Puddintopia

Holly should have been done with it already. By now she should have a fist full of cash and be back with Jimmy, looking to score a bag of entertainment for later. Instead, she was halfway to Florida and was wrestling with an unusual bout of conscience.

She’d meant to take this guy’s leather satchel before they’d gone ten miles. Usually she pulled her trusty little Springfield 9mm out of her purse as soon as the guy she’d hitched a ride with started giving her looks that said her little skirt and red boots were doing their job. She’d never felt so much as a twinge of guilt for taking every last dime she could find on an asshole like that. In fact, she delighted in seeing the lustful gleam in their eyes replaced with first shock, and then shame. Admittedly, every now and then the shame turned to anger, but that never led to any trouble because Jimmy was always standing at the driver’s side window with his big, ugly .45 before anyone got worked up enough to start swinging.

This guy, though, wasn’t showing signs of getting worked up at all, even in ways she could take advantage of. In fact, he hadn’t given her so much as a second look. It ought to be irritating, but wasn’t for some reason.

She thought his name was Phillip, but details like that rarely stuck with her. When she slid up next to him at the counter of that backwoods diner outside of Bowling Green and ordered coffee with a fake tear in her eye, he was “the Satchel Guy.” Yesterday it’d been the “Blonde Guy with the Cadillac”, and last week they’d taken well over a grand from “the Tan Raincoat Man”.

Guys usually took their time, bought her a little lunch, and played twenty questions while trying to decide if she was a psychopath or a sexy little raven-haired gift to open later. This guy, though, Phillip or the Satchel Guy or whatever, seemed to be different. Instead of all the standard questions, he just offered her a ride, before she even finished the well-rehearsed heart-wrenching yarn about being a penniless college girl with a blown engine trying to get home to see her sick grandmother in Panama City.

After she accepted the ride, he surprised her again by how much he liked to talk.

He started by talking about salt.

“Salt has thousands of uses,” he claimed. “I never leave home without carrying a little extra, just in case. It’s one of the most common and useful items in the modern world. It’s good for cleaning, laundry, personal hygiene, and of course food preservation, just to name a few. You can’t have too much salt with you.”

Holly hid a grin with the back of hand while she watched him pick up the nearest salt shaker and slip it into his jacket pocket as he spoke.

He offered to buy her lunch, as long as she promised to pay him back when they reached Panama City. She ordered an egg white omelet and wheat toast, and somehow he talked the waitress into bringing her a whole carrot cut into narrow sticks as well.

He explained. “If I’m going to buy your lunch it’s going to be a nutritious one. Carrots are very good for one’s vision and are full of vitamins.”

The guy was obviously little bit off center, but not off-putting. Charmingly unusual. He even stole a salt shaker for her as they left the diner.

He didn’t stop talking after they hit the road. He explained the marvel of how his skin tingled after base-jumping Angel’s Falls in Venezuela. He said he wanted to watch a colt born one day because until he did, he’d just have imagine how it would make him feel happy all over, inside and out, to see a miracle like that.

She turned to him somewhere near the Alabama border. “Phillip,” she began, unable to pretend any more that he didn’t have a name, “if there was one thing you had to do with your life, what would it be?”

He didn’t even pause to consider before replying. “I’m going to swim from Panama City, Florida to New Orleans. I don’t know if I can do it, but I had a dream where God told me I could, and to take a bunch of salt with me. So that’s what I’m going to do.”

“Don’t you think that’s crazy?” she replied. “How far even is that? Hundreds of miles? There’s no way.”

He shrugged. “I’ve always wanted to swim in the Gulf of Mexico. I think people should use their lives doing what they want. It’s a gift, they should use it. I’m just glad I have a reason to try.”

The further they traveled the more certain she became that he was different for more reasons than just because he wasn’t looking to take advantage of some helpless twenty year-old girl on a road trip through Alabama. He was different in another way; innocent, considerate, almost child-like. Maybe a little defenseless.

Holly had never taken anything from someone that seemed so completely without guile. So she rode along with him down I-65, hoping that sooner or later he would prove to be as selfish, ugly, and broken as every other man she’d ever met. The tops of her ears burned, though, because she knew it was a futile hope.

So she kept waiting, trying to figure out how she was going to pull that Springfield on this poor sap, or how she’d rationalize it later. Somehow, that got her all the way from the little country diner outside Bowling Green, Kentucky to somewhere just north of Montgomery, Alabama.

Jimmy, who was never more than half a mile behind them, had to pissed enough to start kicking teeth out.

They stopped at a cheap motel outside of Montgomery as the sun was just starting to creep beneath the horizon. She said they could just get one room and she’d sleep on the floor, but he insisted that she have her own. Of course, she could pay him back when they got her home.

Phillip went out to get something for dinner and Holly took a shower, hoping that would settle her mind.

It didn’t help.

Her cell phone was ringing when she stepped out of the bathroom. When she retrieved it from the bottom of her purse, the tiny screen told her she’d had four other missed calls. All from the same number.

“Jimmy,” she said, opening the phone, “everything’s fine.”

“Fine, my ass, Holly,” a gruff voice replied. “I’ve been driving for nearly six hours and here it is sundown and still we ain’t got paid. I’m going to be sleeping in the damned truck while you’re all tucked in and snuggly with that asshole. What the hell is your problem? Is he too much for you? Did you finally find one that scares you? Do you want me to come in there? I noticed he drove off for something; I could be just waitin’ for him when he gets back. We’d be out of here in ten minutes.”

“No, no, Jimmy. I got it. This guy’s nothing. I’ll take care of it. No problem.”

“You better, princess. I’m tired of waitin’. If you don’t got it done by eleven tonight, I’m coming in and takin’ care of it.”

The line clicked dead as she heard someone enter the room on the other side of the wall separating her room and Phillip’s. She dressed quickly and was just pulling a shirt over her head when she heard a knock at the door connecting the two.

“Yes?” she said through the door.

“I got us something to eat.”

Holly glanced at her purse and briefly considered pulling the gun out and greeting him with it when she unlocked the door, but still wasn’t sure how she would live with herself afterwards.

She flipped the bolt instead. “What have you got?”

He was smiling broadly as the door opened. “Peanut butter, jelly, wheat bread, celery and milk. Just like grade school. Hard to get more wholesome.”

Of course, she thought guiltily. “Sounds great.”

