Rather than go straight home, however, as I was about to open my door, key inserted into the lock, I turned and saw that the lights to the Smith’s living room were on.

  I snuck over as quietly as I could towards their house and made to peer in through one of the windows.

  It was not something that I would normally do, or had ever done before. But with all that had happened, and the way I felt that my mind was crashing around me, I wanted to see if I really did have grounds to be so suspicious.

  The light was dim, but sufficient enough given the surrounding darkness to form adequate contrast for me to be able to see the details of what was going on inside.

  The room was shockingly devoid of furniture or any fixtures like plants or photos. It had just the bare minimum you’d expect of a house like this, not a single extra thing. It looked like they had just moved in, though they had told me they had lived in this house for twenty years. John could’ve been lying about that, though I could see no reason for him to.

  What stood out the most wasn’t the lack of décor, it was what the inhabitants were doing. All four of the family members were standing, standing two feet from a wall. Their heads were locked at it, as if the most fascinating movie in the world was playing out on it even though there was nothing there. It wasn’t even the same wall where the television (which was not in use) was either.

  At first I thought that this was some kind of strange prayer session, but their hands weren’t folded and neither were their heads lowered. They stood ramrod-straight, not even speaking to one another as far as I could tell.

  They kept this up for a while, following which I felt it was time to hightail it out of there and go back home.

  As I went upstairs, I saw that the man was no longer standing under the streetlight like he had been before.

  He was nowhere else either, and the streets were as barren as they always were.

  ‘Once my car’s fixed, I should pack up and just leave,’ I thought. This was not worth all of the headache.

  As I drifted off to sleep, it was as if I had been woken up immediately by thunderous knocking.

  My stomach filled with dread as I realized that the knocking was not coming from downstairs, but from outside my bedroom door. I had locked it out of caution, and I was thankful to have done so given that someone had found a way to break into my house.

  My thoughts immediately went to my phone as adrenaline surged through my body. Oh right, it was useless. The landline? Downstairs.

  As the knocking stopped for a moment before resuming again, I went to the bedroom window.

  I was an entire floor up, but I would take my chances compared to whatever was waiting on the other side of that door.

  Only it was too late to escape that way.

  “Hello,” a voice called out to me as I opened my window, a flashlight shining brightly into my face. It was Jane. “Ah, could you open the door behind you? My husband and a few other people are there – relax, we just want to have a word with you.”

  The knocking stopped as well. A voice called out from the other side of the door. “Hey, it’s me, John. We just wanna talk.”

  Like hell I was going to believe that!

  But where was I to go?

  I had to bar the door first, that was what first ran through my head, though even as I reached to push the dresser against the door, I heard the gentle click of a key as it opened on its own.

  A hand turned the light switch on. It belonged to John, but he wasn’t alone. The man who was walking a dog earlier was there, as well as Mr. Dawkins and Principal Wesley.

  John held up his hands. “Look, I don’t have any weapons. We’re not here to hurt you, I promise you that. Just, come down with us for a chat.”

  I looked out the window again. No, there was no way that I was going to get out that way.

  The people in the doorway hadn’t made a move. “Tell you what,” John said, sensing my apprehension. “For every step you take, we’ll back off by a step. I really am sincere when I say that we have no intention of harming you. We can’t let you leave either, but I think you’ll understand when you talk to us.”

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  “Alright, back away,” I said, and John took a step back.

  I took a few steps forward, and they backed away as promised, though a few people blocked the other end of the corridor to seal off that route of escape as well. I saw people from work, people I think were from school, and some people I’d never seen before at all.

  I went down the stairs as I felt my heart racing like it’d never done before. Every step seemed to take a monumental effort as I watched the other side closely, and they watched me likewise. I deeply regretted not bringing a gun, but I’d never carried one in New York and I’d figured before coming here – why would I need one? Small towns like these are always safe and have low crime rates.

  As I went down to the living room, my eyes went to the landline.

  “It’s been cut, sorry,” John said, following my eyesight. We had played a strange game with him backing off even as I took every single slow step, both of us wary that the other side would do something drastic and sudden.

  “Were you also the person who broke my car?” I asked.

  John sighed. “Well, yes.”

  I glanced out the window. We were not alone – there were even more people outside. I could see their silhouettes as they peered inside curiously. So I was completely surrounded then.

  “So what’s going on? I take it this isn’t a surprise welcoming party,” I said dryly.

  “No, no,” John said. “We would’ve loved to have one, but it looked like you were about to take off before we could even get to know each other. That’s sad really, because we all really must insist that you stay.”

  I took a chair, and then turned it so that its back was to a wall as I sat down. My eyes frantically searched for something that could be used as a weapon, but the kitchen and the knives there were far away. Not to mention they were regular cutting knives, of very little use against a crowd this big.

  “So, what’s going on?” I asked.

