AETERNUM


	The world stopped as, well I don’t exactly know what happened but it was amazing, well at least for someone who was supposed to be dead, like me. Somehow the sniper’s bullet that went straight into my ribcage did not kill me. Even though when I was at the hospital they said I should be dead. I had a hole straight through my heart. I never would be able to do anything if I did live. But I’m here, alive and well and still in prime condition.


	Last year my dad “died” but then the next day he woke me up for school. The day after his funeral, my mom didn’t think it was weird at all. Even though we had just been at his funeral and she had spent all night crying her eyes out. He had been cut to pieces alive, they broke his legs and arms. Covered him in gasoline and set him on fire. Alive. They had tortured him to death. They thought he had something they wanted because they could have sold the thing on the black market for millions of dollars but he appeared perfectly normal the next day. At first I thought it was just a nightmare or bad dream but sitting on his bed was the still smoldering suit he had worn that day.
When I asked him what had happened he said “I just took a short trip to Asphodel, why?”

“Nothing...”

	When I got home from school that day I went straight to my computer and googled “Asphodel” what came up on the results was frightening: The Land of the dead. Not what I wanted to find. I was hoping for just some random city in the middle of nowhere like New Mexico. 
	Now I know who was trying to get rid of me. The same people that tried to get rid of my Dad. I have to go where they won’t expect me to go. 
“Hey mom...”
“What?”
“I’m hungry,”
          “Well wait a minute and I’ll get something ready” While my mom had her back turned I raided the cabinet and took out all of our beef jerky and ran up stairs, I threw the jerky on my bed and went to the closet and yanked out an army green backpack and stuffed the jerky in the bottom of it then I took out my hunting knives from on top of my bedside table and put them on a belt and left it on my bed. “Honey! Breakfast is ready!” my mom called up the stairs. 
“All right! I’m coming!” I yelled back as I pounded down the stairs.
The smell of bacon and pancakes drifted to me as I opened the fridge and took out the syrup and butter then set them on the kitchen table and opened the cabinet and took out two a few plates and set them on the table. She put two pancakes on each plate and I put bacon on both.


      After I almost inhaled five or six pancakes and at least ten strips of bacon I put the dish in the sink and ate three more pieces of bacon on my way upstairs. I changed into jeans and a t-shirt and I threaded my belt on. I looked out the window and there was a man walking into the garage with a small box with some wire hanging out of it. 


     A few minutes later he sprinted out of the garage and jumped into a car on the street and then his car blew up. “Ha!” I thought to myself, the bomber just got car bombed” I laughed and then our garage blew up.” damn it! Not again! I fixed that yesterday!” the shock wave blew out all of the windows in my room and threw the glass all over my room it looked like someone had blown up our garage. Oh wait someone had...


“Nick!!!! What the heck were you doing!”
“NOTHING” 
“Well then what was that?” 


“NOT ME”


“What did I say about eating just beans for dinner!”


“IT WAS OUR GARAGE BLOWING UP”


“Sure...”


“IT WAS, LOOK OUT THE WINDOW”


“Oh my god, that will be coming out of your allowance young man!”


“WHY?”
“Because you blew up our garage!” 


“BUT I DIDN’T! DON’T YOU SEE THE CAR IN THE STREET!”


“You did that too?”


“NO!”


“Who did then?”


“THAT’S THE GUY THAT BLEW UP THE GARAGE!”
“What the heck!”


“SOMEONE BOMBED THE BOMBER!”


“Uh, ok!”


     I looked around at the street and thought, “wow, this is the weirdest day ever”.

	Car alarms were blaring all up and down the street as I walked throughout the house. All of the cars except one. A gigantic black van sat there in our driveway extremely out of place because two reasons. 1 it was right in the path of both explosions, and 2, its car alarm was not on, if a car three doors down were going crazy blasting its alarm how would this one not be.
	 The only reason it would not be that I could think of is that it just pulled in, but I had been here the entire time, and I had not heard a single car move. From my room I had a clear look at the driver; he sat there for a few minutes, and then slowly got out of the car.
	I watched the driver get out of the car, slowly; as he walked up to our house he tripped and fell on his face, but on purpose. A hail of bullets hit the front of my house and I cringed as a bullet hit one of mom’s potted rosebushes, sending thorns everywhere. The man drew a gun and returned fire and ran into my house.
	 I grabbed a BB gun and ran downstairs into the kitchen where the man was standing amid the shards of glass on the floor. 

	His jacket was off and he was pulling a bullet out of my mom’s leg his white shirt soaked with blood. “Come,” he said, his voice was strangely high for a man of his size. I brushed away the glass on the floor and knelt, holding my mom’s leg still as he dug the bullet out and put it into his pocket, He stood and I could see the muscles ripple under his shirt.
	 He picked up my mother, who by this point was as limp as a rag doll and unconscious and went to the back door. I ran upstairs and put my BB guns in a backpack and put my belt on and ran back downstairs and barged out the door after him.
	 There was another black van in our backyard. He opened the back and laid my mom down and closed it. I got in and stared at the computer screens that covered the interior of the van. Then a scarred head poked out from the driver’s seat, “Hey,” I jumped and fell backwards out of the van, landing hard on my back, I heard the man laughing inside the van.
	 I got back in and he turned around and stuck out his hand, still shaking from laughter, I shook it and my hand was nearly enveloped in his. I slid to the back and the scarred man called outside, ”Darrell, come on be faster, they’re become suspicious!”

“I’m coming, and Geez! Don’t scare him too badly!”

	Darrell, I now know his name, came into the van and spoke in that same high voice, ”This is Mikhail, he has a nasty habit of scaring anyone that comes into the van,” I shifted and Darrell sat down. 

	“Where are we going?” I asked nervously.
	It was Mikhail, who answered, in his deep voice with a slight Russian accent, “Safety,”

	I nodded and leaned my head against the wall and fell asleep, exhausted from my day so far.
Aeternum, 6-8,pg.1