11/26

I was in a harbor town walking around. I walked up to a house that resembled my old house in Maryland. As I walked up the driveway I saw hundreds and hundreds of jets appear in the sky and hover low to the ground. They had a Japanese flag painted on the side. Soon, American military men began pouring from the house, guns ready. The jets began firing missiles and guns at us. I thought that the next world war was happening. I ran past the house to the back deck, which was elevated very high from the ground. Lush forest met the deck. I ran along the back of the house, trying to look for a door to inside of the house so I could hide in a room. I saw a Native American Indian standing at the end of the deck. He smiled and laughed and then pointed behind me, then raised his bow and arrow. A Japanese soldier was firing bullets at me. I had no choice, so I jumped off the deck and fell, and fell, and fell for what seemed an endless amount of time.

When I regained controlled consciousness, I was riding a bicycle on a flattened down grass path in a field. There were many people around me traveling on foot, some on bicycle as well. We can to a forked path in the field. The grass had grown taller and I could not see where the paths led to. Only a green sign stood aside the right path and read Fort Worth. I remembered that I had lived there before, and it might as well be home. A middle aged man in a light brown suit with white whiskery hair smiled and wished me good luck.

As I arrived in town on my bicycle, everything seemed very strange. People were dressed differently and there were fewer buildings around. I parked my bike at a high school and decided to go inside and inquire about the town. As I entered, kids were changing classes and bustling about the hallways. I recognized a few faces but they were all very young versions of what I remembered to be familiar. A homecoming banner was hanging in the hallway that read 'HOMECOMING 1949'.

My younger brother Gabriel emerged from a classroom and was shocked to see me. I told him what happened and we rushed out of the school. He had an apartment that was much more modern than the rest of the town. He said not to talk to anyone for they would never believe that I was from the future.

11/13

I am sitting in a high school chemistry lab. The girl across the table from me is my partner. She has a melancholy attitude and fiddles absentmindedly with the Bunsen burner. I ask her what is wrong.

"My boyfriend and I broke up..."

"I'm sorry to hear. Why did you guys break up?"

"Reptiles."

10/27

Sasha and I are standing outside a large house at night. There is a huge house party going on, people are flooding in and out, music is blasting. She tells me the house is also a hair salon and that one of her friends wants to cut my hair. I agree to it since I had been wanting a haircut; nests were forming out of my matted hair and the length was to my waist. We go inside and find her friend, a tall, skinny, black man whom I never learned the name of. He leads us through the crowds of people to the side of the room where mirrors, sinks and hair salon chairs are organized. He is excited and tells me the first step is to relax in a chair while he goes to retrieve the injection. Wide eyed, I refuse and say I don't like needles. He shakes his head and says it is too late to decline but to not fret, for I am sure to enjoy it. Sasha pulls up a half reclined salon chair behind me and tells me to relax while she goes and finds her friend Lea. The man comes back with a velcro, rectangular case and fidgets with a syringe inside. I look around me, a blond girl is crying in the chair next to me. She is facing the mirror and running her hands through her hair. I immediately know that she had hair like mine before, whereas now she has a very short, blond pixie cut with a small, uncut chunk in the back, similar to a rat tail. I tell her this is my first time and ask if she would hold my hand. She sobs silently and stretches out her hand. I squeeze it and stare at her short hair as I feel the needle sliding into my forearm. I ask the man what medicine is in the needle. He smiles and says it is just a concoction that will help me relax. I let go of the girl's hand and say nothing. The man realizes he doesn't have his hair cutting supplies, he apologizes and rushes off to retrieve them. The girl tells me it's not too late, I can still get away but the injection will make me drowsy. Sasha walks up with her friend Lea and asks if I canceled, for she has just seen the skinny man talking to a group of friends. I tell her yes, and that we are leaving.

Sasha and I are in a club. It is a new club called 310 because it opens at 3 a.m until 10 a.m. It is dark and green strobe lights are flashing. She is talking to a few people. I stare at a gigantic flat screen television on the ceiling. It is an automatic DJ she tells me. It composes songs based off what random people in the room are thinking of. I think of the recent Studio Ghibli film I saw. Immediately the Ghibli logo flashes on the television, but remade with darker colors and bright japanese symbols jumping around the screen. The current song transitions into a remixed theme song from the movie. I laugh and think it ironic. I then see Tanner behind the group of people Sasha is speaking to. I walk around and raise my hand to greet him, but he does not acknowledge me and walks away. I then wonder if the DJ picked up my thoughts on the song, or had someone else been thinking about it.

Sasha gets a ride home with her friends from the club, I am alone in the parking lot walking towards my car. The tall, skinny man from the salon runs up to me apologizing profusely. He insists that I return for a haircut and that his employers were furious with him. I smile and say nothing as I climb into my car, shut the door and watch his mouth moving, still speaking through the window glass.

