weird anyway. Right?

“Hi, thanks for inviting me” I chime back, needing to speak loudly over the music in the bar. Janice smiles warmly.

“Of course! Come join us at the table, I’m just going to get us some drinks, okay?”

I nod my agreement and watch her disappear into the crowd. Looking around, I spot another familiar face from the library sitting at a corner table with three other women.

“Tamara, you came!” she smiles when she spots me too. I nod smilingly.

“Yeah, I’m here.”

She gets up to go help Janice with the drinks, and I smile at the other three women. Two of them smile back friendly, but the third one has a scowl for me.

“You’re that freak who always takes out the most ridiculous romances, aren’t you?” she says, and I frown looking at her. She does look familiar but there are a lot of employees at the London Library so I really couldn’t say if I’ve met her before. Forcing a smile, I nod again.

“Yeah, that’s me, living for the good romances” I reply as cheerful as I can, trying to defuse the situation before it even begins, but the angry woman isn’t on board with that. Why is she even angry, I haven’t done her anything. I think? She scowls at me again, looking down with the most arrogant sneer I’ve ever seen.

“There’s nothing romantic about those books you read and write, it’s all rape and grooming, if you ask me” she says, her eyes clearly intending to insult me and I guess she knows I write too then. I don’t write under a pseudonym so if she knows my name, she will know my work too, seeing as she works at a library.

“That’s why it’s a niche” I inform her, really trying not to let her get to me, “it’s not for everyone.”

Ignoring me, she turns towards the other two woman at the table who have been following our bickering quite intensely.

“Ugh, I hear she lives in a basement and stays in the darkness for days with only her books as company, I mean, it’s no wonder she writes freaky stuff like that, because seriously, imagine how big a freak you have to be to live like that?” she laughs, speaking to them as if I’m not even here anymore. Pain rips through my chest despite my best efforts to avoid it, and I so, so wish I could ignore it, but I just fucking can’t.

“Do you know why I spend all my time in my dark basement surrounded by books?” I ask, forcing all three of them to acknowledge my presence but speaking at her specifically. She raises an arrogant eyebrow, and if I was a stronger woman, I would smack her across the face. But I generally don't condone violence.

“It’s because of people like you” I hiss accusingly, “selfish people not capable of showing any kind of compassion or care towards anyone but themselves. At least my books never make me feel this fucking shitty.”

She smiles as if I’ve just complimented her.

“You’re gonna die alone and only your disgusting books will miss you” she counters, smiling triumphantly at me. I’m so angry I can’t even cry, so I force a smile back.

“We’re all alone when we die, but I’ve made my peace with it. Have you? Who will mourn you when you take your last breath? It sure as shit won't be all the friends you don't have because you're such a fucking bitch to them.”

Seeing her face falls as her confidence fails, I spin around on my heels and pushes my way through the crowd. About halfway towards the exit, I bump into someone huge and hard, but I’m too angry and hurt to even look up.

“Excuse you” I bit out, shoving my way out of the pub and into the fresh air of the autumn night. The wind is light and the sky dark with rain clouds, but I’m too embarrassed to go back in for my jacket. I’ll just come back and get it another day. Maybe even not that. Maybe I’ll just write that jacket up as lost. I’m not even a few hundred meters away from the pub, when my emotions get the best of me. Sinking down onto the top of a wall, I let them take me over completely. I never imagined myself sitting on the edge of an abandoned playground crying my freaking heart out, but here I am. The playground is one of the better ones so it’s hard to understand why it’s abandoned. It’s down in the ground so to speak, as if someone decided to dig a huge hole about 1½ meters into the ground and build a playground down there in the sand. The wall is all around the area of the playground and one a small stone staircase leads in and out of it. But the vines and other plants have taken over from the kids who once played there, probably every day, because it looks to have been a great playground. I would have loved a playground like this when I was a kid.

“Are you okay?”

