PART I

“You can’t trust me because I can’t trust you!” I shout at my friend. We’ve been bickering like this for what’s felt like an eternity, and mindlessly going back and forth on who is correct. After we both woke up in the middle of the woods in a shed, nothing has been right. My splintering migraine signifies that the dreary chill in the air isn’t just from the late September weather, but from something much more sinister.

“You seriously don’t remember?!” Garrett hollers back. “We were walking in the woods looking for Rusty. We came across this random shed, and then we blacked out!”

“How could we be looking for Rusty?! You just wanted to explore in the woods, and then you got us lost! We decided to take shelter in this shed, but we fell asleep! You’ve been making up all of these confusing tall tales, and I’ve had enough of it!”

“Making up tall tales? I know what happened, your memory is the one that’s skewed. Don’t act so high and mighty Jacob! You out of all people should be aware that I’m scared of the woods at night, why would I want to explore it?”

“I figured you were just being adventurous! I assumed maybe you wanted a change of pace,” I shrug. Suddenly, a branch outside the shed snaps. My migraine-induced heightened senses make it sound almost like a gunshot. Garrett and I whip our heads around to the door of the shed. We’re both standing to the back, and far from the double barn-looking doors. It’s a red shed, square, cold, and half-full of random sports gear and gardening tools.

“What was that?” Garrett whispers, leaning in close to me. I shiver, I hope that it’s caused by the freezing temperature and not anxiety.

“Don’t look at me like I would know.” Garrett sometimes asked questions that a comic relief side character would ask. However, that never made me want to spend any less time with him. He was usually the only person who was fully able to understand me. I’ve never had a friend as great as Garrett. The doors shake and startle me back to the present. Someone, or some thing; is trying to get in. I reach for one of the baseball bats on the floor, the icy aluminum spreads all throughout my fingers almost instantly. A gust of wind abruptly shakes the shed violently, sending wails of wooshing air all around Garrett and I. It almost sounds like screams. Our thin, gray, zip-up sweatshirts are the only extra layer of clothing keeping us warm. I’m not sure why I didn’t put anything else over my white T-shirt. Jeans, Nike sneakers, and socks aren’t very insulating either. Garrett has practically the same outfit on as I do. The doors rattle again.

“Who’s out there?” I try to be loud, but it just comes out in a neutral tone.

“What are you doing?” Garrett forcefully whispers to me. I don’t reply to Garrett, and nobody replies to me. Maybe I wasn’t loud enough. There’s a clinking noise coming from the doors, but now it isn’t moving. It sounds like there’s a lock being opened. Garrett and I hadn’t actually tried to exit the shed yet, we were too mad at each other to even think of that idea. The lock makes a soft thud, seemingly hitting the ground and disrupting some fallen leaves. The double doors slowly open. A tall and lanky man emerges from the dark void outside. He appears to be an older man, but not quite at the age where people get shorter. He’s pale, like pure fresh-fallen snow. His cheeks are hollow caves, he is wearing a black beanie hat. All of his clothes are black, a puffer jacket, sweatpants, and boots. This man is almost one with the night outside.

“What are you two doing in my shed?” His voice is like sandpaper. All of a sudden I feel hot. What are we supposed to tell this guy? We don’t even know why we’re here.

“Sorry sir, but we ourselves don’t even know how we ended up here,” Garrett says. Garrett is always honest, sometimes to a fault.

“Don’t mess with me, boy,” He grits through brown-stained teeth. The ghostly-looking man scowls so intensely that he dons a unibrow.

“I’m not!” Garrett throws his hands up in front of him, as if he was backing away from a bear. “We randomly woke up in here. My friend and I have been arguing over how we even ended up in here. We’re really truly sorry.” When Garrett finishes talking, he begins to rub on his left temple and squint his eyes. Does he have a migraine too?

“I don’t believe you…” The man growls at us.

“Look! Okay! Uh… We were looking for my friend’s dog… This is my friend Jacob,” I awkwardly raise my hand to wave at the man while side-eyeing Garrett. “We went into the woods to look for his dog, Rusty.” Garrett continues talking, but I don’t hear what he says. My shoulders get tense. I’ve had enough of him mentioning Rusty.

“Garrett, stop! Rusty has been dead for two years! He passed away at the beginning of Sophomore year, remember?”

“Sophomore year? Jacob. What are you talking about? We’re freshmen for goodness sake.” My heart feels like it stops completely.

“What?! That’s it, you’ve officially gone off the rails. Listen to me. We are seniors.” I’m starting to officially get irate at Garrett, which is something that has never happened before. I don’t understand why he’s acting so strangely.

