The Brewing of a Storm

Taylor L. Baron

If names, characters, places, and general context included in this book are similar to anything real, it was purely coincidental and not intended. Copyright ©/2021 Taylor Baron. All rights are reserved by the author. Absolutely nothing included in this book may be used or reproduced in any similar manner without written consent from the author, with the exception of small quotes for sharing purposes.

First edition; 2021

Chapter One: The Drive

Everything around us was completely normal as if it were an ordinary day, but it felt like the entire city had been blown up along with the Presidential house. Not a single word came from anyone around me, packed into Hagen’s small car as we hurriedly made our way down the road.

“Hagen slow down!”, Janet demanded, quickly breaking the eerie silence.

“You are going to draw attention to us, just act natural and go the friggen’ speed limit. We are far enough away now and there’s no reason for anyone to suspect it was us, so just relax”, she clarified.

I felt the car slow down to a much calmer and safer speed. Janet’s much needed calming words about everything being ok, were able to allow me to take a deep breath and relax a smidge, but I was still scared out of my mind about what would be happening next. We had come up with a plan, but we hadn’t thought much further than the point we were sitting in right now. I guess maybe we were all kind of skeptical about our odds of success because of how it was obvious, we all had no idea what we were doing. Up until this point, I hadn’t even been informed about going to the middle province. I didn’t even know that anyone had discussed going to the middle province after all this was over.

“Why are we going to the middle province? I don’t ever remember this being part of a plan or discussing it at all, actually.”

The awkward silence I was now sitting in while waiting for an answer, felt like a good enough answer in itself.

“It wasn’t part of the plan; we never came up with anything for after the initial one. Jeffrey and I just kind of decided it while you and Janet were inside planting micros. It was mostly a last minute due to panic kind of decision”, Hagen explained.

“Well, I mean, we can’t stay here, right? Plus, there is that friend of yours that the doctor guy said you were supposed to meet up with in the first place, right? So, I was thinking maybe she knows something that we don’t, that we need. You got a letter, so maybe she got one too”, added Beard.

“Where’s the rest of the guys?”, Janet asked, while throwing looks of concern back and forth from Hagen and Beard.

Hagen looked at Beard through the corner of his eye.

“They ditched”, Beard replied nervously while giving the same strange look back to Hagen.

“What do you mean, they ditched?”, Janet asked sternly, demanding an answer.

The tension in the car was growing to a very uncomfortable level. I found myself sinking into my seat and bouncing my focus off of each person, just waiting for someone else to say something.

“They left, said things were going too far and that they didn’t want to be a part of any of it anymore”, Hagen responded nervously. 

“Did you kill them?”

Leave it to Janet to ask something like that.

“No, I didn’t kill them! why would I?”

Janet shrugged her shoulders and turned away to look out of the window,

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because you shouldn’t trust people who turn their backs on us. They are probably turning us into the cops the minute we speak.”

“I doubt it, they wouldn’t do that.”

“You think too highly of people, and its cause’ you’re weak. Both of you are weak; useless.”

“Excuse me?”

“Shut up and just drive faster, don’t mess it up more than you probably already have.”

I wanted to say something, I was fond of both Beard and Hagen, but in the moment for some reason I felt like a complete stranger. I am now realizing that I had gotten deeply involved in illegal acts, with people I knew nothing about. It wasn’t calming my nerves much to hear them go back and forth about killing each other, while wondering if what Janet were saying could possibly be true.

I heard a click and a strange mans’ voice fill the car after watching Beard reach his hand over to press some buttons in the middle.

“We should keep an ear out for what they are saying”, he asserted before increasing the volume.

“An ear out for what?”, I asked.

“What they are saying, on the news, they will talk about what happened and what’s going on. Most importantly, what they know and who they think did it. Jesus somebody needs to get this kid up to date. I’m tired of explaining to him basic shit. They don’t have radios in that place you come from, either?”

“Aye, go easy on him. It’s not his fault.”, Hagen snapped at Beard.

Usually, I would have taken offense to Beard saying something like that, but I understand it can’t be easy dealing with all of my questions, especially in a moment like now, so I brushed it off.

“It’s all good guys, I get it”, I replied.

While sitting there in the car, I found myself getting lost in the mirror reflection of Janet’s eyes. They were this deep green color that I had never seen in eyes before, and something about them made it difficult to focus on anything else.

“What are you staring at, freak?”, she snapped while making direct eye contact with me through the mirror.

“Huh? What?”

Her voice caught me completely off guard, and the laughter and snickers in the car added to the embarrassment rushing through me.

“She’s pretty huh?”, teased Beard.

I could feel my face burning and knew that it meant that I was probably turning as red as it felt I was.

“Shh… Shh… listen”, Interrupted Janet while motioning her hand towards the radio.

Thank God, I thought to myself as Beard turned it up even louder. I don’t think I could have handled another second of the ongoing conversation.

“We are standing here outside of the President’s house in what appears to currently be ruins. An unexpected attack had occurred less than an hour ago from now. Unaware of the reasoning behind the attack, we have been instructed to advise everyone to stay indoors with their families until further investigation. Please stay tuned for reoccurring updates on the situation, until then please stay indoors and stay safe.”

The message playing through the car, was music to my ears. For now, we seemed to be in the green. I am nervous about how this is going to play out later today though. I guess from this point forward, I am going to be addicted to the radio.

“That’s great! We’re in the clear!”, Beard pronounced with joy.

“Yeah, for now”, added Janet.

“Let’s try to stay positive, shall we?”, added Hagen.

I let out a small laugh before trying out my first tease in the group,

“I don’t know if that’s possible for Janet.”

Beard started busting out laughing in an overly exaggerated way.

“Oh! Shit! Look who’s a funny guy now! The kids got jokes.”, he teased.

I know that Beard was obviously being sarcastic, but I was still pretty proud of my joke, especially when I noticed Hagen start laughing.

“So, what’s our plan then? We going or not?”, Janet asked while pulling a cigarette out of her pocket.

“Don’t light that in my car!”, Hagen shouted before furthering his words. “I think it’s best we stay in a hotel tonight and come up with a detailed plan, and then make a go at it hopefully by tomorrow. We have a tough boarder to get through, and we can’t just show up and think we will gain access without questions.”, Hagen explained.

“Agreed”, Janet countered while rolling down the window and giving her cigarette a light.

“What did I say?!”, Hagen angrily demanded, while basically getting into a car crash to turn his entire body and look at her.

Both Beard and I couldn’t help but bust out laughing at Hagen’s dramatic reaction to Janet’s cigarette.

“Just drive, old man. We got a hotel to find.”, she replied before pressing it to her lips and taking in a deep breath.

Sometimes I wonder if Janet has a death wish for herself. It seems like every single law that is set in place, she feels the need to go against. I haven’t quite yet figured her all out. I’m still leaning on the idea that her tough act is just her sense of humor, or if she is trying to cover something else up with it. It wasn’t just Janet that I felt I was having a hard time understanding, though. I feel like everyone here is still a bit of a mystery, and maybe that’s another reason why trusting them with my life might be stupid, but there was always something about them that I felt I could naturally trust. Sometimes I find myself wondering that if they saw me in my actual body, they might treat me a little bit differently. I feel like they look past who I actually am because of the fact that I’m disguised as Chantedy.

Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with Chantedy, but I just feel her appearance doesn’t exactly suit my true personality. I think the more obvious reason would be the fact that she is a girl, and the less obvious reasons are a bit more detailed. My entire life I had always been a simple kind of guy, and I feel like Chantedy’s clothing style choice doesn’t exactly match with that. Also, I think Hagen still somewhat views me as the Chantedy he has known all of these years, and I can’t exactly blame him. It has to be weird to see me as anything else aside from the usual Chantedy, when I don’t look like anything else but exactly that. I am hoping that once we figure this whole mess out, they will finally be able to get to know me as my actual self.

We were all silently listening to the radio as we made our ways further down the road. I can’t wait until we find a hotel, because I have never gotten to see one in real life before. Hotels aren’t really a thing in the middle province. We don’t really get out of our homes much, it’s kind of depressing. Though my excitement for this hotel was through the roof, I couldn’t help but to still be drowning in paranoia about all that was going on, though. Everyone seemed to be as calm as possible, which I found difficult to understand how, with the amount of stress and chaos that had been flying around at the moment. Janet was sunk down in her seat, puffing on a cigarette. Beard was concentrated on the passing scenery out the window, and Hagen was of course concentrated on the road.

“There’s one there! Pull over!”, Beard shouted at the top of his lungs while motioning towards the window with his hand.

Hagen made a quick sharp turn in the direction Beard had insisted.

“Suppose’ that’ll have to do”, he said while speeding into the parking lot.

At this point I felt like it was necessary to remind him about the thing Janet said earlier; you know… the whole go the friggen’ speed limit comment.

As we came to a stop in an empty parking spot, I opted to turn around to get a view out the back window of the hotel. We had driven into the parking lot so fast that I didn’t get a chance to see it. It was very large in size, even bigger than the party place Chantedy’s mom had chosen.

“Well, here it is, guess this will be our new home for a while”, Hagen said lazily as he swung open the car door.

“You ready for this, kid?”, Beard asked while looking back at me.

I can’t comprehend why Beard keeps calling me kid, he does realize that I am only three years younger than him, right?

“Yep, sure am”, I said in a sarcastic tone, attempting to keep it cool to the best of my ability, with this extremely high-pitched voice I was currently stuck with.

“Alright then. Let’s go”, he said before biting his lower lip, as if he were trying to hold back a laugh and swinging open the car door.

As we walked our way to the entrance of the hotel, Janet lit up another cigarette and Beard continued to ramble nonsense as usual.

“I think we need to stick the rules to the little guy, what do you guys think?”

Janet turned to look at Beard with immense confusion, as Hagen shook his head dismissively.

“What the hell are you going on about now, Jeff?”, she asked.

“You know… the rules”, he retorted with a devilish smirk in her direction.

I already knew that he was referring to me and at this point I feel I am starting to get used to all the crap he lays down, so I was ready for whatever. Janet seemed unamused as she continued to stare at him with the same look, waiting for further description.

“The oldest gets the bed, middles get the couch, and the youngest gets the floor”, he added, before busting out in laughter at his own terrible joke.

“I swear, you say the dumbest things. I wonder sometimes where that brain of yours went. Maybe if you get it stitched, some good would actually come out of that tragedy”.

Everyone started hysterically laughing at Janet’s joke, but I didn’t find it as amusing as everyone else seemed to. Joke or not, there is nothing funny about stitchings to me. They continued to laugh all the way up until we reached the entrance of the door, and it wasn’t until they turned around to open it, that they noticed the expression on my face and realized I wasn’t laughing. Hagen’s eyes grew wide, and he immediately wiped the grin off his face, and nudged Beard on the arm to do the same, which caught Janet’s attention as well. By the time everyone had noticed that they had insulted me, it felt like we were standing in front of the door for an hour of awkward silence before anyone decided to walk inside.

The inside of the hotel looked much more comforting than it did on the outside. The colors were warm, a lot of wood and greys, and there was a smell of freshly baked pastries, with a sizable hint of melted chocolate. Everyone here was dressed in uniform and by the look of their movements, they were robots like the make-up guy. There was a fireplace fully lit behind the desk we made our way to stand in front of, that I couldn’t help but turn around to stare at. I heard the robot lady behind me begin to ask Hagen questions that sounded personal, which only made me begin to feel nervous. Just as I was starting to worry if they were thinking something was odd about us, I felt Janet’s hand grab my arm and motion me to turn around.

“What are you doing? Stop staring at things like a weirdo. Right now, is strange times for the government and you never know if there are cameras planted in these things”, she explained while motioning her head towards the robot lady.

“Can I help you ladies?”, the robot asked with a freakish smile.

“We were just discussing how beautiful the fireplace is and I was telling him that I love your hair and totally wish I had it”.

Hagen and Beard immediately turned around in a little bit too obvious of a panic at the fact that Janet probably just called me him in front of a camera.

“Why are you guys acting so strange? What did I say?”, she asked while giving them a serious look.

Both Hagen and Beard started laughing, brushing their reactions off like nothing happened.

“Here is your key sir”, the robot lady said while holding up a card for Hagen’s reach.

He turned to take the key and thank her as Beard began to walk away.

“Alright let’s get to our room guys, we don’t wanna’ waste our vacation time standing around and staring at each other. I know I am fun to look at, and I’m flattered and all, but let’s get this show on the road already”, he said teasingly while motioning us to join him in his walking.

The four of us arrived at yet another door and I began to wonder why nobody was opening it, so I decided to step up.

“I got it”, I said before stepping forward to press on the metal doors.

This time, I felt Hagen’s hand grab me and pull me back from the door. It was odd having Hagen jerk me around, usually it was Janet. Confused, I watched the three of them nervously scope the room and turn a dark shade of red. When I turned around to look at what they were seeing, I noticed all of the robots turned in our direction with empty stares. Hagen began laughing nervously while stumbling across something to say.

“This kid… I don’t know what has gotten into this one lately. She just got a new pair of eyes recently and I don’t know if those eyes of hers are getting to her head or something. She has been doing weird stuff all day.”

Before anything else could be said, or anything could have become any more awkward, the metal doors slid open. I found myself being pushed inside alongside more awkward laughter. The minute the doors closed around us; I began scanning around at everyone’s expressions. They all looked extremely tense as we stood there in silence and the metal room began to do what felt like, move.

“You guys, okay?”, I asked nervously.

I didn’t get a single answer out of anyone. They just continued to stand there in complete silence.

I was beginning to feel like I had really messed things up when the doors opened again, and I got pushed out once more.

“Let’s go, kid”, Beard said as he placed his hand heavily on my shoulder and led me in the direction of the crowd.

We walked past many doors with numbers, until we reached one to stop by. Hagen held the key up to a laser in a glass box until a clicking sound occurred, then opened the door for us to make our ways inside.

Chapter Two: The Hotel Room

“What the hell is wrong with you?!”, Hagen screamed furiously.

“Stop touching things! Don’t touch anything else! In fact, don’t do anything! Just don’t even move!”, Janet added to the yelling.

“No! No! Not just him! You are the problem too! What is wrong with you? You almost blew our cover with that whole pronoun mix up!”, Hagen furiously asserted towards Janet.

He was so angry that I thought his brains would pop out of his skull in any second from now.

“Everyone shut up!”, Beard shouted.

“Do you realize how loud you are being right now? You are going to draw even more attention to us with all this”, he added in a yelling but whispering type of voice.

Everyone went quiet as Beard went on explaining the situation,

“Don’t you get it? There is nothing wrong with anything we did. I mean, sure it was a little odd that this one pushed on the elevator doors, but the explanation that Hagen gave wasn’t bad. Yes, it was weird that he looks like a she and Janet called him a he, but whatever its all good. Don’t you guys realize that things like this can happen with simple explanations that don’t give away anything that will harm us? I’m sure strange family’s walk in here for vacation every day. It is our expressions and awkward reactions that is giving them strange vibes, even stranger vibes than pushing elevator doors. So, everyone just needs to chill out and relax a little. Stop acting like a bunch of weirder weirdos than you already are.”

After hearing Beard’s outburst, I now realize that pushing on the doors was the reason everyone started flipping out. It’s so easy to mess up and risk blowing your cover around here, especially when you are from pretty much a whole different world, and the stress that we are under right now isn’t making anything exactly easier. At this moment everyone is high strung and I’m starting to think it’s a good idea to maybe purpose a drink and to start putting together a plan, so that we have one less thing to stress about.

“I see everyone is really tense at the moment, why don’t we get some drinks, sit down and relax, and start coming up with a plan so that there is one less thing for us to stress about.”

