3.

It is a little over a month before a third anniversary comes around. The Townsend's try to be a family as much as they can but the loss of a child, a son, a little brother, is always there. Alex is lost in a trance and is stabbing his fork into his dinner plate aimlessly.

'What's wrong with you?' his father asks.

'Oh, nothing ...'

'Nothing? Doesn't look like nothing to me.'

'It's just the guys. We didn't do anything last night for Halloween and they are wanting to spend tonight in the club house ...' a lie of course.

'Oh really?'

'Yeah, I'm tired and was thinking of not going but I guess I better ... you guys don't mind if I do that, do you?'

Dad looks at mum and between that and her look back a conversation is had; such is their connection. Alex doesn't do all so much for himself since ... well. Spending the night in the clubhouse he and friends share and with his friends too ... well maybe that would be a good thing for him, and indeed tomorrow is Saturday so ...

'You're seventeen son, you don't have to ask for something like that.'

'Great' he says with a genuine smile. He is doing well for not letting on to what he does have planned and doing well with not displaying his dread too. 'Do you mind if I go get myself ready ...?'

'No', mum says injecting herself into the conversation. 'Seventeen or not, you're not going anywhere without getting that dinner into you.'

There are smiles all around, difficult, and sincere. Yeah, life goes on. Everyone deals to the best they can. All is well as well can be but if another family crisis comes ...

***

September 30th, 2018, ...

A carnival is in town and our five friends wait until after dark to go see what it is all about. Odd it is that this evening has a clear sky and a full moon, it is as if it has been purposely set like this with the moon itself guiding the friends to the carnival entrance.

Keith almost right away heads for the house of mirrors, Gary grabs Alex and with that, three fifths of the group are already on their way to an activity without so much as a quick look around being granted first. No point in trying to keep up so Trebor/Robert eyes up the water-gun range.

'C'mon' he says to Alisha. 'Challenge you to a gunfight?'

'Sure' she says with a smile.

Their walk towards the game begins slowly. They match each other step by step up to the point when Trebor thumps Alisha in the shoulder before going on to make a run for it, already gone and laughing before Alisha can react to this. Oh, she will react to it alright and if Trebor doesn't watch himself he'll be on the losing side of a shoulder thumping contest and probably will have some bruising to show for it.

He gives in already by the time she catches up to him and the return thump indeed comes so much stronger that the one thrown first.

'Ow' he calls out, still laughing.

'Don't be such a wuss ...' she says.

They are moving along almost face to face. They have unintentionally caught one another's eyes, well ... the intention can be debated. Why do moments like this seem to be moving ever so slowly? These moments also have a tendency to block out all sound ... for the most part at least. They can't, not here, not in this moment, the other three are around ... if any of them were to see ... as it so happens it doesn't matter. Firecrackers go off a few feet behind Alisha. They crack, hiss and snap and frighten the heck out of her.

Nothing to worry about, moment over, nothing to hide. All is well and nothing will need to be explained.

'Are we playing that game or what?' she asks.

'If only ...' Trebor says under his breath.

The game is played and can be played by up to five people at once. Trebor and Alisha being two plus three others who so happened to choose this moment to be where they are. The aim of the game is to aim the gun towards a circular opening ... water spews out of each of five water guns ... direct the water through that circular target to begin filling a balloon, the more water that goes through the target the larger an attached balloon becomes. First player of the five to burst a balloon is the winner.

Trebor manages to get an ever so brief head start and those balloons ... his in particular .... have faces ... eyes and smiles as those balloons expand.

More punching and general distracting of one another, it is of some surprise that Trebor wins the game. His balloon pops first. All the messing must surely have given the strangers an advantage though as it is ... well. He was won the right to choose a stuffed toy ... an honour he passes to Alisha. She chooses a decent sized fluffy, stuffed heart as red as red can be. Such a thing is not questioned over the course of the evening as for not long after the heart is chosen, the rest of the crew rejoin Alisha and Trebor having finished with the House of Mirrors.

For the year or so since that night, Alisha has kept that little red heart in her bedroom, kept in and amongst other cuddly toys. What might it mean that in the few days prior to November first, 2019, that she failed to notice that it is no longer within her bedroom?

Alisha's darkness, when it comes, the room she enters, how could such a thing like a decently sized red stuffed heart be known about? How could anyone know about its relevance? For on a chair just beyond the entrance to her room at The Flesh Factory, there so happens to be a decently sized fluffy, red stuffed heart, the very same one that had been kept in her bedroom for as a little over a year.

In an instant, she regrets accepting a challenge so quickly ... so quickly.