After dinner, they talked a little longer, and she surprised herself by telling him, honestly, how intrigued she was by the way he’d described jumping from that cliff in Venezuela. If she did nothing else with her life, she hoped to be able to feel that tingle.

Phillip just smiled and said it was time to go to bed.

Two hours later, she lay in her room wondering how she was going to get out of this mess. He was a genuinely kind, considerate person, and if she didn’t do something, Jimmy was probably going break his head open just for the inconvenience.

When she couldn’t stand lying there uselessly any longer, she picked up her purse and knocked on the door between the rooms. “Phillip?”

“Are you alright?” he asked through the door.

“Yeah, I just,” she said, “um, I’ve never itched this bad before. I think my bed has bedbugs or something. Do you mind if sleep over there?”

“No, no, that’s fine,” he replied, opening the door. Walking back to his bed, he grabbed his pillow and the comforter and said, “I’ll just sleep on the floor.”

“No, there’s no need…”

“I insist. You’re nearly half my age, I wouldn’t feel right.”

With a sigh, she climbed into bed with her purse beside her and waited. Before long, Phillip’s breathing became slow and regular. When certain he was asleep, Holly sat up in the dark and drew the gun from her bag.

Holly checked the clock by the bed: 10:50. Ten minutes to eleven, and Jimmy would not be late.

“God help me,” she whispered.

Exactly nine minutes later, she heard the handle on the room’s front door twist. She wondered if he’d paid for the key or beaten it out of the night clerk. She raised her gun. And then Jimmy burst in, the door banging against the interior wall.

She flicked on the lights, and Jimmy, seeing that he was pointing his gun at her, gave her a look of confusion. She gestured with her own gun towards the foot of the bed and he followed suit just as Phillip rose from the floor.

“What’s going…oh!” he exclaimed.

“Give me your money, all of it, NOW!” Jimmy bellowed.

Phillip raised his hands calmly. “My wallet is one the table. That’s all I have.”

Jimmy grabbed the wallet and removed everything inside. “Sixty bucks? Bullshit. What else have you got? Don’t mess with me!”

“That’s all I have, I swear it. You can shoot me or knock me around all you want, it won’t matter. That’s all the money I’ve got.”

“Don’t lie to me, asshole. Where’s the satchel? I know you’ve got a satchel. Hurry up or your head is gonna go splat against that wall!”

“Splat,” Phillip said, smiling to himself. “That’s onomatopoeia. I always thought those were funny. The satchel is there on the floor, but there’s no money in it.”

Innocent. Defenseless. In the middle of being robbed, and struck with the notion to point out unusual language. Holly’s heart was lead in her chest.

She turned her gun on her boyfriend as he pulled a thick bundle of papers from the bag on the floor. “What is this? Sunny Hills Mental Rehabilitation…Order for Release?”

“Jimmy, let it go.” It was nearly a whisper.

His face flushed crimson in anger. “You dumb bitch! We followed him all day for nothing. I’m not gonna let it go! Now I’m gonna shoot him out of spite!”

He pointed that ugly .45 at Phillip, still standing in his sleep pants at the foot of the bed.

Three loud cracks echoed through the room, two slightly higher pitched than the third.

Phillip collapsed in a heap on the floor instantly. Jimmy looked down at two red splotches growing on the left side of his chest. She’d fired twice and hit him squarely both times, right on target.

His left arm fell to his side, useless, dropping the big gun. His eyes widened in surprise. “Bitch,” he muttered and dropped to the floor.

She got out of the bed and walked over to him by the doorway. Already, he was staring at the ceiling with dead, lifeless eyes. Relief washed over her.

Phillip coughed noisily from the floor by the bed. It was a wet, gurgling, awful sound.

She knelt down beside him. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. We have to get your help.” She reached for her bag to grab her phone, but he caught her arm by the wrist.

“No. Too late,” he said weakly. “Holly, I wasn’t supposed to swim in the Gulf. I was sent to you. The dream I had…about you. I’ve been sick all my life. Got hit too hard playing football in high school. My head has been messed up ever since. I wasn’t going to live a long life. You can. You will. I know it.”

His voice began to shake and slow. “Had to…get rid…of him. He was…poison…heavy. Now, you…can fly.”

Tears rolled down her face and she fought the urge to sob.

“No…tears. Fly. Look…bag.” He reached up slowly and wiped a tear from her cheek.

She clasped his hand and held it to her chest as he struggled through a few last breaths. He’d been the only man who’d ever done something beside take from her, and he was gone.

When she finished sobbing, Holly looked through his bag. It was stuffed with his medical and mental health records. But at the very bottom, in a little pocket to the side, she found five hundred dollars and a plane ticket to Venezuela.

She picked up her bag, surprised at its lightness without the weight of her handgun, and pushed the cash and ticket inside. Slinging it over her shoulder, she stepped over the body of her former boyfriend and opened the motel room door.

Without hesitating, she walked out the autumn night, into a world that suddenly seemed brand new.

She had a plane to catch, but first, she had to find some salt.

A minute later, he was walking past the counter into the office proper, his search for more enjoyable foods momentarily forgotten.

He checked all three desks in the open room, but found nothing but dusty personnel folders, aging memos, an attendance sheet with a long list of names marked “Absent”, and the couple of framed pictures he noticed earlier.

He walked to the doorway on the left in the back of the room. The short hallway beyond was completely dark. The sun had apparently gone down while he was in the kitchen, meaning that what little light had been coming through the windows was gone.

He found three doors on the right side of the hallway, each leading to an individual office. The first had a plaque above it that read “Principal”, the second, “Vice Principal”, and the third, “Security”. He spent a significant amount in each of the first two, hunting in the dark for some kind of binder or folder on the desks and bookcases he found inside. No luck, though; everything was covered in three years of dust, and didn’t look to have been disturbed the least bit.

Thom guessed he’d been searching for probably an hour, at least, and his stomach was beginning to rumble. He finally admitted that the goal had probably been futile to begin with, since he didn’t even know if the journal existed, or what exactly to look for, if it did.

Telling himself he would give the last room only a cursory glance, he stepped into the security office, which was easily the smallest of the three. It had probably begun its life as a supply closet or something like that. Nonetheless, he immediately found it the most interesting. Directly in front of him as he stood in the doorway was a wall of screens displaying security camera video feeds from throughout the school.

Monitor One was labeled “Main Entrance”, and had a clear view of the set of doors just outside the main office. Monitor Two was apparently watching the “Rear Entrance”, and Monitor Three had the word “Subject” written on a piece of tape below it. That one was pointed directly at the empty hospital bed where Thom had spent most of the past seven weeks.