“Ah, see that’s why I love this kid. He is always coming up with the right thing to do. Let’s get some drinks. I could really go for a beer right about now.”, countered Beard before falling back onto the overly sized bed in the middle of the room.

“We are not all gonna’ share that right?”, I asked jokingly with a smidge of concern.

“Kid, I already told you, you are sleeping on the floor tonight”, Beard joked.

For the first time in my life, I can safely say that I was relieved to hear that I’d be sleeping on the floor. I turned over to my right to see Hagen turning on the TV and changing it to the news channel. I almost forgot that we were supposed to be keeping up with the news to know what was going on.

 When I looked back over to my left, I watched Janet take a seat on the couch, and Beard press a button on the wall to begin taking an order for beer.  I felt my nerves clench as Janet made eye contact with me. She gave me a warm smile and began patting her hand on the open couch seat next to her.

“Come on Nathan, take a seat, you deserve it.”, she said while continuing to pat her hand on the cushion.

I figured why not and nervously made my way over to the couch to take a seat. I don’t know what it is, but something about Janet makes me feel awfully nervous and I just can’t seem to put my finger on what it is. Maybe it’s the fact that I watched how much damage those tiny little explosives of hers could do. She might be a tad bit intimidating now, at the fear that she may be a little bit insane. My thoughts on Janet were abruptly interrupted by an important broadcast being played on the TV.

“We are back to you again with further news regarding the explosion. We have not yet been able to locate the president from the disaster, but we have not yet given up and we don’t plan on it anytime soon. The military has just recently decided to join the search team a couple of minutes ago to help in the search. We currently still have no idea, who or what could have caused this, but there are very smart people are currently working on that as well. Until we find the explanation of this terrible act, we have been told to advise you to continue to stay indoors…”

Janet’s voice interrupted the rambling man on TV,

“Hey, don’t you think it’s kind of odd for us to go on a family vacation in this moment?”,

Knock, Knock, Knock

“I got it”, Beard said joyously while making his way over to the door.

“It’s the beer”, he added.

The three of us stayed quiet until we heard Beard seal off the deal with a thank you and the closing of the door. Beard didn’t hesitate a second before cracking open the bottles and passing them around.

“I don’t know about you guys, but I could really go for one of these right about now”, he said while placing one in each of our hands.

Hagen fell to the chair of the desk in front of the window before letting out a sigh and swearing underneath his breath,

“We gotta’ go now.”, he said in a panic.

“Hold up… Hold up… You guys are doing it again. Think damn it… think”, Beard spoke while looking at the panicking Hagen in a desk chair.

Beard took a sip of his beer before continuing to speak his words of wisdom,

“Not everyone listens to the news, right? Maybe we could have been driving in our car here when it all happened, and we were listening to the pop station like normal people do and not the news. Look, the TV is on now, right? And the Delivery bot just showed up to give us the beer and spotted us with the TV on, right? So why don’t we just walk out of the room like we are in a panic about something we literally just found out?”

He took another sip of beer and motioned a cheers towards Hagen’s direction,

“let’s let it be you, you seem to be good at the whole panicking thing”, he included sarcastically.

Hagen let out a deep sigh while nodding his head in agreement,

“Alright yeah, whatever, I will take care of it”, he said before making his way out the door.

After the door closed behind Hagen, Beard took another sip of his beer and turned around to look at Janet and me.

“That settles it then… now everyone chill out and drink your beer”, he stated before falling down onto the bed again, clenching his beer tightly in his hand while some of it sprayed out the top.

I took a sip of my own beer and took a deep breath. Watching how everything was blowing up already, wasn’t a very promising feeling. I knew I needed to help figure out a way to bring everything back together, and figure it out fast. If I got us through the first step, I knew deep down that I could get us through the next one as well. I needed to think, and I needed to do it fast, I didn’t have the time now that I did to come up with the other plan.

As I sat here trying to think of a next step, I began to wonder why we were so worried in the first place. The president is obviously dead, there is no way he survived that explosion, and they will never figure out that it was us. The main issue now was for me, trying to figure out how to get back into my old body. I have no idea what these guys are so worried about. They are in their bodies and good to go. I took another sip of beer and decided to speak my state of mind.

“What are you guys so worried about?”

Both Janet and beard turned to look at me with an immense amount of confusion.

“What do you mean?”, Janet asked.

“You guys have nothing to worry about, is what I mean. They will never figure out it was us who did it. We looked like two casual school students going in for a project, not people coming in to plant bombs. Besides, the bombs we planted don’t even exist outside of our circle because Janet is the only one to our knowledge that knows how to make them. Everyone and everything in that explosion, including the President himself is gone. You guys saved the world. It’s all done and over with now, so as Beard keeps saying, just relax. If anyone has anything to worry about here, it’s me. I am in the wrong body and have no idea how to get back home. Plus, don’t you think that Chantedy’s family is going to wonder where their daughter is and where Hagen went off to? We have a bit of time because they are barely ever home, but I bet our time is cut short because I am sure they will come home as soon as they can after seeing that news report. We need to figure this out now, and figure it out quick before our disappearances bring up suspicion and blow our cover. If Chantedy and I don’t get into the correct bodies fast, all of us are screwed. So, there is the start of your next plan. We need to find a way to get to my house and we need to find my uncle so he can patch up this mess, I explained.

After explaining myself, we all sat in silence staring at each other. I began to wonder just what was going through their heads. The intense silence was cut off with the sound of Hagen opening the door to enter the room.

“I’m back. Everything is good, don’t worry”, he said after shutting the door behind him.

“What did I miss?”, he asked.

“Sit down Hagen, I think we are starting to figure things out”, Janet said before sliding over to make room on the couch.

Hagen walked his way over to the couch, with a confused look on his face to take a seat.

“The kid’s pointing out the obvious once again here, Hag”, Beard said while tossing his empty beer bottle into the waste bin by the desk.

He began pacing the room frantically, while running his hand repeatedly through his hair which always fell in his face.

“What are you pacing for?”, Janet asked.

“I think we are in way over our heads in this one”, he explained.

By the way these guys were acting, it was almost as if they had forgotten how dangerous this whole thing was from the beginning. I began to wonder if they would all run off somewhere and ditch. I guess now was my turn to start taking some hits at tough guy over there.

“What? You scared now?”, I teased.

Beard stopped pacing and looked directly into my eyes. He looked pretty thrown off by my comment.

“Nah, I ain’t scared”, he replied.

“Then why you pacing the room like that?”, I asked.

“Will you guys quit your damn nonsense, stop acting like children and just get to the point already?”, Hagen interrupted.

“I just wanna’ be sure this guy isn’t gonna’ run off like the rest or something”, I added.

“I’m not running”, Beard replied before grabbing another beer, popping it open, and taking his seat back down on the bed.

I replied with, “good” and went on to explain to Hagen what I had told the others, when he was gone causing more unnecessary drama. I felt a little less worried after seeing Beard’s reaction to my accusations of him being scared. I knew now that If I keep teasing him about his fears, there would be no way he would run away.

After explaining everything once again, I was nervous to hear Hagen’s thoughts on the situation. He kind of just sat there quietly with a deep, thoughtful look on his face for a couple of minutes, until he finally came across something to say.

“Alright, so that’s it then? We stick to the plan and find Chantedy.”

He then went on to ramble about what a mess Chantedy was and how he had no idea why she had been chosen for this plan in the first place. He referred to her as ‘useless’ and ‘spoiled’. I found his words to be quite harsh, but then again, I had never actually met Chantedy. I was starting to wonder after all he was saying about my parents, though. I wondered how they were holding up with Chantedy in the house. A horrible thought abruptly crossed my mind with the possibility that they were no longer there, that the government had already caught them. If she was as much of a mess as Hagen explained her to be, what if she had already messed everything up. I decided to brush these thoughts out of my mind and think about the plan to get there instead. No sense worrying when we were about to find out the answer anyways. I proposed the idea to the crew that we should all take some time and think about things, then come back a little bit later and share our thoughts. Everyone seemed fond of the idea, so that’s exactly what we ended up doing.

I decided to not grab another beer, because I didn’t want tonight to turn out like the last time. This was a whole different situation, and you never know what could happen, so I needed to be in the best state of mind to deal with whatever comes our way. Before thinking any further, my train of thought was cut off from the sight of the skirt I had still been wearing. It was awful enough being in the wrong body, but wearing these clothes was starting to bother me more and more by the minute. I decided that I wouldn’t be able to do anything any further until I changed out of this stuff and get some more normal clothes on. Knowing that none of us took any time to pack up spare clothing, I was hoping that someone here would know where to maybe find some.

“I need some help”, I said while glancing around at everyone.

“Yeah, we know that”, Beard answered back.

Could this guy get any more annoying, I wondered to myself.

“Ignore him. What do you need help with?”, asked Janet.

“I want to change my clothes. I can’t stand wearing this stuff any longer, or I will go out of my mind.”

Everyone in the room grew smirks on their faces, followed by laughter at my misery.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea”, Janet said.

“Why not?”, I asked.

“Cause it’s going to look strange and draw attention to us”, Hagen chimed in.

“Ya’ll think too much”, Beard explained.

All of our attentions focused in on beard’s comment.

“What you saying?”, I asked.

“Just wear whatever you want, kid. We don’t need to be your typical stitch family to stay off the radar. There are weird families everywhere. Plus, it ain’t really weird. You are a guy, right? What’s weird to me is seeing you in that skirt. Just wear some damn pants and maybe I will start taking you a bit more seriously.”

“Are you sure about this?”, Hagen asked.

“Yeah, why not. Just let the kid where what he wants. I know I’d be miserable if you put a skirt on me right now”, he explained further.

Beard’s somewhat close-minded statement was probably the nicest thing anyone has done for me since I got here. Him doing this for me, really made me start to see him in a new light. Maybe he wasn’t all that much of the jerk that he comes off to be.

“So, any idea where I can get some clothes then?”, I asked.

“Yeah, I’m sure the downstairs giftshop has to have somethin’”, beard explained.

Hearing those words come out of Beard’s mouth, was a much-needed bit of relief.

“I’ll go with ya’”, he included before walking towards the door.

I followed Beard out of the hotel room, into the elevator and all the way to the gift shop. The size of the hotel was massive. It felt like it took a year to arrive there.

When we walked inside, the style choices weren’t exactly what I had imagined in my mind. Absolutely everything looked the same, just in different colors. On every clothing item there was an annoying logo, and I was pretty sure that I was going to end up looking like a walking billboard for the hotel, or maybe another assistance bot.

Even though I wouldn’t be looking my best, anything in here was better than what I had on now, so I excitedly made my way over to the men’s section. When I arrived there, I grabbed the first shirt and pair of pants that I laid my eyes on. I was amused to see that Beard had been already waiting by the checkout line, just like Chantedy’s mother did. I laughed at the fact the two of them had a similarity and made my way over towards him.

“Alright, is that what you want?”, he asked when I arrived with my armful of things.

I joyously looked down at my choices.

“Yep, that’s what I want”, I said before plopping everything down on the counter.

The look on the cashier’s face was a tad bit judgmental and rude as she eyed the clothes I had chosen up and down, but I didn’t care a single bit. The only thing I cared about right now, was getting out of this skirt, and I could honestly care less about what people thought of it.

After the cashier packaged up our buy and Beard paid the bill for me, we made our ways back to the hotel room where everyone was impatiently waiting to see what I had gotten.

I wasn’t in the mood for holding up my clothing choices, so I decided to just walk past everyone towards the bathroom to change. I couldn’t wait a single second longer. The bathroom of course had a mirror to remind me once again how I looked. I stopped for a second to stare at my reflection which would never feel like mine, even with a change of clothes. I found my head spinning while the worrisome thought of the possibility that things don’t work out and I have to stay stuck like this forever. I don’t think that I could really ever get used to being in a girl’s body. Another guy’s body, maybe, but not a girl; it just didn’t feel right. I was hoping that this change of clothes would make things a little bit better though.

After quickly changing into my new pants and T-shirt, I immediately felt the relief I was hoping for. Thank God, pants, and normal shoes, I thought to myself as I opened the door to get a look at everyone’s reaction. Hagen, Janet, and Beard’s reactions were much better than the cashiers in the checkout line. They didn’t look at me with harsh judgement, but with joy instead.

“It’s about time this boy got some pants on”, Hagen said in a happy tone.

“Agreed, they look nice, Nathan”, added Janet.

Wait till she sees how they would look on me in my actual body, I thought to myself while letting out a slight smirk.

“Wait, there’s still somethin’ we need to fix”, beard said before making his way to the bathroom.

Confused, I decided to follow him.

“Like what?”, I asked.

“That hair of yours”, he explained.

He had read my mind with that comment he just made, but I don’t think I could bring myself to cut my hair; it wasn’t my hair to cut. Chantedy would probably be devastated to see herself with her hair gone, it would be purely selfish for me to do something like that. It wasn’t great having my hair like this, but I think I could stick it out a little bit longer. I mean, it can’t be that long until we switch bodies back, right?

“I can’t, man. Chantedy would be devastated if she saw her hair gone”, I explained.

“Ah come on, she would understand. I am sure she is going through hell right now as well stuck in your ugly body. Just do it”, he argued.

“No way man”

“Dude, she probably already started painting your nails and shaving your legs and you know it.”

“Doubt it.”

“Oh yeah? Ask Janet how long she could go with man hairy legs before shaving them off.”

“Not everyone is Janet, Beard.”

“Janet, would you have shaved them off by now?”

Janet looked as if she wanted to walk away from the situation and pretend, she had never met us.

“I’m not getting involved in this”, she answered.

“She doesn’t want to get involved in it because she knows she totally would have done it”, Beard stated.

I turned around to look at my current reflection in the mirror and started thinking about the things Beard had just mentioned. I couldn’t help but begin to wonder if maybe what he is saying could be true, what if she did paint my nails and shave my leg hair. Plus, I’m sure it isn’t easy for her either being a girl in a guy’s body, and I guess I could understand if she did something like that. It would take a long time to grow back, but who knows how long we will be stuck in these bodies for anyways.

“Alright, fine. I’ll do it”, I decided.

“These two are nuts”, Hagen mumbled from a distance.

Before I could say anything else, Beard pulled out a switch blade from his pocket and flicked it open.

“Hold up! You can’t cut his hair with that! It will look a mess!”, Janet explained.

“What do you care?”, asked Beard.

“Just do it, man”, I ordered.

“Oh my God”, Janet mumbled beneath her breath.

“It’s a sharp blade, don’t worry. I trim my Beard with it”, Beard added.

Looking at the nest of a Beard that he had, his words were actually not that reassuring. I felt his hands clench onto a fist of my hair. I tried to keep my head still as it got pulled back from him sawing his way through. Before I knew it, he was waving around a clenched fist full of long hair and laughing maniacally. Hagen was right, this dudes nuts, and I’m now nuts for going along with him.

Beards maniacal laughing was cut off by Hagen’s voice.

“When you two idiots are done messing around, I have the plan by the way. No rush though, whenever you are interested in hearing it.”

I felt a rush of panic run through me when I realized that I was having so much fun messing around, for a minute I had somehow completely forgotten there was a plan to be made. I noticed that Beard probably did the same when he panicked and put away his switch blade before even getting to finish my haircut. I stared in the mirror at the craziest looking hairstyle I had ever witnessed in my life, as he walked away to join Janet and Hagen. Without a choice I decided to join them and take a seat next to Beard on the couch.

“What are you thinking?”, I asked to Hagen after sitting down.

“The sewers are our only way to get across the border. There are guards there that will never let us through, but they won’t see us coming under ground, and well, tunnels are kind of my specialty. We should go tonight though, before they start looking further into the case. Plus, at night it is the best time to sneak around with it being dark and all. We really shouldn’t wait a second longer, though. It is getting darker as we speak.”

“What are we going to tell the hotel staff though, we are supposed to stay inside, remember?”, asked Janet.

