Why?

After the year I had it was great to be anywhere that didn't remind me of that horrible day and the torturous months that followed. That's what I told myself as I clambered into the black, hearse-like car. The windows were so darkly tinted that I had to press my face against it to see through to the thick trees and dusty tomb stones surrounding us all. The icy glass felt as if it should be melting under my face, flushed with the trauma of it all. I felt the pulse in my head pounding still.
“Here, Peyton,” said Olivia leaning back to face me from the passenger seat as we pulled out of the graveyard and started down the bumpy gravel street, “take this, it’ll take away any discomfort or pain you might have.”
I took the pill between my fingers and dropped it down my throat. I shut my eyes and visualized the rhythmic beats of my still pounding head. As the beats slowed the pain slowly melted away and I drifted off to sleep.
“Peyton, we’re here!” shouted the voice that opened my door.
I staggered up the hill and then followed Olivia into the shack on the tallest hill of an old fishing village battling with the sleep threatening to send me to the ground at any moment. It was stormy outside, the rain fell down in sheets and the wind threatened to pick up my 120lb body right off the hill and into the air. Even the house looked like it was about to follow me up in the air in the hurricane force winds, some shingles off of the roof whizzed by my head missing by inches.
"You get used to it," said the voice of Olivia standing next to me flashing me a familiar smile. I was glad that Olivia was down wind of me or her voice would have disappeared into the wind without me ever hearing it, "it's not perfect but it’s home. What do you think Peyton?"
"I never judge a book by its cover," I said half-jokingly, a flicker of worry passing through my eyes.
The door creaked as if it had needed a good oiling for a number of years. It was roughly put together with nails hanging out of all parts of the door and many gaps between planks big enough to see through. Not such a great impression but at least it was an escape, anything was better than seeing him and what had happened around every corner, in everything I laid eyes on.
As we stepped in the door I was shocked, but I saw the composed expression on Olivia’s face that told me this was normal. I was overwhelmed with the sound and activity inside the shack. It was a lot bigger than the outside let on and also a lot less tattered too although still slightly worn down and stale.
Olivia had told me when I had met her only a month before that she housed a few people in my situation but I revisited the definition of a few in my head, I must have seriously underestimated that word. There were at least 20 rough looking strangers prancing about the small shack!
Olivia jumped on the table in the room and stomped her foot on the table hard being careful not to lose her balance. The crowd all suddenly gave her their immediate and full attention. Well, at least they were polite house crashing thugs; I had to give them that. "This is the new addition to our community, Peyton Miller, be nice guys!"
My eyes grew wide, I was never one for crowd especially in such a cramped space and I was never a spotlight hog either, at school I had preferred to fade into the background and let the cheerleaders and jocks hog it all they wanted! I got an encouraging shove from Olivia and then was engorged by the mob of people.
"Hello, the names Eugene but most call me Scabz, with a Z at the end!" introduced the first thug flexing his muscles to make his dragon tattoo that wrapped around his arm seem to dance.
I snickered at the joke she used to have with my parents, when I had brought home Lukas they had said, "at least he isn't called Scabs with a giant tattoo all over his arms!" My parents had loved Lukas, for great reason too. He genuinely loved me and it was easy to tell from just looking at him and he was patient, never pushed me into things I wasn't ready for. He was polite, kind and a good person all around. The perfect gentleman, what wasn't to like? I felt a cold shiver run through me and a warm tear leaving a salty steam in its wake as it rolled onto my lips threatening to leave a salty taste there for the rest of the day. I shook my head and reconcentrated my energies on the situation at hand; I had come here to get away so that’s what I intended to do.
"... Tony and I am a guitarist and yeah that’s me." As I zoned back in I was pretty sure they were on at least mobster #18. All I could think about was that I wished that no one had seen my tear as I tried to act like it hadn't been there myself. I couldn't take any more intros so I asked for directions to the bathroom. As I pushed my way through the mosh pit of rough looking strangers with confused looks on their faces, eyes following me as I moved, the tears slowly increased like the crescendo of an orchestra. By the time I finally got there I was bawling like I had just about a year earlier. I was surprised to find there were any tears left. I had shed so many by this point.