The voice is quiet but definitely masculine. I look up, barely able to see anything through my haze of tears and the darkness surrounding us. A man stands a few meters to the side of me, but he takes a small step back when he sees me and I know I must look like a drowned mouse or something, all teary-eyed and red-faced. Great.

“I’m fine” I say, nodding to amplify the statement, but my lie doesn’t hold up and I look down again. The man is quiet for a moment, but then he sits down next to me and something warm is placed around my shoulders. Warm and leathery and smelling very much of man. It’s his jacket, I realise. Feeling even more embarrassed, I shake my head.

“You don’t have to be nice to me, just because I’m crying. I’m fine, really” I mumble, trying to make it sound like the truth, but my words come out hollow. I can hear it too.

“No one has ever accused me of being nice before” he replies calmly, with a little wistfulness to his tone. I look up at him, sitting right next to me. He’s handsome, for sure. Even in the darkness surrounding us, I can see the marked features of his face and the sharpness in his eyes. Dark haired and dark eyed, just the way I write them. The black t-shirt and dark blue jeans do suit him, I must admit. As does the dark tattoos down both of his arms and up the sides of his neck. I would bet my livelihood that he’s covered in them under that shirt too, probably covered in even more than just the ones on his upper body. Not that I'll ever find out. Men like him doesn't go for women like me. That's for sure.

“Then what do you call this?” I ask, nodding down at the leather jacket around my shoulders. His eyes look down at me with seriousness, as if he’s seriously considering my question even though it was meant more of a sarcastic comment.

“Easing a guilty conscience” he replies after a few seconds, making me frown at that reply.

“You haven’t hurt me and you’re not the reason for me crying, so nothing for you to feel guilty about.”

He thinks about that for a moment while his dark eyes roam over my face. What is he looking for? Signs of abuse? More tears? He won’t find any of it on my long, wavey and very blonde hair or in the green of my eyes. I’m as Swedish as they come, to be honest, at least in the appearance department.

“Projected ease of a guilty conscience. And someone did hurt you” he replies, stating it so painfully calm that it’s like he’s merely saying that the sky is blue. Is he projecting his own bad conscience of a different situation or trying to rectify the current of my situation with someone else having hurt me?

“Yeah, well....” I mumble, not sure what to say.

“A guy?” he guesses, but I shake my head.

“No, I got into an argument with a friend of a friend, I can't remember her name; I don’t even know her.”

“But she made you cry like this?”

His tone is suspicious and curious. I shrug, not wanting to go into full details about my embarrassment and misery to this handsome stranger. Because suddenly it seems ridiculous and stupid.

“She hit a nerve and once I had started crying, I couldn’t seem to stop again.”

We sit in silence for a moment, and I’m amazed at the comfortable ease there is to it. I don’t know the man, nor does he know me, and still, it’s just nice to sit here next to him. Well, nice and creepy. He’s a stranger and this isn’t the best part of town. Especially not when a man looks like that. As I realise that, I get to my feet.

“I should go, but thanks for the gesture” I say, handing him the jacket as soon as he’s on his feet too. He looks around us, but the playground is deserted and nothing or no-one can be heard.

“Go where?” he asks confused, while not looking at me yet.

“Home” I reply, not sure how that wasn’t obvious to begin with. Now he looks at me.

“Where is home?”

The question should have creeped me out, but the way he says it sounds more caring than intimidating. So, I nod for the west side of the playground.

“I’ve got a dark basement full of books not too far from here, so I can walk. I think I need the fresh air anyway.”

Staring down at me for a long moment, he obviously doesn’t understand my snarky remark, but still, nods confidently.

“I’ll walk with you, it’s not a safe neighbourhood.”

He gestures for us to start walking, but as soon as we do, something strikes me.

“Aren’t you going in the wrong direction? You were heading that way before” I say, pointing towards the east where he was going when he stopped in front of me. He nods.

“I’ll double back, it’s not a problem. Sometimes a knock to the shoulder can make you take a detour.”

