Chapter Two

A heavy fog hung inside my mind, dampening any chance there was that I would be interested in what was going on around me. That was why Kelley drove, with Tyler in the passenger seat, leaving me to lean against the frosty car window in the back and stare blankly as the world flew by.

Fall had truly settled down on the town and suffocated the memories of that perfect summer. I was drawn slowly back into reality watching the steam form on the window with every breath I released. That fog wasn’t just in my head; it was all around me.

At some point I took a breath, and the glass was momentarily clear. The car was clattering slowly down an old dirt road, but rain drops splashed down on the ground, turning the road to muddy sludge.

“Where are we?” I groaned, my temples starting to throb.

Tyler had said something about not wanting to take the main roads, and Kelley had followed along blindly, so, at that moment, he had no idea where we were. Tyler was quick to assure us it wouldn’t take much longer.

The muddle, forested scenery slipped past us infinitely. Most of the leaves that weren’t already on the ground had turned brown and were hanging as if by thread for their branches.

“Maybe I’ll be there,” Kenna said wistfully.

As my head snapped up to meet her empty gaze I because painfully aware of what a mess I was. My hair was chaos, I still hadn’t shaved, and my acne was way out of control.

“What?” I whispered, leaning closer, but never close enough to touch her.

She smiled sadly and looked away. “Maybe I’ll be there. You know. Where did you think I went?”

“Well, I don’t know⸺”

The car suddenly swerved and spun to the left, cutting my sentence short and causing Kenna to twist and fizzle into nothing like an enormous splatter of rainwater against the window.

We were rocketing down an even bumpier, narrower dirt road. The dying branches on the trees around us seemed to reach out and call to me with some sort of dark beckoning. I shook off the feeling and aimed a glare at Kelley through the rearview mirror.

“Sorry, man,” he said. “Almost missed this little road.”

I looked up ahead and spotted what appeared to be a rundown Victorian mansion. Its door was boarded shut, and so were many of its shattered windows.

“This is where your friends hang out?” Kelley asked, letting the car drift slowly to a stop in front of the house.

Tyler looked apprehensive. “It’s not as bad as it seems. Pull the car around to the back.” He directed Kelley to a grove of trees a few hundred feet behind the house and showed him which tree to park under and the branches we would put on top of it. I didn’t see the other two cars parked in the grove until I’d almost run into them.

“This is weird, Tyler,” Kelley said.

I interjected, “Ya’ think?”

He asked, “Why are we hiding?”

“Well…Well, Greg will tell you. C’mon, I’m cold.”

We ran across the overgrown yard in the rain, and my shoes were sloshing with grassy puddles by the time we arrived at the back door. My ankles were covered in grass and smeared with mud. Tyler apologized robotically.

At first glance, the door looked to be boarded shut, but the boards were sawed in half along the crack around the door. Tyler turned the knob and, with one hard yank, the door slid out of place. We stepped inside, and he slammed it shut, the boards squeaking against each other as they settled.

The house was dark and musty, and I immediately fell into a fit of coughing, the dust in the air tickling my throat to no end. Tyler coughed once and shrugged. “It’s not so dusty upstairs.

The hallways were narrow and eerily lit by dusty beams of light falling through the small cracks in the windows that the boards didn’t cover. Everything in the house was coated with a thick layer of dust, giving it all a grey, forgotten look.

The wooden stairs curved inward, and the wallpaper was chipped and falling away from the walls. The floor creaked and swayed with every step we took. If Tyler hadn’t been there, I would have fallen through the gaping hole at the top of the staircase. Something told me there was no going back from this.

“Don’t go in there, there, there, or there,” Tyler said, strolling down the cramped hallway and pointing to various doors along the way.

“How about we don’t go anywhere?” Kelley asked, smiling nervously at Tyler.

Tyler turned around with a serious look glued on his face. “Oh, no. You have to come now.” With that he turned around and continued walking, not stopping until he reached a small, battered door at the end of the hall. Reluctantly, Kelley and I joined him.

Tyler suddenly smiled with bubbling apprehension. Kelley was instantly put at ease, losing himself in Tyler’s eyes, while I was left giving them both a dirty look.

The door suddenly flew open, and the hallway was bathed in silver light. Once my initial shock had faded and my eyes had readjusted to the light, I noticed that Tyler and Kelley had both disappeared into the room. With a hefty sigh, I went in after them.

Polished wood replaced the dull, scratched-up floorboards of the hall, and the peeling wallpaper that lined the hallways gave way to smooth, dark plaster. The light emanating from the ceiling was warm and welcoming on my soggy clothes and dripping skin.