I bolted the door to lock the world out, clutched the sink with both hands and squeezed as hard as I could in frustration. I stood there for at least 10 minutes with my head hanging in the sink, dizzy and preparing for the vomit that came with the overwhelming emotions.
“Peyton! Peyton!” whispered a voice which seemed like it had come from inside the mirror above the sink. Assuming that the memories and tears had clouded my mind I told the owner of the voice to go away with a low grunt of pain and anger. Looking down into the sink, afraid to look up at my swollen and red face from all the tears I heard it again, this time a little louder than before.
“Leave me alone,” I whispered back, barely audible. After just a few seconds of peace came a reply, one that petrified me!
“Silly Penguin, why would you want me to do that?” I slowly lifted my head and saw the ghost that had haunted me since the incident. The one thing I had come here to escape and it was now staring me right in the face!
“Are you trying to run away from me Peyton?” said the face in the mirror. I finally came to my senses and turned around to stop looking at that haunting face with those empty eyes. “Nuh uh Penguin! You cannot escape me that easy baby,” it said appearing again in front of my face!
“This isn’t you! This is all in my mind!” I shouted at the aberration of my memory. While trying to even my breathing to melt away some of my panic and squeezing my eyes as shut as my muscles would allow I remembered the small translucent orange bottle Olivia had given to me when I had first told her about my hallucinations. She had said that these pills would help me get rid of him! I had slipped the pills in my pocket and forgotten about them until now. I desperately fumbled with the bottle and shakily poured the contents into my hands, eyes still firmly shut. Squinting I picked up 2 dropping them with one swift motion down my throat. I forced them down my throat dry, afraid to move back to the sink.
“Baby, baby, baby! You will never get rid of me!” said the ghost, this time it had drifted to my ear and its words wrung painfully through my head sending an uncomfortable chill down my spine like an army of ants under my skin. Just as I was sucking in air to scream in terror and pain a voice shouted in from the outside. It was an authoritative and strong voice but far from thug or Olivia. The voice outside the door startled the owner of the voice at my ear. He nervously looked both ways and dissipated into the molecules of the air just as the voice behind the door knocked down the bolted door of the bathroom, pretty impressive, and darted in to catch me as my helpless body fell to the floor, a thick black curtain separated me from my consciousness.

An electric shock coursed through my body and shot out of my fingers and toes. I felt a firm squeeze on my hand, but from my weakness it felt like a brick had fallen on it. I let out a slight moan and almost immediately the squeeze lightened. I pulled my eyes apart but the concrete seal only let them open to a squint. I saw a hazy rush of people and heard a muffle of excitement around me. It was slowly becoming more distant, like I was leaving my body until the dark hair and green eyes of a person filled my vision. I felt him cup my face in his warm hands and realized I recognized the face in front of me but wasn’t sure where from. My concentration on the bright smile on this face kept me awake and alert for a few extra seconds but my wandering mind trying to discern the familiarity caused me to drift off yet again.

Click clock, went a pair of heels slowly making their way into my house. I had taken shelter in my wardrobe under a big pile of blankets at the first sign of the home invasion. They had already bashed my front door to splinters. The door salesman had said it was “everything-proof” but I guess he hadn’t tested whatever these people had used. Imagining the worst, as I usually did, he probably knocked it down with pure brute strength!
Click clock, the heels made their way upstairs closely followed by a pair of more clunky shoes, probably sneakers. A slow and steady beeping like a metronome accompanied them.
Click clock, click clock, Click creeeeaaak! The figures and their accompanied beeping made their way through the door of my room confidently and noisily as if they already knew where I was. I wasn’t moving or breathing, the only thing I could hear from my area at all was my hammering heart which quickened in anticipation with every heel click. Adrenaline was being released and circulated 10 fold and my blood pressure was steadily rising.
