The image faded away. He awakened, groggily. The bedroom was small, mostly dark, with hints of sunlight peering through the blinds of the sliding glass door that stands beside his bed. The carpet was brown, the ceiling white and bumpy, and the walls, the same as the ceiling. All were faded and worn with age. At ends opposite the boy’s bed was a double door closet, bulging open with clutter – unsorted clothes, mostly. The shelves above the boy’s bed were equally cluttered, here with books and collectables, and looked ready to fall. A plastic toy box was turned over on its head, spilling cars, jakks, action figures, balls, and squirt guns across the brown floor, restricting the already cramped space to an even smaller area that could actually be traversed. The mess was not what is on the boy’s mind right now, however.

“Another dream about the beach... It feels familiar, but it’s not the one I know…”

The boy slowly moved from his bed, not bothering to return the sheets to their proper state. The boy’s appearance was a perfect reflection of that of his quarters. His brown hair was unkempt and wild, and dark bags hung under his eyes. It was easy to tell, judging from his features, that a thousand unanswered questions were taking their toll on his REM cycles.

“‘Can you see stories in the stars, Dares?’ Hmm… what could that mean?”

The boy pondered for a few long moments, and then shrugs. Shaking the uncertainty from his mind, he hastily dressed himself and exited his room through the sliding glass door.

“Who has time for riddles? The sun’s already up, time to play!” said Dares.

The boy stepped out onto the back porch. “Porch” in this case, was really more of a stone slab, open to a collective backyard shared by all of the tenants. The porch was characterized by a dusty barbeque in the right corner, and an equally dusty stationary bike, standing horizontally to the door, which blocked most of what little walking space there was, so that only a small path to the left could be used to step off of the porch, and onto the bright green grass.

The boy distinctly remembered the stationary bike, which had originally taken up residency in his designated room at his grandmother’s house. As a toddler, he had climbed all over it, always perching himself on the handlebars, and always, inevitably, falling directly onto his head. The seat was yellow, withered, and torn now, and the plastic broke and jagged, yet the exercise machine still evoked the same powerful memories, becoming a kind of Everest that the child had sought to conquer, regardless of the risk.

As he sifted through the space between the stationary bike and the left wall, he had to duck to avoid hitting the front of his father’s ten speed, which hung upside down from hooks that stuck out from the ceiling overhang. This accomplished, the boy dropped down from the porch (a surprising good half foot; definitely a case of ‘watch your step’) and felt the lawn depress under his bare feet. He stood for a moment, feeling the earth below him, feeling much like a solid tree, his roots drawing forth energy from the ground. He had always loved the sensation. His eyes were closed as he took a moment to take in the sunlight, basking in its warmth. A cool breeze rushed across his face. The world felt right.

The youth was broken from his spell of nirvana by his mother’s voice, beckoning him to come inside and change into his day clothes. Realizing only now that he had been outside in his underwear, the boy begrudgingly complied.

A few moments later, the boy, now dressed, and wearing open-toed slippers (the closest compromise he and his family could ever come to on the subject of shoes), basked in the sunlight.

He found a note from his mother. It read,

Sorry to get up ahead of you, son. I’m at Steve’s. Come for a visit if you want.

Dares looked up towards the sloping end apartment at the end of his walkway. A cow skull sat on the stone porch, framing a screen mesh door, where the smells of greasy, overcooked chicken floated out onto the cool breeze. Dares fixated on the support pillars holding the canopy of blue holding the shingles aloft for no real reason. He rounded the bend of the stone cubicle housing the community dumpster. Around the side of the golden monolith, mailboxes addressed to the tenants sat in a row, largely untouched. Dares fumbled for his key and dropped it into an oily puddle. Shrugging, he bent over and picked it up out of the gunk. He inserted it into the keyhole and twisted, wrenching open the box to see what memos waited inside. Junk mail. Well, whatever. He guessed he had been a bit excited, waiting for the return note from his mysterious penpal.

Dares heard a call. Steve, a man in his late forties, scraggly beard and stained tee shirt, acting with childlike glee and cheerleader exuberance unbecoming his age, beckoned Dares forward. Steve’s kids were a little older than Dares, but they showed him neat things, and his mother was there too. Besides, there had been a letter in the mail addressed to her he needed to deliver - as good an excuse as any to play with the big kids’ toys and computer games. He walked down the path to that enticing apartment and felt a breeze at his back.

“Oh, Jun, you’re awake. Are you feeling well?”

“...”

“Huh? Speak up, I can’t hear you. What’s wrong? Are those guys picking on you again?”

Dares heard a gurgle behind him. It was a sound like wet paint splashing over stone steps. A smell, thick and metallic, rose up to greet his nostrils. And the sound - hacking, gasping, almost like the sounds of grating strikes against one’s ribs and lungs. Dares turned, and saw.

“W-What the… S-Steve…?” Dares’ eyes were wide with shock.

“Kid… R-Run…” the scruffy-looking man-hippie’s beard was plastered with blood, which mixed, iron-like and cloying, with the scent of chicken that perpetually hung over him. He hurled a final torrent of thick, coffee-ground blood down his beard, chin, raining like red hail onto the pavement. Then he folded over and just… stopped moving.

“Jun… Jun, get out of here! Go get your mom!” Dares turned to the doe-eyed girl. She didn’t react at all. “Jun? Jun are you listening to me! Go get help, right now, it isn’t safe here!”

“She can’t talk to you. She can’t even hear you.” another voice showed up.

“Who the hell are you? Did you do this?!” Dares flew into a mixture of panic and unbridled anger at the cloaked figure standing there behind Jun.

“Don’t you dare-”

The hooded man clasped a hand on Jun’s shoulder. “You are faced with mounting tragedy, horrors far beyond your ability to comprehend or control. You are helpless to avert your fate. You are as one, a frog, forever swirling into the depths of an unstoppable maelstrom. Even after a trillion repetitions, this scenario can only ever end the same way.”

“What are you going to do with Jun?”

“It’s… It’s all your fault, cousin… you’re weak… that’s why you can’t protect anything you care about…” Jun looked down. Her eyes were clouded. What was going on-?

“Dares.” a comforting voice called from behind him.

Dares turned around. “Mother….” all of the color drained out of his face. “Mother, listen, there’s still time to save Steve, but he’s lost a lot of blood! If you hurry - ”

“It’s useless, Dares… It’s all useless…”

Useless? What was useless? What is there to understand -

And then hellfire engulfed the righteous and unrighteous alike.