He wanted to be furious that she’d been watching him for so long without his knowledge, but the fact was that two months ago, he really probably needed to be watched closely. And he had to admit that continuing to keep a watchful eye on her only patient seemed prudent, especially given how important she claimed he was. Still, he didn’t like it, and would definitely be adding that to the list of things he needed to discuss with her.

Eight monitors, in all, made up the wall of video displays. The cafeteria, the windowed hallway upstairs that looked out over the courtyard and parking lot, the gym, the library, and even the stairway he’d come down were on camera. He wondered if the footage was recorded someplace too, or just displayed real-time. Had Ana been going back to watch what he’d been doing when she wasn’t here? Something else to ask her.

He stopped looking at the monitors and did a quick visual sweep around the room. There was little else of interest, but to his left, he found a bookshelf holding what were almost certainly old, recorded security tapes. One of the shelves, though, had three 2-inch binders instead of tapes. The first binder was labeled “Subject 1″, the second “Subject 2″, and the last “Subject 3″.

Elated, he quickly grabbed the third and opened it. The first page held nothing but a picture of himself in that same hospital bed, still wearing the IV and either comatose or asleep. He guessed it was taken when he first got here. He flipped through it quickly, finding pages and pages of hand-written notes. He set it aside carefully; he would come back to that one.

Thom then pulled the “Subject 1″ binder from the shelf. The first page had a similar photo of a younger-looking woman, but unlike his image, she was clearly still connected to a respirator. The bed and the room in the picture were unlike anything he’d seen elsewhere in the school, so it must have been taken at a differently location. He flipped through the pages like he had his own journal, but pausedon the last page where he found the word “Deceased” in large letters. One sentence below that told him everything he needed to know, “Expired following removal from life-support”.

He was just about to go back to the first page of the journal when a flicker of movement caught his eye from the wall of video. His heart leapt into his throat when he realized a dark figure was standing outside the door on monitor two. It was shorter than average for a person, although he couldn’t be sure because whoever was out there seemed to be half-crouching and was bobbing erratically. The poor quality of the video feed made it impossible to tell much more, but if pressed, he might have said it was probably male and likely older.

Thom stood petrified, the binder in his hands forgotten, as the figure leaned forward toward the door and pressed its face to the glass. One hand, the left, came up to touch the door, just beside its head. The face bobbed three of four times slightly, like an animal testing for a scent. The other hand slowly grasped the door’s handle.

“Oh, Jesus, no.”

The figure tugged against the handle. The door held firmly, apparently locked.

Unaware that he’d been holding his breath, Thom exhaled slowly, quietly.

The short figure jerked the handle several times, forcefully, using its whole body.

“Shit. Give up, dammit. Go away.” It was barely a whisper.

On the screen, the figure stepped back from the door and looked up towards the sky. It opened its mouth and released a horrible screech that made Thom think of a furious, wounded cat. Even more chilling was the realization that he could hear it clearly from inside the building – the security monitors had no audio.

He stood helpless and watched the thing on the monitor raise its hand, form a fist, and swing it against the glass door. A spider web of cracks formed instantly. It leaned forward, apparently inspecting the damage.

Thom’s heart hammered in his chest. He held his breath again.

The thing’s hand made another fist, and swung a second time, hitting the center of the cracks. Glass exploded from the door.

Thom’s hands went numb. A cold chill swept through him.

The figure stepped through the broken glass, either not feeling or not caring about the jagged shards still held in the door’s frame.

Panic overwhelmed him. Deep inside, his mind screamed to do something, anything; run, hide, grab a weapon. But he couldn’t think, didn’t know how to react.

Something was in the building. Something was looking for him.

Thom was paralyzed with fear.

Thom negotiated the broad steps carefully, coming to a large landing where the staircase turned the opposite direction before continuing to the floor below. He felt immeasurably stronger than when he woke up weeks ago – almost new again, really – but the possibility of toppling over and rolling to the bottom was still very real; he hadn’t walked down stairs with his own legs in a long time. His left hand clung gingerly to the railing, just in case.

His slippers slapped against the hard steps as he moved, bouncing echoes around in the space slowly coming into view. He cringed without knowing exactly why, since there couldn’t be anyone down here except Ana. Disturbing the otherwise absolute quiet was nerve-racking, though, which played right into his blossoming paranoia. Going barefoot might have been less unsettling, but he really didn’t want to catch a cold, or worse, from a chilly floor that hadn’t seen a mop in at least three years. Especially over a little noise that no one but a few rats was around to hear.

He reached the bottom and was very glad he’d thought to bring a flashlight. A few windows here and there let in a measure of pale autumn afternoon light, but not much. It was late enough too, that the sun would be reaching towards the horizon before long.

He thumbed the flashlight on and took a look around.

A long hallway ran from where he stood at the bottom of the steps to a set of double doors, roughly 50 yards away. He could just make out the word “Gymnasium” above them. Immediately to his right were two sets of glass doors leading outside, and just beyond them down the hall was the school’s main office. He thought the external doors were likely the main entrance.

Taking a few steps forward, he turned to this right and looked into the office. Behind the wooden counter intended to separate the administration personnel from the students were three standard-sized desks, two along the wall to the left and the third facing him from the middle of the room. They still held a few stacks of file folders and some errant paperwork, which meant they likely belonged to the secretarial staff. The center one even had a picture frame or two, face down on an oversized 2007 desk calendar. Hanging from the back wall was a large grid of staff mailboxes, a few of which contained unclaimed mail. Finally, he noticed a narrow doorway at the far back of the room on the left, which he figured would lead to the infamous principal’s office.

Making an about face, Thom found himself looking at the school’s cafeteria. It was completely open and took up the entire left side of the hall running from the stairway to the gym. Twenty or twenty-five circular lunch tables were spread relatively evenly throughout, reaching all the way to the back of the room where archways opened to the food service area that would have served hungry students back when there were still students.

Since he was nearly sick to death of reconstituted soup, beef jerky, and instant oatmeal, finding a better variety of canned good seemed a lot more interesting at the moment than digging through old records or looking around in the gym. Shooting some hoops was definitely on the to-do list, if he could find a basketball that would hold air, but food absolutely came first. He stepped forward into the lunch room and walked toward a door bearing the label “Kitchen Staff Only”.

