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Conspiracy is a short vignette written in the Unfair universe by Personalias. I originally posted this on his discord and he directed me to post here. Important notes: 1: This is fan fiction. It uses the events of Unfair to tell an adjacent story set at the end of Part 2. 2: This is not what actually happened in Unfair, rather it repurposes the mystery in Unfair to tell a different story. A few of the details don't line up exactly right, and under no circumstances should you assume there is some reactionary conspiracy in Unfair involving "smoke filled rooms" of Amazons. Someone in chat made a joke about how it was all a government plot, and I ran with it. 3: Thank you Personalias for giving me permission to post this in public. I get how weird having people write fiction in your world is, so thank you for letting me post it. Conspiracy By Operational Systems (5260 Words) Julian Garibaldi squished his brown sun hat between his palms and salty water dripped out its front between his digits. He had been outside for less than half an hour, but it had been enough to drench the armpits of his previously white pressed shirt, wrinkle his black tie, and ruffle his pants. He breathed in heavily just outside the main office door. This was the perfect time of day, the quiet moment, the halls were empty, not a single student within a thousand feet of the building, just adults working in their offices and class rooms. If this had been earlier in the year, a parent teacher meeting, a scholar's challenge, or an evening football game would quickly puncture the quiet, but this was the last week of school. No one would volunteer to be here if they were not required to be in the building. His hearing picked up the shift as he was approaching the office. It was four 'o'clock, the air conditioning had shifted from full blast to night mode, and the change was like an orchestra playing its last note. The halls had been quiet before, and now they had an ambiance of noiselessness, the silence of a cemetery. The building would retain its cool seventy degrees for some time, before needing to be purged of the moist night heat in the early hours of the morning. Julian looked at his darkened reflection that flattened in the office window. With his wet drooping face, and scraggly remains of gray to white hair on the sides of his head, he didn't look intimidating, or commanding, he looked old. Maybe frumpy, or jolly, but definitely old. He put up a shaky smile as he opened the door. A small puff of pressure difference as he entered was enough to catch him off guard, and drop his false smile. The secretary Connie looked up from the computer as he entered. She dressed like she was one hundred but was only slightly past fifty. Her triangle red glasses had gone out of style forty years ago, if they were ever were in style, and her clothes had too many colors and patterns to be serious. She had picked up her fashion sense in 1988 and never evolved it. Julian was old enough to remember that time, almost no one dressed like this back then either. She was not ageless, she was eternally out of vogue. “Two more days” She politely reminded him. “It's not school that's exhausting.” School was exhausting like the sun was exhausting, but he had actually had a poor time sleeping last night. Connie was never one to turn down an opportunity to small talk about irrelevant issues, it was how she developed her trade as a quidnunc. A three minute conversation that went no where was as valuable as any gold vein, and like an old prospect miner, she would strike at Julian's rich deposits. She only needed a gesture, a hint of interest, a shift of her body closer and catch of his eyes. Go on, Mr. Principal divulge your darkest secrets. You can trust Madam Connie. “Jeremiah has been … he's in a phase now where he's needing to be held all the time. He started...” Julian was unsure how to describe it. His baby boy had become possessed by a demon. His baby boy had been replaced with a changeling. His baby boy had entered his terrible twos. “Jeremiah started quoting bible verses at me.” He said it as flatly as possible. “Like he's picked up something at church on Sunday? That's cute.” Connie gave him a reassuring smile. “No, I mean, he's not quoting... It's like he's preaching at me, it's like he's praying for salvation when we put him down. Like we're the problem and he acts like God will rescue him.” “Oh that, yeah, that's a spanking.” Connie was pretty old school, her answer to everything was a spanking. She used to be an administrator at the grammar school, and she kept the old habits here at Oakshire High School East. Disrespecting teacher? Spanking. Throwing food in the cafeteria? Spanking. Boys throw toilet paper all over the biology teacher's house. Spanking. Girl wears pants too short for school, definitely a spanking. “The worst part is, I looked it up, and none of the verses are in the bible. I don't know where he gets this stuff. It's all fire and brimstone and a vengeful god.” “Maybe Television? Or Daycare?” “He didn't want to sleep in the crib, didn't want to do anything. Emily finally just let him sleep with us, and that seemed to have jumper cabled him back to a perfect baby for a bit. I, you're right, two more days and I can be with him full time.” “Emily should stay with him if he's doing this. It's not right to leave him in daycare if they're going to let him get worse like that. They should be helping him.” “Yeah, well, she makes more money. Besides he's not actually...” They're