Chapter II.
(once again, not final on the draft and also not original formatting
*GleeOk said my last one was not allowed since I stated it had profanity. I fixed anything that would trigger the filter. Hope it works for you this time! )


Maybe I woke up because of the storm outside, which was still raging long into the night. However, maybe it was the dream I had... I have always had very vivid dreams, even day mares’, as doctors call them. After looking at the clock, I confirmed it was 2:00 AM. I started remembering the hellish reality my brain conjured in my sleep.
In the dream, I was in the kitchen. My parents had been cooking dinner, but were arguing with someone. I realized what they were yelling about about as my father turned and stuck a finger out at me, screaming at my mother. She then turned to me and yelled too, and then Jason was as well. They were calling me names, degrading me. I stood and walked out the door, and when I was outside, I ran crying and did not glance back until I was to the park. Everything at this point was pulsing with colors, the orange slide had a pulsating aura, and the swings were a foreboding haze of black. In ‘my mind’, I began to feel scared of where I was, so I tried to make my way back home, yet I was lost. I cried out but no one came to help me. I managed to find home, but once I arrived; my parents, brother, and all our possessions were gone. I stood looking around at a den stripped of all precious items, the pictures, antiques, and trinkets. I felt lonely and forgotten. I went to the corner and laid there sobbing, tired, out of breath. A car door slammed; sound resonating multiple times before fading away, and then the door swung open to reveal my brother, aged ten years older than before. He looked at me disgustedly and slammed the door, rattling and breaking the window in the doorframe.
“They’re gone! Moreover, it is your fault. Everything is ALWAYS YOUR FAULT! YOU ARE NOT WORTH THE DIRT ON THE GROUND!” he accused, fading into the darkness.
The memory began to crumble. I could not see any further into the recesses of my memory, and I was aware that I was shivering. At that point, I cried my eyes out, for at least ten minutes, until I quieted myself when the stairs creaked.
“Hey...Lu? You okay in there?” he said, outside the door.
I sniffed and wiped my face dry on my arms.
“Yeah.Fine...You can come in...” I replied weakly.
He walked in and closed the door behind him, although we were the only ones in the house.
“I had to stay up… weather report said our area was under a tornado warning until one thirty...” he trailed off, picking up my shirt, boxers, and jeans from yesterday.
“I wonder what a clothes basket is for. Decoration?” he said jokingly, tossing the articles of clothing into my basket.
I smirked slightly and remained silent as he came near me and sat on my bed with me.
“What’s wrong...? ‘nother nightmare?” he asked, wrapping his arm around my shoulders.
“Y-yeah...” I said, feeling more at ease. “I... it was about mom and dad again” I added shakily...
He sighed, “Lewis...you need to understand what happened is not your, or my, fault...”
“But why does it feel like it? I always have this dream...they yell at me, and I run off. Then when I go back...” I replied.
“Everything is gone...?” he asked, to which I nodded.
“Lewis...we were robbed... the mind is not something that can easily be explained. Your guilt is turning against you in the dreams. Your conscious is under the impression that it’s your fault, so that’s what it will ‘believe’ as long as you think that.” He said slowly.
“I know... I just cannot get that feeling out of me.... Jason, I feel like if we were here we could have stopped it...” I said quickly, trying to push the thought away.
He hugged me. “I know...however, we cannot regret something we had no control over. How did we know that they would have done that?” he stated. “We were at the park. We can’t help that.”
I sighed quietly, understanding his point. I resigned to argue that it was my fault.
“You feel a bit better?” he asked in his normal bubbly tone.
“Yeah...I’m going to try to sleep more. Bye...” I replied as he walked off.
“Night buddy.” He said shutting the door lightly.
I sighed and lay back down.
*----*
I woke up at noon. It was a Saturday, June seventh. I stood and stretched, and after relieving my bladder, I went downstairs. Jason was, as usual, in the kitchen concocting some type of meal. He always hummed when he was at work, so I decided to leave him to his musical and culinary experiments.

