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CHAPTER 30: TAKEN

I haven’t seen Athena in days.

Well, that’s not exactly true. I’ve seen her body. Not her dead body, mind you. Her avatar is still where she laid down after our last exchange. She hasn’t logged in for the past several days.

I’ve been monitoring the wards around our impromptu camp and wiping out the occasional undead incursion… I think. I’m pretty out of it these days, more than usual. I can barely remember a lot of those fights. I think I just don’t care.

I’ve also been exploring the nearby tunnels—a bit. I don’t dare move too far from her. I fear I’d come back and find her gone.

I’m no closer to finding an exit.

Now I’m halfway between bored and depressed, or oscillation between the two. Mostly, I have no motivations to do anything much. I just spend hours at a time sitting in the dark and staring at Athena’s sleeping face, dwelling on what-ifs.

It’s not healthy, I know, but I can’t help it.

The only good news so far is that I haven’t seen or felt a trace of those [Death Knights] and Shadowman—or whatever his name may be. If they’re still after us, then this maze we are in is apparently as much of a hindrance to them as it is to us. Though, I can hardly bring myself to care.

Right now, I’m not actually playing Untold Tales. I’m at home, sitting on the couch and staring at the starry ceiling while distractedly petting McLeon. Today is Saturday. I am expected at the Jakande’s for Hope’s birthday party in… I glance at the clock… about an hour.

I’m hesitating whether to go. I’m just not in the mood right now. I don’t feel like seeing anyone—not even my two best friends and a bunch of ten-year-olds, a roundup which doesn’t exactly bring much in terms of social pressure.

On second thought… isn’t an informal party with people who won’t judge me and only care about having fun exactly what I need right now?

Probably.

I don’t really care.

You promised, though.

…true.

In the end, I decide to go. I did promise Dan after all. And, besides, I don’t want to disappoint Hope. We had a bit of a rocky start, Hope and I, vying for the attention of her older siblings, but now we get along swimmingly. I’m sure she’d be sad if I missed her birthday. She wouldn’t say anything. She’s quiet like that. But I know she would. And I feel I’ve already been enough of a disappointment for a while.

With a sigh, I grab a pair of pants, shoes and my coat, and soon I’m out the door, heading for the bus stop.

* * *

Five minutes later, I come back inside the apartment, grab Hope’s gift I’d almost forgotten on the dinner table, and then run back out to catch the bus I’m about to miss.

* * *

In the bus, my seat neighbour is listening to music just loud enough that I can hear it but just low enough that I can make out nothing but a modulated white noise. I swallow back an urge to bash his head against the window. I believe there is a special Circle of Hell for people like this. It would be one circle where the damned are chained in complete silence, with only the constant maddening noise of a loud pair of distant earpods for sole company. Those damned souls would slowly go insane, until they rip off their own ears, which would only increase their torment. Their ears would then regrow after a while and the cycle would repeat indefinitely until the End of Days.

I could ask him to lower the volume… hypothetically… but that would require more human interaction than I feel up to. I’ll have my fill of socializing when I reach the Jakande’s home.

So I press my cheek against the window and sigh.

These are going to be fifteen long minutes.

The bus stops a mere block away from the Jakande house-cum-judo/fitness club. A strange combination, yes, but no stranger than an African immigrant teaching Asian martial arts to European people. It’s a very multicultural place, like the Jakande family itself.

I walk around the modern fitness centre and past the renovated old dojo and reach the backdoor that leads directly to the family living quarters. There are multi-coloured balloons attached to the frame and a banner stating “Hope’s Birthday Party” hanging above.

I’m going to take a wild guess and say Hope herself had no part in choosing this decoration. Had she, the balloons would have been black and maybe purple, and probably sporting skulls… or be shaped like skulls. Anyway, there’d be more skulls. This rainbowy style, however, is a signature move from Colleen, the siblings’ mother. For a woman married to a black man, she always had an almost sickening love a bright colours. I’m almost convinced her activism in the gay community is only so that she can get free rainbow stickers.

We’re bordering on offensive here.

Comedy.

I don’t bother with the doorbell before I push the door and step inside. I’m immediately assaulted by the noise. Happy music is playing loudly in one of the rooms down the hall. Even then, children’s chatter almost drowns it. “Eh.” This sounds like a lot of children. Though that’s not really surprising. For a withdrawn and sullen bookworm, Hope has got a surprising number of friends. I suppose even she inherited the family’s magnetism.

