I woke up, clawing with hands that had no nails. The sting of my raw skin rubbed against the rusted metal that trapped me. I was encased like a toy on display, with nowhere to go and nothing to do, just sitting on a shelf. For a moment, I could not remember who I was. As my senses started to return, I smelled the earth and something pungent, almost like blood. My heartbeat was an echo inside my head, distracting me from the excruciating physical pain I was going through. My thoughts were entangled with one another. My vision was blurry, foggy even. Nothing was making sense. I sat back, leaned against the metal encasing me, and began to breathe. The pain in my stomach had returned. 

I.

I looked down and saw more than just my ribs. I saw what seemed like all of my organs. Just as I began to get comfortable with my surroundings, I heard a metal door swing open behind me.

    That was a weird dream. Those have been haunting me recently. I woke up to the humming of my father, the snoring of my mother, and the rumble of the tires around us as we traveled to our new home. Moving to a new town was never ideal. Dad got a new government job in the city of Everspring. I had heard of it, but not much. Just a normal small town, right? 

    As we rolled up to the entrance to the town, I began to get nervous. These new town walls felt foreign. When you live somewhere else for your whole life, it feels off to move out of the blue. 

As we entered, I felt changed already. Something was off here, I could feel it. Right as we pulled in, we were greeted by the Mayor himself, Mayor Carmichael. 

    He was tall and he dressed neatly. He smiled in a way that did not reach his eyes. It was almost like one of those fake smiles my mom would always give to her “friends”. Something behind that smile made me uneasy. 

    “Welcome to Everspring!! We are so glad you decided to move here. Your house is located this way,” the mayor said, pointing down the long, winding road that stretched for miles. 

    “Thank you, kind sir. I shall see you soon. Have a good rest of your day!” My father said, returning the kind gesture as he drove away. 

The road seemed endless. House after house after house, and ours was nowhere in sight. Being bored in the car made me the most observant person I've ever been. I began to look out the window. I started to notice some strange events happening around me. Each house had labels across the front porch. One I saw said, “Mark Peterson - Butcher.” A few houses down, I saw another one - “Eliza Shepherd - Seamstress”. I did not really think anything of it at first. Maybe the town just wants each other to be friendly. When we finally pulled up to my house, though, my thoughts had changed.

II.

    “Carlos Ramirez - Student”. Written on the front steps below my parents' names. They already knew who I was. I walked into the house, trying to clear my head. When I went up the stairs, there were bookshelves lining the whole way up. Each book seemed to have something to help with in our daily lives. “How to cook food” and “What to do when I feel lost” were just a few. However, as I got closer to the top, I saw a few more that caught my attention. 

    “Who is Emily Ramirez?” and “What does Christopher Ramirez do for a living?” were some of the select few at the top. Why do my parents need reminders like these?

At first, I thought that it might be a weird local custom. However, the closer I looked, the weirder it became. The people around here followed these signs like they were literal commands. They listened to what the signs and books said. They knew who they were and what they did. No one questioned it. No one seemed to notice. 

    “Don’t you think it’s weird, Dad? All of the signs and books with our personal information?” I asked my dad that first night.

    My father responded by saying,” That’s just how things are done here, buddy.”

    I could not fight off the feeling that something was off with Everspring.

 My father instructed me to go to bed. I reluctantly listened. I lay down, wondering what my life had really become. I could not sleep. There was no movement throughout the house, yet the house creaked throughout the night. It was almost like the house was breathing, letting out a sigh of relief that we had become its next victims. I was tossing and turning when I noticed a glowing, flashing light emitting from the window. I moved the blinds to find my name flickering on and off, flashing like a warning sign. It was like they were alive, trying to speak to me, warn me of anything. I ran to my parents' room, shaking them, trying to startle them awake. They were sound asleep, peaceful and still, like they had been cast under a spell. 

    The next morning, walking into town, I noticed more paranormal activity. One sign had changed in front of my eyes. “Dawson Henry - Farmer” changed to “Dawson Henry - Missing.” This startled me. How come no one else noticed the strangeness of the town? Everyone greeted me with the same fake smile the mayor used. Right when the Mayor crossed my mind, he was standing in front of the town fountain, greeting people. Something about him was off. Something was wrong. I could feel it. I was approaching the Mayor, trying to get some answers, when all power around me went out.

    It was daytime, so it was not hard to see. However, everyone around me was like zombies. No one could function, not even the Mayor. 

They all had a beady-eyed expression, blank across their faces. I had come up with the conclusion that the people were under some kind of mind control. They could not remember anything on their own. It was as if they were made to forget everything, and then reminded of it again the next day. I was lost, confused, and worried. I wanted to talk to someone, but who could I turn to? My own parents were changing. I felt alone. 