Click clock, two shadows revealed themselves in front of my closet door; I could see the edges of the red clicking stilettos and worn old converse through the crack in the bottom of the door. How had they known where I’d be? Why were they just standing there? Suddenly I felt the slightest breeze across my face indicating a signal between the two figures on the other side of the door and suddenly that breeze turned into as full blown wind as the door was opened and the air rushed out. The moonlight filled the previously dark closet inspecting every single crevice. I was unmistakable now among the blankets, even without a flashlight it was obvious. A sick feeling of the inevitable sank to the bottom of my stomach like an anvil dropped from a few stories high.
Clank! As soon as the anvil reached the bottom of my stomach a hand reached for my face! “Calm down Peyton, it’s okay,” said the green eyes. The eyes got closer and the hand covered my nose and mouth making it impossible to breathe. Squeezing my eyes shut to concentrate on not panicking I felt silky smooth hair brush again my face side to side as I struggled under the ninja grip of the green eyed man. I heard footsteps and the slamming of a door from behind my attacker. With hope I opened my eyes to see Olivia making her way up behind the man.
“Olivia! Olivia, HELP ME!!” I screamed at the top of my lungs but it came out like I had tried to play chubby bunny but overstuffed my mouth. My arms were still moving weakly but the green eyed attacker had overpowered me and secured my limbs to the ground with his.
“Calm down Peyton,” stated Olivia in a psychologist’s over exaggerated soothing voice that screamed that calming down wasn’t the thing to do in that particular situation. Giving an approving glance to the attacker Olivia continued, “Everything is going to be okay.” My eyes widened at the betrayal of my friend and I swallowed unable to do anything else, then suddenly all things faded to black like at the end of a cheesy 80’s chick flick. All that was left was a far-away but steady beeping.

The beeping persisted, steadily fading away from me as my consciousness approached! When I finally came to, those green eyes were staring into mine again. He was leaning over me; his eyes were kind but tired, as if he had had several unrestful nights. His thin, pale lips spread into a smile across his whole face as he motioned over to someone else in the room. As green eyes got up to talk to the woman across the room I took the opportunity to take in my surroundings. I was lying on a dusty and ripped yet warm blanket in a room that smelt of rot and decay. Several others shared this room with me but not all of them were faring as well as I was. Some were violently sputtering, choking and hacking which echoed in the chilly, cave-like room.
“You are awake I see Peyton,” stated the woman that accompanied green eyes back to my bedside, “How are you feeling?”
“A little dizzy I guess…” I trailed off, “wait a second, who are you? Where am I? Who are all these people? Are we underground? Where is Lu...” The answer to the final unfinished question finally dawned on me and I fell silent to mask the pain, waiting for the rest of the answers.
“So many questions! All of this might be too overwhelming to handle with your fragile brain right now so we will take it one question at a time. My name is Dr. Stone and this here is Sebastian,” said the woman pointing down at green eyes, flashing him a smile. “I have to go check on the others right now,” said Dr. Stone gesturing towards the rest of the people on floor mats in the room, “but Sebastian will answer the rest of your questions, won’t you?” she said to Sebastian, but it didn’t really sound like a question.
“Sure…” said Sebastian a little less than enthusiastically, mouthing ‘you owe me one’ to Dr. Stone before turning around to face me again. “You know you snore louder than a train wreck,” stated Sebastian with a chuckle.
“Who me?” I shot back, “well sorry, I didn’t hear it so I’m gunna need some proof mister… Sebastian was it?”
Sebastian laughed and pointed at his tired, baggy eyes with the beginning signs of bloodshot starting to peer through, “first off only Stone calls me Sebastian, some business-like relationship crap, everyone else calls me Seth. And is this enough evidence for you little missy?”
Defeated I sighed and turned away from Seth. From the emotions in his eyes, a sort of guilt and regret, I realized that his eyes had been the ones in my dream a few moments before, but I couldn’t quite place my finger on what had been happening in the dream. I pondered for a few moments and finally dismissed the thought deciding it must not be too important or I would have remembered.
I must have hesitated a moment too long because as I turned back around Seth had a stroke of worry sweep over his whole body, but he masked it as quickly as it had come and asked, “Is anything troubling you Peyton?”