As I stand in the entrance, a stout blonde boy briefly pokes his head out of a nearby door. Upon seeing me, he quickly ducks back inside. His face strikes a memory, but I can’t seem to put a name on him. Before I can remember, he comes back with a little girl.

Her, I immediately recognise. Hope Jakande has her mother’s ghastly pale skin and curly hair. However, her hair is as black as her older siblings and dad’s. She also shares with them their darker-than-night black eyes, and hers are often underlined with dark rings because she suffers from insomnia. She certainly has a “horror movie child” vibe going on, and the black dresses she is always wearing don’t help. Honestly, Hope doesn’t really look anything like her black-skinned, athletic, and confidently handsome siblings.

Several people ended in the hospital for suggesting Hope might be adopted within earshot of Yasmin.

“Thanks, Mike,” Hope says to the other kid. He nods at her before walking back into the room. She turns towards me. “Hello, Nicolas, thank you for coming to my party,” she greets and thank me in the same breath with a dull emotionless voice. It so doesn’t fit a ten-year-old—Ah. I guess she’s eleven now. Anyhow. But she owns that tone well. I can’t help but crack a smile. I shake my head with an incredulous chuckle.

Ahh… Coming was the good decision after all. These people always cheer me up. For the first time in several days, my sullen mood lighten somewhat.

I raise the wrapped package I’ve carried from home. “I come bearing gifts, my lady.”

“Good.” The little girl nods imperiously and reaches for the package, which I hand over. She quickly proceeds to neatly unwrapping her present.

“Was that Michael?” I finally recall the bulky blond child from before. I frown slightly. “Didn’t you say he was a bully? You always complained about how he stole your stuff and hid it, or how he spoke behind your back and tried to intimidate you with his friends.” That always angered me. I’ve always felt extremely protective of the little girl. The Jakande are like a second family to me—even a family, period, considering my own blood-ties start and end with my mother.

“Oh. Yes.” Hope answers idly without looking up from her meticulous unwrapping. “But he’s reformed now.”

“Reformed?”

“Uh-huh. We had a… talk. I made him an offer he couldn't refuse.”

“………I see.”

Let’s not look further into this.

Let’s not.

Hope finishes unwrapping her gift. She neatly folds the gift-wrap and slides it in her pocket.

She holds the book I bought her at arms’ length and takes a long look at it, her face unreadable.

“Do you like it?” I ask.

Her answer is a silent nod, then she suddenly steps forwards and wraps her arms around my midsection. “Thank you,” she whispers. 

I crouch and return the hug. “Of course, kiddo. Happy birthday.” She’s cute, and very emotional, even if her face has the expressiveness of a piece of white cardboard. She only shows that side of her to the people she trusts. I feel somewhat proud of having that status.

Another voice joins in. “Oh, Nicolas! Glad you could make it.” I look up to find Colleen Jakande waltzing down the hall with a bright smile. I release Hope, and the little girl darts past her mother and up the stairs, the book I just gifted her clutched to her chest. She’s probably going to drop it in her room.

I move my eyes to the tiny redhead now standing before me, and I return her infectiously bright smile. “Heya, Auntie Colleen.” Colleen is a short woman, and paler than death, but she makes up for both with her exuberant energy that makes it seem like there’s always ten of her in the room. Her face is covered in freckles like she was sprinkled with brown sugar. “Glad I made it too. Dan didn’t believe I would remember, but behold,” I gesture emphatically at myself, “here is I.”

As far as I can remember, I’ve always been calling this woman “Auntie Colleen”, even though we share no kinship. One could argue Colleen has been more a mother to me than my real mum, who’s always busy with work and used to drop me for days at a time at the Jakande’s home. Plus, Colleen never made any mystery of her hopes to make our filial relationship more official by marrying one of her children… be it Yasmin or Daniel.

This woman is as open-minded as she’s stubborn.

I don’t trust her.

Neither should you.

She’s never suggested I marry Hope… but I don’t put it past her. I live in anguish of Hope’s sixteenth birthday.

