The Criminal Diaries

      A little later, a big black spot shows up before Peter’s eyes, and Dark Theodore gets out of it with his head proudly raised. The one who looks as deathly pale and horrifying as the other demons, who are sure that they can win if the men get a victory thanks to the rude, furious power, and if the girls use the illusions that can strike the light versions down for a while and make them remember some especially disgusting actions of Rose toward them. Peter himself looks closely at his demonic copy without emotion, not even thinking of resisting, hiding, or answering. While Dark Theodore himself looks at him as if he is the winner, who finally got what he wanted.       “This moment has come,” Dark Theodore pronounces in a low, demonic voice. “You will be erased from the ground. I shall take the place I belong to. The one you’ve been taking for so many years.”       “Take…” Peter replies powerlessly. “Take everything… I have nothing to lose…”       “A little time before the folks in that world realize that reviving you doesn’t make sense. No screams of theirs can bring you back to life. Because you will die. You will go to where you belong. Hellish hell. Where you, bastard, will be burning in the fiery hyena. Paying for all your sins.”       “I am ready… Go…”       Dark Theodore laughs quietly and sinisterly at first, but then his laugh becomes more hysterical and louder. So loud that it literally shakes the ground and makes Light Daniel and Light Helene fighting so bravely fall to the ground and let their opponents give them a long-awaited crushing hit. Understanding that he is doomed, Peter doubles over, covers his face with both hands, and starts crying bitterly as he swallows the air greedily since he lacks it catastrophically. At some moment, he makes a heartbreaking, long-lasting scream, for which he magically finds the strength.       “I DON’T WANT TO DIE!” Peter screams. “I WANT TO LIVE! BUT I AM TOO WEAK! WEAK IN FRONT OF THIS WORLD! I CAN’T FIGHT IT! I CANNOT!”       Peter screams hysterically again when he clenches his hands into fists and hits them against the ground several times, tensing all his muscles from the pain.       “I WANNA ESCAPE! I WANT TO GET OUT OF MYSELF! I AM LOCKED INSIDE ME! I AM SCARED! I AM CHOKING! I FEEL BAD! I FEEL VERY BAD! A-A-A-A-A!”       After screaming a lot, Peter just stands on his knees and leans on the ground with his hands, with a heavy breath, while drops of tears roll down his cheeks. The screams of his friends that he can hear through the so-called deaf wall make his condition much worse and bring him closer and closer to uncontrolled hysteria. And failures that Light Daniel and Light Helene start chasing him become the reason why the dark claims its rights again and envelops everything around, not letting even the smallest shoot of light get through the leaden clouds.       “Wait a little, three minutes before you’re finally dead,” Dark Theodore announces, looking at his watch. “The angels will lose when this time is gone. When fighting for your life doesn’t make sense to them. When the people from the world of the living have to save money for your funeral. If they think you deserve this honor, of course.”       “A-A-A-A, GET OUT, EVERYONE!” Peter demands. “LEAVE ME ALONE! I WANT TO SEE NOBODY! NOBODY! AND NOTHING! JUST LEAVE ME ALONE! LET ME DIE QUIETLY!”       After sneering sinisterly, Dark Theodore takes a blade from the pocket of his leather jacket and raises it above Peter crying bitterly and sitting on the dirty ground. He wants to put it deeply in the back of Rose, but at some moment, the invisible wave made by Light Helene with her magic throws him back. While the demon falls to the ground and lets go of his blade, someone comes to Peter slowly but confidently, gets down to the knees, and raises his face by the chin softly. When he moves his wet eyes up, the guy freezes for a moment when he sees Cornelia. The skinny, pale woman with blisters on her skin, signs of premature aging, and bleary eyes full of kindness.       “M-mother?” Peter pronounces hesitantly in a shaking voice.       “Alright then…” Dark Theodore strokes down his hair after he stands up. “Alright. Talk to your mommy for a goodbye. But I will go to help my brothers and sisters kill this sweet couple of angels.”       Theodore goes to the side where the fight between the angels and the demons is still on. Although it’s impossible to say Light Helene and Light Daniel are losing, it’s impossible to talk about their victory. Even if there are many more demons, who become strong in a certain magical way, striking the angels with dark magic again and again and giving them crushing hits, which these two fight off so hard. The dark ones confuse the light ones with destructive illusions that easily break the protective shield into a million little pieces and leave mild burns on their skin.       “What…” Peter rounds his eyes, looking at Cornelia in mistrust. “What are you doing here?”       “You’re not ready to die yet, my boy,” Cornelia says softly. “Your time on the earth is not gone yet.”       “Did you die… Or…”       “I’m already dead. I froze to death during one of the latest winters. I drank too much vodka, fell in the snow, and didn’t get up. Though the temperature was almost -22 ºF, and it was heavily snowing. So, I died outside, and nobody cared about me.”       “It all looks like a weird dream. It’s like I’m sleeping… It’s all not happening in reality.”       “No, my sweetie, it’s not a dream. You are one step away from the afterlife. If you don’t change your mind, you will die.”       “I can’t… I can’t go back. I don’t want!”       “You must, Peter. You have close people. You have reasons to keep living.”       “People deprived me of this wish. With their indifference. With their cruelty.”       “I am really very sorry, sonny. I am sorry about what happened.”       “Can I ask you one question? The only question that’s bothered me all my life.”       “Sure!”       After a short, tense pause, Peter sniffs and raises his head a little, asking confidently:       “Did you ever love me? Just a little! Did you really regret agreeing to take me out and raise me?”       “I did,” Cornelia replies with no hesitation, caressing Peter’s cheek with a slight smile. “Very much.”       “You gave a damn about me when I needed you so badly. You blamed me for all the sins, and you didn’t believe me when I told you about the rape. You beat me every time you got a chance.”       “I know… And I am very sorry about it. God punished me for the way I treated you.”       “Was I really so disgusting to you?”       “No, Peter, you were my happiness. The reason why I wanted to live. I was happy when they gave me the bundle you were in. I wasn’t able to give birth – that’s why I considered that meeting a gift from heaven. I thought my husband and I would live happily. But… Jeffrey had different plans. And you and I were not a part of this. And I could not handle it.”       “I get it. But I didn’t ask you for anything impossible. Just some love and care. Nothing more. But I didn’t even get it.”       “I honestly tried to wean myself away from alcohol several times. For you. I understood you needed me, you were a little and unprotected baby. And I held on for several weeks and months. At these moments, you and I lived like a loving mother and a son.”       “But I remember nothing good from what connected us. I only remember your reproaches, charges, and hits. I remember I had bruises all over my whole body for weeks. Or actually fractures.”       “Nevertheless, there were good moments. There were times when you and I were more or less close. Especially after I once saved you when you almost drowned in the river not far from home.”       “Yeah, I remember…” Peter glances aside. “I played with a ball that fell in the water. I tried to get it back, but I couldn’t swim. So, I started to flail and scream out for help. But I swallowed water, choked, and came down rapidly…”       “Not quite. You almost drowned because you wanted it.”       “Wanted?”       “It happened some time after you told me about what Garret did. You went to the river closer to the evening and jumped into it at your will. Even if you could really barely swim. And you didn’t resist when you started to get down. You didn’t fight for your life. You tried to kill yourself.”       “Really?” Peter’s eyes start running chaotically from side to side.       “I went by with my drinking buddies, being a little drunk. But I got immediately sober when I saw you drowning. I left everyone instantly, rushed to you, jumped in the water, got you out, and started to revive you because you didn’t breathe. And luckily, you woke up quickly. I covered you with my warm shirt, took you in my arms, pressed you to me, and drove you to the hospital so that you were closely examined.”       “But… I always thought I jumped in that river accidentally.”       “No, not accidentally…”       “I dunno… Maybe you’re right… The memories of my childhood were blocked. Because of the case with Garret. I’m just starting to get them back. To my sadness.”       “Anyway, I hope you will no longer consider me a certain monster, who didn’t love you at all.”       “It’s… It’s hard for me to believe you yet… But your words about you loving me… They… Warm my soul.”       “Forgive me, Peter…” Cornelia begs with pity in her eyes, putting her hands on Peter’s cheeks. “Forgive me, old, stupid woman, for treating you like this. I am sorry about not being next to you when you needed it so badly. I am so ashamed of it…”       “Mom…”       “I know just apologizing wouldn’t be enough after everything I’ve done. I became a terrible mother for you. Since I agreed to educate you, I should’ve done it with responsibility. I should’ve protected you from this world.”       “If you really understand it, I’m glad.”       “Will you forgive me?” Cornelia takes Peter’s hands. “Will you forgive your mother? Maybe I’m not a biological one, but I’m your mother anyway. Please, sonny, let her soul calm down. She can’t find peace here. Because she is suffering from a sense of shame. A sense of regret.”       “Yeah,” Peter smiles shyly. “I forgive you. And I’m not mad at you.”       “Really?”       “You had a choice of not taking me with you. But you did it. And you didn’t leave me even after your husband left you. No matter what, I didn’t end up outside. I didn’t live in an orphan house where they wouldn’t have treated me better. I didn’t end up… Abroad… In the slavery of rich people…”       “Thank you, my boy. Thank you so much. Thank you, my sweetheart… You made me so happy. Now I will be very happy.”       “May your soul rest in peace.” Peter caresses Cornelia’s hand. “No matter what, I love you anyway and will never forget.”       “Aw, Peter, my sonny…”       Cornelia, exhaling with relief, takes Peter in a strong hug, which he answers with pleasure. At some moment, the woman starts crying bitterly too, caressing the guy’s head and kissing him on the cheek a couple of times. Even if everything that’s happening seems unreal to him, this warming feeling is familiar to him. Maybe he remembers it vaguely, but he starts to believe that he was really close to his adopted mother and had a good chance of getting along with her.       “I love you, Peter…” Cornelia pronounces in a shaking voice.       “Love you too…” Peter replies softly. “Mom…”       “I will always be the one. Always.”       “I hope you’re gonna feel good here. Gonna have something to get busy with.”       “Don’t worry, my sweetie, I don’t feel bored here.”       Cornelia steps away from Peter.       “I’m not alone. All my late relatives are here. Those I reunited with forever.”       “And you… Didn’t meet… Julia… Well… My… Real mother?”       “I did. Although she didn’t manage to hold you, her love for you is really strong. Julia is always next to you in hard moments.”       “Maybe… Sometimes I feel… Someone watches me. With kindness… With warmth.”       “She’s very happy Marcus didn’t bring his plans to an end and didn’t kill you.”       “Thanks to my friends. The second family that means a lot to me.”       “Go to them then! Reunite with the girl you love! Become the best friend for all of them.”       “And my girlfriend? You like her?”       “Very much. And Julia does admire her.”       “Gonna think I got the blessing.”       “Return to the world of the living and surround her with care. Marry her and raise many wonderful children. I hope God didn’t deprive her of such a wonderful gift as giving birth to babies.”       “I’d be happy to, but I’m not sure if I can live with everything that’s happened. Everything I just found out.”       “Sonny…”       In parallel, the fight between the demons and the angels is not even going to stop. The Dark ones sneer evilly and raise their heads proudly, striking down the Light ones, for whom it’s getting harder to hold on in this unequal battle. Besides, Dark Theodore helps them too, whose crushing power makes the victory of the evil people much more possible. He easily creates the magic wave that throws Light Daniel and Light Helene two meters away and makes them roll on the ground with a deafening groan. Breathing heavily, they sit up slowly and put the rest of their strength together to stand up and keep fighting. But the girl’s magic is weak, and her staff breaks into two parts, while the man’s hands are literally rooted to the ground so that he cannot raise them, no matter how hard he tries. They cannot help each other anymore since they are absolutely powerless, and the rest of their strength is subdued by the illusions Dark Helene creates with the help of Dark Theodore.       “Good job, demons!” Dark Daniel exclaims with pride he cannot hide. “We have won again!”       “Let’s take the souls of these poor folks right now,” Dark Natalia encourages with her head proudly raised.       “Of course, these fools held on well, but nobody has been able to resist our power yet,” Dark Helene smiles slyly.       “And knowing this asshole has literally two minutes in that world, he can stop trying to hope on a miracle,” Dark Edward adds confidently.       “Oh, oh, look, how scared they are…” Dark Raquelle walks around the angels with the look of a winner. “How they are shaking… I do sense the smell of fear and hopelessness…”       “Too bad this story will not have a happy ending,” Dark Terrence laughs sinisterly and squeezes something invisible with his fingers, using his magic to squeeze the throat of Light Daniel tightly.       “Another proof of the fact that love cannot save the one who is doomed to suffer forever,” Dark Anna adds, waving one hand and clenching another into a fist to put the invisible rope around the neck of Light Helene.       “Alright, Dark Ones, I no longer want to waste time on these pathetic creatures,” Dark Theodore says confidently and uses his magic to lift Light Daniel from the ground, while the man keeps choking from a lack of air. “Destroy these two bastards now!”       “Dark Gentlemen, deal with this angel, but we, Dark Ladies, will deal with this freak,” Dark Helene sneers evilly, drawing something in the air with both hands and giving Light Helene unbearable pain.       By this moment, Light Helene and Light Daniel stop fighting and resisting since their strength is close to zero, and the Dark ones pushed them into the corner, from which they are not going to let them go. The demons do understand it well and start laughing evilly, thinking they are so close to dealing with this couple and killing all the light and kindness Peter still has deep inside and taking his soul with them to hell, where he would never escape. Peter himself steps away from Cornelia at some moment and grabs himself by the throat with the sense of the heaviness in his chest and the unbearable pain in his heart, doubling over, moaning quietly, and falling powerlessly to the ground before the eyes of his adopted mother.       “Peter, sonny!” Cornelia screams in horror.       “H-help…” Peter groans quietly and winces strongly. “P-please… I feel bad…”       “I’m sorry I can’t help you.”       “Please…”       “You’re strong, my boy. Since you survived many times before, you can do this now.”       “I can’t do this… I’m too weak… I’m lonely…”       “Not true, sunshine, it’s gonna be okay.”       “I wanna stay here…” Peter moans painfully. “With you… Please…”       “No, Peter, you will not stay!” Cornelia exclaims harshly. “You will not let the darkness swallow you!”       “My time has come…”       “You must not die! You must not let the dark version of you win and kill all the good you have inside.”       “I have no strength…” Peter grabs his throat much tighter and sits up slowly. “And a wish…”       “If you feel weak, come to your greatest power. The one you keep in your heart.” Cornelia puts her hand on Peter’s heart. “Your friends and girlfriend. They are your shield and sword. Your power and confidence. Your happiness and hope.”       “I’ve lost it! I don’t wanna come back…” Peter coughs quietly, noticing that his hands become transparent rapidly. “The place where… Pain is alive… Where I’d be afraid of it… I’m sick… I can’t…”       “Peter…”       “May everything be over… Here… I can’t… I wanna… Find peace… After all…”       “No, sunshine!”       “May the infinite dark take me out!” Peter notices that a transparent hole shows up on his chest and gets bigger and bigger. “May it swallow me! May it take my soul! May it take everything I have! MAY EVERYTHING END ONCE AND FOREVER!”       “NO WAY!”       Cornelia squeezes Peter in her hug as tightly as possible, starting to cry bitterly at some moment, while her numb lips shake slightly and try to release just one word.       “No, sonny, no… I will not give them to you… I will not… The evil incarnates will not take you out… No…”       “Please, Mother…” Peter sobs quietly. “Let me go…”       Meanwhile, the dark demons laughing evilly are going to get rid of the light ones, who have already accepted their fate, with the most powerful mortal spell they know. But then sparkling arrows show up out of nowhere and reach the evil folks, getting into the hearts of some of them. That’s why Dark Edward and Dark Natalia moan painfully from pain and double over. While the others look at each other, being confused, Dark Daniel and Dark Ana get thrown back with the invisible wave, and Dark Theodore and Dark Helene scream from the strong burn on their hands. When Dark Terrence and Dark Raquelle being enraged try to use their magic, the invisible power turns them into statues for seconds so that they cannot move and take a deep breath. They can only make a quiet groan and growl irritably.       When something lowers them down slowly and safety, Light Helene and Light Daniel see their friends standing in front of them with a slight smile – Light Anna, Light Raquelle, Light Natalia, Light Terrence, and Light Edward. All of them are wearing white clothes and spreading the light as they use their magic skill to save their friends and heal the scars they got in the battle. While Light Daniel and Light Helene look at each other with a slight smile and share it with their friends, who came here just in time.       “Hey, did you miss us?” Light Anna asks confidently, creating colorful sparkles in the air with her fingers, so that she heals Light Sammy lying powerlessly on the ground and treats his wounds.       “Need some help?” Light Terrence adds proudly, turning the silver rod above his head and pointing it at the demons with no hesitation when he spreads his legs shoulder wide and clenches his free hand into a fist.       Cornelia keeps hugging Peter, who watches surprisingly the fight that is happening before his eyes and sees that many more people have joined it. Light Terrence and Light Edward help Light Daniel get up on his feet. Light Anna, Light Raquelle, and Light Natalia come to help Light Helene. And Light Sammy runs happily to the team of the angels, wagging his tail amicably and having pleasure from accepting the caress from everyone, who strokes his head or claps him slightly on the back.       “Oh, look, a crowd of angels joined us!” Dark Terrence hisses, looking contemptuously at the angels who just showed up and paying special attention to his light copy. “Several more pathetic parodies of ours.”       “I can’t be compared to you at all!” Light Terrence protests, shaking his head slightly. “Even if you tried to copy me, someone like me is unique. He is the only one in this world.”       “M-m-m, I feel we’re going to have an excellent dinner tonight,” Dark Raquelle sneers evilly, creating a small dark ball in the air and clenching it in her hand, “Well, my appetite is so wild now.”       “You'd better keep your strength for someone who should really go to hell,” Light Raquelle advises. “Not for the soul that can still be saved.”       “It’s okay, more people, more hearts, guts, and souls!” Dark Anna smiles smugly, licking her sharp claws that she releases. “More fresh blood…”       “You see blood and guts, but I see the souls we must save,” Light Anna replies quietly. “And protect from negative and dirt.”       “Yeah, I thought we’d only have to enjoy the rotten snack,” Dark Natalia says thoughtfully, fixing her hair graciously. “But the fresh food came to us by itself!”       “I don’t advise you to eat a lot because you may lose your beauty, and demons don’t want to spend nights with you,” Light Natalia snaps. “You have nothing but beauty to use.”       “Don’t snap and show off, little angels,” Dark Edward snaps. “It will not help you when tongues of the fiery fire kick your naked ass fucking hard.”       “Let’s see what you can show us now when there are more of us,” Light Edward puts his hands on his hips. “See if you’re not cowards who refuse to fight with us honestly.”       “M-m-m, I think I see some signs that indicate this pathetic creature has some brain…” Dark Terrence pronounces poisonously.       “Ha, even if you all came here, it didn’t give you any benefit,” Dark Theodore states, walking from side to side proudly. “There are many more of us. It means we can crush you like a pearl.”       “We will see it!” Light Anna replies confidently. “We do believe the power of kindness, friendship, and unity can defeat any evil.”       “Demons, let’s end this shit right now,” Dark Daniel takes a step forward. “Do it quickly, shortly, without senseless talk.”       “Peter Rose is still trying to resist, but we will get a victory anyway,” Dark Helene states.       “Let’s go, angels!” Light Daniel quietly but determinedly. “We must get a victory in this battle!”       By the order of Dark Terrence playing the role of a certain alpha, the demons’ team moves forward furiously all together, starting to sing the song about the monster and its real side again. While the female demons get ready to make dark magic with their hands, the male demons are going to give crushing hits with fists and feet. The male angels use all their physical strength and create magic rods and tridents, while the female angels take each other’s hands and create the impenetrable shield so that no manipulations of their opposite work on it. And alongside it, they start to sing a song back. It’s about the angel with a wounded soul, who needs help to escape this hell. Light Sammy groaning furiously attacks Dark Sammy determinedly, striking him down and sinking his teeth into his neck so tightly that the dark dog starts whining with pity and hits his opponent with his paws in hope of setting himself free.       Even if there is one person less in their team, the angels act as if nothing can stop them anymore. The men and the girls become a real team and come to help each other out all the time, while the first ones show their power and determination, and the second ones show their grace and accuracy. Music is also a very important part of this battle, and the lyrics of both songs can hold down the power of both sides, at least for a while. Salvos get out of the fingers like hell out of a snuffbox, arrows from bows hit the opponents, the blades always reach the goal, tornado kicks are always brilliant, hits are clear, and one wave of a rod or hand is enough to make a deafening or striking spell.       Meanwhile, it’s getting easier for Peter to breathe, and the intercostal pain squeezing starts to get weaker little by little, even if the hole in his chest keeps growing a little slower now. Besides, he can hear the deafening call of his friends still fighting for his life so hard and racking their vocal cords with heartbreaking screams and pleas not to die. He hears the angels repeat they will not give up on their brother and are ready to fight for him until the very end, singing confidently the song that makes the demons scream and double over from pain. He is crying quietly in the hugs of Cornelia, who caresses his head tenderly, kisses him on the temple, and starts shaking him like a child and singing him a lullaby in her squeaky but tender voice full of warmth. The corners of his mouth show something like a smile. This is the first time he gets so much of his mother’s love he dreamed about all his life. The love that is the reason why he gets a wish to get out of here again. Though he is still ashamed. He is scared. He is afraid to remain lonely and live with what he recently found out.       “Fight, my boy,” Cornelia begs in a shaking voice, caressing Peter’s cheek tenderly. “Fight, my sweetie. You can’t die.”       “I’m scared…” Peter sobs. “I’m weak…”       “You have very little time. If you don’t decide it now, you’re gonna die for sure.”       “I want to live… But I’m afraid… I can’t… If I stay alone… If nobody forgives… If everyone turns their back on me.”       “If everyone turned their backs on you, the guys wouldn’t rack their cords in that world, begging you to breathe and open your eyes.”       “What if it’s an illusion? The demons’ illusion…”       “It’s not an illusion, Peter. This is the battle that’s happening inside you. Your dark side is trying to take control of the light one and deprive you of all feelings and emotions. What you see in front of you is what’s happening inside you. You’re struggling. You don’t know what to do. If you wanna stay, the demons win. If you wanna come back, the angels do.”       “Do you think the guys won’t turn their backs on me? Do you think they won’t regret deciding to get in touch with me?”       “The answer is behind you,” Cornelia smiles mysteriously.       “What?” Peter frowns. “What do you mean?”       When Cornelia starts looking aside, Peter steps away, turns back slowly, and sees the angels singing in ringing and high voices getting the highest chance to win the fight with the demons running from side to side in search for a salvation like scared animals and stopping to seem a threatful pack that is ready to destroy everything in its way. Everyone of them started a fight with their copy, and Light Daniel has to fight with Dark Daniel and Dark Theodore at the same time, but he does not give them any chance anyway. The girls do not use the strength. They use magic. The magic they create with hands and rods, creating a shield and hitting their opponents with powerful spells that strike them down and take their power away. The men focus on using their physical strength, giving clear hits with fists in the vulnerable areas, and using all the fighting tricks they know. And they also use the weapons they create out of the air to fight off the attacks and give their opponent much more serious damage. Being sure about their victory, the angels start smiling during the fight, making the demons enraged and forcing them to incite each other against the Light ones with words and threats.       “I imagine how you’re going to cry bitterly now if I make you ugly,” Dark Natalia hisses through her teeth. “If I make you bald, with a lot of scars and bruises.”       But when Dark Natalia creates a dark burst of energy and points it at her opponent, Light Natalia melts it easily with the shield. Then she runs her hand over the air, grabs the trident she makes and pierces her copy with it with no hesitation. The demon only makes a deafening moan before she turns to the dark cloud that melts immediately in the air.       “Let’s see what your pack is going to do without an alpha,” Dark Terrence sneers evilly. “Who chose himself the one.”       Dark Terrence tries to attack his opponent and smash his fist in his face on the run, but Light Terrence answers him back, pushes him off himself rudely with a powerful hit of the foot, creates a blade in the air, and puts it silently fully into the chest of his opponent. Then the demon screaming painfully turns to a piece of dust that gets carried away by the strong gusts of the wind.       “I hope you’re going to love taking a lava bath,” Dark Edward states. “This is the only one you’re going to have in hell.”       Light Edward creates a small burst of energy with his hands and points it at Dark Edward screaming after he gets painful burns that melt his skin like acid. Then the angel draws a line in the air sharply so that it leaves a deep wound in the chest of his opponent and makes a tornado kick, hitting his temple with his foot. After this, the demon melts in the air for seconds, begging someone to help him, but having no chance against the one who is stronger.       “Accept your loss, loser!” Dark Raquelle advises. “You have nobody to play the role of a wise and holy one for.”       Dark Raquelle growling irritably tries to break the shield Light Raquelle creates with fireballs she makes in the air. The light one smiling slightly controls the protection with both hands, trying to keep her opponent within her view so that she does not attack her from behind. But when the demon clenches her hands into fists with rolled eyes and screams furiously, the angel takes off the guard and waves her hand with her natural grace, freezing her opponent and turning her to a piece of thick ice. Which she easily breaks into pieces with her second hand, so that they fall to the ground and melt immediately.       “You will have nobody to save you in hell,” Dark Anna says confidently. “You will not even save yourself.”       Light Anna just smiles sweetly, turns the rod Dark Anna creates to ashes, and uses her magic to create a big, bright, sparkling burst that she points at her opponent with her mind. The screaming demon is surrounded by the white light, in which she melts little by little, no matter how hard she tries to get out. And then the angel destroys the portal once and forever with just one click of her fingers, keeping her head proudly raised.       Light Helene and Light Daniel fight fearlessly against Dark Helene, Dark Daniel, and Dark Theodore side by side. The angels stand shoulder to shoulder under the powerful magic protection, which even three demons cannot take off, no matter what they do. The girl draws different figures in the air with her rod and hand, making spells that deprive her opponent of strength. The demons’ skin melts rapidly, her fingers become kind of numb and refuse to work, and the blinding light gets out of the wound in her chest, taking the soul of the one to rack her cords. And when Light Helene pierces the edge of the rod into the stomach of Dark Helene, the evil girl melts into millions of colorful pieces that explode like a firework and fall to the ground.       Although it’s much harder for Light Daniel to fight with two demons at the same time, he is holding on confidently enough, does not put his head on his shoulder, and does not put his tail between his legs out of fear. The angel gives a powerful hit of fists against the faces of Dark Daniel and Dark Theodore at the same time. He hits his foot against the chest of the first one and against the jaw of the other, uses his magic to squeeze the throat of Peter’s dark version, and strikes his copy down. When Dark Daniel tries to attack him with poisoned arrows, Light Daniel has to jump and squat a lot, avoiding the attacks easily and melting some of them in the air with just one wave of his hand. He gets close enough to his opponent to smash his foot against his groin, then break his neck with one clear movement, and cut it with a knife he creates in the air. Then he creates a rod and, growling irritably on the run, puts it deeply into the stomach of Dark Theodore. While the demon freezes with widely open eyes from pain, the angel cuts the enemy with the rod like a piece of paper. The black cloud breaks into thousands of pieces and fills everything around for a moment.       The powerful explosive wave shakes the ground along with the choir of the angels’ voices and almost strikes down all the angels, who take each other’s hands and magically manage to keep the balance, being a little tired after the hard battle. The strong gusts of the wind raise whirls of dirt, dust, and sand in the air, but the thick dark around starts fading away little by little, giving in to the bright light that melts the clouds in the sky. At this moment, Light Sammy barks furiously at Dark Sammy lying powerlessly and whining with pity, but turning to ashes by himself. Then the light dog falls into silence, looks closely into the bunch that melts right before his eyes, and almost falls due to the powerful gusts of the wind.       Meanwhile, Peter crying quietly and being powerless is still sitting on the ground and keeping his eyes wide open as he watches those who are standing in front of him with a look of the winners and shares a slight smile with him. The guy lacking the air pays attention to the doggy that is wagging his tail amicably with his tongue out, while the strand of his hair get into his eyes due to the strong gusts of the wind that, however, gets light shades of the warmth and no longer makes his teeth bash in a crazy rhythm and twirl into a curl from the unbearable frost.       “Decide now, Peter, tick tack, tick tack!” the teenage version of Peter exclaims, showing up out of nowhere, and knocks on the dial of his watch with his finger. “Time is going by! You have two minutes only!”       “Go, my sweetheart, go to the guys,” Cornelia says softly. “Don’t make them wait.”       “I can’t…” Peter shakes his head.       “You can! My boy must be strong. He can’t give up so easily. And Julia doesn’t want to see you fall and give up. She does believe in you.”       “I’m scared… If the guys don’t forgive me, I won’t survive all alone.”       “You’ll never be alone. Your guardian angels will always be near. I will not leave you. I will be watching you and helping you. Guiding you.”       “Please, Mom… I wanna stay here. I wanna be with you. Forever.”       “It’s time, Peter, time has come!” Cornelia gets up on her feet. “Go! Go home. Come back to life!”       Peter swallows nervously and inclines his head, still hesitating and not being sure about his decision, even if all his friends, who had a cruel fight with the demons, whom they defeated all together, are waiting for him. And he moves his eyes hesitantly to Light Daniel when the man comes to him confidently and gives him a hand.       “We’ll get through this,” Light Daniel promises. “Together.”       After hesitating a little and sniffing loudly, Peter takes the hand of Light Daniel, who helps him get up without problems. Then he sees someone running up to him out of nowhere… He sees himself?! As a little baby, at the age of six or seven. With his hands spread aside and a wild smile, the boy runs to the adult himself and takes him in a strong hug. Even if he is a little confused, Rose presses the boy to himself and caresses his head tenderly, squatting down at some moment, while the boy closes his watered eyes tightly. At this moment, the blond is taken in the arms of the fourteen-year-old version of him. And then Light Theodore comes to him and puts his hand on his shoulder, making the blond move his eyes to him and get up. Then the light one takes Rose in his strong hug silently, without a warning, while his copy answers it hesitantly without understanding what’s wrong.       And when Peter decides to hug his light copy tighter, the bright white light flashes before his eyes. It’s the reason why he has to close his eyes. When he opens them again, he surprisingly sees that Light Theodore and his younger versions are all suddenly gone. And he gets a feeling that something inside him has changed after this. It’s like something has returned to its place. It’s something like… Relief?! A little relief that lets him breathe heavily. Take a deep breath. Feel that he kind of reunited with the part of himself that he denied and rejected for a long time.       At some moment, Light Helene comes to him, hugs Peter tightly, and kisses him tenderly on the cheek. Light Anna, Light Natalia, and Light Raquelle caress his shoulder, and he smiles at them shyly in reply. And when the guy looks guiltily at Light Edward, Light Terrence, and Light Daniel, they clap him slightly on the shoulder, head, or cheek, looking at him as if they let him know that they will always be by his side, no matter what. Sammy gets the attention of Rose too by barking a couple of times, butting his head against his legs, and rubbing his face against them. It makes Peter smile shyly and caress the dog’s head, while the retriever wags his tail amicably.       “We’ve been here for too long!” Light Terrence breaks the silence cheerfully. “Don’t ya think, guys?”       “Yeah, it’s time to go home,” Light Edward smiles shyly. “We have nothing more to do here.”       “C’mon, Peter!” Light Raquelle exclaims. “It’s time to go!”       “Hey, hurry up!” Light Natalia jabs. “We have very little time!”       “Maybe you will go without me?” Peter asks hesitantly. “Let me stay here?”       “Maybe next time,” Light Daniel replies. “But now we need to go.”       “If we don’t hurry up, the gate is gonna close,” Light Anna adds. “And we won’t get you out of here.”       “I’m not sure if I want this!” Peter shakes his head.       “But we do want it!” Light Helene states determinedly. “And we will not let you go to another world until it’s vice versa!”       With these words, Light Helene takes Peter’s hand tightly.       “C’mon, guys!” Light Daniel raises his head proudly, hugging Peter around the shoulders. “It’s time to come back.”       Even if Peter tries to break free and turn around, his friends and girlfriend take him away anyway. Further and further from his teenage copy, who keeps standing in the same place next to Cornelia, who smiles at him shyly.       “Please…” Peter pronounces in a begging way as he looks back.       But nobody answers him. Teenage Peter and Cornelia keep smiling at him shyly, watching Peter’s return to the world of the living, in which his friends and girlfriend are close to hysteria since they cannot bring the guy back to life, despite their efforts and pleas. Their heartbreaking screams reach out to the blond’s ears again and again, like through the deaf wall: the girls cry bitterly, or the men strain their vocal cords. At some moment, the woman at the age of thirty with blonde hair and kind gray eyes shows up next to Cornelia, wearing a long white chiffon dress and waving her hand at him with a tender smile on her face.       “I love you, my little Theo,” the woman pronounces with tenderness and sends an air kiss to Peter. “Your mother will always be by your side. She will always be your guardian angel.”       “I can feel you…” Peter whispers. “I feel you’re watching me…”       “Go, my sunshine, go home. But I will keep you safe. I will help you when you just call me.”       “Promise?”       “I promise, Theodore,” Julia says confidently and puts her hand on her heart. “I promise.”       “Thank you…” Peter swallows nervously. “Mother…”       “We will meet again. In many, many years. I will be waiting for you. But now, go. Go! Come back home. To your friends. To your girlfriend. Those who are waiting for you.”       Peter spends some time looking back before he lets himself give up in the end and follows obediently his friends, who lead him on the straight path. It used to seem endless to him, but now he sees a high wall with the door, through the gap of which something bright and light gets through. After coming to it, Light Sammy barks two times, touches it with his paw, and moves his eyes to the adults. All eyes are on Light Helene and Light Daniel, who come to the door together, look at each other, nod slightly, and push it together. The man lets the girl go first with a gesture, while Light Edward and Light Terrence do the same thing toward Light Natalia, Light Raquelle, and Light Anna. Then they get through the doorstep and turn on Peter, who keeps standing in the same place. Then Light Sammy grabs him softly with his teeth by the thin silver bracelet with a signature engraved on it and leads him after himself.       After getting through the doorstep, Peter closes his eyes tightly and covers them with his hand due to the bright light that hurts them like the winter sun being high in the sky. When he turns back briefly, he sees the door behind him disappear as if it lets him know that there is no way back. He hesitates a little before he takes the hands of Light Helene and Light Daniel when they reach out to him, and follows the others. The white light gets brighter and brighter, swallowing everyone who gets through it without looking back like fog. It swallows Rose himself, who closes his eyes tightly, hearing the female and male screams clearer and clearer as they accompany him on this whole way.       