The words are said with a smile, but I frown.

“A what?” I ask, but then it hits me. My cheeks flush with more embarrassment. “Oh god, you were the one I bumped into back in the pub, I’m so sorry, I should have paid more attention to where I was going.”

He laughs and the sound makes something fly inside my stomach. Butterflies or bats, I’m not sure.

“I’m a big boy so I’ll be fine though you do have a very pointy shoulder.”

The joke makes the both of us laugh. He puts the jacket over my shoulders again and I smile unknowingly at the gesture.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re being nice to me” I remark, looking up at him walking next to me.

“It’s a good thing you know better then” he states, not really a joke or a snarky remark, more like a statement. We walk in silence for a while, but then I feel the need to break it.

“You haven’t told me your name” I say, making sure to not look at him this time while saying it. He stops. I must stop too and look back at him.

“It’s Kieran” he says, reaching out a hand to greet me properly. I accept it and his palm is warm against my cold fingers.

“Tamara.”

We smile at each other, and those damn wings fly again. Pretty sure it’s butterfly-bats, because there is such a thing, right?

“So, you live in a dark basement full of books” he says, starting a conversation which I’m a bit surprised by. He doesn’t seem like the talkative type. “You read a lot?”

I nod without looking to the side.

“When I’m not writing.”

Damn, did I mean to tell him that?

“What do you write?” he asks curiously, but then frowns: “Romance and shit?”

I laugh out loud and some of the tension in me loosens.

“Sometimes” I agree, nodding to myself, ”but mostly I write in a smaller niche, so to say.”

“What have you written? Maybe I can read some of it.”

He sounds genuinely curious, so I let out a nervous laugh.

“It’s published online so feel free to read whatever you want, but I’m not sure if you’re the targeted segment for my kind of writing.”

“Because I’m a man?”

He makes it sound like that’s a bad thing, but from what I’ve seen so far, he’s not the bad kind of man. Well, maybe he is, but it's the right kind of bad boy.

“Well, yeah, mostly that” I admit, inhaling sharply while not sure if I should elaborate or not. Most people, especially men, doesn’t seem to find my kind of writing particularly to their liking. My target segment is probably more housewives so bored they daydream of dangerous excitement and horny teenage girls swooning over bad boys and undying love.

“Now I’m even more curious. What kind of kinky shit are you writing?” he asks, his tone only half joking while being accusing too. Which makes me laugh.

“The kinky kind” I tease with admission, but then I force myself to stop laughing. “The dark romance kinda kinky shit.”

“Ah” he says understandably, nodding as he keeps looking ahead of us, “dark romance: that’s when the bad guy ravishes the innocent virgin into falling in love with him.”

I choke on a laugh. He’s not wrong.

“Sometimes it’s like that” I admit, not really wanting to go into too many details with this tall, dark and handsome stranger. Seriously? Did he just step out of a page or some shit?

“It’s that the kind of man you like, the bad guy kind?” he asks, making me blush with embarrassment. That’s how men usually think; that just because I write it, it must mean that’s how I want it. But I write a lot of dark shit and most of that I won’t want to happen to myself or anyone else in real life. I shake my head at his question.

“I don’t know what kind of man I like to be honest. I just write them like that. It's all fiction and fantasy; not a diary of my personal life.”

I look up and notice that we’re right in front of Mrs. Kaminski’s house.

“This is me, by the way.”

Kieran stops and spins towards me.

“What kind of man do you think I am?” he asks, pinning me with a hard stare while he steps into me, so close that our warmth mixes.

“The unreal kind” I exhale, suddenly out of breath because he’s so fucking close. And so freaking handsome. His scent is all around us and it’s the most intoxicating scent I’ve ever had in my nose. This is the scents I write about, for fuck’s sake. How can this man even be real? Kieran’s dark eyes are so impossibly serious as he stares down at me.