“We just tell them that we forgot a phone or something at home and we need to pick it up. People around here can’t go more than a minute without a phone, so they would believe it”, he explained.

“Not bad really”, Janet countered.

“Alright well, what are we waiting around for then?”, Beard asked while making his way to exit the room.

“Let’s go”, Hagen said before standing up to follow him.

Janet and I made our way behind them to the downstairs lobby where we met up with one of the hotel bots. The bot of course stopped us with questions by the exit. Apparently, the robots were concerned about our safety. Wait till I tell my dad this stuff, he won’t believe it. Hagen explained to the bots what he had explained to us and just as he expected, they seemed to buy it. I guess people really are so crazy when it comes to phones, that they would actually risk their lives for one.

We headed into the parking lot together to approach Hagen’s car, and when we got inside, I couldn’t help myself.

“So, we are still going to finish this haircut sometime, right?”, I asked concerned.

Everyone in the car busted out laughing in amusement at the way I was looking right now. I think I’d take the long hair back over the way it is looking at the moment. I shouldn’t have agreed to let Beard touch my head; poor Chantedy, she is going to die when she sees this.

Chapter Three: Sewer Travels

The sun began to fall into a deep orange and red sunset as we pulled out of the hotel parking lot and headed down the road. I had absolutely no idea where we were headed, but I couldn’t help but to feel excited at the fact that I was about to be home again. I missed everything, from my mothers’ bacon in the morning to even my fathers’ nagging about my chores. At this point, I might have actually even missed doing the chores. My mind reminisced on memories of home, and ideas about the new ones we were about to make. I was wondering how my family was taking the whole situation and if they would get along with the crew, but the real burning question was how they would react when they find out I blew up the President and his house.

As we furthered down the road, looking out the window gave me thoughts about how life would be if everywhere in the country looked like this. I could only hope that my family would get a chance to see all of this as well. We had been practically living in the past this entire time and my parents deserved to see what the world really had to offer.

“Hang tight, we are almost there”, Hagen notified us.

The smooth relaxing ride in the car turned into almost hitting my head on the roof and falling out of the door. Sights of trees and branches banging against the glass windows, filled the outer proximity of the car after taking an extremely sharp turn into what appeared to be the woods. To be honest, I didn’t even know the woods still existed in this part of the country.

“Where the hell are we going?”, Janet yelled out frantically.

“We need to drop the car off here, figured it’s better if traces of us are harder to find”, Hagen explained while continuing to drive into every tree branch.

After realizing that his reckless driving was purposeful, I found myself enjoying the choppy ride through the woods.

“Hang tight”, Hagen said as mud began to fly up to the windows.

Everyone seemed to have the same thoughts going through their head, as all of us raised our arms in the air and enthusiastically began to cheer in excitement. Hagen decided to roll all the windows down in the car. The three of us were having the time of our lives as mud flew through the windows and entered the car, splashing off of our faces and covering the interior. This will be one of those memories that will go down in my mind forever. I had never quite felt a feeling as freeing as the one I was living right now. As much as I had wished this moment could go on forever, sadly everything must come to an end, and it was cut off by the car coming to a stop and Hagen rolling the windows up. I guess it’s time for things to get serious again, I thought to myself as everyone let out a sigh and clenched their door handle.

“Here we go”, Hagen said before being the first to swing open a door.

The rest of us followed behind him. By this point, it was pitch black outside and it was hard to see even a single branch from a tree.

“Follow me”, Hagen directed.

I still have no idea how Hagen manages to see like this. Without him, we would all be screwed.

“Stop”, Hagen called out.

“This is the destination”, he added.

The sound of running water filled the air as the glistening reflection of the moon lit up a creek. The three of us had the same question and confusion going through our heads as we all spoke at the same time, “a creek?”, we asked.

Hagen laughed, “yep, a creek; at the end of it is the start of a sewage line”, he clarified.

The three of us exchanged worrisome looks at one another towards Hagen’s statement.

“You want us to walk through a creek?”, Janet inquired in a worrisome tone.

“Well yeah, I thought I made that clear just now. This is our way in.”, Hagen countered confidently, before taking a step into the flowing water.

“Careful, it’s a little wet”, he joked.

“Yeah, no kidding”, Beard replied sarcastically while following in after him.

We slowly made our ways down the creek, following Hagen’s direction. The water wasn’t as shallow as I was hoping it would be, it almost reached my waste in some spots. I was hoping that the sewer drain would be a little less deep as we approached the entrance, which looked like a small cave made out of concrete.

“When we get inside, duck and try not to touch the top, there might be spiders’ nests laying around”, Hagen warned.

“Spider’s nests?”, Beard asked.

“What you scared?”, Janet teased.

Beard struggled to find a good response for Janet’s comment, no other words came out of him as we squeezed our ways through the small cement tunnel. Only a few steps in, and a funny smell started flowing through my nostrils that reminded me of rotting trash, which made me begin to wonder how long we would be down here for. I didn’t know how much of the smell I could handle.

“How far are we?”, I asked.

“Nathan, we literally just started walking”, Janet replied.

There was nothing for me to say after her answer because it was true, and I also wanted to avoid looking like Beard had in the beginning; pathetic.

“We might be down here for a couple of days. We have a very far walk ahead of us. By the way, try to stay as quiet as possible, we don’t want the possibility for anyone to hear us. Try not to speak at all if you can”, Hagen expounded.

A couple of days?! I began to freak out quietly to myself. This place was awfully cramped to be spending a couple of days in. I guess now was then the time for me to toughen up a little bit. Never before had I ever imagined being in a situation like this one. I shook my head, letting go of the terrifying thoughts running through my mind and continued forward.

My heart rate was up, and I was wide awake as the adrenaline pumped through my veins and I was ready to keep on walking to destination. I don’t know how long we were walking for, or what time it was, but Hagen didn’t seem to be feeling the same way when he mentioned we should stop to rest. Beard teasingly called him an old man and asked where we would possibly be able to do that. Everything in here was pitch black and appeared to be covered in water, so I had no idea how we would manage to rest, either. But Hagen never failed to surprise us, when up a little bit further he made a turn into what seemed to be a room or a small pocket in the tunnel.

“Here looks like a nice place”, he said before taking a seat on the cement floor.

I followed Hagen’s lead and plopped down with him. I was suddenly feeling pretty tired as well, it had been a really long day. Janet took a seat down beside me, and Beard next to her. Hagen leaned back onto the wall and let out a deep sigh of relief. The rest of us laid back on the damp cement floor and it wasn’t too long before I heard snoring all around me. Some more time passed, and I wanted to sleep as well, but it just wasn’t seeming to happen. I stared into the darkness and tried my best to calm my nerves. I took deep breaths, thought about happy places, and even counted sheep, but nothing seemed to work. All Of A Sudden, I heard Janet say something in a quiet whisper next to me.

“What’s that?”, I whispered back.

“You having trouble falling asleep?”, she repeated quietly.

“Yeah”

“Me too, wanna go for a walk?”

“In here?”

“Yeah, why not? I know it’s not the best situation but moving around a little bit might help.”

I wasn’t sure if her idea was right or not, but I decided to take her up on her offer.

“Alright, sure.”

The two of us stood up from our seated positions and stepped back into the water as quietly as possible.

“It might be better if you remove your shoes, you don’t want to sleep with wet feet, trust me”, she suggested.

I decided that she was probably right and sat back down on the edge of the cement block Hagen and Beard were sleeping soundly on, to quickly take them off and place them in the spot I was laying in before. After stepping into the water again, I immediately realized that Janet was right, it felt really good to take off those sopping wet gift shop sneakers.

“Let’s go”, she said quietly, while motioning me to follow her.

After walking some distance away from the rest of the crew, she started in on some casual quiet conversation. I guess Janet was now trying to get to know me a little more. Maybe it’s the new clothes, I joked around to myself.

“This all must be hard on you”, she alleged.

“Do you miss your family?”, she asked.

Janet’s question made a pit grow in my stomach and a lump in my throat. I swallowed the emotion I was feeling but tears still managed to fall down my face anyways.  Janet began to panic, wanting to take back her question at this point.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to upset you! It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it. It’s just that we were so caught up in all the chaos since I met you, that I didn’t even think till laying there a couple moments ago, how hard this must be for you. You know, being in a strange place hanging around with the people who tried to basically kill you, and on top of that you are not even in a body that is yours. I guess we are becoming more like friends now, and I just wanted to be sure that you were ok. I’m sorry if I upset you.”

Janet’s nervous rambling made me go from crying to smiling in a split second. It was nice that Janet was considering the thought of the situation to be tough on me, but I figured it wasn’t easy for them either. They had left their homes and their safety to help not only me, but many others as well. They were basically heroes in my mind.

“It’s ok, don’t worry about it”, I said while wiping away my tears.

“I usually don’t cry like this, by the way; it’s a Chantedy thing”, I added.

Janet let out a small chuckle, then quickly cut it off by placing her hand over her mouth and looking around as if someone were watching us.

“Shit, we are supposed to be quiet”, she cursed, before lowering her voice.

“I am sure we will be fine. We are probably the only ones awake right now anyways”, I clarified.

“It’s just Hagen overreacting again”, I added before letting out a small laugh as well.

“Probably true”

“By the way, you are right, this isn’t easy. All of this is getting harder by the day. I can’t wait to be home again and hopefully fix all this craziness. Thanks again for helping out.”

“Thank you too. We wouldn’t have done what we did if it weren’t for you. Also, what’s it like for you? All of this?”

I took a big gulp, a deep breath, and prepared myself to explain to Janet what I hadn’t to anyone yet; my donate day. I figured it would be a good place to start. I then followed with what it was like for me waking up, and then everything after that. I told her about putting on high heels and almost wiping out on the stairs, which made her laugh. I then told her about the party, the car, and all the way up to meeting them. I found myself pouring out my emotions to her in a way I had never done with anyone before. There was something about Janet’s personality that made me feel that I could tell her anything; she just had that thing about her. I found myself starting to feel that lump in my throat again, when I started to talk about my concerns with my parents and how they were handling the whole situation, but I didn’t make it to tears this time. Janet had laid her hand against my back and looked directly into my eyes. There was something about the way she looked at me and the way her hand felt, that instantly made every negative emotion go away.

As I was beginning to feel lost in Janet’s eyes a light began to leak out of a hole in the cement above us.

“Shit! We have been talking all night, we need to walk back before the others wake up and wonder where we went”, Janet said in a panic.

The way back wasn’t exactly a walk, but more like a troubled run. When we approached the concrete ledge, both Hagen and Beard were nervously awaiting us.

“Where the hell did you two run off to?”, Hagen asked, angrily demanding an answer.

“Calm down, will ya’, we just went for a walk”, Janet defended.

“A walk?”, Beard asked confused.

“Yeah, we couldn’t sleep so we went for a walk”, I clarified.

“The two of you didn’t sleep all night?”, Beard questioned further.

Janet and I looked at each other and smiled before shrugging our shoulders and looking back at the two of them.

“Guess not”, I replied.

“Alright then, well let’s go. You two are probably going to regret that smart decision of yours, because we got a long walk ahead of us today”, Hagen said, sounding a little like a father.

“Yeah, yeah, old man, whatever”, Janet teased.

Before I knew it, we were on our ways, and I’d soon find out that Hagen wasn’t exaggerating; we did have a long walk ahead of us.

Chapter Four: The Arrival

Two days of being stuck in this tunnel, was starting to make me feel like I would go insane. Everything on my body ached. My back was killing me from having to hunch over constantly in tight spots, my feet hurt from walking so much, but the worst part of it all, was the fact that my legs and feet hadn’t been dry for forty-eight hours now. Everything itched from head to toe, and by this point I was starting to worry if it were possible for your skin to fall off. It appeared that I wasn’t the only one who was agitated. When I looked over at Janet, it appeared as if she were about to either start crying or punch somebody, and I couldn’t tell which it was. Out of concern, I decided to ask if she was okay, and ended up getting a notification that absolutely nobody had an ounce of patience left inside of them. Both Hagen and Beard, instantly turned around and synchronized a harmony of shut up in my direction. After receiving a reaction like that one, I figured it would be best if I just stayed quiet like we had planned earlier on. I took a deep breath and let out a sigh while we continued to walk forward. I was dying to know how much longer we would be walking for, but I decided it would be a good idea to just stay quiet and tough it out. I figured that asking wouldn’t make much of a difference anyways, because even with an answer, we would still have to be down here walking.

Hours passed in what felt like days, and by this point I was completely exhausted. I didn’t think I could get five more steps out of me about two hundred ago, and we were still walking. You would have imagined that the smell in here would have faded away a long time ago after getting used to it, but sadly that wasn’t the case. There were so many different putrid smells coming from different directions, that there was never a chance to get used to anything. I was hungry but kept reminding myself with the idea that it was probably best I hadn’t eaten anything, or the smell would have made me throw it up.

Before I could think about any more complaints, flooding bright light through the tunnel interrupted my train of thought. Hagen didn’t even bother to say anything this time, he just started to sprint towards it impatiently. Without knowing what else to do, the three of us ran in the same direction after him. I didn’t have a single drop of energy left in me, but somehow after seeing that light and witnessing the excitement pour out of Hagen, I felt like I could conquer the world. I stumbled my way through the smelly water to the view of another wooded area.

“We’re here”, Hagen joyfully stated before falling onto his knees and lifting his arms up to soak up the sunlight.

I swear I saw a tear fall out of his eye after he hit the floor. I didn’t think I’d ever see Hagen cry.

I decided to join Hagen on the floor and dived into a cushiony coat of pine needles to lay on my back and let the brightness of the sun take over my vision. After letting out a deep breath of relief, I noticed that Beard and Janet had joined in on Hagen’s idea as well. The three of us laid on the pine needled woods floor and took in the fresh air and warmth of the sun. We laid there for quite a while, drying off and relaxing. I had been carrying my shoes in my hand the entire time, waiting for the moment to finally put them on again. As I placed the sneakers on my now dry and less wrinkled feet, I was happy that Janet had given me the idea she had. I’d have sopping wet sneakers right now if it weren’t for her.

Suddenly, the words Hagen had said when we exited the tunnel processed through my mind. I guess I had just been so overwhelmed with the fact that we were out of that tunnel that I didn’t even think too much about the fact that he said, ‘we’re here’. We’re here, I repeated to myself in my mind. Was here, home? I wondered.

“Are we in the middle province?”, I asked.

“Yep”, Hagen answered while standing up to his feet and dusting pine needles off of himself.

Hagen’s words were like music to my ears. There couldn’t have been any better feeling in the world than the one I was having right now.

“You need to help us find your house now. We don’t know where it is”, he added.

I gulped in fear of the comment that had just come out of Hagen’s mouth. There was no way I could possibly know how to get home from where we were right now. I was pretty sure that we were in the middle of nowhere and directions had never really been my thing since I had never actually left my house aside from a bus ride to training school and to my doom.

“I have no idea where we are. How am I supposed to find the way to my house? We are in the middle of nowhere”, I protested.

“Listen kid, this is your territory not ours. Grow some and find the way to get us where we need to go. We didn’t travel for two days in a nasty tunnel for no reason”, Beard snapped.

Grow some, was not a funny joke to me at the moment in my current situation. Infuriated, I decided to do the only thing I could think of, walk till we found a road.

“Follow me”, I retorted in an agitated tone of voice.

I decided to take a chance and follow the direction of the creek that was connected to the sewer we walked out from, hoping that it led to the road. All of us were starving and extremely tired, so if we didn’t find a road quick, things might not turn out well for us. We hadn’t had water in two days now and I could feel my body shutting down by the minute. I looked back at the rest of the crew, worried about them as well. Hagen was much older than the rest of us, so I could only imagine how he was holding up. I think it was a pretty dumb decision to not pack a bag with supplies from the hotel. I guess we were in such a panic, that we had forgotten about the essentials.

