We Have To Play
The next part after "The Cold After Everything"
Anxiety would not have covered what I felt in the moment, driving with Cecil. The symptoms were the same, but the feeling was entirely different. My hands shook as I bounced my knees. My neck kept flipping from side to side as I looked for something that simply wasn’t there. Black passed, more fogged than ever, as I became stranded in this wasteland. You see, dear reader, I was intent on getting Her back. That man, thing, had taken her with his brutality. The only moral thing to do was to proceed with courage into the danger set before me.
“Cecil,” I called out. “We have to turn back?”
Cecil didn’t turn.
“And why is that, exactly?” He asked.
“We just do,” I replied.
“This is the girl, isn’t it?”
I didn’t reply.
“This is not a fight you want to be part of,” Cecil said. “Do yourself a favor and leave it alone.”
I started jiggling the door handle, deaf to Cecil.
“Stop the car.”
“No,” Cecil said. “We’re going home.”
“Stop it, Cecil.”
“This isn’t your place, Kid.”
I started pushing against the door, frustrated that it wouldn’t move at my whim. I couldn’t get the image of the Front-rider and Her out of my head. They were intertwined, one bleeding into the other—soiling the other. Fire stewed inside of me as I eventually reached across Cecil. He couldn’t stop me without letting go of the wheel. Cecil watched, surprised, as I unlocked the car. Then, in a moment of bravery that was hard to find that evening, I opened my door and jumped.
I curled into a ball as I flew through the air. I hit the ground hard, smacking my ribs against the hard soil as I bounced down a hill. I felt things crack. I felt things stretch and then snap back into place. Then, finally, I felt myself stop.
In a haze, I uncurled myself. I felt every part of myself ooze with pain. Everything throbbed and ached as I started to stand. In a miracle, I was unhurt, aside from a few bruises. I seemed to have rolled down a hill, near a small pond, far beyond the highway. I watched as headlights turned around above me and then stopped. A silhouette climbed out of the car and started walking across the top of the hill. My heart rate jumped, hiding any lingering pain. In an instant, I ran.
Crashing through the trees on the other side of the pond, I came to a small neighborhood. It was a single, straight road in the middle of an empty field. It ran just to the middle of the field before stopping. There were streetlights illuminating the houses on either side of the street. The houses looked identical. Perfectly identical. There was no movement beyond the occasional rustling of the grass. Each driveway had the same car in it, and every mailbox had its flag up. It was like the blueprint of a town—like something you would see an architect draw before decorating it. Entranced, I began to move towards it.
I stopped my advancement when I saw a small shadow run in the space between two houses. Then the shadow disappeared. I continued with more pause than before. Yet, with nowhere else to turn, forward was the only option. Shadows continued to fly in front of me as I approached. I kept myself low and out of sight. They looked like children, but they disappeared before I could be sure.
Before I knew it, I was standing next to the back porch of one of the houses. The property had no clear backyard as the property line blended into that everlasting field. The wall of the house was shingled—only barely illuminated by orange lights in the distance. I stood over a water tap when I heard a voice whisper from behind me.
“Who are you?”
I jumped. Looking down, I saw a child, no older than twelve, looking up at me. He had dark, curly hair that seemed to wave in the night and glaring brown eyes. He wore a dark colored shirt and jeans. No wonder I couldn’t see him.
“I’m lost,” I said.
The child brought a finger to his lips.
“Shhhh,” he whispered. “We can’t get caught.”
I crouched down so he could hear me better.
“What are we hiding from?” I asked.
“The other team,” he replied. “If we get caught, we lose another round.”
“Are you playing hide-and-seek?”
The brown-eyed boy shook his head and pointed to the other side of the street.
“That’s the enemy base,” he said. “We have to sneak over there and kill their king before they catch us.”
“Wow,” I replied, trying to engage him. “That’s really tough.”
“Not really,” the brown-eyed boy said. “We wanted to use real guns, but our parents said no.”
Voices and rustling started to amble towards us. Taking my hand, the brown-eyed boy led me around the side of the house, behind a large air-conditioning unit. There, we waited again.
“I need some help,” I whispered. “Is there an adult I can speak to?”
“Yes,” the brown-eyed boy said. “My parents are inside.”
“Can you take me to them?”
“After the round,” the brown-eyed boy replied.
I stood up, taken aback.
“This is really important,” I said in my normal voice. “I’m really lost.”
“Shhhh!” The brown-eyed boy said again. “I can’t leave in the middle of a round. Especially not with the other team around.”
I crouched down again.
“It’s just a game.”
“Of course it is,” the brown-eyed boy said. “That’s why we have to play.”
Once again, the brown-eyed boy led me by the hand to the next house. We hid by the back porch.
“Ok, so, how do we win?” I asked.
The brown-eyed boy looked around, jolting at every noise. Then, he walked over to the porch. It was raised above the ground, with stairs leading down from it. The siding walling off the bottom was some kind of wood, tacked on like shingles. The child knocked in a rhythm on the wood. After a moment, the wood panel moved out of place, revealing the underside of the porch. Moving over to see inside, I saw two other children staring back at me.