I can already imagine Colleen staring at us with that overly bright smile of hers. She’d say something like, “Ara, but what’s a twelve-year gap these days? Don’t worry. It will seem like nothing by the time you’re both past forty.”

Then she’d laugh and change the subject.

A frightening existence.

I shiver discreetly. Colleen can be as scary as my mum sometimes, though for entirely different reasons.

Why are we only surrounded by scary women?

“Besides,” I continue with a soft shrug, “I wouldn’t miss the little lady’s birthday party. She probably would sic hitmen on me in reprisal.” My tone is deadly serious.

Colleen guffaws, though, and gently slaps my collarbone. “Hah! You say the silliest things as usual. But where are my manners! Give me your coat.”

I glance to the side. The coat hanger is literally within arm’s reach, but I know better than to protest. I let her take it off me. I can’t say I dislike her motherly fussing, though. My own mother is many things, but doting she is not.

“Hope always looks forwards to your gifts the most, you know?” Colleen smiles gently. “I don’t get most of them, but Hope loves them. What did you get her this time?”

“Nothing fancy. Just an anthology of short stories from an author of the early 20th century. He didn’t get much recognition while alive, but he was hailed as a master of his genre post-mortem. I quite enjoy his work myself.”

“Oh. What's his name?”

“H.P. Lovecraft.” I smile.

“Hmmm...” She pokes her lower lip with her index finger. “I can’t say I’ve heard of him.”

“I didn’t think you would.” My smile may have turned a bit Machiavellian there. Just a bit. “Where are Dan, Yas, and Uncle?”

“Yasmin is still helping Ahmed in the dojo. They’ll be here soon.” Colleen’s smile doesn’t flatter an inch, but the light in her green eyes suggests they better be there soon, or she’ll go fetch them herself. I repress a chuckle. Now, I kind of want Yasmin and her father to be late, just to see Colleen try to scold her husband. As scary as she may be, intimidated by his wife is not something anyone would say about Ahmed Jakande. Watching the short woman pout angrily at the athletic giant is always a treat. “Daniel is in the kitchen,” she concludes.

She dragged the poor guy into setting the cake, didn’t she?

Most likely. Daniel doesn’t share his father’s resistance to Colleen’s stares. Out of the siblings, only Hope does. Besides, Dan is too nice to refuse.

Colleen and I exchange a few more niceties, before a loud noise from the room with the kids demands her immediate attention. After taking off my shoes, I make my way to the kitchen, in passing taking a peek into the room. Apparently, Hope came back down while Colleen and I were talking, and is now facing her mother, probably in defence of the boy currently failing at hiding behind her small frame. As I pass by, Hope gestures dismissively towards the remains of a shattered vase on the floor, calling it “an unfortunate collateral damage of innocent playful activities”.

I walk away laughing.

I find Dan in the kitchen. He’s wearing a bright green apron and wielding an icing bag with intense concentration above a chocolate cake, his tongue poking out between his lips. I lean against the doorframe and cross my arms.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Now, now, friend. What would the players of UT say if they saw the fearsome ‘Red Gloves’ Daniel-san, guildmaster of the most fearsome fighting guild Horizon, decorating a cake? It would cause an uproar. I’m not sure Horizon would ever recover.”

“I’d just have to wait until you shock everyone with your latest ridiculous catastrophe and my culinary escapades would be forgotten as yesterday’s news,” Daniel retorts without missing a beat or breaking his focus. “If you’re going to stand there and be silly, make yourself useful, will you? Pass me those sugar toppers. And don’t touch anything sharp or pointy.”

With a fake offended huff, I step into the kitchen and look around. I quickly find the box of eatable cake decorations. I take a peek inside. “Rainbows and unicorns?” I raise an eyebrow at Dan. Colleen strikes again, it would seem.

“Hope enjoys the intention more than the content.”

“She’s mature like that, isn’t she?”

“That she is. There, finished.” He puts the icing bag aside and takes the box I’m handing him.

While he carefully arranges the little horned multi-coloured ponies on the birthday cake, I open the fridge and take out a bottle of diet coke. I also transfer a can of beer from the back of the bottom shelf to a more easily accessible spot before closing the fridge.

“So, anything interesting happening on your side of the Digiworld?” I ask as I pour myself a glass of highly caffeinated sugar-free soda.

Mostly chemicals, really. I don’t even trust the water in there.