“Nobody packed water?”, I asked.

Everyone turned to look at each other with an expression of anger, as if it were one persons’ fault in particular. Everyone always likes to blame someone other than themselves, I guess.

“I drank the creek water”, Beard replied.

“You did not”, Janet reacted in shock while looking at him with repulsion.

“I did, I was thirsty”

“Oh God”, Hagen added while looking up at the sky like he had actually been calling for God’s help.

I was calling for God’s help at this point too, in fear of not only Beard being poisoned, but of what would happen to all of us if we didn’t find help soon.

“Wait a minute! I just remembered something I read somewhere once!”, Janet called out.

In curiosity, we all stopped walking and waited for her to finish her statement.

“There was a book I read once about survival, and I remember it mentioning that you could drink water not in a creek, but next to it if you dig a hole”.

“What?”, Beard questioned.

Beard couldn’t have picked a better response, because it was the only thing that was going through my mind as well.

“Yeah, something about the sediments cleaning the water”, she clarified.

“So, you are basically telling me that dirt is supposed to make my water cleaner?”, Beard asked before letting out a snicker.

“Glad I drank mine earlier”, he added.

“Come on guys, trust me. We have nothing to lose, who knows how long we will be walking for, and we need to get some water in us”, Janet pleaded.

A part of me wanting to take the chance and keep walking, worried about what the dirty water could possibly do to us. But I then remembered that I had no idea where we were going, and Janet wasn’t wrong to question our safety. I decided to have her back on this one.

“Maybe what she is saying is true, guys. I think it’s a good idea and maybe we should trust her. I mean, she was smart enough to create the first micro bomb, right?”, I argued in attempt to defend Janet’s proposal.

Hagen and Beard looked at each other for a moment before shrugging their shoulders and nodding their heads in agreement.

“So that’s a yes then?”, Janet asked.

“Guess so”, Hagen replied.

“Alright, then let’s get digging”, Janet said before walking her way over to the edge of the creek.

The three of us walked over to the edge as well. I took a kneel down beside Janet, brushed some pine needles aside, and dug my hands into the wet dirt.

It didn’t take more than a few seconds before we hit water. Looking down into the dirt hole, I found myself wondering if maybe Beard’s comment was right. However, I was so thirsty that at this point that I didn’t care anymore. I cupped my hands, slid them down into the hole and scooped myself out a nice amount of cool water. I felt the refreshing feeling of it meet my lips and slide its way down my tongue and throat. I didn’t know if this water would get us sick or not, but at this moment, it sure felt worth it.

After we finished chugging down dirt water, we were on our way walking once again. Conversations were pretty dead, since we still had the fear in the back of our heads about someone hearing us and wondering what we were doing. I don’t think it was common in either of our provinces for people to be out walking this far in the woods. Plus, right now any small suspicion would bring out unnecessary questions towards us. I ended up taking advantage of the silence to look around at the beautiful scenery around me. I found myself getting lost in the sights of the tall trees and beautiful colors of nature. The fact that we were being so quiet, actually ended up drawing some small animals towards us. I got to witness a few birds and a deer or two, closer than I had ever seen in my life.

Suddenly, my view of nature was cut off with what seemed to be an opening in the distance. Excitement filled my veins as I thought the only possible opening in a woods would have to be leading to a road.

“Look guys! Over there!”, I exclaimed.

After pointing towards the direction that I had been looking at, I immediately took off running towards it. Without bothering to look behind me to check it the rest of the crew had been following, I approached what appeared to be exactly what I hoped for, a road. My feet stepped onto the black pavement as I peered down into the distance at what seemed to be a small sign. Not looking back once again, I continued running towards it. I heard Hagen yelling behind me to slow down, but the excitement running through me wouldn’t allow me to stop until I reached it. The sign grew larger in size with every step I took, until I finally reached the front of it. It was a red sign that was in the shape of a rectangle which held white letters reading, civilization 5 miles. Excited at the words I was reading, I turned around to see if the crew was reading it as well, but instead I saw them trailing behind, lazily running towards me.

“We told you to hold on!”, Hagen yelled out from a distance.

“Sorry!”, I replied.

The three of them, agitated and out of breath finally caught up and made their ways to the sign.

“Look, it says we are 5 miles away! We made it! We’re over the boarder!”, I cheered while pointing to the sign above our heads.

“Good job kid”, Beard reassured me, before giving me a pat on the back.

“Can we walk the rest?”, Janet teased while trying to catch her breath with the rest of the crew.

Chapter Five: Home Sweet Home

We approached a sight that was shocking to us all. As we stood on top of a hill that appeared to be as big as a mountain, we looked down at something that grew outrage in me. A truth that would change the world was right in front of our eyes as we peered down at the place, I called home. The place I had grown up, was apparently the only thing around us for miles. I saw in a great distance a large circle of rooftops engulfed in a massive number of trees. Was this single large sized neighborhood, the entire middle province? I wondered. The irony suffocated me as I looked down at what appeared to be a cage made of trees. The crew couldn’t seem to dig up a comment to make as they stared at the same sight I had been. Looking over at their faces said it all when I noticed the look of confusion on each and every one of them.

“I wasn’t expecting this”, I uttered.

“What?”, Janet questioned politely.

“This being all there was”, I explained.

Nobody seemed to have anything to say to what I had just pointed out, as they continued to stand there in silence at the view of my prison.

“Well, let’s stop standing around and get this show on the road”, I alleged before making my way down the hill.

While we made our ways down the thin, dark paved road between the hundreds of towering trees, worries started to cross my mind. No matter where we were, you never knew if the government might be watching you. I was beginning to wonder if there might be cameras hidden in the trees or maybe even on the very road we were walking on. I thought the most obvious of places for cameras to be located in, would be the inside of the middle province itself. And I was sure it would look a bit strange for all of us to be walking our ways inside from a road to the woods, that nobody ever ventured in. As I began to state my concerns out loud to the crew, I could see the worrisome looks spread across their faces as well.

“I don’t think we have another option now”, Hagen rationalized while looking up at a large metal fence.

Beard eyed the fence up and down before asking in his usual know it all voice,

“Well, what are we going to do now?”

Looking at the fence, I wasn’t sure that this was a situation we would be able to pull ourselves out of. But we had made it this far, so I figured I’d just give it a second before someone figures something out.

“Hey! Who’s out there?!” a strange voice echoed out from the distance.

Startled, I tilted my head to side to peer deeper through the fence, attempting to find the voice I hadn’t recognized.

“Shit! We’re screwed”, Beard yelled in a hushed tone.

“Shut up will you”, Janet demanded.

I watched the man approach the fence.

“Who’s there?” he asked again.

The man had a ruggish look to him, salt, and pepper hair, with slightly wrinkled skin, and some strange scars in a variety of places on his face. He was dressed in pants which matched his button-down collar shirt with a dark blue shade. He peered through the fence in a way that made one eye look bigger than the other and spoke in a raspy voice.

“Nobody should be out here. Who are you?”, he asked.

I turned to look for reassurance from anyone at this point but found everyone with the same look of expression on their face, pale as a ghost and frozen in fear. It was now time for me to take matters into my hands, once again.

“We are neighbors, friends, and we decided it was a nice day to take a bit of a risk and go on an adventure”, I explained.

The man gave me a look that made me unconfident in being sure if he were buying my story or not.

“You know… I don’t recognize either one of you”, he replied while looking all of us up and down in a way that makes you nervous as hell.

I began to ramble, “really? Well, that’s strange cause’ I know you. Well, I don’t know you… but I have seen you around before. Do you have a son that happens to go to west training school?”

“Nope”, he said confidently, turning the situation into a more difficult one.

“Are you sure? Hmm… maybe you just look like someone else I know then”.

“Yeah, maybe”.

“Well, could you help us get back in?”

“How did you get outside anyways?”

In a panic, I came up with the first thing I could think of,

“We used a latter, from the inside and didn’t think about how we would get back in from the outside”, I tried to explain before letting out a nervous laugh.

“Hmm… is that so?”

“Yes sir, I know it sounds crazy and we probably shouldn’t have done this in the first place, but here we are.”

I laughed again, trying to make it sound a little bit less awkward this time. My laughing was suddenly interrupted by the sound of Beard’s voice.

“Come on man, let us in. We are dying of thirst out here”, he whined.

The man continued to lock us down in a hard stare for a minute before deciding.

“Alright, hold your horses I’ll be back”, he said before walking away into what appeared to be his house.

I let out a sigh of relief before looking back at the rest of the crew.

“That was a close one”, I whispered as quietly as possible.

“Nice job”, Janet quickly responded.

Before anyone could say anything else, the man began to walk back towards us out of his house carrying a large latter.

“I thought I was the only one who had one of these”, he said while stepping up to the fence. 

“Watch out”, he added before holding the latter over his head.

The three of us quickly scattered out of the way as he propelled the latter over the fence. We watched it loudly hit and bounce off of the grass next to our feet.

“Alright get it on up there”, the man ordered.

As I stepped forward to grab the latter with Hagen, Beard rudely stepped in front of me. He placed his arm out in the air to stop me from stepping any closer and grabbed it himself instead.

“Come on kid, let the men do this”, he said while helping Hagen lift it up to the fence.

“It takes two of ya to pick that up, does it?”, the man teased from the other side.

I would have laughed at his comment, but my blood was still boiling from the one I had heard before.

Hagen and Beard got the latter in its place, and Janet started making her way up first after Beard had insisted for her to do so. As she reached the top of the latter, Beard pissed me off more than I ever thought possible. I watched him as he cupped his hands around Janet’s ass.

“Don’t worry, I got you”, he said before turning around to give a showy look, bouncing his eyebrows, and flashing a devilish grin.

“Get your hands off me, beard!”, she snapped.

If he had held his grip for even a second longer, I swear I would have not been able to stop myself from nailing him in the face.

“Alright, alright, God… sorry…”, he cried while taking a few steps back.

Hagen didn’t appear to be amused by Beard’s move either, as he stood there refusing to make eye contact with him, no matter how hard he tried to dig for any type of attention.

“You guys are no fun”, Beard complained.

“You are disgusting”, I replied.

“Wow, you really are a girl, aren’t you?”, he teased.

“Shut up, what’s your problem today? Why you being such a dirt bag?”, I snapped.

“Yep, you are”, he snapped back.

“Leave the kid alone”, Hagen demanded in a low and intimidating tone of voice.

“Are ya’ll gonna stand here fighting all day or is someone else going to come over? I can take my latter and the pretty girl and leave, ya know”, the old man teased.

“Ignore them”, Janet mumbled.

Beard peered down at me and motioned his arms towards the latter,

“Ladies first”, he said with a forced smile.

As I walked over to take my first step up onto it, I couldn’t help but to feel confused as to why Beard was acting stranger than usual today, but I let it go as I reached the top. I was face to face with barbed wire and had no idea how Janet managed to get over it, because I was too busy being angry at Beard to see.

“Stand on the very top and jump down into my arms, sweetheart’, the old man explained while squatting and holding his arms out in the air.

Today is the worst day of my life, I thought to myself. Could this get any worse? I stepped up on the very tip of the latter and looked down at the crouching man, took a deep breath and jumped my way over. Butterflies filled my stomach as I felt nothing below me, and gravity do its job. I am not sure the old man’s arms were as comfortable to land in as the floor would have been, but I turned out being ok. Standing there looking through the other side of the fence, only made me wonder how the old man was going to manage to catch Hagen; he wasn’t exactly the slimmest of dudes.

As Beard made his way up the latter, I found myself to be amused at the fact that the old man took a step back. It looked like he wasn’t going to be attempting at catching his fall.

“You got this, big guy”, the man said as he approached the top.

I saw the fear grow in Beard’s eyes as he looked over the fence at the distance to the grass he was preparing to fall down to.

“I got the latter, don’t worry”, Hagen reassured Beard as he held it in place.

Beard responded, “Thanks”, before taking his leap over the fence.

Immediately after hitting the floor, he fell to his side in agony, clenching his legs in his hands and screaming.

“Quiet it down! You are going to get us caught! You crazy!?”, the old man yelled angrily.

“Man up!”, he added as Beard turned his screams into more quiet grunts and whimpers.

If the fall were that hard on Beard, I began to worry about Hagen knowing how much heavier he was and how much harder the fall would probably be on him. For the first time ever, I felt thankful at the fact that someone gave me special treatment for looking like a girl. As I watched Hagen approach his way to the top as well, my nerves completely took over. What amused me was the fact that he didn’t appear to look as nervous as Beard did standing up there though. He had a very serious look on his face as if he had prepared for this moment his entire life. Hagen bent over and prepared to make his jump. I then watched him propel over the fence and land almost directly next to Beard who was still curled in a ball whining on the floor.

Hagen sure made Beard look ridiculous, when he landed on his feet and immediately stood up to brush himself off. He then held his arm out to Beard who was still struggling to get up off the floor.

“Come on, get up, kid”, he said.

Beard reached over to grab onto Hagen, who pulled him up off of the floor. When Beard got to his feet, he immediately fell over again. Agony spread across his face as he clenched his teeth together and grunted some more, holding his leg in his hand.

“I can’t”, he cried while rocking back and forth on the grass.

“What happened?”, Hagen asked.

“I don’t know, it’s my ankle. I think I broke it or somethin’”, Beard explained.

“Let me see it”, Hagen demanded.

Beard let go of his clench and laid his leg down flat on the grass.

I felt like I was going to throw up when I saw what appeared to be a bone poking through his skin, and I don’t mean poking through behind the skin either.

“Yep, that’s broken, alright”, Hagen agreed.

“You guys can come into my house if you want, I got some stuff to fix it up for now and then I can call an ambulance for you”, the old man explained.

I immediately answered in fear that someone here would agree to his offer in panic and put us at risk of being caught.

“No sir, that’s ok. You have done enough for us today, more than we could ask for. My dad here will carry him back to my house, my mom used to go to nursing school, and she will know how to fix him up, don’t worry. Thank you again for all you have done for us today, we won’t be leaving again any time soon, you can count on that.”

I then turned to Hagen, “We have definitely learned our lessons, right dad?”, I asked.

Hagen put on a fake smile and nodded his head, “Yep, you got that right, princess”.

Hagen turned his head to look at the old man who was standing there, who was still in confusion.

“I hope you can understand, sir. I just wanted to show my kid’s a good time. It can be so boring in here sometimes, can’t it?” he said.

“Yeah, I guess I get that”, the old man replied before nodded his head.

“Next time, play some checkers or something”, he added before walking away with his latter into his home.

“Alright hurry up and grab him, let’s go”, I said before motioning for us to quickly walk forward.

Janet rushed over to Beard’s side while Hagen was about to lift him up,

“Are you okay?”, she asked concerned.

Beard played it off as cool as he possibly could through the pain, as if it were nothing.

“Yeah, I’m fine. It doesn’t even hurt that much.”

“That’s why you were screaming right?”, Hagen teased.

“Come on guys hurry up”, I said impatiently while standing there waiting to continue walking forward.

Hagen swung Beard over his shoulder and the three of us made our way down the street, walking aimlessly to try and find my house.

Excitement filled my body as I looked at all of the houses around me. I felt for the first time in what felt like years, safe. I was finally home again and staring at these plain boring cooker cutter houses that lined the streets. A part of me felt like I’d wake up in any minute from now and find myself in Chantedy’s bed or laying on the cold wet cement block of the sewer. Being home right now, felt like a dream. I guess a part of me never imagined any of this actually happening. Right now, walking through these streets was to me, living the impossible. Everything I had been through immediately began to feel real for the first time. This isn’t a dream, I thought to myself as we furthered our ways down the street.

