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Fun fact: This was the first time in my entire life that I have dreamed of a zombie apocalypse.

Zombie Portal

I was in a darkened store. We had discovered that the elevator had broken.

The elevator had turned into a portal for zombies.

We teamed up and got as many weapons as we could from the store, shovels, knives, etc - anything sharp or deadly. I was left with sharp little darts. They would only be effective if I could attack the zombies from a distance. I remember that I was wearing a yellow jacket. The jacket had pockets in the front where I could keep my extra darts.

The zombies would come out from the elevator portal. Their flesh was falling off of their face. We tried to kill as many as we could on the first round, but many would escape to seek prey around the store.

Joe and I decided to go and hunt the rogue zombies. We were disappointed and disheartened to find many of our teammates dead on the floor. If they were bitten by the zombies, they too would also become a zombie soon.

We spotted a rogue zombie and I began throwing my sharp darts at it. I was surprised at how well they worked. Straight through the heart!

Unfortunately, they only worked so well. The zombie continued to creep towards me. Once it got close enough to me, I could recognize that it was the face of a fellow peer. The face was now disfigured, gray, and emotionless. Stripped of any liveliness that it once contained.

I didn't have a knife to defend myself, so I pushed the darts through his body and knocked the zombie to the floor. It took me down with it for a fight to the death. I didn't know zombies could bleed, but I figured that they could when I began to engage in Zukin Slaughter (a term for when I begin to overkill my enemy).

Once the zombie had been slaughtered, I proceeded to find Joe.

I took him from his slaughtering and lead him down a long dark hallway, in which he protested every minute of as it was very very creepy. The hallway was something out of a Harry Potter castle. Dark and wet and arched. Because there wasn't any life here, there also wasn't any zombies.

I took him to what was supposedly my dorm.

"Joe, I need to die," I pleaded.

"Why?" He asked.

"They got me," I returned. I showed him my stomach. The top part had been lacerated so badly all that was visible in the moonlight that poured out from the window was blood.

"I don't want to become one of them," I whispered.

In that moment, Joe had a powerful vision. He saw all of the names of the survivors etched in gold. All of the names of the heroes.

"I need to help them," He assured, "quiet, listen." We heard footsteps outside of the door. We weren't sure if it was zombie or human.

"I need to go," Joe announced. And I was left there in the quiet dorm with the moonlight as my only companion. The door was locked behind him as he left.

Mean Chick

I was moving into the dorm. Mine was a mess. Somebody had left all of their belongings here last year.

I remember being at an auditorium. There was a girl sitting next to me who had very short platinum blonde hair. She took my hand in a strange protective manner.

There was also a girl who was being mean spirited. She was getting physically violent with the other girls.

What interests me the most about this dream though was the girl with the short platinum blonde hair. She followed me throughout the dream.

In my DJ I also wrote "syringe and self hate"...Yeah I don't really know what I meant by that

I am in my old house from when I was a child. I am with my husband and his brother ((who died a few years ago)), there are about 3 other blokes with us aswell. I dreamt that one of my husbands brothers had recently died but spirits were good again with everyone, we were just having a laugh etc.. We were all playing a game in the front room, my husbands brother had a towell to his mouth while we were playing, I remember looking at him and thinking "Jesus, he's bleeding", we finished the game and while my hubby went and sat in the front room I went upstairs. I got to the landing and went into the bathroom, I got to the sink and I could see blood, there was bloody tissue, bloody cottonwool balls and the bloody towell, there was also blood all over the sink. I began to panick and knew it was off my husbands brother. I walked out of the bathroom and I saw my husbands brother lying on the landing, I knelt down by him and knew he was dying, part of his tongue was next to him on the floor. I leaned forward a little and looked at his mouth..the inside of his mouth had been sewn up, cotton went through the sides of his mouth and through his tongue. I tugged on the cotton trying to get it out but the cotton also went down his throat and was well and truly stuck. I realised there was nothing I could do then I looked at my hubby's brother and realised he had died. I really didn't want to tell my hubby that his brother had died on this night because he hadn't long lost his other brother. I walk downstairs, I'm still holding the blood stained towell etc. in my hand, I walk into the kitchen and my hubby says "where's mi brother, have you seen him?" I get all upset because I don't want to tell him. I put all the rubbish etc in the bin then walk into the front room, I take a seat next to my hubby and I just look at him. I have tears in my eyes and i'm so choked up that I can't speak. My hubby looks at me and his face just drops, he then says "NO, please no", I then break down in tears and so does my hubby. ((dream skip)) I see my husbands dead brothers ((they are both dead in RL)) They have their arms around each other and they are singing, they say "this is for K, we know he likes it" They sing "stand-by-me" they sing the whole song and tell me they are ok now and back to how they used to be, they also say they know my hubby is doing ok and I can actually feel how much they love him. They said they sang the whole song so that i would remember it when I wake up. There was a 3rd brother but kev has only got 2 brothers that died, I argued with this 3rd bloke that he wasn't my hubbys brother but he argued back with me, he is very stubborn and adamant just like my hubby lol. We ended up laughing and I said "ok, ok you win!" He smiled and then my hubby's brother "D" said "It's all true you know and make sure you remind "K" of the song. I then wake-up for real with the song "stand-by-me" in my head and then it blagged me for about an hour or so afterwards lol.

