The Train I'm On Hasn't Stopped Driving (Part 5)

 

I kept staring at the slowly ticking clock. Based solely on my biological assessment of time, it felt like days had passed, but according to the clock itself, it had been no more than a measly half hour.

It was the same with each clock on the train, they simply didn't work together with reality, measuring each minute as a small eternity.

With John dead, we felt more vulnerable than ever, and since his death we hadn't spoken a word.

“I know we're all on edge, but I think it's time we discuss what we'll do once the train stops again,” Frank said in his usual annoyed tone.

Both Mia and I knew our true destination, but hadn't yet told Frank. Alas, time had come, and if we stood even the faintest chance of surviving, we had to be able to rely on each other.

“Frank, we need to tell you something,” I said.

His eyes narrowed in suspicion at my obviously guilty tone.

“Tell me what?”

“Our destination, Gehenna, well...” I trailed off.

“Yes, what about it?”

“It's- eh-”

“Gehenna is Hell, Frank, we're all going to Hell,” Mia burst out, annoyed by my hesitation.

We fell silent for a few seconds while Frank processed what we'd just told him. Then, he suddenly burst out laughing.

“Really, Hell, that's the best you could do?” he said.

I just nodded in response.

“So, you mean to tell me, that we're already dead, and that our next stop will be the realm of Satan himself?”

“Yeah, I guess, why is that funny?”

“Well, if you hadn't noticed already, two of us died. How is that possible if we're already dead? Where's John and Phillip, huh?”

He had a point, our conventional idea of Hell required us to be dead already, though it never stated whether you could die twice, or what happens upon second death.

“We're clearly not dead, but that doesn't mean we're not going to a horrific place. Regardless of what you might think, Gehenna means Hell,” Mia said.

The argument went on fruitlessly for a while, Frank never giving in and admitting that we weren't going to reach salvation once the train stopped.

In the meanwhile, I kept staring out the window. The once green fields of killer crystals has long since vanished, and the forest of red pillars had grown so dense that it finally blocked out each ray of light brave enough to attempt to illuminate our path. If I hadn't known better, I could've thought we were back in the void, but it felt different, far hotter than it had before, even more devoid of hope.

Before I got a chance to question the environment, the darkness gave way to a large, open space, devoid of any life. Just a rocky, flat surface surrounded by infinitely tall cliffs on each side. It was a valley, gray and dull, with little to no light penetrating a layer of thick clouds above.

Then the train started to slow down...

“We're coming to a stop,” Mia said as she peeked out through the window. “The tracks end here.”

Before long the train stood still, and all the doors opened automatically, signaling for us to get off. There was a sign on the empty platform next to us, written in a language I couldn't comprehend. I pulled out my crumbled up ticket and compared the text, noticing that some of it matched.

“Gehenna,” I mumbled.

“So what now, we get off the train and wonder the wasteland, or sit here with the last of our supplies, waiting for hunger to kill us?” Frank asked.

We never got the chance to make a decision, before the train simply started disintegrating under our feet. First the windows turned to sand, then the seats rotted away as if hit with a thousand years of time, and finally the floor started to crack, causing us to plummet into the ground.

I groaned in pain as I landed, severely twisting my ankle, while the others landed slightly more elegantly. Mia and Frank helped me to my feet as we witnessed the last chunks of train just vanish before our eyes.

We climbed off the tracks, and onto the platform. It was situated on a bridge, giving us a clear view of our surroundings. It was a city, or at least it used to be one, now nothing more than the ruins of a previously inhabited place. Tall cliffs stood around the city, too steep to be climbed, too massive to allow for much light. We were in the shadows, clueless and lost.

I looked around at the worn down buildings, desperately searching for any kind of life, but there was none to be found. Without any other options, we headed down to the streets and started searching for a way out.

The houses were mostly empty, too broken to set foot in without risking total collapse, filled only with crumbled papers written in a language none of us could understand. Where they had furniture, it was crudely constructed from debris of metal and what could only be bone fragments, but whoever built any of it, were nowhere to be seen.

“How much food and water do we have left?” Frank asked.

“Enugh for maybe a day,” Mia responded.

He sighed in response, and we kept walking. I limped behind the other two on my twisted ankle, until we eventually reached a large, open square, surrounded with what looked like temples. Unlike the surrounding city, they were beautifully built in stark contrast to their surroundings.

In the middle of the square sat an emaciated figure. A man with white, thin hair and protruding, prominent ribs from his starved body. He didn't seem to notice us as we quickly approached him to see if he needed help, but even as we spoke to him he just sat there, rocking back and forth as he mumbled over and over again in a hoarse, sickly voice:

“I just want to die, why won't you let me die, I just want to die, why not, why, why, why?”

Mia bent down in front of him and tried to his attention. His eyes had turned white from cataract, rendering him completely blind, and chunks of flesh were missing from his chest and abdomen, visibly infected and smelling like rot.

She reached out and checked his pulse, quickly retracting her hand.

“He's dead.”

“What do you mean, dead? He's clearly living. Talking and everything,” Frank said.

“Look at him, no one could have survived these wounds, and doesn't have a fucking pulse,” she said.

Of course, she was right. The man should've been dead, yet there he said, crying in agony, begging for a death that never came. Suffering, blind and deaf without anything to connect him to the world he lived in.

“What do we do?” I asked.

“I think- I think maybe we just finish him off...” Frank said meekly.

“We can't, he's-” Mia stopped mid sentence, realizing that for once, Frank was right.

“I'm sorry, I think I've gotta agree with Frank on this, he wants to die. The least we can do is to free him,” I said, as kindly as I could.

Frank pulled John's knife out from the backpack, and looked at us for the go-ahead. I nodded in return.

“You guys better look away,” Frank said.

He bent down behind the suffering man, and whispered that he was sorry, before quickly slitting his throat. To all of our surprises, not a drop of blood poured out from the newly formed wound. Instead, the man just fell to the ground and gargled incomprehensibly.

A whole minute passed, and then another, yet the man refused to die. The city wouldn't let him, and rather than freeing him, we'd just put him into a whole other level of misery. Taking away his voice and ability to beg for death.

“I-I, I didn't-” Frank stuttered as he realized what he'd done.

With that, as if a veil had been lifted from our blind eyes, we finally saw the empty city for what it truly was. Rather than the desolate ruins we'd met as we entered, we saw a fully populated city, filled to the brim with suffering inhabitants. Each mutilated in various degrees.

Most of them were blind, with their eyes either ripped out or turned to coal. Those unfortunate enough to see had their limbs removed, or their organs torn our onto the street, unable to do anything to end their miserable existence.

As the horrific realization hit us, the ground below us started to move. The city had finally noticed our unwelcome presence, and it reacted violently by pulling itself apart, creating a gaping chasm in the middle of the square that swallowed anyone unlucky enough to be in the way.

“What's happening?” Frank asked in panic.

“I don't know, but let's get out of here!” I yelled in response.

The chasm quickly widened, revealing a massive hole extending down into a dark abyss, with spikes and black tendrils extending from the burning walls beneath us.

With my sprained ankle, I couldn't keep up with the others, and slipped to the ground as it shook violently.

“Thomas!” Mia yelled as she rushed to my aid, Frank continuing to flee towards the alleys.

She pulled me up just in time to avoid being swallowed by the ground. We headed after Frank, who'd started running down one of the alleys, seemingly devoid of any people. As he entered the alley, the concrete walls started moving vigorously.

“Frank, wait!” I yelled, but he didn't hear me.

By the time he noticed the walls, it was already too late, and hundreds of spikes shot out from the walls, morphing out from the concrete buildings. Frank dodged the first one as he tried to retreat back towards us, and for a moment it seemed he was in the clear, before one final spike emerged and penetrated straight through Frank's abdomen.

With the mortal wound, the wall fell silent. Frank collapsed to the ground holding onto his guts, unable to scream from the intense pain.

“Frank!” We yelled simultaneously as we rushed to his mangled body.

He lay there in shock, his eyes darting frantically back and forth between us. Too wounded to move, he didn't even realize the severity of his injury.

Mia tried her best to stop the bleeding by applying pressure, but it hardly slowed down the incessant flow of crimson blood.

“I'm okay, I'm okay, I'll be alright-” Frank kept repeating in panic, getting quieter with each iteration.

He quickly bled out, too fast to accept his ultimate demise, and all we could do was to sit over him as he let out a final breath, and finally fell silent.

The ground started moving again, not to attach us, but to swallow Frank, to fuse his limp body with the concrete beneath him. Within seconds, he'd vanished, and become one with the city of Gehenna.

Before we could get the chance to catch our breaths, the walls started moving once again. With my injured leg, I knew I stood no chance of escape, but Mia didn't have to die with me.

“Mia, get out of here!” I yelled as spikes formed around us, reaching out to destroy our vulnerable bodies.

Then, out of nowhere, a dark rumble sounded alongside a bright light, and the ground came to a standstill. An old man emerged from up the alley, wearing a worn out, but perfectly tailored suit, and a cane in his left hand.

The sound shook us, and I grabbed my ear futilely trying to block it out, but it barely helped.

“What the hell are you kids doing here?” the man said as both Mia and I passed out.

 ---

Credits

 

The Train I'm On Hasn't Stopped Driving (Part 4)

 

Mia stared out through the train window, her eyes fixated on the crystallized remains of Phillip. They'd known each other most of their lives, and now he had become nothing more than a memory, forever preserved within the green rocks.

It had been a day since the train broke down, but despite the time that had passed, there wasn't any noticeable change in daylight. The sky hung above us, blue and bright, though no sun existed to let us know whether we were still on Earth, instead the light seemed evenly distributed across the sky with no visible source.

I tried my best to comfort Mia, though nothing I could say would ease the loss and trauma we'd all just experienced. Our best bet would be to simply keep everyone alive through the next part of our horrific nightmare.