more like pets. You love your pets, but you wouldn't quit your job or rearrange your life around their needs. The adults came first. “Oh right. Sorry.” Her attention fell on the piece of note paper she had placed next to the desk's telephone. “Actually, there is one thing while you're up. Theresa needs to see you, there's a problem with the State assessments. She needs you to meet her and the grading staff in library room two.” The room's temperature fell ten degrees and his mind raced with every negative possibility. Did they get destroyed by the scanning machines? Lost in the mail? It was done. If they had to redo them there was literally only two days left. Impossible. The whole thing had been planned for weeks, each step carried out with layers of precision and oversight, because no part of it could be allowed to fail. Darker worlds grew as he approached library room two. Hadn't there been a school district that had been caught by using arcane statistical methodology and found they had been cheating on the tests? What had happened to those teachers? To that school? He didn't know. Could the same thing have happened under his watch? With dread he went up to the wooden door and gave it a rap with his knuckles. He could peer inside the side window and see a woman get up from the table, she had been in conference with some others. Theresa unlocked the door and smiled while waving him into the room. He was barely a foot in before she started closing the door and locking it behind him. Julian wondered why she locked it. The room saw no use in the school year. In fact, the library saw no use period. Less than one book a day had been checked out since the start of the school year. He had personally removed that statistic from the reports to the board when earlier this year they had dragged him in to discuss parental concerns over inappropriate literature. No one knew what secrets could be found in the library, least of all the students. Library room two was filled with white boxes and manila folders, several stacked eighteen feet to the ceiling. In the center was a long wooden table in the shape of a flat oval with straight ends. It was able to seat maybe ten people, but while the paperwork and folders that covered it spread from top to bottom, only three other teachers were here. Julian moved up and pulled slightly at a close chair. It brought him low to the floor, as it was aimed for men and women closer to eight feet or nine feet than his full eleven. Before Theresa sat down she grabbed one of the white boxes and set it before him on the table. She then pulled out the seat next to him, sliding her nine foot frame into the chair. The school psychologist found a way to carry her small body so it seemed as prominent as Julian's taller frame, even if he hadn't already dragged his own stature down a foot with his exhaustion. Like Julian everyone else in the room had a stink to their demeanor, but Theresa's smile was permanently attached to her face, like she had gotten surgery to make it so. The biology teacher Mr. Vargas spook first, “We have a problem with the ninth graders. Or some of them.” Vargas was a plum of a man, but also the youngest here. He had only been teaching three or four years. It was the words he did not want to hear. They had finally done it. No Child Left Behind was another way of saying, 'we are going to push the idiots forward even if they can't handle it'. And now the buggers were up to his school and probably couldn't read or write or do basic quantum physics or linear regression. “How bad are the scores?” It would be his school's fault too. Obviously the students had been brilliant before they got to ninth grade. Ms. Finkel provided an answer. She taught English to Juniors, she was only a few years younger than Connie, but she dressed like a woman ten years younger and it looked good on her. Her husband was supposed to be rich, and she traveled to another country for vacation every two years. “The test scores are fine. The Flynn effect is still happening. It's a problem with the essays.” They were holding a meeting with him over this? Who cared about the essays? What mattered were the math and science scores. Typical Teachers! Always finding a way to complain. Finally Ms. Budde added her input, “These twenty students rejected the essay prompt and wrote something critical.” Ms. Budde spent her days in a potpourri of social science classes: government, history, world history, state history, even sometimes an exotic class like anthropology. Her hair had been overly curled, and she allowed it to grow long. It was as dark as the sharpie she had been grading with. Julian looked around the table, everyone was taking this seriously, “Come on. They're in high school. It's one of the easiest tricks in the book a student picks up. Just write the opposite of what the prompt wants. Be critical and you can pretend you are thinking critically. It's perfectly normal for students that age to think that's what critical analysis means.” He had said the wrong thing. He gave voice to how students played the system to win brownie points, and likely each of these teachers, at some point, had rewarded a student for doing that exact trick. There was a small cough from Mr. Vargas to puncture the awkwardness. Julian tried again, “As long as the writing is good, the State does not care what the substance is, and if they did not take the prompt seriously we are allowed to mark it as … exception or bad behavior. That's on the testing examiners too, they're supposed to monitor the