The grey swinging door squeaked loudly as he pushed past it into the kitchen area proper. Once inside, he found stainless steel work tables and kitchen appliances, and a dingy floor composed of tan tiles. The two work tables stood in the center of the room, to his right as he stood near the door. Behind them, along the back wall, was a large metal griddle next to several gas-powered burners, all under a big ventilation hood. A single pot sat on one of the burners, which he guessed Ana used to make soup for him. There were several other pieces of equipment along that same wall whose purpose eluded him since he’d never been in a kitchen with commercial-grade appliances before.

Directly in front of him were two large metal doors with clasp handles and a third plain-looking one which reminded him of a closet. He stepped to that one first and tried the doorknob, which twisted easily. He pulled the door open and nearly clapped when he saw a shelf full of cans that meant he’d found the pantry. The happiness was short-lived, though, as he took stock of what was available in the little room. Cans of chicken soup, cans of bean soup, cans of tomato soup, two cans of dark red kidney beans, and a can of creamed corn that looked like it was from the 70′s. On the lowest shelf he found some tomato paste and a huge can labeled “Beets” that was bigger than a gallon-sized can of paint.

“Looks like it’s going to be soup for a while yet,” he mumbled, disappointed.

He exited the pantry, closed the door, and stepped to the larger doors. He suspected one was a freezer and the other a refrigerator, so wasn’t terribly surprised when he pulled the handle of the first and a wave of frigid air rushed past him. It was a fairly sizeable walk-in freezer, but held nothing other than one rather oddly-shaped hunk of whitish meat. Pork was his best guess, but he couldn’t be certain. His mouth watered profusely at the thought of devouring a big, juicy roasted hunk of meat, and he briefly considered grabbing it. Unfortunately, though, he didn’t know where to begin trying to cook it in a kitchen like this. Besides, being frozen, it was probably too late to make for an evening meal tonight anyway. He left it alone and let the door swing shut, which produced a thud as it hit its frame and then a click when the handle clasp settled into position.

Thom immediately reached for the next door, which had to be the fridge. He was even more disappointed with its contents, two shelves of labeled bags which appeared to contain blood, a stand-up rack of vials, and several small bottles of various types of medication. Ana was obviously using the refrigerator for medical supplies needing to be kept cold.

He thought the blood seemed a little unusual, at first, until he realized it was bagged to hang from IV hooks like the one he drug around weeks ago. He knew that athletes often used blood transfusions as a way to increase strength and stamina, and it wouldn’t surprise him if Ana had done the same thing to him early on. There was little question he could have used the help, and she didn’t seem to have any problem doing whatever she saw fit to him medically.

He took a closer look at the rack of vials. To his untrained eye, they appeared to be samples for testing, the kind that your doctor drew when you got a physical exam or were sick and needed some type of exotic-sounding cell count. Each was labeled simply, with just a number and a date. Two vials were labeled with a “1″ and both were dated well over a year ago. Six or seven carried a “2″ and were least six months old, while more than a dozen had a “3″ and all seemed to be from the last couple of months.

He might have considered it just a coincidence, but the saying “it was a small world” had been around since well before he theoretically became one of the last real people in it. So, no, no coincidence; the contents of those number “3″ vials had almost certain been taken from him in the very recent past. However, just as he couldn’t figure out how Ana had taken out his IV without him realizing it, he was baffled at how she’d drawn samples of his blood unbeknownst to him. Sure, the first few probably weren’t hard to get when he was still mostly in a coma, but the most recent vial was dated two weeks ago, long after that IV line had been removed. She’d clearly had to use a syringe, if these actually were his samples, and it unnerved him to think she could just stick a needle in his arm and take blood without waking him.

In that case, a circus running through the room probably wouldn’t wake him, and he wasn’t comforted by the idea that he was sleeping that soundly when dangerous people were supposed to be looking for him. He wondered, not for the first time, if she was slipping him some kind of tranquilizer at night. It was definitely time to have a very serious talk with Ana about what she was giving him.

Right on the heels of that thought, a more significant question occurred to him and he cocked his head to the side quizzically. “If the number threes are mine, where did the number one and two samples come from?”

Thinking back over all the conversations he’d had with her over the past two months, Thom tried to pull out anything that might give him a clue about the other two sets of vials. Unfortunately, nothing was forthcoming.

Simply asking her would, of course, be the quickest way to find out, but she wasn’t exactly at his beckoned call. There was no telling when she might appear again when he was awake, and this kind of thing would prey on his mind until he had an answer. A research journal or notebook of some kind might shed some light on it, but he couldn’t think of time when he’d seen her with anything like that.

That thought, actually, suddenly struck him as a little odd. She seemed an extremely meticulous person; in fact, she reminded him of a girl from his intro Psychology course that wrote down every word the professor spoke in class, verbatim. The girl never had a button undone, a shoelace loose, or a hair out of place, which is exactly how he pictured Ana in her college days, assuming she’d had any. Either way, if she was taking samples and tracking his rehab scientifically at all, there had to be some kind of research journal, somewhere. If he was lucky, it stayed when she left.

“The office”, he said to himself. Surely if such a collection of notes could be found in the building, it would be in the main office.

The day after his trek up and back down the hallway, Thom struggled through the fire doors leading to the library. He managed to make it to the other side without incident and was greatly relieved to find a working prop foot for the massive door once he had it wedged open. It hadn’t occurred to him before starting the endeavor, but halfway through he realized how much more trouble pulling the door open on the way back would have been.

Nearly the entire day was spent rummaging through the remains of the school’s library. It turned out to be a high school, which was a lucky coincidence. A library intended for teenagers meant newspapers, some magazines, and more importantly, stacks of books containing pages full of words rather than colorful pictures. An elementary school would have had him pulling at the stubble on his head.

He perused the card catalog, noting the new books his favorite authors had published while he slept, and picked out a couple to spend the day with. He also found that several series he used to enjoy reading had progressed with the addition of new books. Well, they were new to him, anyway. At least there was that as a minor benefit to a decade-long coma.

The hours slipped past, and soon the sun was nowhere to be found in the few windows available on this side of the building. The light outside was a pale grey, which meant the sun was close to setting. He thought about trudging up the long hallway to watch it slip below the horizon from the viewing area windows, but decided to pass on that today. He’d been out of the room for long enough and had eaten nothing all afternoon but a few strips of jerky and bag of trail mix he’d barely remembered to pack into the pockets of the tattered robe Ana had recently left for him.