My mind started to replay everything that had happened over the course of what couldn’t have been much more than a week, and I found myself beginning to panic as I saw my body standing there in the yard of what I assumed to be my house.

I stopped walking and found myself standing there in shock as I made eye contact with what appeared to be me.

“Nathan, what’s wrong? What is it? Are we here?”, Janet questioned.

“Yep, and that guy standing right there in that yard, that’s me”, I answered still unable to take in what had actually been happening around me.

My other self, seemed to be in shock as well because he wasn’t moving much either. He stood there staring me down in the eyes, with an expression that reminded me of my own that time I had woke up and looked into my first mirror. Suddenly, I heard my voice for the first time ever from a stranger’s perspective.

“Hagen? Is that you?”

“Chantedy?”, he asked in a curious tone.

“What are you doing here?”

“This is going to take a lot of explaining, can you let us inside?”, I asked.

“Of course, follow me.”

I watched myself run through the yard and up to the front door of the house and couldn’t help but to think, that’s not how I run, is it? We followed after her towards the door of my house. I heard her calling my mother and father from inside as we approached closer.

“Come inside!”, I heard my own voice call out.

When I stepped foot inside, I witnessed both of my parent’s standing there, wide eyed and speechless. I took turns looking into both of their eyes, waiting for something to say to come to me, but I felt completely lost and awkward in the situation. Somehow, I felt like a stranger in my own home as I witnessed my family standing together, with me included. I know that Chantedy was inside my body, but everything was so surreal that I couldn’t seem to wrap my head around the idea. It just felt like exactly what it appeared to be; me staring at myself next to my family. Plus, I could only imagine how awkward this was for them too, they were standing there with someone who looked and sounded like their son but were looking at a strange girl who was actually their son. All of this had to be mind boggling to them. The word’s that came out of my dad’s mouth to follow my thoughts, shocked me even more.

“Welcome home, son”, he said before walking over towards me, alongside my mother.

The two of them wrapped their arms around me in a warm, tight hug.

“We missed you so much”, my mother added.

I felt teers dripping down onto my filthy T-shirt from not only both of them, but me as well, when I realized that they still saw me as their son.

“Do you guys have any beer?”, Beard asked while hanging from Hagen’s shoulder, interrupting the moment.

My parents stopped hugging me to turn around and look at him with all of the confusion in the universe.

“They don’t make beer in the middle province”, my dad explained.

“What? You are kidding, right?”, Beard asked.

“Nope, not kidding, but how about we start with getting a little bit of food in you all”, my mother chimed in.

“Alright, sure. Food sounds great. Thank you, ma’am,”, Beard politely replied.

“There is a lot we need to discuss”, I said as my mother laid her hand on my back.

“I’m sure there is, but why don’t we eat and let you guys get cleaned up a little bit before we start talking about all that. You guys are a mess and must be starving”, she said.

My mother wasn’t wrong with the thing’s she was saying, and I found no reason to argue. I looked around at the rest of the crew to see if they had felt the same way, to receive shrugs of shoulders and nods of heads, letting me know that they did. A decision was made, and we all proceeded in the direction of the kitchen table.

“I just finished making Nathan’s favorite”, my mom explained while all of us took our seats.

Chapter Six: The Talk

 Sitting over lunch would have been awkward, since we decided not to discuss anything till later, but everyone had been so hungry that nobody looked up from their plates for even a breath of air. I was reminded about how spoiled the stitches were, when I finished my plate and wanted about five more. Not having a lot of food to dish out around here on a normal day was tough enough, and now that we had even more people to split it amongst, only made things more difficult. After everyone’s plates were cleared and empty, my mother began explaining to the crew where the shower and soap was. I guess we smelled so bad, that she couldn’t wait until after we got up from the table to insist, we shower.

“We have been walking for days in a sewer”, I explained.

My mom’s face grew with shock and concern at my comment.

“In a sewer?”, my dad asked.

“Yep, a sewer”, Beard clarified.

“Hence why I needed a beer”, he added.

My father found Beard’s comment to apparently be quite amusing, because it was one of the few times, I had really seen him laugh, and not in the fake way. My dad apologized to Beard again for the lack of booze and gave him a pat on the back.

“Oh, also my ankle is sticking out of my skin, but it’s all good”, Beard added.

“What!?”, my father asked alarmed, before jumping out of his seat and kneeling on the floor in front of Beard’s chair.

“Let me see, son”, he said.

Beard lifted his pant leg to reveal his horrifying wound to my father.

“Shit! Excuse my language, but that’s not good”, my father exclaimed.

“Yeah, no kidding”, Beard replied mockingly.

“Hold on, I’ll get something that will help for a bit, but we need to find this guy a doctor”, my father explained before running off to grab God knows what.

“I thought you said your mother was a nurse”, Beard said, looking at me a bit muddled.

“Oh that… that was a lie to get that guy off our backs”, I explained.

“Dude! What the hell!”, Beard snapped.

“Calm down, kid, it’s going to be alright”, my dad said while arriving with his first aid kit.

I chuckled to myself, finding it quite amusing that Beard was now being called kid. I would feel bad for him right now, but I was pretty sure this was karma for the way he was acting lately. My mother began to ask more questions as my dad started to attempt at fixing Beard’s ankle.

“Why in a sewer?”, she questioned.

We were supposed to wait until after lunch and cleaning up to talk about everything, but I had a feeling it was about to be discussed now. I guess I had given such an interesting comment that it couldn’t be resisted.

“Oh, and we also, blew up the President and his stupid house”, Beard confidently added to the discussion between agonizing screams.

Both of my parent’s, along with everyone at the table, faces lit up.  I don’t think anyone could believe what just came out of Beard’s mouth. Leave it to him to make a comment like that one.

“What? That’s supposed to be a joke, right?”, my mother asked with concern.

“Nope”, Beard replied before letting out another deep, alarming scream.

“You blew up what?”, my dad asked.

“The President and his stupid house”, Beard clarified once more.

“Don’t listen to him, we will explain”, Janet added, attempting to calm my parent’s down.

This is gonna’ be a long night, I thought to myself.

Me, Janet, Hagen, and sadly Beard, continued to explain what had happened and what all was going on. We told them everything, from the letter that told me what was to be done and then went in detail with the bombing. For the first time since the start of the discussion, Chantedy decided to chime in.

“Hold up! before you guys start fighting or whatever, I have been waiting to say this since you all got here. What the hell happened to my hair?! Also, this is insane, are you guys were the ones who did that? And this was planned on purpose? Someone put us in different bodies on purpose? Why?”

She asked a million questions a minute, but the one that caught my attention was the one where she said, ‘you guys were the ones who did that’. She knew about the explosion? I wondered.

“Wait, wait… go back”, I interrupted, while trying to disregard the hair comment.

“You knew about the explosion?”, I asked.

“Duh, it’s all over the news”.

“Wait, they are playing it on TV here too?”

“I literally just said that… come on man…”

Before anything else could be said, I charged full speed to the TV, and turned on the news channel. To my shock, I was witnessing exactly what Chantedy had explained, the explosion was all over the news and our worst nightmare was about to begin as I watched the injured and alive President be loaded on a gurney and onto an ambulance.

“Guys! Quick! Come here!”, I panicked.

The crew except for my father and the injured Beard, immediately got up from the table to make their way over to the TV.

“He’s alive!”, I bellowed.

Chapter Seven: A New Plan

We had all hoped from the bottom of our hearts that we would be able to go on living normal lives, without any further trouble, but it was obvious at this moment, that wouldn’t be happening as we stared at the TV, horrified at what we were witnessing.

“That little…!”, Beard yelled across the room from the kitchen table, before cutting himself off with another painful scream.

“He survived?!”, he finished.

“How?”, Janet questioned.

“This can’t be”, I added.

“This part I didn’t know about”, Chantedy assured.

“What are we going to do now?”, Janet asked.

Beard stumbled his way over to us alongside my father after hearing the news of what was happening. Janet’s question was probably what was running through all of our minds right now as we stared at the television in disbelief. The only thing for us to do at this point, would be to come up with a plan of how to fix this. With him alive, I was almost positive that we would be found. Beard began to share his thoughts out loud,

“Maybe he won’t find us”.

“How are we supposed to contact or find my uncle without him knowing about it?”, I questioned.

“Chantedy and I will be stuck like this forever and the country will just go back to the way it always has been, if we don’t do something fast”, I added.

“Screw it, let’s just tell people then!”, Janet shouted.

“What?”, the three of us asked in confusion, while both Chantedy and my parents stood there without a clue to what was going on.

“Let’s just tell them”, she repeated for a second time.

Janet reached into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out two cell phones.

“I have these, but they don’t have much battery left on them, so we need to do something fast.”

We looked at each other and Janet who was cradling the phones in her hand.

“You guys still don’t get it?”, she asked.

Frustrated at the fact that none of us bothered to respond, Janet continued explaining her idea.

“Look, the president is critically injured at the moment, so he won’t be able to do anything, right? Your uncle knows what the inside of your house looks like, no?”

The room stayed quiet, as we waited for her to continue.

“Ok, well, we need to make a video of both of you. For the one who looks like Chantedy, we will set up a background so that nobody can tell where she is recording from, that way nobody will be able to track her here. The one who looks like Nathan will take the video from inside of this house, this way Nathan’s uncle will have some sort of clue to our whereabouts, and by putting everything together he should be able to figure out where we are”.

“I’m so confused”, Beard interrupted.

“But if my uncle can figure it out, can’t the government?”

“Dang it… you are right…”, Janet mumbled beneath her breath.

“You know what, let’s just take the chance. If we don’t do something, the entire world will fall apart again, and all of this would have been for nothing; I say let’s just do it. Maybe the President is too stupid to figure it out, who knows.” Hagen said, putting his two cents in.

“There is no way for Chantedy or now Nathan to receive a phone here in the middle province without us being here. It’s a dead giveaway”, I explained.

“Well then we better leave as soon as we make the video”, Hagen proposed.

“Hold up, hold up, if we leave after we make the video, how will Nathan’s uncle find us?”, Beard asked.

“Duh, Nathan’s parent’s will be here to redirect him to where we went”, Janet replied as if she were pointing out the obvious.

“No way! My parents are coming with! If the government finds out, they will automatically assume that they were a part of this and kill them. I won’t let that happen.”

“I think us being stuck like this forever is a risk we will have to take in order to save the world, and I don’t know about Nathan, but I guess I’m willing to take it”, Chantedy argued.

“Agreed!”, I exclaimed.

“Wow… Chantedy, I’m impressed. You have really come a long way”, Hagen said, with the look of disbelief spread across his face.

“Alright, then it is settled, we pack some stuff into bags, make the video, and then we leave immediately”, Hagen ordered.

“Where exactly will we be going though?”, Janet asked.

“Into the sewers”, Beard said in a way that I’m assuming was supposed to make it a joke.

“Well yes, actually, but we will also be headed to the inner province”, Hagen clarified.

Hearing Hagen’s statement was shocking, never in my life had I ever even met anyone from the inner province, and I never imagined a day where I would end up going there.

I looked over at my mom and dad, who were standing there, frozen stiff and lost for words. I couldn’t imagine how overwhelmed they were probably feeling right now.

“Mom, dad, you, ok?”, I asked.

The next thing my mother said, would be a moment I’d never forget for the rest of my life.

“Let’s put an end to this, bullshit”, she replied with a stern tone to her voice.

My mom’s words were like a signal to get started because everyone immediately started doing something. Beard was limping around my house, finding things he wanted to take and placing them onto the kitchen table, and it wasn’t long before Hagen and my parents had all decided to join him. Janet was clenching a phone in her hand and leading both Chantedy and I to another room inside of the house.

“Do you even know where you are going?”, I asked as we followed her.

“No, not really”, she replied before turning around to smile at us.

“Come, follow me upstairs. I will take us to my room”, I said before making my way over to the staircase.

As I stepped down onto the carpet, calming memories flowed through my mind. I had wished more than anything in the world, that life would go back to the way it had been before. I wanted it to be Christmas, just one last time. Suddenly, everything seemed like it would be easier than the way things were going right now. When we made our ways to the top of the stairs, I led them to my room where we closed the door behind us to drown out the noise. When I looked around the room at all of my things, I felt a feeling of sorrow take over. I didn’t know if I’d ever get the chance to sleep one more night in this place, or read a book one last time, or even just smell what smelled to me like home: safety.

When I turned around to look at Chantedy and Janet, Chantedy had taken a seat on the bed and Janet was off snooping around at things in my room. She was holding one of my books and smiling at the cover.

“My mother use to tell me this story”, she said while grazing her fingertips over the front of it.

“Really?”, I asked.

“Yeah, we never owned a book, but she remembered this story in particular and would always tell it to me when she would tuck me in at night”, she explained.

“Hmm… must be nice. My mother never tucked me in”, Chantedy added.

I picked up Chantedy’s cellphone that Janet had left on my desk to look at the books, and Chantedy’s statement hit me hard when I realized that an explosion had gone off in her province, and neither one of her parent’s had sent her a single message to check if she were ok.

“Yeah, what’s up with that? Your parents are sure something else, aren’t they?”, I agreed.

“Mhm… I’m sure you got a taste of it, didn’t you?” Chantedy asked.

My head fell down for Chantedy’s pain when I answered her question.

“Yeah…”, I lightly replied.

“Sorry that you had to deal with that. Your parents on the other hand are amazing, aren’t they”, she said.

I smiled at her comment and nodded my head, feeling a little bit ashamed of my good fortune.

“Yeah, they are”, was all I could think to reply.

“Okay, enough chitter chatter, we can get to know each other more later on. I am sure we will have plenty of time to talk with the long walk in the sewer that we have ahead of ourselves. For now, let’s get started on these videos and let’s do it quick. We don’t have any time to waste”, Janet explained.

Janet took the phone out of my hand and pointed at the bed. Ok Nathan, sit here with the white wall behind you.

“What do I say?” I asked after taking a seat and having Janet position herself with the phone in front of me.

“Wait! He can’t post something with my hair looking like that?! Um… hello!”, Chantedy interrupted.

“Guy’s the battery is running low and if we don’t do this now, we are screwed. I don’t have time to fix anyone’s hair or to plan what you are going to say. Just say what you want, tell them the truth, them everything. Action!”, she said before pointing to me.

I started with the first thing that came to my mind, “Hello world”.

“Oh God”, Chantedy said in the background while burying her face in her hands.

Nervous, I continued anyways.

“My name is Chantedy, but my real name is Nathan. There are some things about the world that you guys don’t know about…”

I went on to explain every detail as briefly as I could. After I was finished, the entire world had known about every single lie the President had ever dug into us and why.

“Good job, Nathan”, Janet said before turning the phone off and putting it on the table.

“It’s off, now they shouldn’t be able to track us”, she added before instructing Chantedy to sit on my desk chair in front of the bookshelf.

“Ok you sit here, other Nathan. You ready? Ok good, Action!”, she said, hurrying through the process.

Chantedy did pretty much exactly what I did, only a little more dramatic and used some different word choices, but the important thing was that we now had proof of everything that was going on and had two people to verify it as true.

As soon as Janet turned off the other phone as well, to signal that the posting was finalized, she walked to the door and signaled for us to follow her.

“Come on, let’s tell them it’s time to leave. Hopefully they have everything ready to go”, she said before opening the door and making her way to the staircase.

“Wait!”, I said before running back to my room.              

I had almost forgotten to pack my things, most importantly, clean clothes of my own. I ran through my room, grabbed my backpack from around the corner of my bookshelf and started stuffing it with whatever would fit. I didn’t just stuff it with clothes, I stuffed it with books too.

“This guy is nuts”, I heard Chantedy say in my own voice from behind me, which still continues to freak me out by the way.