Teens twice my size are chasing my friend and I. I get the feeling that if they catch me I might not live. Without them seeing, I jump into a grassy slope next to the pavement and lay flat. [In real life my house is only next door to that, I dont think it was safe for me to go there in my dream though.] My friend keeps running around the corner where presumably she finds safety in her house. [ which is technically my other friends house in real life]
The mother of a boy in my class unknowingly sat on top of me to eat her picnik. Bones crunch. My kitten comes up to me and licks my hand. I fall asleep. When I awake I have no body and am merely a presence looking down on the scene. The boys mother is standing with her sandwich looking dazed. Where I once lay was on only several bones and a boot. I am pretty fucking pissed. How did that woman not notice me being eaten in my sleep by a kitten?! People begin to gather. My friend is there unharmed and possible the teen boys as well. My dead presence slowly fades.

A bunch of my friends decided to have a sleep over. I have no idea whose house we were at. We were in an upstairs bedroom that had two twin beds in it with hard wooden floors. There was a window on the back wall and a closet on the side wall near the window.

Everyone was asleep. I couldn't sleep, so I was reading through my physical dream journal, laughing at all of the silly notes I make.

Suddenly, I felt a strange feeling.

I heard this awful noise, it was like a creaking/ripping sound.

I looked over, and noticed that Joe, who was occupying one of the twin beds, was laying in a pool of blood. There was blood dripping off of his arms and down to the wooden floors. His girlfriend, who was occupying the other single bed, had also mysteriously died as well.

I rounded up everyone else that was at the sleepover and we called the ambulance.

As we waited for the ambulance I let Brian read my dream journal.

"It's all your fault!" He yelled.

"What? Why?" I asked.

He flipped to a page in my dream journal where I described the horrible death of Joe and his girlfriend, it was almost the exact same dream as this one.

"You should have known this was going to happen!" He yelled out.

I was in tears. I couldn't believe that I had lost another great friend.

I looked over and noticed that a rocking chair in the room was rocking itself.

This isnt a nightmare persae, but a dream that filled me with horrible emotions and made me sick. (Not literally)

My Grandmother was in hospital. As it turns out it was me who could decide when to pull the plug. My grandma was talking, smiling and looking more alive then ever. But she left an essence of hatrid and betrayal. I saw the plug and pulled it. She died upright mid-sentence. That was all i had ever wanted and it made me feel so satisfied. But then i started crying. Tears of sadness washed down my cheeks. I couldnt speak. I talked with my eyes, trying to show my happiness. I was left in a state of mixed emotions and everything around me became a blur.
I dont recall the ending but I think I leant over her and questioned my life and the people in it.

- It starts with me being in some kind of legal trouble, and then it's a flashback to what happened as I'm telling it to someone else, so I see everything but I'm narrating on top.

I wanted to build extra rooms in the attic of my house so I could have my room up there and stuff, but my mom would only let me have half of the space, so somehow, I made up a brother...who was a small beluga whale.

I built a few sections in the house that were weird and uneven. I saw myself drawing a diagram in pencil that looked kind of like this.