Though the crystals had slowed down once we retreated, they kept reaching out for the train, and had already covered two of the cars in the back, slowly inching their way ahead during the day we'd been stuck. They seemed to react to touch, spreading faster with any interaction between us and the environment outside the train.

While trapped in the morbidly beautiful landscape, John had taken it upon himself to find a way into the locomotive. The entrance had been sealed by a heavy metal wall, and it seemed that even from the outside, there wasn't any windows nor feasible way of entering. It was simply a block of iron that had effortlessly dragged us through two dimensions, broken down only to cause us pain.

John, as fit as he was, had turned into a spitting image of death itself, both from exhaustion and the infection spreading through his wounded leg. Pearls of sweat formed on his forehead as he looked for different tools to smash his way through the wall, a noble, but futile effort.

“John, you need to get some rest,” I demanded carefully as I noticed him on the brink of collapse. I didn't dare say too much against him, both from fear of pissing him off, and because he stood our best chance of escape.

“No, I'm fine,” he shouted back as he popped a couple of pills, a mixture between antibiotics and painkillers.

He leaned against the wall, looking out through the window at the ever-growing crystals outside. “There's no time to stop, if we don't do anything, we'll be dead in a matter of days.”

“I know, John, but we can work without you for a couple of hours, you have to take care of yourself.”

“Just leave me alone, I need to think, there has to be a way inside, I know it!” he said as he shoved his way past me, off to search for more tools.

The train had turned quiet, illuminated by bright light from the sunless sky above. The air felt heavy, and was filled with the stench of dead Surveyors, but it was still preferable to the threat of Sentinels, and in addition it was now an easy task to search for both supplies, and any equipment we could use to aid us in our escape attempts.

---

Another day passed in the fields of crystals, and Mia still hadn't spoken a word, apart from checking on John's bandaged wound and instructing him to keep taking the antibiotics. Of course, despite the inflamed and painful cut in his leg, he refused any rest.

Frank and I eventually decided that we'd force him to take a break, even if it meant physically restraining him. After a short talk with Mia to make sure she agreed, we set out to force John into temporary retirement.

He had turned oddly quiet, and we had to search every car to finally find him collapsed on the ground with the bandage ripped off, and black liquid oozing out from the wound. Before we could even call Mia in to help, the train jolted to movement, quickly coming to a stop as the back cars had fused together with the crystals.

“The train, it's working again!” Frank yelled excitedly, before realizing we weren't actually moving.

We looked at each other in sudden realization and shouted simultaneously “The cars!”

“We have to disconnect them,” Frank suggested.

“You do that, I'm going to stay with John, tell Mia we need her quickly,” I said as Frank started running to the back of the train.

I sat down and shook John in an attempt at waking him, and while he didn't respond, at least he was breathing. I glanced at the black liquid trickling down his leg, forming a puddle on the floor, not daring to touch it. Whatever it was, it didn't look anything like the yellow puss I'd expected from an infection.

Mia came running to my aid, quickly checking his pulse and breathing.

“He's burning up,” Mia said.

Suddenly the train broke loose, and we started moving away from the green fields of infectious crystals. Frank joined us with as many supplies as he could carry from the back cars, trying not to leave food or medication behind.

“I can't believe we're moving again,” Frank said gleefully as he returned to us, showing little concern for John's deteriorating state.

Near the front of the train there was a sleeping car, which we cleaned out and put John to rest. Moving the mountain of a main was a tough challenge on its own, but it was nothing next to the challenge of keeping him alive through sepsis, as the infection spread into his bloodstream.

Mia took on the task of watching John, making sure he drank and fed him his antibiotics while the train moved closer to Gehenna. It would only be a matter of hours until we reached our final destination, and I had yet to tell the others what the place truly was.

While Frank was busy trying to contact the outside world, using one of the few battery packs still working, I approached Mia to tell her the pitiful truth about our journey.

I sat down, and glimpsed out the window, watching the landscape change as we quickly passed by. The infinite green fields that had taken Phillip started to give way to solid rock, gray and continuous, with scanty cracks breaking its perfect surface.

Tall structures extended from some of the cracks, looking like red tree-stems covered in veins and arteries, pulsating and twitching in response to our passing. At the top they broke up into bubbles filled with swishing, black goo, similar to what had oozed from John's wound.

Red forests reeking of rotten flesh, growing in density as we kept moving closer to a literal hell.

Every now and then, creatures would emerge from the densest parts of the structures. Bizarre beings vaguely resembling horses, with long bodies and impossibly thin legs stretching at least fifteen feet away, and eyes that were pitch black, sunken things, far too large for their heads.

About a dozen of them had gotten an inkling to our presence, and galloped elegantly along our moving train, keeping up the pace.

“Mia, I have to tell you something,” I said carefully.

She didn't respond, she just kept staring at the creatures that were following us. They never got too close, probably only curious as to what and who we were.

“We're not going to make it, are we?” she said without a hint of emotion in her voice.

“What do you mean?”

“Gehenna, I know the name, it means Hell,” she continued.

The red forest outside kept getting denser, forcing the creatures to break off, and as the trees grew taller, the sky darkened.

“I'm sorry, I should have told you earlier, I didn't want us to give up,” she said.

I kept my mouth shut, she'd been struggling with the same information as me, yet she kept helping us. It wouldn't make sense for me to confess that I already knew as well.

“I'm sorry about Phillip,” I said after a minute of silence.

“Thanks, he would've wanted us to keep fighting.”

I checked the watch, only to notice the seconds tick slower than normal. According to the time, we were only an hour away from Gehenna, but with every watch having slowed down, there was no way of telling how far away we really were.

“So, what do we do?” I asked.

“When we get there?”

I nodded.

“I don't know, but right now we have to-”

She was cut off by John starting to shake violently, screaming in agony without fully regaining consciousness. At first, it looked like a seizure, but once we saw his leg we realized it wasn't anything that could possibly be explained by modern medicine.

His leg had torn open completely, and black tendrils stretched out, wriggling around in the air as if searching for something. The obsidian black appendages looked exactly like the flesh of the Sentinels, and it immediately dawned on both of us that the Sentinel had deliberately let John live after spreading itself within him.

We both screamed in shock, unable to decide whether to leave John behind and flee, or to stay and try to save him. Frank came rushing in just in time to see one of the tendrils shoot out from the leg and try to grab me, but I ducked beneath it just in time.

“What the-”

“We have to cut off his leg!” Mia yelled in panic. “Frank, get the knife and something hard!”

“H-how are we going to- to-” I tried to ask with a trembling voice.

“We'll cut through the flesh with the knife, and try to break the bone, but I-I-”

Before we could even start to plan out the amputation, John shot to his legs, partially waking up from the pain, realizing what was going on.

“Get- get away from me,” he groaned as one of the tendrils shot out at us, ripping flesh away as it extended from his wound.

I pulled Mia with me out from the compartment, and we fled forward into the next car, just as Frank came running back with an ax he'd found.

“Where's John?” he asked.

We didn't need to answer the question, because John quickly followed us, walking with his mangled, Sentinel infested leg. One of the tendrils had grown out from the wound, forming an amorphous black blob on the floor, still attached to John, feeding off his body.

His leg had completely shattered and split open, but the infection had spread even further, reaching his abdomen, covered in tiny holes occupied by more dark appendages. Amputation was no longer a viable option, so we kept backing away as John screamed in agony, visibly trying to fight against the Sentinel's movement inside him.

As we got to the space between cars, John unwillingly grabbed onto Mia with his arms. She fought back, but even without the tendrils, John was far stronger than all of us.

“I- can't, stop it,” he forced out, “please, use the ax.”

Frank got ready to hit John, but one of the tendrils swung at it, snatching it away.

John kept fighting, turning his head to one of the exits, reaching out for it with all of his remaining willpower.

“Don't- fucking die- on me,” he said before pulling the handle. The door opened, and John let himself fall off the train into the thick mess of red trees and darkness.

I held onto Mia as she collapsed to the floor from exhaustion, carefully checking if she'd been wounded from John's grip.

Frank closed the door John had fallen out through, and we all stared at each other in silence. John had died to protect us from himself, and with that, an immense feeling of loneliness overwhelmed me. Our best chance of survival was gone...

...and our next stop will be Hell itself.

 ---

Credits

 

The Train I'm On Hasn't Stopped Driving (Part 3)

 

John grabbed and pulled me down to the floor, away from the window. “Stay the fuck down,” he whispered.

While we lay there, Frank and Philip rushed to cover up the windows with whatever debris and furniture they could get loose from the floor.

“Do they know we're here?” Mia asked.

“Doesn't matter, we ain't taking any risks. We need to survive for four more days until we reach Gehenna.” John responded.

They were quick to block the windows, and within a minute we'd all settled down on the floor, where we tried to discuss our next more as quietly as possible.

On the other side of the door, leading to the next car, we could hear the shuffling of Surveyors trying to get in. They knew we were here, which meant the Sentinels would be alerted very soon.

“They're behind the door,” Frank said.

“Can they hear us?”

“Don't know, but stay quiet anyway. They might not know for sure that we're here.” John said.

“What about your gun? If we just kill the surveyors, they won't be able to alert the Sentinels.”

“I don't have any ammo. Besides, that idea is fucking stupid.”

Even with the emergency lights dimly illuminating our car, it was hard to make out our surroundings, and with no idea how to turn them off, we could only pray that the surveyors didn't notice them either.

A few hours passed with none of us daring to speak up. All fearing that the Sentinels would come bursting in through the windows at any moment. The only one moving was Mia, and she only did so to check on John's leg.

“Do we have any antibiotics in the bag?” she asked.

Philip opened, and rummaged through a large travel bag. In the dark he couldn't see much, and after a minute, he decided to just empty the bag of all the random items they'd gathered on the train; Finally pulling out a box of pills.