students to make sure they're actually working, and I can talk to them if that's the issue.” Theresa decided now she could save him from embarrassment. “The State will care a great deal about the content of these essays, because the essays are subversive. Ever since those hypnotics were found in that foreign documentary, we have been charged with protecting the youth from bad influences or propaganda.” Hundreds of people had taken the trip to Yamatoa and come back with illegal adoptions – literal human trafficking. The video app the young people liked to use on their phones had been banned in most of the country. There was even evidence that ads were going onto TV and social media that were bought by foreigners just before the last election. This country was supposed to be free, but could it ever be “really free” if foreigners were using hypnotics to get citizens to vote a certain way or commit crimes? If the bad countries were corrupting the youth to hate their homeland, to see only the news and propaganda and opinions that favored their way of seeing things, what future would there be for their people and way of life? He pulled an essay out of the box, and carefully laid it on the table. The name was covered with a small bit of masking tape that had been hastily reapplied, and unpeeled slightly. A blank front page covered the offending document, like a diaper cover keeping the stench and dirtiness in the pants. Mr. Vargas brought the paper into context, “So the point of the essay is they have to bring in things they learned from school the past year, like biology or social science, or government, or history, even literature. It's broad but the students know they're being graded on how well they brought in that information, as well as the quality of the writing, not so much what they say.” “What's the prompt?” Ms. Finkel had it printed out on a short piece of paper, she brought it up and read easily with a practiced voice. “Since Unification, the lives of the normal sized people, those who reach an adult height less than seventy eight inches, have shown dramatic improvement. What are the causes for the improvement of the condition in the lives of the smallest and most vulnerable citizens? Incorporate lessons from your classes this year, like biology and sociology, on the unique challenges the second species faces in our society, and how we now address those with changes in technology, custom, or law.” Julian's eyes were shocked, that's the ninth grader question? He wasn't sure he could answer it. Was this just the Flynn Effect? Well, if teenagers were so smart, why were they idiots who made a mess of the bathroom and got into fights over girls? Julian still had to ask, “Normal sized? What's wrong with calling them little? It's an accurate description.” No littles attended the high school, and only a couple tweeners – who weren't actually tweeners, they were Amazons who had developed a hormonal issue in their second puberty. Real medical conditions didn't count, and besides the doctors were helping treat their condition. Ms. Budde jumped in, eager to explain, “They don't like being called that unless they're in a diaper. I mean, an adult in a diaper, not a little little in a diaper.” Julian flipped open the page and began to read. Theresa could not help her self as she saw what he was reading. “Oh this, it's Amanda McDowell's essay. She's been on this feminist kick all year, and she just exploded on this.” “I'm reading it.” he quietly brushed her off so he could have space to take it in. The penmanship was excellent, the selection of words was like a fine chef pulling an exotic spice, the exact dash needed to elevate the everyday to the extraordinary. He wanted to love the author, and yet. It was daggers. Her linguistic mastery had turned bibles into kindle to set a bonfire that would bring the flag ablaze. Or maybe maternity bras. Either way it killed his soul to know someone could hate their society so much. Oikophobia, it should not be possible for a teenager to have such big feelings. He had compulsion to quote it aloud as he read, “'Ever since the discovery of birth control, men have struggled to find new ways to bring women back into the kitchen. The attempts through wage suppression and their narrow defeat of the equal rights amendment, were insignificant compared to a woman's ability to control her reproduction. Sex is now finally the domain of women, and her body and life could be in her complete control. Which is why it is no surprise that a new form of enslavement has emerged, both in the literal enslavement of adult women of smaller stature, but also us taller ladies, who are encouraged back to the realm of motherhood. If men cannot force women to submit through the womb, they will instead tell us we need to adopt. One way or another we will be relegated to the domestic servile role of changing diapers and giving bottles.” He threw the paper back on the table and slapped it with the back of his hand. Where did Amanda get this? “Are they all like this?” Who could have done this to sweet Amanda? Sure she dyed her hair purple, and got a lip piercing, but in Julian's mind she was the same Freshman he had had seen at orientation nine months ago. Mr. Vargas shook his head and answered, “No that's the thing they're all different. Jeremy for example talked about his experiences at the local gym and contrasted how there were plenty of weights and equipment for him, but that littles had to do yoga and other cardio or stretching exercises. He said that we had some ideal body in