He shuffled back to the room with a couple of books, thankful to finally have something to do at night besides consider the possibility that he was actually already insane and living out an elaborate apocalyptic hallucination. Or worse, that he wasn’t. The unrealistic lives of the characters in the mystery he’d chosen for the night were a welcome diversion.

The IV disappeared a few days later, although he couldn’t figure how she had removed it without waking him. Regardless, having the thing removed brought a new sense of freedom. Especially now that he’d made making daily trips to the library and was beginning to feel strong enough for a slightly more extended tour of the building.

Just beside the library entrance was a double wide set of steps that led down into darkness, obviously intended for use by large groups. He desperately wanted to see what was at the bottom, but didn’t relish the idea of being stranded down there, or worse, losing control and taking a tumble. So he instead contented himself with sticking closer to “home”.

Over the course of the next several weeks, he developed a kind of pattern that seemed to help ward off insanity. In the morning he’d have a light breakfast, often consisting of something his mysterious caretaker had left for him the previous night. If she hadn’t, it would be dry oatmeal packets made with water heated from an electric burner plate she’d gotten at his request. He’d then freshen up as much as possible given the circumstances before strolling down the hallway to the library.

A few hours later, when the legs began to feel the stiffness of sitting still for too long while reading, he would have a small lunch of dried meat and stale granola and then stretch himself out before going for an exploratory walk through the halls. By this time, he’d made his way through every door and hallway to be found on this floor.

The school was laid out in a simple grid pattern, with six parallel halls of classrooms, each ending in two long hallways running perpendicular to them. One of the “end” halls, as Thom thought of them, was made of a wall of windows providing a view to the outside world. As he had guessed earlier, it overlooked the courtyard and also offered a view of an empty and overgrown parking lot. The other “end” hall ran adjacent to the library, and had large matching staircases at both ends.

Four of the halls of classrooms seemed to be dedicated largely to a particular subject each, specifically English and other languages, mathematics, social studies, and the sciences. The remaining two halls were comprised of a kind of hodge-podge of other topics, including everything from home economics to what must have been health, judging by the posters of reproductive organs all over that room’s walls. He considered those two halls, which were the ones farthest from “his” science hallway, to be the “elective” halls.

Without spending a significant amount of time in any one classroom, he made a point to open the door of each room at least once over the course of those weeks. Each day a different door would swing wide, and he’d step in for a moment or two to survey the room. Occasionally, doing so would trigger a foggy memory of his own days in high school, which he thought should have swept over him in an emotional wave of nostalgia. Instead, he just stood in the room a moment or two longer, with the feeling that he was watching an old movie of someone else’s life, from long ago.

Finally, seven weeks to the day after waking up in an unfamiliar room with a thirst that surely meant death could not be far off, Thom stood at the top of the large stairway next to the library doors. Much of his strength had returned, making it a relatively simple matter to walk the whole of this floor without having to stop for rest or recuperation. He’d seen everything there was to see at this level; it was time to find out what secrets, if any, hid in the darkness below.

He checked the large, police-style flashlight Ana had given him, flicking the switch on and off a few times to make certain it was in working order. He chuckled at his own foolishness; it was a simple flight of stairs, not the path to Hell. There was likely nothing to find down there but a few rats and some yellowing textbooks.

Taking the first step, he began his descent.

He did as she suggested and took a walk the next day. Whatever she was giving him seemed to be doing its job, as he managed to shuffle all the way up the hallway after leaving his room and turning left. At the end of the hall, he came to a set of gunmetal grey double doors, each with an inset window roughly a foot square. Already feeling the strain of his effort, he didn’t dare try to push either open. The result likely would have left him sprawled out on the floor, wedged between the door he’d pushed and the one still closed. Even if he did manage to open it and shuffle across the threshold, getting the mobile IV hook through while trying to hold a steel fire door didn’t seem much like a good idea.

He settled for cupping his hands to his face and peering through the window. He couldn’t see much beyond the doorway, though; it looked like just another hallway running perpendicular to his own. Along the far side of the hall was a wall of windows, which appeared to overlook some kind of courtyard.

He turned around and shuffled back toward the open door of his room, passing a number of other closed doors along the way. Looking through the window in each doorframe, he found classroom after classroom, each dedicated to a branch of physical science. Seeing all the other science classrooms confirmed his suspicions about where Ana had him stashed.

“Why’d she pick a school?” he wondered quietly to himself. Of all the places in a supposedly empty world, it seemed strange to take him to an old school. Why not a huge high-rise, with hundreds of floors in which to hide and limited points of entry? Or some random suburban house, nestled in a cookie-cutter neighborhood. For whoever was looking for him, that seemed like it would be trying to find a needle in a haystack. For some reason, though, this place gave him the eerie feeling of being exposed.

He reached his doorway, paused, and then continued past it. The price for so much walking around would likely be steep tomorrow morning, but he wasn’t quite ready to climb back in bed yet, not while the other end of the hallway beckoned. He chuckled to himself at the thought of being “adventurous” by walking to both ends of the same hall in one day.

“You’re a regular action hero, Tommy boy” he mumbled under his breath.

Passing another group of closed doors, Thom found more science rooms just like at the other end of the hall. When he reached the big double doors, though, he found something much more interesting. Looking through the window, he saw another perpendicular hallway, but no matching windows looking out into the world. Instead, a set of stairs wound downward to his right, and beyond the hallway he could see into an enormous open room, lined with dozens and dozens of bookshelves. He was just down the hall from the school’s library.

Besides finding himself alive after waking from a decade-long coma, it was the only really good news he’d gotten in a week. With the library close enough to make regular trips without taxing himself, he’d finally have something to do with all the time he had alone. Reading had never really been his favorite hobby, but it was certainly better than waiting to hear voices in your head.

Exhaustion was creeping up as returned to the room, a not too subtle reminder of exactly how far away “feeling normal” seemed. He climbed into bed and made a note for Ana, in case he was asleep when she checked on him next. He wrote that he’d like to do without the IV, if possible; wandering the empty hallways would be much easier without it.

Thom expected to be asleep quickly, after the day’s tremendous effort, but plans for spending the coming weeks rereading favorite novels and researching the events of a decade missed had his mind racing. For the first time in weeks, sleep came only with effort.