“Amoxicillin?” he half asked, half said.

“That's all we have?” Mia asked.

Phillip nodded, and tossed Mia the box. She handed them over to John, giving him instructions on when and how many to take.

---

The first twenty four hours, each marked by an innocuous beep from Mia's digital watch. I couldn't get my mind off the name: Gehenna, it sounded familiar. It was definitely something I'd heard before, if only to be stuffed away in the back of my mind, polluted by pointless information I'd gathered throughout my life.

Forty-two hours passed, as counted by the beeps. People were getting restless, unable to stand up or move around without alerting the Surveyors. We still hadn't made a decision whether to stay on the train as we reached Gehenna, or to bail and try out our own luck elsewhere.

“Are we really going to listen to some cryptic message?” Philip asked. “Like, I don't want to be all pessimistic, but why should we trust them?”

“They're telling us to stay on the train, but do they mean as it stops, or now while it's heading there?” Mia asked.

“Does it matter, shouldn't we just do the exact opposite of what they tell us?”

“No, whatever happens, we're getting the fuck off this train when it stops, as long as there's solid ground to walk on, we're not staying a minute longer than we have to,” John interjected.

Sixty hours passed, and the void lingered outside our train, ever present, and full of unseen horrors. Despite the stress, I'd somehow managed to drift off to sleep. Though restless, it was a deep sleep occupied by an incredibly vivid dream of Gehenna. I saw it as an empty ruin of a city, trapped in the center of a steep valley.

Mia and Frank stood by my side with defeated expressions on their faces. As we observed our surroundings, a bright light lit up the gray sky, almost blinding us with its presence. I tried to lift my arms to block out at least some of the light, but I couldn't lift them. Something within the light had paralyzed me, surging through my body with intense pain.

As I winced in agony, my mind suddenly felt clearer than it ever had, and then I remembered. It was just a piece of fragmented information long since forgotten, that I'd learned during my childhood during some religious class. Gehenna, it was hell, and we were heading straight for it.

I awoke abruptly due to a high-pitched, glaring sound emitting from a speaker system, hidden in the ceiling. It jolted all of us to our feet in panic, as we tried to decipher what it meant.

“What the hell is that sound?” John yelled as he clutched his ears.

It was rhythmic, Morse code, just like before. Though, in the mess of static and distortions, I could barely make out the individual beeps.

After a couple of minutes, despite the mess of sounds, it became apparent that the sound was just a loop of beeps with a simple message played on repeat.

“Leaving Vacuus, stand by,”

“Leaving Vacuus, stand by,”

“Leaving Vacuus, stand by,”

“Leaving Vacuus, stand by.”

It was incredibly loud. Vibrating enough to loosen the already fragile barricade in front of the door and windows. On the other side, the Surveyors were trying to break through, and with a final push, the door gave in.

Dozens of them flooded in through the broken barricade, stumbling over each other in the process. All the while, they kept their eyes fixated on each of us, non-blinking, full of agony.

“Push them out!” John yelled, as he rushed at them with a stick, shoving the one furthest behind back through the door, then the next, but they kept getting back up.

The rest of us rushed to aid John in his futile attempt, but before we could even each him, every single window in the train shattered from the force of hundreds of Sentinels throwing their mangled bodies at the car.

Covered in shards of broken glass, I fell to the ground alongside Frank, who tried to use me for balance. A piece of glass cut my left eye, temporarily blinding me from pain.

As I got the piece of glass out, I saw the Sentinels digging their way through the broken windows; Turning to a viscous fog and poured in through each crack in our barricade, reforming themselves on the other side, just like before.

It was hopeless, and all we could do was to stand there in frozen panic, unable to think of any plausible escape. Mia and Phillip had sought cover in one of the corners, were they sat embracing each other, while John charged at the Sentinels wielding nothing more than a kitchen knife.

As the mix of Sentinels and Surveyors came at us, the alarm kept blaring, and I prepared for my quickly approaching demise.

“Leaving Vacuus, stand by.”

Suddenly an impossibly bright light filled the entire void, instantly turning the Sentinels to mere filaments of darkness lingering in the air. It persisted for minutes, completely blinding out any memory of the empty void we'd left behind, and then the speaker gave out a new message in the form of Morse code.

“Designation: Gehenna, 18 hours, do not get off the train,” the code said.

As quickly as it had come, the light faded. It took a while before our eyes adjusted, but once they did, we were greeted by a brand new world outside the windows.

The once empty void had been replaced by endless fields of bright-green grass, only contrasted by tall, blue mountains in the horizon, miles and miles away. The Sentinels themselves had all but vanished, while the Surveyors had turned back into lifeless corpses, now doing nothing more than littering the hallways.

“Whe-where are we?” Mia asked.

“Gehenna? Did we make it?” Frank asked.

“No, we still have eighteen hours left,” I corrected him.

I took a hopeful look out the window, and stared at the lush fields just out of reach. The ground looked so soft, and I contemplated for a moment whether it would be smarter to just jump off the train.

That idea was quickly put to rest as I got a look around the train, now filled with blissful daylight that had immediately changed the mood.

“Alright, let's head for the locomotive and try to shut this train down,” John said.

We quickly made out way through the train, littered with the fresh corpses of people that died weeks ago. Their connections to the Sentinels had been broken, leaving them limp on the ground with no direction.

Once we reached the locomotive, we were faced with a heavy iron wall blocking our entrance. A door with no handle, nor a keyhole to open it.

“Great, what now?” Frank asked.

“Maybe we can climb out one of the windows and get there from the outside,” John suggested.

Before we could even indulge the idea of climbing on the outside of a moving train, we were all shoved to the ground as the train rapidly lost speed. The tracks screeched as the wheels locked themselves in place, and we quickly came to a sudden stop.

“What the hell just happened?”

“We've stopped, but, there's no platform or anything outside.” Mia said as she peeked outside the window.

“Doesn't matter, get your stuff, we're getting off this nightmare.”

We returned to the dining car and picked up our bags, alongside any amount of food and supplies we could possible carry. We hadn't yet reached Gehenna, but considering the implications that we were heading straight for hell, this would be a safer bet.

For the first time in weeks, we stepped down on solid ground, with a brilliant green field only a few feet away from us. Phillip took charge, carrying what little medical supplies we had left, while John followed.

There was a decently brisk wind that felt great in otherwise hot climate, but the grass didn't seem to sway even the slightest. As minute a detail as it seemed, it warranted a closer look.

They were crystals, green, razor sharp crystals that from just a few feet away resembled blades of grass.

“Wait, don't-” I tried to yell, but it was too late, and Phillip stepped down hard on the field.

“Ow, fuck!” he yelled as the crystals cut through his shoes, into the sole of his foot.

The rest of us froze in our step as we saw Phillip pull back in agony, clutching his leg.

“It's not grass...” I trailed off.

“Fuck, it hurts,” Phillip groaned.

Mia instinctively ran to his aid and pulled of his shoe.

“Let me have a look,” she said.

There were green crystals embedded deep in his sole, covered in jagged edges, making it almost impossible to pull out without causing more damage.

“We've got to get you back on the-” Mia froze mid sentence.

The crystal was spreading, with tiny shards breaking off, embedding themselves into Phillips skin, tearing through it as they grew.

“Wha-what's happening?” Phillip stuttered.

Though the growth was slow at first, it quickly sped up, covering his entire foot within a minute, before proceeding up his leg.

“Get them off me!” he yelled in pain as Mia reached out to try to rip them off, but John stopped her before she could touch them.

“Wait, you'll get them on you too!” John yelled.

He pulled out his knife, and got ready to peel the shards off Phillip, but the crystal simply cut through the knife like butter, spreading onto that as well.

In shock, John stumbled back and dropped his knife. Mia once again tried to run over and help him, but we all held her back. All we could do was to stare at Phillip as the crystals dug their way into his body; His bones audibly cracking and his skin rupturing as they continued spreading.

He just lay there screaming in agony until the crystals got to his lungs, and before long, his entire body had been turned to rock.

Before we could process, or mourn our loss, the crystals started spreading along the ground, slowly making their way towards us.

“Back on the train!” John screamed.

As we got back onboard, we did out best to seal the doors and windows, but even then we had no proof it would stop the spread. The train had broken down, and with no way of getting it back up and running, all we could do was to wait as the green field of crystals spread onto the train, and to us...

...it's just a matter of time.

 ---

Credits

 

The Train I'm On Hasn't Stopped Driving (Part 2)

 

Still feeling weak, I fell onto the floor of the hallway, as John desperately tried to get free from the rapidly enveloping tendrils around his leg.

As their grip tightened, his service weapon, still in its holster, fell to the ground, out of reach from him.

“What are you waiting for, get the fuck out here!” he yelled.

Refusing his orders, I dove to the floor and grabbed his gun. With the absolute minimal amount of firearms knowledge I possessed, I picked up the weapon and started firing at the center of the creature. Frantically pulling the trigger, and I didn't stop until the excessively loud shots were replaced by silent clicks.

Though the rounds barely fazed the creature, it loosened its grip on John just enough for him to crawl away from certain death.

I helped him to his bleeding feet, and together we rushed through into the next train car, where we pulled loose some chairs and used them as a poorly constructed blockade to slow down the creature.

We continued through the car, repeatedly tripping over the dozens of corpses littering the floor. I took a peak back at the barricade to see the creature slowly seeping through like a black fog, before reforming itself on the other side.

“Hurry up!” John yelled at me.

The creature had almost fully formed by the time we got through the next car. Unable to grab us, it quickly realized we were out of reach, and in response, it split open its body down the middle, revealing rows of black teeth and multiple tendrils that resembled tongues. It let out a horrific, high pitched shriek that shook the entire train, almost destroying my eardrums.