    The only thing that I thought could finally save me had arrived: school. Maybe being away from my house would help me cope with my mind. I walked into the school for the first time, and the horrors that I 

saw stained my imagination forever. It looked just like the town.

III.

    School in Everspring might be more strange than the town itself. Imagining my old school on steroids is the only way to describe what it looked like. The classrooms were spotless, and every student followed the same routine. The teachers were practically robots, speaking in a flat, almost rehearsed tone. Each movement, each word, perfectly timed. That’s when I met Eli. He seemed different than the others. He was quiet at first, but something shone in his eye that showed me that he was not like everyone else. I introduced myself, and so did he. When I began to ask him simple questions, his responses were so bizarre. 

    “What do you like to do after school?” I asked Eli.

    “... I, I’m not sure,” he hesitated before saying. 

    He seemed nervous, like he was searching for the right answer. It seemed like it was on the tip of his tongue, but it just would not come out. The next day, I simply asked him the same question. 

    “What do you like to do after school?” I stated again.

    “... I don’t really know how to answer that,” Eli said, with a bit of a stutter.

    “I asked you the same question yesterday. Do you not remember that?” I asked Eli.

“Yesterday? What was yesterday?” Eli asked, with an extremely confused expression running across his face. 

    Not remembering yesterday concerned me. Not even knowing what yesterday was or meant did not just concern me; it scared me. I began to spend time with Eli each day, pushing for him to remember. Every second of every school day was spent with Eli. It had become such a habit that he finally began to remember my name. He knew who I was now. Progress was coming. He did not remember the questions that I continued to ask, but the progress made inspired me. 

    Because of Eli, I began to take notes. Every night when I went to bed, I wrote down what I saw. The flickering signs, the shifting words, and the people who seemed to forget their entire day. 

 I noticed new signs popping up across town, written in the same glowing letters. “Work. Obey. Stay.” The instructions were worshipped by the people around. I was walking around one day when I saw a different sign. When I could finally make out what the sign said, I dropped to the floor. It said my name.

   I have no clue why or how they got my name on a sign, but it frightened me. My biggest fear was the mayor being behind all of this. The creepy smile he always showed to others around him began to appear in my head. It felt like he was trying to take over my brain. The signs were becoming more apparent. The mayor was becoming more persistent. The longer I was stuck in this town, the worse it was getting for me. I needed to find someone else who could remember, or else I would become like everyone else around me. 

    Eli was the only one I could almost reach. I tried to remind him of our conversations, but it seemed pointless. 

IV.

I showed him the notes I took about the town, but page after page, he would just blink. Confused, he would just say something like “Carlos, I think you’re mistaken.” That was the breaking point. I believed that I could not get Eli to remember. I went searching for answers. I had to find the truth myself. So one night, I slipped out of my house, my notebook in hand, and I began to explore the streets of Everspring. 

    I made my way through town, and I eventually made it out to the edge of Everspring, where the woods began. The woods were dense and silent, the kind of quiet that made the twigs under my feet snap like thunder striking a tree. Using my flashlight, I followed a faint path that wound deeper and deeper into the woods. 

My flashlight began to flicker before it went out. I had just put new batteries in it this morning. I started to crawl on the ground. It was pitch black. The longer I crawled, the more panicked I became. I stuck my hand out, and to my luck, I brushed it against a tree trunk. I leaned against the tree, longing for rest. None of my senses seemed to be working, so right when my head hit that tree, I was out. 

V.

    Trapped inside a cage, longing for fresh air, I groaned. The rust on my chains, clinging to my wrists, started to cut into me. The agonizing pain going through my body did not feel like pain anymore. I was immune. My heartbeat continued to pound through my head. Looking down, I saw water and jagged rocks deep below me. The fear of heights that I have always had ran through my head. Weeping was never my thing, but right now I had nothing left to do. I weeped. I wept for hours, days, even. I wept as long as I could. My voice could not take it anymore. My weeping was forcefully done. The daily ration of a small loaf of bread shoved into the cage was my salvation. 

When it was thrown into the cage, the hands of my captor came into view. His morphing body stretched in front of me. His face came into view. Wait, I know that face. It is so familiar, but how?

    When I woke up, I had to gasp for air. These dreams keep haunting me. I have no clue what they mean, but they continue to trouble me. As I was questioning these nightmares, I set my hand back against the tree. I heard a hollow, metallic sound echo through the tree behind me. When I turned around and felt the tree, I realized that it was not a tree. It was a camouflaged hideout. I pulled part of the roots away, and I felt something below it. I found a small, claustrophobic opening. 