We stood in what appeared to be a waiting room, with a wooden desk in the far corner and a sofa against the wall nearest to us.

Tyler was practically bouncing with excitement. “Okay,” he said, “Okay, sit down.”

I tried to get comfortable and talk to Kelley, but he was completely engrossed in staring at Tyler’s a*s by the desk in the corner.

“Hey,” Tyler said to the man at the desk, trying to keep his voice low but failing miserably. “I got two new guys for, you know…you know.”

I sat up straighter and watched the guy at the desk give Tyler an approving smile. Tyler smiled back like a dog being scratched on his belly. The man stood slowly and looked down on me from across the room.

I stood up, leaving Kelley on the couch with a dazed look in his eyes. He would gladly follow Tyler anywhere at this point, since he’d had two days to fall madly in love, so I would have to be the one to speak up.

I could feel the short beard bristling on my chin and the bags pulling down on my eyes. I took a deep breath and used the most patient voice I could manage. “Tyler, what the hell is this.”

Tyler’s face fell. He looked at the other guy and bit his lip. “Um. Well.”

The other guy gave him a look that shut him up in an instant, then returned to me with a smirk. “It doesn’t matter now,” he said, his voice clear with the hint of a Russian accent, “We can’t exactly let you leave.”

His name was Ivan; he was at least half a foot taller than me and looked like he could snap my neck with one finger. His shaved head and strangely intriguing tattoos put me off more than the rippling muscle between his tight t-shirt.

After sending Tyler running off to get water, Ivan sat on the edge of his desk and began a lengthy, emotional description of his rough childhood in Ukraine. Kelley hung on the edge of every word, trembling quietly and trying to take deep, slow breaths.

Seventeen years into the story, Tyler returned with two tall glasses of water. Kelley was completely lost in the story and was saying, “Oh, no…that poor cat,” when Tyler shoved the glass of water into his shaking hand.

I murmured a thank you and stared down at the glass while Kelley took a long sip of his, gazing up at Tyler with a childish spark in his eye. I took a small sip and stared at my feet, wondering what I’d have to do to get a smoke break. Oddly enough, Ivan was still ranting on and on about Ukraine.

Time wore on, and my leg began to bounce up and own as my heart pounded in my head. I lifted the glass to take a sip and hopefully quench my grinding headache, but it never reached my mouth.

Right beside me, Kelley’s glass slipped out of his hand and landed with a splintering crunch on the polished wood floor. A moment later, his glazed-over eyes fluttered shut, and he slumped down on the sofa.

Suddenly silent, Ivan stared at me with a col, piercing glare. My mouth hung open, and I let my glass hit the floor beside Kelley’s, the bits of newly-shattered glass drifting across the floor in a spreading pool of soiled water.

There wasn’t time to run, or even to think. Ivan’s stony composure turned to rage, and in one fluid motion, he stood and brought his fist down on the top of my head with force enough to break the skin of my scalp. The dull grinding in my temples gave way to a splintering, throbbing ache, and my vision blurred for a moment and then narrowed. The last thing I saw was the light hanging from the ceiling.

“I’m dead, right?” I asked, walking through the park on a summer evening with Kenna by my side. An overwhelmingly comfortable presence hung all around us, in the trees, the grass, the flowers. I watched fireflies dart about in the humid air above the creek and smiled.

Her deep brown hair was long and feathery, let loose around her head as it always was in the summertime. She looked content for the first time in a long time.

“No, Darren,” she said quietly.

I cursed under my breath and drank something sweet from the silver flask in my hand. “What the hell is this?”

Kenna just laughed beside me, her elvish smile distracting me from the dreamy world around us. I hadn’t seen that smile in so long. It felt amazing.

I thought to ask where we were, but I never wanted that smile to fade, so I said nothing and instead just stared back at her, my own smile growing gradually across my face.

Despite my desperation to stay right there and in that moment, the summery contententedness slowly crashed down around us. Suddenly the warm air felt sharp with unease. The liquid in my flask bit into my tongue with an intense bitterness.

The sun was setting around me, and all form s of life in every direction seemed to wilt and crumble before my eyes. As always, she wilted along with them. Her cheeks seemed hollow, and her once beautiful eyes seemed dull and sunken. The spark of life I’d always admired in her face had faded and was gone, and so was the girl I’d come to love.

I shut my eyes and let the darkness take me.

A blinding headache and suffocating nausea washed over me as my eyes slid open and met the sickeningly empty room we had woken up in. Doing my best to ignore the crushing pain in my head, I looked around weakly and tried to take in my surroundings.

