Young Writers Society

Queenie stepped in front of Bobby. The kid liked to disappear whenever he was out of her sight, but he knew how to stay safe - a task that couldn't possibly be difficult in a little town like this - and it really was better if she did the talking first.

"I'm Elizabeth," she said with a cheery smile, "That's what my friends call me, anyway. You know Kira?"

Rex smiled.

"Those are great names," he said, only faltering for a moment when Queenie (Elizabeth?) introduced herself. Kira was becoming more and more convinced that Rex wouldn't notice anyone present unless they tried interacting with him. No matter how much Kira mulled it over, she couldn't figure out if she found that comforting or not.

Rex glanced over at Kira and gave her the smile that had always made her want to do her best. "And I've known Kira for a long time. I taught her everything she knows."

Kira gave a tiny smile. "You make it sound like you're my dad."

Rex's expression softened. Maybe Kira shouldn't have said that; she was okay with how distant her parents were, but Rex never had been. Then the smile returned, and he jokingly teased her, "If I am, does that give me permission to tell bad jokes?"

"No," Kira said, giving a little laugh. She couldn't remember the last time she had laughed at something. "Permission denied."

"I'll convince you someday," Rex said. He looked back over at Queenie and James. "I was going to show Kira around this town - it's her first time here - but we can all walk around instead. Have you ever been here before?"

James looked to Kira, then back to Rex. "No," he answered. "This is our first time. Where exactly is - uh - here?"

The town was weird.

It looked like a normal town, but the main thing that unnerved Adam were the cars. They didn't look like cars. More like.... he couldn't really describe it. Some of the signage on the walls looked different too.

The young woman was deep in a conversation with a man, and she wondered who he was to her. He thought it best to let them be, and started to wander around the town.

This would be nice if he didn't have a sinking feeling that something bad was going to happen. An older woman walked by, and he waved at her.

Just then, his clothes changed. His hair was shorter, buzzed at the sides and longer over the top of his head. Now, he was dressed in a tight fitting black t-shirt with a pocket over the left side of his chest. It wasn't tucked in. Straight-legged beige colored pants. No belt. Navy Keds. He wearily tucked his shirt in as he took a seat at the bench and watched his father, who looked very out of his depth. Of course, he was standing there, watching the others.

Not interacting with anyone else. Adam sighed.

"It isn't anywhere special," Rex said, smiling. "It's just a little suburban town I had a job in a few weeks ago. But there's some kinds of places I've never been to before, and I thought Kira might like to go to them, too."

Jay stood back from the crowd.

He wasn't too interested in what was going on and the town was strange. From the way people dressed to the cars. Also, his "son" was ignoring him. Even though he'd known about Susan, even though something in his eyes told him it was true, he was still skeptical.

Adam was dressed in strange clothes too.

Were they in the future? This didn't look how he had imagined.

"Where are we? Anywhere close to Colorado?" He asked the girl's friend. As he did that, his clothes changed. He was in a v-necked purple shirt. Baggy black jeans. Brown flip-flops.

No.

Why?

He thought he saw his "son" laughing at him from the bench.

James didn't know Adam or Jay, but when he saw Adam laughing at his father, who'd finally been put into period-fitting clothes along with the rest of them, he wished he could join in on the laughter.

He didn't really know why Jay's clothes were funny, but he figured it was just one of many cultural differences that went over his head.

He looked back to Rex, who seemed to be acting normal... for now, and awaited his answer to Jay's question.

"I'm sorry," Rex said, slightly startled by Jay's sudden appearance. He looked slightly upset about hearing Adam laugh at Jay, but he otherwise ignored the laughter coming from Jay's son. "We're in the wrong part of the country right now - we're in New England. But I can probably make a rift that goes to somewhere in Colorado after we finish up here."

Rex hesitated.

"...We could also get you some different clothes, if you want," he added.

He started to walk down the street, his tour guide mode already switched on. Kira had hated chasing after him - he always underestimated how fast he could be compared to everyone else - but she didn't mind rushing to catch up right now. It felt good to fall into the routine again.