“Nah… just some stupid dream,” I mumbled softly. Catching onto my hint, Seth walked with me in the dark, soggy tunnels of the cave without asking another word.
“What do you call this place anyways?” I finally questioned when I felt confident enough to speak again.
“This,” he motioned to the walls around us, “is what we call Geheim.”
“You will not laugh at the seemingly dumb and general question…” I said waving my hand in front of Seth’s face attempting Jedi mind tricks on him, “…but what is that?”
Seth laughed anyway and I mimed being upset that my mind trick hadn’t worked. “Well that question has a long answer,” he sighed, thought about what to say and started back up again, “I guess it starts with who runs this place which would be the Yetunawao, a sub and a lot more secretive group of the witness protection program, but of course you already know that.”
“Wait! How would you assume I already knew that?” I asked suspiciously, starting to revisit the green eyes from my dream once again.
Seth hesitated for a fraction of a second and then answered, “Why else would you be here?” The hesitation lingered in my mind. Something was definitely not right here. He continued while I pondered this, “We are an escape for people in danger with no other escape, an entirely underground facility dedicated to these people. How would you like a tour?”
I quickly nodded in reply and followed Seth’s dark, smooth hair down the corridor.
The distance of caves down here seemed immense. Why didn’t people just start living underground, I thought, there was a lot more room and the people sure as heck would save a boatload on air conditioning; the frigid bite nibbled on every exposed piece of skin it could find.
Seth showed me dozens of seemingly endless rooms with different purposes. One functioned as a schoolroom, one a town hall sort of room, a few small sell it all stores and several churches of different kinds. Some looked and smelled similar to my old school cafeteria; hopefully the food was better than the slop they used to give us there. I swear that food was alive. I was forced to chase it around my plate attempting to stab it with my fork until I finally gave in to the movement of the brown bag lunches.
We ran into many people along the tour, citizens of Geheim, going about their everyday business and using the rooms. Some stopped and chatted but looked as if they were nervous and jumpy but others who did not glanced my way with a look of festering paranoia. All the citizens had the same air about them and looked very dishevelled. Maybe it was something about living underground that did this to people. Would explain why most people don’t live there.

As Seth and I strode through the door of the next room I expected to get hit with a chilling wind as with all the other rooms I had entered with him on my tour but this time was different. I was blinded as soon as the doors opened and my thin sweater was suddenly saturated with sweat as I was hit with a heat wave from the giant lamps hung around the room.
“This is personally my favorite room in the entire facility, the gardens of Geheim. It’s an experiment we are working on along with many others here,” Seth stated nonchalantly.
I was utterly wordless, only twice before have I literally had not one word to say, to be honest most of the time I was quite the chatterbox, but in this giant, warm, cave-like room my words were swept away with my breath at the beauty of it.
After a few minutes of just walking down the path catching flies as my jaw hung low, I finally mustered a mouse-volume, “wow.”
As we walked among the rainbow of trees and plants Seth droned on about the experiment which was going on in this room and how important it was to mankind, blah blah blah… Obviously I was not listening; instead I was daydreaming about all of the wonderful fresh foods in this room, how they would taste in my mouth and as they slid down my throat. I hadn’t had anything fresh in forever, back home in the last few months the only thing I ate was mint chocolate chip ice cream and Oreo’s when I ate at all which wasn’t too often. I hadn’t really realized how hungry I was or how much weight I had lost since the accident. As I circled my wrist with my fingers, with plenty of room to spare I was caught red handed by Seth’s stare which appeared to be awaiting an answer to a question.
“Huh?” I said innocently, looking at him but not in the eyes.
“I was asking what your favorite fruit was.” Seth fired the question back at me with an obvious undertone of hurt. It was probably due to his realizing that I hadn’t been paying attention to his question the first time and from there he probably figured out I hadn’t listened to any of his spiel or been interested in it like he was.
Oh that’s easy, I thought but then decided against it, instead I fired my carefully considered answer of, “I know, it’s just a challenging question, you got to give me some time to think, jeez” in attempt to cover up my daydreaming.
“Oh okay,” said Seth. He was trying to play along but I could see he was totally unconvinced.
