The Light Doesn't Shine Here (Two weeks before the present time)

Phil was snoring away without a care in the world, not aware that his head was about to fall out of his hand and crush to the wooden desk below him.  A moment later it happened. He popped open his eyes and instantly started rubbing the pain which had collected in his forehead. Leaning back in his chair he lazily scanned the room, his glowing computer screen was the only reason he could see anything in the tiny room, which was full of boxes and perilous-looking old magazine  and newspaper towers.  His girlfriend was still sleeping on the floor behind him where he'd kissed her goodnight some time ago, a few inches above her a cold breeze was forcing its way through the boards he'd nailed across the window which had been a gaping hole in wall before he sealed it.  Next to it was the door which he had boarded up the same way. The two had been couped up in here for days,  hiding from a relentless psycho who was chasing them across the state. 

He had been sitting in this one sit for hours and naturally his muscles had become quit painful and taut and in need of some serious stretching but a walk outside in this dark was out of the question.

He suddenly heard a noise from the computer and dropped his gaze to the screen in front of him. 

A bazillion pop-up adds had taken over his computer, all vying for his attention: Fill me out to win an iPad®, fill me out for a trip to Dubai, fill me out, fill me out, fill me out--they screamed to him in dancing colors. Was there an offer for a second chance at life cos he'd fill that one out, his life was over as he knew it, it went up in flames days ago along with his family home.

His jaws moved slowly as he continued eating the piece of sandwich he was having before falling alseep.  He got to work shutting down the annoying ads one by one. 

“There,” he sighed halfheartedly, closing the last of the stubborn pop-ups. “Now, back to – what! 4:30 Already!”

He had been out for about and hour or at least that what his clock said, but he could have sworn his eyes had only been closed for a few minutes. He really needed a proper rest; he was mentally and physically drained, out of juice, sucked dry like a lemon. Coffee and energy drinks could only keep the body going for so long, and there's only so much of the stuff you could load yourself up with before you started feeling like you'd been drinking poison. Something Phil learned the hard way as he squatted by the toilet bowl a little while ago to throw up his sixteenth cup of coffee and the only meal he had eaten.

Oh no! What was that in the corner down there?

Click! Click! Click!

Phil's furious punching of the cancel button couldn't stop the download from happening.  

Malware? Spyware? What was it this time? Only one way to find out. He moved the small white pointer of the mouse to the corner of the screen and double tapped on the downloaded item. Stretching out a noisy sigh, he leaned back and waited for something to happen.

He looked at his girlfriend. The sight of her small frame shifting uncomfortably on a single blanket filled him with feelings of guilt. Images suddenly illuminated his face as a video popped open on his screen.

Hmm? What was this? Phil readied the mouse pointer to hit cancel if he saw anything he didn't like.

LIVE! LOVE! LEARN!

The speakers blasted out a woman's voice.

Phil scrambled for the pause option, then turned his head to the young Korean woman, she blinked her drowsy eyes, and yawned, before sitting up on the blanket with her toes touching. 

“I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you.” Phil tried to explain.

Her silent black eyes stayed on him.

“I said I was sorry, ok.” he said then, raising his tone.

“You're going to lead him straight to us, if you continue to be so careless.” The young woman said matter-of-factly, then began fooling around with her waist-length locks, twisting them round and round into cords. 

“What are you watching anyway?” she said after a while, standing up with a groan from the hard floor.

“I don't know, it's just some video I accidentally downloaded. It's probably just por—Ahem—I don't know what it is.” His fingers came away waxy as he nervously combed them through his disheveled curls.

“Shall we find out if it's just porn, baby?” She whispered in his ear, leaning gently on his back, and slinging an arm around his shoulder.

Phil let a smile overtake his frown as the warm softness of her skin melted his taut muscles like butter. She too hadn't bathed in a few days and reeked a bit but Phil could care less about that, he was just happy to have someone around that he could hold onto whenever the ground under his feet felt unsure. 

"Are you going to eat that?" His girlfriend said, staring at his sandwich; there were still a few good bites to be had out of it, but Phil had had enough. It was a real fight to to get anything passed the nervous knots in his belly. 

"It's all yours if you--want it." 

He had barely finished his sentence when her scrawny little hand reached around him and came away with the sandwich.   

"hmm... I'm starving." she said, already several bites into the dry pieces of bread. Her jaws resembled a rabbit's as she got rid of any sign of bread in her mouth.  

"Baby, now's not the time to the skip your meals.  Your body needs all the food and energy it can get for optimum performance."

"I'm not hungry." he replied. 

She looked at him with incredulity in her eyes then said, "let's watch your video. Could be interesting."

“Eh, sure.” he gasped, hesitatingly unpaused the video and let it continue at a lower volume.

Gardens and streets, frozen landscapes and deserts, lakes and mountains—all flashed before them to the soothing sound of what could easily have been a Beethoven number.

Live. Love. Cherish...

The same female voice from before declared, sounding just as soothing as the classical music.

Again the same images of Gardens and Streets, frozen landscapes and the rest repeated themselves in the same exact order.

“What the hell are we looking at?” Phil said, reaching for the mouse.

“Wait, don't take it away yet. I feel that this is only the beginning.”

“The beginning of what? A long boring video?” With one click Phil brought back silence to the room. “That was total crap, and honestly baby, I don't have time for crap right now. Someone's after me, and I need to find out who it is.”

“How? By caging your self up like a hen and spending hours in front of the computer?”

“If there's one thing I'm good at, its hacking computers, and this guy, whoever he is, has left a great trail of fingerprints all over my internet world: emails, blogs I go to, my Facebook. All I have to do is follow the trail which will lead me straight to the sicko.” He gave her the most innocent eyes.

“How do you even know it's the same person?” The young woman said rising from his back and pacing back and forth between his chair and the blanket. “You could just be dealing with a troll here.”

“A troll that tried to kill me, not once but twice and set my family home on fire! Look. This guy is good, he has me under his thumb. Every day I worry that he's gonna hurt my sister, and worst of all I can't even call her to find out how she's doing, because he's literally cut me off from the world, from her, and every time I set foot out of the door he finds me somehow.”

“I know all that.” She sighed, before continuing, “have you found anything.”

It took Phil longer than he would have liked to answer that question, “No. This guy is a ghost.”

Live.Love.Cherish...

“I thought you didn't wanna watch anymore of that?”

“I didn't touch a thing!”

They exchanged panicked stares as they comprehended the situation.

“He's found me.” Phil said with a frail whisper.