The sound itself awakened the dead people strewn across the hallway. They lifted their heads and looked around until they fixated their eyes on us, which alerted the creature to our presence.

It moved quickly, all the while its tendrils stretched impossibly far towards us in a hungry attempt at catching us. We were almost at the dining car, when I fell back to the ground. A tendril had wrapped around my shoe, and John quickly grabbed my arms as I was pulled away.

I screamed, and the door to the dining car shot open. Two men and a woman ran over and helped John pull me free from the tendrils' grip. One of my shoes slid off in the process, allowing me to get away.

We ran through the door and shut it behind us, while one of them men pulled a large metal rod through a makeshift lock. Both John and I lay wheezing on the floor from exhaustion as I tried to look around, observing my new surroundings.

The car was full of booths with a small bar all the way up front. Covered in canned foods and bottled water. In the corner I saw a few bags full of waste and empty food wrappings. The entire car was dimly lit up by a couple of rows of emergency lights on the ceiling, and it was clear they'd survived there for a couple of weeks already, though if the four of them were all that remained, I didn't know.

“What the hell happened to you, John?” A man in his fifties asked.

“They- they must have seen me coming, I don't know how,” John said, still out of breath.

They kept looking at him in shock, not satisfied by his answer, so he continued.

“I didn't even use the flashlight until I saw Thomas here, and by then they'd already awoken.”

“So you waited until they went back to sleep?” The woman asked.

“No, they'd already seen us, we had to make a run for it. I came back as quickly as I could.”

His last sentences shut everyone up, and John started confused at them.

“John, you were gone for two days,” she finally said.

“Don't be ridiculous, I was gone for a couple of hours at the most.”

She pulled out a digital watch and showed John the time and date. “It's December 1st,” she said quietly.

“That's...” John trailed off, speechless by the realization.

“How did they see you anyway, they're not exactly observant unless someone disturbs them?” one of the men said in a condescending tone.

“I don't know, Frank, do you think I did it on purpose?”

I thought back to the old lady I'd seen in the first compartment, and realized John hadn't been discovered at all, I was the one that got caught.

“Officer I-” I tried to say before John interrupted me.

“John,” he corrected me, “we're in another fucking dimension or some shit, no need for ranks or titles.”

I tried to confess again, but the woman noticed John's bleeding leg and rushed over to him.

“You're bleeding,” she said.

“It's nothing, the Sentinel got a hold of my leg. Don't worry, I'm fine.”

“Just sit down, let me have a look anyway.”

John sat down and the woman rolled up his trouser leg to reveal deep gashes in his calf.

“You'll need stitches. Get me the med kit, will you?” she said as she pointed to Frank.

While she did her best to fix up John's leg I got a better look at the door. They'd reinforced it with pieces of metal around the edges, also covering the window, preventing the creature from seeping through the cracks, and its surveyors from seeing through it.

On the wall beside the door, someone had etched lines, marking each passed day. Nineteen lines for nineteen days passed on a train that never stops.

The oldest man, Frank, came over to me, looking as suspicious as ever.

“Who are you?” he asked firmly.

“Thomas,” I responded.

“You wanna tell us how the hell you survived 19 days all on your own, without food or water?”

I couldn't answer his question, to me, only a few hours had passed, and though I felt thirsty from fleeing, I wasn't even close to parched.

“I-I don't know,” I stuttered.

“What do you mean, you don't know? How can you not know?” Frank said, getting agitated.

“Give him a break, Frank, if you hadn't left your bag behind, I wouldn't even have had to go out and risk my life,” John interjected.

It was enough to shut Frank up, though an asshole, he knew his place in the group. The other, younger guy came up to me and reached out his hand.

“I'm Phillip, and that's Mia,” he said as he pointed to the woman fixing up John. “And, lastly, that's Frank, don't pay him any attention, he's a pain in the ass ninety percent of the time.”

“Whatever,” Frank interrupted. “Did you get the batteries at least?”

“Of course I did, you twat, they're in the bag,” John said.

I just stood there trying to get a grasp on the situation, barely responding to the other's questions.

“Don't worry about it, Thomas,” Mia said as she noticed the absolutely baffled expression on my face.

“Huh?”

“None of us remember what happened, we all just woke up at different times on the train, and had the idea to make our way here. It's safe, mostly, and the Sentinels keep us from going out very often. You're lucky John found you.”

“Sentinels?”

“The thing that chased us,” John explained.

A bright light penetrated the otherwise gloomy car, as Frank booted up his phone, using one of the battery packs. Without hesitation, he attempted to dial a number.

“Put it on speaker if you're trying to call someone,” John said, still waiting for Mia to finish bandaging his leg.

No one responded on the other end, but no sooner had Frank lowered to phone to input another number, before it started ringing; Blocked called ID.

For a few moments, he just held the phone in shock, before he regained his senses and answered.

“Hello?”

No response.

“Hello, can anyone hear us?” Frank he asked again.

We listened intently to the emptiness on the other side of the line, and a minute passed without anyone speaking.

“There's no one there,” Mia said.

Before any of us could respond, the phone started emitting repetitive beeping sounds. They continued for almost a full minute, none of us daring to speak up while we listened. Once it was finished, the call ended on its own, and Frank looked around at us, wearing a confused expression.

“What the hell was that?” John asked.

“No clue, it was just a bunch of beeps.”

“Designation: Gehenna, 108 hours, do not get off the train,” I said.

“What?”

“It was Morse code, learned it as a kid to secretly communicate in class. I know, it's dumb, I was a geek, but I'm absolutely sure that's what the message said.”

They looked at each other for a moment, still visibly confused, then back at me.

“Gehenna, what does it mean?” Mia asked.

“Forget that, Frank interjected, “why are they telling us to stay on this fucking train?”

We fell silent again as Frank attempted to dial another number, to no avail.

“108 hours, just over four days before we reach our next station? We can do that, just gotta stay here. We have enough provisions for at least two weeks,” John said.

“So that's it, we just sit here in the dark for another four days?” Frank asked.

A small argument ensued, and while they discussed what we'd do at the train station, I took a moment to look out the window.

The vast emptiness was horrifying on its own. I wondered how far the darkness reached, if it had an end, or if anything lived in the void. A part of me felt dead as I pondered these questions I felt dead, as if the train was nothing more than a mere figment of my decaying mind, but the pain was ever too real, the tiredness felt too overwhelming for the world to be fake.

I took my dead phone, grabbed one of the battery packs and plugged it in. The others were too busy discussing to notice me wasting power, but I just needed to write down some of my thoughts over text, ready to send if we happened to get a signal. I sent it to my dad, hoping he'd share the story should I not make it back.

While I patiently waited for the text to go through, I kept staring into the dark. Some parts were blacker than their surroundings, and I then noticed they weren't just patches that contrasted with the rest of the environment, but moving things, almost vantablack, like a shadow moving through the night.

It glided in the air alongside the train, quietly looming by with its eyeless body.

It was a Sentinel...

“Guys...?” I said quietly.

They kept on arguing.

“Guys, there's a sentinel outside!” I said much louder.

John broke off from the argument and everyone fell silent as we watched the creature fly beside the train. Then we noticed another, and a third, and a fourth, and before long, we could make out hundreds, if not thousands of Sentinels following the train.

“Don't worry, they shouldn't be able to see or hear us without their surveyors,” Phillip said.

We all kept staring at the shadowy things in the void, and though Phillip was right, they couldn't possible see us without their aides, there was one undeniable fact about them that just didn't make sense.

They were getting closer...

 ---

Credits

 

The Train I'm On Hasn't Stopped Driving (Part 1)

 

I was jolted back to consciousness by a violent coughing fit caused by the unnaturally dry air around me. Drops of sweat had piled up, and started trickling down my forehead. It was dark, not a singly ray of light to even make out my closest surroundings.

My memory served little help in recognizing my whereabouts, but upon fumbling around with my weak hands, I noticed I was sitting a fabric coated chair in a room that seemed to vibrate ever so slightly.

As my eyes started to adapt to the overwhelming darkness, I could start to make out the vague shape of my room. There were three seats facing each other with windows on the right hand side, though they revealed nothing more than an empty void on the other side. On the other side was a door with a small window, which lead out into a hallway, and it then dawned on me where I had woken up.

It was a train compartment, and the train was still moving, though seemingly rid of any other people. I tried to get up, but my legs refused to properly cooperate. They were too weak, as if they hadn't been used for days.

Then some of my memories returned. I was traveling, I remembered getting on the train, though I hadn't the faintest idea what my destination should have been. My memory simply cut short after stepping inside my empty compartment, that had been November 12th.

I checked my pockets to look for clues. I found my phone, which had long since ran out of power, and my wallet, though it contained a ticket, in the dark it just looked like weird scribbles on a piece of paper.

With an incredible amount of effort, I finally managed to get my legs working enough to stand up. Though I had to use the wall as support, it was enough to move around, and I soon stumbled into the hallway of my train car.

I took a moment to look through the windows in the hallway, and the world outside was empty. It both looked and felt as if nothing existed outside the boundaries of the train.

The darkness made it hard to navigate without falling to the ground. I tried to look for a light switch, or at the very least another person to help me out, but none where in sight.

I peeked in through the window into the next compartment, and I could see the vague shape of people sitting still in their seats, but upon trying to enter, I realized that the door was locked. I tried to knock, but the people on the other side didn't even flinch.

When I tried to call out for them, I realized my voice had almost completely vanished, replaced by just a whisper.

I made my way from compartment to compartment, and while they all seemed to be occupied, none would open, and not a single person responded to my increasingly frantic knocks.

As I reach the last compartment of the car, the train turned ever so slightly on its tracks, enough to knock me to the ground. While I lay there I tried to call out for help with my barely audible voice, but no one could hear me.