Sasha and I are at her friend's apartment. It is early in the morning but they are still drinking. A few people are huddled around a laptop computer, laughing every now and then. Sasha tells me there is a popular YouTube video that everyone is watching and she wants to show me. We sit on a large white couch and she puts the laptop on my knees. She full screens the video and it begins:

A group of girls in their twenties are standing in a line. They are smiling, wearing dresses and cone party hats and are singing happy birthday. The girl being sung to is standing in front of them, but with her back to them. She has a short pixie hair cut and a blue dress. Her face looks pained and she is hugging her mother in slow motion. The line of girls singing behind them becomes out of focus. The camera closes in on the birthday girl's face, now resting on her mother's shoulder. She stares into the camera. The camera zooms in closer and closer and tears begin to roll down her cheeks.

10/20

Gabriel, Eric, Alyssa and I are walking down a stone paved, torch lit hallway that seems to be underground. We come upon a fork in the hall. To the left there is a rustic looking door with Mesoamerican frescos decorating it. The door on the right is a brilliant shining gold with ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Alyssa doesn't hesitate and tells us we need to take the door on the left. Immediately the door slides open. Another torch lit hallway stretches out beyond the door. There is an engraving on the wall that looks like the word 'MAYAN.'
The hallway ends and a large room opens up. An old man is sitting behind a table. The table is covered with a colorful cloth with an ethnic pattern. There are ceramic bowls full of spices, incense and small magical looking talismans. He hands us small sticks with bright blue feathers attached to the end. We hold the feathered sticks and look at him in confusion. He take a torch and lights the ends of the feathers. He tells us we need to go light the incense to the God and make our offering. He looks beyond our faces, we turn to match his gaze and see a great statue of a beast with wild eyes and many feet. There are bushels of flowers, incense and food at its feet. We light the incense with the flames of the blue feathers. The smoke slowly slithers up over the beast's face. His eyes glow and a deep voice erupts from within. It tells us we can procede.
The wall to the left of the statue shakes and a segment slides back, bringing in a small gust of wind. We step through the opening in the wall and are suddenly outdoors.
It is dusk, but we are able to make out the treetops, which tower above us. The trees are unusually large. The sky cannot be seen beyond the trees. The trees outline a rolling stretch of land. We begin to explore and come upon an enormous structure.
A ladder awaits us in front of the structure. It reaches nearly to the top of the trees. We begin to climb, and climb for nearly an hour. At the top of the structure we can see the levels below. Dark orange rectangular cushions stretch across the four posts of the structure. They have at least a two foot gap between one another. Beneath that we see a black mesh net. The structure reminds us of a giant trapeze artist's station. Eric and Alyssa are excited with the great height and leap off the top towards the cushions. Gabriel and I stand back, astonished. We watch them fly through the air and fall atop the cushions. They burst into laughter, which Gabriel and I can barely hear. We hear the echoes of their shouts to jump. Gabriel hesitates and says he will jump if I do. They beckon us more with their calls. Gabe shrugs and steps off, his hair flying back, arms stretched out and slams into the soft orange cushion. Now the three of them are sending broken shouts and echoes to me.
I swallow the nervousness that holds me back and take a leap off the top of the tallest structure known to us.

10/6

Peter and I decide we want to drive to Lubbock just for fun. My friends there had already told me that they would all be out of town. Peter is anxious and uncertain about something. He drives my car and we arrive there within an hour. We stop at a swampy marsh area. All the trees are dead and the grass is long and the color of ochre. There's a small gravel path that slowly widens into a road. I tell Peter that I know exactly where we are, and that my parents had secretly moved back to the United States and lived only a short walk from the marsh. He is hesitant and is complaining about something. But we walk.

We reach the house, one storied red and pale yellow. The screen door is open, a closed wooden door is behind it. There are no cars there. I walk in silently. The house is more spacious on the inside then we guessed it would be. The windows are open and a ceiling fan is slowly turning. We take the hall to our right and go into a large bathroom. Peter messes with his hair and says he doesn't want to be seen by public. He mentions something about having plans with friends. He picks up a silver cross decoration from the counter and begins to cry. I hear distant talking down the hall. Only one voice, that of my stepmother. She is on the phone. I hear the jingle of what could only be a dog collar and her small yorki sniffing out our trail in the hall.

I tell Peter I'm going to step out and surprise my parents. I walk out and down the hall into the room my stepmother is in, still laughing over the phone. She raises her eyebrows at me in a smile and waves, turns away from me and continues her conversation.

I turn around and my father is in the kitchen. He gives me a hug and says they were expecting me.

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.