When We Meet Again

Prologue

Fear.

Something that has propelled man since the dawn of time was the concept of fear. Fear of the unknown, loss, or even death. Growing up, I was told that fear was all in your head. We've evolved with it. It's what could've saved our ancestors' thousands and thousands of years ago from impending doom. Everyone gets afraid sometimes, but some people more than others.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Me, on the other hand, I grew up not being afraid of much. My parents used to say it was something strange about me. They called it my little superpower. They've told me I've looked in the face of death without even flinching.

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

I was two-years-old when I almost drowned at a neighborhood barbecue. My seven-year-old brother was in charge of watching me make sure I didn't get into any trouble. Like any normal seven-year-old boy, he ran off to play various tag games with his peers. I was hobbling around, exploring the vast area of my neighbor's backyard. We weren't the richest of families, but we weren't on the poverty line by any means necessary. I remember looking at his massive flower bed and slumped down next to the prettiest flower I had ever seen.

A dandelion.

Now, that's not the greatest flower out there, not by a long shot. Especially compared to the thousands of different types of flowers, they make the dandelion look like a pebble trying to pick a fight with a mountain. Being in this lower-middle-class area, we didn't have the best yard on the block, so anything other than weeds and gophers had a hard time thriving in the dry climate of our lawn. I wrapped my stubby little fingers around the stem of the weed and plucked it from its leafy base. As any two-year-old would do, I immediately stuffed the golden bulb into my mouth. Realizing after a few seconds that it wasn't food, I took it out of my mouth with a sour expression slapped on my face, and chucked it back into my neighbor's garden, and walked into the opposite direction, completely losing my love for my discovery.

KA-BOOM!

That's when I noticed the massive blue pit of water dug into the ground. It was surrounded by various tile patterns, giving it a Southern California feel to the area. No one was sitting around the pool at the time, because they were all interested in a new grill that my neighbor had bought. He always had cool stuff that everyone was jealous of. I've never seen anything like his pool before, so I waddled closer to the mysterious structure. I sat down at the edge and reached my hand into the water. It was cold, but not unbearable for a toddler. Just then, I watched a leaf spiral down about two feet away from the edge of the "shore". My neighbor had a massive oak tree in his backyard, and occasionally during the summer months, it would drop down some of its fully developed leaves. Being super interested in the structure of this leaf, I reached out to the leaf, trying to release it from the grasp of the pool. Before I even knew what happened, gravity went against me and I fell into the chilly, crisp water.

CRACK! CRACK!

This next part is a blur. Possibly because my brain is trying to forget the majorly traumatic moments in my life, or maybe it's regular to forget what it's like to inhale copious amounts of water. I'm no doctor. What I do remember was my father pulling me out of the water and attempting to do CPR on my unconscious body. I regained consciousness and threw up all of the chlorinated water I swallowed, and most of the cheap, store-bought hot-dog I had for lunch. I didn't cry when I was done throwing up, and I didn't cry when I was being taken to the emergency room to make sure that I was going to be okay. I don't remember feeling anything.

BAM!

"August. August! C'mon man, snap out of it!"

The gunfire all around me was deafening. Three other men were in the room with us, two of them shooting large rifles out the windows at something below us. The place looked like a rundown apartment that would belong in a cheaper, more ghetto part of a city. The room we were in had a dusty old couch, lampshade, and old bookcase that were completely covered in drywall and paint shavings. The walls had an ugly tint to them, showing that this place had been abandoned for quite a while. There were questionable stains from unknown substances scattered about the area of the floor and ceiling. The paint was starting to chip and peel from the wall.

I was laying on the floor, covered in dust, blood, and debris, meanwhile, the two other men kept firing, while the other man was making sure I wasn't dead. It took me a minute to realize what was happening before it all finally clicked into place. The man shouting for me was shaking my shoulders in a desperate attempt to wake me up from my unconsciousness. Just when I came to, the man closest to the door started reloading his rifle. I heard a loud crack as he threw back his head and hit the floor with a solid thud. Blood was gushing profusely from the back of his head, and a bullet-hole wound the size of a dime in his forehead, just above his right eye.

The other man with the weapon cursed.

"August, you're gonna need cover for him!" the armed man yelled.

Bullets started cracking on the wall behind him, and he hit the deck. He flinched and waited for the gunfire to stop before he could resume his position and continue firing. The other man and I dragged our fallen soldier off to the side closest to the entry. I picked up his rifle, checked to make sure it was loaded and started firing on the enemy below.

Now, it all clicked into place. I remembered what was going on. I remembered why I was here, with these other men, with the high chance of losing my life to a greater enemy.

The revolution.