    When I finally wedged myself in, I found a winding staircase that led down multiple flights of stairs. My heart pounded, but my curiosity was greater than the fear trying to take control of me. If I really wanted to know what was wrong with this town, I needed answers. I needed to continue to explore. Each step felt like a leap of faith. Technically, it was. Without faith, I would not have made it this far. With confidence, I jumped from the last step onto the concrete floor. 

VI.

It was dark, as if the sun had just set, and there was no more light, only stars glittering across the sky. Except the stars I was seeing were flickering computer screens, and a small, hunched-over man was scurrying around each screen frantically, searching for answers. I sat and watched his aged eyes just scan and scan, looking for something, longing for something he could not grasp. 

    I decided to speak up. Not because I needed to, but because it looked like he needed someone to talk to. 

    “Hello? Is there anyone down here?” I asked, obviously playing dumb. I did not know what else to say.

    There was silence for a long ten seconds. The chair he was sitting in scraped across the floor. He turned around, facing me. When he stood up, it was hard to believe how tall he was. He was clutching a clipboard tightly when he began to approach me. His eyes looked tired, but still sharp and kind. 

    “You must be Carlos. I was wondering why it took you so long to find your way down here,” he said with a sly smile.

    “Y-You know my name?” I asked, terrified.

“Well, it’s written on your sign, isn’t it? The one on the front of your house? It’s kind of hard not to notice it,” he said, coming closer to the point where I could make out a face.

    He was wrinkled, with hair that was starting to grey. He had a bald spot on the back of his head. He wore these glasses with a crack in the middle, just adding to his overall appearance. He wore a long white lab coat that really resembled Dr. Emmet Brown. 

    “So if you know my name, can I know yours?” I asked, maybe being a bit forward.

    “Why, of course. Dr. Marek Hale. Pleased to meet you,” he said in response.

    “What is all of this? What are you doing down here? Does this have to do with everything weird going on in the town? You mentioned the signs around town earlier. What do you know about that?” I asked him, straight up. I wanted answers, and I wanted them now. 

    “I am trying to understand what they are, son,” he said as he gestured to the wall where all of his equipment was sitting. “This town, if you haven’t noticed, isn’t normal. Everspring is controlled by those flashing signs. It’s like they tell everyone who they are, what to do, and what to remember. I cannot figure out why, but something about this town makes everyone forget. The only normal person I have noticed in the town of Everspring is you.”

VII.

    “Yeah, I noticed something was off. My friend from school forgets everything. I have to drill information into his head to get him to remember. My own parents have begun to act differently, even my dad. I thought he was indestructible,” I said, curiously moving forward into his room.

    “The signs seem to change them. Rewire their minds. Rewrite their story. I have been down here studying for years, trying to find the source. For some reason, it never affected me. It has been hard on me, staying down here for years. I don’t think I can do it alone anymore,” Dr. Marek Hale said, with bags under his eyes.

    “Are you asking me to come help you? Why me? I just moved here a week ago,” I said, astonished.

    Dr. Hale stepped closer, his voice calm but serious. “Because you actually see it, Carlos. Most people here can’t tell that something is wrong. You can. You noticed the patterns, the signs, and the way that people act. That makes you different. And for some reason, it doesn’t affect you or me. That means I need you to be here to help me before you become one of them.”

    “So what exactly should I do?” I asked him, still looking around his giant basement lab. 

    “Keep your eyes open. Watch everything around you. Take notes on your surroundings. 

I need to know when the signs appear, what causes them, and how the people react. You can be my eyes out there,” Dr. Hale said, smiling with a warm gesture.

    All the doctor wants is to stay safe and figure out what is wrong with the town. He only wants what is best for them. After thinking for a while, I finally replied.

    “Okay. I can help. But if the town is really being brainwashed and controlled… Who's doing it?” 

    “That’s what I am still trying to figure out. However, the answer might be much closer than you think,” the doctor said as he glanced away.

VIII.

After that night, that night that finally felt like closure, I could not stay away. Every day after school, I would sneak away and find my way to his bunker. I only got lost a few times on the way before I knew how to get there. The path became familiar. Always checking to make sure I was not being followed, I would sneak down into his lair. The scene became so familiar to me. The hum of the machines, the smell of metal and dirt filling my lungs, and the feel of wet concrete on each step I took. Dr. Hale was always there, smiling, surrounded by his work. He was always waiting for me, expecting my company like his life depended on it.

He began to teach me how the monitors work. The patterns, the flickers, the shifts in the light, and even the way that words would change depending on who looked at them. He referred to it as some sort of network that linked the town together, just constantly rewriting itself. One day, a few words of advice he gave stuck with me.