“Boy, that makes me feel a whole lot better,” Thom replied sarcastically, and paused before continuing. “I think maybe you should go. I’m tired and feeling a little off from that stupid dream.” He didn’t add that every time she tried explaining things, the information she gave became more horrifying and tended to result in more new questions than answers.

She seemed to know what he was thinking. “Look, Thom, I know that…” she began.

He put a hand out to interrupt her. “No, it’s alright,” he said softly, “I’m fine. Just a bit tired.”

Ana cocked her head to left and gave him a concerned look.

He suddenly regretted having suggested she leave. The tilt of her head and look on her face made him think she was trying to decide if he couldn’t handle hearing the truth, or maybe just wasn’t up to dealing with it. Realistically, he probably wasn’t, but would never admit that to Ana. The last thing he needed was a candy coated version of his situation because she figured he’d do better with the kid gloves. No, if the world was as different as she suggested, and they really were in legitimate danger, he wanted to hear about it unvarnished.

“Honestly, I’m fine. Actually, let’s keep going for a little while longer.”

“Are you sure? Your rest is very important.”

“No, I’m sure. I’ll just sleep in a bit tomorrow. It looks like my schedule is pretty flexible all this week.” He winked at her playfully, hoping to allay any lingering doubts.

“Okay, then, yes, let’s continue for a bit. Perhaps you might like a drink of water first?”

“Sure, yeah, I am a little thirsty, that’s good idea. Thank you.”

She nodded, but he couldn’t tell if it was in confirmation to herself or was meant for him. She revealed nothing else and turned to pour him a cup of water.

“So tell me why we’re in so much danger here. I get the sense we’re being looked for? Who’s doing the looking, and why?”

She handed him the water and leaned back against the stool. “Yes, I suspect we are the targets of a search, although I haven’t seen any direct evidence of it, luckily. As I said, I believe the man I snuck you away from will make every effort to get you back.”

“What does ‘every effort’ mean, and who is this guy?”

“It means he likely has several groups of hunters out trying to track you down. His hunters are very skilled and very dedicated, which makes our situation so precarious. They will find us eventually; it is simply a matter of time.”

He sipped at the water and tried to let that sink in. Thirteen years ago he was a regular schmuck working his way through a fairly unhappy life as he tried to put the pieces of his marriage back together. In what seemed the blink of eye, he somehow became the focus of people intent on locating him and apparently returning him for some kind of twisted experimentation. The whole story just seemed so surreal.

“What about ‘the guy’?” he asked.

“His name is Gordon, and he is effectively in charge of this part of what used to be United States. The days after Charon were chaotic, at best, and the few thousands of survivors were basically all trying to live independently. Before long, there wasn’t enough food; not many knew anything about its production. Worse, in places where the survivors lived in relatively close proximity, fighting was invariably the result. And typically, such fights resulted in deaths.”

“Clearly, some form of order was necessary. In this part of the country, Gordon was somehow able to convince enough survivors to follow him, to accept his rules and live by his law. In return, he brought the worst of the fighting to an end and has apparently made some progress on providing food. I suppose those might be considered admirable results, but he apparently used threats and coercion to solidify his power and simply killed anyone who disagreed with him or wouldn’t follow along.”

“So, what exactly do you mean by ‘this part of the country’?” Thom asked.

“The former US has basically been separated into six zones or regions, and each has a kind of leader like Gordon, although not are all so brutal as he is. Each one came to the position in a different way. Some were well known before Charon and lived in areas still well populated enough for their influence to spread easily. Others were largely unknown, but managed to gain support from the people in their respective region through another means, whether by force or by some other method of proving their leadership. It’s a lot like a return to feudalism, with each region having its own king.”

“So, you’re not from around here, originally? Which region are you from, and who do you serve?”

“The West,” she replied, “California, specifically.”

“I’m so sorry,” he interjected, thinking of a huge black crater as the remains of Los Angeles.

“No need to be. Before Charon, I lived in Atlanta. I just happened to be in California when the worst of it came, and started over from there. I do follow the leader from the West, a man named Colin. Everything I do, even here, I do on his orders. He is equally responsible for getting you away from Gordon.”

“Then I would like to meet him.”

“And you will, when you are well enough to travel. We will head west, where things should be safer for both of us. And with that, I need to be going. There are number of things I need to check into and need to start making arrangements for us to leave. We will talk again soon.”

He wasn’t exactly looking forward to that, fearing he might find out he had an alien growing in his stomach or something. Still, it was nice to not be so completely in the dark about the world outside. “One more thing.”

Ana turned in the doorway, and for a brief moment, her eyes shone like Onyx in the moonlight. “Yes?”

“Where is the closest border to Gordon’s area? Are there hard borders?”

“In some places, where geography helps, yes, but in most places, no, which is an issue that still leads to fighting. In any event, we are currently in what used to be Ohio, north of Cincinnati. South of the remains of the city is the Ohio River; it marks the edge of this territory. Across the river, in what used to be Kentucky, the South region begins.”

Thom nodded and yawned. He was suddenly very tired.

“Oh, Thom, one last thing,” Ana began. “You need to start walking about further. Don’t overdo it; I don’t want to have to search the whole building just to find you slumped in a corner someplace, too exhausted to stand up. With each walk, though, try to go as far as you can indoors, keeping in mind you will need to be able to return to this room.”

He nodded again, mumbled an agreement, and fell into a somewhat peaceful asleep.

[author's note: I wanted to write something from an antagonist's viewpoint. The whole point of my nightly exercise is to practice, right? I was inspired by the idea of the layoffs and then tried to come up with someone as deplorable as possible. I don't know if it's quality entertainment or not, but it was kind of fun to write someone who doesn't give a whit for the rules]

The man pulled the stool away from the bar and inspected it. It didn’t wobble on uneven legs, the cushion was intact, and it didn’t flex with pressure. It would do. He pulled himself up into it and crossed his arms with his elbows on the bar. He gestured for his usual drink and took a look around.

A tall, well-groomed man bustled through the front door and climbed into a stool three seats away. He wore an expensive-looking tie and perfectly crisp white dress shirt. His dark hair was combed back from his forehead and was shiny with some form of product. He appeared to be pulling close to fifty years old, from the streak of gray showing at his temples and the creases around his eyes. He greeted the bartender with a gregarious smile and set a twenty dollar bill in front of him. He signaled for three-fingers of bourbon over ice and pulled one of those fancy PDA phones from the front pocket of his tailored pants.