I zipped up my bag, flung it on my shoulder and turned around to see the two of them standing there, eyes wide and waiting.

“Okay, now we can leave”, I said.

Chapter Eight: That Fence

The crew had packed bags of necessities, from water and first aid kits, to blankets and clothes.

“I packed some clothes for Janet and Chantedy”, My mother stated proudly.

I looked at Chantedy, standing there happily in my body at the thought of wearing my mothers’ clothes, and became a little frightened. I can’t believe I was possibly going to witness myself in my moms’ clothes.

“And I packed some extras for the boys. I think I have some stuff that should fit you, Hagen”, my dad added.

“Gee, thanks”, Hagen said sarcastically, obviously insulted that my father pretty much called him fat.

I noticed my mom had packed a single bag for everyone here as she started calling people’s names and dishing them out to each crew member. As we all grabbed our things and walked out of the door to head down the street, I started to wonder how we were going to conquer the fence again. With Beard injured the way he was, there was no hope in any kind of jumping this time. After giving the situation some thought, I decided to propose the idea that we dig our way under the fence, which the crew seemed decently happy about, except for Beard of course. But when I asked him what he suggest we do instead, he had no comment to say as he probably realized there was actually no other option for us other than throwing each other over the top.

We were arriving at the edge of the fence once again and it was time to get digging.

“Aren’t there cameras around?”, my father asked as everyone bent down and started to claw at the earth.

Janet turned around to look at him with me, but everyone else pretty much just pretended like they didn’t hear him and kept digging.

“No offense sir, there might be, but I don’t think that matters much anymore at this point”, she kindly explained to him with a smile.

“Ah I see”, he said before nodding his head in realization.

My father then stepped over towards the hole we were in the middle of digging to join in but came to a harsh stop and peered at something over us. His face became ghost white and he looked as if he were going to be sick before panicking frantically.

“Don’t touch the fence! Don’t touch it!”, he called out.

Everyone immediately stopped digging and drew their attention towards my father who was standing there with his hands clenching his hair like a crazy person.

“Why not?”, Hagen questioned.

“Look! There! Over your heads!”, he said while nervously pointing at something.

When I looked up, I noticed a sign above our heads that read, high voltage.

“Ah that’s bullshit, this government is so cheap that they wouldn’t actually pay for something like that. Have you seen the rest of this neighborhood? No offense”, Beard argued.

“Why would they put up a sign if they didn’t need one”, My mother asked.

“Duh, to scare us”, Beard replied.

“Well how do we find out for sure it’s fake?”, I questioned.

“Guy’s, we touched the fence with a metal latter and climbed on it earlier”, Janet explained.

“Only the plastic part of the latter was touching the fence though, so that might have protected us”, Hagen countered.

“Guy’s it’s fake, here give me something in our bags to throw at it, you will see”, Beard said while limping back from the fence holding out his hand for someone to place something in it.

I decided to get up from the hole and take off my bag to grab one of my t-shirts out and hand it to him. As I placed it in his hand, he began to look at me with an irritated look on his face.

“Not clothes, we need something heavier to set it off”, he argued before grabbing my bag pack out of my hands and searching through it freely, against my will.

Beard then pulled out what I could have only feared he would have; one of my books.

“This should work”, he said before throwing my bag on the floor and preparing to chuck my book at the fence.

“No!”, I quickly contended, before grabbing his arm and holding it in place.

“Not my book!”, I added while looking deep into his eyes with pure frustration and fear.

“Dude, chill. Quit being such a girl”, he teased before grabbing my arm and pulling it off his, then hurriedly chucking my book towards the fence.

I watched one of the only things I had left from my home, fly through the air and smack against the metal fence. My heart raced as I watched it land in the dirt, pages face down.

“See told ya’, not electric. It’s just a lie to scare us. This government is so cheap”, he said, stumbling back over towards the half-dug hole by the fence.

Everyone was completely silent as they watched the anger run through my body, while watched Beard limp his way across the grass. My fists were clenched, and I felt hot anger run through my veins. I was pretty sure my blood was actually boiling, as I felt my face begin to feel like I had been standing near a burning hot oven. No longer being able to control myself, I did something that had caught everyone off guard.

“Well, maybe it has to be human contact to know if it’s truly electric or not”, I said before running towards Beard and shoving him with full force into the fence.

I knew that what I was saying wasn’t true and that he actually had been correct about the fence not being electric after watching my book slam against it, but it felt so good for some reason to watch beard fly into it and fall to the ground. At this point, I had been completely fed up with him and his obnoxious behavior. I used to like Beard at the start of all of this, but right now I was beginning to feel pure hatred for his existence.

Beard stood up from the floor, and brushed off his pants, laughing. Everyone stayed quiet, still in shock from what had just happened.

“What a cute little push you have”, he teased, diabolically smirking in my direction.

My body literally began to shake from head to toe. I felt an anger growing inside of me that I had never felt before in my life. I looked directly into his eyes and at his stupid face, attempting to show him the fire that was growing inside of me.

“Fuck you…”, I said before taking my fist and shoving it directly into the middle of his face.

Before I could do anything else, Beard had tackled me on the floor and pinned me down, pulling my arms back above my head and pushing them down into the grass. He looked at me with blood dripping out of his nose, which was about to land in my face.

“What? You are going to hit a girl?”, I teased.

“You are not a girl, you fucking dumb ass”, he replied with rage.

“Oh, so now, I’m not a girl? I guess I am only a girl when it suits you then, huh?” I joked some more.

“Please don’t hit my face!”, Chantedy interrupted, biting her nails anxiously.

“Alright! That’s enough! The two of you, get up right now! We don’t have time for this petty crap. We should be on our way by now. We have a job to do and both of you need to get doing it, you can talk this out, maturely, later. You understand?”, Hagen commanded while hovering over the two of us.

I Watched him grab onto the back of Beard’s shirt and yank him to his feet.

“Get up, Nathan!”, he ordered before walking towards the hole and dragging Beard with him.

Before going to the hole again, I walked across to the spot by the fence where my book laid. I picked it up, dusted it off, and placed it back in my backpack before slinging over my shoulder again.

“Wouldn’t wanna forget your precious book, would ya’, princess?”, Beard poked.

“Shut up! Enough!”, Hagen demanded.

As soon as I knelt down to begin digging, I heard my fathers’ voice echo in whisper next to me.

“Nice one, son”, he said before winking in my direction.

Chapter Nine: Dirty Water

After digging our way deep enough to fit Hagen’s belly through the fence, and walking what felt like a hundred miles, here we were standing in front of the sewer drain, smelling that putrid smell once again. I could tell by the look on my parents’ faces that they were not looking forward to crawling inside, either. Plus, this was their first time, so I was a little bit worried about how they would take it. It wasn’t easy being trapped inside a dark, wet, hole for many days straight.

“Alright, here goes nothin’”, Hagen said before being the first one to crawl through.

“Don’t worry, the inner province is much closer to the middle than the outer was. I hear it’s much smaller in size as well”, Hagen explained as the rest of us entered in behind him.

I couldn’t help but have a burning question inside of me as Hagen continued to lead us through the sewer once more.

“How do you know all of this? Like how to get through these and where places are and stuff”, I inquired.

Hagen let out a strange noise before taking his time to answer.

“Well, I practically built them”, he said.

“What?”, Janet asked.

“At one point in time before the world went crazy and I decided to become a chef for Chantedy’s family, I was a constructor. I helped design all of the sewage lines that ran from city to city”, he explained.

“Wait so, you have seen the inner province before?”, I asked.

“Yes, but not exactly. I saw the middle province too, but things have changed so much since our current President was elected. After visiting you, I realized that there really isn’t a middle province anymore, it’s almost like they changed its location or something”, he explained further.

“He’s right, your mother and I used to go on road trips around the country all the time before everything changed. It was such a different world. There has to be lost cities somewhere or something, because it seems like everything just magically vanished”, my father added.

My mother chimed in, “Also, things used to be called something different, it wasn’t outer, inner, and middle province. There was so much more, with so many more names. You have to wonder where all of that went.”

For many hours, we continued to talk about how much the world had changed by sharing stories and getting to know each other. I didn’t realize how much there was that I didn’t know about my parents’ lives.

 It wasn’t to my surprise that Chantedy was a big talker. She took up most of the conversations, rambling about stuff that didn’t even matter at this point. She was going on about school and friends, where she wanted to go to college and all that. But to be honest, it was quite fascinating to hear all that she had to say, since I never got to experience anything quite like it before. I lived a little bit of her life, but I didn’t live it in depth to find out all the details she was informing us about right now.

 You could tell that Hagen had a little bit too much of Chantedy’s rambling for one lifetime, because of the fact that he was getting quite agitated as the minutes passed by. He continuously tried to change the subject to any other person possible, but his attempts failed due to everyone already feeling warn out from all the walking. Nobody seemed to be in the mood for chatting aside from Chantedy. It might have been a bit strange, but I think I appreciated her rambling, because it filled the silence and made the time seem to pass by a little bit quicker, sort of like when you are watching a movie or a TV show. Sadly, Hagen did figure out a way to get her to stop talking, by reminding everyone they needed to stay quiet because we were apparently crossing dangerous territories.

I had remembered to take off my shoes before stepping down into the creek, this time, and luckily, I had a backpack to store them in now. Carrying my shoes around the entire time was quite annoying in the last travels. I felt the skin on my lower legs and feet begin to wrinkle as they did last time, and I knew now that it was probably close to night fall by the severity that they were in. Hagen had read my mind when he informed us that just up ahead would probably be a spot where we could call it quits for the night.

There was a strange beam of light that had leaked through the roof of the tunnel, illuminating the square cement ledge in which I assumed we would be sleeping on.

“Hopefully, it doesn’t rain tonight. That is a floor drain above us, so if it does, water will come pouring down like the most powerful shower in the universe. Try to not talk at all, okay? This means we are literally in the middle of the street, so people can hear us. There is good news too, though, this also means by midafternoon tomorrow we should be at our destination”, Hagen explained to us in a hushed tone.

The Seven of us stepped up onto the dry cement ledge and quietly took a seat. Maybe Hagen wasn’t lying to get Chantedy to shut up and had actually been serious about this being a quiet zone, I thought to myself as I laid down under what appeared to be a clear opening to a street. The sound of a car passing by startled me as it ran over the metal lid of the drain. When I was about to fall asleep, another car shortly passed after that one. This is going to be a long night, I thought to myself as I turned to look at Janet who had somehow already passed out with all the obnoxious noise. For a minute I found myself getting lost in her face. She looked like an angel with her eyes closed and her lips gently pressed together. Her skin looked soft as it glowed under the moonlight that shone through the cracks in the drain above us. Her hair gently falling in her face, and partially falling over one of her closed eyes. I found it more and more difficult to take in air as I continued to gaze over her. I had never seen anyone quite like Janet before.

A bird began to chirp in the distance above us, informing me that I had been awake all night, listening to cars pass loudly and staring at Janet. Realizing how creepy that actually was, I turned my head up at the daylight beginning to pass through the cracks in the ceiling. Being excited to get the day started, and finally get out of this sewer once again, I decided to begin waking everyone up. I didn’t bother to whisper at all, worried that someone might here, so I instead went around shaking everyone individually, until we were all up and on our way.

After a few hours of more walking, a familiar light came into view.

“We’re here!”, Beard called out, letting go of Hagen’s shoulder and limping his way through the rest of the flooded tunnel.

We followed Beard through the rest of the way, and out into another open woods. Something about the woods we were standing in, was different from the one in my province, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was yet.

As we made our way deeper into the unfamiliar woods, we noticed the sound of children laughing to the left of our path in the distance.

“Do you hear that?”, Janet whispered.

The rest of the crew and I nodded our heads in agreement to Janet’s question. Though the noise intrigued us, we decided to continue walking. But only a couple of minutes ahead, we heard another voice, this time it sounded like a man.

“Who’s out there?”, the voice echoed loudly through the trees.

When I turned my head to the left to look in the direction of the mystery voice, I noticed a small fence lined beyond the trees and above that, traces of what appeared to be someone’s home.

“Someone lives here!”, I yelled out in a hushed tone.

Before anyone could comment on my statement, a strangers eyes locked onto us as he approached, carrying what appeared to be a shot gun. Hagen Immediately intervened and started talking down at the guy.

“Woah! Woah! Hold on!”, he said as the guy pointed the shotgun in our direction.

“What are you doing on my property?!”, the man asked, still pointing his gun at us.

“We wanted to go on a hike, and we got lost on the way back”, Hagen nervously explained.

“We don’t mean you any harm, sir. We are just trying to get home”, My dad chimed in.

“What’s wrong with him? He hurt?”, the man asked, pointing at Beard who was clenched onto Hagen and holding his foot in the air.

“I took a good spill sir, but I think I’ll be ok”, beard responded while motioning towards his foot.

“Why don’t ya’ll come on inside, I can take a look at it. I used to be a doctor. You can’t walk all the way back with him limping like that. I might have an old pair of crutches handy as well”, the man kindly offered while insisting for us to follow in his direction with the motion of his head.

The seven of us looked at each other, trying to decide if we all agreed on it being a good idea or not.

“Should we trust him?”, Janet whispered to Hagen.

Hagen looked down at Beard’s ankle, which had completely covered his jeans in blood.

“I don’t think we have much of a choice”, he said.

All of us followed Hagen who was practically carrying Beard by this point, up to the back porch of the gun holding strangers’ home.

“Come on inside”, the stranger said, while opening the sliding glass door.

He helped Hagen lift Beard inside the doorway and led him onto a brown leather couch that sat in the middle of a living room. His house reminded me more of my own than it did Chantedy’s. The moment you entered, it felt warm, like a home and less like a mall. There was wood covering all of the walls and animal themed carpets and decorations everywhere. Above the fireplace hung deer heads, and above our heads hung a chandelier made out of deer antlers. I guess he didn’t only threaten people with that gun of his, I thought to myself as I continued to let my eyes wander.

“Do any of you want something to drink?”, the man asked.

“My name is Rus, by the way”, he added as he made his way towards the kitchen that sat behind the living room.

“Nice to meet you, Rus. I’m Janet, this is Chantedy, over there on your couch is Jefferey, but some of us call him Beard, next to Beard is Hagen, and the dude with the big muscles standing behind us by the door is Nathan. Oh, and these two right here next to Chantedy and I are Nathan’s parents”, Janet said, making sure to introduce everyone.

“Do you got any beer?”, of course was the request Beard had to make after Janet’s introduction.

“Wow, big family. Also, of course I have beer. Are you sure you wouldn’t want anything stronger for that ankle of yours? How about some whiskey?”, Rus asked while grabbing glasses out of the kitchen cabinet.

“Nah, beer is fine. Finally, someone has beer”, Beard said with relief.

“Excuse me?”, Rus questioned.

“They had been staying with us for a couple of days and we don’t drink, so Beard has been quite down for the past few days, being unable to get himself a drink”, My dad quickly stated.

“We are all not a family, family and friends. Nathan is the only one here who is my child”, my mother awkwardly added.

“I see, well then you are in luck, Beard”, Rus said after popping one open and walking it over to the couch and handing it to him.

“Anything for the rest of you?”, he then asked after turning around to walk back into the kitchen.

“I’ll take you up on that offer for whiskey”, my dad replied.

Rus looked at my father confused.

“I thought you said that you don’t drink”, he answered.

My father nervously looked around at all of us who appeared as if we wanted to punch him right now, before stumbling across an answer.

“Man… you do not know the day we have had. I think I’m going to start again right now”, he clarified.

Rus let out a deep laugh,

“No judgement here”, he said before pouring him a glass of whiskey.

“And how about for the ladies?”, he asked after handing the glass to my father.

“Hey!”, Hagen yelled.

“Oh sorry… uh… what was your name again… sorry…”, Rus stuttered.

