“Idiot!”

“This fat kid thinks he can talk with us.”

“No- I just,”

“You what? You wanna know if I got a cheeseburger?”

A group of middle schoolers crowded around an oak tree, having just been released from their classes. It was overcast, the sky a musky shade, and the moisture such that whatever itch poked the skin was indistinguishable between a rain drop and a mosquito. The bark of the oak was dull, its canopy duller. Grey layered upon grey masked the scenery.

On his way to get picked up from high school, George Edrik needed to pass by the middle schooler’s hangout spot. He scanned the cars parked just a few yards away in a fenced off lot, but to no avail. His dad’s black Chevy was nowhere to be seen. With a few minutes left it seemed before his dad would arrive, George stood back to try to put some distance between himself and the antics of the middle schoolers.

“The walking pillow is out here scavenging for a cheeseburger!” The shortest and skinniest boy stood against the trunk of the tree, where the roots sloped to their highest, so that he towered over the naturally taller kids. He seemed to be leading a group which mercilessly surrounded and mocked another kid. The encircled kid wasn’t exactly fat, at least not compared to the exaggerative claims of his peers, but he was a bit bulky- chubby, George thought.

There wasn’t any physical contact or rough play between them, so George couldn’t tell for certain whether it was legitimate bullying or just banter. The words seemed harsh, but he didn’t know the context. He had probably said meaner things to his own friends. He hung back. Either way, he had never been in a fight and didn’t plan on having that change any time soon. Besides, an age gap of just a few years wouldn’t make up for the difference in numbers.

A steady light drizzle started to fall.

“Come on.” The scrawny kid hopped off his perch and led his group away, leaving the chubby kid behind, alone with George.

He looked to the parking lot again- still no luck. He took out his phone to see if his dad had messaged him. Nothing, just the time and the charge- 60%. Must have just been rough traffic.

The chubby kid began to approach George as he put down his phone back in his pocket.

“H-hey.” His voice was soft, which probably contributed to the walking pillow nickname. “Can I borrow your phone? I need to call my mom.”

“Sorry, but it’s just about out of charge,” George said. It was a lie, but the response came out of instinct. He had always been a bit shy, and because of that shyness, he couldn’t put to rest thoughts of what could go wrong giving a complete stranger his phone.

“It will just be for a second. Please?” The rain grew harder, and the kid’s voice softer. His eyes widened as water started to stream over his head.

George couldn’t bear looking at the sad face any longer. “A-alright.” He handed him his phone.

The chubby kid dialed a number and spoke to a faint, but snappy woman’s voice. George sighed in relief. Knowing that the kid had called their mom, his worries faded- they had to have been honest. In a moment, he’d have his phone back and they could part ways.

“Ok, see you soon.” Finally, the phone call concluded.

George reached out to take his phone back, but all he caught were drops of rain.

“Sucker!” Phone in hand, the chubby kid bolted away.

George stood still in shock and confusion. Was this a joke? It had to have been some kind of prank. In a second, maybe two, the kid would turn back, and have their laugh at his expense. But as he thought those hopeful thoughts, the chubby kid kept on running.

Orange light shimmered through the rain- now a full downpour. At last, the black Chevy pulled in the parking lot, but now his dad would have to wait.

George accepted that he had been played, and tried to jog after the thief who had turned a corner around the concrete behemoth of the middle school. But when George turned the same corner, he was nowhere to be seen. George stopped. The swindler could have gone anywhere. Across the street, inside the building, another dimension- well, maybe not that far, but he might as well have. The chubby kid was gone, and there was no hope of catching him.

-------------

It had been a few days since George lost his phone, and anxiety swelled within him as he again waited for his dad to pick him up. He stood at the end of the parking lot, as he had since the incident. Enduring imagined stares from incoming drivers wondering why a highschooler was standing alone at their parking space wasn’t ideal - but the fence separating him from the oak tree hangout was worth it. He had been waiting for 20 minutes, but without his phone and no watch, there was no difference between that and an eternity. That’s if he would even recognize the thief. It all happened so quick. Chubby. That was the only description he thought to give the police. Needless to say, nothing came up from the investigation- as if one had even taken place. It was just a phone, of course they weren’t going to take it too seriously, nor should they have. Even after it had been abused, George still clung to a layer of sympathy for the chubby kid, and perhaps that was why he didn’t seek to give a more detailed description. He couldn’t stomach the thought of what being charged with a crime would do at that age, how it could haunt the kid for the rest of his life.

The honk of a car broke his train of thought. His dad had arrived, ready to take him home.

“Sorry I’m late, but there was a garage sale I stopped by.”

Murdoch Edrikson always had an interest in antiques and old knickknacks. “But I found something for you this time, an old smart phone. It doesn’t have much, just a telephone app I think, but it should hold you over until we can afford to buy you a new one. Plus, I think it’s solar charged. Good for the environment.”

George rolled his eyes as his dad handed him whatever ancient electronic it was that he managed to scrounge up. There was no way an old phone could be solar charged. Yet, sure enough, as George examined its bottom, there wasn’t any charge port. He shrugged. It must have just been covered by the case, which was a peculiar guard made from wood that was perhaps a bit too authentic. It felt brittle, like bark above a termite colony.