mind for them, which from a health perspective really only encouraged them to be dysfunctional. He thinks instead littles should be encouraged to focus on strength exercises so they can better fit into our world.” Jeremy? Jeremy Portillo, the star freshman on the junior varsity football team? Pretty hefty social commentary from a guy who was in remedial differential equations. Theresa stood up and looked through the white box, trying to find a specific essay. She plopped it in front of Julian. “This is from Colleen Sanchez.” Colleen had perfect grades to match her perfect glasses and perfect teeth behind metal braces. She had earned some position on student council next year, treasurer maybe? Julian knew her as her name kept coming up in announcements, she was known to the Principal's office but never had to go inside it. “The presumption that Maturosis must be caused through genetic condition cannot be justified. I have had the privilege of a newly adopted brother who is genetically distinct from the native population. Doctors improperly diagnosed him with an advanced case of the disease though neither blood work or physical change in neural activity was used to determine this condition. False medicalizing the condition is shamanism, a kind of useful hypocrisy to justify his forced abdication of rights and freedoms, one that moves along societal acceptable paths, rather than based in reality. This hurts the small ones because they, recognizing the cruel injustice of the medical system, avoid care for legitimate illness, leading to shorter more difficult lives.” “My exposure to this false scientism continued with the travel company as I inquired on the nature of my brother's loss of mass or possibility of his return to his people. Their explanation, nothing more than jargon filled pseudo-science of plasma loss – felt more like a cover up for what appears to be deliberate damage to otherwise healthy tourists. As the following short example from multi-dimensional physics shows, the stated explanation is not possible, and these travel companies should be put out of business. My brother who is fifteen years older than me and had worked his previous life in health insurance, is more sanguine, believing a similar system of oppression existed in his homeland and this is the state of all societies when the begin to worship at the altar of science.” No, not Colleen. Jeremy was an idiot, and Amanda was a goth lesbian, but Colleen! How could the youth be corrupted so? Who would do this? The Freewindians? The Free Port of Sing-a-ling? Some new app on the phones? They were supposed to be good kids. They weren't like this in their other classes. It might be too late for them, he wasn't even sure how to address a problem this deep. Just pull out the old black and white projector and play the same films from when he last was a Freshman? Theresa answered his internal dialogue, “It's a teacher. These essays get to who they are and how they see themselves. You need a mentor, someone really special in your life, to change an opinion like this. Not television, or books, or a video game. Not their parents.” It was a bit egotistical and self-serving to believe that only a teacher could have this much power over the young ones, but no other part of society wanted responsibility to claim to be that influential and important. It had to be a teacher. Once they found the source, the wannabe revolutionist could be fired. She needed to be pulled out of the classroom before she could further infect the minds of the young and the vulnerable with radical disruptive ideas. Once these essays got to the State, it would certainly result in investigation. However bad the library inquiries were, this would be a thousand times worse. They had to find the bad actor and remove her first. “They have no significant overlap in their classes.” Ms. Budde objected. Julian stood up, commanding the room, rallying his teachers and staff, “Then go back further. Middle School maybe? Do we have the earlier records?” Ms. Finkel stood up and grabbed another box. She brought it to the table and placed one massive folder in front of each participant. Each folder was stacked with dozens of pages. Trees had been slaughtered to create these permanent records. Part of him wished this had been digitized so they could easily go through the records, but the responsible part of him knew keeping it in paper form meant it was easier to not be accountable for a mistake like they were seeing in these essays. Paper was quiet. Theresa took out her laptop and started a spreadsheet. Each student's name, each year, and each teacher. Middle School was difficult, but it quickly became apparent it was not the problem. The twenty had been split between the two different schools. The student's paths converged again in elementary school. Down the list they went, not fifth grade, not fourth. All down to kindergarten and nothing. It was closing in on six o'clock and Ms. Budde finally surrendered, “I don't think it's a teacher, sorry, maybe this is proof we can rule us out? We tried all of them.” Theresa started a fight with her. Her correction brought all her psychological jargon her four years in college could bring to bear, the expertise of someone who knew just enough to lord over those who knew nothing. It made Ms. Budde's head grow red, either from the lack of air conditioning, or perhaps believing that a teacher, any teacher, could be so cruel as to inflict such horrible thoughts onto her students. Julian stared at the thick envelope and stack of paperwork