“Alright that’s enough! You two need to get out, now!” the freakish old man bellows at us. His voice is no longer gritty, nor is it grumbling. He swings open the double doors, and exaggeratedly gestures to the woods. Garrett and I reluctantly exit the ratty shed; our only protection from the outside world. Another gust of wind picks up, blustering leaves all over the place. The moon is half-full tonight, and stars adorn the vast sky. The still-mysterious man’s truck is outside the shed, off to the side of the doors. It’s red, but more of a blood-red compared to most red cars.

“Don’t come back, or I’ll be callin’ the cops!” He gets into his truck, turns it on, and drives away. The bright LED headlights offer some temporary hope and illumination before everything gets pitch black again,

“What seems to make you think we’re seniors?” Garrett says, putting his hands on his hips and gawking.

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the fact you’re turning eighteen in December, and I just turned eighteen a week ago? You really don’t have any memory of the last three years of high school?”

“I remember your fifteenth birthday party. Your parents were finally able to get their hands on a PS5 for you. We haven’t been in high school for three years, we just started it.” He was saying all of these things as if they were concrete facts. To some extent, they were. All of the things Garrett was talking about did happen, but the real mystery was why couldn’t he remember anything recent.

“Not to beat a dead horse, but something is definitely wrong here. Let’s pick a direction and start walking. It’s no use to sit and wait in one spot.”

“I hate to say it, but I agree.” I look at Garrett and nod. We begin to walk into the eerie and frigid woods.

PART II

As we walk into the forest, there are ghoulish sounds. Owl hoots cut through the lingering silence, and the monotonous crunching of leaves beneath our feet drone on. I dig around in my jean pocket, hoping to find something to fiddle with. I pull out a small green and black compass. It’s about the size of my thumbnail. The compass points North, and we’re heading East; straight towards the moon. Neither Garrett nor I have spoken to each other in an hour. All of the trees seem to be blending together, each scattered leaf pile matches the one before it. We had to hop over a couple of small streams, but nothing crazy. Eventually, I spot a large, stout, rectangular, white building in the distance.

“Garrett, do you see that building up there?” I grab his shoulder and point up ahead.

“I do! Do you think we should go towards it?” Garrett asks.

“I think it’s worth a shot. This building is the only sign of other human life we’ve seen in an hour. Maybe someone will be around to take us back home.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.” Garrett pats me on the back twice. He’s acting slightly more like himself again, but he still keeps occasionally rubbing his temples and forehead. My migraine hasn’t dissipated one bit since waking up in the shed. When we approach the building, there is a noticeable chain link fence surrounding the whole premises. It towers over Garrett and I. It is probably about three times either of our heights.

“How are we going to get in there?” I ask Garrett.

“Why don’t we just go through that hole in the fence?” Garrett points towards it. There is a hole that has obviously been made with bolt cutters, the person who did it was very haphazard with the procedure. We walk through the gap in the fence. I chalk up my unobservant behavior as a result of my migraine. The building looms over us, and a heavy weight falls upon me. A man with brown hair in a white labcoat opens a back door of the facility, and he is carrying a black trash bag out to the dumpster. This building must be a hospital or something? How have I never seen this place? I grab Garrett’s arm. He better be ready to run. I swiftly sprint towards the door. The man in the coat propped it open with a cone to allow himself to get back in, but we’re going to take advantage of the opening. I can tell Garrett is right behind me, because there’s no tension in my arm. The wind from running has made my ears numb. We successfully make it inside the presumed hospital. In the hallway, there’s a brown door on the right. I push down on the skinny handle, assuming that this is a closet. My hunch is correct. There’s enough room for me and Garrett in here. I drag Garret by the arm again, and I shove him into the closet. I follow him immediately after, shutting the door swiftly. It accidentally thuds shut, hopefully nobody heard it. It feels like the blackness is walls, slowly pushing in. My armpit is being pierced by the handle of what I think is a broom. Everything is dark, I can’t make out any shadows or shapes.

“What are you doing?” Garrett questions me.

“Buying us some time to come up with a pla-” The door opens, reilluminating the closet. That man who had the trash bag is standing right in front of us.

“How did you two…” He trails off and seems like he recognizes us. “How did you two get back in here?”

“What do you mean back in here?” I ask.

“You two are supposed to be in a shed. Not in the lab.” Unexpectedly, the man reaches into the closet and pushes a red button on the wall. It was hidden behind some cleaning supplies on a shelf. The whole closet and the whole hallway turn bright red. Alarms start to sound throughout the building. Men and women from other rooms emerge into the hallway.

“Test subjects one-oh-eight and one-oh-nine have broken into the lab!” The man shouts to the people in the hall. Garrett and I get the same idea to run, but the man holds us firmly in place. It was hard to predict the potential strength of the man when he wasn’t up close and personal. A woman comes up to us with two medical needles, and sticks them in the shoulders of Garrett and me. After a few seconds my vision goes fuzzy. Then, everything is black.

