Control Freakz Read online

  “Natalie!” Hunter screamed desperately. He forcefully grabbed me and pulled me across the roof. I closed my eyes, hoping that when the bullet connected it would all end quickly. It’s time to release. Finally, you can release it all now.

  I tried to imagine the flurry of emotions that would overcome me as all the pain, suffering, and sadness I’d endured throughout my life would be alleviated from my body in a single moment. No more dark days. No more anxiety. No more defeat. I tried to let my body loosen up as I prepared for the inevitable. I tried to accept reality for once, before my reality as I knew it came to a crashing a halt. But I couldn’t.

  No matter how hard I tried, my brain refused to allow it. I closed my eyes, and I could feel the air rush up underneath me as Hunter’s grip around my body got suddenly tighter. If I die, I will haunt this earth forever. If I die, I will die in vain.

  Then, I could hear one final resounding bang echo in my ears, and I knew in that moment that this was the end. Suddenly I could feel my muscles tense up, and pain reverberated throughout my body as my feet came into contact with the ground below. I opened my eyes, disoriented, half expecting my life to come to a crashing halt. But instead, I could feel Hunter’s muscular arms wrapped around me as he pulled me up and started to run.

  What just happened? I looked around in shock, surprised that I was still alive, never mind sprinting forward through Ethan’s backyard. Did I just jump off his roof? No way. If I wasn’t scared out of my mind, on the brink of death, I would have congratulated myself. But instead I followed Hunter’s lead as we dashed through Ethan’s backyard to find ourselves in the artificial woods between his house and the golf course.

  I heard a loud bang, and suddenly Ethan yelled, “Hit the ground!”

  Hunter brought me down with him onto the dry dirt beneath us. I choked for a second as I gasped for air. My heart thumped erratically in my chest like the waves on a tumultuous day at sea. With every surge of emotion, I could feel my insides rock back and forth like a boat on the stormy ocean. And it wouldn’t be long before that boat was devoured by waves and sunk under the pressure.

  Before my mind could even register what was happening, we were up and running again. I looked back one last time at the ginormous man who stood at the edge of Ethan’s yard with the barrel of his pistol pointed directly at me. Get the hell away! My body tried to release some of the horror and anxiety building up inside of me by letting out one blistering scream. However, my lungs were so depleted that I could barely muster a faint croak. The searing pain in my legs eventually fizzled out and became a numb, stabbing feeling that prodded at my legs like a horde of mosquitoes. The thoughts in my brain suddenly turned into a hazy twister, as the emotions inside of me began to spill out of my eyes with destructive force. Buckets of tears mixed with gallons of sweat dripped from my face and landed onto my damp blue shirt I’d worn to bed the night before.

  I willed myself forward as Hunter tugged me alongside him toward the fields of grass, which looked bright gold in the rays of morning sunlight.

  “Where are we going?!” Hunter shouted in Ethan’s direction, who was ahead of us leading the way. I could feel Hunter’s arm tighten up as we all glanced behind us to check whether the agent had emerged from the woods yet.

  “We’re right out in the open!” Hunter yelled. “We’re gonna get shot!”

  “I know what the hell I’m doing!” Ethan replied. “Just follow me.”

  Although Ethan sounded stern, I could hear the thick layer of terror and doubt in his voice. Is this even real? The rolling, golden hills sprawled on either side of us stood like a mirage in the middle of the desert, and in fact, they were. Just above the line of afghan pines that dotted the exterior of the golf course, the rocky, light brown mountains surrounding Phoenix were visible. We are in the middle of a desert, and here, there’s nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

  I gulped, trying to suppress the fear threatening to burst out of me in one cacophonous scream. We are dead. We can’t run forever. We will die. Another gunshot sounded from behind us and I refused to turn around, knowing that if it was headed toward me I would be powerless to do anything about it.

  “We will make it.” Hunter’s warm voice radiated in my ears as he squeezed my hand tighter. “Don’t worry.”