I got to my feet while the train still turned, and noticed the door to the last compartment slowly glide open from the turn.

“Hello, can anyone hear me?” I called out with a trembling voice as I approached the open door.

No response, either because the compartment was empty, or because my voice hadn't been used for so long that barely functioned.

I slowly peeked my head around the corner to see the compartment fully occupied by dark figures. All of them sitting perfectly still in their seats.

“Hello?” I said again.

I took a step inside. My eyes had started to fully adjust to my dark surroundings, and I quickly realized that not only were the people sitting perfectly still, but they weren't even breathing.

The horrible thought of them being dead struck me like a hammer, but I had to make sure. I bent down on my knees next to the closest man and shook him gently. Still, he didn't respond. I then checked for a pulse, and though I'm not a doctor, I couldn't find any signs of life.

I heard a small beep that shot me to my feet, and looked down to see the man wearing a digital watch that alerted him that an hour had passed. I looked at the watch and noticed the date was also written in the center.

29th of November... It had been seventeen days since I boarded the train.

With a trembling hand, I checked the rest of the people for signs of life. All of them were beyond a shadow of a doubt, dead.

Panic arose in my body, both from the presence of dead people and from the realization that I'd been asleep on a moving train for more than two weeks.

I collapsed to the ground in front of one of the dead passengers. She was an elderly woman, dressed elegantly with wide open, piercing blue eyes. I didn't want to stay in the compartment with them, but I was paralyzed by the lack of a plan.

There I sat, surrounded by six dead people, trying to contemplate my next step. The train was still moving, which clearly meant that someone had to be in control of it, a conductor or at least someone with an idea as to what the hell was going on. So, I decided that my best bet would be to make my way to the locomotive, and pray that not everyone had died on the train.

All the while these thoughts ran through my head, I couldn't take my eyes of the elderly lady. Something just felt off by their presence. Firstly, there wasn't any smell, meaning they hadn't started to decompose, and secondly, all of them had their eyes open wider than I thought possible.

Before I could consider the bizarre situation any further, the woman suddenly blinked.

I shot to my feet in horror, as she blinked again. I double checked her pulse, still nothing. Yet, her eyes kept blinking without any other signs of life. In shock, I looked around to find that the other five, dead passengers were also blinking rapidly.

Without checking them for life, I jumped out from the compartment and shot the door. I noticed a chunk of wood missing from it, as if someone had kicked it in, leaving it unable to properly close.

As I slowly backed away from the compartment, I glimpsed out through the windows, into the empty void beyond. I humored the thought that we might be driving through a tunnel, but if so, how long could it possibly be?

I stepped into the next train-car. Unlike the previous one, it wasn't divided into compartments, but rather filled with rows of seats, split in the middle by a central passage. But, like the compartments, each seat was occupied by a dead passenger, each blinking in response as I quickly passed in panic.

I walked through about fifteen such cars, each alternating by rows of seats and compartments. It felt like hours passed as I made my way towards the locomotive, and just as I was about to enter through a door marked “First Class,” I was shoved to the floor by someone holding a bright light to my face.

“Stay the fuck down!” a deep voice shouted at me.

Speechless, I could do nothing but comply with the man in front of me.

“Wait, you're not dead?” the man asked.

As he realized I was basically just a kid, barely in my twenties, he moved the light away from me and reached out a hand to help me up.

“I'm sorry, I just heard someone moving and though you were one of them,” he said as he pointed to the lifeless people sitting idly by in their seats.

“What's your name?” he asked.

“I-I I'm- Thomas,” I stuttered.

As the shock from the bright light faded, I saw that the man was dressed in a police uniform, well built and bald.

“The name's John Hendricks,” he said. “And we better get out of there before these bastards wake up again.”

“They're not dead?” I asked.

“Yeah, well, not exactly, it's like they're in hibernation.”

I looked at him in confusion.

“People in hibernation?”

“They ain't people, kid, not anymore.”

As he spoke those words, he seemed surprised by something behind me.

“Fuck, I was too slow,” he said, oddly calm.

I turned around to see the people moving their heads around, all of them staring directly at us, their eyes now fixed and unblinking.

“We need to get out of here,” John said as he pulled my arm and dragged me in through the door to another compartment-car, though far nicer than the one I'd awoken in. All the doors had opened, and people were slowly piling out from each compartment into the hallway, staring at us with their wide open eyes.

We dove into the first available compartment, and the officer pushed one of the people out from it, and locked the door.

He sighed, “we'll be safe here for a bit, hopefully they're just scouting.”

“What the hell is-” I started saying before the cop put his hand over my mouth, gesturing for me to keep quiet.

“Keep it down, would ya?” he said quietly, clearly agitated by my idiocy.

“What's happening?” I whispered.

“We've got to hold up here until they go back to sleep.”

He stood up and peeked out the widow into the hallway, before pulling down quickly back behind cover.

“The other passengers, what happened to them?” I asked.

“Dead, most of them anyways, got a few survivors camped up in the dining car. I just came out to look for batteries, hoping we could get a phone working and get help. How the hell did you survive here all on your own?”

“I- I don't know, I just woke up an hour ago,” I said.

I took out the ticket from my pocked and tried to read it. Officer Hendricks took his flashlight and set it to its lowest setting to help me read. The text on the ticket was a language I didn't recognize, just jumbled symbols and a date.

“Yeah, it's the same with all of our tickets as well, none of this makes any damn sense.”

“Do you remember where the train is going?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“The people out there seem fairly docile, can't we just push our way through, they don't seem to be moving?” I asked.

He sighed again, “I'm not afraid of the things out there, it's what comes next that terrifies me.”

“What is it?”

“Hell, I don't even know what it really looks like. It's massive and dark. It just uses those things to look around for survivors, we call them-”

As tried to finish the sentence, a large thud could be heard on the other side of the door. I carefully peeked out through the window to see that all the people had collapsed back to the ground, and that the door leading to the car behind us had opened up.

A tall, obsidian black created pulled its way inside using large tendril like appendages. It had thin stumps that resembled legs, and multiple more tendrils that slithered on along the walls, seeming to sense its surroundings. Though it was vaguely humanoid in nature, it didn't have a head, nor any eyes.

John lifted a finger to his lip and signaled for me to keep absolutely silent.

I noticed then he had a gun holstered, attached to his belt. I pointed to it without saying a word, but he just shook his head in response.

The creature moved closer, and before long it was standing just outside the door. Its arms spread out, flattening out and covering the window. It started to form small cracks in the glass pane, allowing small tendrils to seep trough.

“God dammit,” John whispered as sweat poured down his face.

Suddenly, he stood up and kicked the door, breaking it straight off its hinges. It barely fazed the creature, but it allowed us for enough wriggle room to bolt past it.

He grabbed me and pushed me through the gap between the wall and the creature, getting caught up in its tendrils as he did, they latched onto him and buried into his leg.

“Run!” he yelled in agony as he tried to fight off the tendrils wrapping around him.

 ---

Credits

A Monster Saved My Life

I developed a drug addiction in my teens. It tore me apart for a long time, but it was nothing compared to the events that sparked it.

I know. We’ve all struggled. Get over it. That’s what my dad would say, the son of a bitch. My mom would probably feign empathy, but fuck it up by trying a little too hard. Then she’d drink herself to sleep.

This isn’t a story about my dad and my mom though. This isn’t even a story about my addiction. This is a story about a monster, and the scars they left upon my life. It’s a story about the end of my world, and it might be a story about the end of yours too.

It began when I was eight.

Third grade, for me, was not a pleasant time. Sure, there are bright spots in the year. There always are. Overall though, I rate third grade a 1/10, and that’s probably being generous.

You may have surmised that my mother and father were not exactly great role models in my life. My dad was cold and, in retrospect, probably a sociopath, or at least a narcissist. He rarely spent time with me and when he did I could tell he regretted it. Usually he did his best to forget I existed.

My mother was kinder. Sometimes she’d help me with my homework, and she’d always drive me to school. When she dropped me off, she’d wave goodbye with a smile and as if reading from a script, tell me she loved me and hoped I had a good day. I liked my mom. Sometimes, I think I even loved her.

At least, when she wasn't drinking.

Her vice made sense in retrospect, given the man she decided to shore up with, but what didn’t make sense, especially to eight-year-old me, were the relentless insults she’d throw my way. “Lazy. Waste of space. Brat. Dumbass.” These were all mainstays of her vocabulary, and never far from her lips once they’d been soaked with wine.

My only reprieve from the depression of my home life was school. Growing up, I loved everything about it. I loved hanging out with my friends, I loved learning new subjects, and I especially loved the teachers who always had time for me, and never drank and always remembered my name.

One of those teachers was Mr Gilad. A boisterous, heavy-set man with bushy eyebrows and an uncanny ability to always brighten the room. He wasn’t my teacher, but he was my best friend Oscar’s, and because of that I often crossed paths with him.

He remembered my name the first time I ever told it to him. Every day after that, he’d greet me with his beaming smile and booming voice. “Walter! How was class today?”

I would always tell him exactly how it was. Usually it was good, but sometimes it was frustrating, or boring. No matter what though, Mr Gilad would always listen intently, his eyes focused on me and a grin on his face. He was the first man I met that inspired me to be better. He was the first man I met that made me believe I could be.

One day, I was feeling particularly low. In the middle of the previous night, my mother had woken me up. I smelled wine on her breath, and I asked her if she had been drinking again. She told me to shut up, that it was none of my business. Swaying on her feet, she stood over my bed, staring at me. I remember feeling really nervous, because there was this sense of hatred in her eyes, and the way she studied me almost seemed like she was making a decision.

“Mom?” I remember asking. “Can I go back to sleep now?”

She didn’t reply.

Instead, she left the room. I curled back into my covers, nervous and afraid, although what I was nervous and afraid about I couldn’t exactly say. It felt like an intuition. Something deep inside of me, something primal was screaming that the way my mother was looking at me was not okay.