There was a VHS tape that was evidence somehow that my 'brother' was 'fake', and I couldn't just move it or get rid of it for some reason, so I also built a chair that sat right on top of it and hid it.

One day I was eating dinner with my mom and she told me that he had died. I already knew this, and wasn't really sad since he never even existed [??? I have no idea if he actually didn't exist at all or was just a whale or what...makes no sense], so I had to try REALLY hard not to smile or laugh, and managed to. I looked really shocked and put down my forkful of pasta for a moment, then kept eating shortly after lol. I saw a scene of him being checked at a hospital for "colon blockages". There was a progress bar stating this, but it was hovering around 8-9%, then said it failed and he died.

My mom was talking about how he was such a good student at university and always got As and Bs. I was looking at a collection of his possessions gathered on a table that were going to be used by the police to do an investigation of his death. [even though he died of colon blockages?] It was mostly some photos and random stuff, but one of the things was a pendant I have. I thought that it was 'the most spiritual item he owned'. I also thought they might be able to connect it to me, and contemplated taking it, but didn't.

The next thing I knew, my mom had found out and was angry that I'd made him up, and apparently this was illegal or something because I got in trouble with the police. She was also telling me these stories like how once she called him from the other room, and it upset her when he didn't answer or call back.. which was because he didn't exist.. and was a whale.


- Another short dream where I was patting my cat, and then she froze up and got all weird and started licking the blanket she was laying on. I thought this was funny and brought her face up to my face. She was just licking automatically and would lick the air and started licking my face when I put her there. (That was the worst explanation ever lol) Then she stopped licking and started breathing really weirdly. I realized there was something wrong and got really worried.

It switched to me at a movie theatre with my cousins. The movie screen was maybe half the size of a normal one and we were controlling it. We were trying to figure out how we could get it to show my cat at the vet. I was on MSN on my phone except it looked like MSN on the computer, showing custom fonts and everything. N was like "dude why aren't you talking" and I said "sorry, I'm at a movie theatre, and my cat is really sick =(".

There's already a lot of tension in my dream. A lot of stuff goes on during the beginning, but it's very fuzzy and hard for me to remember. Everything comes in clearly when an older man is talking to a guy with a hateful redneck personality who seems to be in his 30's or so. The redneck is extremely angry about something and every now and then he pauses and looks like he's listening to someone talk. Until the end of him ranting and fuming I finally hear a dark voice say something to him. He then proceeds to smash his own face in with his fists, but instead of any pain or gore his body falls away to reveal something much more built and 'demonic' in appearance. I'm shocked by the sudden transition, but the older man seems to have expected it.

The scene changes and there now seem to be sides in what appears to be an impending war. Based on the appearances of each side, it's mostly angels opposing demons. Ages are still apparent for the beings on each side, as they still look the same other than looking more angelic or demonic in appearance. And for whatever reason, there are also vampires fighting on each side after having been turned by the respective leaders. These vampires can walk into the sun, but it weakens them much more than if they were in the night. I end up being one of the vampires, and am forced to fight for the side of 'good'. The fighting commences and there's lots of gore and death. I can't remember much of the specifics during the fight other than spontaneous scenes where I'll see one side or the other killing a member of their counterparts. I also can see each time I'm fighting another vampire.

After killing a vampire, I wake up from my dream.

I had a dream that i was in the street and some guy was trying to get me and the other people, we ran into my friends house where all my parents, and my friends family were. We went through the garage and the men were at the front trying to close the garage door down..
I was worried and for my dad and stood in front of him in case the thing came and got him. Once the door was closed we all went inside and tried to comfort each other.

He broke in the house and we all got him but i was in charge of finishing him off.
I got him and put him inside my friends room and tried to kill him, but he wouldn't die, he then transformed in some kind of animal, like a cat i think (which was really disturbing because i absolutely love cats) .. and he would transform in my vision from a cat to a human.. I soon realised that this kind of person could not die, i could hurt him but no matter what i did he would still be alive ..he lay there gaining conscious now on the floor and i had to do something to stop him from killing everyone. i had to cut off all his limbs instead so even if he was alive he couldn't do anything because he couldn't move without any legs. arms or head. so i sat there trying to cut through everything, it was very hard to get through eat part and it was hard emotionally because he kept turning into a cat and i wanted to stop. the blood soaked into my friends carpet and i was worried she would be upset. after i finished cutting everything i walked out of the room and everyone was rather happy about him dying, but i still had an uneasy and sad feeling. Later that day i came back to my friend house and we sat in her room, all the blood was gone from the carpet, her mum had cleaned it up.