“Hagen”

“Oh right… Hagen... anything for you, my man? Oh, and I forgot Nathan back there too, I guess he’s a bit shy, eh?”

“I think the rest of us will just take water”, Hagen answered.

“Well alright then…”, Rus said while beginning to fill up our glasses.

“Come and grab em’”, he said after lining the filled glasses across the kitchen counter.

Rus walked back over to the couch and got on his knees to take a look at Beard’s ankle.

“This isn’t looking good at all, are you sure this happened today? Because this is beginning to look a little bit infected”, he interrogated.

“Yep today”, Hagen answered confidently.

“You guys are starting to look a little bit familiar”, Rus said while looking around at us.

“Have I seen you somewhere?”, he asked.

“Nope, not that I would know of”, Hagen swiftly answered again.

“You sure? Cause the two of them look a lot like those two kids that were on the news yesterday about a post telling the world about the truths and what not”, he said while motioning towards Chantedy and I.

“What? That’s crazy talk. What kids did what now?”, Hagen said between nervous laughs.

I was beginning to feel like it was a stupid idea to accept Rus’ help when he started to laugh awkwardly at Hagen’s attempt to defend us.

“I know it’s you guys. I knew it since I saw you outside my house in the woods, I just didn’t say anything because your horrible attempts at disguising yourselves was quite entertaining on my part”, he explained before laughing even harder.

I turned to look at Hagen’s worried face and wondered what we were supposed to do. It was seven of us and one of him, right? We could totally take him if we had to, I thought to myself.

“Chill, don’t barf on my floor”, he stated while looking at Hagen who had turned white as a ghost.

“Look, I’m on your side. I would have shot all of you back there if I weren’t”, he cleared up.

Hearing his reassurance didn’t calm me down a single bit, as my heart continued to pound out of my chest. Even though he says he is for us, I couldn’t help but still feel like everything was over, and I could tell I wasn’t alone from the looks on everyone else’s faces.

“You all are welcome to hide out here as long as you want”, Rus offered.

Silence filled the room as we continued to stare blankly in different directions, still attempting to take in what had been said. Beard’s loud screaming instantly snapped me out of my own panic as Rus began trying to fix his ankle.

“I wouldn’t go anywhere else for a while if I were you. Not everyone is fond of what you said in that post of yours at the moment”, he added while pouring what looked like alcohol directly into Beard’s open wound.

Beard’s horrific screams echoed off of every wall and room in the house as Rus continued to explain,

“You see… not everyone believes the stuff you said. A lot of people think it’s a lie and still believe the lies that have been told to us all of these years. Personally, I can’t understand how they could believe such things. I mean, here is a perfect example of how obvious it is. We no longer have freedom to choose our career. What type of free country pulls shit like that? Oh, and here is another one; traveling is no longer permitted because planes are due to cause rare illnesses? As a retired doctor, I can assure you out of all the years I have studied medicine, I had yet to come across anything that would prove that theory to be true. When I tried to argue, do you know what the President himself told me? That I was not intelligent enough to continue working in my field of expertise. He fired me and had me replaced the next day, with someone who apparently was smart enough to understand the link to disease and airplanes. Sorry… I guess I am rambling a bit much. Hold tight, Beard, we are almost done”.

Another ear-piercing scream echoed through the house from Beard as I began to process everything Dr. Rus had said. After hearing his long rant of reasons for hating the government, I couldn’t help but to feel a little bit calmer about the whole situation. I found myself quickly starting to believe him as he finished stitching up and patching Beard’s ankle.

“Alright, there… that should do it for now, but you will need surgery later. Your bone was completely shattered in half”, he explained while standing up from the floor.

Rus walked over to the kitchen and poured himself a whiskey before taking a sip and exiting down a hallway. As soon as he left the room, we started talking amongst ourselves about everything that was going on.

“Can we trust him?”, Janet asked.

“I think I’m starting to”, I replied.

“The dude just fixed my ankle and didn’t shoot us, who else do we have to trust?”, Beard replied.

Before anything else could be said, Rus was walking back into the room carrying a pair of crutches in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other.

“Well, have we decided on staying yet?”, he asked while walking over to the couch and propping the crutches up next to Beard.

“Oh, if you don’t decide to stay, you can keep those it’s the least I can do. But, if you do decide to stay, will all of you please get a shower as soon as possible”, he added before walking over to the kitchen table and taking a seat.

“Well?”, he said after sitting down.

I looked at Hagen who looked at the rest of us, attempting to figure out what the best choice would be.

“I think we have decided to take you up on your offer”, Hagen replied after a moment of immense silence.

“Well, it’s settled then. There are three showers in this house, two upstairs and one downstairs. Get a shower and I’ll order a pizza”, he said before standing up to approach a phone which was hanging from the wall.

Never in my life had I ever heard of ordering a pizza, but it sounded exciting to me.

Janet and I both had the same idea of where to go when we made our way up the stairs to locate one of the showers he was talking about. I couldn’t wait to finally be able to wash off all the sewer filth and dirt that had been accumulating over the past couple of days. I could tell that Janet felt the same way as she sprinted up the stairs alongside me.

“Excited to shower?”, she asked when we reached the top.

“You bet”, I replied enthusiastically.

After engaging in small talk, we both immediately started walking in the same direction.

“Uh… maybe you should walk on that side of the house to look, and I’ll go on this side”, she explained.

“Good idea”, I replied, feeling embarrassed.

I turned to go in the opposite direction and walked towards the entrance of the first I laid eyes on. To my luck, the first door I opened was to the bathroom. After stepping inside, I slid my backpack off my back and placed it on the toilet. I decided to start by pulling out the first outfit I’d wear in what felt like forever of my own clothes. I had packed my favorite button-down shirt and jeans, alongside something I could never forget, my favorite classic hand me down Ven’s shoes from my father.

I began by folder everything and laying it nicely in a pile to await me after my shower. Being able to feel the hot water beat off my skin was probably better than heaven at this point, as I watched the dark brown colored water run into the white tile and flow down the drain. Goodbye dirt, I thought to myself as I reached for my towel and stepped out of the shower.

After putting on my old clothes, I sadly realized that they were kind of big for Chantedy. I decided to rip a shoelace out of the dirty old gift shop sneakers I had on the floor and use it as a belt, in attempt to keep my pants from falling down. But aside from everything being extremely baggy, it felt amazing to be in my own clothes again. Standing there looking at my new self in the mirror in my old clothes, I couldn’t help but be horrified with the sight of my current hair situation. When I peered down at the bathroom sink, my eyes caught on to the sight of a razer that was sitting there patiently waiting for me. Not knowing or caring at this point how Chantedy would react, I picked the razor up and clenched it in my hand. I watched chunks of hair fall off my head and roll down my shoulders onto the floor in the reflection of the mirror. I then reached my hand to the top of my head to feel the scruffy smoothness that finally laid where the mess of half cut choppy long hair use to lay. Looking at myself in the mirror, I felt a little less guilty after realizing that having no hair looked much better than the mess Beard had caused before.

After shaking the hair off my clothes, I stepped out of the bathroom to greet a screaming Janet, who had finished showering and was about to walk downstairs as well.

“What the hell!”, she shouted in fear.

“What?”

“What did you do?! Chantedy is going to kill you!”

“It looks better than it did before though, no?”

“I suppose, but I don’t think Chantedy is going to be happy.”

“Again, anything is better than what Beard did to her head. Plus, it will grow back evenly now.”

“Good point.”

Janet could not stop staring at my head the entire walk downstairs. At one point, she almost tripped and went sliding down them instead.

By the time we got downstairs, everyone else was finished with their showers and changed as well.

“What did you do to my hair?!”, Chantedy screamed from across the room.

I started feeling incredibly guilty when I saw the look in her eyes as she sat down on the brown leather chair of the living room. She looked at me as if I had crushed all of her hopes and dreams and like she was about to cry any second from now.

“I’m sorry… I wanted to fix it”, I explained.

“And that was fixing it?!”

“I’m really sorry, but look on the bright side, it will grow back evenly now.”

“There is no bright side! I am bald!”

I was starting to feel like there was nothing I could possibly do or say to make it up to her, but I tried.

“Well, what if I let you do whatever you want to my body, that way we are even.”

“Like what?”

“Anything you want, your choice.”

Chantedy sat in her chair, staring at the ceiling in deep thought.

“Can I paint my nails?”

“With what nail polish?”

“My ex-wife left some behind”, Rus chimed in.

Great… I thought to myself before letting out a deep sigh. As if it wasn’t enough to see myself in my mothers’ clothes, I was about to see myself in nail polish.

“Alright then, sure… have at it”, I said.

Rus ran to the other room to grab what I assumed to be nail polish, and I ran to the kitchen to grab a beer.

“I didn’t know you drank”, my father said as I popped open the bottle and took a sip.

“Yeah, I started a little while ago when the crew threw a party to celebrate our first plan going into action”, I replied.

“Well, cheers to that”, my dad said before holding out his glass of whisky for me to tap.

“Cheers”, I said joyfully, tapping his glass.

I guess having my old clothes and less hair again was giving me confidence, because I seemed to get the nerve up to offer Janet a beer.

“Janet, you want one?”

“Sure!”, she replied before happy walking over to me.

After dishing Janet her beer, the sound of the doorbell startled me. When I watched Rus hand Chantedy her nail polish and run towards the door, I remembered about the pizza that was supposed to come. My father started going on about how long it had been since he had eaten a properly made pizza, which only made my mother angry and grab a drink for herself as well.

By the time Rus had walked back inside the house, I already downed my first beer, Hagen was passed out asleep on the couch, my mother found a stereo to turn on, and Janet and Beard were onto shots. From the volume of the music, I had no idea how Hagen was still asleep, but he was.

“Oh, I see y’all in the mood to celebrate”, Rus said as he placed the biggest pizza I had ever seen in my life, stacked times four in the middle of the kitchen table.

The rest of the night blended together with everyone talking and playing strange games I had never seen before. Laughter filled the room for the first time in I can’t remember how long. And for the first time in a while, I felt safe.

While everyone was up dancing and playing party games, I spent most of my time talking to Janet, after she finished her shots with Beard. I figured with the great time we had going on around here, it was the perfect opportunity for me to get to know her a little bit better. I noticed she was more like me than everyone else. She didn’t seem like the dancing type, but despite that, I felt a need to ask her anyways.

“Would you like to dance?”

“What?!” She yelled out, as if she couldn’t hear me through the music.

“Would you like to dance?”

“Are you seriously asking me to dance right now like in one of those cheesy movies?”

“Well, yeah, I guess so.”

After her comparison of my offer to something in a cheesy movie, I was sure to be declined, but to my surprise…

“Sure, I’d love to dance”, she replied, while flashing me a crooked smile and biting half of her lip.

I didn’t bother to move out from the middle of the kitchen, I just reached my hand out like they did in one of those cheesy movies she referred to, and waited for another smile like the last, which is exactly what ended up happening. Janet gave me a look I would never forget and placed her hand in mine. I had no idea how to dance, but I tried my best as I pulled her closer to me and began to sway and move my feet, completely out of sync with the music around us. I felt Janet’s head lay against my shoulder as she began to melt into me. When I took in a deep breath, the feeling of her soft hair against my cheek and the way she smelled, made me feel calmer than I had ever felt in my life. All my nerves and feelings of insecurity from being in Chantedy’s body, instantly faded away and I felt as if the world was put back together, dancing in the middle of a stranger’s kitchen with Janet in my arms.

 I felt Janet lift her head off of my shoulder to look me in the eyes. There was something about the way she looked at me that made me feel like the only person in the room and knowing that it had actually been my eyes she was staring at, only made it better.  As I was getting lost in Janet’s beautiful green eyes, I could feel my head being pulled closer and closer to hers…

“Aye! Get a load of this!”, Beard’s annoying voice echoed across the room from the couch.

Startled, Janet and immediately let go of me to look around.

“How drunk are you, Janet?”, Beard teased.

“I’m not drunk, I was trying to teach him how to dance. Mind your own business, meat head”, she snapped.

“Meat head?”, he repeated confused.

“Didn’t look like that to me”, he added.

“She said mind, your own business”, I added, stepping in.

“Oh, look who’s a tough guy now, bald and all”, he said before using his crutches to stand up off the couch and walk his way over towards me.

“You really gonna try and pick a fight with me, right now?”, I asked, looking him up from head to toe.

Beard stood directly in front of me, putting his face right in front of mine, far too close for comfort. I felt the air expel out of his mouth as he began to speak more idiotic words.

“I wouldn’t get too confident if I were you, I could take you without hands as well.”

Hagen woke up at this point and walked over to scoop Beard into his arms and walk him across the room to drop him down onto the couch.

“That’s enough of that! You know what, as a matter of fact, as the leader of this crew, I say that it’s time for everyone to go to bed. All of you have obviously had way too much to drink and can longer control your behavior to make good decisions. We need rest anyways, because tomorrow we need to start thinking about what our next step is going to be. Staying in this house forever was not a part of the plan, you understand?”

“You can’t order us to go to bed… are you crazy”, Beard argued from the couch.

Hagen clenched the top of Beard’s shirt in a fist and nearly lifted him up off the couch into midair, staring directly into his eyes.

“Quit being an idiot”, he said with rage as he stared him down.

After dropping Beard down onto the couch again, it appeared as if Hagen’s eyes would pop out of their sockets in any second from now, as he stood there, red faced and shaking with anger.

“Everyone! Go to sleep! Now!”, he yelled at the top of his lungs in a voice so deep that it felt as if the house shook beneath us.

Chapter Ten: Let’s Get Em’

‘Good morning’ were the words I heard as I made my way to the bottom of the stairs. As I rubbed my eyes, I noticed the smell of bacon and eggs escaping from the kitchen. When I turned around and walked towards the living room, I found everyone already awake and sitting on the couch, eating their breakfast. As I skootched in next to my father, I heard Rus’ voice echo from the kitchen.

“Would you like something to eat?”

Hung over and starving from last night, I wasn’t even sure I had gotten a chance to eat any of the pizza.

“Sure! Thanks!” I replied before cupping my pounding head in my hands.

I had forgotten what a hangover felt like until now, and I was now remembering why I didn’t want to drink again the last time it had happened.

The crew had the TV set on the news channel and were hovering around, watching intently, as if they were waiting for something specific to appear. I assumed that the something specific had to deal with the current situation with the president.

“What you guy’s watching for?”, I asked.

“You missed it”, Janet replied.

“Missed what?”

“They said they were about to share new news on the President”

Rus carried my plate of eggs over to me and took a seat with his next to Hagen on the floor.

“You know that we have more chairs, right?”, Rus teased, looking next to him at Hagen.

“I know”, he replied.

“Ok, just checking”, Rus answered before shooting us with a funny look.

Knowing Hagen, I was sure that he felt awkward about the fact that he wasn’t the one cooking this morning, as he stirred his eggs with his fork and was hesitant to take any bites. The news broadcast was quick to interrupt my assumptions about Hagen when the President’s name came up. Rus quickly put down his plate and grabbed the TV remote to crank the volume up a bit louder.

“We are happy to bring great news to your morning, when we announce to you that the President has made it out of his surgeries just fine, and he is alive and well”, the news broadcaster stated.

The cold chills of fear that ran through my body after hearing those words, were far too intense to even begin to describe. I gulped and continued to listen in on what else the guy had to say.

“The President has made his first steps this morning and has officially clarified that he will be going to each and every Province himself to speak to the people and clarify everything that is going on. He says he hopes to clear up any misunderstandings and confusion that might have been spread through rumors during his injured times. He also said, he is there for us and always will put us first, and that is why he finds it important to be there in person.”

“This guy can’t be serious”, Beard interrupted.