“The king of Wesen hired Horizon to clear a small castle near the border. It’s in a newly reclaimed area. The monsters around there have been cleared, but the official army would rather adventurers retake the keep. There’s a whole warband of orcs in there.”

“Orcs, eh…” I take a sip, frowning briefly. I don’t really want to think about orcs right now. “Old Leo doesn’t want to risk his troops, huh?” I’m not a fan of the Beast King. He puts up a righteous front, but is just really a greedy self-serving bastard.

Still sore at him having you executed, huh?

He didn’t need to have me killed sixteen times!

“They don’t come back from the dead, Nick,” Dan comments and adjusts the position of a winged pony.

“True enough.” Whatever. “Does it pay well at least?”

Horizon isn’t a mercenary guild, but they do contracted work on occasion, when the offered job aligns with their primary objective: fighting hard battles. Mobilizing so many players for a battle costs gold. There’s the food, the potions, the gear maintenance and all sorts of logistics to take care off. So they do charge for their service, and they do good work, so they’re not exactly cheap.

“Factoring in the experience gain and potential loot, the campaign should at least pay for itself.”

“That's it? No benefit?”

“Well…” he trails off and glances at me. “There another thing, but that’s a secret.”

“Oh, come on! You can tell me! You know I won’t go blabbering to anybody.”

Because you got no one to tell.

Oh, shut up.

“Nope, sorry, guild business. Only the core members are privy to this.” He pauses and raises a sly eyebrow. “Now, of course, if you were to join…” He leaves the sentence unfinished.

“I know where this is going. My answer’s still no, Guild Master,” I scoff. He shakes his head but doesn’t push.

We fall into a companionable silence, I sipping my carbonated drink and he meticulously organising a dance party of equine sugar figures on the iced cake—a silence which he eventually breaks. “You’re not going to tell me what you’ve been up to? You’ve dropped completely off the radar. That’s not like you.”

“Yeah…” I sigh. “I’ve been… around, you know.” I take another sip of coke. A pair of sad golden eyes fills my thoughts. The coke in my mouth taste unusually acid and bitter.

When I don’t elaborate further, Dan looks up from his exercise in confectionary art. He give me a long look. “Nick, what’s wrong?” I open my mouth to deny anything was wrong, but he quickly raises a hand to stop me. “And don’t tell me it’s nothing. It’s gotten worse since Monday.”

“Monday…?” I frown in confusion, then understanding dawns on me. It was just after I discovered Dorothy was a dead little girl. “Oh, no, it’s not that.” Ugh. Two downs in one week, you’re losing your edge, Nick.

What happened to being a careless happy-go-lucky guy?

Gimme a break.

“But it’s something.” Dan’s voice doesn’t leave room for counter.

I meet his piercing black eyes. In them, I see the stubborn streak all three siblings got from their mother. I sigh.

I’m not wordplaying my way out of this one.

I sigh, again, and look down into my glass. It’s empty.

“Nick, talk to me.”

Ugh. Do you need to sound so sincerely concerned?

I sigh, again, again. I think I’ll run out of air at this pace.

“I made a friend, in-game,” I start prudently, wondering how much I should reveal.

Dan wouldn’t approve of how I was handling things, I know. He’d also insist that I report the irregular sex change of my avatar to the game moderators. Whatever Inc.’s gender policy for character creation is there for a reason, and I’ve suffered enough side-effects—headaches, nausea, loss of appetite, vertigo, you name it—in the past month to know it isn’t just marketing and unfounded paranoia. And I know that if didn’t report it, he would. Not because he’s a stickler for rules, which he is, but because he always worries about me.

Right, all that pesky worries and good intentions, how dare he?

Oh shut up, will you?

The thing is… I just don’t want to give up Victoria just yet.

I’ve already probably screwed up my friendship with Athena over a joke, and even if I didn’t, I know I would lose all chance at mending things if I came out as a man.

Coward.

I know.

Keeping up a lie to try and mend the damage caused by another, not to mention a far less innocent lie… the hypocrisy isn’t lost on me. But I don’t want to think about it. I’m good at doing that. Lying. Especially to myself.

Looking down, I notice my knuckles are white around my glass of coke. I set it down, a little too brusquely, and shove my clammy hands inside my pockets. Dan is staring silently at me, not pushing for information but waiting for me to volunteer them on my own.