1) Holding a girl in my arms.

2) LUCID. Tell the three people I'm with (I assume they're DCs. At least one is a middle-aged man.) that this is a dream, and I walk past them and call for my guides. They walk through three doorways ahead of me but I wake up.

3) Something... Death related maybe?

1) Doctor Mallick. Einstein (or Edison...) exhibit in a museum.

2) I'm washing my face, CP_Steel from Team Fortress 2 is on a poster to my left. Think about death.

Dream from night of 7-26-11


I was in some sort of school or colorful building. I was in real trouble because I was going to die. I didn't know how, where, or when but I knew that I was fated to die. It had to happen, in order for other events to occur and the world to move on. I had to die, and I had accepted this. (the entire dream) I spent time getting my things managed, putting things in place, and trying to get a hold of my family to tell them the bad news, and say good-bye. I couldn't get a hold of anyone, my brother, my parents, my roommates. I even tried calling my ex. All I could do was leave messages of me saying good-bye. While I was doing this there was a short, blonde, kind of puggy woman following me around, wearing an all black lacy dress. (Kind of a goth look). She kept taunting me, and teasing me about my death. I just tried to ignore her but she kept following me around. I had a feeling that she was a part of it somehow or orchestrating it. I actually caught her trying to steal my soul. She was a sorceress. I took back what part of my soul she managed to steal and for some reason said "you can't steal a music major's soul." I ran away from her and ran to my dad's house. I was just waiting for my time to come..still trying to reach any of my family. I looked outside and thought, "wonder when this is all going to go down..." with that though a black horse and carriage came down my street, driven by a massive figure dressed in black and with a mask over his face. I said, "there it is I guess". They stopped short, right in front of my neighbors house. I saw through my neighbors big living room window, to see the nuclear christian family that lived there, sitting around in the room playing guitar and singing together. The driver of the carriage along with a short man, and a tall lanky butler dressed man, charge through the big window and just slaughtered the family. I tried shouting to them to ask if it's me they wanted....the butler man heard me turned around and gave me the "one moment" signal with his index finger, then continued inside my neighbors house to kill them. After they were done they came up to the end of my yard and urged me to come inside the carriage. It was the carriage of death. They were invisible to everyone else but me. I got inside the carriage and knew that they would take me to the place of my execution.


I woke up.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

It was night. I walked out (from where) onto the peak of a big hill or mountain. The peak of the mountain was kind of thin and knobby. It seemed to be made of a pink stone like sandstone. There were little stretches of green vegetation like moss or short grass. Below the peak, the mountain seemed to wind around in spires and caverns. There were even a few waterfalls. The air was very calm and cool.

There were a few groups of people on the mountain, doing different things. There was a group of policemen sitting near the peak of the mountain. I sat near them. I looked down the mountain and saw a group of skateboarders skating down a sandstone ramp.

The police may have been talking about some job they were on. They may have been looking for some woman for some reason or another.

The skateboarders had all gone to the bottom of the ramp, possibly together. Now they all came back up together. I was kind of wondering if it was okay to be skating out in a natural area like this. But the kids were getting ready to skate again. So I figured I'd watch.

A black boy, kind of tall, maybe in his late teens, skated down part of the ramp. But he ended up going down a side ramp off to his right. The ramp sloped upward, over the edge of the moutain. The boy lifted up into the air and then disappeared off the cliff. There was no sound of his crashing, although the boy may have made a little sound of surprise as he went off the cliff.

I kind of waited for a second. It seemed like everybody, including the cops, had seen the young man flying off the cliff. But the police didn't seem to care. They just kept talking about this job of looking for a woman.

Finally I told the police that they probably should look for this boy. He obviously just fell off a cliff, and he was in danger. I even bent over, while still sitting, to get a view down the mountain through some kind of hole made in the sandstone. I saw the boy below, lying face down on a ledge of sandstone.

It was pretty obvious the boy was dead, and I told the police so. They grunted a bit and stood up reluctantly, saying they'd go check things out. In the meantime, however, I was apparently charged with the task of finding the woman.

