Leave The City - A Trench Story (tøp)

Good Day

The day of our plan was a cold, rainy day. Not much to invite the others out to, but hopefully they were already aware that DEMA was much worse than whatever could be out here. As the three of us secured our makeshift houses and such, we went over our plan again, making sure that there was a plan b for every possible outcome, positive or negative. By the time we finally started travelling back to the place we had spent years trying to get out of, it was almost noon. We spent most of the day walking in silence, never speaking a word until it began to get dark. "Shoot, I don't know why I thought we could make it in one day if we knew the way. I guess I was so caught up in our rescue plans I didn't think about the actual journey and forgot to bring the sleeping stuff." Tyler told us. "It's alright. I slept under trees for days before I found you guys." Josh said. Tyler looked at me, as if asking if I would be alright. "I'll be fine, It's only one night anyways." I said, mostly to assure Tyler that I was okay with it. "Hopefully the others will have some spare sheets or something to lend us on the way back." He said.

Although I told Tyler I was fine, I barely slept at all that night, at least not well. I may have been asleep for half the night, but I woke up what seemed like every 5 minutes, and my dreams were feverish. Filled with bishops and strange conversations from random citizens of DEMA that I couldn't decipher. I wasn't sure if it was because I was worried or because I was sleeping on the wet grass, but I decided to just sit up and lean against a tree until morning, since I figured it would be much less miserable than trying to sleep. Just before the sun came up, Josh's breathing became unsteady, and I leaned over to make sure he was okay. Instead, I ended up spooking him as he woke up. Surprisingly, he didn't make a sound. His eyes widened and then he took a few silent but deep breaths. "Are you okay?" I whispered. "Yeah, I was just dream-stressing, and then I woke up and you were staring down at me." He explained. "Sorry, I couldn't sleep peacefully either." I related. "Unfortunately I haven't had a real good sleep since DEMA, it almost makes me wonder-" "What?" Josh asked. I turned my head towards his and stared at where I imagined his eyes would be, since it was still too dark to see clearly. "I don't know, I just wonder sometimes if it really was better for us back there or something." I confessed to him. Josh and I had never had a conversation one-on-one, and there had been no mention of my feelings about the city in front of him either. I wondered if he would find it offensive, considering he had just escaped, and we were going back to get his friends in just a few hours. But instead of getting angry with me, the faint face that I could make out through the dawn seemed to smile at me. "I know what you're saying. That's the reason I hesitated to join the others for so long. I knew about them for almost a year before I finally went to one of their meetings. Once I was there though, there wasn't really room for questions. It was all about how we were getting out, but never one mention of why we were actually doing it." He explained. I relaxed a little, and decided to push a bit further. "So, do you still think about it then? Like, what it would be like if we were still there?" I asked. He shifted his face down to look at the ground. "I try not to." He said. "I guess I'm just... afraid. Like if I think about it too hard I'll realize something that I don't like, something I don't want to accept. Like..." "That it really would be better for us back there." I filled in. His head lifted up to my level. "Yeah... that. It's just that I've worked so hard to get here, I would hate to realize that it was all for nothing." He said. "Yeah." I said while nodding. Before we could say anything else, Tyler sat up and turned around to look at us. "How long have you two been up?" He asked. "I've been awake pretty much all night." I said. "but I only got up about 15 minutes ago, and then Josh woke up and I scared him." I laughed a little. Tyler nodded. "We should probably get going now. Maybe we can get there before the weekly ceremony." He told us. We quickly picked up the small bags that we had brought along with a singular fish in it and went along on our way. Tyler kept trying to make conversation, but Josh and I both couldn't seem to really get into it, so after a while he decided to be quiet.