If only this wasn't just a dream.

She would give up anything just to see Rex for real - to have a moment like this with him. She wanted to see how he would handle the present day. To see if he'd finally cut his hair, if he'd change to something more casual, and to see what he thought of the country that had just been starting when he disappeared.

"Kira?" a familiar voice suddenly called out from behind the group.

Kira faltered.

"I finished my assignment early today," the voice's owner added, "and I heard you finished yours early, too. We should go to the coffee shop you told me about together-"

When she stopped and turned around, she saw Ray standing there - in his oversized blue sweater, jeans, and sneakers. It was only when she saw the little braid dangling in front of his shoulder-length black hair that she realized the skies had grown dark.

A storm was coming.

Ray's expression saddened.

"Oh," he said. "I see you're busy right now..."

"No," she protested. "Ray, you could join us, too-"

"You just want to spend time with the first," he said. "I know you do. I always see you staring up at the portrait of him when you're talking to me in the meeting room. He means more to you than I ever will."

She frantically turned to Rex.

"Rex," she said, "he's wrong, right? He can spend time with us, too, can't he? An extra person doesn't hurt."

But Rex wasn't looking at her. He had his back turned to all of them, and he just kept walking away. The further he walked - even if it was just another few inches - the harder it became to make him out. His clothes starting glitching like they were in some kind of video game. One moment, they were what he was supposed to be wearing right now. The next, he was wearing the colonial clothes he had been wearing the last day she saw him.

The last day she saw him walk away from her.

"Rex!" she shouted over the wind.

He turned.

For a moment, she was able to make out his face. But then it was gone, lost to a glitching darkness that enveloped every identifiable feature.

James's stomach twisted as Kira called out for her friend. Rex, whoever he was, was leaving again. James could decipher that much. Kira was reliving the loss all over again.

He stepped forward and put a hand on Kira's shoulder. Now seemed like a good enough time to go as any, but it was awful having to watch everyone get just a small taste of their deepest desires before everything would fall apart. James looked at Rex, whose features were obscuring more and more each second, and then looked back at where they're entered.

The door was gone.

He'd thought he'd made a note of where it was, and he had. He was looking right where it was supposed to be - a door from one "reality" to another, but it wasn't there anymore. They were fully immersed in the fantasy. Someone had to have closed it, but he couldn't imagine who apart from whatever or whoever brought them to this place.

How were they supposed to get out now?

Queenie pulled Bobby to her as the fiction - an uncomfortable situation in the first place - turned into a half-rate melodrama. Queenie had barely any idea who any of these people were, and she could frankly care less.

Right now, Bobby was shaken, and looking at her with those big dumb eyes of his. A plea for guidance.

Guidance she couldn't offer.

Adam was starting to panic.

He walked over to the group, still avoiding his father. He felt like there was so much he wanted to say, but the situation was still too strange.

His heart was pounding. "What's going on?" He asked.

"We're stuck here," Jay added.

"Thank you, Sherlock Holmes," Adam snapped. "You get off on stating the obvious?"

"Just saying what all of you are too afraid to," Jay replied with a smug look.

Just then, Adam caught a whiff of his father's body odor. He smelled rancid. And his hair was so greasy. The clean clothes didn't do much to hide any of it. How did any of the girls find him attractive?

"Don't they have showers in Eagle Rock?"

"How do you know about Eagle Rock?"

"I am your son."

"Whatever."

Feeling James grab onto her shoulder helped snap Kira out from the fantasy that had finally fallen apart. She had known it was going to happen - that was what had happened with Adam's fantasy - but it still hurt watching Rex walk away. When she turned back to look at Ray, he was gone. She could just barely make a figure walking away down the road.

It was funny had everyone who said they would always be there for her always left.

Her gaze shifted. Though she didn't know James and Jay had already picked up on it, the door they had entered through was gone. Kira felt a pit grow in the very depths of her stomach. One hand tightly grasped her necklace; the other was curled up into a fist at her side. It was all she could do to fight the panicked urge to give in to the part of her that was her dad's - the part she couldn't show around her co-workers, and certainly couldn't show around humans.