The man scrolled through his email messages, seeing nothing of any real interest for the moment. Normally, he’d dawdle at the office on a Friday afternoon, waiting until it was time to meet his wife at her latest favorite restaurant for dinner. She tended to make him wait one way or the other, and he suspected that was only because she knew it infuriated him. He got back at her by sharing a few drinks on his executive couch with the new girl in the department, and they would often share something else as well. He couldn’t hang around the office today, though, not even for that; everyone was whispering about the upcoming layoffs and he was holding the ax. He didn’t mind being the guy that handed out pink slips. He actually rather got a charge from it. It made him feel powerful.

The task was not without complications, though. The girl would want assurances that all of her…extra efforts…weren’t going to be wasted, but he couldn’t make her any promises. He had a list of who needed to be let go, and it was short one name. It was either going to have to be her or Randall, who was arguably the laziest employee in his department. Randall knew all about the affair, though, and about several other skeletons lurking in the past. He was a terrible worker, but had some very embarrassing information and had been making thinly veiled threats over the past month.

Laying the girl off was problematic too; women had a tendency to do crazy things when they feel like they’ve been used. The last thing he needed was for her to develop some courage and start sending messages to his wife. Not that his marriage really meant that much to him. His wife was just a pretty face and nice rack to show off in a black dress at corporate dinners. He could easily do without her. Frankly, she’d be an idiot to leave him; she had no marketable skills beyond mixing a martini. Still, she’d mop up in a divorce settlement, and he’d be damned if he was going to send her a check every month for the rest of his life.

There had to be a simple solution without the ugly truth becoming public. He briefly considered paying Randall off. The little schmuck would almost certainly go for it, but he was devious and lazy and might find that getting paid to do nothing was an arrangement he’d like to continue. Paying the wife would be preferable to long term extortion.

His first drink disappeared quickly and was replaced with a second and then a third. He savored the warmth of his bourbon buzz and ordered yet another. By the time he reached the bottom of the tumbler again, he’d made a decision. It had to be Randall, and the kid wasn’t going to get a dime out of him. He’d find some dirty secret, some reason to fire him outright, and avoid the layoff altogether. Surely the weasel was up to his neck in violated company ethics. If not, well, it really only needed to look bad, and he had a plan that would do just the thing. He might need to convince the girl to do something she didn’t like, but he’d talked smarter people into doing more onerous things in his career. Taking care of number one was still his first priority, and you used whatever tools you had to do it.

The executive set his glass down, empty but for three cubes of ice, and signaled for another drink and a menu. The man three seats away at the bar paid for his beer and slid off the stool. As he headed for the door, he noticed a wolfish grin spreading across the business man’s face. It was absolutely predatory, and the man was suddenly very glad that he was leaving.

Thom looked down at the circular wounds dotting his arms. Some were completely healed, slightly raised and shiny pink. Others seemed very recent, having thick, dark, scabbed caps that itched enough to need idly scratching. Others still were in-between fully healed and freshly made. He seemed to mostly have them on his arms and legs, but also a few along his neck and shoulders.

“Well, I suppose it’s good to know I wasn’t being used to put out cigarettes,” Thom remarked sarcastically. “What kind of experiments? Am I going to get cancer or something? It’d be a bitch to live through the end of the world and then die because someone shot me up with transmission fluid just to see what would happen. And what left the marks?”

“Unfortunately, I don’t know. The man I believe was responsible for seeing to you either does not keep much in the way of scientific notes, or he keeps them with him. In any event, I was unable to determine exactly what they were doing. I don’t even know for sure that they had a plan or goal.”

“Great,” Thom muttered in frustration. “So we know I was in a coma, we know I got some experimental brain drugs, and we know some guy probably used me as a pin-cushion for three years, but have no idea why. That about sum it up?”

“I am sorry, Thom,” Ana replied. She shifted uncomfortably and looked down at her feet. “I had hoped to find out something more, maybe after getting you out, but my attempts to return to the research area have failed. So for now, we really just don’t know anything more than that you’re awake, you seem normal, and you’re getting stronger.”

“Stronger, right,” he scoffed. He was so weak he could barely make it across the hallway without needing to nap for a couple of hours. Sure, he wasn’t army-crawling across the floor to get a drink of water anymore, but he was an awfully long way from feeling like a normal person. Still, her suggestion struck at something else he’d been wondering about.

His brow furrowed. “If I was in a coma for 13 years, and just woke up a handful of day ago, shouldn’t I pretty much be an invalid? I’ll admit that I’m not running any marathons anytime soon, but I can actually walk a little ways. Shouldn’t my muscles be complete pudding by now?”

“Well, according to your original chart, part of the coma study included regular electrical muscular stimulation. I don’t know if it was continued later, but that would explain why you aren’t in worse shape than you are. You are certainly gaunt, but you’re not completely skin and bones. Also, I’m giving you a pretty regular regimen of steroids and other growth hormones to help you heal.”

“Steroids!? What gives you the right to just decide to pump me full of steroids? Those things have terrible side effects. I don’t want to be all juiced up. You’re no better than the others!”

She looked him squarely in the eyes and gave a piercing glare. “Since I’m the only one between us with medical experience, I’m quite content to make those decisions without consultation. Besides that, I risked my life to get you out, and every day we stay here we get one step closer to being detected. Both of us are in grave danger at the moment, and the faster we can be on the move, the better our chances of survival. I need you strong enough that you can travel across country, alone if necessary, and I’ll do whatever it takes to accomplish that, as soon as possible.”

She smiled wryly, “And if it’s the side effects you’re concerned with, I wouldn’t worry too much. The most likely are baldness and infertility. Your head is shaved at the moment, so I think we can agree you have little to fear from baldness, and since I doubt you’ll be having much luck on the dating scene in our brave, new world, reproduction is probably not going to be a big issue.”

Thom scowled and opened his mouth to reply, but she cut him off.

“Don’t worry; it’s only for the short term, until we get you strong enough to travel. You should have no lasting side effects. But if we don’t move away from here soon, and are found, side effects will be the least of your concerns.”

“Very well,” she began, “we will start with what I know about you.”

Ana resumed her perch on the same metal stool, apparently unmoved since their last meeting. “What is the last thing you remember before waking up here?”

He opened his mouth to answer and paused. Thom had given that exact question a good deal of thought in the handful of days since finding himself in this room. To be completely honest, he had not yet come up with a good answer. He remembered walking away from Heather in that hotel and wandering an underground parking garage in a daze, looking for his car. He remembered his hands shaking as he drove and thinking that he needed to stop before he killed someone. Most of his memories after that are a hazy collection of bars, smoke, and alcohol.