  Don’t worry?! How is that even possible?! We are about to die! Of course I’m freaking worried. The immense panic ringing in my brain only propelled my legs forward faster.

  “There’s a storm drain just up ahead!” Ethan yelled as we began to run down one of the dozens of hills on the course.

  I quickly glanced backward to see how the close the government agent was behind us, but he was nowhere to be seen. What the hell? Where did he go? There was a brief moment of excitement that rushed through me; for one single moment, I believed things were actually going to be okay. But that moment was short lived.

  “Hunter,” I said, my flustered voice slicing through the morning air. “The man isn’t following us anymore.”

  Instead of responding, Hunter pulled me closer to him as we continued to run toward the storm drain that passed through one of the hills in the golf course. Where did that man go? Is he bringing more of them? Or is he going to go and capture more people?

  I shivered madly as shock, confusion, and fear coursed through me. I could feel the icy sensation throughout my body slowly begin to subside, while the hands of death suddenly let go, freeing me.

  Ethan exhaled, outstretching his arms to touch the perimeter of the large pipe he had just zoomed into. “This is it!” Ethan yelled ecstatically as his footsteps echoed from inside the concrete tube.

  Hunter and I followed him into the oversized storm drain that served as the main runoff for most of the water on the golf course. The concrete surrounding us was ominously dark, and the air had a thick mustiness to it that instantly caused chills to run down my spine. We made it! I exhaled, releasing my fear and anxiety in the form of carbon dioxide. Finally, with my tongue devoid of all moisture and my legs absolutely exhausted, I let my body collapse against the concrete behind me. And in the same moment I felt the fleeting adrenaline from my system, it all hit me.

  Holy shit. I grabbed onto Hunter as the true magnitude of our situation began to smack me. Everything is falling apart. We are screwed! I looked up at Hunter through the film of tears and tried to let his blue eyes and firm body comfort me. But it was no use.

  I screamed, so viciously and so ferociously, that I swear it must have been the sound of my inner demons desperately crawling out of me. A tidal wave of emotions suddenly washed over me as I began to drown in despair, shock, anger, and pure terror. The tears soon followed, as they always did, and started to pour out of me uncontrollably, like water from a fire hydrant.

  I could feel the blackness start to overcome me as I started to drown in my emotions. I buried my head in Hunter’s shirt and I felt his body start to shake while he hugged me tightly. And for the longest time we both just sat there, and I cried, and I cried, and I cried until my body could no longer produce anymore tears. And even after I had broken past that threshold, I still managed to cry again as my reality settled over me like a perpetual thunderstorm.

  That day, my whole life was stolen from me. And I don’t know if I will ever get it back.

  Chapter 2

  Survival feels like a fleeting memory when death is omnipresent. It barks like a sinister screech in my ear, threatening me to succumb to its will with its ferocious screams. It tantalizes me with its soft whisper and warm, long arms that promise to shelter me from the pain of this world. It smothers me, like a warm blanket, and as it begins to wrap tighter and tighter around me, I can feel the life inside of me slowly start to escape like a cool gas.

  What is life? Tears started to force their way out of my closed eyes as I could feel Hunter’s body shift closer toward me. Why does everything have to go wrong, when for once you were actually happy?

  “No,” I said. My whole body began to shake, and I w
as in adamant denial of the reality that had not only hit us, but stolen our whole lives from us, seemingly for no apparent reason. “No!” I yelled.

  “Natalie,” Hunter said as he put one arm around my head so that my cheek laid against his firm chest. “It’ll be okay. It has to be okay. There is no other option. Life always works out.”

  Just the sound of his warm, calm voice usually soothed me, but in that moment, nothing in the world could calm the oceans of anxiety, fear, and anger raging through me. I could feel my entire body collapse as I thought about my mom and my brother. They are somewhere out there! Those monsters took them! A shiver ran down my spine as I imagined all the horrible things that they were likely enduring.