A few moments later, I heard the creak of my door opening and then there she was again, this time with a half-drunk glass of wine in her grip.

“I wish I never met your father,” my mother said, staring at me with dead eyes. “That way you’d never have been born, and I’d have enough money to enjoy my life.”

She watched me until she finished her glass of wine, and then she left. I cried myself to sleep.

The next day I spent recess alone, at the far end of the field. I didn’t feel like I deserved friends. I didn’t feel like I deserved to have fun. I didn’t feel like I deserved anything. When the bell rang, I took my time getting back to class. As I entered the door’s of the school, I was greeted by an empty hallway. The rest of the students had already returned to class.

I swallowed, knowing I was in for a talking-to, and probably a detention once I got back. A voice called out, and I recognized it as Mr Gilad. “Walter!” he shouted.

Out of all the teachers I could have crossed paths with, somehow Mr Gilad felt like the worst. He was the one adult I really believed cared about me, and liked me for I was. For him to see me late like this, it probably destroyed whatever respect he had for me.

“Sorry, Mr Gilad,” I said, my eyes downcast.

He wasn’t angry. Instead, he knelt down in front of me. “Is something wrong?”

I shook my head, but for one reason or another, the floodgates opened. My face scrunched up in a grimace, and then I started to sob. Before I knew it, I was bawling my eyes out in the empty hallway.

He took me by the shoulder and ushered me into a classroom undergoing renovations. He closed the door and sat me down at the teacher’s desk. “What’s happened?” he asked me, his voice calm and kind.

I told him everything. I told him about my father’s cold indifference, my mom’s drinking, and how last night she had woken me up to tell me she wished I’d never been born. I worked all of it out between sobs, my nose runny with snot and my cheeks soaking wet with tears.

Mr Gilad pulled me into a tight hug. “I’m so sorry, Walter,” he said. At length, he let me go, and then sighed. “You know, it’s tough to talk about these things at times, but it’s important that we do. My parents weren’t especially kind to me either, you know.”

It seemed strange to me that somebody like Mr Gilad, the kindest man I knew, could have had parents who were anything less than saints. I didn’t know what to say, but thankfully I didn’t need to say anything, because he kept talking.

“Something important, that I think a lot of people learn far too late in life, is that none of us are defined by our parents or our upbringings. Our future is our own. We get to choose who we become.”

“We do?” I asked him, calming down. I sniffled and wiped my nose on my sleeve.

“That’s right, we do,” he said, his voice adopting a more serious tone. His eyes, usually so bright and full of cheer, now looked sullen and filled with sadness. He seemed somehow distant.

“It took me a long time to realize that, Walter. For a long time I felt like I needed to do what society wanted, or be the sort of person my parents wanted me to be. It was only recently that I realized that in doing so, I wasn’t actually living my life.”

Mr Gilad sighed, shaking his head and muttering something beneath his breath. “I never felt fulfilled, because each day I felt like I was a part of a play, or an act. I felt like I was fighting tooth and nail against my instincts, and it was only making me more desperate to see them through." He bit his lip. "I was never happy.”

It was a heavy conversation to have with an eight year-old, and while a lot of its nuance went over my head, I decided I got the gist of what he meant. “So no matter what anybody says, even my mom and dad, I should just keep being me?”

He smiled, and the sadness in his expression seemed to evaporate near-instantly. He was back to the beaming, joyous teacher I knew and loved. “Something like that,” he said, ruffling my hair. “Hey, here’s an idea. Why don’t you join Oscar and the rest of my class tomorrow? We’re going to be doing a trivia competition in the morning. Oscar tells me you’re one of the smartest kids in the grade, and it’d be a shame if you missed out.”

I grinned, sniffling. “I don’t know if Mrs Applefig would allow it. Actually…” My eyes drifted up to the clock above the closed door. Its minute hand ticked forward to 10:32am. “I think I’m already gonna be in a lot of trouble for being so late.”

My mood plummeted all over again. Maybe my mother was right. I couldn’t seem to do anything right -- even get to class on time.

“Well, then how about this,” Mr Gilad said, standing up and opening up a drawer in the teacher’s desk. He pulled out a stack of sticky notes and a pen. “I’ll write you a note explaining your lateness, as well as giving you permission to attend tomorrow morning’s trivia competition. Sounds good?”

I nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, I’d love that!”

“Perfect,” he said. “So would I.”

He handed me two sticky notes. One excusing my late return following recess, and another requesting permission for me to attend trivia tomorrow morning.

By some miracle, I spent the rest of the afternoon smiling. Oscar and I walked home together after school, and the entire time we brainstormed team names. We eventually decided on “Brainiacs.”

“You better get us the win!” Oscar teased.

“Well duh,” I laughed. “One of us has to!”

The two of us joked around and goofed off all the way home. For such a bad start to the day, I can scarcely remember a day ending with me feeling happier, and more full of life. When Oscar and I finally split off, we swore that tomorrow we’d go home as the trivia champions.

As soon as I got home, I cheerily started on my homework. Mr Gilad had given me a practice trivia question: what temperature does nitrate burn at? If I got it right, we earned an extra point immediately in the trivia competition. I thought long and hard about it, and decided I really had no idea. To be honest, I’d never heard the word nitrate before in my life.

Which meant it was probably a trick question.

It sounded like something way beyond a third grader, so maybe Mr Gilad wasn’t expecting me to know the answer. He had forbidden us from using the internet, and I bet you that if I got the right answer for it, then he’d know I was cheating. Instead, I wrote ‘very hot’ with a confident flourish of my pencil.

A short while later, I heard the front door open and my mom came home. She paid me a hasty smile, before pulling off her jacket and opening the cupboard to start on supper. “Hey mom,” I said, beaming. “How was work?”

“Long, honey,” she said, her eyes bloodshot and jaw set. “How was school?”

“Great! I’m doing a trivia competition tomorrow with Mr Gilad’s class!”

She eyed me for a moment, and then smiled. “That’s lovely. I’m sure you’ll learn lots.”

“Me too.”

A half hour later my father came home. He threw his jacket over the kitchen chair and immediately asked where supper was. “I’ve been stressed all day, Sarah, and I come and you still haven’t started dinner?”

I shrank into my homework, doing my best to ignore my parents’ arguing.

“I have started supper,” my mother countered, “I just haven’t started cooking it yet. The ingredients are all ready to go--”

“Jesus fuck, Sarah!” my dad bellowed. “Can’t anybody in this house do anything right?”

---------------------------------------------

That night I woke up to the smell of alcohol. I lay on my side, curled in blankets, and heard the sound of breathing near my face.

“Worthless,” my mother’s voice whispered from behind me. I felt her hand wrap itself around my neck, and I didn’t move, I didn’t speak, I didn’t so much as breathe. My body was paralyzed with fear.

“You stole my life from me,” she hissed. “If only you would just go away.”

Her fingers squeezed, their nails biting into my flesh. My throat contracted. I gasped for air, whimpering in pain and terror and then almost as soon as she started, she stopped.

Her hand slipped away from my neck.

My back was to her, but I could tell from the shadow she cast on the wall that she was still there. Standing in the dark. Watching me. Drinking wine straight from the bottle.

A half an hour later, she finished and put the bottle down on my dresser. I watched her silhouette wipe her lips, and heard her mutter the word, “Tonight.”

She left my room.

I listened as her footsteps creaked their way down the stairs, and into the kitchen. A moment later came the sound of wood squealing against wood, like a drawer being opened, followed by the clatter of cutlery.

I stared at my wall, blinking back tears. Again, that primal sense of fear returned. That indescribable intuition that something was very wrong, and I needed to be far away from my bedroom, and far away from this house.

My heart thundered in my chest as I heard the creak of footsteps on the stairs. This time, coming up. The sounds grew louder, the higher and closer they got to my bedroom. Soon, the footsteps were in the hallway. I could hear my mom’s voice muttering, although I couldn’t make out any specific words.

Please, I thought to myself. Please walk by my door. Please don’t come inside.

The footsteps groaned on the floorboards as they approached. My mother left my bedroom door ajar when she left, and from its crack I saw a shadow in the hallway. I heard her voice.

“... Threw away my career for this. Threw away my entire life, and all so that you could take my money, take my time and destroy my marriage.”

The rusty hinges of my door whined, and the door swung open slowly. A shadow grew on my bedroom floor, and I recognized its shape as my mother in her nightgown. She held something in her right hand, but it wasn’t a wine bottle.

It was a knife.

I curled into a ball, every part of me screaming to do something. To run. To call for help. To throw something at her. My instincts told me I was going to die.

Instead, I lay there as still as a board, too paralyzed by fear to move or speak.

Who would I call out to, my father? He didn’t care about me. How was I supposed to run? My mother was blocking the doorway. What was I supposed to throw at her? The only thing I had nearby was my lamp, and I knew it wouldn’t hurt her enough to stop her from hurting me.

She walked toward my bed, standing beside it, knife in hand. I stared at her, hyperventilating with panic. She looked back into my eyes. She kept moving her lips, muttering words but not loud enough for me to hear. Her face was painted with revulsion and hatred, and every so often she would lift the knife up and threaten at stabbing it down toward me.

Then, she turned on her heel and left my room, closing the door behind her.

I lay there, sat-up in bed, my body too awash with adrenaline to even dream of sleeping or thinking or doing anything. I just waited, wired and awake.

I waited for her to come back and kill me.

She never did.

The sun rose, and with it came the sound of cars in the street and dogs barking in their yards. I nervously stepped out of bed. My feet were cold against the hardwood, but I barely noticed. All I could think about was my mother, and how she would react this morning. Usually she was full of smiles and affection after she’d slept off the booze, but after last night I wasn’t so sure. Something seemed to have changed in her.

