A/N
I apologize in advance: this chapter is a mouthful. Only as I was preparing to upload it did I realize that I wrote some parts backwards to the storyline. I promise I tried to fix it, but I was at a complete loss for words.
If any of you have any suggestions on how I could word this differently, lease message me. DO NOT COMMENT!!! Whoever helps me with this will definitely get a shoutout
--XOXO--
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Two Years Later
It seemed like just two weeks had passed since I left the comfort of Mason's bedroom for a hot, fiery pit of doom hundreds of thousands of billions of miles below Earth's surface. When we arrived, our fears had been relieved. Satan wasn't mad about us using his kingdom for shelter until we could make our final plan of action. In fact, he seemed happy to have us for company.
Mason, Chase, Shane, Michel and Scott had run to give their father a hug. Dawn and I stood back and watched the happy reunion. Both of us had a hard time ignoring the urge to look around at the tormented souls. Skylar had looked—big mistake—and kept asking the same questions: "Why is everybody dying?" and "Am I going to die?" and "Have I done something wrong?" and "Don't you want me anymore?" It took a while for me to explain that the things burning weren't people, just their souls, and that was their ultimate sacrifice for choosing to do bad over good.
The strangest thing of all was that Satan had fallen in love with Skylar. It was like love at first sight. Ironically, Skylar called him Luce—short for Lucifer—instead of anything family-related because he didn't want to see him or his kingdom again. During our time there, we stayed in a separate chamber. It was different from the other one; it was made entirely of stone, and the walls were soundproof. We never heard any of the tormented screams, and Skylar wasn't exposed to death.
Now we were back on earth. Nothing's different. There were no flying cars or robots or aliens wreaking havoc. Everything looked exactly the same with the exception of us. We were older. I was barely a teenager, and Dawn and Mason had peeked twenty. Chase was in his twenties, Scott was thirty-one, Michel was thirty-four, and Shane was almost forty. Skylar had changed the most. He was not a baby anymore. Literally. He could pass as a primary student. His hair was still short and fluffy, but his nose was less of a beak. He had a slim figure, and the best thing of all was he could speak.
There was something else that had changed while we were gone: the Sweeney's house. The last time I saw the exterior, it was full of color. Now it's faded, and the paint was stripped in spots. The grass hadn't been mowed in so long that the weeds were knee-high. The old car in the driveway looked like it hadn't been moved in quite some time. The rims on the tires were rusted beyond repair, as well as the rest of it. To sum it up, the whole place looked dead. I doubted anyone lived here anymore.
I wondered if they were still on our side. We were gone longer than expected and anything could have happened during that time. They could have abandoned this place from the start.
"They probably found somewhere to hide." Scott swatted away a cobweb from under one of the wood posts.
Dawn tried to peek in a window, but they were all boarded up.
I curled my hand around the doorknob. They could have left a note or some kind of clue as to where they went. I twisted the knob and the door creaked open. Michel stepped around me and flipped the light switch, but the room remained dark. He pulled on one of the boards that blocked the windows and it crumbled to pieces. The rotted splinters looked like confetti that was shot out of a canon and landed on the filthy floor. In the dim light, hardly anything was visible. I was glad. The outside view had already tainted my memories. And of what I could see on the inside, it wasn't any better in here. The carpet was stained, and the walls had begun to rot. Rodents scattered around our feet and dropped crumbs of moldy food on the floor. Dawn shrieked and kicked a roach off her shoe.