for the four students he had personally gone through. Dozens of pages, detailed notes from every year, no evidence of subversion. Something was off. “Why are their permanent records so big?” Julian had, from time to time, needed to pull permanent records, most were thin folders often with just a paper or two from each school, a former list of classes, maybe a final grade, and important demerits at best. Mr. Vargas volunteered, “That's typical of students with education plans. Each year a teacher or councilor has to sign off on the longitudinal assessment. Some long term study thing for the State. It will be with them until they graduate, and I think we even keep a copy for years after that for research or evaluation purpose.” Julian turned to Theresa, “None of these students are disabled or need plans. Colleen is a perfect student.” Theresa gave him a dirty secret, “If you're ever flagged as needing developmental assistance, at any point, it has to be tracked, even if the student grows up healthy and normal. Just to make sure that there's no backtracking.” Left unsaid was the State's need to verify faculty weren't covering up a problem by having the next teacher check their work. Julian clapped his hands, “Well that's it then. We solved it. They all have a condition and that condition has manifested again ninth grade and we can... we can get extra funding to help with solving it”. It wasn't their fault. Maybe? Probably not. At least they had something to spin. No one would be fired. The small woman laughed, “No, here it's not in the paperwork, but I can pull it up on the laptop.” She typed some commands into her arcane system. The minute to load up the assessment software gave Julian time to wonder why they had chopped down a sequoia to fill all these folders if they were also going to have a digital copy of the same work. She brought up Amanda McDowell's portfolio, her 9th grade picture was prominent. She clicked a tab at the top. Oakshire Intermediate East, a younger gal of eleven filled the top box. Her piercing was gone, and her hair a soft red blonde that went over her shoulders. Theresa clicked again. Oakshire Elementary, and the picture became older, with fewer pixels and worse color. The girl looked around six. “So this is the official record, but not everything is in here, because it would be in the old system. So if we go to images, we can pull up a scan of the original classification.” The laptop's fan whirred to life in the growing heat of the room. It took thirty seconds for the first image to load. Much of it was scanned duplicates of the same information he had seen in the manila folder. Theresa scrolled through the images with ferocity, the laptop struggling to load each page, often just leaving a blank sheet of white. Julian tracked her progress down through the Amanda's years until finally the last few documents were found in the preview bar. Theresa stopped her voyage to the past near the bottom of the long list. “Amanda McDowell: Age 4. Assessment: Developmentally Delayed”. It was a form filled with pen that slowly loaded top to bottom, letters squiggling into focus. Julian only needed to see a handful of words to determine why she had been doomed to a lifetime of invisible scrutiny by the State. She wasn't potty trained. Her parents had put her in pre-k and she wasn't potty trained, like they expected the teacher to impart that important life lesson. Of the three hundred students who attended his high school, most of them did not even go to the public school pre-k. Until this conference Julian had forgotten it was even a service offered at the elementary school. He had to ask the question. “She's potty trained right?” Could her lifetime of dealing with such a secret be enough to give sympathy for the normal sized ones? The disgusted look from the teachers told him that he shouldn't have even hinted at asking the question. How dare he accuse an Amazon of that. Ms. Finkel chastised him, “Yes, of course she is. That's why the flag isn't there anymore.” It took another forty minutes, but he had Theresa go through each student just to be sure. Each one had been developmentally delayed, each one had been enrolled in pre-k at Oakshire Elementary eleven years ago. Just how meaningful could such an early mentor be? What was she teaching these students that it stuck with them a decade later? It was impossible. No teacher was that important in anyone's life. And this was politics, children didn't watch the news or read the paper. You couldn't teach a four year old that littles were just as capable as real grown ups. Four year olds have no concept of what being an adult actually meant, what was the cycle of life, or anything about biology. How do you teach a three year old to respect people regardless of their height, when they themselves would bully and tease each other over the smallest of trivialities? How could anyone be that influential, that strong of a mentor, and yet she herself was content to limiting her influence to shaping the minds of those still in diapers? As if learning the shapes were as equal in importance as learning how to pick a side in the culture war. Whatever she was doing, it was worse than Kit-Kot. Worse than Us-box. Worse than putting the wrong ads on the NOW Network before the election. It was deeper than hypnosis, it shattered the foundations of what it meant to be a citizen by making them see society wrong. How do you break a Manchurian conditioning that started before they were even potty trained? “I'm going to give Ms. Brollish a call, this