“Done!” he called, a few minutes later.
‘Ooh Breakfast!’ I thought as I ran into the kitchen sliding to a halt at the refrigerator to grab some juice.
“HA! Waaay ahead of you kiddo” he teased, shaking the jug at me and sticking his tongue out.
“Tch…” I said as I sat at the table, my tail wagging quickly. “What’s on the menu?”
“Let’s see...juice, eggs, biscuits, and bread and bacon.” he said.
“Damn! Mind cooking the kitchen sink as well?” I sniggered, smiling.
“Mh... might be kind of hard,” he said thoughtfully. “I think that you are a weird little brother indeed. Eating sinks. THAT sounds healthy...”
I only laughed back at him.
After we ate, I went upstairs and noticed I had a few texts and an email from Alex:
“Subject:
To: Esoteric-Siv@affliction.com
From: error67@fracturedfur.com
Message:
‘
Hi, Lewis I was wondering if you wanted to hang out or whatever, you could come over to my house if you want or vice versa,
Get back with me when ya can,
Thanks!
¬¬ ’”
I replied after a moment of thought.
“Subject: Re:
To: error67@fracturedfur.com
From: Esoteric-Siv@affliction.com
Message:
‘Yeah. Sure. I don’t have anything else to do. What’re we going to do?’
¬¬”
I sent the email and moments later, he appeared on my chat queue. We discussed for a while on what to do, and after confirming the time and location, I went downstairs and talked with my brother about it.
“Hey, Jason? Can I go to a friends’?”
He looked up from his sketching. He was probably working on school assignments.
“Yeah...sure. Text me when you get there and tell me where you’re at, Alright?”
“Yup!” I hollered as I was walking upstairs to grab my phone.
I was feeling nervous as I walked down the road. I was about to meet up with a friend, basically for the first time ever. Once I arrived, I stood on the front veranda for a few minutes before ringing a fancy-looking bell. A silhouette appeared in the fogged glass of the door, and then the door swung open to reveal Alex.
“Always fashionably late?” He quipped before adding “Ha-ha, just kidding. Glad you could come!”, as he gestured inside.
“Nice place you have,” I stated.
“Thanks.” He said stretching with a silent yawn. “well, that’s the kitchen, the bathroom is just down that way, and my room is this way’ he added, gesturing to each as he said it.
I followed him down the hall, and at a right, we entered a rather spacious room painted in deep shades of blue.
“Nice room!” I smiled, my tail agreeing with my observation.
“Thanks.”
We sat and chatted for a while, getting to know each other. I learned he was from way upstate and that his parents had moved down here for a job offering a few months ago, and that until a few weeks ago, he had been homeschooled. We played his PS3 for a while and goofed around on the internet before I decided to head home. Our plans for having a sleepover weren’t discussed, and I did not mention it. After I went home, I ate leftover pizza and sat in my room for a while doodling before I took a shower. I had a few thoughts run through my mind, but I decided to ignore them.
Once I crawled into bed and got comfortably situated, I doodled a while in my journal and filled two pages full of the last few days. Sleep came around midnight, and my dreams were of positive material.

I awakened due to the bright morning rays of sunlight filtering through my window, and my ears twitched in response to voices downstairs. I eventually got up and started down the steps, when I realized whom it was. The voice was Alice. Alice is Jason’s fiancée. They’ve been engaged for about a year, and they plan to marry on the eve of Christmas, which is also the day after my birthday. Alice and I get along quite well. She seems fond of me; she is naturally a sweet and kind-spirited person. Alice works in the city, as a medical doctor and ICU nurse at the Children’s Hospital, Anderson & Gallé Children’s Hospital. (AGCH)
“Hi Alice, how are you?” I inquired, sitting next to Jason.
She reached across and hugged me firmly, “Lewis! Oh goodness, I’m glad to see you! I’m wonderful, how are you?”
‘I’m not too bad myself, I’m glad to hear you’re well,” I replied, hugging her back. “Err... Jason.. When is breakfast...? I’m starved!”
“Ah. Teenagers. Always hungry!” he chuckled, which elicited a cheery laugh from Alice as well. “Well, were going out to eat actually” he replied.
“Oh.. cool! I’ll go get dressed then....”
*--*