Damn. Why is he so good at this?

That stupid perfect protagonist.

Can’t you go worry about your harem, or something?

Leave me alone.

Despite my mental protest, I relent eventually, but I decide to go with the bare bones version.

“That person I met…”

“Yes?”

“I did something stupid and hurt their feelings. I didn’t mean it. It was just an innocent joke—I think. I kind of noticed when it started going too far, but I didn’t stop. And now I don’t know if they’ll forgive me. I’ve been feeling like shit over it.”

“It’s good that you're making more friends, Nick.”

I glare at him. “What are you, my mum?” I snap. He returns my irate stare with a much calmer one. My swell of anger quickly deflates. “Sorry. It’s not at you that I’m mad.”

“Have you tried apologizing to them?”

“They haven't logged back in since,” I reply dejectedly.

“Do you think they might not?”

Would she?

There are systems to allow avatars to automatically consume food directly from the Inventory while the player is logged off, but it only works for so long. Once the Inventory is empty, the avatar won’t get up to hunt and forage on their own. Leaving your avatar to starve is entirely possible.

Athena strikes me as someone who wouldn’t lose levels and stats points if she could avoid it. But then again, her reaction to the whole NPC-joke thing had caught me completely off guard, so I probably didn’t know her as well as I thought I did.

Well, duh. You’ve know her for, what, little less than a month? You know shit about the girl.

That’s… that’s true, I guess.

What do I know? She’s a girl. She’s probably a student between seventeen and twenty-seven years old, freakishly smart, if socially awkward. She has an older sister—she mentioned her a couple times. She gets pissed easily and hates when her abilities are put in question by others. She might have a surprisingly fragile self-esteem, but I have no real proof of that. She’s a lesbian and a serial groper.

Oh, and she hates being lied to.

Not much to go by.

And how much of what I know is “Athena” rather than her real self? I certainly tend to turn into a parody of myself whenever I’m in-game. If internet thought me anything, it’s that anonymity reveals the extremes in people, often the worst.

“I don’t know,” I eventually sigh and run a shaky hand through my hair. “I don’t know. They were really upset. I’ve never seen them like that. I… I really don’t know.”

For a long moment, Dan just stares at me. I get annoyed at having my hands unoccupied, so I decide to pour myself another glass of coke. I turn around and pick the bottle off the counter where I left it, uncork and pour.

I take a swig.

Too warm.

I should have put it back in the fridge.

This is in dire need of ice cubes.

Are there ice cubes in this house?

“You’re really worked up over this.” Dan voice rises from behind as I lean into the freezer. He sounds like he just came to a startling realisation.

What? Is that so weird I actually have emotions?

Well, you rarely display anything outside of the range from quiet contentment to exuberant happiness via silly mock anger, so it’s not weird that he’s surprised.

My hand pauses on the ice box, then I shrug. “I guess I am.” I turn around and drop about half the box content inside my glass. I wait a few seconds and take another sip.

Much better.

“As I see this," Dan continues after another pause, “you can only wait for her to log back in and apologize. Nothing will get better if you don’t at least start with that.”

The cold drink goes a long way to improving my mood. Caffeine also helps. There’s something about being chemically energised that I feel highly comforting. Maybe it’s just because a sluggish brain spends more time on pointless things—like sadness, or guilt.

“Nick, are you ignoring me?”

“No, no… I’m listening.” I am, listening I mean. And Dan’s got a point. A very good point, in fact. I really shouldn’t beat myself over something that already happened. I should focus on taking steps to fixing it. “How did you get so wise, O Green Sage of the Kitchen?” I joke, a half-smile finally lifting a corner of my lips.

He looks down at his bright green apron and chuckle with a self-depreciating smirk. “I don’t think it’s wisdom, only a thoughtful application of common sense.”

“Oh.” I raise an eyebrow. “And you’re good at that common sense thing, sir?”

He shoots me a wide grin that could rival his mother’s, enhanced by the fact his skin is so black and his teeth so white, they seem to glow. “I’ve got to be, because my brother and my sister seem to completely lack any.”

Brother, hmm? I’m surprised by how touched I am when Dan calls me this out of the blue. I scratch my nose to hide my embarrassment, but I don’t think I’ve fooled him. This guy’s got some kind of localised omniscience when it comes to Yas and me.