PART III

I wake up in a room with a tile floor, roof, and ceiling. There is a rectangular mirror spanning almost the entirety of the wall to my right, and a security camera in my line of sight in the top middle wall. A brown door, just like the closet door, is directly to my right. I’m tied to a black foldable chair with rope, a gray rectangle-shaped table is in front of me. Garrett is tied to a chair on the other end of the table. I attempt to wiggle myself free, but I barely move an inch.

“Garrett!” I shout. He’s seemingly unconscious. His head is completely relaxed and slumped down. My migraine is worse than ever; my vision is fuzzy on both sides. I feel nauseous, and this whole situation is malaising. The bright fluorescent lights are definitely not helping. I look over into the lens of the security camera, there’s a flashing red light on it.

“Hey! Let us out of here!” I try to think of some act of defiance. My arms are at my sides, but my hands are relatively free. I notice they’re free enough to grab the bottom of the chair. I shake and thrash my body, violently moving around in place. I realize that wasting my energy on movement was a bad idea. I feel more exhausted than I did before. I look back over at Garrett, and he has a bloody nose. Did he have a bloody nose before? I sniffle in an attempt to identify if I have a bloody nose as well, but it doesn’t seem like I do. The door handle begins to rattle. The hairs on my neck stand up, and it feels like blood is rushing out of me. The door slowly begins to open, and a woman in a white labcoat stands in the doorway. She has black medium-length hair, severe bangs, and brown eyes. She has bright red lipstick that sticks out against her skin. She is almost as pale as the man from earlier. She also has on a pair of black glasses with full rims. She enters the room with the speed of a cat; a cat that is nervous to take a treat from its owner’s hand. The woman goes and stands by the side of the table, with her back to the mirror. Which I now realize is probably a one-way mirror. She is right in between me and Garrett.

“Well… it seems you couldn’t get enough of this place.” Her voice sounds like Maleficent. I know this because I just watched Sleeping Beauty with my little sister a few days ago. I begged my mom not to make me watch it with her, but it was to no avail. It was the most boring seventy-five minutes of my life, but what I wouldn’t give to be back home watching silly cartoons with my sister now. I begin to cry. In my desperation I try to call for Garrett again.

“Garrett- p-please, please, wake up!”

“Oh stop it,” the woman rolls her eyes at me. “Don’t be a baby. Besides, crying isn’t going to do you any good now.”

“What are you going to do to us?!” I yell at her through tears. My vision is more clouded than before.

“A better question would be, ‘What have you done to us?’ You don’t seem very intrigued about your relationship to our lab.”

“Fine… what haAave you done to us?” I mock her, I want her to think I am not scared of her. I glare at her brown eyes. The woman begins to slowly pace back and forth, ping ponging between me and Garrett.

“Two of our finest doctors kidnapped you, but you would have no recollection of this. We took you both into our operating room, and did experiments on your brain; and your friend’s brain as well. We only intended to remove the kidnapping from your memory, but the procedure went wrong when we tried it for the first time. Have you perchance noticed that Garrett’s recollection of the past few years is non-existent? We ruined his memory quite a bit, so his recollection of things is going to be flawed forever. It seems anything before high school is all that’s still intact. As for your brain, we only had an error when it came to noticing your surroundings. You two were in here for a few days as we observed your behaviors, and by temporarily preventing your brain from creating long-term memories; we were able to ensure you wouldn’t remember that time we spent observing you and Garrett. We planted a fake late night forest expedition into your head, and then we knocked you out with chloroform; and stuck you in a shed in the woods.”

When she finished speaking, a loud thud was heard from outside the room.

“So what are you going to do now? Haven’t you already tortured us enough?!” I worry that I already know the answer to this question.

“Well it’s not like we can let you go. We’ll probably have to kill you and-” Just then, the door flies open.

“PUT YOUR HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM!” a cop hollers. My head throbs with pain at how loud he is. He has his gun pointed right at the woman. She raises her hands high up above her head. The cop must’ve woken up Garrett, because his head is straight up now. Garrett’s eyes groggily open, most likely adjusting to the bright lights. I almost shout his name, but I don’t want to startle the cop. I simply sit patiently, I let out a sigh. Another cop enters the room. He has handcuffs. The first cop frees me from the chair.

“Don’t worry kid. We’ll get you home safe. Both of your parents had been worried sick about you.” He walks over to Garrett, who is still attempting to process what is happening around him. Garrett’s rope is untied. My best friend looks over to me and he attempts to smile, but he is obviously tired. The woman is now in handcuffs, and is being escorted out of the room. The cop who freed me speaks to me again.

“Thankfully, old Arthur called and complained about two random teens in his shed. We’re going to shut down this lab and arrest anyone affiliated with harming you.”