  I’d heard people were chained like animals to cement walls infested with parasitic fungi and mold that reeks of human flesh; fed nothing but lard; and barely got enough water to keep their tongues moist. There were also huge machines they hooked people up to, which forced them to permanently reside in a state of mental insanity as punishment for ever-defying the will of the government and President Ash. Of course, all the stories that I have heard are strictly rumors, because no one has ever come back alive from one of the government’s cleansing facilities. If the rumors are true, though, not even hell could compare to the pure horror that thousands upon thousands of people have to endure there.

  That time the insides of my skin crawled with an icy chill as tears began to pour uncontrollably out of my eyes. It was in that moment, when I finally came to the devastating realization: I hope my family is dead! I could feel my insides become instantly repulsed at the very thought, as my mind still tried to reject the idea that any of this was really happening. I fumed with anger and sadness as I pictured the pain I knew they would have to endure. No human being should have to go through that. No human being deserves this!

  In sheer frustration, I banged my fist hard against the cement below, and I could feel the whole foundation of the abandoned office building shake ever so slightly. There was still an outlandish but faint gleam of hope inside of me that somehow this was all a dream, and that somehow, I would wake up and it would all be over. Even after four days had now passed, when I shut my eyes and went to sleep on the hard cement floor beneath us, there was part of me that still believed I would wake up in my bed at home to the smell of my mom making pancakes on a Sunday morning. But without fail, every time I woke up I found myself laying on that same hard cement floor, three stories up in an abandoned office building.

  Every time I woke up I still felt the hunger eating away at my insides, and the thirst starting to flow through my blood like sepsis. And every time I woke up, I could feel the pain of the gaping hole in my heart as it grew greater and greater, and the shock as it slowly wore off and turned into a deep depression.

  I could now officially say that I used to be happy, though for a short period of time, but that feeling has long escaped me and left for good. I used to be hopeful, hopeful for a better life, hopeful for a better future, hopeful that one day I might be able to get my dad back. But that hope eluded me like a cloud of smoke floating off into the sky, and in its place, a thick fog of despair had begun to coat me. I used to want to live. But that desire left me, along with the hope and happiness that were stolen from me.

  The whole world felt as if it were about to collapse. The very foundation of America, the very foundation of my life, had begun to crumble before my very eyes, just as the walls full of graffiti had begun to crumble, and fall piece by piece down onto the streets of Scottsdale below. With every breath, I could feel another layer of heavy must coat my lungs, as the silent breeze of the night kicked up the dust from the building and spewed it all around us.

  I opened my eyes and gazed through the hole in the roof up into the night sky, and at all the stars that sparkled effervescently. There were only a few dozen of them visible due to the light pollution from the skyscrapers in nearby downtown Phoenix, and as a result, a blackness blanketed most of the night sky. It perfectly resembled the emotions in my brain. A dark, depressing blackness had smothered most of the light from the night sky, leaving a beautiful yet mysterious purple tinge. With the absence of the moon, everything appeared darker, and gloomy, and the shadow of the building, just like the shadow of my anxiety, hung over us like a perpetual blackness.

  It was moments like these when it seemed like maybe the blackness would never end, that maybe I would go on living the rest of my life without the moon. Maybe I would go on living the rest of my life stuck in a pit of despair. Maybe happiness would be forever unreachable, just like the stars that sometimes glow so brightly in the sky.

  I let out a long sigh, trying to exhale some of the anxiety that flowed through my veins at toxic levels. I could slowly start to feel my body beginning to overdose from the emotions; my whole brain was beginning to shut down and just give up. But there was always that voice in the back of my head that made me stop myself. There was always that one last reminder that gave me maybe just a bit of hope, or at least if nothing else, a bit of strength to push through the pain.

  I wasn’t the only one.