would have started just before her time, but I think we found the root of the problem and she needs to know what is happening.” That drew Ms. Budde to interrupt, “Elementary is out already. Who knows if this rebel is still teaching?” “In that case, if this teacher comes back in the fall, we'll be ready. We'll take any and all efforts necessary to ensure the continued safety of our children and our future. Any means.” Principal Garibaldi seemed to say the last part with too much pleasure and enjoyment. Where once his active mind had been filled with dread over damaged scantrons and idiot children, now he was redirecting the dark imagination to this treacherous teacher. There were punishments you could do to teachers and staff that went beyond firing, and surely this was the highest of crimes. Ms. Finkel brought it all back to the present problem, “And the students? What's the plan for unbrainwashing them?” “Theresa, go ahead and mark them all as developmentally delayed, I want you to setup an I.E.P for them. That should get the State off our backs when they read these essays, and when they come back in the fall we can give them the extra attention they need, someone who can push back on their undesirable behaviors.” Developmentally delayed, good use of words. It meant adults were not happy with your progress but you weren't actually disabled. Theresa seemed to struggle with her laptop's mouse, frustrated hard clicking that only resulted in beeping and chimes from the device. “This bullshit software won't let me put that flag on because they already had it once.” She fiddled with the mouse a bit, and then her classic smile returned. The two men and two women looked at her in anticipation. “But, it will let me put the old one back on.” Julian would need to bring Jeremiah's genie to school in the morning. It would be a shock for those students to find the yellow stained white cloth in their lockers that afternoon. Tomorrow was the day everyone cleaned out their lockers. The metal cabinets were given one last inspection by administration, verifying they were ready for the next year's new students, only to have these twenty students come up short of expectations. Any other student, and the discovery might be given a pass. Some prank by a bully or class clown. As the school psychologist would explain to their parents, these young lads have a preexisting condition, they had been taught to hide it remarkably well. It was good that they had been tracking it all these years, just in case it came up again. Note again: Conspiracy is fan fiction, it is not intended to be an explanation of the events in the original story. Thank you personalias for giving permission to post this in public.

Here's a free story about a young woman who doesn't know when to keep her mouth shut. Please comment or give it a like if you're enjoying the story. --- Lindsey sat in her room, staring out of her bedroom window brooding after her self imposed exile. It was her fucking birthday for crying out loud and her parents had forbade her from being able to leave the house! Unlike most twenty one year olds, Lindsey had been forced to spend her summer break from college back at home with her parents. Well, the word "forced" was a bit extreme; she had voluntarily returned home to see her parents and mooch off of them until she had to go back to school. However, things quickly changed once she got home and found out that they had a new baby in the house. "It's okay, Maddie. It's just a little bit of poopy in your pamper." Lindsey felt the right side of her head throb upon hearing her mother's sickeningly sweet voice coming from just outside of her door. She knew that voice well. It was her mom's "attempting to calm her sister tone" when the brat was screaming her head off like a teething toddler. "Don't cry, baby. Mommy's going to change your diaper once we get you down for bed." "Ugh," Lindsey subconsciously groaned. She had been stuck on diaper duty during the past three weeks whenever her mom and dad weren't at home and it was starting to grind away at what little remained of her sanity. The worst part of the whole arrangement was that she effectively being kept a prisoner in her own house. At first, it was because nobody was around to watch the baby since both of her parents still worked. Since she was watching her sister all day long, she hadn't really thought about leaving the house since caring for her sister was literally a full time job. However, as time passed and tempers flared, she finally got sick of wiping her sister's ass and wanted to go hang out with her friends. It was on her mom's first day off since Lindsey arrived home that her parents literally told her that she couldn't leave the house! It was no longer about helping out with the baby; according to her parents, it was about keeping her safe from whatever was going on around town. To Lindsey, it was as if a quiet, self contained hysteria had engulfed the small town over the past few weeks. It seemed more and more incidents were occurring around town which made her parents become increasingly protective of her. At least, that's what she was able to piece together through the few snippets of what passed as conversation during dinner. It felt so odd to be effectively ignored since she had to help feed the baby, but hearing her mom and dad gossip in solemn tones about which family around town was afflicted by this mysterious tragedy was starting to drive her crazy. It all came to a boil during the previous night's meal where her dad had casually mentioned