George waited until he was home before attempting to use it. Not because he was ungrateful, but because he had always found setting up a new device to be a pain- the new password, updating the contacts, and the daunting flurry of terms and conditions; he would rather not deal with it in a moving car. George rushed up to his room, and closed the door, always afraid to let anyone see the mess strewn across his floor. He pulled the wood covered phone out, but it was turned off, and he hadn’t even found a power button when searching for its charge port. Without any other ideas to get it working, he heeded his father’s words, and took it to the window where he stuck it past the blinders. The device took in the sunlight that filtered through the dusty glass, and soon enough, a single icon appeared. It was about the same size as a typical app, and the same shade of green as the phone icon, but without the little symbol of a telephone. It was without any symbol at all, just the same shade of green, but it wasn’t exactly solid either- more so swirling, animated.

George tried to press the lone icon, but instead of hitting a glass screen, his finger continued to push in a centimeter or so further. Curious, he thought. Then, his eyes closed against his will.

It felt hot. Had he somehow shut off the power? Did the air conditioning stop working? George was well acquainted with that heat from agonizing days spent cooking in his A/C-less room, but this wasn’t that kind of heat. Warmth coddled his body unevenly, in a fresh embrace, like being outside on a clear, sunny day. A quick falling sensation wracked his body, interrupting his peace. With a thud, he crashed into a sandy surface. When whatever force possessed his eyelids allowed them to open, he hobbled up, and dusted off his now dirt-stained leather pants. Leather pants? He had been wearing jeans. Hard, navy blue, denim jeans. But as he looked down, he found his legs were wrapped in a mildly soft, brown material. Leather. He then reached to his chest and pulled his shirt forward. It too had changed from a red tee-shirt to a white silk garment laced with black string. Compared to his surroundings though, the change in clothes seemed almost plausible. His jaw dropped in awe of the expanse before him. Hills rolled up and down for as far as he could see, and a dirt road rolled with it- as did the sun. The late afternoon’s orangish glow cascaded down the tips of grass, creating a sort of rainbow of different yellows. Had he been transported to the Midwest? Was this what Iowa was like? A single dark spot poked out of the bright landscape. Some ways away, a person strolled down the road, carrying something large on his back.

Every ounce of shyness abandoned him as George willed his battered legs forward. He raced his feet as fast as he could toward what could have been the only other human being for miles. After a long sprint, he looked up at a grand assortment of packages tied together by tense rope, what must have been the stock of a merchant.

“S-sir do you have a phone that I can borrow?”

There wasn’t an immediate response. He must have spoken too hesitantly.

“Sir!?”

The body behind the wall of boxes turned to him. Yellow eyes looked back at him from a face that was that of a monster. Triangular teeth lined its far too thin lips, and rather than smooth edges, its grey skin launched into knife-like prongs from where its cheeks should have been. George jumped and fell back. Rather than a growl or snarl however, the sound that came from the monster was a cackle. As George took another look at the frightening face, he noticed that it was perfectly flat. It had a nose, it had lips, it had eyes, but as he now saw, it was all paint, and not even that well designed. A mask. A stupid mask was what sent him down on his back.

The snickering had finally begun to settle as a hand pulled the mask away to reveal an old wrinkled face, with a fuzzy beard.

"W-where is this?”

“You’re outside. Kid, is this your first time under the sun? What are you, one of those cavern children I’ve heard about? Tell you what, when you get back, give your parents a good piece of your mind for me. That generation, far too cautious, too afraid to let their kids get a glimpse of light." The old man sighed. “I used to be part of the crowd out here at this time. Now it’s just ‘ole me, lugging my wares to my shop. You ever see a sunset boy?”

“I’ve seen plenty.”

“No, I don’t mean those pictures they show you in school. I mean a real sunset, out here.”

“I’m not from here,” George said softly, his brow furrowed. The way the old merchant talked about sunsets, and outside, and that there was an old merchant like him in the first place; he wasn’t in a different state, a different country, continent. He was in a different world. It would explain the change in his getup- well, not exactly explain, but provide some context as to why his sense of fashion seemed to have aged back over half a millennium.

“Please. I don’t know where I am, I don’t know for sure where I came from, and at this point I don’t think I know anything. Just take me somewhere, civilization, whatever you call it, wherever you’re going, take me there please!”

“Calm down. Of course I’m takin you with me. I’d never leave a kid out to the slaughter at night. Sure, I like to have my share of laughs, and I can be a bit grouchy, but I’m not evil.”

“Slaughter? W-what happens at night?”

“You really don’t know? Maybe you aren’t of Telora after all.” The old merchant grunted. Telora- that must have been what they called their Earth. Perhaps the genuine break in George’s voice finally clued him in that the kid he was talking to wasn’t of his world. “Prowlers.”

“What’s a prowler?”

“I wish I could answer that, but I’m afraid no one knows much more than you, stranger, other than that they come out at night, and you don’t want to meet them.”

George started to grow fidgety as he walked along with the merchant down the dirt road. The sun was sinking by the second, and they hadn’t so much as seen a silhouette of any structure. Yet the merchant if anything was slowing down. There was no way they could make it to any sort of shelter in time at any pace, much less a snail’s. The old merchant began to sing a tune, a death chant no doubt, jolly to distract from the horror of certain death.

George stopped himself just in time before he tripped at the edge of a raised seal which stuck out in the middle of the path.

“Here we are,” the old merchant said, then lifted the seal like a trap door. It revealed a hole of a decent size, more than large enough for George to fall through, and he didn’t see the bottom. But if as he thought, it was just some stop in the road to shelter a traveler during night, would it fit both him and the merchant? He shuddered at the thought of a whole night cooped up in a tight space between an old man and dirt walls.

Then the merchant removed his bundle of wares from his back and dropped it down the hole. Just as George didn’t see a bottom, he never heard the bundle hit the ground- only a prolonged tumbling, and splashes.