When I made my way downstairs for breakfast, she wasn’t there. Normally she was eating her porridge and ready to grab my cereal of choice from the cupboard. This time it was just me. The house felt empty. Lonely.

I clambered onto the countertop and opened the cupboard, pulling out a box of Frosted Flakes. I did my best to remember what Mr Gilad had told me the day before. It doesn’t matter what my parents think of me, I thought to myself. I need to forge my own path and listen to my heart. I have to do what I think is right, and not let anybody, my parents or otherwise, get in the way of that.

I thought about his words over my bowl of cereal. Even if my dad didn’t love me, and even if my mom wished I’d never been born, I could still find my own path in life.

As I ate, I monitored the digital clock sitting on our kitchen counter. It was a habit I picked up because my mom was always very strict about ushering me into the car by 7:15am, so she could drop me off in time to get to work.

Right now it read 7:45am. She was nowhere in sight.

A minute later I heard the familiar creak of footsteps on the stairs, and my mood picked up. Even after everything that had happened last night, my mom hadn’t hurt me, and I still had my trivia competition with Mr Gilad and Oscar to look forward to. Maybe mom realized she loved me too much to hurt me.

The creaking stopped as the footsteps reached the landing, and my dad bustled around the corner, adjusting his tie. He paused, seeing me at the kitchen table. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for mom,” I said quietly.

“Excuse me?” he said, his voice rising.

I swallowed. My father always had a way of making me feel smaller than I already was. “Waiting for mom, dad.”

He stared at me with something between irritation and disbelief. “Your mom’s not home.”

“What?”

“I said she’s not home. Do you need a fucking hearing aid now too?”

I looked down, eating another spoonful of Frosted Flakes. Where did she go? I wondered. She was here last night.

My eyes drifted to the digital display. The clock now read 7:50am. Class was starting in ten minutes, and so was my trivia competition. It took at least ten minutes to drive to school.

“Dad?” I asked.

“Have you seen my briefcase?” he said, impatiently.

“No, sorry.”

“Fuck!” he snapped. “That stupid bitch probably took it!” He adjusted his collar and reached for the coffee pot, before realizing it was empty and then flung it across the room, where it shattered on the wall. “Everything I do!” he screamed. “Taken for granted!”

Mr Gilad’s words echoed in my head. To believe in myself. To trust in my instincts. To do what I felt I needed to. I cleared my throat. “Can you drive me to school, I have a trivia compet--”

“Do I look like your mother?” he said incredulously. I stared at him, feeling tears welling in my eyes. Eventually, I shook my head.

“I have a real job,” he said, grabbing his jacket from the wall and opening the front door. “I don’t have time to play at being a parent.” He muttered something about ingrates, and then disappeared through the doorway, shutting the door behind him.

I sat at the table for a few more minutes, too stunned to do anything. My mom was gone. My dad was gone. It was just me in the house now. My family didn’t care about me. Nobody gave a damn.

No, that wasn’t true.

Oscar cared. Mr Gilad cared.

I snatched my jacket from the coat rack beside the door and exited after my father. I used the key we hid under the rock in our garden to lock the house behind me, and I started jogging toward the school. Usually, when I walked home with Oscar it’d take us just over an hour. Unfortunately for me though, Hillcrest school lived up to its namesake.

My school sat perched atop a large hill, overlooking the rest of Plumberry township. At the top, it was really a spectacular view. To the north you could see most of the local streets, all the way up to the city hall, downtown. To the south, you could see far down the country road, all the way out to Lake Tyler and Gefferson forest beyond.

Still, it was uphill. Which meant it would be a longer walk to than from. I was determined though. Mr Gilad’s words recited themselves in my mind like a mantra, pushing me ever forward.

I kept my eye on the watch on my wrist, figuring if I could get there before 8:30, I’d be in the clear. In both third grade classes, we did a sharing period from 8 till 8:30, where we talked about our day or new things we found interesting.

My sneakers pounded along the sidewalk, my backpack bouncing up and down with my binder, pencils and markers. I made good time getting to the bottom of the hill, and at the distant top I could see the gates that marked the entrance to Hillcrest elementary.

I started my ascent.

It was slow going. As I went, I kept track of the watch on my wrist. 8:20am. I had ten minutes to reach the top, and I was barely a quarter of the way there. My breath was coming in big heaves and my legs, tired from jogging for so long, burned with soreness. I felt lightheaded and wobbly -- out of breath.

I continued to climb, more slowly now. I didn’t have a water bottle, and I was beginning to feel incredibly thirsty, but I knew I needed to get to the top before the trivia competition started.

Somehow, even after everything that had happened with my mom and dad, I felt like if I could just win that competition, then everything would be alright. My mom would come home, and she’d realize how smart I was and decide that drinking wasn’t worth it, and my dad would be so proud of me that he’d start taking an interest in my studies.

My eyes drifted back to the watch on my wrist, and my heart fell. 8:45am. How had I been walking up the hill for so long already? I stopped, catching my breath and realizing none of it mattered anymore.

I was way too late for trivia, and I was probably going to end up in detention besides that. There wasn’t any point in rushing now.

My day was already ruined.

I took the rest of the hill at a slower walk, and my legs thanked me for it. I hated my mom for leaving last night, and I hated my dad for not driving me to school. I hated both of them for making me miss out on trivia, and disappoint the one adult who seemed to care about me: Mr Gilad.

Tears tugged at the corners of my eyes as I considered how ashamed of me he probably was. He went through all the trouble of securing me permission to attend his class this morning, and I gave him my word I’d be there. Then I didn’t show up at all, and my dad didn’t so much as call the school and let them know I’d be late.

He probably thought I was just as much of a lost cause as my parents by now.

“There he is!” a shrill voice shrieked. “Oh my god, he’s here!”

I looked up as Mrs Applefig came stampeding toward me, her lined face filled with concern and her tone thick with relief. “Walter, are you okay?” she wrapped me into a tight hug. “Thank goodness. Thank goodness.”

I’d been so absorbed in my own thoughts that I hadn’t even noticed I’d crested the hill and come up in front of my school. Mrs Applefig smothered me with her hug, and all I could see was the blue fabric of her blouse. “I’m fine, Mrs Applefig,” I lied. “I’m sorry for being late.”

“It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s okay,” she said, pressing her face to mine. I felt something wet on her cheek.

“Gloria, is that Walter Thimby?” a man bellowed, and I recognized it as Principal Patel.

She wheeled around, nodding fiercely. “It is, Uday! It is!”

Freed from Mrs Applefig’s all-encompassing blouse, I became acutely aware of something very strange: my entire school was staring at me.

“Bring him over here,” Principal Patel called out. “Everybody triple check your students and make sure everybody’s accounted for!”

Mrs Applefig ushered me into a line with the rest of my classmates, and I plunked down on the grass beside Jessie Wilson, a blonde kid who held the record for most school suspensions in third grade. He leaned over and whispered into my ear.

“Whew,” he said. “Gotta say man, for a while there you had us worried.”

“Had you worried?” I said, feeling too depressed to chitchat.

“Yeah,” he said. He thumbed over his shoulder, back toward the school behind us. “We thought you were still inside.”

Still inside? I turned around, and gazed at the school with narrowed eyes. Beyond the belltower in the center, I saw a dark cloud billowing into the sky.

Smoke.

“The south wing caught fire early this morning,” Jessie explained. “We cleared out all the classrooms, but I guess we’re still missing some students. You were one of them.”

I swallowed. The smoke was pitch black, and heavy. It looked like it was growing thicker.

“Firefighters are on the other side,” Jessie continued. “They’ve been fighting the blaze for twenty minutes now, but it keeps getting bigger. They’re calling in fire trucks from the next town over.”

I stared, transfixed at the pillar of shadow rising from the school. Beneath it, faint in the brightness of the morning sun, I spotted the flicker of flames.

The school was burning.

Just then, a cacophony of sirens sounded in the distance. A handful of seconds later, and two fire trucks roared over the crest of the hill, through the school gates, and swung around the parking lot toward the south side. I gazed after them in awe. I’d never seen fire trucks in action before.

“Mister Thimbly,” Principal Patel said firmly. I blinked, returning my attention to the front of me. He crouched down, meeting me at eye level. “I need to know if you were with Mr Gilad’s class this morning.”

“Mr Gilad’s class?” I said, confused. “No, I was late. I was supposed to be but--”

“Jesus,” he muttered, shaking his head and standing up. “He wasn’t!” he shouted to somebody I didn’t recognize. They were in a suit and on a cellphone, and their lips were moving fast.

“That’s not good,” Jessie said beside me.

“What’s going on?” I asked, fear beginning to take seat in my chest.

“We’re missing twenty two kids still, and one teacher.”

I swallowed, a piece of me already knowing the answer to the question I was about to ask. “Who?”

“Mr Gilad,” Jessie said darkly. “Nobody knows where he is, or his class.”

“They’re two doors down from us,” I argued. “How can they not know where he is?”

Mrs Applefig appeared in front of us, her finger pursed to her lips. “Shh!” she hissed. “It’s important that we’re all quiet. This is a very serious situation and it’s crucial that Principal Patel is able to hear what’s going on.”

Jessie and I closed our mouths, nodding in acknowledgement. As soon as Mrs Applefig shuffled out of earshot though, he leaned over and resumed his whispering.

“That’s the thing, they cleared the entire school. The fire alarm went off as soon as the smoke detector caught whiff, and Patel himself made sure to double check every classroom to make sure they were clear. All of them were empty.”

I shook my head. “That doesn’t make any sense,” I said, defiance leaking into my voice. Oscar was in that class, there was no way Patel would miss Oscar. He was the loudest kid I’d ever met. “They had to have been there. We were doing a trivia competition today.”

Jessie shrugged. “Don’t know what to tell you man, that’s just what I’ve heard.”

