“What about your mother? How is Akari? Is she out right now? How is she doing?” Jake asked about Akari as he had not seen her ever since he entered the house. Even after all the ruckus they created by the front door. The screaming and laughing out loud as they did, Akari should have come out by now.

“You know your mother used to tease me about my living habits by calling me a slob all the time. She said if Sylvia was not there for me I might just be living in a garbage can. I would love to rub this in her face now that her own husband has become a slob. I cannot believe she let him get to this stage without divorcing him.” Jake chuckled as he reminisced about Akari and her teasing. Not knowing that his question just derailed the motion of their whole conversation.

It was only a simple question, asking about the whereabouts of a friend just as he had been doing so far, but this question had Alice visibly shaken. She was thunderstruck and froze in the middle of their conversation. She was looking at Jake at first but then her eyes started shifting all over the place. She was fidgeting and her misty eyes were staring at her lap. She was audibly trying to hold back a sob to control herself.

Jack was alarmed at this reaction and suddenly went into the lower end of his mind. In his mind, there can only be one reason for this but he wanted to avoid even thinking about it. A dark place where he had been a few hours ago worried for his family. He wanted to say something to her but was stopped by Andy waking up.

“It's fine Alice, you have talked enough about everyone. I will take it from here, just help me sit up please.”

Andy had woken up a few minutes ago and was listening to their conversation. The way things were going he was sure a question like this was coming. So, he waited for the question and then spoke up. After all, this was not a subject that he would let his daughter talk about no matter what.

He was still lying down where Jake had placed him. Alice wiped her tears and got up to help her father. She helped him up and put pillows on his side so he would be comfortable. He sat up straight, rubbed his sore legs, and looked at his friend for a minute before he spoke up.

Jake’s hands were white as his knuckles cracked and his face was flushed of any color as he prepared himself for what was to come. He pushed all the thoughts to the back of his mind hoping to hear something good but alas it was not meant to be.

“Akari is dead Jake. She died five years ago the same day you went missing. She. Is. Dead! You are right never in a million years would she have let me become the slob I am right now, never.” Andy looked at Alice standing in the corner before continuing.

“Neither the slob I am nor the kind of father I have become. She would have hated me for both.”

Deep down Jake knew this was coming but he was still not ready for it. All of his nightmares had come true but just not for him but for Andy. He could not imagine the pain his friend went through over the last five years. A pain he would have experienced if the circumstances were reversed.

He was not sure what to say at the moment. He was just stunned and at a loss for words. Tears welled up in Alice’s eyes when Jake looked at her. Andy on the other hand was just sitting still. His eyes searched for something on the ground, bone dry like a desert. This was a man who had cried the loss of his love over and over again. His body simply had no more tears to offer with his excruciating pain. Only one word escaped from Jake’s quivering lips.

“How?”

“How? I have asked myself the same question over and over again. How and why? No matter how much I asked, I never really got any answer for the why.” Andy took a deep breath and looked at Jake as he started telling him the how part.

“As I said it happened five years ago right around the time you disappeared. Maybe the same day but they could never really tell. Five years ago when you never came back home from work Sylvia got worried and called me. I told her you might be busy but she was having none of it and kept saying that something was wrong. So, I started calling your phone, your office, friends, and anyone else who might know your whereabouts.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

I was still calling people when it happened, Gates started opening up all around the world. Almost in every major city, three to four gates opened. In our city alone there were six gates. Usually, there is a months time before the gate can be cleared and a gate crashes but this time it crashed immediately. They still have no explanation for why that happened, gates appeared randomly and then crashed out of nowhere but then again they never knew why they occur in the first place.

Within seconds of the gates opening, they crashed and monsters started pouring out and slaughtering people. By the time the alarm for gate sighting occurred the portals had already emptied out all the monsters on our land. After that, it was just a blood bath. I was home with Alice when it happened so I took her to your house and stayed with Sylvia and Ellen. There were no gates in our town but we still had to stay inside. Most people who remained indoors were safe like us, and the majority of the casualties came from people who were outside, people like you and Akari.

You disappeared somewhere around the time all this happened and Akari, Akari was out in the city. She was meeting some of her work friends for drinks and was in the city. I kept calling her and her friends but no one answered. I tried Jake, I really tried but I was helpless. I wanted to jump outside and search for her but how could I? The girls were home alone, there were monsters outside and I am no hunter. I really wished for powers then maybe I could have saved her, just maybe I could have done something." Andy clenched his fist and gnashed his teeth over his helplessness at the time.

"It took the hunters close to two days to subdue all the monsters in the area. After two long days when the hunters' fight was over, began the tireless battle of civilians, finding their friends and family in the city’s broken rubble. Sylvia and I left the house immediately to find you two. There was so much blood Jake. Blood was flowing down the streets to the towns where there had been no monsters and still they were filled with blood.

We rushed around the streets of the city, searching for hospitals, shelters, and any place we could search. I slipped and fell a few times, even cutting myself with either a monster tooth or a human bone sticking out of the rubble. Sylvia and I spent every minute of the day looking for you two. We had to go back to the house and change clothes every time we went out because the air was so pungent with the stench of blood. I can still smell it sometimes when I wake up. It wells up in my nose, that disgusting stench, with memories. It took us three days of searching when we finally.....”

Andy paused for a moment as he could not hold it in any longer and broke down. He needed to let out all these repressed feelings as he had been holding on to for too long. He did not have anyone close enough to talk these things out besides Jake. He didn’t realize that he subconsciously had let go and was starting to talk about his trauma in detail. Details that were not really necessary to the question asked. He talked about his experience in as much detail as possible to be rid of these feelings of being caged. He even forgot that his daughter was present right now and listening to his story.

Alice was quietly standing behind her father in a corner listening. She knew these things but not in so much detail and she was never really privy to her father’s experience of the incident. She was wiping her tears as she listened and saw her father in a completely new light. Not the drunken mess she had been seeing after the death of her mother but her father, the man he used to be was clawing out from behind the tears.

Jake was listening to the story with a heavy heart and cursing his fate for not being there for his friend and family at such a crucial time. He was not there for his family and friend when they needed him most. He had no idea that gates would open up like that and then crash immediately. One thing was clear the gates appeared after he was thrown into the other world. Were these two incidents connected? That was a question for another time. Andy was stiff with grief and anger and Jake lost his strength, filled with shame and regret.

“It took us three days to find Akari. When we did find her she was... she was... she.... We... We buried her first. We held a funeral and laid her to rest. After that, we continued our search for you. Sylvia wanted me to stop and rest but I couldn’t. I hated you at first for not being there with me. To help me but later on, I was thankful to you. If not for finding you and keeping myself busy I don’t know what I might have done.

Two weeks later everybody had been accounted for involved in the incident. Except for those whose body or body parts were never found. They were presumed dead along with you. Sylvia insisted with the authorities that there was no evidence that you were dead but then they used the same logic that there was no evidence that you had survived. So, they declared you dead with other missing people.

You were dead in everyone’s book but not for Sylvia, she was not having it. She would not take no for an answer. So we still kept searching for you, even going as far as hiring a private detective. With his help and a lot of optimism on our part, we finally found your last known location. This was all we could find after that there was no trace of you anywhere.

It was CCTV footage of a camera on a bus stand. You were standing in line waiting for a bus. You had flowers in one hand and a teddy bear in the other hand."