Thankfully, he only smiles with understanding and change the subject. “Can you get me the candles? They’re in the bottom drawer on your left.”

“Sure,” I quickly agree, happy we’ve stopped discussing my feelings. That is one subject matter I really, really don’t like talking about, or thinking about. I don’t care if it’s not healthy.

Healthiness is overrated anyway.

For the next twenty minutes, we joke while looking through the kitchen for silly decorations to add to the cake. Dan was against it at first, having spent so much time perfecting his rendition of Equestria on Icing, but I convince him eventually. And Auntie Colleen has one impressive collection of cake decoration in here. The end result is somewhat psychedelic, but I’m positive Hope will love it more than the original version. Sorry Dan.

We are discussing the progress of Prince’s DragonHeart Flower guild, or lack thereof, in their expedition to the Tiamat Mountain Range, when Yasmin strolls into the kitchen in her workout clothes. She’s wearing some sort of hybrid between sport bra and tank top—which I’m sure has a name of its own that I don’t care about—and skin-tight shorts which don’t leave much to the imagination. Her chocolate skin, a shade paler than her brother’s, is covered in a faint sheen of sweat.

Through the kitchen door, down the hallway, I can see several boys looking in this direction with wide eyes.

Hoy, you’re not even twelve, kids.

Fuck off, brats. You don’t deserve her.

I shoot a mock glare in the boys’ direction and they scamper away.

It’s for their own good, really.

They really don’t want Hope to give them the “you lookin’ at ma sista” talk. There are only so many graves one can dig in a small urban garden before it becomes crowded, even if they’re kids.

……she wouldn’t do that, would she?

Of course not.

Right.

She’d hire someone else to do it.

“......”

Meanwhile, Yas leans into the fridge and lets out an appreciative grunt at the can of beer positioned where she can easily grab it.

Cavewoman.

Be silent.

Yasmin salutes us while taking a long swig and belches like a fat trucker at a soccer match.

“…hehe.”

“……”

I chuckle nervously and Dan massages his forehead.

A tall black man steps into the kitchen a few seconds later, wearing a tight black T-shirt and black shorts. He pauses when he notices me. “Ah, Nick. Glad to have you. You’re staying for dinner after the party, I assume?” Ahmed follows his daughter to the fridge and takes a bottle of water.

I raise my glass in greeting. “If you’ll have me.”

“Of course, this house is your house. Yasmin, go shower and make yourself presentable. We have guests.”

The girl groans something unintelligible in response, but it sounded vaguely like “they’re ten, dad,” and she walks to the door. Before stepping out, she stops, as if remembering something, and turns back in my direction. “Hey, Nick, I’ve dropped that package you wanted me to drop at that bar in Start.”

“Oh, thanks.” I nod. I’d almost forgotten about that.

“No prob. You owe me one, by the way. Oh, and I have your Faust DC, remind me to give it back.”

Ah! So that’s where that was!

I’d been searching for that Data Chip for the past two weeks. It’s been driving me crazy! Faust is, like, my favourite band right now. Not only is their music great, but they're local. I usually only care about the music and not the people behind the music, but… they’re local, you know? It’s hard not to feel some kind of baseless sense of pride.

A smile creeps on my lips when I recall buying that record. That was the day I first ran into Eva… and the first time she ran away from me.

Fond memories?

“Eh. Something I don’t know?” Yasmin’s smug tone snaps me out of my momentary reverie. I look puzzled at her. She clarifies, “Anything that makes you grin like that can’t be good. Is there a girl I need to rescue from your basement again?”

“I don’t have a basement.” I return a deadpan stare. Her smug grin widens. I grimace. “Don’t you have a shower to be in?”

She laughs. “I’ll get this story out of you, one way or another.” She turns around and throws me a last glance over her shoulder. “No peeking this time.”

My brain short-circuits. For an instant, I think of nothing… then cold sweat pours down my back.

That… girl!

What a cheap blow just because I didn’t answer her question!

My eyes move slowly to Ahmed, whose silent and imposing presence fill the kitchen. He is casually leaning against the kitchen counter and drinking from a bottle of water, but his black eyes are staring straight at me like two black holes waiting to swallow me. Even if I did date Yasmin in the past, that doesn’t really change the fact she is Ahmed’s little girl. It feels like a black panther is gauging the best way to rip me into bits.