  I cuddled up closer to Hunter, a person who’d been suffering for years because of the government’s ignorant and selfish ways. I looked all around at the office building that was dying, along with dozens of others in Scottsdale, and was reminded of all the thousands of lives that had been affected just in my town alone. I gulped, the true magnitude of how bad things were finally hitting me. Every single person in this country is suffering. And if anyone isn’t, the government will make sure that they take everything away from them, too. Fucking government! Fucking President Ash!

  The anger suddenly coursed through my veins as I thought about the corrupt and selfish ways of the government. How could we elect a man as incompetent and corrupt as President Ash? How did we allow our country to turn to complete shit?! I could feel my fists shake in vexation as my heart thumped loudly in my chest. I cursed the government, and I cursed every single person who’d voted for President Ash. How could they have willingly destroyed America?! How could they have so eagerly voted for such an insane man? I closed my eyes, trying to let my confusion and anger at the world wash over me. Desperation. My mind immediately thought back to the Great Crash and the riots, and the pure chaos. Complete and utter desperation. What fools!

  I could still envision President Ash, with his jet-black hair and evil brown eyes, standing behind the podium at his campaign rallies, attempting to convince the hearts of tens of millions of Americans to get behind him so he would have their vote. What a bastard! Lying, selfish bastard. He preyed on the poor and the helpless. He manipulated the uneducated. He thought he could just trick all of us into believing his bullshit, and the funny part is that he was right.

  The rise of President Ash all began with the Great Crash. It was the driving force behind his political campaign; his promise to restore strength in the American economy, and to restore power to America’s working class. In July of 2035, there was a massive earthquake that rocked the eastern seaboard of China, putting tens of millions of people out of their homes, and effectively causing trillions of dollars of Chinese infrastructure to crumble to the ground in a matter of minutes. This cataclysmic natural disaster caused a state of emergency in China, as hundreds of millions of citizens fought for food and water, in a country whose entire infrastructure was completely decimated. In the aftershocks of this one singular event, markets across the world began to plummet as investors feared the economic unrest in China would create a ripple and affect the rest of the world.

  This caused the stock market in the U.S. to plunge fifteen trillion dollars over the course of a month, resulting in tens of millions of workers being laid off as thousands of companies went out of business. With all the factories and the massive consumer market in China, thousands of companies in the U.S. crumbled in the aftershocks of the earthquake. The earthquake literally shook the entire world, and with its seismic force, it awoke the people of America, and the p
eople of the world, into action. The riots soon followed, and they came with such righteous force that their waves were just as powerful as the earthquake itself.

  I was just a young child at the time, but I can still remember the deafening roar of the people screaming on the streets. I can still picture the fires tearing apart buildings and cars as people lost their minds in the desperation of the moment. I can still hear the calm voice of the reporters on television, yet envision the look of horror in their eyes as they broadcasted to the entire world the apocalyptic ending of American society. Journalists immediately dubbed it the Great Crash.

  Little did anyone know, that name was perfectly fitting for what it represented. Because, as a result of that earthquake—as a result of the entire world being trembled by the sheer force of those seismic waves—the foundation of modern society cracked, which exposed the weaknesses of the system. As a result of that crack, just that one singular break in the stone wall that fortified the foundation of our society, everything crashed. The Great Crash not only marked the crash of the world economy, it marked the crash of democracy, the complete and utter annihilation of freedom and justice in America, and it marked the crash of my old life and happiness.

  But when the Great Crash happened, no one knew any of that. When the millions of Americans voted for President Ash based on his promise to fix the mess of America and rebuild the cracked foundation of our country, at that time, they were completely unaware of the truth. When I was just a little girl watching the news, I had no idea that I was watching the destruction of America—and my life—unfold right in front of my eyes.

  No. I thought, just like everyone else, that things would turn out okay. I believed, even as time progressed and things turned even darker, that the sun would somehow finds its way and break out of the layers of clouds blocking its light. I truly believed my dad when he told me he would find a way to fix things, and that life was going to get better. I thought that one day everything would work out the way it was supposed to. But I was fucking wrong.