***

      After Natalia’s another attempt to breathe the air into his lungs, Peter makes a quiet, hoarse sigh, but then spits a lot of water out of his mouth, tearing his head off the wet, tiled floor. Then he starts suffering from a loud, tormenting cough and clings desperately to any chance to get some air and push out everything that does not let him breathe. Sammy stars thrilling with a loud, happy bark, Daniel, Edward, and Terrence, barely sitting pale from horror, grab their heads and swallow the air greedily, looking at each other with widely open eyes at some moment, and Anna, Raquelle, and Natalia, being powerless, do not hide their wide smile, and Helene shaking from excitement cries bitterly.       “My God, Peter…” Helene keeps crying bitterly, not believing what she sees, and caresses Peter’s head tenderly, while he rolls on his side and keeps coughing up water. “Sweetheart…”       Breathing heavily, Helene almost falls on Peter, squeezes his shoulders tightly, and kisses him on the cheek several times.       “Oh, damn…” Helene breaks into a quiet, nervous laugh through tears. “My sunshine… Oh, gosh…”       “Oh, shit, you scared us!” Raquelle exhales sharply, putting her hand on her forehead. “We nearly died here!”       “Are you freaking crazy, doing this to us?” Natalia resents. “The guys and I almost went crazy!”       “Asshole, we must kill you for this!” Daniel jabs, grabbing his hair with both hands.       “You found a very good time to walk outside!” Terrence resents. “The hell is happening here, but you…”       “You’re lucky that this shit didn’t hit you to death!” Edward exclaims. “Otherwise, reviving you wouldn’t have made sense!”       However, Peter ignores all these words and keeps swallowing the air greedily, while water keeps getting out of him during his choking cough. At some moment, he raises himself sharply, doubles over, and keeps doing the same. Not paying attention to drops of water rolling down his body, wet clothes that get stuck to his body, and the coldness that is the reason why his skin gets covered with goosebumps and gets a slight shade of blue. Using the moment, Helene hugs him tightly from behind, presses herself to him, and snuggles her nose in the curve of his neck, while Sammy whining with pity walks around him again and again and tries to lick him somehow or put his nose in his face.       “Don’t do this again, hear me!” Helene begs desperately and kisses Peter on the cheek several times. “I’d die if I lost you! Died!”       “My gosh…” Anna exhales sharply, running her hands over her hair and face with a heavy breath. “Did I do it? Did I really do it?”       “Yes, sweetie…” Daniel pronounces in a shaking from excitement voice, takes Anna in his strong hug, and kisses her on the cheek in happiness. “You did it… You did it… Did!”       Seeing that he is shaking strongly from the cold, Helene takes off the towel and puts it on the shoulders of Peter, whom she presses closely to herself again.       “It’s okay, my sunshine, it’s okay…” Helene tries to calm down, caressing Peter’s head. “It’s all over… It’s okay…”       “Yeah, you were extremely close to your death, but thank God, we came in time,” Raquelle exhales with relief and gives her towel to Peter, with which she wipes his hair and face until they are more or less dry. “You’re with us, buddy… With us…”       “Give us more towels, it’s not enough!” Natalia exclaims. “We’ve gotta wipe him well!”       After she looks around quickly, Natalia sharply takes the clean towel lying not far from Daniel and wipes the open part of Peter’s skin with the girls’ help. While he tries to understand where he is, what happened, and feels that the bitter cold gets through all his bones. However, the guy does not care about being wet and freezing. He cares about something different. A strange and anxious feeling that makes him feel super nervous.       “Don’t worry, buddy, you’re safe,” Anna calms down softly, caressing Peter’s forearms and trying to catch his glance. “It’s okay. We’re here. It’s okay.”       Maybe the wind calms down a little at some moment, but the bright flashes of lightning and long-lasting claps of thunder keep horrifying the inhabitants of the city, letting them know that the disaster is not going to give up. Or maybe it actually wants to start another wave of destruction.       “The house!” Terrence orders determinedly after he looks up to the sky and glances at the others. “In the house! Now!”       “Yeah, we’ve gotta get out of here!” Edward agrees. “Before something else falls over our heads.”       “C’mon, guys, get up, everyone!” Daniel exclaims. “We’ll think about what’s been destroyed later. Now we need to warm up the blond and the girls.”       “Dry clothes!” Anna exclaims. “Find dry clothes for Peter now! He must change his clothes!”       “And you find dry clothes for the girls! They must change them too!”       “And give something hot to everyone!” Terrence demands. “Tea, coffee, water – it doesn’t matter! You all must warm yourself!”       “In the house, girls, go to the house now!” Helene orders. “To change clothes!”       “Quick, girls, in the house!” Anna pronounces excitedly. “You need to change your clothes before you get a cold!”       “Don’t sleep, dorks!” Natalia jabs, punching Edward and Daniel on the hip. “Take the blond to the house now! Do just something already!”       Anna quickly takes Raquelle, Helene, and Natalia to the house after they all get up on their feet. Sammy prefers to stay with Peter, who keeps coughing loudly at times with a heavy breath, looking into the distance closely, and saying nothing after coming back to life.       “Get him up, get up!” Daniel orders when Edward and Terrence take Peter under his arms and help him get up, and helps them hold him when the blond’s legs get sharply weak. “Quiet, quiet, quiet, hey!”       “It’s okay, buddy, hold us tight,” Edward demands. “We’re here.”       “Okay, man, okay, let’s go,” Terrence encourages. “Don’t rush, breathe deeper.”       Since Sammy closes the path, walking sharply around Peter, jumping and trying to get the attention of the guy who cares about nothing, Daniel has to take the dog softly aside.       “Sammy, don’t disturb!” Daniel exclaims when Sammy does it again. “Samuel! Get out of the fucking way!”       Daniel has nothing but to grab Sammy by the collar and take him to the door that leads to the living room, while Terrence and Edward follow him slowly but confidently, holding Peter tightly and putting the towels on his shoulders after they fall again. Sometimes the dog turns to the blond being indifferent to everything and tries to get his attention by barking quietly and whining with pity.       “Damn, am I alive?” Peter gets the thought as he is taken to the living room. “Or am I dead? I don’t understand…”       While Peter tries to find the answer to this question, Edward and Terrence lead him to the living room and, holding him under his arms, help him sit on the sofa. Sammy runs to him and starts snuggling his nose in everything he sees as he whines with pity, hoping the man would love to hug and caress him.       “The girls are probably changing their clothes on the up,” Daniel assumes.       “Let’s come to them!” Daniel makes a calling gesture. “And I’ll find dry clothes for Rose.”       “Yeah, let’s go,” Terrence agrees and moves his eyes to Sammy. “Sammy, watch him now.”       Sammy barks several times excitedly as if he gives a hint to the men, like, “Guys, hello, what are you doing? How can you leave the man alone after he almost drowned?” But Daniel, Edward, and Terrence do not literally understand it and follow the girls all together to the second floor, getting upstairs and finding nothing bad about their act. And Peter does not care about it at all. To be clear, he cares about just one thing – what’s happening may be something unreal to him. The dumbfounded guy sits motionlessly on the sofa and looks closely into the distance with widely open, red, and puffy from tears eyes. His breath is heavy and uneven, the skin is covered with goosebumps, little drops fall off the edges of wet hair, his lips still remain light blue, and every single muscle shakes from tension and coldness.       “What was that?” Peter asks. “Was it reality? Or was it my sick fantasy?”       Peter does not react to Sammy’s desperate attempts to get his attention by barking loudly and touching his knee slightly with his paw. He does not know if he should consider everything he saw before some kind of delirium, or if all the talks about the afterlife are really the truth. The guy remembers everything very clearly: how he woke up in the middle of the field and felt good and warm at first, but then the world around him became colder and darker.       “Though everything seemed so real… As if I were really there… As if I felt the warmth, the coldness, the quiet, and the despair… Was I really, as they say, between life and death? And saw that fight… The angels… And the demons… The demons whom I saw in that nightmare… Hey… What if I’m still dead? What am I dead, but everything is unreal? Damn…”       Peter runs his hands over his face with a sharp exhalation and coughs the rest of the water out of his lungs. The guy’s consciousness is still unclear, but everything is kind of mixed in his mind. Where reality is, where fantasy is – it’s a hard question. The clap of thunder can be heard, but the flashes of lightning can be seen behind the window, but it seems that he does not notice it. All voices reach his ears like through the deaf, impenetrable wall. The only thing he hears is the fast beat of his heart that hits his temples so hard. Which squeezes painfully again and again, while the memories of everything that happened to him while his friends were fighting for his life come into his mind.       “Maybe I died? Maybe it all doesn’t seem to me? But if it’s so, why do I feel so strange? Or no? Am I alive? What if I’m back? The girls are the only ones to keep worrying about me. And the men keep giving a fuck. They’re still mad. And they would’ve done nothing if they hadn’t been pushed.”       Peter swallows nervously and rubs his hands.       “Though they were different in that world. So kind. So caring. They promised. They promised not to leave me. But the guys are still cold here. They still hate me. Though I deserve it. I can completely understand them. However, I’d be so happy to know they forgave me. They’re happy to have me back.”       Sammy keeps knocking at the closed door with the hope that someone opens it, trying to get the attention of Peter again and again by whining with pity, and let him know he is worried about him so badly. He was ready to face his fear of thunder and get outside to be near and do his best to save him.       “It was so nice to see them all… When they came for me… When they decided to guide me… And it was nice to talk to my mother. Hear what I wanted to hear all my life. What made me feel way better. Even if I hallucinated. Since I’ll hardly meet her again, may this thought warm my soul. The thought that my mother loved me. Loved me when she was sober. Maybe that’s how I can forgive her. For everything. For her terrible attitude toward me. For literally not noticing my complaints. Kicking me out when I wanted to tell her something. When she laughed at me and devalued my suffering. When I came to her to complain about what that man did to me and…”       At this moment, Peter feels like he is struck by thunder. He holds his breath unconsciously, gets sharply pale, and opens his eyes widely when he realizes the most important thing – the memories of the horrible case from his childhood are back. The memories of what the man named Garret did to him. About how he became the reason for a much deeper psychological trauma of Rose, who has always lived very badly without all of it.       “Garret…” Peter starts breathing heavily. “That day… The rape… I remember that… I clearly remember what happened on that day…”       His heart starts squeezing painfully, while Peter replays the events of that day. The old house. The cold, dark room. The thunder and heavy rain are behind the window. The man wearing old, shabby clothes with holes. His smile. His glance that looked at the little boy from head to feet. All those unobtrusive touches and hugs that made him freaking uncomfortable. A click of the door lock. A scream. A bag. Pain. Despair. The point of no return.       Peter’s eyes hurt from salt tears that roll down his pale cheeks, while he closes his mouth tightly with both hands. While he starts shaking three times stronger. So the three towels on his shoulders cannot warm him up. He can barely breathe as if someone tightened a rope around his neck. A sense of despair and loneliness gets stronger every second, drives him crazy, and makes him wish to fall into an uncontrolled hysteria, which nobody might be able to deal with.       “No…” Peter thinks with tears in his eyes and shakes his head sharply. “No… No, please, no… I didn’t wanna remember this… I did not want! How did it happen? How? I tried so hard to avoid it! I knew I wouldn’t know anything good! I did sense it… And now I remember the fuck everything! I remember how that fucking pedophile ripped my ass… I remember everything…”       While Peter covers his face with his hands and doubles over, crying much more bitterly, Sammy starts whining with great pity, reminding him that he is near. And he is very saddened because he still remains invisible to him.       “Why? Why did I recall it? WHY? I wasn’t ready for that! I WAS NOT! How did it happen? HOW? I don’t get it! I feel fucking bad, but now this! And how do you want me to live? WHY? WHY DID THEY THE FUCK MAKE MY SUFFERING LONGER? WHY, THE FUCK?”       Peter breathing heavily grabs his wet hair with the fingers of both hands and pulls it strongly, sitting on the sofa and doubling over.       “Why? Why? I don’t wanna remember that, I don’t want! Nothing will change because I remember everything now. NOTHING! I WILL NOT GET BETTER! And it will not help me fix my mistakes. As well as the fact that I was the fuck RAPPED WHEN I WAS A CHILD! AND I WAS RAPED SEVERAL TIMES AT A TEENAGE AGE!”       Peter closes his mouth much tighter to hold down his wish to make a heartbreaking scream at the whole house. Sammy barks quietly again and touches his knee softly, looking at him closely with his eyes full of sadness.       “No one will believe me if I tell them something like this. Just like nobody believed when I hoped for someone’s help. When they fucked me off. Saying, ‘Men can’t be raped! Since you got your ass kicked, you asked for this!’ My suffering was devalued. They meant nothing. Nothing. My feelings and emotions meant NOTHING. NOTHING! EVERYONE GAVE A FUCK ABOUT THEM!’”       Peter doubles over much more and puts his head between his legs, not even thinking of hiding his tears that roll down his cheeks right on the floor – the rag his sneakers are put on. Dirty and wet sneakers. At some moment, he irritably takes all the towels off himself and throws one of them aside furiously in anger without looking. And he does not care that he may get a cold because he is absolutely wet and shakes after spending some time underwater that was far from warm, and lying outside where the cold wind was blowing.       “How do I live with this? How do I accept it? It’s been twenty fucking years, but I HAVEN’T ACCEPTED IT! NOT AT ALL! And I have no idea what to do. Now this shit is going to remind me of itself all the time. Wake up a much greater wish of dying inside me. Even though I don’t wanna live. I DO NOT WANT!”       Peter grabs his head, feeling that there is less and less air in his lungs, and his heart beats in a much crazier rhythm.       “A-a-a-a, I want to die… I. Want. To. Die. Want. TO DIE. I WANT TO DIE! WHY DID THEY SAVE ME? I WANTED TO STAY THERE! THERE! IN THAT WORLD! WHY? WHY, THE FUCK? WHY-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y?”       Wincing strongly, Peter grabs his stomach sharply with a sense of sharp pain in it and doubles over again, holding his chest with another hand since it burns with fire and hurts every time he tries to take a breath. Sammy whines with a greater pity and snuggles his nose in the man’s knee, while the blond keeps his head between his legs. But the dog jumps sharply back when Rose raises his head and, looking into the distance with wet eyes, opens his mouth widely so that the silent scream nobody can hear gets out of it to express the unbearable pain and suffering that does not literally have an end.       “Theodore…” Peter pronounces in a whisper and looks around with watered eyes. “Theodore, where are you? Theodore, please, come… I need you so badly… Help me… Please… Theodore…”       Peter sniffs quietly.       “Can you hear me? Why don’t you come? I’m asking you for help! Theodore! Please, I need you… I can’t survive this nightmare without you. Please, Theo, come… Save me from this nightmare… Please… Theo! Theo!”       But no matter how hard Peter looks around and calls him, Theodore is not near and is not going to come. As if he really left him. Just like he promised, in case the guy remembered what he should have remembered and found the lost part of him.       “Please, don’t leave me…” Peter keeps whispering. “Theodore… I don’t wanna be alone… Please… Theodore… I’m begging you… Don’t leave me… I need you… Why did you leave when I needed you so badly? Please, come back! Come back! I can’t do without you! Please, Theodore… Theodore…”       While Sammy sitting in front of him looks surprisingly at Peter talking to himself, another clap of thunder is heard outside, accompanied by heavy rain that hits the windows and protrusions of the house. Then the guy moves his eyes sharply aside when he thinks a black shadow runs somewhere far from him.       “Theodore?!” Peter pronounces hesitantly. “Theodore, is that you? Theodore!”       But it disappears as suddenly as it showed up, making Peter believe briefly that it seemed to him. But later, he moves his eyes sharply aside when he thinks he sees it at the other end of the living room, somewhere under the stairs.       “Theodore?! Theodore, answer me! Where are you?”       Something unknown moves from one side to another several times every time Peter wants to catch it with his eyes. During the bright flash, he believes he can see Garret, who did horrible things to him, show up out of the wall that divides the kitchen and the living room. He makes Rose breathing heavily press his legs closely to his chest, and press his back to the back of the sofa tightly, looking into the distance closely.       “Theod-dore…” Peter begs quietly in a high, shaking voice. “Theodore, p-p-please… C-come…”       Garret hiding behind the wall and sneering evilly calls the guy to him with his finger and bites his lip, making Peter frightened to death. Sammy tries to wake him up by barking quietly, but the man keeps acting like he does not notice him. Even when he jumps on the sofa and presses himself to him closely.       “I don’t want… I don’t wanna get through all of that again… P-p-please… Don’t d-d-do this…”       After another blinding flash of lightning, Garret disappears, but it’s kind of darker in the living room now. As if someone turns off a part of the light. The strong gusts of the wind open the window sharply, which hits against the wall after this. Peter embraces himself with both arms and rubs energetically his cold biceps, still looking around with widely open eyes and feeling like a little, vulnerable, and unprotected boy, who just wanted to be happy, but who has been suffering from cruel mockeries of other children and adult people since his early age.       “Someone… Please… Save me… Take me out… I don’t wanna suffer anymore… I don’t wanna feel pain anymore… I don’t!”       Crying bitterly and not even thinking of wiping tears off his face, Peter stops his eyes sharply on one of the windows, in which he briefly sees a black shadow and then someone who looks like him. Someone who looks at him with a glance that is far from kind and warm.       “Theodore?!” Peter pronounces quietly with hope in his eyes. “Is that you?”       A bright flash of lightning behind the window – Peter’s twin laughs evilly. Another flash – he looks at him with a kind glance. Another flash – he terrifies him with his evil look. A fourth one – he becomes nice again. It happens several more times. And along with the deafening clap of thunder, the twin steps away from the window sharply and disappears into the unknown.       “Theodore!” Peter pronounces loudly. “Theodore, wait! Where are you doing? Stop!”       Not thinking a lot, Peter gets up from the sofa sharply and runs to the window, where he sees his twin turn on him and gets through the closed gates of the house easily as if he were a ghost.       “Theodore! Theodore!”       Peter rushes to the hall door, ignoring Sammy’s emotional bark, opens it, and closes it when he runs outside. When a clap of thunder and a flash of lightning show their whole power to the whole city that has already suffered a lot from the hurricane and caused serious damage people would have to deal with. Not paying attention to the gusts of the wind that strike him down and the cold, heavy rain getting into his face, Rose runs mindlessly, as if he is charmed, after the twin that fades away rapidly since it definitely calls him after itself and wants to show him something. Running on tons of pools that he meets on his way, the guy breathing heavily opens the gates easily enough and leaves the territory of the house, not stopping to scream out Theodore’s home and begging him desperately to stay with him when he needs him so badly. Then he runs, runs, runs… Without knowing the path. Looking forward only. Seeing just one goal. Only what is slipping from him rapidly. What he wants to catch so badly.       And when the twin kind of melts in the air at some moment, Peter wakes up immediately and realizes he is nobody knows where, among high trees, and gets much wetter under the heavy rain. His heart misses a beat, and he holds his breath at the thought that nothing is familiar here. Flashes of lightning can briefly turn on the light in the place where there is the evil, infinite dark. And just one clap of thunder strikes the giant oak, which shoots up a fiery flame that is quickly put out by the rain. Tears come to the eyes of the pale Peter and roll down his cheeks, and fear paralyzes his icy body that can barely be held by his shaking legs. Every clap of thunder is like a mockery. An attempt to gloat over his suffering. To horrify the man, who cannot take this endless nightmare anymore. He is alone. In the middle of the chaos. The chaos he cannot escape from, because there are only large trees around and the dark corners.       After several hesitant steps, Peter’s legs get sharply weak, and he falls to his knees powerlessly, not thinking about how the frost gets through him to the bones. A wild, inhuman scream gets out of his mouth and literally shakes the ground. The sky kind of answers him with such a powerful clap of thunder that Rose’s muscles tense with pain. It seems that the disaster is going to take another attempt to erase him from this world and get rid of the one whom it considers the thorn in its side. And there is no doubt that it can do it this time. Because there is nothing and nobody that can save the guy again. The man, who keeps crying bitterly, while a burning short tree fall two meters away from him first, and then a powerful electric wave hits right in the ground, leaving a big crack in it.       

***

      Meanwhile, Sammy barks loudly at the closed door, then gets through the little door specifically for animals and, being determined and fearless, runs wild under the heavy rain after Peter, whose tracks have already disappeared. And he reaches the dead end when he runs to the gates of the house, through which he cannot get. He cannot jump over the high railing, even if he speeds up a lot. That’s why he only has to bark desperately, touch the closed gate with his paw, and whine with pity as if he feels that Helene’s boyfriend is about to get in trouble since everyone left him alone. The girls went upstairs to find dry clothes and counted on the men. But the men themselves just did not want to watch him and left without thinking of the consequences of their action, and recalling all their offences against him after he came back to life.       After he whines at another flash of lightning, Sammy returns to the house and shakes himself at the doorstep to clean his wet hair. Then he, saddened, comes slowly to the living room and starts barking loudly in the hope of getting someone’s attention. And he puts his tail between his paws when he hears a clap of thunder, looking scarily at the window. The strong fear makes the dog lie under the stairs, where there is a table, and decides to stay here, fearing the hurricane that is happening outside and worrying about Peter, with whom anything may happen if everyone keeps blinking their eyes like this.       Sammy keeps sitting under the stairs when Helene, Natalia, Raquelle, and Anna get down to the first floor. Even if the girls’ hair is not quite dry yet and brushed in a ponytail, they are now wearing dry and clean clothes, while their wet ones are being washed. After they look around and do not see any of the men here, the girls frown slightly and look at each other questioningly.       “What the…” Anna pronounces thoughtfully. “Where are the men? I thought they’d be here!”       “It’s weird…” Natalia shakes her head. “Are they still on the back of the house?”       “Nope, they’re not kinda there…” Helene replies hesitantly, looking through the window that opens to the view of the back of the house. “And it’s raining heavily outside.”       “And where’s Sammy?” Raquelle wonders. “Is he with them?”       “Sammy! Sammy, are you here?”       Sammy reacts to Helene’s voice immediately, barking quietly, leaving his hideaway, and running to the girls.       “My boy, you’re here!” Helene caresses Sammy’s head softly. “Why are you alone here? Where are the guys?”       “They’re on the up?” Anna specifies. “Went to change their clothes in a different room?”       Sammy starts whining loudly, with pity, as if he tries to explain to the girls that Peter may be in great trouble again.       “Oh, God, our little baby!” Natalia sighs heavily, squatting down, pressing Sammy to herself, and kissing him sweetly on the nose. “He’s so scared… He’s shaking so badly…”       “No wonder…” Anna pronounces as she looks around. “One window broke, and others are open by themselves. Some things fell, and some things broke…”       “Sweetie, we’re scared, too,” Helene adds with sadness in her eyes, grabbing Sammy’s face. “I was horrified at just one thought that Peter would die.”       “Girls, we must warm Sammy up,” Raquelle says confidently, running her hand over Sammy’s hair. “The poor baby’s shaking from the cold so badly. And the hurricane can’t stop… He’s sitting here scared…”       “Maybe we should feed him something tasty?” Anna suggests. “Maybe it can calm him down? Let me find something in the refrigerator?”       “Yes, sweetie, give him something,” Helene agrees. “It’s supposed to calm him down a little.”       “And take the towels to wipe him better!” Natalia exclaims. “Or better take the hairdryer from the room! So that we can dry ourselves and warm him up!”       “Hey, that’s it!” Anna exclaims, pointing at two towels lying on the sofa. “Two ones!”       Anna comes quickly to the sofa, takes one of the towels, and wants to give it to the girls so that they can wipe Sammy shaking and whining. But it’s enough for her to take just two steps to stop sharply, look at the sofa again, and suspect something is wrong.       “Stop…” Anna pronounces hesitantly. “Aren’t these the towels we covered Peter with?”       “They are…” Raquelle opens her eyes widely.       “Oh, God…” Helene starts breathing heavily, coming to the sofa, taking the second towel, and looking at this with horror in her eyes. “They are… And this one is so wet…”       “I don’t like all of this, girls…” Natalia puts her hand on her heart, looks around, and finds the third towel in the other corner of the living room. “Hey, there is the third towel!”       Sammy barks several times loudly as if he confirms the friends’ words, while Natalia runs to the towel lying on the floor and takes it.       “If it’s so, where’s Peter himself?” Anna wonders. “Why are these towels lying here?”       “And where are Terrence, Daniel, and Edward?” Raquelle meddles. “Where are these three brainless dorks?”       “Went to the room when we changed our clothes in another?” Helene assumes. “Anna took dry clothes before they came?”       “I really hope they are sitting there and watching Rose now,” Natalia expresses hope.       “Let’s go there now!” Anna orders. “Run!”       But when all the girls want to come to the stairs, Daniel, Terrence, and Edward get down the stairs quietly as if nothing had happened, while Sammy starts barking at them.       “Hey, girls, why is it so loud?” Daniel asks with a slight smile. “Sammy, why are you barking here like a victim?”       While Sammy keeps barking much more furiously and even growling quietly, Natalia, Anna, Raquelle, and Helene look at Edward, Terrence, and Daniel with widely open eyes from head to feet and glance at each other briefly.       “Oh, bloody hell…” Daniel frowns slightly, looking around. “I’ve gotta change the window glass again… And half of my stuff broke…”       “Where’s Peter?” Helene wonders. “Why are you without him?”       “Peter?” Terrence pronounces hesitantly and looks around quickly. “Isn’t he with you?”       “We actually counted on you!” Natalia crosses her arms over her chest. “We thought you’d watch him!”       “But…” Edward replies hesitantly. “We thought you’d watch him… Come back soon and…”       “Oh, shit…” Anna grabs her head.       “Where’s Peter, empty-headed dorks?” Raquelle demands the answer a little louder. “Where have you the fuck been?”       “And don’t dare to tell us he is not in the house!” Helene threatens with her finger.       “Isn’t he here?” Daniel asks surprisingly and looks around the whole living room. “Not on the back of the house?”       “No, blind chicken, he is not here!” Natalia cries with recentness.       “Where did you leave him, idiots?” Anna wonders. “Where did you leave him, I asked?”       “Erm, h-h-here…” Terrence replies in a little shaking voice, opening his eyes widely. “W-we… Seat him on the sofa and… Left…”       “WHAT did you do?” Helene explodes.       “Q-quiet, g-girls, q-q-quiet…” Edward tries to take a word, waving his fingers smoothly, while his fingertips shake slightly. “Calm down, please…”       “What did you do, idiots?” Raquelle horrifies with a heavy breath. “Do you understand WHAT you just did?”       “Quiet, quiet, friend, calm down, please,” Daniel pronounces quietly.       “Seriously?” Natalia resents. “Are you SERIOUS now? Do you dare to tell us to CALM DOWN?”       “Why are you all so excited?” Terrence wonders. “Maybe… Maybe he’s in the house? He just…”       “Uh-huh, maybe the man just went to the bathroom!” Edward exclaims nervously. “He wanted to do his business!”       “Yeah?” Anna resents loudly, gets the towel from Natalia’s hands, and shakes it along with the others she is holding. “What is THIS? WHAT is this? Explain?”       “And THIS!” Helene ads, shaking the towel she is holding. “And they are wet! WET! ALL OF THEM!”       “These are towels we covered Peter with!” Raquelle recalls. “And be pleased to explain HOW they ended up here? Why did we the fuck find them on the sofa?”       “Hey, hey, hello, hello, calm down, everyone now!” Terrence orders. “Stop your hysterics!”       “DON’T DARE TO SHUT US UP!”       Sammy barks several times confidently as if he agrees and growls quietly at Edward, Terrence, and Daniel being a little confused and breathing heavily as they look at each other.       “Are you freaking crazy, guys?” Anna resents. “Why did you leave the man alone? The one who almost drowned?”       “We thought you’d come back soon!” Edward excuses. “We thought…”       “Thought?” Helene sneers contemptuously. “Do you have something to think with?”       “Shit, why are you so excited?” Daniel waves his hands sharply. “The man just went to wash his face, but you’re screaming here like victims!”       “Alright!” Anna exclaims. “If I come to the bathroom now, open the door and find out that there’s nobody there, you’ll ask for trouble.”       Anna comes to one of the bathrooms in a sharp and quick step, knocks quietly at the door, and calls Peter. When she does not get an answer, she enters it determinedly and sees that there is nobody there.       “Nobody here! Let’s check the other!”       Now Anna comes to the second bathroom, where she finds nobody. She checks both of the toilets, but she does not see Peter either. Then she comes back to the living room, stands next to her friends, and puts her hand on her hips, looking gloomily at Terrence, Daniel, and Edward.       “No one!” Anna exclaims. “There’s nobody! Peter is not here! He is not anywhere! Nowhere!”       “Where’s Peter, dorks?” Helene demands an answer. “Where did you leave him? Why the hell did you not watch him enough?”       “How do we know this?” Daniel throws irritably and crosses his arms over his chest. “We are not his nannies!”       “Exactly!” Edward adds coldly. “Just because he nearly died does not mean we will forget everything that man has done to us.”       “Are you out of your mind?” Raquelle resents. “Do you understand WHAT you are talking about?”       “Unlike him!” Daniele exclaims. “The one who ruined our evening! Which we could’ve spent quietly if not for that bastard.”       “Are you not ashamed, assholes?” Helene freaks out. “Are you out of your mind?”       “Were you hit by thunder?” Natalia wonders. “What’s the hell wrong with you, huh?”       “What happened to you?” Anna surprises. “Why are you so aggressive?”       “Peter did apologize to you!” Helene recalls. “He truly asked for forgiveness for everything he’d done!”       “It changes nothing!” Terrence states without emotion, crossing his arms over his chest. “We are not going to forgive him!”       “Uh-huh, we do not the fuck need his apologies!” Daniel adds. “He can put them in his ass!”       “Bloody hell…” Helene grabs her head.       “Are you kidding us?” Anna resents. “The man just nearly died! We barely managed to revive him! We barely did it in time! But you the hell pretend that you do not have to do with it!”       “It doesn’t really have to do with us!” Edward exclaims coldly. “Peter is not our friend anymore. And he will hardly be the one.”       “It doesn’t give you the right to act like this!” Raquelle replies. “So disgustingly!”       “What happened to you?” Natalia wonders. “Since when have you been so senseless?”       “Yes, he offended you!” Anna adds. “But it’s not a reason to do that to him! Not a reason to sit and wait for him to pass away!”       “Uh-huh, you probably saw everything clearly!” Helene states. “You saw Peter was drowning and ended up under the blockage, but you did NOTHING! You LET him drown! And you were pleased to leave the room when WE went to save him.”       “Do you know how hard it was for us to get him out of the water?” Raquelle freaks out. “How hard it was for us just to move the heavy pieces he was pressed to the bottom with! How hard it was for us to get him up to the surface and get out! We did it because we acted like a team!”       “Exactly! I wouldn’t have gotten him out all by myself! Moreover, it’s not a secret to everyone that I can barely swim. And I just recovered after a cold that became a company to my depletion of the body. I still cough and suffer from a runny nose. But I was not afraid to dive. I WAS NOT! I was not afraid to drown. I was afraid to dive. But I was afraid to lose Peter much more. To know that he is dead. One fear was stronger than other fears of mine! I COULD NOT LEAVE HIM TO DIE!”       “Uh-huh, we were freezing, risking our lives, but you, bastards, were warming up your asses in a warm room!” Natalia resents loudly. “We were almost struck down by the wind, we could have drowned. It was the first time we gave CPR. And we were not sure if we could do it. But you were just sitting near and blinking your eyes! Waiting for Peter to die! For getting rid of the need to deal with him!”       “You did NOTHING to help him!” Helene adds. “NOTHING! Because you are cowards! The offended cowards, who were afraid to get out in the hurricane. You stayed in the house until the very end!”       “Nobody made you go there!” Daniel states with no shame. “And nobody locked that bastard there!”       “Do you think we should’ve looked through the window and watched him die?” Anna gets enraged. “Watched DEATH come to this house? Do you want us to sit and watch the corpse of Rose swimming underwater?”       “We the fuck shouted at you!” Terrence throws rudely. “We shouted at you, idiots, telling you to come back to the house immediately! BUT YOU DID NOT! YOU STAYED THERE!”       “WE SAVED OUR FRIEND!” Natalia screams at the top of her lungs. “While you were waiting for his death!”       “Hey, I’m kinda confused, what are your claims for us?” Edward resents. “What do you try to get? What do you want from us? WHAT?”       “Don’t pretend to be stupid and deaf!” Raquelle roars. “You KNOW what we want!”       “Did you get your head cold there, didn’t you?” Daniel wonders. “What kind of shit are you talking about?”       “No, you struck all your brains out!” Helene snaps. “With your constant scuffles! You’ve come so far that you don’t understand what you say now!”       “You actually must be by our side!” Terrence replies. “Rose is a motherfucker! But you are defending that bastard!”       “No, you all are bastards!” Raquelle, Helene, Anna, and Natalia state at the same time.       “Listen, why did you all go on the wrong side?” Edward waves his hands. “Are you having PMS? Or your period? All of you!”       “God knows, we were silent and held down until the very end,” Natalia raises her head proudly. “We tolerated it until the very end. We closed our eyes to your evil comments about Peter. We were silent when you started to make him a psycho first.”       “And I wouldn’t be surprised if you lied to us a lot!” Raquelle adds. “If you told us all these terrible stories to turn us against him. Proving that Peter was right when he didn’t rush to trust you completely.”       “But that’s all!” Anna exclaims. “Enough! We lost our patience! And the reason for this is your indifference to this terrible situation. Your disgusting attitude toward the fact that Peter almost drowned. Your hints at your wish to see him dead. It all became our last drop. The last one!”       “Stop, enough, we’ll no longer be silent!” Helene states determinedly. “Now we will tell you everything we think about you and your disgusting actions!”       Sammy barks several times and growls threateningly at Daniel, Terrence, and Edward with evil in his eyes, being totally dumbfounded by how Raquelle, Anna, Helene, and Natalia freak out.       “Whoa, your heads are into the fucking stratosphere…” Edward throws gloomily. “They are beyond our galaxy…”       “You are joking, huh…” Natalia resents. “You are joking… Laughing and having fucking fun! You don’t care that the man could’ve died! You don’t! You just want to have fun!”       “And how do you dare to call yourself good friends after this?” Anna wonders. “How do you dare to call yourself smart and wise guys, who everyone must listen to? You do not deserve it at all! After everything you have done!”       “Yeah?” Daniel surprises. “Aren’t you blaming Rose for anything? Do you give a fuck about him nearly killing us? He has tried to kill me twice! Oh, no, come on! MANY times! MANY! He. Tried. To KILL. Us! We all could’ve died! BECAUSE OF HIM! But you all dare to protect that asshole and blame us for something? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING US?”       “Peter is a victim!” Helene shouts. “The victim of this world that really treated him cruelly! If everyone had treated him well, NOTHING would have happened. But EVERYONE hated him! EVERYONE! He was kicked like a ball! BEATEN LIKE A PUNCHING BAG!”       “It’s clear that he is not so holy since he’s had his ass kicked all his life!” Edward replies rudely.       “He trusted you!” Raquelle recalls. “Peter hoped on you! He believed you! He was happy to find loyal friends! But you betrayed him! You killed his belief in humanity!”       “We killed?” Terrence points his fingers at himself. “He started it first! Rose was the first one to attack us! Do you think we needed it all? DID WE WANT TO DEAL WITH HIM?”       “Nothing surprising!” Helene adds. “What do we expect from those who drive Peter to the thick woods on purpose to rape that guy all together? To take their genitals out of their pants and shake them in front of their friend! ASSURING HIM THAT WAS A JOKE!”       “What?” Raquelle, Anna, and Natalia open their eyes widely, while Daniel, Edward, and Terrence get sharply pale and tense and loom at each other.       “What did you say?” Anna cannot believe it. “R… Ra… Rap… Rape?”       “To do WHAT?” Natalia specifies.       “My God, Helene…” Raquelle shakes her head. “What you’re talking about!”       “It’s true, girls!” Helene says confidently. “On the way here, Peter told me what these dorks wanted to do to him. They beat him strongly, knocked him out, tied him up, and wanted to take their pants off in front of him after he woke up.”       “It’s awful!” Raquelle closes her mouth with a hand.       “And when Pete was telling me all of this, he had a hysteria that I had never had to witness before. He was screaming, crying, shaking in seizures, and he even tried to bite himself to the bone… But I listened and couldn’t believe he really talked about the guys.”       “Do you want to say that was what they were doing when we were waiting for their call?” Natalia concludes. “These bastards decided to fuck their friend? For fun! The kids felt BORING! They didn’t know where to shake their penis!”       “Not true, we didn’t try to rape him!” Terrence takes a word. “We just pretended that we wanted to!”       “Oh, come on?” Helene sneers sinisterly. “Is this how you are trying to excuse yourself now?”       “We just wanted to scare him!” Daniel states. “No verbal threats and the sight of a cold gun or a threatening fist worked on him! But when we hinted at this wish, he went out of his mind!”       “So, do you feel bored in bed with us?” Anna crosses her arms over her chest. “Are you done? You don’t finish anymore! You decided to go on the side! With whom! THE MAN!”       “My God, if I told someone my man would cheat on me with a man, everyone would laugh at me,” Natalia puts her hand on her forehead.       “Hey, hey, hello, we’re not one of them!” Edward adds loudly. “We’ve always loved girls and will love them to the day of our death!”       “Yes, yes, don’t drop dirty hints!” Daniel jabs. “Men can be our friends only!”       “Uh-huh, we saw how you just BEFRIEND them!” Helene nods.       “Wow, how many interesting things you can find out if you fight with a person!” Natalia puts her hands on her hips. “So much that can make you think if you chose the right partner.”       “Oh, alright, we admit it, we crossed the line in this case!” Terrence raises his hands. “But we had no choice! It was the only thing that let us reach out to Rose. If not for that, we would’ve kept fighting him until the evening, until the hurricane started.”       “I didn’t know you’d go so crazy before hurricanes,” Anna throws gloomily. “Are you such weather-sensitive guys? I guess magnetic storms impact you in the same way!”       “Okay, okay, what do you want from us now?” Daniel puts his hands aside. “What should we do for you to calm down?”       “It’s too late to do something!” Helene states. “You have done enough. We can see a clear enough picture and understand what we wanted to understand.”       “Yeah, I didn’t think you’d remain so cold-stoned even in this situation,” Raquelle shakes her head, exhaling sharply.       “Oh, in short, figuring out something doesn’t make sense,” Anna says much quieter. “And I wouldn't like to spend my nerves sorting out our relationships.”       “In short, do what you want, we don’t care!” Natalia waves her hand. “It doesn’t matter if you wish Peter all the best or worst – it’s up to you. But we made your choice.”       “Listen, girls, let’s calm down and talk about everything quietly,” Terrence tries to take a word. “Let’s not fight over stupid things.”       “You call it a stupid thing!” Raquelle resents. “Do you call Peter’s death that we prevented a stupid thing? Is the fact that you wanted to RAPE your friend a stupid thing to you?”       “My gosh, nobody wanted to rape him!” Edward exhales sharply. “We were just looking for a way to calm down that psycho and make him meet Helene. We had no other choice!”       “Tell these stories to someone else and do what you think is right from this moment on,” Anna says quietly. “If you use what you have between your legs instead of your head, it’s up to you. We will not even try to change your mind. It worthless.”       “Alright, girls, if Peter is not here, it means he’s somewhere outside,” Raquelle says confidently. “We have to get out and look for him. And let’s hope he’s somewhere not far.”       “He is not on the up – we went down the halls together,” Natalia says thoughtfully. “He’s not here, either. It means, yes, we’ve gotta find him outside.”       “You will not go there!” Daniel states determinedly. “The wind and the rain are outside! Having you struck down would be too much! Having you all wet!”       “Go to hell, Perkins!” Anna throws coldly. “As well as these boneheads!”       “I am not kidding, Anna! Do not even dare to go there! If I have to, I swear I will lock you in the room.”       “Don’t listen to him, girls! We will go to find Peter right now. And we will find him wherever he is.”       “You will go nowhere!” Terrence exclaims in a low, rude voice. “Hear me?! That idiot can go anywhere he wants, but we will not let you go anywhere!”       “Hey, Seymour, do you have some warm coats?” Raquelle ignores Terrence. “We can put on a hood, and it’s gonna be okay!”       “Yes, I’ve got several ones!” Anna nods. “They’re in the dressing room. I’ll get them now.”       “Oh, maybe we should also put on rubber boots?” Natalia suggests. “Or we may water our feet!”       “Cool idea, too! I have everything!”       While Anna looks for the things she needs in the room on the second floor and under the stairs, Terrence, Daniel, and Edward being resentful of the girls’ behavior look at each other and shake their heads, not believing that they are really considered something like nothing.       “Hey, hello, cuties, can't you hear us, huh?” Edward resents. “We did say you’d go nowhere! Rochester! I swear I will tie you to the radiation if you do this! Hear me, you, stupid blonde?”       “Fuck yourself, asshole!” Natalia throws rudely. “We’ll decide it without you!       “Fuck, Cameron, I will strangle you now!” Terrence roars. “How long are you going to play on my nerves? Do what you are told! DO YOU HEAR ME, BITCH?”       “I duplicate Natalia’s answer, ‘Fuck yourself, asshole!’” Raquelle snaps.       “Hey, you must listen to us!” Daniel resents. “We are men! We are leaders! You must obey us!”       “Got it!” Anna exclaims after she finds the required number of pairs of rubber boots and brings several warm coats from the second floor. “There are enough for all of us! The size is supposed to fit you!”       “Seymour! You will not leave the house! Hear me! I am banning you! Hey! Can you hear me? Did I say something unclear to you? Seymour! Seymour, the fuck?!”       “Hello, are you out of your mind?” Terrence gets enraged. “Girls, are you fucking crazy? What are you doing?”       “Fuck, Sammy, stop barking now!” Edward freaks out. “My head hurts from your bark! You'd better stop them!”       “And you were the fuck actually told to watch Rose,” Daniel recalls. “You can think we’re in trouble because of you. Because you blinked your eyes and framed us!”       But Sammy just growls quietly at Edward, Daniel, and Terrence as if he expresses his resentment about their actions toward Peter. Meanwhile, Anna gives her friends a coat and a pair of boots, which they put on for several seconds.       “So what, girls, are you ready?” Anna specifies after she puts on a coat and rubber boots.       “Yes, I am ready!” Helene exclaims determinedly. “And yeah! I have a dog’s raincoat in my bag!”       With these words, Helene runs to her bag lying on the sofa, opens one of the sections, and takes what she needs. Then she puts the special protection on Sammy after he comes to her, showing that he is ready to go to look for Peter, along with all the girls.       “I'm gonna take something with me, maybe we’ll need it,” Anna announces, running from one side of the living room to another in search of some necessary things that she puts in a small backpack that she finds among the stuff lying under the stairs.       “Hey, can somebody here hear us?” Terrence throws his hands up. “Isn’t our word a law to you at all?”       “Hello, girls, are you deaf?” Daniel wonders. “Hey! We are actually here!”       “Keep sitting here in the warmth and warming up your asses, dreaming of your troubled friend dying,” Raquelle snaps boldly. “But we’re not going to do what you want and dance attendance upon you.”       “Peter needs us, and we’re coming to help him!” Natalia states determinedly. “Now it’s our time to be heroes! Responsibility and determinacy are taking the place of tears and fears.”       “Fuck, excellent!” Edward freaks out. “Now we are nothing! And you stand by the side of the one who tried to kill us!”       “By the side of the one whom you wanted to fuck allegedly to have fun,” Helene replies gloomily.       “Not sure if it can help us in this weather, but we can try to let Sammy sniff something that belongs to Peter,” Anna suggests.       “Oh, he left his phone and keys from the car here!” Raquelle exclaims, pointing at the coffee table with the things she called. “Let’s take them!”       “Of course, we will!” Helene exclaims, takes the phone and the keys, and puts them in her pocket. “If we don’t find him, we’ll try to let Sammy track him. Maybe he will find something by smell.”       “Hey, Anna, where are you?” Natalia moans. “Time is going by!”       “Here, here, I’m ready!” Anna jabs and puts the backpack on her shoulder after taking everything she needs. “Who knows what we’re gonna need in this weather.”       “Let’s go then!” Helene says confidently. “Let’s go to find Peter!”       After Sammy barks confidently, he comes to Raquelle, Anna, Natalia, and Helene, who want to come to the hall door. The friends do not pay attention to the loud resentfulness of Edward, Terrence, and Daniel, who try furiously to close the way out, repeating they will not let them go anywhere and showing a horrible indifference to the fact that Peter ran away nobody knows where and may do anything in a hysterical condition after he recalled what happened when he was a little child.       “Hey, step away from the door!” Daniel demands, closing the way. “Get back, I said! All four!”       “Get out, Perkins!” Anna throws coldly. “Get out if you don’t wanna make me mad!”       “Where are you the fuck going, idiots?” Terrence resents. “Are you blind? Look at what’s happening outside!”       “You’re gonna be hit!” Edward horrifies. “And then you’ll all get sick at the same time! Lie in bed with a fever and cough!”       “We’ll think about it a little later,” Raquelle states. “But now we need to find our friend.”       “Your friend can do this without you!” Daniel exclaims. “Not a little boy, huh!”       “While you’re all here so heartless and egoistic, we still have our mind working,” Natalia snaps. But we don’t leave our friends in trouble!”       “You will go nowhere!” Edward says confidently. “All of you will stay in this fucking house!”       “If we have to, we will really lock you somewhere!” Terrence threatens. “And we will not let you go until you calm the fuck down.”       “Be pleased to follow my rules at my home!” Daniel demands. “It has to do with guests and those who live here!”       “Go to hell, dorks!” Helene throws rudely.       The girls have to spend some time fighting the men before they find a way to get away from them, hitting one on the cheek, hitting another in the groin, and pushing the third one so that he almost falls.       “Ah, fuck…” Edward swears, doubling over after he gets a hit of the knee against his stomach from Natalia.       “Ar-r-r-r, they do irritate me…” Terrence growls, rubbing energetically the burning cheek that Raquelle slapped.       “Hey, where are you going?” Daniel resents, leaning on the wall with his arm after Anna’s push, when all the girls run out of the house shortly, along with Sammy. “Seymour, the fuck! Are you fucking crazy? Come back! Come back now! Come back, I said!”       But despite the strong gusts of the wind and drops of the annoying rain that get into their faces, the girls do not give up on their goal and go to look for Peter after they close the door and fix their coats.       “Fucking shit!” Daniel hits his hand sharply against the wall. “They got out, after all!”       “¡Maldito asnos!” Edward swears irritably, clenching his hands tightly into fists. “Ar-r-r-r…”       “I will kick the ass of that bitch when we come back home,” Terrence threatens, going to the living room and sitting on the sofa tiredly. “I’ll show her where she belongs!”       “Oh, give a fuck, let them do what they want and go wherever they want!” Daniel waves his hand, following Terrence along with Edward. “They shouldn't then whine if they get in some trouble. We will not rescue them.”       “Exactly! If they think they can do this, it’s up to them! And they will get therapy from a cold on their own.”       “The important thing is that we don’t get a cold,” Edward sighs tiredly, putting his hand on his forehead after sitting on the sofa. “We were outside for too long. Under the cold wind.”       “Oh, let’s drink some hot coffee…” Daniel suggests. “So that we can warm up a little…”       “Oh, good! Good!”       “That’s what I need,” Terrence says tiredly.       “One second, the kettle is gonna boil soon,” Daniel assures and goes to the kitchen. “I’ll prepare cups now.”       When Daniel adds some water to the electric kettle and turns it on, he prepares three small cups and adds two spoons of coffee with a slide. And then he adds a third one in one of them after Terrence asks him to give him stronger coffee.       “Fuck, the girls did really freak out!” Edward throws gloomily, crossing his arms over his chest.       “Uh-huh, they should press Sammy to the wall since he didn’t watch him enough!” Terrence exclaims. “What’s our fault? He should have watched that idiot! But we turned out to be guilty in the end.”       “Right!” Daniel agrees. “Are we his nannies? It’s okay he didn’t die! He can go home now! And Sammy did really frame us!”       “I didn’t think these cuties would really stand by the side of the blond-haired one,” Terrence rubs his forehead. “After everything they know about him.”       “I am dumbfounded by them, too!” Daniel confesses, comes back to the living room, and sits on the sofa, spreading his legs widely. “I didn’t think they’d do it to us.”       “It’s okay, I’ll watch them whine when they cough and sneeze with a handkerchief in their hands and a thermometer in their mouths,” Edward replies. “And regret getting outside.”       “Uh-huh, they will run everywhere for nothing and come back here with nothing. Admit that we were right, and they did a freaking stupid thing.”       “Oh, give a damn!” Terrence waves his hand. “If they wanna deal with it, it’s okay! We will not even move a finger to help them. Since they’re so brave and sassy, let them do all this shit without us.”       “It’s okay, guys, you and I won’t feel bored!” Daniel notices cheerfully with a wide smile. “Now we will drink coffee, get up, lie on the bed, and watch a movie.”       “Well, as I understand, the hurricane won’t end soon…” Edward assumes, glancing at the window. “So, we have to stay here.”       “That’s why you can relax. It’s a cool chance to spend some time together. And if we’re in a good enough mood, we can drink something strong.”       “M-m-m, do you have alcohol, huh?” Terrence smiles mysteriously.       “That hurts, brother! I always have a bottle of something strong! Not just one bottle. I’ve got jars, too.”       “It’s strange that Seymour hasn’t kicked your ass for that.”       “I’m surprised too! Though she knows I keep alcohol for hangouts with men only. And I never drink alcohol alone. Because I ain’t an alcoholic.”       “Make sure she doesn’t throw everything off in anger tonight,” Edward warns and chuckles kindly. “Along with you and your underwear!”       “Oh, c’mon! They’ll run some time under the heavy rain and calm down! The cold rain is supposed to wake them up quickly. So that they run to us shortly, squeaking they’re scared.”       “Yeah, the silly ones don’t understand we’re worried about them,” Terrence sighs tiredly, leaning back on the sofa. “I didn’t wanna let Cameron go because lightning could hit her as fuck, or she could get a cold. Not because of Rose. The wind is strong outside!”       “I didn’t let Rochester go for the same reason,” Edward confesses. “And her parents are gonna cut my head if something happens to her. Saying I don’t watch her enough.”       “Of course, it was painful to do it so cruelly, but they gave us no choice,” Daniel notices. “It didn’t help, though…”       “Let’s wait for some time, but then go and find them if they don’t come back in the nearest time,” Terrence suggests. “I don’t think they will go too far. They’re gonna be walking somewhere in this neighborhood.”       “Well… At least we know that Rose is surely somewhere near. Knowing that he left the keys to his car and his phone.”       “Oh, what does that idiot have on his mind?” Edward sighs tiredly, running his hands over his face. “What was he thinking of when going outside in this weather again?”       “He’s not a child anymore and can stand up for himself. But we don’t have to please his ass. And we don’t want to.”       “I can understand why he attacked Marcus and his fucking friends,” Edward says thoughtfully. “But the fact that he took it out on us, too… It’s too much.”       “Agree,” Terrence nods. “We can understand everything, but we can’t understand this.”       “That’s why we’re hurt,” Daniel replies, rubbing his hands nervously. “It hurts that you do everything for someone, but they pay you back like this. They just let you befriend them.”       “If Rose took it out on the girls like this, they wouldn’t dance attendance upon him. So, I understand why these cuties worry about him so much.”       “Logic,” Edward shrugs. “Peter did nothing bad to them. Though… He fought with Helene over the charges of Marcus for lying and betraying him for some time. But now these two don’t kinda remember that.”       “But Helene doesn’t deny that there’s something,” Daniel replies. “And Raquelle, Anna, and Natalia do know her secret. It means Marcus didn’t bluff. He really had some dirt on Marshall.”       “Whatever she did. I’m sure it’s not as terrible as all the actions of the blond he has done.”       “Anyway, it’s his problem,” Terrence says quietly. “We’ve done too much. I am personally sick. Sick of getting that idiot out of the pool where he comes back again and again.”       “I was doing this for five years, dude!” Daniel exclaims. “And as you understand, it didn’t lead to anything good.”       “Nevertheless, it doesn’t mean I wish him death,” Edward confesses.       “However…”       Hearing that the kettle turns off automatically after the water in it starts boiling, Daniel gets up from the sofa, goes to the kitchen, and fills the cups he prepared before with boiling water.       “Not gonna hide, I was really scared when the girls were trying to revive him. I was really scared that the guy would die. I wasn’t pretending. It was true.”       “I didn’t want him to die, either,” Terrence confesses. “And when he started to breathe, I felt a great relief.”       “Good memories are the reason?” Edward specifies. “The moments when he seemed normal?”       “Yeah… There are good memories of him. And thanks to them, I can’t add that guy to the list of my biggest enemies.”       “And I have a lot of them…” Daniel confesses, puts all the cups with plates on the small tray after he mixes coffee and adds some milk, and carries them to the living room. “And whatever happens, I will always remember. I’ll never pretend that these things have never happened.”       When he comes to the coffee table, Daniel puts the tray on it and gives the cups carefully to Edward and Terrence, warning that they are hot. Then he sits on the sofa, takes the third one, and takes a little sip to taste it.       “Hey, guys, what if we’re doing something wrong?” Terrence asks after an awkward pause. “Maybe we should think about what we’re doing?”       “Right…” Daniel nods. “If we think better… The girls are right! Absolutely right. We’re acting like nobody the fuck knows who. What are we actually doing?”       “Yeah, but they’re wrong that we were waiting for his death!” Edward notices. “It’s not the truth! I was personally just confused. Overwhelmed by what was happening.”       “Yeah, that awkward moment when the girls put themselves together and decided what to do much faster,” Terrence says thoughtfully.       “But if we’d noticed he was drowning first, we would’ve run to help him,” Daniel replies. “At least, I would’ve run. Because I don’t want Peter to die.”       “Oh, about the girls!” Edward exclaims. “Why the fuck did they let him go to the back of the house when this chaos started outside?”       “And why the fuck did he stand under that canopy?” Daniel drinks some coffee. “That thing weighed nobody the fuck knows how much! But that idiot was standing under it with his mouth open! It’s a miracle that it didn’t kill him if it really fell over his head. If he really swallowed a lot of water because he couldn’t get out of the blockage.”       “I guess his imaginary friend told him something again, and he went to do it mindlessly,” Terrence assumes.       “And it’s a miracle that the girls actually managed to move it. Under water!”       “Oh… If one girl can do the impossible, it’s hard to imagine what several girls can do. You just need to give them a reason so that they turn this whole world upside down and crash it with all their power.”       “In short, we’re all guilty of what happened to some extent,” Daniel concludes. “If we hadn’t watched him enough, there would’ve been a lot of policemen at this house, who would’ve been investigating Rose’s death.”       “After thinking a little, you may unconsciously think all these scuffles did really break our brains a little,” Edward says hesitantly. “We left the girls alone and went to the top. And nobody watched Rose.”       “I’m glad Rose admitted his fault and apologized to us. We can say it wasn’t true. But still… You need to have great courage to come to someone and say, ‘Hey, forgive me, please, I wasn’t right.’ Even if the blond did something wrong, he always apologized and tried to make amends.”       “Agree, it’s never easy to apologize when you’re really sorry,” Terrence agrees. “Nobody made Rose do it. It’s not the case when two children stand one against another after a fight and are told to apologize and hug.”       “Right, he came to us, apologized, and explained the reasons for his actions,” Edward notices. “Yes, maybe the girls could convince him to do it. But I don’t think they told him to do it. They didn’t force him one hundred percent.”       “And when Helene showed up alive before his eyes, his glance suddenly changed,” Daniel notices. “It was full of hatred, contempt, and anger. But then it became much softer… Confused… I dunno… Different… I’d say… It was our Peter. The Peter we know.”       “I dunno, guys, the case is complicated,” Terrence sighs tiredly. “I’m kinda hurt, but I’m kinda sorry about ending all of this like this.”       “I gave him many chances, but he missed all of them. Rose makes mistakes again and again. He makes me regret the day I actually talked to him and suggested that we become friends again and again.”       “We understand you,” Edward pronounces thoughtfully. “You’ve known him for much longer than we have. And it’s much harder for you.”       “Yup, it’s really hard for me. And no matter what, it’s unpleasant for him to fight with him. You know I didn’t want it from the beginning. But we had no choice. We had to forget about our fucking good relationship just to survive. Not to let him kill us in that basement.”       “And we fought for life today,” Terrence adds. “If we’d been standing like columns and blinking our eyes, Rose would’ve killed us shortly. And even if he’d regretted it, it would've been too late.”       “Right, that battle meant a fight for life to us,” Edward replies. “A wish to prove that we were right.”       “And on the contrary…” Daniel pronounces hesitantly. “I would behave in the same way if I were him. If everyone despised me since childhood. If nobody loved me, nobody appreciated me… If adult people didn’t care about my fucking problems. If people of my age used me like a punching bag. I would break, too. My psyche wouldn’t be as tough as it is now. Yes, I’ve gotten through many bad events. But I managed to survive them. I managed to find the strength to move on.”       “Moreover, he was a child,” Terrence notices. “All alone. Everyone gave a fuck about him. Though a child needs love, care, and protection like never before. While they’re little, they can’t fight the cruelty of this world. A baby counts on their mom, dad, or someone else. But who could Peter count on? To whom could he go to complain?”       “Father gave a fuck about me too,” Edward says. “But I always had someone else to complain to. Grandma, friends… Even teachers could support me… I was alone, but I was not. But in the case of Peter, everything was much worse. He had nobody.”       “And let’s admit that we didn’t always treat him well. He does have reasons not to trust us and run from us. He’s afraid to be betrayed again, and I can understand it.”       “Maybe we should reflect on our point of view on this question again?” Daniel suggests hesitantly. “Think about whether we wanna keep pretending that we no longer wanna have a business with him.”       “First, we need to ask ourselves if we want it. Because… Sometimes having just one wish is already enough. One true wish.”       Silence settles in the air for two or three seconds, during which the three men think about something.       “I want,” Daniel pronounces much more determinedly.       “Me too,” Edward flashes a slight smile.       “And me,” Terrence raises his head.       “Still…” Daniel purses his lips. “Nothing’s gonna happen if we… Give the man a chance… At least for the good moments that unite us.”       “We are not all holy,” Edward notices. “And we have reasons to be mad… And Peter has a right to be mad… We all made a lot of mistakes…”       “And now it’s a wonderful moment to show that we’re ready to work it all out,” Terrence says. “That the girls are wrong, blaming us for being heartless and wishing to see Peter in the grave.”       “Then…” Daniel pronounces thoughtfully. “Let’s follow the girls? Find Peter and bring him back here.”       “I think we’ll find him quickly,” Edward assumes. “There aren’t many places to hide here.”       “I’d bet…” Terrence protests. “Did you notice he said nothing since he woke up? He looked into the distance and reacted to nothing!”       “Yes, yes, I noticed it too! He was obviously outta his mind and thinking of something bad! Which means the blond can do any stupid thing and run wild anywhere without understanding what he’s doing. And in the end, we may find him literally on another side of the city.”       “It makes me feel creepy…” Daniel replies tensely. “In this condition, he can actually jump off the bridge or a cliff and crush himself to the fuck. I really doubt that the blond actually understands something now.”       “And there are enough things like these here,” Terrence notices. “Cliffs, deep rivers, and something like this.”       “What if the girls don’t find him in time?” Edward expresses anxiety. “What if they don’t stop that guy in time? What if they can’t prevent the catastrophe, no matter how hard they try to find him?”       “Anyway, he couldn’t go too far. He’s supposed to stay somewhere.”       “If some of my neighbors noticed him, they probably got overwhelmed, seeing that idiot running in this weather and being wet and cold,” Daniel assumes. “After he nearly drowned here and barely woke up.”       “Yeah… I thought my brother was a weirdo. But now we’ve got a much weirder folk.”       “Ha! Your brother is actually an innocent angel against Rose! Of course, he had his head in the space too, but he didn’t go so far…”       Edward decides to say nothing and just chuckles kindly. And after he takes a sip from his cup, he moves his eyes aside and stops it on the table with some things on it near the sofa. The guy puts his cup on it and takes the silver photo frame from the floor after he puts an eye on it.       “Hey, I’ve never seen this photo here!” Edward exclaims, viewing the photo with all the men and the girls posing together. “Did you put it here some time ago?”       “Yup, Anna and I recently viewed photos she took on her polaroid camera,” Daniel shrugs. “She had this photo among them. I wanted to put it in a frame, but it was too small. Then she scanned a photo with her phone, did something, and printed it. The result is pretty good, huh.”       “Did it have this crack before?” Edward looks closely at the crack in the glass that goes between Peter and the other guys.       “Nope, it wasn’t here…” Daniel sits next to Edward. “I guess it just crushed… After falling from the table.”       “Don’t ya find it a symbolic sign? This crack kind of separates us from Peter… Look at how interesting it goes.”       “Indeed,” Terrence nods after he sits next to Edward and views the photo. “As if there’s really a sign about this.”       “And you and I are standing near him…” Daniel notices. “As if some circumstances really separated us from Rose.”       “But when was this photo taken?” Terrence frowns slightly. “I can’t remember how we took it.”       “Oh, I can’t remember either! Though it was definitely taken a long time ago. I think we’re much younger in it.”       “So funny, so happy…” Edward smiles shyly. “Not knowing what shit they’d get through someday. Living when things seemed much simpler.”       “Many things have changed since then… And we’re no longer those we were several years ago. We learn from mistakes. We learn to live, to love… Overcome barriers…”       “And no matter what, I don’t regret anything…” Terrence confesses. “Anything we’ve got through. Who knows where I would’ve been if not for all of this…”       “But I regret many things…” Daniel swallows tensely. “For example, about not being better. Not being as good as my parents, my sister, my friends wanted me to be…”       “We all have got sins…” Edward replies thoughtfully. “And we’re guilty of Peter to some extent. We can’t deny that we’ve never been such perfect friends.”       “But we can’t be blamed for wishing him the worst,” Terrence adds. “When I hear something like this, I wanna freak out. Because I’ve always been by his side.”       “Peter counted on someone, probably for the first time in his life, but people didn’t always do what he expected to him,” Daniel notices. “Even if the blond was my friend, our relationship couldn’t be called perfect. And the bigger fault is on me mostly. And he never did anything bad to me. Before… He attacked me with a knife. And tried to kill me many times.”       “We have to give him credit ‘cause he understands his problem. The guy probably wants to solve them so badly, but he doesn’t know how. Or… He lacks motivation… Or the memories… The reason why it all started.”       “We all got support from each other in the dark times,” Edward notices. “We’ve always been stronger together. Always been able to get through fire and water together. Been able to survive any hurricane together. And when we felt bad, Peter didn’t stay aside. He always comforted us and supported us. Even if he felt very bad.”       “No matter what, we need him,” Daniel says with sadness in his eyes. “And he needs us. We can’t let anything ruin this relationship so easily. Since it means a lot to all of us.”       “So, let’s prove it by the business, not words,” Terrence suggests determinedly. “Fuck all the offences of and show that we still love our friend. Even if he’s a fucking asshole with mental issues, we’re always ready to come and help.”       “We’ll no longer screw it up. We’ll no longer let our anger and offences make us forget all the good moments that connect us with him. Forget that it’s too hard to trust the world after you’ve been betrayed and wounded one billion times.”       “Alright, guys, stop growing our asses on the couch,” Edward says quietly but confidently. “Let’s get them up and finally go to look for our friend. Go look for the girls.”       “The hurricane is getting stronger…” Terrence notices, glancing at the window after a flash of lightning is seen in the sky. “We’ve gotta hurry up…”       “Give a fuck!” Daniel exclaims. “No tornadoes and hurricanes can stop us! When we find the girls and the blond, we’ll keep sitting here.”       “We need to do something to our clothes,” Edward notices. “We’re gonna get wet to the bones in all of this. And then lie in bed with a high fever, a sore throat, and a cough along with the girls.”       “I only have four pairs of rubber boots,” Daniel confesses. “But the girls took all of them.”       “Damn!” Terrence swears. “And what do we do?”       “We can put on coats with hoods. I have several ones – for all of us. But I’ve got problems with shoes. I have many pairs too, but all of them are gonna be too big for you.”       “Bring here what you want so that we can see!” Edward exclaims and puts the frame on the table.       “Maybe there’s something else here?” Terrence specifies, getting up from the sofa along with the other men.       “Hardly, the girls took everything!” Daniel shakes his head and looks around quickly. “But you can check out the area under the stairs while I go up for coats. There is a lot of shit that I need to sort out someday. I’d probably throw most of it.”       “Okay, we will check it out now!”       “And wash the cups, please, if it doesn’t bother you.”       “I will wash, don’t worry!” Edward exclaims.       “And I will sort these things out!” Terrence replies.       “A second backpack is supposed to be here!” Daniel exclaims. “Find it and put everything we’re gonna need.”       “Deal! But you go to take coats! Faster! Don’t waste time!”       “I’ll be back now!”       While Daniel gets up to the second floor literally on the run, Edward takes all the empty cups and washes them quickly with warm water, using the detergent, while Terrence examines closely the staff he can see under the stairs in the hope of finding something necessary.       “If we don’t find any shoes, we can put plastic bags on our feet,” Terrence suggests when he sees a thick package of bags. “Of course, we’d feel uncomfortable, but we’d have no choice.”       “I sense that we’re all gonna be coughing and sneezing at least for several days after today,” Edward replies. “Because we’re wet as fuck after running under the heavy rain in wet clothes with wet feet.”       “Give a fuck! The important thing is to find the guys and bring them back to the house! Then we’ll put on dry clothes, drink something hot, and warm up under the blankets.”       “I wonder if I have time to send a message to Mom and Dad and say I’ll stay here for a night due to the hurricane that ain’t gonna end while Perkins is looking for coats?”       “Maybe just a couple of words. Without details.”       “Ha, if I told them everything that’s happening here, they’d be fucking overwhelmed.”       After he wipes all the cups and puts them in the place where they usually are, Edward takes his smartphone lying on the coffee table. He opens the message app, records, and sends a short voice message to Rebecca and Jamie to warn them that he is going to spend a night at Daniel’s house, lets them know he is alright, and asks them to reply to him if they are safe too. And some time later, Daniel returns to the living room, holding two warm coats with hoods and two pairs of fall-winter shoes. Then he gives both of these coats to the MacClife brothers, who put them on without question and zip them up.       “Listen, I have some shoes here…” Daniel says thoughtfully. “I bought them a long time ago, but I’ve never worn them. But when I just wanted to try them on, I found that my feet got bigger.”       “They look good,” Terrence notices.       “Let’s try them on,” Edward says.       After taking these pairs of shoes from Daniel, Edward and Terrence sit on the sofa and spend several seconds changing their shoes to the shoes that, to their surprise, turn out to fit them like magic.       “Wow, they’re so soft and comfortable!” Edward approves, getting up from the sofa and taking several steps.       “Much better than the snickers that are as wet as fuck,” Terrence says, walking into the living room.       “Oh, I was gonna get rid of them…” Daniel exhales with relief. “I like them so much, but they are too small for me, sadly. If you want, you can take them. No problem.”       “Hey, are you ready?”       “Ready!” Daniel zips up his coat, which he put on some time before, and raises his foot to show the shoes he is wearing now. “And I changed my sneakers to these shoes!”       “Great!” Edward nods in approval. “I washed the cups and put them in their place. I even sent a voice message to Mom and Dad, saying I’d stay here due to the hurricane.”       “And I put everything we might need in the backpack,” Terrence says, glancing at the backpack lying on the sofa. “Who knows what we may need.”       “Excellent!” Daniel cracks a slight smile. “I need to take the keys from home and my phone before we can go.”       “Let’s go now!” Edward encourages. “It seems like the rain is getting heavier. If we don’t find the guys now, something bad is gonna happen.”       “Okay, okay, let’s go!” Daniel jabs after he puts the keys and the phone in the pocket of his coat. “Get out while I switch off the light.”       Terrence puts on the backpack on his shoulder, and Edward zips up his coat before they come to the hall door, open it, and, showing a furious resistance to the powerful gusts of the wind, cross the doorstep. After he switches off the light in the living room, Daniel follows them, closes the door, and locks it with the keys. Then the men come determinedly to the gates, barely holding on their feet and holding the hoods that they have to put on again and again, while drops of the heavy rain get right into their faces.       “Oh, shit, everything is destroyed here!” Daniel horrifies. “How much money do I have to spend to restore all this shit?”       “It seems like a lot!” Terrence assumes, “We're all gonna spend a lot!”       “Where do we go?” Edward tries to shout out thunder after he, Daniel, and Terrence end up behind the gate of the house. “Where could they go?”       “Who the fuck knows! They may be anywhere!”       “Even Sammy can’t help the girls in this heavy rain,” Daniel replies. “The rain is gonna get rid of all the smells on the ground, and he’ll find nothing.”       “At least, all our cars are still here!” Edward notices. “Nobody left! It means everyone’s here!”       “It’s strange that nothing has fallen over them yet,” Terrence notices. “Nothing has pressed them yet.”       “If the hurricane continues, half of us are one hundred percent gonna lose our cars tomorrow.”       “I’m gonna give a fuck about it if we don’t find the guys now,” Daniel says confidently and looks around excitedly. “Where do we go? Right or left?”       “No idea!” Terrence throws his hands up and barely stands on his feet due to the strong gust of wind. “Though we’ve gotta think faster!”       “Uh-huh, or we’re gonna be stru-u-u-uck…” Edward adds and manages to grab the hood with both hands.       “Look, guys!” Daniel exclaims, pointing his finger at the fresh tracks on the ground near the wide asphalt path. “The tracks of shoes!”       “You wanna say they went there?” Terrence asks surprisingly, coming to Daniel along with Edward.       “I dunno… But the tracks are obviously fresh…”       “Hey, there are a dog’s paws here!” Edward announces, pointing at the prints on the ground. “That’s surely Sammy!”       “They lead to the depth of the woods…” Terrence frowns slightly. “Does it mean the girls went there? Does it mean Peter went to that side too?”       “Sammy went on the same path when leading me to the place where Peter was attacked for the first time after that show, when someone wanted to kill him too,” Daniel recalls, frowning slightly.       “And where does it lead?” Edward specifies.       “I dunno. The fluffy brought me to the glade where Rose was fighting that asshole, who tried to strangle him. But there’s a further path.”       “Have you never driven on it?”       “Never! And none of my neighbors use it. Everyone goes to the other side. And who the fuck knows where this path leads to.”       “Okay, give a fuck!” Terrence waves his hand. “We’ll figure it out later! If the tracks lead there, we must follow them.”       “What if they disappear because of the wind?” Edward throws his hands up.       “I dunno. Let’s reflect on the way, huh.”       “Anyway, we can come back here on the same path,” Daniel says.       “Let’s go, guys! We’ve gotta check out that place!”       “Oh, I hope you put at least one flashlight in the backpack…” Edward expresses hope. “Because we’re gonna surely need it in this endless darkness.”       “The important thing is not to be struck do-o-o-o-own…” Edward notices loudly and almost loses his balance due to the strong wind.       “Ar-r-r, the rain hits right in the face…” Terrence blunts irritably.       Trying so hard to ignore any discomfort, Daniel, Edward, and Terrence move forward determinedly, following the direction where the fresh tracks of shoes and a dog’s paws lead. They are already washed away by the rain, but they can still be noticed. Their path gets through the thick woods, the strong wind wants to strike them down, the heavy rain gets right into the eyes, their feet end up in dirty pools all the time, and wet sticks getting into the face do not make this mission better. Moaning at times, complaining, groaning, and shaking slightly from coldness, the guys do not give up, however, and continue to move on. At some moment, they have to take a flashlight from the backpack and turn it on since it’s getting harder for the friends to orient when it’s getting darker and darker outside, and the weather literally blinds and disorients them.       