Maddie's best friend from down the street like her disappearance was perfectly normal. "I haven't seen the Miller girl in a few days." Her mother looked up from her plate. "Is that the family with the twenty four year old daughter?" Her dad sighed. "Yeah, she went to school with Maddie if I'm not mistaken." Lindsey recalled putting down the large plastic spoon full of mashed prunes before chiming in. "Are you guys talking about Jackie Miller?" Her mother sighed. "Yeah, I think so." She couldn't believe her mother's apathetic tone. That was Madison's best friend and they were pretending like she didn't exist! "Well, what do you guys think happened to her?" "Hopefully nothing, but I haven't seen her since last Friday." Her mother replied before taking a sip off of her alcoholically enhanced iced tea. "They should've kept her in the house." "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?!" Lindsey snapped at her father's remark causing her sister to start bawling her eyes out. In the blink of an eye, her mother had leapt up from her seat and was standing beside her daughter, Maddie. "It's okay, baby. Big sissy isn't mad at you." Her dad had cleared his throat by that point and was staring her down from his spot at the head of the table. "You know what I meant, Lindsey. The Miller's shouldn't have let Jackie leave their house which is why you're definitely not going to leave this house until the sheriff's catch the sick fucks responsible for your sister's condition!" An awkward tension had filled the air before Lindsey stood up from her seat at the table and screamed at her father. "Tomorrow is my twenty-first birthday, dad! I'm not going to just sit here like a prisoner while all my other friends are enjoying their lives!" That was the last time Lindsey had spoken to her parents. She had spent the entire day in her room, periodically walking out to the kitchen to get a yogurt or make a bowl of cereal. Just because she was pissed off at her parents didn't mean that she was going to starve herself. Their attempts at conversation were ignored. Each "happy birthday" was met with quiet indifference and indignation. Somehow she had gone the entire day without talking to either one of them, but luckily she had her friend, Gwen to chat with. They had spent the whole day planning out their night on the town. In all honesty, there wasn't much to plan since the town only had two bars and the Copper Stallion was the only thing close to a "hip dive bar" suitable to the forty and younger crowd. The Iron Spittoon was literally a Boomer bar and she wouldn't waste a minute in that shithole even if the drinks were free! The sound of her bedroom door creaking open pulled Lindsey's attention away from the window and towards the door to see her mother looking in through the gap. "I just put Maddie to sleep." Lindsey remained silent, but didn't look away. "I know you're still upset about the situation, honey, but we don't want you to take any risks. What if you end up like your older sister?" The question lingered in the air for an uncomfortable amount of time until her mother spoke again. "You're still angry, I get that, but how about we celebrate your birthday tomorrow?" It sounded less like an offer and more like a plea. "I'll take the day off, hire a babysitter for Maddie, and we can make mixed drinks all day. It'll be a regular girls day in!" Slowly, Lindsey turned away and returned her gaze to the window, peering out of it like a bird trapped inside of a cage. The sound of her mother closing the door in defeat was the only sound that pierced the quiet stillness of the house until a few moments later a digital ping came from the phone that sat on the desk by her chair. She immediately picked it up and noticed that it was Gwen. Ur parents in bed yet? Lindsey's thumbs got to work typing on the now fully charged phone. "Dunno bout my dad. Mom is prolly gonna lay down." K was the only letter sent in reply. Lindsey stared at the reply for a moment and started to get annoyed. "U gonna pick me up or wat?" Normally, she would've taken her car, but since her dad had confiscated the keys she was forced to rely on Gwen. An uncomfortable amount of time passed waiting for her reply. If Gwen had bailed on her then she'd just walk to the bar. It wasn't that far away, but the thought of someone jumping her along the way did linger in her mind until another digital ping sounded off, pulling her out of her increasingly dark thoughts. Can't take my car. No gas. "Fucking cheap cunt." Lindsey seethed under her breath. "Walking to the bar." Lindsey replied with annoyance. Don't. I got a buck for UBER to get you. "Such a cheap cunt." Lindsey chuckled to herself before typing, "Wat about beer?" I got cash. UBER is cheaper than gas. Lindsey couldn't argue with that line of thinking so she simply replied with a "K" and put her phone into the back of her ripped Jeans as she stood up. She quietly slid her window open, taking her time to push the screen out from its place, knocking it out of the frame. Flashes of sneaking out of the house during high school to smoke pot flashed through her mind as she did so, making her feel rather juvenile until her face was hit by the cold air of the night. Originally, Lindsey had wanted to wear her booty shirts and show off her body, but once her sneakers landed on the wet grass, she knew that she had made the right choice by wearing her Jeans. The minutes passed by painfully slow as the cold air made Lindsey start to question whether standing around and waiting for her friend was a good idea. Lindsey sighed, seeing her breath hang in the air for a moment before vanishing. 