9/21

It had been weeks since they captured Gabriel. If I mourned, it was silently. They would be watching. Listening. Eager for any way to discover me. My canine companion Maryll and I traveled by night, slept during the day in whatever concealed shelter we could find. We were quick and silent as we moved through the maze of suburban neighborhoods. We had been traveling for nearly a month trying to escape. At first it was just Gabriel and I. Somehow we managed to break free and run. At first we just hid for days, watched from narrow opening as They panicked and sent out fleets of watchers. They drove in cars. They always came in cars. But They lure like true hunters do. That's how they got Gabriel. It was right after Maryll had found us. A large, white long haired creature that resembled a mix between a great dane and a greyhound. She was quiet and wore the look on her face that she wanted to escape too. Since then she has been an irreplaceable companion. We three traveled by foot, quick and swift. Until one day we came upon an empty backyard with a red road bike propped against the outer fence. Gabriel wanted it. He insisted that we'd be able to travel faster, with him on bike and I riding Maryll. She was large enough to support my weight and riding her seemed not to hinder her in the least. Still, I knew it was a trap. The bike was bait, meant to lure us out. Yet it was dusk, and They had begun to shuffle back into their homes. This part of town was bare. He went for the bicycle while Maryll and I stayed behind under a collection of shrubbery from across the street. Wide eyed we waited and stared as he crept up to the bike, always looking to his surroundings. He touched the bike with a single hand when They ambushed him. At least five clothes-less figures emerging from corners, placing hands on him. They covered his mouth and eyes. Their faces were expressionless. I knew They were puppets, being controlled from a distance, probably from Them in a car. I gasped and thought about running out to him, but Maryll nudged her head against mine and licked my cheek. Canine or not, she was intelligent and knew the importance of what we were doing. She understood my words, emotions and actions.

I was filled with paranoia, fear and anger. Maryll and I could trust noone. We passed the methodically placed bowls of dog food or sweets near porches. Obvious lures they were. They would try anything.

I was close to capture once. Before Maryll came to us, Gabriel and I decided to split up one evening. He talked of a wild blackberry bush that he could find for our supper. I was to find a safe place to sleep that night. We had gone days without food. I was sloppy. Tired. I dragged my feet and crossed a street. Headlights blared behind me and a family wagon pulled up slowly next to me, driving as I walked. The windows rolled down and a middle aged man and his wife sat in the front seat. A blonde toddler in the back. They took up any disguise, usually the least intimidating ones. The man smiled, used kind words. But I wasn't listening. All I needed to see was the hungry look in his eyes when he stopped talking. The obscure stretched smile of his wife and the glisten in her eyes as she watched me walk. That's when Maryll came. She ran out from a yard barking at the car, providing distraction while I jolted and ran in opposite direction behind houses. I did not look back. It was the only time They saw me. I was extremely careful since then. Maryll appeared with Gabriel that night when we met up in the backyard of an abandoned house. She saved me, she wasn't one of Their tricks. She could be trusted. She was all I had now.

We travel by nightfall. I ride on her back and we dart through houses, jump over or dig under fences. We tunnel under busy streets or neighborhood intersections. We trust only wild growing food, sometimes with only handfuls of grass to swallow down. We drink rainwater when it comes. We keep our noses forward, for our will is strong.

9/14

I'm in a small waiting room that is dimly lit by the desk lamps in the corners and four walls decorated with maroon wallpaper with gold trimming. I am reading over a script, even muttering some lines out loud, but not within hearing reach of those sitting next to me. A woman opens a door and calls my name. I timidly step through and into an office. I am greeted by another woman and we shake hands. She sits at her desk and I stand, rigid, holding the script. I tell her I will be singing the theme song from the play Annie, about the sun coming up tomorrow. She smiles and waits. Five slim figures wrapped head to toe in black spandex rise up from the floor in between her and I. They are silent but in complete unison they begin to jump and flail and perform what would be deemed a type of modern dance, nowadays. I do not speak or sing. I watch them and look to the woman at the desk. She sits, still smiling at me, she can not see them. I begin to follow the figures' movements. We spin and leap and flail around the room. The papers from the script are being tossed out of my hand and fall through the air between my movements. We continue dancing until they slow down and sink back into the ground. In the end I am crouched against a wall corner, panting. The woman sits silent. I tell her I am demonstrating my lithe abilities as a dancer to accompany my singing. I rise and suddenly become nervous. I stutter the first note and stop. A knock comes from another door, not the one I entered but one on the opposite wall from the entrance.