The chatter during the ride there and back was lively, mostly about academics and work. We all ate to our fill in the buffet at the ‘Imperial Shogun”, a Chinese restaurant and buffet outside of town. OnF the return home, we went by the market to buy a few necessities and finally headed home. Alice decided she had to leave, so for the rest of our weekend, things were rather uneventful. Monday was a school holiday so I stayed home, and furthermore, slept in all day. I woke around four o’ clock PM, and Jason was off at work. I was feeling quite bored, so I called Alex to see if he could meet up somewhere and play football or something. After a short chat on the phone, I locked the house up and made sure the security system was on.
‘Where the hell is that stupid ball at…’ I said, looking around the front yard. I eventually found it and started toward the main town park. Lowellville was large enough to have two parks, one more scenic than the other.
Arriving at the park, I saw a group of kids playing basketball and figured they’d let me join.
“Uhm.. hey. You guys mind having another player?”
I immediately recognized that was a mistake when the largest of the group, a Bengal tiger, stopped advancing with the ball. I recognized him as one of the senior jocks, he played both football and basketball and was supposedly high authority among students.
“Who the hell are you kid?” He growled, dropping the ball and walking towards me. I tried to keep my cool, though I was actually frightened.
“Lewis.” I said monotonously, standing straighter.
“Ha.. You must me some kind of idiot to see that we have four players already. Four on five isn’t that fair, now is it?” He replied adding sarcasm.
By this point, my ‘other nature’ set in, so my own sarcasm was there: “Five against four eh? So what you’re implying is that you think a puny character like me is a threat in a game of basketball to an ‘advanced’ player as yourself?”
He growled, “I’ll show you threat you mouthy little punk!”
Advancing towards me more, his group jerked him back away from me. “Whoa dude, Sal you’re still on probation man!” was voiced by a rather small but malicious-looking boy.
“Mmmhg...”
“Think about it dude.. Seriously, Coach Wels will tan your hide if you get into trouble again!”
I scoffed and walked away. All I had done was ask to play a round with them because Alex was not there yet. I noticed two younger boys, one of them a rabbit and the other a raccoon, occupied the swing set. They appeared to be at least fourteen maybe thirteen. I heard a voice, Sal, yell “OH WELL! I DON”T CARE!” and turning to look, he was advancing again.
The last I heard was “Stupid little bastard,”
Sound seemed to resonate and echo into forever, and my vision was blurry as I came around after the first blow. I felt an immense pain in my stomach, then groin, and then my face met the earth. Laying there for what seemed like forever, I couldn’t see, and as the world went to blackness and silence, I noticed the blood stained grass about a foot away.
It seemed miles away, but I heard a voice, mature and indistinct. It started to become clearer and more recognizable as my vision returned.
“Hello? Can you hear me? …….Hey kid? You okay?” the faceless voice said. I couldn’t feel or smell anything.
“Mh..” I groaned as I tried to sit. A sharp pain, like glass through flesh, cut the wind from my lungs and I fell back to the ground.

“Oh gosh! You’re bleeding! Oh.. uhm, d-don’t move okay? Stay still!” I heard more footfalls and then two voices, and then again more feet, sounding smaller and quieter.
“Hi… Mummy told me to stay by you while she went for help,” the quiet voice said, sitting next to me. “Are you hurt mister?”
I nodded in affirmation. It sounded like a young child was talking. I had thoughts it was the boy from the swings earlier.
“Uh oh…” he said, and I felt, or barely felt, a gentle prod at my arm. He seemed quite innocent of the situation at hand.
“Yeah…” I replied softly, falling in and out of consciousness. I finally gave in and slipped back asleep, the faint sound of another worried, familiar voice breaking into the blackening field of my vision.