He remembered the papers. Try as he might, though, he could not recall anything after opening the manila envelope holding his divorce papers. Did he even talk to an attorney?

“My wife filed for divorce. That’s the last thing I remember.”

Ana frowned. “A pity, I was hoping for more. It is common, though, in cases of head trauma, to not recall events leading up to the responsible incident. I suppose we’ll never really know how you ended up in the coma.”

“Once I became aware of your….situation, I began looking for background information. Eventually I managed to locate your original hospital chart, but it was partially damaged and large sections were missing. From what I can tell, during the spring of 1997, you suffered a massive head injury and became comatose.”

“Was there anything about what caused it?” Thom asked.

“Not that I found, and my search was extensive. If the computer system at the hospital had been operating, I might have found out, but electricity is not universal anymore.”

“Well,” he mumbled, “it was February, I think, when I got the papers. Maybe I drove myself into a tree or something.”

“Perhaps,” she allowed. “Regardless, you ended up with a significant head wound and a very negative prognosis. No one expected you to ever be conscious again. You were you lucky, though, that the hospital was participating in a medical study regarding coma. As a result, rather than being shipped off to whatever establishment your family could afford, you remained there for nearly ten years. You apparently received a variety of experimental drugs intended to boost your brain activity. You were very closely monitored and well cared for, until Charon.”

“So everyone got super-flu and died, but I didn’t get it? How’d that happen? And, even if I didn’t get it, how’d I manage not to starve to death. Don’t people in comas need feeding tubes or something?”

Ana smiled wryly. “Yes, feeding is necessary. I don’t know exactly what happened when everyone else died. As I told you, though, there are those that survived, but they are largely…different…not really exactly human beings anymore.”

“What do you mean, different?”

“We’ll get to that. The important thing is that somehow they found you, and they had to have found you relatively soon. You could not have survived long, helplessly comatose and without food.”

“Ok, fine. So someone else, some people like, what, the Road Warrior guys, took care of me for three years and kept me warm, dry, and fed? Great. I don’t care how screwed up they are or if they’re a bunch of psychos or elves or something. Whatever. They kept me alive. I should get them a card or something. I need to say thanks.”

Ana jumped up from her stool. “You will make NO attempt to do any such thing!”

“Whoa, lady,” Thom began.

Her eyes narrowed in the moonlight and she pointed at him. “No. Listen to me, carefully. If you ever try to return there, you will surely be killed. You were held by a very twisted man for three years; kept alive only because, well, you weren’t dead already. I only just found out about you a month or so ago and I spent every waking moment trying to devise a way to sneak you out of there. You cannot go back. It isn’t safe. You have to trust me.”

“Ok, ok. Calm down. But why? Why would anyone want to kill me, especially now? What the hell were they doing with me all that time?”

She sighed and dropped back onto the stool. “Experiments, Thom,” she said quietly, “hundreds, maybe thousands of them. What do you think made those circular marks all over you?”

She had promised to return in a few hours, and she did, but he didn’t see her again for three days.

After she delivered her incredible story and left, he tried to work his way into the collection of newspapers but didn’t make much progress the first night. Thom did read an article deep in the first L.A. Times that warned of a strange outbreak of some deadly infection at Cedars-Sinai. So apparently she wasn’t feeding him a complete line of bull. Still, he would have to see a lot more to buy what she was selling.

It was dark when she woke him and as the night got later Thom keenly felt the exhaustion of slurping a bowl of soup for the first time in a decade and hearing about the death of everyone he loved. He fell asleep desperately looking for something to contradict her, to catch her in a lie. So far, the yellowing paper supported her every claim.

He woke up the next day with the sun filtering through his nearly-closed blinds. They had been twisted completely open when he drifted off the night before; she must have returned while he slept and closed them.

He found a note from Ana and a thermos on a wheeled table pulled up beside the bed. The thermos contained tomato soup that was somewhere between warm and hot. He was disappointed, though, when he tasted it and found it had been made with water. He preferred it with milk, of course, but allowed that not too many milkmen were probably making runs if civilization had come to an end.

The note was relatively direct. “Thom, stay in bed and rest. You must regain your strength as quickly as possible as we will need to move before long. Read everything I have left you and we will talk again soon. The electricity works, but there MUST be no use of the lights after dusk. If you find you can walk, there is a restroom across the hall. I will return tonight. I am sorry I cannot be there, but I have a lot to occupy me. There is dried food in the cabinets. Ana.”

It was nice of her to assume he could reach the cabinets on his own.

He spent the next two days mostly reading and dozing in the dusty sunlight that drifted in through the blinds. At dusk on the second day he folded the last newspaper from her stack and set it on his finished pile. From the collection Ana left him, he found absolutely nothing to contradict her and an overwhelming amount of corroboration.

He wanted to vomit when he read about the destruction of Los Angeles and was unsure what made him sicker in the next’s day’s New York Times: the story about the first cases of Charon on the East Coast, or the political piece about the President’s re-election chances, having just nuked his own constituents.

Thom spent the third day trying to escape boredom by filling out whatever puzzles and games he could find in the newspapers. In the afternoon, he wheeled his IV hook and bag into the hall, just to prove that he could do it. Stopping in the middle of the hallway, he found double doors at both ends and briefly considered picking a direction and setting off on an admittedly short adventure. His legs, though, still mostly felt like jello from just standing there beside his room.

With a promise to venture further in the next few days, he returned to bed and fell asleep in the early evening. He dreamed of riding his motorcycle along the ocean, of playing with this chocolate Labrador Retriever, Chester, and of a spring picnic with his beautiful Heather, the wife she had been in the days before the problems. He also saw disturbing things: a fire that burned out millions of lives, a mob of moaning plague-ridden friends, clamoring for his help, and a pale bald man with fiery red eyes and a open-mouthed grin.

Thom awoke with a shout in the dark, startling Ana enough to nearly drop the thermos she was setting on his side table.

“I had a strange dream,” was all he could think to say.

“Do you want to tell me?” she asked.

“No. Not….not now.”

She nodded her head in understanding. “I have about an hour before I need to look after some other things. Would you like to talk about the news I left?”

“Yes, but not now. Not first. First, you’re going to explain to me where the hell I am, and how the hell I got here.”