    “It’s not magic. It’s control. Someone wants to keep these people in a loop.”

I began to trust him. After hours upon hours of sitting down here with him, I felt like I had found a friend. Not a fake friend, like Eli, whom I had to force to talk to me. A real friend, whom I could bring my problems to. A friend who really understood me. 

He treated me like a friend, too. I would always talk to him about how my parents were acting strangely. About how a new sign would pop up. About how the mayor keeps following me around. He would just sit and listen attentively, offering advice as I went on. 

    Each day that I was down here, I helped collect data. I marked down when new signs appeared, recorded each phrase displayed, and brought back any items that he might want from town. The more I learned about the town, the more terrifying it became. The signs were not harmless instructions anymore. They were rewriting memories, erasing thoughts, and changing people's identities overnight. 

“I suspect the mayor has something to do with it,” I said to Dr. Hale. “I don’t see any other suspicious people. However, my father works for the mayor, so I really don’t know what that means. Could my father know that this is all a lie? Could he be faking his memory loss?”

    “Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Dr. Hale replied. “Inspect the mayor. Spy on him. Gather as much information about him as you can. The more, the better. If you find anything suspicious, we can investigate further to see how or if he is controlling people.”

    “What is the plan? How can I somehow get close enough to him to find any information out?” I asked.

    “Why, it’s quite simple, Carlos. Your father works for him, doesn’t he? Go to work, go to the faculty dinners, go to everything that they may be attending,” Dr. Hale said to me.

    I went home after that, eyeing my father at dinner. My family just stared down at their food, eyes beady, with nothing left in their souls except numbness. My father could not be faking. If he was faking, he might as well be the world’s best actor. When I was going to bed, I asked my parents a simple question:

    “Do you guys love me?”

    “Why, honey, of course we love you. We love, well, you,” my mother replied. It seemed like she tried to find an example or attribute of me, but she could not place it.

    “Thanks, goodnight, guys,” I said, walking slowly and groggy towards my room. 

IX.

    My arms and legs felt numb. They are always numb. Not being able to move around causes my joints to lock up. I have not really moved around for as long as I can remember. To be fair, I'm not sure what I can really recall. My shaven head, tattooed body, and scarred face have taken away from the truth that lies above me. I hated myself. I hated my life. Whoever did this to me will never be forgiven. His face was so familiar to me. My captor was so similar to someone I know. Through blurred vision and squinted eyes, I could almost make it out. When I was almost there, he put a mirror in my face. I could not recognize myself.

I went to the mayor’s house the next day for dinner. My dad was invited over for dinner. It felt too coincidental, too easy. I walked into his house, expecting that same fake smile he always has. However, when I walked in, he actually seemed nice. His house was warm, smelled like the fresh scent of pine and dew, and had an arousing aroma coming from the kitchen. Sitting down with the mayor’s family was such a nice night. They were so nice, and the food was delicious. I excused myself to use the restroom during dinner. No one would notice me if I disappeared for a little bit. I crept around until I found his room. I walked in, rummaging through drawers, cabinets, closets, anything. 

I saw his dresser, and it spoke to me. When I grabbed the handle, a sign appeared in front of me. It read “Carlos Stop”. That motivated me even more. I opened the top drawer of his dresser when I heard a voice behind me.

    “You shouldn’t be in here,” the mayor said, with that crude smirk across his face, creepier than before. 

    I was speechless. I just ran by him and went back to the dinner table. He returned, walking slowly and effortlessly, with that same smile, bigger than before. It was getting to me. That smile was engraved into my head. It was stuck. Whatever the mayor is involved in is dangerous. I cannot come back here. I need to get away. 

I need to go back to Dr. Hale. 

X.

    I ran as fast as I could. I weaved through the trees, branches snapping underneath my feet as I made my way back to the hidden bunker. My heart was pounding faster than ever before. The thing I saw poking out from inside his dresser - the bright cord pulsating and emitting light. It was hidden underneath some clothes, but the clothes could not hide its light. I did not understand what it really meant, but I was sure that Dr. Hale would. 

    When I finally reached that oak tree, the same one I had become familiar with, I stopped for a second to catch my breath.

After a few seconds of longing to go down, I disregarded my fatigue and sprinted down those stairs. “Dr. Hale! Dr. Hale! You aren’t going to believe what I just found!”

    “Carlos? Back already? What is it that you found?” The Doctor said, just as intrigued as I was.

    “I went to the mayor’s for dinner. Normal dinner, nice conversation, nice family. That is, until I got up to use the restroom and I snuck into his room. I was rummaging through the closet, underneath the bed, and even inside his bedside table. I then ventured into his dresser drawers. As I went to open them, a sign instructed me to stop. I pursued further.