There were no windows that I could see, and the only door was a small metal one behind me. Kelley was sleeping soundly on the floor nearby and, as I had for almost as long as I’d known him, I felt envy.

Mere minutes after I woke up, Tyler appeared in the room from behind me and gave me another glass of water. Unable to bear the headache any longer, I drank the whole thing immediately, letting the cool water quench the pain pounding in my skull and the sickness stirring in my stomach.

Tyler didn’t even look at me, instead choosing to sit down cross-legged in front of Kelley and look down at him with fatherly concern. When he finally came to, he smiled weakly and picked himself up off the floor, drinking the water as quickly as I had. Ivan strolled into the room the moment both glasses were empty. He didn’t shut the door.

“Hey, you two,” he said, smiling despite the cold glare he was getting from me.  “Really sorry about that, Darren. I never like hurting you people, but,” he cracked his knuckles all at once, “sometimes I have to.”

Tyler sat down on the floor beside Kelley, and I saw him immediately put at ease, while I was left antsy and irritated.

Ivan went on, “You guys came to the right place. It’s a dangerous world out there.” He paused as if expecting something, then went on, “Anyway, that means you need to do something for me. There’s a greater good in this for both of us, see. You’ll understand soon enough.”

Tyler nodded along with everything Ivan said, and Kelley, watching Tyler intently, nodded eagerly as well and smiled. I sighed and stared blankly at the wall behind Ivan. Anxiety suddenly surged within me again, and I felt small beads of sweat form under my arms and start trickling towards my elbows. I bit my tongue hard and squinted down at the floor.

The heavy silence in the room was quickly broken by the familiar click of a lighter. My suddenly heightened hearing picked up the small, sweet sound of paper catching on fire. A cigarette was offered to me, and I took it. This one tasted different⸺better.

Finally calm, I listened to Ivan casually explain what coming to the house meant for us; basically, we couldn’t back out. He was quick to assure us that we weren’t in any “real” danger, and that after a short “prospective period,” we could “decide” if we would stay or not.

At the end of that lengthy explanation, Ivan handed me the rest of the pack of cigarettes and said, “Good stuff. You want more of those? Do me a favor.”

We were given a sealed package and and address, along with the instructions to get it delivered and bring the money back by the end of the week. We were shown out into the hall and guided through the the musty house and out the back door.

Tyler waved goodbye and then slammed the door shut, squeezing it into place with a piercing screech.

The rain had let up quite a bit, so we walked to the grove of trees at the edge of the lot. Kelley carried the package, cradled in his arms, into the passenger seat of my car, and I shoved the branches to the ground and slid in next to him.

“Tyler’s hot,” he said, a stupid smile stuck on his face. “I think he was coming onto me⸺”

“Kelley, stop,” I interrupted, trying to sound reasonable but feeling my voice crack regardless. “We can’t go back there. You know that.” I started the car and began a slow, careful cruise around to the front of the house.

Pouting, he asked, “Then what are we going to do? You can’t keep me from my soul mate…”

“This is too dangerous for your romantic s**t. He’s playing you, like Ivan and his stupid cigarettes.”

“⸺which you love,” Kelley said matter-of-factly. “And what are you saying? People can’t be attracted to me?”

“You know that’s not what I’m saying.”

We were both silent. The car clunked sloppily down the old dirt road, roaring through the occasional muddy puddle and flinging pebbles across the road.

After a few long minutes, Kelley said, “Maybe he’s onto something. About the world being dangerous. I mean, you know how we’re releasing a bunch of felons because of overcrowded prisons?”

I thought about that for less than a second. “No.”

Kelley sighed and stared out the window at nothing in particular. “We should just do what they say. For a little while. Can’t we just see how it goes?”

“Whatever.”

I piloted the car around a series of sharp, swerving turns before a paved highway came into view. “Finally, I muttered.”

Kelley reached over to the radio and tuned it to some country station, then leaned against the window and watched the road fly by for the rest of the drive.

The sun was setting when we arrived at the apartment building. I couldn’t shake an unnerving apprehension as I pushed the package under the passenger seat and tossed a jacket on top of it.

The brown skies matched the muddy streets and soggy leaves scattered across the dark parking lot. Even the leaves on the ground looked uncomfortable that night.

Kelley gave me one last hopeful look before disappearing into his apartment. I walked across the hall, took a deep breath, and entered my own.

The scent of burnt food wafted across the small living room to my nose and, as if on cue, the scent of greasy takeout followed.

A rusty voice stumbled in from the kitchen; “I made dinner.”

“Not hungry,” I called back, walking briskly to my bedroom. Thankfully, the conversation ended there.

Author's Note

2nd Draft - Thank you for reading :D