'Fucking bitch.' She looked down the end of the street and was just about to text Gwen when a pair of headlights appeared in the distance. 'It's about damn time!' Lindsey thought as she stood there impatiently on the sidewalk in the growing glare of the car's headlights. The black SUV crept forward until it pulled up to the side of the curb and stopped. Right when she was about to step up to the sports utility vehicle her phone pinged, notifying her that she had just received a text message. 'I wonder who that could be?' Lindsey ignored her phone, opting to approach the luxurious SUV. Before she could reach for the handle, the back door flung open revealing Gwen leaning over from her seat. The slightly older girl flashed her a smile and patted the empty seat. "Come on, Lindsey. What are you waiting for? Your birthday is almost over!" "No thanks to you." Lindsey replied in a bitchy tone while getting into the car and grabbing onto the side of the door, slamming it shut. Before Lindsey could even get comfortable, the driver was already starting to complain. "Make sure your friend is buckled up!" Lindsey cocked an eye and looked over at Gwen who was already reaching over for the seatbelts that laid limply by Lindsey's shoulder. Before she could be buckled in, Lindsey brushed away Gwen's hands and buckled herself in. "Just because I haven't been out of the house doesn't mean that I forgot how to use a seatbelt." She expected Gwen to say something, but the young woman remained silent which seemed odd given that she was always a bit of spitfire; it was why they both got along. "You're the birthday girl. Just thought I'd help." Gwen finally spoke up after snapping her own seatbelt shut. Lindsey felt like she was missing something here; like she was being left out of an obvious joke or something. She turned her gaze away from Gwen and to the driver who was already looking over her shoulder, watching her. It made the already awkward atmosphere of the backseat seem to build more awkward if such a thing was possible. It felt like the driver was waiting for her to say something. "Maybe you should stop staring at me and get this clown car on the road." Lindsey demanded in an annoyed tone. "You don't like the lighting? My passengers always love the lights, especially after a long night out." The driver replied, ignoring her rude tone. "They just stare at these lights until I deliver them to their homes." The back of the car had electric-pink pin-striping running around the lining of the ceiling which bathed the backseats in a faint pink glow. Lindsey had noticed the lights, but didn't exactly care for them. It seemed a bit much for a simple ride to the bar, more like a luxury car,but maybe Gwen had been lying about her budget? "The lights are nice, but I'd have to be pretty shit faced to just stare at them like some retard." Lindsey retorted. "Don't mind Lindsey." Gwen finally spoke up. "She's had a long week and just wants to get drunk on her birthday." "That's right." The driver smiled. "You did say on the way over here that it was her birthday." "Yeah, and it's almost over." Lindsey sighed. "So less yapping and more driving!" "Of course, but before we get going, here's a little gift from me for your special night out." The older woman pulled out a bottle of water from a cooler she must've had sitting on the passenger seat and handed it back to Lindsey. "Gee, thanks." Lindsey replied in a sarcastic voice. "It's actually a good idea to hydrate before you start drinking." Lindsey cocked her head just in time to see Gwen drink from her own bottle of water she must've gotten from the driver beforehand. "Your friend is right. It helps prevent hangovers." The driver added, seemingly waiting for her to pop open the top and drink. "Fine, but I want this car moving once I finish taking a sip." Lindsey grumbled while screwing off the lid of the twenty ounce bottle of water. She took a long sip from the water bottle and the car finally pulled forward. Feeling the vehicle actually moving made Lindsey start to unwind. She leaned back in her seat and started thinking about the potential guys she'd meet tonight. How many she'd flirt with and maybe the lucky guy she'd fuck if things went right and he invited her back to his place. Suddenly, Lindsey felt like she was having trouble thinking straight as an unusual haze overcame her mind. She tried to lift her hand to touch her forehead, but all the strength had left her arms, causing her to drop her bottle of water onto the floor. "Gwen!" Lindsey slurred her words. "Sum thin ish wong wif me!" If Gwen had heard what Lindsey had said, she gave no indication of it. Lindsey struggled to keep her eyes open as everything grew blurrier and darker in the backseat. A yawn escaped her mouth as a tiny trickle of drool dripped down her chin. Lindsey couldn't believe how out of it she was; it was like she had been drugged or something! The very idea that she had been drugged gave her a second wind of sorts. She gazed up from her slumped position and tried to spot the driver but found an opaque black glass divider that hid the woman from sight. It was like a big black mirror reflecting an endless sea of neon pink due to the custom interior lights of the car. She pulled her eyes away from the tinted glass partition and let out a long sigh before succumbing to the drugs in her system. "Okay, she's knocked out now." Gwen said as she looked at her unconscious friend. To Be Continued...