The door is small and gold. I am closest to the door so I walk over and grab the knob to open it. The woman suddenly panicks, jumping up from her seat, shouting 'No!' I'm only able to open the door just a crack when something long and bulbous slithers into the room. It is the color of ochre, it resembles a tube worm but wears a collar and bears the face of a man. The woman is screaming and the creature is growing in size and devours her in a single bite. I jolt for the door I entered, and slam it behind me. The remaining people in the waiting room are startled and look up at me cautiously. I smile awkwardly, tip my head in farewell and leave the scene.

9/8

My two brothers and I are in the van again, driving through a desert. We stop at what appears to be a gas station but turns into a grey stone wall with a water spick et and three different sized plastic water bottles glued to the wall. Mike drops in coins into a coin slot I didn't notice. He says he wants the medium sized water bottle and it is instantaneously dispensed from the wall, somehow. Water begins to spew out of somewhere, Mike keeps handing Gabe and I empty jugs, which we wrap our arms around and hold under the blasting water supply. We are laughing and trying to avoid the water in our face.

Now I am with my sister Sasha at our old house in Maryland. The man that used to be my stepfather is smoking a cigarette outside in the driveway and making comments about the carvings in the trees and how his grandfather did them with his pocket knife. I am standing in the driveway and Sasha is yelling at me and walking into the house. I am holding the car keys to the van which is parked parallel to the house. I walk inside and she grabs my keys, insulting me under her breath and storms out.

9/6

I am standing at a restaurant entrance waiting to be seated. A young man behind me walks up to my side and runs his hand across my back. I turn my head to look at him and he has no face. His hair was a sandy color.

I am surrounded by a group of teenage Japanese girls in one of their bedrooms. They just cut and dyed my hair. I have straight across bangs that are shaped like a downward facing arrow at my nose. My hair is a silver/light grey color. I'm talking on my cell phone and taking pictures of it to show my sister.

9/4 & 9/5.

9/4.

I shifted in and out of the perspective of a gold and blue droid. There was a price on my head and I was being held captive by a group of bounty hunters. I woke with my wrists and ankles bound, my body was thrown against a wall of what seemed to be an ill lighted supply room. From overhearing conversation from the men across from me, I knew we were underground. I saw an elevator on the other side of the men. The floor indicated we were 58 floors under. The men were debating whether to turn me in for the reward money or to clip my wires and let my power drain out into nothingness. In the 3rd person perspective, I knew the droid/I had done something terrible to offend these men and possibly all human kind.

One of them began to approach me, I switched back into 1st person view. I lowered my remaining power levels to appear completely unconscious. He grabbed me by my bicep and dragged me a little ways, shouting to the others about how he wanted to cut my wires. In a swift single movement he flipped out a long, sharp blade and cut through my exterior shell and several wires that were linked to my arm. I lost feeling in the arm. The other men got riled up by his actions. He dropped me and walked back into their group, shouting in their faces.

That's when I saw it--a single match by my remaining active hand. I scanned the room, still appearing unconscious, and laid my desperate eyes on what would be my way out of this mess. Four stacks of dynamite against the wall adjacent to my body.

/wake.

9/5.

I am myself, with my older brother Michael and younger brother Gabriel. We are driving through a desert in a van with all windows down. Sand blows through the windows and stings my face, gets imbedded in the roots of my hair. We make a couple stops at what appears to be gas stations.

We are running through a grocery store. Every aisle is filled with exotic spices, every person in the store besides us is speaking Spanish, yet the signs of the store are in English. I'm wearing only brown underwear, calf high boots and a jacket. A small boy is holding my hand and dragging me to a room where he says I'll meet Monet. The ceilings get higher and darker, looking more like a warehouse rather than a grocery store. As we're running I pass my brother Gabriel who yells 'Fia! Dad's here!' I turn my head and I see my father standing in a group of men dressed in military wear. My father nods in acknowledgement of my presence but does not come after me. The dark skinned, spanish speaking boy and I arrive at the room. The walls are lined with water tanks filled with various underwater creatures like sharks and squids. There's a bubbling hot tub in the center of the room. A large flat screen t.v. is hanging from the ceiling, playing a black and white film with endless ocean waves crashing against a shore. My brother Gabriel appears behind me, staring up at the screen.

"It means the world will end next week. The first moon will arrive over New Zealand and we'll all be destroyed from a tidal wave."

/wake.