I walked down one of the sandstone slopes. But then I was suddenly in a house. I was in an area like a living room. It was really wide, but it also felt short somehow. There were a lot of windows and sliding glass doors. It was night, and the house felt lit, but not completely.

I had to search along all the walls, even feeling along the walls and down at the corners where the walls met the floors. The woman was apparently in a small space like this. All this time I was either having a conversation with myself in my head or hearing or remembering hearing the police talking, probably about the woman.

I remember walking down this dark hall. There was little light but I don't know where it was Comming from because there were not lights or windows. Then I used the lumenesent spell. (Or however you spell it). My wind lights up and I see professor mcgonagail fighting a bunch of death eaters. Then there were people behind me. Using spells like ''explelliarmus" and ''stupify". I shot a couple of the death eaters. One of the death eaters grab mcgonagail. I use expelliarmus to shut the wond out of his hand and than I used stupify to shoot them away. As I kept walking I saw one of the weasly brothers on the ground. He threw his wond at me.

That was the last thing I remember.

I was smoking from a pipe with my friend H while sitting outside in public. I stated getting paranoid because cars kept driving past really close (as in, they were maybe 2 feet away from where I was sitting), but then realized we were right next to the entrance of a parkade (that's a Canadian word, isn't it..), and we decided to go in.

It was very dark inside and I could hardly see anything. We were startled by a person who had decided to exit the place through a window that was there for some reason, and H said something like "Why can't people just use doors?!"

We got to a brightly lit area that was white and a bit 'cleaner' looking with tile and stuff, though it was still dirty and lit up with gross fluorescent lights, that had a bunch of flights of stairs. I realized then that I was being followed by someone with a weapon. I don't know how I knew what it was, as I never turned to look at him (I think it was a man), but it was a very heavy, hollow metal rod, about 2-3 feet long and square, that looked really dangerous.

We were walking up the seemingly neverending flights of stairs and I knew he was right behind me the whole time, though he never spoke or made a move to attack me. I called out to H, who was above me somewhere but I couldn't see, to watch me. Now the guy knew I knew he was there, but for some reason I thought he wouldn't do anything if she was watching.

We finally got to a slightly bigger landing and I met up with H. The man then rested the side of the metal thing against the back of my head, and I thought I was actually about to die. Somehow, though, I don't know what happened next, but I ended up being fine, and H was killed. I woke up right after.

Nicole and I were staying with my parents in Texas. Austin was sick, but my parents couldn’t take him to the hospital because the health care infrastructure had been taken over by a group calling themselves (simply enough) the Organization. My mom did her best to take care of him, and his situation seemed stable. We assumed he would be able to wait a few weeks for a military action to sort out this mess with the Organization. As the days wore on, the news reported that the Organization’s reach was spreading. They captured residential lots for use as barracks and weapon storage. What they didn’t capture, they ransacked. All of the food, water, and valuables were stolen from countless homes in the vicinity of the hospitals. It was a terrorist attack on a level the country had never seen. We decided to build a secret basement beneath our home. Although building codes prohibited the construction of basements in Houston, the area beneath our house was suited to that, so we didn’t have to worry about any serious health issues – at least, that’s what my dad thought. I wasn’t so sure. He finished digging it out in two days, and we moved a good portion of our food down there. We left enough food upstairs that the Organization would just take it and ignore the possibility of people hiding under the kitchen tiles. It wasn’t long before the Organization made their rounds… We could only get the news by radio now, and many of the standard broadcast stations had been knocked out, so much of what we listened to came from other people like us living in secret in their own homes. The airports were under the Organization’s control now. Everything seemed to be getting worse, and Austin’s condition wasn’t getting any better.

A few days after the Organization stopped running in and out of our house, my dad and I went outside to check out the area. It was spooky how normal everything looked. The streets were empty, of course, but the houses all looked fine on the outside. We went door to door trying to find anyone who had hidden themselves properly. We found a couple of corpses, but I tried not to dwell on it. I didn’t know any of these people, anyway… We found one family that did the same thing as us. Their basement area was a little larger, so they invited us to come stay with them. My dad wasn’t sure it was a good idea, but we agreed to attend a party. When we got back, we told the rest of the family all about it. We went back to the larger hideout the next evening to try to enjoy ourselves for the first time in a while. Unfortunately, a passing truck under the control of the Organization stopped in front of the house. The driver picked up the music playing in the basement from his vehicle. Before we knew this had happened, the driver called a couple of loading trucks to the scene. They infiltrated the house, broke up the party, and captured everyone as prisoners.