“Humm well I’ll go with the raspberry!”
“Fine choice, my lady, for that is one of our specialties.”
“You would have said that whatever I picked, huh?”
“Of course, everything is our specialty.”
Seth sent me a cheeky grin and guided me through the mazes of boxes, pots, fences and bags to a row of six raised boxes with vines inside. He quickly stuck his hand in the mesh covering the vines and pulled out 2 plump red raspberries.
“Hey you are you stealing?” said a slightly chubby bald man with a watering hose across the room. I’d never quite got questions like that, they were like invitations to lie because it’s not like anyone would ever say yes to this question.
“You might want to start running now,” whispered Seth uncomfortably close to my face with a glimmer in his eye.
He took off holding out his hand behind him like an Olympic relay runner receiving the baton. It was like he was telling me to take it if I wanted it but if not then hasta luego, off he would go leaving me behind. What a nice gesture I thought, but I took it anyway fearing what the bald man might do if he got ahold of me. His demeanor scared me a little.
As I sprinted down the aisles full of juicy and succulent looking food hanging from its plant I felt like I was being dragged. Hand in hand with Seth at my top speed pace, the kind I used in my kick to the finish in my events at track meets seemed more like a marathon pace. Seth was running at superhuman speed but looking behind me at the man who had the hose, so was he. Neither man looked exceptionally strong or fit, the one chasing us definitely wasn’t, but yet they reached these kinds of speeds. It was mindboggling. I decided to tell myself I was imagining things from my hunger and shrugged it off as I continued running.
After weaving through the plants for a few minutes the hose guy stopped his pursuit and me and Seth disappeared into the giant white canopy in the middle of the room.
Dozens of different types of flowers in thousands of different colors wound their way up the metal grates holding up the canvas. A giant patch of lush grass made a bed beneath it all.
At the speeds we entered the canopy area there were no other options to slow up than to tumble to the floor. Seth and I landed in a tousled and giggling heap right in the middle.
“Did you see that guy’s face…?”
“… He was all like, ‘Gahhh, Don’t do that…”
“… stupid menacing kids!’”
Together Seth and I lay side by side in the grass pulling faces trying to mimic the grumpy old man who had chased us but mostly our hysterical laughter interrupted the faces before a few seconds if we were even able to pull them in the first place.
Looking down I realized I was still clutching his hand for dear life. After seeing this I turned a dark shade of red, it was as if every drop of blood in my body followed giant flashing signs saying for free stuff go to Peyton’s head, and quickly yet awkwardly I released his hand!
“Hey Peyton,” said Seth softly while propping his body so his torso and face hovered over mine.
“Yeah,” I said nervously, the words came out all cracked and strange like I had never spoken before or like I was suddenly a pre-teen boy in puberty.
“What do you think of my garden?”
“What do you mean?”
“This,” he motioned around us at the canopy, “is my garden. My little bit of haven in this hectic life, my creative outlet.”
“What do you mean hectic?”
“People who thought land towns were small haven’t lived underground. The meaning of ‘small-town’ gets completely rewritten down here. There’s 10 times the gossip, 20 times the nosy neighbors and 100 times the secrets.”
Seth closed his eyes and shook his head disappointedly then let it hang lose with a sigh.
“I’m sorry Seth,” I pleaded.
“It’s ok,” he replied eyes still closed and head still down.
“Your garden, by the way is breathtakingly beautiful.”
He looked back up and this time right at me, I’m not talking just right in my eyes but right through to my soul, and his bright green eyes sparkled.
“Really?” he sounded unsure, “You aren’t just saying that?”
“It’s incredible!”
With that a huge and genuine smile spread across his face and he got even closer to me, pressing forehead to mine. Out of the corner of my eye, leaning against the supports next to the yellow roses, I saw Lukas waving at me with that coy smile of his, the one that made me fall for him in the first place.
A searing pain forced its way through my brain, breaking the levy holding back the memories of Lukas. I closed my eyes feeling Seth’s rhythmic breath on my face. Syncing mine with his, I succumbed to what the pain was telling me to and drifted into my memories.