My mind raced. Where could they be? Mr Gilad had promised me there would be a trivia competition today. He hadn’t told me to meet the class anywhere special. They had to be here.

My eyes scanned the crowd of assembled students. Each class was separated into small ranks, with their teachers standing out front. I went over every single one of them twice, then once again to be certain. No Oscar. No Mr Gilad.

Once again I felt my emotions getting the better of me. Tears began welling in the corners of my eyes, but I took a deep breath. Maybe they had met up at the school, and then gone for a walk? I looked up at the near cloudless sky, and the warm sun. It was an uncharacteristically nice day for November. Maybe Mr Gilad took them outside for the trivia competition, so that they could enjoy the weather?

A crash sounded behind me, and myself, and every other students’ heads turned in near unison. I watched, transfixed in horror as the bell tower, now almost entirely enshrouded in thick black smoke, sagged, and then with a loud groan fell backwards, onto the blazing south wing. The resultant collision was deafening. The roof of the school caved in instantly, and in its wake exploded an inferno of fire and smoke.

Screams erupted from the students.

My jaw dropped. I was watching my school, the one place I truly felt at home, be destroyed in front of my very eyes. It felt surreal. Like I was dreaming, and couldn't wake up.

It was Mrs Applefig’s crying that brought me back to earth. She had a hand covering her mouth, and she kept muttering the words “Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.”

A moment later a school bus arrived, and all of us whose parents hadn’t picked us up yet were loaded into it. I remember resisting at first, telling Mrs Applefig that I needed to wait for Oscar, but she kept crying and telling me I had to get onboard. “Please,” she said. “Please, Walter.”

I relented, and fifteen minutes later the bus dropped me off at home. I used the key in the garden to get back inside, and when I did, I called out for my mom. She didn’t answer, so I went into the kitchen and picked up my phone, calling Oscar’s house. Maybe he was home sick.

The ringer rang once, twice, three times and then a voice picked up. “Hello?” it said breathlessly. “Sarah? Matthew? Is Oscar at your house with Walter? Please we need to--”

“No,” I said. “This is Walter. Oscar’s not here.”

The line went quiet on the other end.

“Is he not at home?” I asked.

“No,” said his mother’s voice, though it was broken, and filled with sadness. I heard her stifle a sob. “I’m sorry, Walter. I have to go.”

“Okay, Miss Cortez.”

The line went dead, and I hung up the phone. I looked over to the clock. It read 10:54am. My dad wouldn’t be home for another six hours, so in the meantime I made my way to the living room and turned on the TV, hoping maybe there was something on the news.

I flicked through the channels until I spotted a newscaster in front of my school.

“-- Here in front of Hillcrest elementary, where a vicious fire has caused the bell tower to collapse upon the South Wing. The blaze has finally been out and overhauled by firefighters, and efforts to locate survivors, as well as fully assess the extent of the damage have begun.”

The woman speaking, dressed in a nice business suit, turned her attention to somebody off camera. They exchanged a few words with her microphone down and unable to pick up more than faint mumbles of sound. A moment later, she looked back at the camera and raised her microphone to her mouth.

“I’ve just received word from the fire department that several remains have been located within Hillcrest. These remains are suspected to belong to the missing third grade class, taught by Mr Heinrich Gilad.”

An emptiness stole through me. The news lady continued speaking, but her words washed over me like white noise. Several remains have been located within Hillcrest. The words haunted me, replaying over and over again in my head. It wasn’t until my father came home that I realized just how long I’d been sitting there.

“Walter?” he said, before rushing over to me. He pulled me into a tight hug. “Oh, god, Walter. I was so worried for you. I was in a meeting and I didn’t hear until twenty minutes ago, once I did I came right over--”

“It’s okay, dad,” I said, though my voice was void of emotion. It was such an odd sort of feeling. All of my life I had craved this sort of attention and affection from my father, and yet now that I was receiving it, it didn’t mean anything to me.

I felt empty inside.

My dad took me upstairs, ordered me my favorite pizza and rented the newest Harry Potter movie for me. He sat with me all night. Every so often he would ask me if I was okay, and apologize for yelling at me earlier, but I hardly registered it. My thoughts were consumed with thoughts of Oscar, and Mr Gilad.

They were gone.

The next morning school was predictably canceled. My father stayed home with me, and put on another rented movie in my room. This one was Monsters Inc. I only watched it for twenty minutes or so before I wandered downstairs. I found my dad on the couch in the living room, his back facing me, watching the news lady I’d watched yesterday.

She was in front of the scorched remains of the south wing of my school, and it looked like a windy day, because her blond hair was blowing all over the place.

“-- I'm again in front of the wreckage of Hillcrest Elementary’s South Wing, where twenty two children and one man are believed to have lost their lives early yesterday morning, in what can only be described as the greatest tragedy in Plumdale history...”

My dad reached for his mug on the coffee table and took a sip. It occurred to me that he must have taken the day off of work to stay home with me.

“...Yesterday morning a fire blazed, quickly spreading through the South Wing and eventually reaching the bell tower. An old school, built in the early 1900s, Hillcrest Elementary was built primarily of highly flammable lumber, and the bell tower was no exception. At 10:13am it fell backward, onto the South Wing, collapsing that section of the school and dooming the individuals trapped inside.”

She touched her ear, and her eyes looked sideways, as if somebody was speaking to her.

“I’m just receiving word that the investigation has determined some rather disturbing details. I… I should caution viewers at home that what I’m about to say is not for the faint of heart.”

The news lady cleared her throat, and I drew closer behind my father.

“Investigators have located two thick wooden doors in the wreckage. The deadbolts belonging to these doors were discovered in the outward, or locked position. According to blueprints, these doors lead into the basement of the school, where the Hillcrest archive was held.”

“Jesus…” I heard my father mutter, leaning forward and setting his mug back down on the table.

“The twenty two students and teacher, who we have now positively identified as one Mr Heinnrich Gilad via dental records, appear to have been locked inside the school’s basement at the time of the blaze. Details pertaining as to why are still unknown. The stunning ferocity of the blaze, according to investigators, is due to old film reels located in the school’s archive. These reels contained nitrate, a substance which burns hotter than gasoline...”

I swallowed.

“One aspect of the tragedy that school Principal Uday Patel is wrestling with, is that he never physically cleared any of the school’s basement areas.”

The camera cuts out, and I see my principal giving an interview on the school grounds, but in a different location during a different time of day.

“I checked everywhere,” he said, adjusting his glasses and keeping his voice level. “Every classroom was personally cleared by myself, as well as a team of three other faculty members. We ensured to check all of them. I double checked them personally, and suffered severe smoke exposure in the process. Of course, in the interest of protecting my students --”

“What about the basement?” the interviewer asked from off screen, and I recognized the voice as the news lady from earlier.

Principal Patel's voice cracked as he began his reply. “I saw no need to physically check the basements. It seemed a dangerous task, given the relative size of them, and the speed at which the blaze was spreading. As I walked by the basement areas in each wing, I called down and asked if anybody was down there and needed assistance. I heard no response, and so I continued on. There simply wasn’t any time.”

The screen cut back to the news lady, and a small icon in the corner reads LIVE.

“Strangely enough, despite Principal Patel’s calls, nobody answered. Given the amount of remains located within the school’s archive, it seems as though such screams would have been loud and plentiful. One theory as to why Patel didn’t hear any of the victims, was that they had already suffered from toxin inhalation due to the nitrate film off-gassing. It's highly likely they'd already passed out --- sorry?”

The news lady brought a hand to earpiece again. Seconds ticked by in silence, and I realized somebody must be speaking to her on the other end, because her expression slowly became more and more disturbed. Finally, she cleared her throat and brought the mic to her lips.

“For those watching at home, particularly family members of the suspected deceased, your viewer discretion is advised."

Her voice trembled and she readjusted her grip on the mic. She cleared her throat.

"I can hardly believe I’m about to say this in sleepy Plumdale, but investigators have just determined that, based on observed damage to a child's hyoid bone, their throat is presumed to have been slit."

The news lady closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "According to dental records, one Oscar Cortez appears to have died prior to the start of the blaze.”

I gazed, transfixed in horror at the television screen. My father was too stunned to notice me creeping ever closer, drawn toward the scenes on the display. “It is now being posited that perhaps this young man was killed in an attempt to scare the remaining twenty-one children into silence.”

“Oh my god,” my dad muttered. He ran a hand through his mess of hair, and I can tell by his sleeves that he’s wearing his housecoat. He didn't even bother getting dressed today.

I took another step closer and the floorboard croaked. My father turned around. “Walter?” he exclaimed. “Jesus, Walter! You shouldn’t be watching this!”

He rushed around the couch, and the news lady's words became muffled against his chest as he lifted me up and carried me back upstairs.

“You need to take it easy, alright?” he said, ferrying me through the hallway. “I know you’re going through a lot right now, and I know your worthless joke of a mother abandoned us, but the two of us gotta stick together, okay? And that means you gotta trust that I know what’s best for you. Now I don’t want to see you out of your room again today, alright?”

He gently lowered me onto my bed, and hit play on the Monsters Inc movie. “You need to take some time for yourself. Don’t worry about the news. This is all just conjecture right now anyway.”

He paid me a remorseful smile and closed my bedroom door behind him. I laid there, staring at my wall and oblivious to the sounds of Sully and Mike from the movie. All I could think about was Mr Gilad’s words, playing on repeat inside of my head.

"I never felt fulfilled, because each day I felt like I was a part of a play, or an act. I felt like I was fighting tooth and nail against my instincts, and it was only making me more desperate to see them through."

Tears slipped from the corners of my eyes. Thanks to the news lady, I finally knew the answer to my trivia question.

Nitrate burned hotter than gasoline.

---

 Credits: [x.x]