We were loaded one by one onto the trucks with our mouths gagged and our wrists bound. I thought it was dumb of them to leave our ankles untied, but when they closed the back of my truck and locked the door, I realized there wasn’t much we could do to escape. I had to sit in pitch black darkness for the whole ride. I wasn’t even sure where we were going… After the first few turns, I was lost. Maybe in Illinois, I could’ve followed the trail better, but I wasn’t familiar with this area. I knew Nicole wasn’t on the same truck as me… It didn’t seem like they were shipping women anywhere different from the men, so I was relieved at least by that much. I had even less of an idea where she had been sent, though. The truck stopped at another house, and they loaded some more people onto the truck. It was becoming crowded in the cargo area, but they didn’t care. We were just merchandise to them. I supposed we would probably end up doing slave labor for the rest of our lives.

By the time we reached the next stop, I realized the knot binding my wrists was loose enough to wriggle out of. I freed myself and cautiously undid the knots binding the men on my left and right. We left our gags in so the Organization wouldn’t notice we had untied our wrists. It worked like a charm. We could undo the knots just as well in pure darkness as in blinding light, so it didn’t matter that we had to work on them en route. We had most of the prisoners free by the third stop – and that was way more people than they were ready to deal with. We had to leave some of them bound, but we were able to rush the soldiers in charge of the loading process and take their guns from them. Only a few people died. Someone else killed the driver of the truck. We were the only truck on this street, so there was no one else to challenge us. Everyone scattered, and so began my long journey across the country.

I found out they had taken me over the border into Oklahoma. I figured it would be fastest to make my way back to my parents’ house from there. I didn’t have a car, and besides, the roads were dangerous with the Organization about. It seemed they were no longer content with just taking supplies. They needed an army of slaves for something. I didn’t intend to trust my fate to chance again. I walked from Oklahoma back to Houston, sneaking into restaurants when necessary to supply myself with water and food. I kept away from the major roads when I could and made short work of crossing them when I couldn’t. I don’t know how long it took me, but I made it back to my parents’ house. I was a little disappointed to find that I was the only one who made it back… None of my family members were in the same truck as me, so I hadn’t been able to free any of them. I didn’t check the other house to see if those people had made it back. Their hideout had been compromised. Although ours was empty, at least I figured it was secure. I stayed there for about a week to give Nicole time to find me. When she didn’t show up, I put a backpack of supplies together and took to the wilderness again. This time, I headed for Illinois.

Traveling during the summer was rough, so I was grateful when things began to cool down. It meant that I had taken a long time to cross the country, but I hadn’t been counting the days, anyway. I was too worried about what might’ve happened to Nicole and my family to think about something as abstract as time. Eventually, I made it to the edge of Chicago. A big storm blew in from the west, and the whole area quickly flooded. I jumped on the back of an Organization truck when the driver wasn’t looking and rode it into the suburbs so I wouldn’t have to spend so much time in the pouring rain. It pulled off into someone’s backyard, so I took the chance to hop off the truck and continue on foot. As I passed a house, I saw a television on inside. I wondered how long it had been playing… There didn’t seem to be anyone in the room. The TV played an episode of the Fairly Oddparents in which Timmy Turner gained the power of invisibility. He tried to save a girl on a motorcycle from the Organization, but he was unable to do anything. They threw her on a train and took her away. I couldn’t help noticing I was in a similar situation…