  “Well, it’s a long story,” John said. “One that started before I was born actually, but I’ll give you a short summary. In the 1960s back when the American government was looking into various projects, including ways to brainwash people such as MKUltra, they decided that our quaint little town was a good testing ground for a new idea of theirs. The idea of creating of suppressing the desires and will of a group of people. To make them more susceptible to propaganda. To make them less likely to rebel.”

  “So, you’re all lab rats?” I asked.

  “Descendants of them,” John said.

  “Some of us still live who remember those days,” Principal Wesley chimed in, eyes glossed over at the thought of memories past.

  “Well, regardless, the point is that we are what we were meant to be: the ideal American citizens, at least, how they government envisioned us to be. They put something in our drinking water that completely sapped us of our willpower,” John said. “It was clear after a few years that they had grown tired of us though, as the project was scrapped and they left, leaving us to our misery. Forgotten. Abandoned.”

  “They took your willpower away?” I asked, finding it hard to wrap my mind around that concept.

  “Well, not all of it,” John said. “Take all of a man’s will away and he becomes an empty shell, not even willing to eat or drink on his own. They couldn’t have that. They left us the bare minimum to carry out our regular duties, to eat and drink, to reproduce to keep the town’s population stable, but just that. The bare minimum to keep a town like this running, and some flexibility when it came to finding people who came from outside. People like you. People who were our salvation.”

  “You want me to help you all?” I asked.

  “Yes, yes,” John said. “I’m glad you understand why we need you. And that’s why you can relax, we’d never hurt you. Not when you’ve already given us so much.”

  “Give you what?”

  “All of this,” John said, waving his hands around the room. “Imagine, what it feels like knowing that every single choice in your life is set for you. Imagine spending a few hours of each day working. The same exact job. And that’s it. Nothing more. Imagine coming back home and being able to do nothing beyond that of your own volition. Imagine not being able to watch more than one or two of the same shows on television. Imagine not being able to go to any new places. Imagine having so little agency you can’t even decide to change the color of the wallpaper in your living room, no matter how much you hate it. Imagine not being able to pick up a new book of your own choice. Imagine not even being able to have a conversation with your own children other than a few topics. Imagine not even being able to decide to change what you have for lunch…” he trailed off, his voice changing, sounding quite sorrowful and tearful as he gave more examples. “...imagine not even being able to change your facial expression to something else!”

  His face contorted, and though it was slightly terrifying to see the change, it was also somewhat relaxing in a way. So these were his true feelings.

  Mr. Dawkins then spoke up. “We may not be wearing chains, but we are still bound in servitude. Our minds have been completely enslaved. No human should have to suffer like this.”

  “What did that one girl say we were like?” John asked the others.

  “En-pee-sees!” someone shouted from the crowd.

  “Right, NPCs,” John said. “She was another outsider. She called us that. We are bound to do but a few actions, and other than that, nothing more. We don’t even have the freedom to take ourselves out of this suffering state. Our ‘masters’ if you could call them that left. And unless we interact with someone like you, someone who can do things on their own, who can be spontaneous, we are helpless but to repeat the same routine over and over. The only slight freedom we have above that is to seek out those who are supposed to instruct us if we don’t have one already.”

  “Every moment we’ve spent with you has been special,” John said, regaining his earlier smile. This one seemed to be quite genuine. “Amazingly so – look at just how exciting this all is! Ah, so I think you can see now why we’ve been so demanding of your attention. And why we can’t let you leave.”

  “Wait, what happened to the other… people you invited here?”

  “Most of them figured things out, though a bit later than you did,” John said. “At first, a lot of them appreciated being the center of attention and us doting upon them. We truly made them the center of our universes… but with time it became too much for them. Some of them chose to, shall we say, make some unwise decisions that were hazardous to their own health? Others broke down completely. Oh, but don’t worry. We’ve learned our lesson. We know that our love can be a bit… overwhelming at times. We’ll be sure to restrain ourselves.”

  “Right,” Mr. Dawkins said as he snarled at John. “That means no hogging him to yourself anymore!”

  “I think he could use a roommate,” someone from the crowd called.

  “Or two.”

  “Or three.”

  “I’ll drive him to work tomorrow.”

  “I think he’d appreciate having a cleaning lady by to help him out. I’ll do that.”

  “Do you like playing chess? I’ve always wanted to play that game but was never able to.”

  The discussion turned into loud shouting.

  At first, I had been a bit sympathetic as I thought of how… dehumanized these people were by whatever the government had done to them.

  But then here they were, talking about ‘distributing me fairly’ like I was some kind of resource.

  “Everyone, relax!” John shouted, and they all quieted down. “We will be as fair as possible, of course, but remember that we need to exercise restraint. If you topple too many trees in a forest, it will not grow back later, but instead turn barren.”

  He turned to look at me. “We must be careful not to break this one.”