As Kira turned around, James let go. There was no way out of this one.

He looked from Kira, then back to the others. Adam and his father were arguing, and Jay wasn't being helpful by stating the obvious. If the door wasn't available to them, they'd have to think of something else. Whatever brought them here wouldn't have made it so they were trapped in one person's dream forever, right? Maybe that was giving them too much credit, but James had a feeling this wasn't how it was going to end.

The ground beneath him began to shift. What was once flat, solid cement was starting to crack, like the ground in the wake of an earthquake. Things started to shake, and the picture around them started to flicker and glitch out like the image of Rex had - "pixels" moving in and out of place one by one, until the whole environment seemed on the verge of collapse. He looked at the ground and caught a glimpse of his reflection in what looked like an endless void.

In an instant, he was standing in a field of grass. Fresh, clean air surrounded him, and little white clouds drifted like whisps in the sky. It was nothing like the city he was just in.

Standing on a hill, he looked down at a long plot of land, tilled and planted, with the beginnings of plants starting to sprout. The plot stretched out far, and the earth looked rich and well cared for. Groves of trees spotted the land around the farm and a big willow stood beside his childhood home.

Home.

The low-hanging leaves swayed in a small breeze. The house was just like he remembered it. The back porch faced the fields, and the outer walls were painted white but faded by the sun. The barn was a little further down, and he could see the fences marking off where the animals grazed and wandered about.

He stood frozen, staring at it all.

It wasn't real. He knew it wasn't real, and he wasn't even sure if he wanted it to be. He grabbed his arm to pinch himself before catching a glimpse of Adam and Jay in the corner of his eye. The other three - Kira, the kid, and Queenie were all gone.

Things were getting less predictable now, and he didn't know how to prepare for it.

When they came to, they were in a farm.

Jay thought it reminded him of the Midwest, of the night in North Dakota that he and the girls had taken shelter in a barn.

They had thought it thad been abandoned when Claire had woken up to a pig sniffing her face. The farmer had found them and once they'd explained, he'd invited them inside for one of the best breakfasts Jay had ever had.

Those were good days.

Jay could tell from the way the man who was not his "son" was acting that this was his vision.

"What is this place?" He asked the man. That was when he realized the other members of the group were gone. And his "son" was standing quietly.

The world shifted and glitched, and Queenie grabbed onto Bobby's shoulder. She could care less what happened to the others, but she wanted to keep him close enough to defend from whatever messed-up fever dream they were tossed into next.

When everything came back into focus, though, she found it was familiar.

A lavish study, decorated with fine, dark oak bookshelves and a hand-carved desk. The space felt cozy, as far as anything could feel cozy when everything in the room was too well-kept, too perfect, to be lived in. The fact that that was real gold those little decorations were made of didn't help the untouchable feeling of the whole cold, empty room.

Her gut sank.

Bobby stepped out of her grip but she was frozen in place. He went to the desk, looping around it to stand behind the big, comfortable-looking chair. Don't, Queenie wanted to tell him, you'll get caught. Why was that kid so stupid? Wasn't he supposed to be paranoid enough to avoid doing stuff like this?

He grabbed a picture frame and Queenie broke out of her trance. She snatched it out of his hand and he jumped back, startled. "Don't touch anything," she said quickly, but not harshly.

"Is that...your sister?" he asked carefully, gesturing to the picture. She hadn't even looked at it before, but now she realized that the fact that there was a picture in here at all was wrong.

Her brow furrowed and she turned the frame around to see...Briar. And their dad. All three of them, together, at some kind of resort. Briar was in a sundress, all-black, which mostly defeated the purpose, and was smiling. Their dad was between them, his sunburnt arms around either of their shoulders, grinning in a way that had nothing behind it. No plot, no morbid humor, just joy.

Queenie herself, or this falsified version of her, was smiling too. And there was no choker around her neck. Instead, there was a chain, a long, silver chain that she could only see the start of before it vanished into her shirt.

Carefully, she put the frame back exactly as it had been before.