“The bad boy kind who could take you out of your dark basement and show you what real darkness looks like?”

Heat flushes my every cell. I nod dumbfounded.

“Is that what you want?” he asks, now more curious than serious. I nod again. Geez. He’s so freaking close to kissing me and my lips tingle in anticipation.

“Tamara? Is that you, dear?”

The voice of my landlady shatters our intimate moment. I lower my head and smile at the interruption.

“My landlady with the impeccable timing” I remark, making a move to take off his jacket but he shakes his head at me.

“Keep it. It’ll be my excuse for coming back.”

Those damned fluffy wings are like dragon wings now. Especially when Kieran smiles so secretively that my pants nearly drop from the sight of it.

“Goodnight Tamara” he says calmly, taking a few steps back while keeping those dark eyes fixated on me.

“Goodnight Kieran” I whisper back, my eyes unable to look anywhere but at him anyway.

“Tamara, dear?”

Mrs. Kaminski calls again and I look up towards the small porch.

“I’ll be right in” I call back, but when I look towards Kieran, he’s gone. The darkness has obscured him even though it still feels like his eyes are on me.

“You’re home early, dear, did you have a good time with your friends?” Mrs. Kaminski asks me, making me force a smile for her.

“It was… different” I smile, nodding for her to get back inside. “It’s too cold out here for you in that outfit, come inside, I’ll make us some tea.”

She’s wearing her nightgown and slippers, probably just woken up from her sleep, but I know she sleeps poorly so it’s not a big surprise. Smiling gratefully at me, she squeezes my arm.

“Perhaps it’s time to try out that Swedish nighttime tea you’ve talked so fondly of, no?”

Even after decades in London, she’s never lost her Polish accent and I admire her for that.

“Of course, Mrs. Kaminski, I’ll go get it” I smile, but she frowns and tsk’s at me.

“I’ve told you a hundred times, Tamara, please do not call me that. I am Veruca to you and we are not formal with each other. Mrs. Kaminski was my mother-in-law, God rest her soul. And I will not be compared to that old hag.”

Hiding my laugh, I nod for the old lady.

“I’ll try to remember that. Now go get the kettle stared and I’ll be up with the tea in a moment.”

But when I enter the darkness of my basement, I get an uneasy feeling spreading all over my skin. Am I alone down here? I’ve never felt this before, this basement has always been a safe haven for me, but these goose bumps doesn't lie.

“Hello?” I call out, mentally kicking myself because they always call out in horror movies right before the killer attacks them. I turn on the lights, but there’s no one in my living room. Forcing myself to relax, I turn for the kitchen and scream my lungs out in terror. Because Kieran is standing right in front of me, so impossibly handsome and unreal in my cramped basement.

“You scared the shit out of me” I laugh, but my laugh is quelled when Kieran grabs me around my face and presses his lips against mine. The kiss is so unexpected and yet, so welcome. I’ve never been kissed like this before, and I will bet my everything that I will never be kissed like this ever again. Not even my late husband, and he was a damn fine kisser, ever kissed me with this much passion. Pushing me backwards in the living room, my back hits the doorframe to the bedroom and Kieran makes sure to pin me against it with his hard body while he sucks out every little bit of my kisses as he can. And it’s a lot. When it feels natural to take it to the next step, Kieran stops kissing me and pulls his head back to look down at me. His dark eyes are lit with lust and my own face must be flushed with the same, because it feels like my skin is on fire.

“I was robbed of the goodnight kiss your eyes were offering me” he mumbles, his eyes roaming over me as if imprinting every detail in my face. I’m too stunned by the kiss to even reply, so I just nod my agreement. Kieran smiles a little crooked.

“Goodnight Tamara.”

He releases his hold on me and I nearly fall to the ground before my legs accepts the sudden weight again. Smiling wider at that, Kieran spins around and leaves the basement. It takes me several minutes to be able to even think again, and then I remember the tea and Mrs. Kaminski.