I had to wade through three feet of water to get across Nicole’s street. Her house was empty. Her garage was empty. All of the canned food was gone, and it basically looked like no one had been there in ages. I noticed that Cleo was also gone… I figured she had decided to fend for herself if she was still alive. Since there was nothing for me to find in Chicago, I decided I might as well go back home and prepare the house for my family’s return – if they ever returned. The trip back took even longer than the trip there; I had lost much of my motivation. The winter months weren’t so bad since I made it far enough south to avoid most of the snow. The new year arrived, then spring, then summer, and I finally made it back to my parents’ house. When I went inside, my heart sank. There were people everywhere. I immediately assumed they were with the Organization and threw up my hands in surrender. It wasn’t worth fighting anymore, I decided. If they were going to kill me, whatever… I didn’t want to live in fear like this anymore. Then my eyes narrowed. Nomad was with them. Nomad wouldn’t join the Organization. I noticed many of them had weapons strapped to their bodies. Some of them – including Nomad – had war paint on their faces. These were rebels preparing to stand up to the Organization. They laughed at my surrender and pointed me to my mom and sister. I was shocked by how similar Chelsea looked to my mom. It had been a year since I saw them, and Chelsea changed quite a bit. I hugged each of them several times. By this point, I was already in tears. Just finding one of them would’ve been enough to make the past year of running worth it.

I headed straight for the secret room, hoping to find my dad and Austin. My mom grabbed my hand before I could reveal the entrance. She hadn’t told the rebels about it yet, and in case one of them really was working with the Organization, she didn’t want them to know. She said she didn’t know if my dad was awake right now, but he would come talk to me soon. I sat down with them in the kitchen to wait. My mom explained that she and Chelsea had been separated from my dad and Austin early on, but they were reunited at the start of winter when they made it back to the house. She spared few details of their experiences… The Organization was trying to construct something to control the minds of the human race, but the details of this weren’t exactly clear. I made a mental note to ask Nomad about this later. Within half an hour or so, my dad walked into the room. He had a pistol on each side and wore a bulletproof vest. I felt small compared to him. It was obvious he’d been through a lot in the past year. I hugged him several times, too.

Immediately, I asked him about Austin. I hadn’t seen him in the building anywhere. I assumed he had just been in the basement or something. My dad put a hand on my back and led me outside. Because of his silence, I already knew what had happened. The tears started flowing. He took me to a little garden beside the house. The plants were artificial, and they had words written on their leaves. There was a little piano in the back for some reason with certain keys marked. It was a memorial for Austin. I knelt in front of it, wondering what I should do. Praying didn’t seem right, but what else was I supposed to do in this situation? My dad read the memorial leaf by leaf, but I couldn’t understand any of it. The whole thing seemed ridiculous, like he would tell me at any moment that Austin was actually just sleeping in the basement. That was just a hopeless wish, however.

“How long has it been…?” I asked, covering my eyes.

“Since November,” he replied. “We couldn’t get him the help he needed. The winter was too much for him, even here.” I could hardly breathe. My only brother was dead, and I never got to say goodbye. I knew how my dad felt about his brother’s death. Was this normal, I wondered? My thoughts raced out of control. I wondered if I would ever see Austin again… Probably not, I decided. There was nothing left of him. I knelt there for several minutes in grief before I could even move. I knew the Organization could come by at any moment, though, and if they saw us here, they would want to search the house. For the sake of everyone inside, I sucked up my tears and went back inside. I sat down on a bench in the basement to be alone while I tried to grasp everything that had happened. All the time lost, all the families torn apart… It was all because of the Organization. My immediate family gathered in the basement to try to cheer me up.

“When I saw Josh was here, I thought he was going to tell me he brought Nicole and two kids,” my dad joked. Clearly, this didn’t help much.

“I haven’t seen Nicole since the party,” I choked. It took me a few times to get this out. I went through my whole trip in summary, stopping whenever the horror of Austin’s death or the year without Nicole gripped me. When I finished telling the story, everyone seemed to agree that I should try going back to Chicago and finding Phil. He might be doing secret work for someone in the city, my dad suggested. I couldn’t imagine anyone having a stable job with the country in its current state, but it seemed remotely possible that he could be working in secret. In that case, he might have a place for Nicole and her family to hide. Knowing Nicole had to turn up somewhere, I agreed to give their idea a try. They probably wouldn’t see me again… I could come back and find all of them dead. We went outside for some reason and sat in the backyard. The sun was already setting, so it was too late for me to leave. I would have to stay for the night. After I finished talking to my family, I turned back to the house. A number of the rebels were staring at me. As Apheri appeared at my side, I put my hand on her black hilt.

“The Organization will pay,” I whispered.