***

      Helene, Anna, Natalia, and Raquelle are already far from the house, but they still cannot find Peter, who has literally been swallowed by the ground. At first, they follow Sammy, who managed to feel the familiar smell on the ground and trees, but the dog loses the track at some moment. That’s why the girls have to rely on themselves most of the time, even if there are moments when the retriever feels something very, very weakly. The friends move forward determinedly, getting through the wet sticks of trees, bushes, dirt, and pools. They shake at every flash of lightning and at every clap of thunder. And they jump like boiling when lightning hits the tree several meters away from them, so that it starts burning sharply.       There are moments when they want to turn around and leave this place. But the girls make themselves forget all the fears and discomfort, not forgetting about the man, who needs their help so badly. Who can only count on them since the men let them know openly that they refuse categorically to do something for him. The thought of Peter destroying himself if he stays all alone makes Helene, Raquelle, Natalia, and Anna bite the bullet and move further and further. Even though they can barely keep their balance due to the powerful gusts of the wind, for which it’s super easy to strike them down due to their light weight. Sammy does not give up either and tries desperately to find some tracks of his owner’s boyfriend, sniffing the ground closely, looking around, and whining heartbreakingly. As if he wants to complain to the girls that he is able to do nothing.       “Quiet, quiet, my boy, it’s gonna be okay,” Helene calms down softly, caressing Sammy’s head. “We will not give up. We will find Peter.”       “My God, where did he run?” Raquelle wonders, looking around with a flashlight turned on in her hands. “We’ve been walking here for so long, but we can’t find any tracks!”       “If he was out of his mind at that moment, Peter didn’t think about it,” Anna replies. “You saw that he reacted to nothing after waking up. He was in a stupor.”       “It’s okay, girls, we can do this!” Natalia states determinedly. “We must find Peter! He has nobody but us to count on. But these idiots went out of their minds.”       “I’m sure we’ll find him!” Helene exclaims. “I’m sure we don’t have to run here for too long.”       “And we’d rather hurry up. The rain gets heavier, and it’s getting dark. It’s not gonna give us anything good.”       “Don’t worry, girls, it’s gonna be okay,” Raquelle assures. “While we’re together, we can do anything. And we don’t need the men to do what we should do as real friends.”       “Peter!” Anna calls loudly. “Peter, where are you? Say something, buddy! Please, tell us where to find you!”       “Peter, please, show up!” Helene begs desperately at the top of her lungs. “Please, give us just one sign!”       Sammy starts barking loudly and heartbreakingly again, showing how much he is worried about Peter.       “Please, Peter, let us help you!” Natalia begs. “We will not leave you! We promise! Whatever happens, you can always count on us!”       “Please, Sammy, find something else!” Raquelle says with pity in her eyes. “You’re our only hope! We can’t do this without you, without your keen sense of smell. I know the rain got rid of all the smells, but please, try again.”       “Please, sunshine, tell us where to go,” Helene begs. “The sooner you can catch a track, the sooner we find Peter and come back to the house, to the warmth. Please, my sweetie, try hard…”       Helene gives Sammy the keys from Peter’s car so that he smells them again. Then the doggy starts sniffing the ground in search of something, but sadly, he cannot find anything. And he lets the girls know it by whining with pity.       “Please, Sammy, please, don’t give up!” Anna begs. “We can’t give up! We must find Peter! We must not leave him!”       But no matter how hard Sammy tries to find a track, he is just not able to do this since the rain got rid of all the weakest smells. That’s why the girls fall into despair for some time, not knowing where to move on. They shout out Peter’s name several times, lighting up the path with a bright flashlight and trying to figure out where to go.       “Just something, Sammy, just something!” Natalia folds her hands together as if she prays to someone. “We can’t leave with anything. Peter is gonna be doomed if we don’t find him. He’s now out of his mind and can do anything to himself.”       “C’mon, baby, do this again!” Helene begs with tears in her eyes. “Track, Sammy! C’mon! C’mon! We’re begging you, sunshine… We can’t do this without you. We need you so badly. Please, Sammy, please…”       Whining with pity again, Sammy sniffs the ground for the hundredth time, runs from side to another, frets, listens to the sounds around him… He puts his tail between his paws when the sky is lighted up by the bright flash of lightning, looking around with widely open eyes. At some moment, he moves his eyes up, sniffs one tree much better, and runs to another suddenly as if he manages to feel something. And then another. Another. Next, he actually starts running somewhere after calling the girls by barking loudly.       After looking at each other, Anna, Natalia, Raquelle, and Helene start following Sammy as fast as the wind lets them. But at some moment, it starts blowing right into their backs as if it pushes them in the right direction. But since the dog does not look confident and seems confused at times, the friends doubt if he follows the right track or just runs somewhere randomly, hoping for luck. Nevertheless, they believe in him truly and do not stop encouraging the retriever that takes something from the ground at some moment and gives it to his owner.       “What’s this?” Anna frowns strongly.       “It’s Peter’s bracelet…” Helene announces, looking at the piece of the silver bracelet with the engraving in her palms. “I mean, the piece… It’s broken…”       “The one we gifted him on his birthday?” Anna specifies. “Which we ordered, adding a phrase to motivate him?”       “It is… ‘Always stay as kind, funny, loyal, strong, brave, smiling, and confident as you are now.’ That’s what's written on it…”       “There must be another piece. It’s just a part.”       “Yeah, but I don’t see anything.” Natalia looks around. “Nothing at all…”       “It’s symbolic to some extent…” Raquelle says thoughtfully. “When the guys turned their backs on Peter, the bracelet broke. The friendship has been ruined.”       “It means he was obviously here!” Natalia concludes. “It means we’re moving in the right direction!”       “Keep going on, Sammy, you’re doing a good job! Where do we go next?”       “C’mon, baby, c’mon! You can do this!”       Sniffing the smell on the trees, which supposedly have a weak smell since Peter grabbed and touched them somehow, Sammy manages to catch a track and start leading the girls to a certain place. He makes them run after him for a long time, for a very long time. The friends have to make a lot of effort to take this hard way, after which they feel really exhausted, but they try to ignore it. The dog also orients to the sticks lying on the ground and still having the weak smell of the man.       “Hey, girls, aren’t those the prints of his shoes?” Raquelle asks, lighting up the ground with a flashlight and noticing the prints of shoes that have not been erased by the rain.       “Maybe…” Helene pronounces thoughtfully. “Sammy’s got interest in them…”       “Yes, these are his prints!” Anna exclaims happily. “Sammy is tracking them!”       “Let’s go, girls!” Natalia makes a gesture to call her friends. “Now, before we lose the track!”       “Orientate on the grass too!” Raquelle advises. “If it’s pressed, it means Peter stepped on it!”       Now, Helene, Raquelle, Anna, and Natalia move forward much more confidently, even if they have not found Peter yet. Sammy also starts looking like he surely knows where the men ran and calls them after himself at times by barking loudly. The weather and the darkness do not let them do what they want so hard, but the girls show an amazing stubbornness, even if they may be scared when they see flashes of lightings in the sky and hear deafening claps of thunders, while the wind is about to strike them down, the rain gets into the face, and they shake from the bitter cold on the skin. Nothing makes them stop in the middle of the way, turn around, and go home, not knowing that the men decided to go look for their friends and girlfriends.       “My God, where’s he?” Helene wonders. “Why the hell did he run so far? Was he really out of his mind when running somewhere without thinking?”       “Yeah, we’ve been having a busy day, huh…” Natalia groans tiredly. “Too busy…”       “You’re right!” Raquelle agrees. “We’re gonna spend a lot of time coming to ourselves.”       “It’s okay, we’re gonna feel proud if we can do this,” Anna notices cheerfully. “If we show the men that we don’t always need their help. We can save everyone and be heroines too.”       “We have to do it on our own when our boys use what they have between their legs to think about something, not their mind,” Natalia replies.       “It’s okay, it’s okay, we’ll do it without them!” Helene assures. “But they can do what they want: overeating, watching movies, or getting ready to sleep.”       Sammy barks loudly as if he tells the girls not to go too far from him and continues to show them a way confidently.       “I guess Sammy finally caught a track!” Anna notices happily, fastening a step as well as her friends.       “Good job, boy, good job!” Raquelle encourages. “You’re doing this so well!”       “C’mon, Sammy!” Helene and Natalia pronounce at the same time. “Come on!”       The girls spend some time running after Sammy before he suddenly stops and starts looking at everything and listening to everything after he brings them to the glade, where there is enough space. Where it’s hard for him to orient again. Where he feels totally confused and thinks about where to go.       “Hey, Sammy, don’t stop!” Helene begs with pity. “Where do we go next?”       “Damn, we lost the track again!” Raquelle swears.       “Maybe he’s somewhere here?” Anna assumes. “The glade is large, there’s much space… And the ground is uneven… With hills and holes…”       “What he’s sitting in a hole?” Natalia tells her version. “Let’s check everything out here!”       After they go on the glade, the girls start looking around themselves slowly and shouting out Peter’s name in the hope of getting his reaction. They check every single brush, every single tree – everything they see, but they cannot find any tracks yet.       “Peter!” Helene, Raquelle, Natalia, and Anna try to call at different times. “Peter!”       Sammy barks loudly too and whines with great pity as he starts shaking stronger and stronger from the coldness and fights so hard against the gusts of the wind that try to strike him down and push him several meters away. He looks around himself again before he pays attention to something he sees afar. After barking quickly, the dog rushes to check out that place with his eagle eye and keen sense of smell. And it seems that he manages to find something else. That’s why he calls the girls to him with a loud, exciting bark.       When they all come to him, Sammy starts getting through the thick bushes determinedly, falling into deep holes at times, dirtying his paws, climbing up, or getting down hills. The way turns out to be short but exhausting. Then the retriever starts breathing very heavily, and the girls choke with the thought that their legs get weak. However, they forget it quickly and keep moving on, letting themselves take a break for two or three seconds. Lighting up what they see further with a flashlight, the friends notice the figure of the century-old tree that is literally standing alone in the middle of another glade.       Anna, Helene, Natalia, and Raquelle notice silently that Sammy shows a great interest in that tree and comes to it determinedly. As if his nose caught something interesting that would let him show him the way and not to let the girls get lost in the woods in the evening, in the heavy rain, in the hurricane. All the girls thank the heavens silently for having the dog with them because they would not surely find Peter on their own, since he is either too far from them or sitting somewhere as quietly as a mouse and does not want anyone to find him.       After getting through lots of bushes successfully and not even being pleased to shake the dirt off his hair, Sammy barking loudly rushes to the tree that he liked some time ago. Then he starts sniffing the trunk and walking around it. And he finds a big dark hole in it, starting to examine it with a greater interest. It’s hard to see what’s inside in the daytime, but now it’s actually impossible. But the doggy easily finds something thanks to his keen sense of smell and starts barking loudly to let the others know they must come here shortly.       Helene, Natalia, Anna, and Raquelle frown strongly when they start checking the tree that is several times taller than them, and look at what surrounds them just in case. The girls do not understand what Sammy could need here and think of going further. But since the dog is very stubborn and literally tells them to check the hole in the trunk, they come to the one and light it up with a flashlight to find out what’s hidden in it. And they find what they have been looking for so long.       Peter is hiding in this hole, being completely wet, sitting on the dirt ground, pressing his knees to his chest, and keeping his legs wrapped with his arms. It’s easy to notice how strongly he is shaking, how pale and exhausted he is… The eagle eye can see that the guy looks into the distance slowly with widely open eyes. He does not react when the bright light of the flashlight is on his face. He does not react to Sammy’s bark full of pity and whine, and his attempts to snuggle his nose in his face or hands in the hope of getting his attention.       “My God, Peter…” Natalia, Anna, and Raquelle exhale with relief.       “Peter, thank God, we found you!” Helene pronounces in a shaking voice, gets down to her knees beside Peter, and hugs him tightly, barely holding down the tears. “I was so worried… I almost went crazy…”       “Don’t do this anymore, buddy, hear us!” Anna says excitedly, getting down to her knees in front of Peter, along with her friends, and caressing his hand softly.       “Why did you run from the house?” Raquelle wonders. “These things are happening outside, but you walk nobody knows where!”       “My gosh, you’re so wet and freezing!” Natalia horrifies when she touches Peter’s forearm. “You must be warmed up and covered!”       “Damn, we’re idiots, we should’ve taken a warm coat with us!” Anna claps her forehead.       “It’s okay, it’s not too far from the house,” Helene replies excitedly. “We’ll come back there quickly and warm him up.”       “C’mon, Peter, get up,” Raquelle says softly, clapping Peter on the shoulder. “Come with us. Let’s go, buddy…”       “Can you hear us, Peter?” Natalia wonders and waves her hand in front of Peter’s dead eyes. “Hello, I’m addressing you!”       “Girls, he still reacts to nothing…” Anna shakes her head. “Look! He’s sitting and looking into the distance…”       “It’s okay, my sunshine, it’s okay, don’t be afraid,” Helene tries to calm down, caressing Peter’s head, and kisses him sweetly on the pale, icy cheek. “You’re with us, you’re safe. Nobody’s gonna hurt you.”       “Come on, Pete, let’s go!” Anna begs with pity in her eyes. “Don’t scare us, for God’s sake! Say just something to us! Please, Peter, please…”       Sammy tries to use all ways to get attention from Peter, who keeps being indifferent to what’s happening to him. He just realized that he remembered everything he tried to forget so hard. The memories get into his mind again and again, making him fall deeply into the past days and stop hearing and understanding everything around. The screams of the seven-year-old child, who he used to be, cover the voices of the girls that reach his ears through the deaf wall. The heart squeezes painfully, the breath is heavy, the head goes around, every single muscle shakes at the tormenting tension, and goosebumps show up on the skin more clearly.       “Please, Peter, don’t scare us!” Raquelle begs and shakes Peter slightly by the shoulders. “Say just one word! Don’t be silent! Say anything you want, but speak! Please!”       “He doesn’t hear…” Helene barely holds down the tears and sniffs quietly. “He notices nothing…”       “What do we do?” Anna looks at her friends. “How do we make him wake up?”       “We will not leave without you, Peter,” Natalia states determinedly. “We may be freezing, but until you get up and come with us, we will not move off.”       “And we will not stop watching you now,” Raquelle adds. “We’ll no longer trust the guys who didn’t watch you enough.”       “Yeah, if they don’t want to help, it’s okay!” Helene exclaims. “We’ll do this. They can do anything they want, but we will not leave you. No way.”       Sammy barks confidently to confirm it and puts his paw on the knee of Peter, whom the girls caress softly on the head or shoulder.       “Please, buddy, don’t withdraw yourself from us,” Natalia begs. “We completely understand it’s hard for you. But we’re here. We’re always ready to listen to you and support you. Even if you do something wrong.”       “We understand why the guys are mad at you,” Raquelle adds. “But you did nothing bad to us. It means we have no reason to end our relationship with you. You’re our friend, and we love you so much.”       “Yeah, Peter, the girls and I are not your enemies,” Anna says softly. “If you do something wrong, but we don’t have to do with it, we will not turn our backs on you and will keep supporting you.”       “We know you don’t want all of this,” Helene calms down, caressing Peter’s cheek. “We know these are not your real emotions. You wanna fix everything, but you don’t understand how. Because the world hurt you. It gave you a too severe pain. Even if you didn’t deserve it.”       “Anyway, whatever happens, remember that you’re guilty of nothing,” Raquelle says confidently. “We blame you for nothing. They are guilty – those who did it to you. God saw that you did your best for someone to say just one good word to you and just clap you on the head kindly.”       “People may be too cruel – we know it better than most people,” Natalia adds. “We were victims of those who bullied us for nothing. They tried to shower us with mud, too. And we tried to be good for them. But they didn’t appreciate it. And even in this case, we understand that we’re not guilty of it. We weren’t just lucky to end up in such a terrible society.”       Sammy starts whining with pity and butting his head against the hip of Peter, on the dead eyes of whim tears show up, while he keeps looking into the distance.       “Please, Peter, let us help you,” Anna begs with pity in her eyes. “You can tell us everything you think you should. You can scream, cry… Do anything if it makes you feel better. We’d get it. We’d handle anything. You must get everything you’re worried about out of you. Otherwise, it’s gonna keep poisoning you.”       “Nothing can help me now…” Peter says in a low, shaking voice for the first time in a while and sniffs, pressing his legs much closer to his chest. “Nobody can help me…”       “I promise, sweetie, we will help you solve any problem,” Helene promises and kisses Peter sweetly on the cheek. “None of us is gonna turn their back on you. Nobody’s gonna put a knife in your back. Just trust us. Don’t withdraw into yourself.”       “I’ve been trying to do this all my life. All my life, I’ve tried to believe that there are those I can trust.”       “Have we ever done something bad to you?” Anna asks with sadness in her eyes. “Have we ever hurt you with words or actions?”       “Listen, friend, if we’ve ever done something bad, we’re really very spry,” Natalia expresses regret. “Forgive us, please. We didn’t understand that we gave you a lot of pain.”       “Yeah, Pete, forgive us, please…” Raquelle shakes her head. “We didn’t really wanna hurt you…”       “I blame you for nothing, girls,” Peter replies without emotions. “I think you… You’re the only ones who… Who have never done anything bad to me. Never said a bad word and done nothing to betray me.”       “Let us help you then. Just tell us what we should do. We’re ready for anything.”       “Doing something doesn’t make sense in my case, Raquelle. I’ve been pushed to the furthest corner. I’ve gone too far. So far that I don’t know how to get out of it.”       “You’re not alone, sunshine, we’re with you!” Helene exclaims, grabs Peter’s face, and raises it, making him look into her eyes. “You have us. You will always have. Even if the whole world stands against you, we will be those who will not turn our backs on you and will be near.”       “I don’t understand… I don’t understand… Why am I getting punished like this?” Peter sniffs quietly. “Why has everyone been treating me terribly since childhood? What did I do? I was… A child… A little child, who asked nothing more but love and care.”       “Peter, sweetheart…”       “I don’t care I never had good toys, good clothes, and tasty food every day. I was ready to accept it. But why was I deprived of simple human feelings? Why did nobody take care of me when I needed it so badly? Why did everyone turn their backs on me?”       “We completely understand you, buddy…” Anna replies softly.       “No, Anna, none of you can understand me. You all had at least someone, but I was always alone. Always. I had nobody. Nobody I could come to and talk about something. I could complain about my problems to nobody. I could not tell them what kind of pain I felt when people mocked me. I mean, I could do. But nobody heard me. No one cared. Nobody cared about my problems. I was kicked like a ball from side to side. I didn’t know where to go. Because nobody was waiting for me. Nobody cared about me. They treated me much worse than older children, who ended up forgotten after the birth of their younger brothers or sisters. They are respected way more than I was!”       “But now it’s otherwise!” Natalia notices. “Now you have us/ We do care about your problems. We do care about what happened, happens, and will happen to you. You’re our friend, who means a lot to us.”       “But it happened too late!” Peter breaks into a cry. “Too late, Natalia! When I forgot how to trust people and believe nobody! Even if someone does something good to me, I can’t believe they wouldn’t leave. I can’t believe someone may really need me.”       Sammy whines with pity again and touches Peter’s knee softly with his paw.       “Listen, Peter, we completely understand you,” Helene says confidently. “We know it’s important to you. And we know we could’ve given you many reasons not to trust us. We know some of our words and actions could’ve hurt you. And the men have actually treated you terribly many times, trying to make it look like a joke.”       “I repeat, I blame you for noting,” Peter recalls and sniffs as he glances aside. “And I blame the men for nothing. Even if they’ve hurt me many times.”       “We know, Peter,” Anna says softly as she caresses Peter’s shoulder. “We’re really ashamed of you because of what they did.”       “Don’t be. It’s not your fault. And I can’t blame them. The fault is all on me. I ruined everything.”       “No wonder you took it out on them and told them everything so cruelly in the end,” Raquelle notices. “It should’ve happened early or late.”       “I didn’t want it, I swear!” Peter excuses himself with tears in his eyes. “I didn’t want that to happen. I am really ashamed of them for all those terrible actions. I… I didn’t understand what I was doing… I did not… I…”       “We have to admit that they deserved it,” Natalia says quietly. “Especially, Perkins. He was asking for what he got for a long time. He was told to stop, but he was like a stubborn donkey and kept doing what he wanted. And now he’s pretending to be a victim who was treated unfairly.”       “If I’d told the men everything earlier, nothing would’ve happened. There wouldn’t have been any stupid assumptions, any insults under the guise of a joke… Everything would’ve been alright! But my mistrust messed up everything. A reluctance to unlock my heart. A reluctance to open my heart to those who offered friendship to me.”       “Yeah, but they should’ve seen it hurt you! They must have stopped! But they didn't have enough brains to understand it.”       “Don’t judge them, girls… They’re all right to some extent. Sometimes I really acted like an egoist. Who felt like an unhappy boy left and forgotten by everyone, trying desperately to find his place in this big and cruel world.”       “It didn’t give them the right to mock you!” Raquelle states harshly. “The right to leave you alone after we barely revived you.”       “Yeah, it hurts me, but I do understand them and am not mad at all. I got what I deserved. This is my payback.”       “Even if they turned their backs on you, we will not do the same,” Helene says confidently. “These men can think what they want, but we will not stop taking care of you. Anna, Raquelle, and Natalia are your friends, and I am your girlfriend. You’re my beloved man, for whom I’d move a mountain. For whom I’d do the impossible.”       “Yeah, Helene doesn’t hide she can barely swim, but she wasn’t afraid to get underwater to save you,” Anna smiles slyly and glances at the sky briefly after a flash of lightning. “In this hurricane…”       “We’re very sorry about missing the moment and not telling you to come back in the house in time,” Anna says with sadness in her eyes. “You nearly died because of us. You almost drowned.”       “You shouldn't have cared…” Peter replies without emotion, while Helene caresses his cheek tenderly. “It would’ve been much better for everyone if I’d died. For you, the men, and me…”       “No, Peter, don’t say it!” Helene horrifies, while Sammy starts whining with pity. “I wanna hear nothing about you!”       “Go, girls…” Peter pronounces in a shaking voice without emotion in his eyes that still look into the distance. “Please, leave me alone…”       “No, we will not leave without you!” Anna states loudly. “We will not leave you!”       “Don’t waste your time on me. Come back into the house. Look at what’s happening outside, but you’re walking here. Freezing and wet…”       “We’d get out in the buff for you, even if it’s showing or freezing!” Helene states determinedly.       “Don’t need, I don’t deserve it…”       “Peter, please!”       “Go away… Or you’re all gonna freeze and get a cold. And the men are gonna blame me for that. I don’t want you to suffer because of me. And fight with them over me.”       “No, Peter, we will not leave you!” Raquelle protests. “And we don’t care what the men are gonna say!”       “Alright, buddy, get up, come with us,” Natalia says confidently. “Stop sitting here. You’re freaking freezing and wet. A little bit before you get pneumonia.”       “I don’t care…” Peter replies in a low, shaking voice. “I don’t care about what’s gonna happen to me.”       “Please, honey, come with me!” Helene begs a little louder, stroking Peter’s forearm and fixing his half-wet hair. “I promise it’s gonna be okay. The girls and I are here. You’re gonna be safe with us.”       “You shouldn't have brought me back to life. You should’ve let me die. Let me stop suffering, living in this world for nothing.”       “No, Peter, no! I wanna hear nothing about it!”       Sammy barks several times with pity, touching Peter’s knee with his paw.       “Please, girls, leave me alone. Let me die. I don’t wanna suffer anymore. I don’t wanna live in the world where I only feel pain.”       “You’re not alone, friend, we’re ready to do anything for you!” Anna exclaims, putting her hands on Peter’s hands, who is holding his knees. “Just say it.”       “Don’t do. Don’t waste time.”       “If you want, we can just sit near and say nothing,” Natalia suggests. “We can say nothing and just hug you tightly. Sometimes silence does much better things than thousands of words. You can make someone feel good and give them support if you just sit beside them and hold their hand.”       “I’m gonna feel good if you just come back to Daniel’s house and ride out the storm there with the men.”       “What about you?” Raquelle wonders. “Will you keep sitting here until lightning hits you? Look at what’s happening around! A catastrophe may happen at any time!”       “Don’t try to prevent what’s gonna happen early or late. No matter how many times you save, I’ll die anyway.”       “Listen, we understand you’re very upset by your conflict with the men, who mean a lot to you,” Anna replies quietly. “We understand you broke down because they refused to forgive you. Their reluctance to help and feel sorry for you somehow. We know it hurts. We know you have nobody closer than them. Your biological mother is dead, your adopted one didn’t care about you, and your father turned out to be a bastard who wanted to kill his own child.”       “I don’t know…” Helene shakes his head. “Maybe… Maybe they’re worried too. They’re not happy with what happened. But they can’t forget what happened. Maybe you just need to give them some time. And try to behave differently in the future. Not to give them more reasons to doubt you.”       Sammy barks confidently as if he approves it, while a clap of thunder is heard in the sky.       “They don’t have to do with it all!” Peter states in a high voice with tears. “I felt freaking bad without them. I’ve already said I was alone all my life and had nobody to count on. The cruelty of people deprived me of any wish to get close to someone. Deprived me of the ability to trust someone.”       “But it’s never too late to learn to trust them again,” Raquelle notices, “It’s never too late to open yourself to the one who deserves it. The one you like for one or another reason. The one who came to help you put your broken world together piece by piece.”       “I don’t trust even those I like. The men and you! Nobody! I’m expecting something bad from everyone! All the time! This fear has been driving me crazy for ages. A fear of loneliness. A fear of staying all alone. Again. I’m afraid to death that someone will put a knife in my back and start to laugh at me if I let them become my close friend one beautiful day.”       “We get it,” Natalia pronounces softly. “You had enough reasons to doubt.”       “Mistrust is the reason why I pushed off so many people who tried to befriend me. Before I met Perkins. Many people wanted to get into my soul. But I let nobody get close. I was building the unbreakable wall so furiously that I was sometimes too rude. Showed aggression toward those who did nothing bad to me. I barked at everyone who tried to talk to me. Daniel can confirm: this is how I turned literally everyone who worked with Albert Sanderson against me. Everyone treated Perkins well, but I fought with someone all the time. They called me a bastard, an egoist, a scum… They hated me. But I did nothing to fix it. Though I felt freaking disgusting deep inside. Because I behaved disgustingly toward those who didn’t want to do anything bad to me at first.”       “You can fix any mistake in 99% of cases,” Helene notices. “You just need to want it truly. And remember that everything is in your hands. You can fix everything, but a reluctance to change something. Until you believe and do something, you have a chance.”       “I wanna fix nothing… I don’t wanna waste time on what will change nothing. Nobody will forgive me, nobody will love me… Everyone didn’t care about my problems, and they still don't. I’ve tried to fix everything a million times and be good, but nobody needed it! Nobody appreciated my kindness and loyalty.”       “Not true, the girls and I highly appreciate your effort!” Natalia protests. “Appreciate the care and support you give us in the darkest times.”       “I’ll never forget how you supported me when I had problems with Julian and his father,” Anna smiles shyly. “I’ll never forget your warm words, your support, and the effort you made to stand up for me. I couldn’t dream of such an amazing friend, who means a lot to me.”       “I don’t believe…” Peter shakes his head sharply. “I don’t… I believe nobody! Hear me, nobody! Everyone lies to me! Everyone always lies to me! Nobody loves me! Nobody the fuck needs me!”       Peter hides his head in his arms, folded on his knees, and starts crying bitterly, not holding himself down at all, and shaking from coldness and tension much more. Sammy whining heartbreakingly tries so hard to please him and get his attention, Helene hugs him around the shoulders and caresses his head tenderly, and Anna, Natalia, and Raquelle put their hands on his wrist or forearm.       “Quiet, quiet, sweetie, quiet,” Helene calms down softly. “It’s okay… It’s okay…”       “Please, buddy, let’s come back to the house,” Anna begs, fixing Peter’s hair slightly. “You’ll put on dry clothes, we’ll cover you with a blanket, give you some hot tea, lead you to the room, you’ll have a good rest…”       “Leave me…” Peter cries, not raising his head. “Please, leave me alone… Please…”       “You don’t want this deep inside,” Natalia says confidently. “You don’t want us to leave you. And we will not leave, I promise. Don’t even expect a betrayal from us.”       “You will betray me, too! Just like all of them! Just like those I tried to trust!”       “Even if we’re dying, we will not betray our family and friends,” Anna raises her head proudly. “Even if we’re under the gun, we will keep standing our ground.”       Sammy barks confidently two times.       “Sammy will not let us lie! He can confirm that we’re speaking the truth.”       “I wanna see nobody…” Peter replies in a low, shaking voice. “I don’t wanna talk to anyone… I’m sick… Sick of this life… Sick of everything… I want nothing! Nothing! Nothing! I am sick of all of this! Leave me alone, everyone! Let me die quietly! Please! I can’t take this anymore! I am sick! I want nothing! I don’t! I don’t!”       Helene hugs Peter tightly, still crying inconsolably and making a heartbreaking scream along with the flash of lightning and a clap of thunder that literally symbolize his current condition. The girls barely hold down their tears, not knowing what to do or how to persuade the guy to go with them and not to reject their help. The dog Sammy also looks unhappy as he presses himself to the wet, shaking, and cold boyfriend of his owner, whose hugs Rose does not answer at all, even if he does not push her off.       While the girls being freezing and shaking too try to comfort their friend with tight hugs and soft touches, they all can hear loud, high-pitched voices of the men at some moment somewhere far from here. At first, nobody can figure out anything, but later they understand that Daniel, Edward, and Terrence are somewhere not far from them and looking for them, judging by the fact that they are calling the man and the girls:       “Peter! Girls! Where are you? Say something! Someone!”       “Raquelle! Raise a voice!”       “Natalia! Don’t make me worried!”       “Anna! Please, say something!”       “Pe-e-e-eter! Say something! Please!”       “Someone! React!”       “Hearing the familiar voices, Raquelle, Helene, Anna, and Natalia frown slightly and look at each other, while Sammy barks quietly.       “Oh, look, does it look like these idiots’ conscience woke up?” Raquelle throws gloomily.       “Or they don’t wanna be bad before our eyes and think they can make amends if they pretend that we do care,” Natalia assumes.       “It’s okay, let them run,” Anna replies confidently. “Torture. Clean their mind a little. We will not react.”       “Nope, come to them,” Peter says in a low, shaking voice, still keeping his head inclined between his knees. “Don’t make them worried. Or they’re gonna be freezing and get a cold. And blame me if something happens to you. The men would cut my head for you.”       “In case you go with us!” Helene exclaims.       “No, I won't go with you.”       “We will not leave you here. I will not leave you!”       “Damn it, Helene. Don’t worry about me.”       “Peter, please!”       “Go… For me… I don’t want anything to happen to you… Come back to the house and stay in there before the hurricane ends.”       “No!” Helene cries. “If you don’t get up, I’ll be sitting with you! I’ll go nowhere, hear me! Nowhere!”       “Please, sweetie…”       “We’ll be together until the very end!” Helene takes Peter’s hand. “I will not leave you! And I will not let you do stupid things! I’ll not lose the man who means so much to me.”       “I’m sorry about letting you down… But I can’t… I will not handle it… It’s too hard for me…”       “We’ll get through anything together, I promise. It’s gonna be okay. I will do my best for you to feel good. I’d give anything for it.”       “You’ve done the maximum of what you could do. You can’t jump above your head!”       “I will not give up! I will not give up in half of the way! We will manage this! We can do anything together!”       “Go… Please…”       “No! We’ll be together until the very end!”       “Since this world doesn’t need me, I don’t need it, either. Since it wants to get rid of me, I’m giving myself to my fate. This world is destined to turn me to ashes. And it’s almost done.”       “If there’s at least one person who needs you, it means you exist in this world for a reason. It means someone wakes up with a smile on their face, thinking of you. The one who means a lot to them.”       “Please, stop wasting time… I don’t wait…”       “Don’t push me off, Peter, I’m begging you…” Helene does not hold back her tears. “You know I can’t do without you. You’re the meaning of my life. We… We’re made for each other. We’re destined to be together!”       “There are many men in the world. You can meet someone better. Someone not to be a pathetic freak with a lot of mental issues.”       “Why the hell do I need other men when I only love you?” Helene explodes. “ONLY YOU! Hear me, YOU!”       Then the voices of Edward, Terrence, and Daniel are heard again, while the guys are still far from here:       “Peter! Peter! Helene! Anna! Raquelle! Natalia! Someone! Call back! Please, buddy! Please, girls! Plea-a-a-a-a-a-se!”       “Go, girls, go,” Peter says without emotions. “See how excited they are. Don’t drive them crazy.”       “They’re looking for you, too!” Anna notices. “You hear them screaming?”       “They’ve probably realized which trouble you could’ve gotten in and decided to forget about all their offences at least now,” Raquelle assumes. “They’ve realized something after we read them a lecture.”       “Uh-huh, and then things are gonna change again?” Peter irritates. “They’re gonna start a boycott again and ignore me!”       “Please, buddy, say just something!” Daniel’s high, loud, really excited voice pronounces. “Show up! Come to us! We can’t lose you!”       “Let’s talk, Peter!” Edward exclaims. “Don’t run from us! We can still talk about everything!”       “We’re ready to accept your apologies!” Terrence exclaims. “Really, dude! We ain’t lying to you! If you let us find you, I promise, we’ll forget everything. We will not come back to what happened. Things will remain the same!”       “Don’t let us lose you, brother, we don’t want this!” Daniel adds. “No matter what, you still mean a lot to us.”       “Pe-e-e-e-e-eter!” Edward, Daniel, and Terrence make a heartbreaking scream at the same time. “Where are you?”       At first, Sammy whines with pity, but then barks quietly and moves his eyes to the girls as if he begs them to let the men know where to find them.       “It’s hard to say, but I think they sound true,” Anna notices.       “So, let’s give them a sign?” Natalia asks. “Or isn’t it enough? Should they run for longer?”       “Okay, let’s call them,” Raquelle says quietly. “Or they’re gonna have a nervous breakdown. We won’t calm all of them down.”       “Sammy, run to the guys and show them the way here,” Helene says. “Can you find them?”       Sammy barks confidently two times.       “C’mon, my boy, bring them here! Now!”       “But be very careful!” Natalia begs. “Don’t wound yourself and don’t fall anywhere.”       “Run, Sammy, quick!” Raquelle hurries up.       The happy Sammy barks loudly again, moves off sharply, and starts running to the place where he can hear the emotional screams of Terrence, Daniel, and Edward running from side to side, trying to find some hints at the place where the girls or Peter could be with no luck and losing hope of finding them in this dark time, in this weather.       “Don’t worry, sweetie,” Helene pronounces softly. “No matter if it’s true or not, we will not leave you. Because you don’t actually want it. You don’t wanna be alone. You don’t want us to listen to you and leave.”       “I want just one thing – to die,” Peter says desperately. “I don’t wanna live in this fucking world anymore. I don’t want anyone to save me. Just let me the fuck go to the afterlife and find my peace there. Stop torturing me! Please! Stop! I can’t handle this! Stop! STOP! I CAN’T TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”       “Scream if it makes you feel better,” Anna insists. “We need it sometimes. Keeping everything inside is also bad. There are moments when we need to talk, to cry, to scream, to whine… It’s fine to be weak and vulnerable for a while. Even if you’re super strong and super confident for everyone.”       “But nothing’s gonna change! NOTHING! Everything is gonna remain the same! You can only hurt your vocal cords. That’s all! NOTHING good is gonna happen! NOTHING!”       “Just give yourself an honest answer: do you really want to turn everyone’s back on you?” Raquelle says quietly. “Is that really what you’re dreaming, not what your mistrust for people makes you think?”       “I want nothing now. I want just one thing: to stop being saved. AGAIN AND AGAIN! I have so many chances to end my suffering forever, but someone or something does not let me do this! As if someone LIKES to watch me suffer! LIKE to see my torture!”       “We don’t let you die because we don’t wanna lose you,” Natalia replies. “Because we’re gonna suffer if something happens to you.”       “It seems like I’m paying for the sins of the whole world. As if someone forced me to pay for EVERYTHING people around the world do. For EVERYTHING I am not guilty of. A child always associates with something cute, nice, tender, and innocent, but I’ve always been a fucking martyr. Everyone sees I am suffering, but they say, ‘No, it’s not enough, he needs MORE!’ And it happens again and again. Again and again. AGAIN AND AGAIN! EVERY FUCKING DAY! FOR TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS OF MY PATHETIC LIFE!”       “Trust me, we all think we’re the same when we have tons of problems,” Anna notices.       “You don’t understand me. Nobody understands me. Because nobody has gotten through everything I have come through. NOBODY SUFFERED AS MUCH AS I DO! Everyone had reasons to live and be happy, but I DID NOT have the one! I didn’t live, I suffered! I was a punching bag for everyone! The toy that anyone could take out on. Nobody thought the toy did have the FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS! Wanted LOVE and UNDERSTANDING! But got NOTHING! Even the smallest part of what I dreamed about. AS IF I DID NOT DESERVE IT!”       “But you have it now!’ Helene exclaims, grabbing Peter’s face. “You are loved now. Deeply loved. And we treat your feelings with respect.”       “Too late… This love found me too late. TOO LATE! IT SHOULD’VE HAPPENED EARLIER!”       “Peter, honey…”       “Why were you many years ago? Where was your love? WHY DID I SPEND HALF OF MY LIFE ALL ALONE? Why did I have nobody by my side when I needed it so badly? Why? WHY? WHY-Y-Y-Y-Y?”       “They really did a cruel thing to you,” Raquelle says confidently. “We know. We know you didn’t deserve it.”       “I don’t understand… I don’t understand why it’s all happening to me… Why have I been unlucky since birth?” Peter sniffs quietly. “Why does everyone treat me like this? Even if my mother didn’t want to take care of me, why did I stay with her? Why didn’t she give me to someone else? Why did she doom me to the greater suffering? I was nobody to her, to your information! It’s much easier to get rid of a stranger!”       “There was a reason then,” Natalia shrugs. “Maybe she loved you to some extent.”       “If she’d loved, she wouldn’t have made me solve my problems on my own. And she wouldn’t fucked me off every time I came to her to complain. She wouldn’t have said something like, ‘Don’t whine, don’t howl, stop crying, solve it by yourself, I give a fuck…’”       “It was really terrible of her,” Helene agrees. “Even if you weren’t her son, she had no right to do that to the child.”       “I’ve never been a child. Never been a carefree boy living the best childhood. I didn’t know what that was. I could only watch other children and be jealous of them. I became an adult literally, shortly after I learned to speak and walk. I had to take care of myself on my own. Because everyone gave a fuck. What childhood are you talking about if I had to serve myself? If I could get out somewhere for a whole day, but nobody cared? I literally changed fucking diapers by myself! I ate everything I saw! I played with anything that could be dangerous! But everyone gave a fuck! Everyone fucked Peter off!”       “We get it, buddy,” Anna pronounces softly.       “Lie. Absolute lie. You’re just pretending that you understand me with the hope that I will calm down now and go with you. Go where nobody is waiting for me.”       “We’ve never wished you anything bad, Peter,” Natalia assures. “All our intentions have been true. We’ve never meant to use or harm you. And what friends could we be if we just thought about it? It’s not a friendship. I don’t even know how to call something like that?”       “It’s always been interesting to communicate with you!” Raquelle exclaims. “You’re a very smart and wise man. You can comfort and listen. You’ve given us so many wise pieces of advice. You’ve supported us so many times. We remember everything and forget nothing. And we’ll always be grateful for your effort.”       “No need to get busy with it, girls,” Peter shakes his head and sniffs again. “I will not go with you.”       “Please, Peter, come with us, I’m begging you so badly!” Helene begs desperately, wrapping Peter’s arm with both arms. “Let us help you and prove that we only have good intentions.”       “Go away. Leave me alone. Everyone. I want to see nobody. Nobody.”       “No, sunshine, I will not leave you!” Helene takes Peter’s hand softly with both hands and caresses his wrist. “Never… Don’t even ask… I’ll not leave…”       “Please, girls, go. Go to get warm. Don’t waste time on what you cannot do.”       “Just trust us and let us help you,” Anna says. “I promise you will not be disappointed.”       “Leave me alone, everyone… Please, get out of here! LET ME DIE QUIETLY! MAY THEY TAKE ME BACK TO THE AFTERLIFE! I FELT WAY BETTER THERE! STOP TORTURING ME! STOP! I CAN’T TAKE THIS ANYMORE! STOP! ENO-O-O-O-O-OGH!”       Leaning his head between his knees and grabbing his hair with his fingers, Peter screaming loudly and heartbreakingly starts crying much more bitterly. A sense of helplessness, an inability to put himself together… It seems that there is no strength anymore, but something is still alive and eating the guy inside. He suffers from a lack of air that he swallows frantically, while tears strangle him tightly, and the strong tension is the reason why his icy body literally turns upside down. Sobbing quietly, Helene hugs him tightly with both arms and presses herself to him as closely as possible, snuggling her nose in his shoulder and trying to warm up her boyfriend freezing to the bones. Anna, Raquelle, and Natalia do not hold back their tears and watch what’s happening with horror in their widely open eyes, feeling how painfully their heart squeeze. At some moment, the girls look at each other, not knowing what to do and how to persuade the guy to go with them, and start to believe that they may be absolutely powerless in front of the one who does not understand which sins he has been punished for so cruelly.       While the girls think frantically about what to do, they all can hear a loud bark of Sammy running here wild and starting to snuggle in the hose of the crying Peter. When the friends believe the dog did not do it, they understand someone is coming here, judging by the crunch of the grass that gets closer and closer. And at some moment, Daniel, Terrence, and Edward run to the tree with the hole in the trunk as fast as they can after barely getting through the thick thickets, along with a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder, lighting up the path with a flashlight and the phone.       “Hey, move it off…” Natalia winces strongly, covering her eyes with a hand when the bright light of the flashlight gets into her face.       “Guys, thank God, we found you!” Edward exhales sharply with relief.       “Are you all alright?” Daniel expresses anxiety. “Everyone’s alive? Nobody’s hurt?”       “So, is your conscience finally awake?” Anna crosses her arms over her chest. “You worked your brains a little and understood what you got into?”       “Uh-huh, decided to play heroes and pretend that you kind of care about the current situation,” Raquelle throws gloomily.       “It’s not the time to snap!” Terrence cuts off sharply. “C’mon, get up now, everyone! We’re getting out of here!”       “Do what you want, but we will not leave without him!” Helene states determinedly, hugging Peter around the shoulders. “At least, you will not surely move me from this place.”       “It’s about all of you, including Peter,” Daniel says confidently. “You all get up now and come with us.”       “C’mon, c’mon, folks, get up!” Edward claps his hands. “With a waltzing rhythm! Come on! Stand up!”       “Fucking shit, do you all want to get a cold?” Terrence resents. “It’s freezing outside, but you’re wearing no hoods! And your coats are open! Get up and come with us, everyone!”       “C’mon, Peter, stand up,” Helene pronounces softly. “Get up, my sweetheart, I’m begging you. Come with us…”       “No!” Peter cuts off determinedly, not even raising his head, and still keeping it between his legs. “I’ll stay here!”       “Don’t be a fool, Rose, get your ass off the ground at your will!” Daniel demands. “Or I swear I will do it by myself. And I give a fuck if you want it or not!”       “Go! Leave, everyone! I don’t want to see anyone! Leave me alone!”       “Indeed, blond, stop doing stupid things,” Terrence says confidently and squats down in front of Peter, while Daniel and Edward do the same. “Get up now and come with us!”       “I said I WOULD GO NOWHERE WITH YOU!” Peter screams with tears in his eyes. “LEAVE ME ALL ALONE!”       “Turn off your brain, idiot!” Edward exclaims. “You want to get a cold? Or actually die?”       “Oh, shit, he’s freaking freezing!” Daniel horrifies, touching Peter’s forearm. “As if he went into the house after being outside in the extreme frost.”       “Hey, dork, do you really want to pass away?” Terrence swears after he touches Peter’s icy arm, too. “You’re sitting here wet and cold! Just one step away before you are in a fucking hospital with pneumonia!”       “What’s your fucking matter?” Peter snaps and sniffs loudly with a shake in his whole body. “It’s MY life! What’s your fucking matter? I CAN DECIDE WHAT TO DO!”       “Alright, stop, we want to hear nothing!” Edward cuts off sharply. “Get up and come with us now!”       “LEAVE ME ALONE, EVERYONE!” Peter shakes his shoulder when the men try to take him under his arms. “GO! GO AWAY! I DON’T WANT TO SEE ANYONE!”       “Please, Peter, I’m begging you, come with us,” Helene begs with tears in her eyes, caressing Peter’s forearm. “Please, honey, let’s come back to the house. Please, sweetie, please…”       “A-a-a, please, leave me alone, I am asking you kindly! PLEASE! WHAT’S YOUR PROBLEM WITH ME? WHAT ARE YOU THE FUCK EXPECTING?”       Sammy barks quietly once and whines with pity, touching the hand of Peter with his paw, while the man does not even think about raising his head and looking at someone.       “Please, Peter, trust us!” Anna begs with sadness in her eyes. “We wanna help you. Nobody wishes you anything bad.”       “I don’t need anyone’s help!” Peter cries. “I need NOBODY! I just want to DIE!”       “You can solve any problem if you want it,” Raquelle notices softly. “There are not absolutely hopeless situations. There’s just a reluctance to solve it.”       “What’s the solution to my situation?” Peter raises his head sharply and moves his watery eyes to Raquelle. “WHAT? TELL ME! What the fuck do I do? WHAT?”       “We’ll find the solution together!” Natalia exclaims. “Just don’t turn your back on us. Don’t pretend that you really wanna stay alone. Because you don’t.”       “I’ve always been alone! ALWAYS! NOBODY helped me! NOBODY listened! Everyone fucked me off! You should’ve found the solution to my problem EARLIER! NOT NOW! IT’S TOO LATE! TOO LATE! YOU CAN CHANGE NOTHING!”       “You just need to stop showing off and admit that you do need help!” Daniel replies loudly and determinedly. “If you want the fuck to live, STOP REJECTING EVERYONE!”       “I DON’T WANT TO LIVE! I DON’T! I’ve NEVER wanted! But someone obviously loves to torture me since I come back to the world of the living. AGAIN AND AGAIN! I’ve wanted to die since my childhood, but I’m like a fucking cat with a lot of lives. WHICH CANNOT BE KILLED WITH A STICK! Not because I am lucky! Because someone LOVES SEEING ME SUFFER! They love to see me weak and vulnerable. When I am in hysteria. When EVERYONE USES ME TO TAKE IT OUT ON ME! WHEN HE HAS NO PLACE TO RUN AND HAS NOBODY TO ASK FOR HELP!”       “It happened then, but you’re living in the present now!” Edward notices. “Everything is different in the present.”       “WHAT’S DIFFERENT? NOTHING has changed! I am still lonely! Still weak! THE SAME OUTSIDER NOTHING HAS CHANGED!”       “Because you let yourself be the one!” Terrence exclaims. “You don’t wanna solve the problem. You’ve been living with it for nobody the fuck knows how long. You’re hiding everything, keeping everything inside, withdrawing into you… And then you torture yourself so that you start to freak the fuck out, attack everyone, and rack your cords! You take it out on innocent people and make them guilty of what’s happening to you. Though you’re the one to blame for most of your problems.”       “I DO KNOW!” Peter explodes. “I DO KNOW EVERYTHING!”       “Then put the fuck yourself together and start to do JUST SOMETHING!” Daniel demands rudely. “STOP ACTING LIKE A CHILD! BE A FUCKING MAN!”       “I AM A CHILD! The child who has been hated from the very beginning! Who has NEVER KNOWN WHAT A HAPPY CHILDHOOD IS!”       “We’ve gotten through hard moments of life, too! Many of them, to your information. But we’ve never acted the way you do. We’ve never blamed everyone for it. We’ve never taken it out on those who don’t deserve it. We’ve never pushed off those who come to us with good intentions. We did not turn our ass on the world.”       “YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT ME!” Peter screams, choking from tears and a lack of air. “You don’t know what I have to get through! You don’t know what pain and humiliations I've gone through! Don’t know WHY this world became my enemy. WHY I don’t expect anything good from anyone. WHY I think I’d rather spend all my life alone than run into a betrayal again and again.”       “Then us then!” Terrence throws his hands up. “Come on, tell us what you’ve gotten through. Why you reject even those who are ready to do just something for you.”       “Get off me, everyone… Leave me… Get out…” Peter grabs his hair tightly with his fingers and pulls it strongly, looking at everyone with wet, puffy, and watery eyes. “GET THE FUCK OUT, EVERYONE! I WANT TO SEE NO ONE! I WANT TO HEAR NO ONE! LET ME THE FUCK DIE QUIETLY! STOP PREVENTING IT!”       “We will overcome anything, honey,” Helene swears in a shaking voice, caressing Peter’s head. “We’ll fix everything together. Just let us help you. Let us be next to you to make you feel better.”       “How would you help me? HOW? IT’S TOO LATE! It’s too late to help and change something! Everything was done a long time ago! It’s been who the fuck knows how much time! NOTHING CAN BE CHANGED! I AM DOOMED TO SUFFER FOREVER!”       “It’s never too late to change your life,” Daniel states. “If you don’t give up and want it badly, you can fix even what seems hopeless. Even if ten or twenty years have gone by and you’re destined to, you will get a chance to fix everything.”       “Fucking delirium! My destiny is TO SUFFER UNTIL THE END OF MY LIFE! WITHOUT THE RIGHT TO CHANCES! If I do something once, that’s ALL! I can fix NOTHING! And I have to live my whole life and suffer from it!”       “Just trust us so that we do everything we can do,” Anna insists.       “Stop… Leave… Just leave…”       “Peter, please!” Natalia begs with sadness in her eyes.       “GET OUT! LEAVE ME ALONE!”       “We will not leave!” Edward states determinedly.       “I WILL NOT MOVE! I WILL STAY HERE!”       “If you don’t go at your will, we will have to use force,” Daniel says with no hesitation.       “GET OUT OF HERE!” Peter strains his vocal cords, clenching his hands into fists tightly. “GET OUT OF HERE, EVERYONE! LEAVE ME ALONE! LEAVE! JUST LET ME DIE QUIETLY!”       “Please, Peter…” Helene begs in a whisper, caressing Peter’s cheek. “Come with us… Please… For me, sunshine… Do this for me… Please… I’m begging you… Please… Please…”       “Stop, please, STOP!” Peter closes his face with both hands. “Stop… I am sick… I can’t take this anymore… Please, stop! Leave me alone… Please! Go away! I have no strength to get through all of this! I can’t! I CAN’T! STOP! LEAVE ME! LEAVE! PLEASE, LEAVE! I WANT NOTHING! NOTHING! JUST LET ME DIE! I DON’T WANT TO LIVE! I DON’T WANT! PLEASE, STOP! LEAVE ME! ENOU-U-U-U-U-UGH”!       After putting his head between his knees, with his arms folded on them, Peter makes a heartbreaking, long-lasting scream that leads to a hysterical cry. His nails sink deeply into the palms to the pain, and he starts shaking much more strongly from tension after a choking howl that drives him crazy. A wish to be small and invisible in this cruel world is as strong as never ever, and the hurricane happening around can describe everything he has deep inside.       While Raquelle, Anna, Helene, and Natalia cannot hold down their tears and close their mouths tightly with hands not to scream from horror, Sammy whining with great pity keeps pressing himself to Peter breathing heavily and running from side to side as he is in despair because he can do nothing. Just like Edward, Terrence, and Daniel, who look at each other hesitantly, being confused and not knowing what to do.       “We’ve gotta get out now!” Edward exclaims, looking briefly up to the sky after the bright flash of lightning. “Or we’re gonna get in trouble!”       “Alright, Peter, think what you want, but you’ll have to go with us,” Terrence says confidently. “We will not leave you here.”       “Leave me!” Peter shakes sharply when he is tried to be touched. “LEAVE ME!”       “Come on, Peter, you were told what to do,” Daniel says with a sly smile. “Do this if you don’t want to feel bad. You know that joking with us is bad. You know we don’t talk to the wind.”       The first words already make Peter open his eyes widely and shake sharply as if he is hit by lightning, holding his breath unconsciously and being afraid to move just a little. Still hiding his head in his arms, he feels that the uncontrolled wave of tension strikes him rapidly, his breath gets heavier, and the cramps in his stomach let him know about it. Every beat of the heart gives him unbearable pain that echoes in his chest. His brain is torn from the memories that come into his mind, there is a hum in his ears so that he can barely hear his friends and the dog’s bark, and his own body literally becomes the trap he cannot escape.       “It’s gonna be okay, Peter, it’s gonna be okay,” Helene tries to calm down, caressing Peter’s head. “We’re here, my sweetheart, we’re here…”       “Please, Peter, come with us,” Raquelle begs. “You’ll warm up at first and then tell us everything you want.”       “Quiet, quiet, my sweetie… Don’t be nervous… We’ll not hurt you. Just do what we say. And everything is gonna be okay.”       “EVERYTHING WILL NEVER BE OKAY!” Peter screams at the top of his lungs, raising his head sharply. “IT WILL NOT! NEVER! NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY! NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY TO FIX SOMETHING! EVERYTHING IS HOPELESS!”       “Not at all!” Natalia protests. “You just need to want it and…”       “SHUT UP! SHUT UP, EVERYONE! DON’T DARE TO ASSURE ME THAT EVERYTHING MAY GET BETTER! NOTHING CAN GET BETTER! NEVER!”       “Listen, Peter…” Anna tries to take a word with pity in her eyes.       “NOTHING CAN GET BETTER AFTER WHAT THEY DID TO ME! NOTHING CAN GET BETTER AFTER I WAS THE FUCK RAPED WHEN I WAS A CHILD! WHEN I TRIED TO ASK FOR PROTECTION, BUT NOBODY DID IT! NOBODY PROTECTED ME! NOBODY BELIEVED ME! EVERYONE THE FUCK DEVALUED MY SUFFERING! EVERYONE GAVE A FUCK WHEN I SAID I BECAME A VICTIM OF A FUCKING PEDOPHILE, WHO PRETENDED TO BE GOOD FOR EVERYONE AND ACTED LIKE HE DID NOT THE FUCK HAVE TO DO WITH IT AND WOULD HAVE NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT IT!”       After a flash of lightning and a deafening clap of thunder, silence settles in the air, during which everyone gets immediately pale and falls into a stupor after this confession of Peter, who is breathing heavily, with wheezes, shaking, and crying bitterly. The eyes of Helene, Anna, Natalia, and Raquelle get an icy horror, and they literally stop breathing, while tears roll down their cheeks slowly. Literally understanding everything that has been said, Sammy makes a much more heartbreaking bark and whines with a greater pity, not stopping to look at the guy pulling his hair out with wet eyes full of great sadness and pain that breaks the soul into a million pieces.       All the hatred Terrence, Daniel, and Edward felt before this moment disappears instantly. Breathing heavily and being pale and dumbfounded, they look at each other with the thought that everything twists from the unexpected pain. Then the three men set their widely open eyes on their friend and look at him closely, feeling such a strong sense of guilt that they have probably never felt before. Because they were not by his side at that moment. Because they did not know it. Because they made their friend freak out, not even knowing it, and, as they think, woke up his memories of the day when the frightening and irreparable happened.