I had to agree with Beard on this one, this guy was a complete joke. He makes me sick, tossing around the lies he does, continuing to use people for his own fortune. I felt as if my eggs were about to come back up any second from now. I put down my plate to listen to the rest of what the broadcaster had to say, and it was pretty much just about the schedule for each province and where everything would be held at each one.

“Turn it off!”, Hagen yelled towards Rus who was still clenching the remote.

Rus, shut the TV down and placed the remote gently back on the table to join us in silence as we sat there in utter shock at what we had just learned. Beard was of course the first person to have something to say.

“Well, we knew he was alive, didn’t we?”

“Sure, but I think a small part of all of us was hoping he wouldn’t make it out of that ambulance”, Janet pointed out.

Janet was right about that one, I certainly was hoping the same when I watched him get loaded onto that thing.

“Well, what are we gonna’ do now?”, Beard asked.

“The thing we wanted to do from the very beginning”, Hagen replied.

The entire crew turned their heads in confusion towards Hagen, waiting for his elaboration.

“Kill him”, he finished.

I took a deep breath, unable to believe what was going on right now. We seemed to be back at square one after everything we had been through. So, this is it? I thought to myself. We just start over? I wondered.

“And how do you propose we do that?”, Janet asked.

“Well, we can start by not using this guy for any plans”, Beard stated, motioning his head in my direction.

“Will you leave him alone? It’s not his fault”, Janet argued defensively.

It made me smile that Janet had been defending me, but it also made me feel bad that she felt the need to deal with my problems for me when I should be dealing with them myself.

“Janet, it’s cool. Don’t worry about it”, I said.

“No, it’s not cool, he’s a pathetic douche. What are you so jealous of, Beard? It is obvious you are jealous of something because you haven’t always been this way with Nathan. Or is it that you are insecure? what is it? You got a little crush on Chantedy or something and that makes you mad cause you can’t handle the fact that it’s Nathan in there?” Janet teased, metaphorically pushing Beard into the ground.

“What? That doesn’t even make any sense”, Beard replied, attempting to defend himself.

“It actually does, why don’t you use your brain for once, huh?”, Janet teased some more.

“Enough! I am God darn tired of this drama! I will do the damn mission myself!”, Hagen let out.

I quickly turned my head to look at Hagen with concern.

“What do you mean?”, I asked.

“I will put on a disguise, change my appearance a bit and go to the President’s speech circle today and put him down, literally”, he explained.

“Alright Hagen, I know you are mad, but now you are just talking crazy”, I argued, attempting to talk some sense into him.

“Listen here Nathan, I am fed up with this entire world and today is the perfect opportunity to do something. Don’t you get it? Remember what Rus said? Not everyone agrees with the stuff we said and other people out there obviously do. Do you know what happens when two large groups of people disagree on a very serious life changing topic? Protests happen, Nathan. Do you know what Protests do? They cause the perfect amount of chaos to cause the perfect distraction and illusion for me to pass through the crowd without being seen. I will hold up a dang picket sign that says, ‘I love the President’ if I have to. But I am getting into that crowd and when I do, I am going to get close enough to him to put an end to his sad life. if I don’t go down fighting today, I won’t be able to live the rest of my life knowing that I could have done something and didn’t. You understand? I will not take no for an answer and if you guys aren’t down to come with me and rather stay here arguing over stupid stuff, then I’ll just go do it by myself.”

It only took me a split second to take in everything that Hagen was saying and realize that it was probably true.

“Ok, then we will come with you, right guys?” I said before scanning the room with my eyes.

“No! this is insane! You can’t do that!”, my mother argued, standing up out of her chair to exaggerate the seriousness of her feelings.

My mother then turned around to get on her knees in front of me while I was seated on the couch. She stared into my eyes, hers were glossy and pooling with tears as she struggled to get her words out calmly.

“Nathan, come on son… Let’s just run away… or stay here… let’s not do anything stupid. I can’t lose you, son.”

I looked over at my father whose head was pointed down at his hands which laid crossed across his lap.

“This isn’t stupid mom… Don’t you see? We have the chance to save the world, why wouldn’t we take it? Besides, we won’t be able to stay hidden forever and you know it. Plus, this is no way to live our lives, there is no freedom. We might as well go down fighting like Hagen said. Trust me when I say how important this is to me mom. I know you love me, and I love you too, but I have to do this”, I explained, looking deep into her glossy eyes with glossy eyes of my own.

“Our son is right”, my father added before looking up from his hands to look at me with glossy eyes as well.

I watched a tear slide down my fathers’ cheek as he took me by the hand.

“I am proud of you, son. You are my hero”, he said before clenching his grip around my hand tighter.

I felt the tears begin to pour out of my eyes and run down my face as I leaned across the couch to wrap my father in a tight hug. I then felt my mothers’ arms wrap around me as well.

“You are my hero, dad”, I said before wrapping my arm around my mother too.

When our hug broke apart, I had almost forgotten other people were in the room with us. I looked around and immediately noticed that not a single person didn’t have tears dripping down their face.

“Let’s do this”, Beard said before standing up out of his seat in a position that mimicked superman, with crutches underneath his arms.

Chantedy stood up after him in a position I was proud to see myself in.

“I’m in too”, she said.

Hagen looked around the room at all of us in front of him.

“I don’t think I’ll be needing all of you”, he said before taking a deep breath and looking down at his feet, which laid in a crossed position behind his plate of uneaten eggs.

“What?”, I exclaimed.

“We don’t want to draw too much attention to ourselves, so I’ll only be taking two of you I think”, he explained.

“Who?”, Beard asked.

Hagen continued, “Well, I was thinking Nathan and Janet would be a good option. Nathan already changed his appearance to be recognized quite a bit, and well, Janet is highest trained member of the crew.”

“What about me?!”, Beard argued defensively.

Hagen let out a sigh,

“Look at yourself, son. You are not in the shape at all to do this right now. I know that you are more than capable of doing so, but not right now, not in your current condition. Heal up, don’t worry. Before you know it, it will be your time to shine again soon.”

Beard fell backwards and sunk sadly into his chair. I know that I didn’t like the guy much and he could be quite the douche, but I had to give him credit for his courage. He wanted to put himself in a highly dangerous environment while basically not even having a foot.

“Well, let’s get going. We don’t have any time to waste we only have thirty-eight more minutes until the President’s speech starts and we have no time to waste. We need to be front row, or I won’t be able to reach him.”, Hagen said before standing up out of his seat and making his way to the door.

Rus stood up after Hagen,

“Wait”, he said before placing his empty plate on the coffee table beside him.

Hagen turned around to look at Rus who was nervously tapping his foot and twiddling his fingers.

“Yes?”, Hagen asked, in a tone that demanded a quick answer.

“Uh… I can… drive you…”, Rus stuttered.

“I know where it is”, he added.

“Alright, thanks buddy. Come on let’s go, no time to be wasting”, Hagen said before walking out the front door.

Rus went after him, and I turned to look at my parents, who sat there on the couch with the same forced smiles on their faces that they had the morning of my donate day. They both stood up to wrap me in another tight hug. I squeezed onto my Parent’s, not wanting to once again, have to let go. A sudden gentle tap on my shoulder from Janet signaled that we needed to leave now. I let go of my Parent’s once again and looked into their sad eyes. There was something different about their sad eyes this time around, though; they seemed to have a touch of hope behind them, which is something I hadn’t seen in the last similar moment to this one.

“We believe in you, Nathan”, my mother said before giving me a kiss on my forehead to send me on my way.

I felt Janet’s gentle touch, as she wrapped her hand around my arm and nudged me to move in her direction.

I got one last look of the rest of the crew before turning away to walk down the hallway of Rus’ house and out the front door. I wanted that picture to stay in my memory forever, this was a moment that I never hoped to forget. Beard never failed to interrupt things as he yelled out “wait”, to stop my first step towards the door. I turned around to look at him and prepared myself to hear another annoying comment come out of his mouth. But instead, he said,

“Good luck, man”.

I never thought the day would come that I let Beard make me cry, but in this moment, that is exactly what he did. I turned away quickly, in hopes that he wouldn’t see, gave him a quick, “thanks”, and walked with Janet down the hallway and out the front door.

When we arrived outside, this was a part of the inner province that I hadn’t yet seen, and it was exactly how I always dreamed for life to be. I felt Janet’s fingers intertwine with mine as we stared at children riding bikes and playing hopscotch in front of their homes. What we were witnessing right now with our very own eyes, was something I had only ever seen in movies and didn’t know still continued to this day. Seeing the dream of a normal life surround us, reminded me exactly what it was that we were fighting for. I turned to my right to see Hagen smiling at the children as well and leaning against a rusty old pick-up truck that was parked in the driveway.

“You ready to go?” I asked.

I had a feeling that Hagen hadn’t even noticed we were standing outside yet, until I said something. I guess he was in amazement at what was going on around us as well.

Hagen opened the doors to the pickup truck and the three of us slid inside. As the engine rumbled after Rus turned the key in the ignition, Janet slammed the door behind her, and we were rolling out of the driveway and moving down the road.

Chapter Eleven: D-Day

I was so nervous sitting inside Rus’ truck, driving to what I was hoping wouldn’t be our doom, that I didn’t even get a chance to take in the scenery of the inner province around me. We pulled up to the start of a growing crowd with large men dressed in black surrounding the perimeter.

“Alright we are here”, Rus said as he came to a stop.

Looking out the window had my heart racing as I stared at the amount of security guards standing around with large metal bats and guns strapped to their belts.

“Are we sure this is a good idea?”, I asked as I continued to peer out the window.

“Let’s go, kid”, Hagen said before leaning over Janet and I to open the door.

Hagen turned over to Rus and placed his hand on his shoulder.

“Thank you, for everything you have done for us”, he said before turning around to signal for us to step out of the truck.

Hagen being the last to step out, he closed the door behind him and led us in the direction of the crowd. I clenched Janet’s hand in mine as we proceeded to walk forward after Hagen. Janet looked over to smile at me with warm eyes and nodded her head. After receiving Janet’s silent encouragement, I felt a little bit better about the whole situation. I squeezed her hand a little bit tighter, as if the harder I squeezed the more she was protected.

Our first encounter with security, was one of the most nerve recking experiences yet. Hagen and Janet stood around me like a shield. We tried our best to use the crowd as one as well, getting lost in the middle of mobs and trying to blend in by moving with them. I was nervous at first when the security guys kept staring directly at us for a longer period of time than I felt comfortable with. It wasn’t just us they were paying attention to, either. After passing a few of them, I started to pay closer attention to their movements and it seemed like they were looking closely at the crowd, as if they were actually trying to find someone. When I pointed this out at Hagen, he told me to stop looking around because I was probably drawing attention to myself, twitching my head around in every direction every minute. He then also explained to me that I was probably right about my observations and that they were probably actually trying to find us.

The crowd we were following, eventually came to a stop in the middle of what seemed to mimic a roman theatre. It was a large rock circle shaped dome with seating all around it. But oddly, nobody was using the seats, everyone chose to pack tightly together in the center instead. People were going insane trying to squeeze their way to the front of the line, as if the President were God himself about to come down and say something. When I began to laugh at my thoughts, I turned over to tell Hagen about it and realized that he had actually become one of them. Hagen was gone and forcing his way through the crowd by jumping and leaping around people. In a panic, I immediately grabbed Janet’s attention and notified her that Hagen had ditched us and was trying to squeeze his way through the crowd of maniacs. Janet instantly turned around and tried to catch a glimpse of where he was, but he was already gone and lost in the crowd; we had lost sight of Hagen.

“What are we going to do?”, I yelled over the noise in a panic to Janet.

“Don’t worry… I’m sure Hagen has a plan. We just have to trust him”, she explained.

When I turned around from my short conversation with Janet, the President walking onto the stage caught my attention. He wasn’t in the absolute best of shape, he struggled to walk at a moderate pace as he grasped a cane and was covered in bandages from head to toe. Screeching cheers filled the air and echoed around us as he made his way to his podium and began to speak.

“Good afternoon my favorite people of the world!”

The start of his speech made me fill sick to my stomach already. Did he tell everyone the same load of crap? That they are the special ones and his favorites and all that? I wondered to myself.

“I stand in front of you today, with much appreciation for all the love and support you have given me in this dire time of need. Especially with the bit of confusion that has been tossed around about me recently. I know you all are probably wondering how those children got ahold of such devices, as the ones they captured that footage on. As you all very well know, our government has banned those devices for one very good reason, our doctors had proven that they cause a specific type of cancer that would end up killing you in a matter of weeks. Well, you know how children can be don’t you? These children disobeyed my laws and got a very irresponsible individual to build them for them. On top of all that they had already done to go against me, after all I had done for them, they spread lies about me to the world. Cruel lies, lies that would make people wish I were dead. And as you look at me and witnessed on the news not too long ago, that is exactly what came of it! Someone had seen those videos before you did and tried to kill me along with everyone else who was in that house that day! But I assure your safety when I say, these children have been found and are currently under our custody.”

Chantedy and I turned to look at each other and struggled to hold back our laughs at his comment about us being in his custody.

Terrified screams suddenly filled the air, breaking off our laughter and catching our attention back to the president once again.

“What’s this?!”, the President yelled towards the crowd.

Chantedy squeezed my hand so tight that I thought it would fall off. I felt as if I were going to be sick as I witnessed what I couldn’t believe to be true. Hagen was being dragged onto the stage by two guards and tied down. I couldn’t even gasp a breath of air as I watched them force him to his knees next to the President. I watched the President then walk across the stage, grab something off the floor, and hold it up above his podium for the crowd to see.

“This man, ladies and gentlemen! Tried to throw a knife at me! Can you believe it?!”

The President began to laugh, hysterically towards the crowd while continuing to clench the knife in his hand and place his other on Hagen’s shoulder. Before another thought could cross my mind, I watched the President slice his knife through my friend’s neck.  Hagen’s eyes grew cold as blood poured out onto the stage in front of him. My body grew ice cold as I felt Janet’s hand slip out of mine and heard her cry echo through the silent crowd around us. Unable to move or speak, I stood there in silence staring at the stage until my friend fell to his death.

A man’s voice from the crowd screamed, “gun”, and the sound of an explosion went off to the left of me, followed by another to my right in the near distance. When I turned around in the direction of my ringing ear drum, I saw a blank stare in Janet’s eyes as she fell to the floor. The crowd around us screamed and ran around in a panic as I fell to my knees, grabbing Janet in my arms.

“No!”, I cried out with all of my energy.

“Why! Janet please! You can’t die!”, I screamed as tears began to pour down my face.

I knelt there, looking Janet in her eyes as she laid there in my arms, gasping for a breath of air.

“It’s okay Nathan, look… he’s dead”, she said while tears began to fill her eyes.

“Where did you get a gun?!”, I asked.

I felt her begin to grow colder as she laughed between coughs. I gently wiped the blood off of her lips with my fingers.

“I have been carrying it this whole time, I don’t trust people”, she explained with a weak smile.

“Don’t worry, I’m gonna’ get you out of here”, I said in as calm of a voice as possible, trying to keep her from getting nervous, but it was obvious that she was the one keeping me calm, here.

“Nathan, no… look at me…”, she said as I began to try to lift her up.

I looked into her eyes again, to find that same look she had given me last night when we were dancing.

“Kiss me”, she said as a tear began to stream down her face.

I slid my thumb across her soft lips, wiping the blood away before leaning over to gently wrap my lips around hers.

After letting go of our kiss, with our lips lingering over each other, she whispered something between soft breaths,

“You are the perfect man, and no matter what, you always will be.”

The moment I felt her lips touch mine once again, I felt the pain of hot metal entering through my back. My heart felt as if it were on fire as it’s beats began to slow down. I felt my body grow colder and the warmth of Janet’s lips fade away. All of my strength was vanishing, and I now realized that I had been shot.