Forgotten

Chapter Four: The History Tour

"And this is where we eat all of our meals," Jess was saying as I followed her on a tour of Cassia. We had stopped in from of what was so far the largest building I had seen in Cassia. It was a plain concrete building with few cracks and a wooden planked roof which looked fairly sturdy, though it was no bomb shelter.

"Breakfast," Jess continued, "is promptly at 8:00 A.M., lunch time depends on your work schedule, and dinner is at 5:40 P.M. If you're late, you either don't eat or, if the cooks are feeling generous, you get to do a job for them. Most likely it will be dishes. Any questions?"

She looked at me, waiting for an answer. I shook my head no.

"Right....anyways I'll show you to the house you'll be in." I followed her through the small town, receiving curious stares from the few people wondering the streets. "You'll be in a house with about 7 other guys."

"No girls?" I asked.

"Of course not. If you had come here with a family though, you'd be put in a house together with perhaps one or two other families (depending on how big your family is) but otherwise girls and guys have separate houses."

"How come?"

"Just because." We walked in awkward silence for a while. Jess sighed and stopped in her tracks about thirty feet in front of an ugly, red brick house with boarded up windows. She turned and looked at me.

"If you must know, it used to be that both genders would sleep in the same house. But that was way back when we first started to barricade around Cassia." She shifted from one foot to the other and crossed her arms around her chest. I was nearly convinced that she wouldn't say another word, but then, "One of the guys kept harassing these two girls all the time. Whether they were having breakfast, sleeping, or brushing their hair it didn't matter. At first we brushed it off as just teasing, but we didn't notice a lot of the other stuff he was doing. It was a few weeks before we saw the bruises. We asked what had happened, but they just brushed it off with stuff like 'I tripped' or 'Just hit my head on the counter.' And we believed them, why wouldn't we? But a month later we found the two girls together in the same bed. They were stabbed to death. The man disappeared and we haven't seen him since."

"Oh," I said, looking at the ugly house in front of me. "Is this where, um...?"

"Is this where he raped and murdered those two girls? No, though this is where you'll be staying. Unless you plan on leaving, but you're welcome to stay until then."

"Ok. Uh, thanks."

"No problem," She said. "You can go in now and get settled if you'd-"

"Where's Pago?"

"Excuse me?"

"Pago...my dog."

"Oh! The Shiba Inu?"

"Um... I think so."

"He's a beautiful dog! He's yours? Don't worry, we have him perfectly safe. My mom and I treated him and he should be just fine in a few days."

I let out a sigh of relief. Pago has been the best thing to happen to me after Lily.... well I'm just glad that he's going to be ok.

"Can I see him?"

"I think it best if you let him rest for now. In the morning though, perhaps?"

"Yes, I'd like that."

"Cool. Well, if you don't have anymore questions I'll just be-"

"Wait," I interrupted, "I do have one more question."

"Hit me."

I thought for a moment, "Why was there an alien with the other guy? The ones who brought me here."

"Oh, you're talking about Vince and Calliope*, aren't you? Calliope is one of the 'aliens,' if that's what you insist on calling them, that live here who are scavengers, so they were out looking for food when they-"

"Hold on, did you say 'live here'? Aliens live here?!"

"You might not want to say that so loudly. Some people actually get offended when you call them aliens, you know."

"That's what they are and that's what I'm going to call them!"

"Fine, but don't come crying to me when you end up with a black eye or a broken leg."

I closed my eyes and sighed, pulling my hands threw my tangled hair. "This is crazy!" I said, reopening my eyes and throwing my arms in the air, "You can't expect to run a civilization during a war with those things sleeping across the street from us!"

"More like across the hall. Each house has an even number of humans and demins* to make you get used to communicating."

I glared at Jess, "And you aren't bothered by this?"

"I used to be just as skeptic as you. Just go in, talk to them. We aren't so different, you know."

I glanced up at the brick house. The thought of being so close to an alien made me want to puke, or fight, or just snap someone's neck. Preferably an alien's.

"Can I have my stuff back?" I asked, my fists were clenched in tight balls by my sides.

"You're backpack with everything that you had inside of in you can retrieve at dinner."

"And my rapier?"

Jess took a little longer to answer this time, "No weapons are allowed on any person unless they are going out to search for food."

I nodded, I had figured as much.

"Well, I really need to get back to the hospital to help my mom. You've got about"-she checks her watch on her left wrist-"an hour and a half before dinner to get settled and meet all your new housemates. Good luck, and don't be late."

And with that, Jessica smiled and ran off back towards the small shack they call a hospital. I looked up at the brick house and sighed.

"Here goes nothing."

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*Calliope, pronounced kah-LAY-ō-pā the first alien you meet. Also goes by Callie.

*Demins, pronounced DAY-mins, the word used for the alternative dimension humans living on Earth.

(Sorry, I know this chapter is short but I hope to update chapter five soon and it hopefully won't be as boring as this one was.)