Very small, small bits.

I chuckle awkwardly. “Errr… I’ll go…” I twirl my finger towards the door, “entertain the kids. I’ve got this magician routine I’ve been dying to try. See you!”

I have no shame in saying I fled the kitchen with all my puny might.

* * *

The rest of the afternoon passes without incidents. I exhaust myself playing with the children… who destroyed me at Exploding Kittens. I’m not sure how Hope always had all the defuse cards, but I’m convinced I saw her smirk faintly at me when I was the first to draw a kitten for the seventh game in a row.

When the moment for the cake came, most kids looked baffled at the majestic oeuvre d’art I had contributed to realise, but Hope seemed quite happy… Well, she nodded in approval and declared it “highly satisfactory.”

Where does she get that way of speaking, really?

From books probably.

Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. I should have a talk with her parents. They need to better monitor her reading habits.

Eventually, the party comes to an end and parents arrive one by one to reclaim their evil semi-clones. Every child tells his or her goodbyes to Hope in an oddly formal and deferent way, calling her “Big Sister Hope”, but I blissfully ignore it.

I’m looking forwards to the dinner that will come later. I’m confident in my cooking skills, but that’s only because I learned all I know from Colleen. She’s the real goddess of the kitchen. I’ve even resisted the temptation of cake overdose to keep room in my stomach. That’s saying something.

Before we can sit at the table, however, the doorbell rings. Since I’m the closest to the entrance, I shout, “I’ve got it!” and make my way over.

Probably some parents whose kid’s forgot something.

But when I open the door, and then look up… and up… and up, I quickly revise my opinion.

The two bodybuilders in black suits, sunglasses and earpieces who tower above me are not any child’s parents.

Not that I don’t believe a couple of gay bodybuilders in black MIB suits who look like they’re about to pull a gun and shoot me in the face wouldn’t make wonderful parents. Of course. However, I’m positive that these two massive individuals, whose facial expressions remind me of two passably unimpressed boulders, were not present during the earlier trade of small humans.

My first thought is: ‘Dammit, Hope, I told you not to double-cross your business partners!’

Then I remember I told Hope no such things, and make a mental note to do it.

Then I ask, “Err… How may I help you, gentlemen?”

“Nicolas Siegel?”

“Himself.”

The two brick shithouse exchange a glance through their shades before redirecting their gazes towards me. I suddenly find myself questioning my life choices—especially the most recent one of identifying myself so readily.

That was pretty stupid.

I noticed, thank you.

My self-questioning turns into intense regret when a large shovel-size palm drops on each of my shoulders, nearly burying me into the stone doorstep. “Please follow us. Don’t make a fuss. No harm will be done to you.”

Suddenly, I am unceremoniously lifted off the ground and carried away from the doorstep.

My legs pedal uselessly in the air between my two transporters.

What… the… actual… fu—

“Wait! Wait! On second thought, maybe I’m not Nicolas Siegel. Who knows? That’s a pretty common name. There must be plenty of Nicolas Siegel in this city?”

“You are the one,” one replies flatly.

Wait? Am I? Am I really the One?

Is this the Matrix?

Are those agents?!

Wait…No. That makes no sense.

Let’s try another angle.

“I’m telling you. Whatever that dead woman is saying, I’m not the father! Billie Jean is not my lover, she’s just some girl, and I’m definitely not the one!”

My brilliant tentative at confusing their psyche was met with unresponsive silence from Humpty and Dumpty.

Ugh… Tough crowd tonight.

But I won’t give up!

“You’ve got the wrong person! My name is Jean Dupont. In fact, je ne sais même pas parler anglais ! Je suis Français. J’aime les baguettes ! Ceci est une honte ! Un scandal ! Je veux parler à mon avocado!”

“Please stop making a scene,” the one on my right stated. “We have photographic identification and your landlord reported your location at this address.”

“Vincent?! What did you do to him?!”

“Your landlord is alright. He cooperated. I would suggest you do the same. Or there shall be…” he marks a pregnant pause and looks at me for the first time since picking me up, “…consequences.”

I gulp, and quiet down.

And this is how I was abducted.

* * * * *