I bang the door shut behind me when I walk back into the house. Without Adam. Maybe he had clubs today.
My thoughts are diverted when I find my parents in the living room, crying as they set the telephone down and grasp each other for balance.
“What’s wrong?” I ask them. At first, they don’t hear me over the sound of their own moans. Once they notice me, they dash towards me and tug at my shirt.
“Your br-br-brother. He’s gone! He’s gone! He’s gone!” My mother tries to gasp for air as she rambles on, but not a single tear leaves my eyes. I’m just...frozen.

There are no cameras. I’ve checked. I rubbed my palms across the entire concrete floor.
How did he know I was up to other things?
The walls. I swept every single square inch of them three times. But one more sweep can’t hurt.
As I finish my final sweep and drop to the ground, I notice a slight movement in the slot of the door from which I receive my daily food.
I suddenly feel cold, my instinct tells me I’ve been searching the wrong area this entire time.
I gently creep towards the door, hesitant to discover if my speculation is true. I pray that it isn’t. What is only a few feet feels like miles, but within a few minutes, I am finally right in front of the door.
Slowly, I repeat to myself as I crouch down and peek through the slot, my body shaking.
I see my reflection. Just barely.
It’s the man. I can barely make out his face, but there’s a hard device across his eyes.
Night vision goggles. Who knows how long he has been watching me? How long he’s been using the darkness to cloak himself? Does he watch me sleep?
He grins. It’s all just a game to him. Fear dilutes the blood coursing through my veins. He walks away. He knew I would catch him. He knew I would check.

I plop myself in front of the door, waiting to see if he’ll come back again. Soon, however, the room’s darkness seeps into my mind, catching me in its arms as my eyelids slowly shut again.

Six months since Adam’s disappearance. It’s Take-Your-Child-To-Work Day. I’m in my dad’s warehouse. Just me and him. When I hop out of the car, I immediately run through the massive building, letting its sheer size envelop my other senses. I am free. I am free.
“You like it?” my dad asks, and I only give him a quick nod before running across the grounds, shouting as I run, and listening to the echoes. My dad heads into his office and tells me to feel free to explore the building.
It’s almost three o’clock, and by then, wall ball has become boring. As I grab the ball in mid-air and put it in my pockets, I hear a tiny moan around me. I immediately turn around, afraid it is some zombie that has come to eat me like the ones I saw in “Return of the Living Dead.” But nothing’s there. The moaning only intensifies, and I yell for my dad.
“What? What’s wrong?!” my dad comes racing towards me.
“I hear a noise Dad.” I put my fingers to my lips, so we can both hear the noise again.
There it is.
My dad’s brows furrow for a couple seconds before he realizes that I’m staring at him. He relaxes again, and tells me it’s probably an injured animal somewhere outside the building. I ask him if we can go look for it, but he tells me it’s six and we have to get back home for dinner.
As we leave the warehouse, and I can hear him mumbling something to himself.
“Soundproof walls, soundproof walls, soundproof…” he’s muttering to himself.
But back then, I didn’t know what soundproof meant.

Oomph! My head slams into the concrete.
I guess I dozed off in front of the door.I push myself up. Half of my body lies inside the room, half outside. I look around. The door wasn’t locked?
I raise my gaze, expecting to see the man smiling down at me, but he isn’t there.
I’m not in my room anymore.
It’s some sort of hallway.
It’s lit. There’s light.

My body tries to absorb as much of the light as it can, even if it is artificial. But my newly discovered joy quickly fades when I hear sounds coming from beyond the corner on my right. There’s no path on my left: there’s only one option.
You have to get out of here. This is your shot. You don’t escape, you die. Or whatever else he says he has planned for you. Might be worse than death. I slowly walk towards the light, my sweaty feet sticking to the ground with each step. Flickers of light appear on the wall in front of me. I cringe to look at what the source is beyond the corner.
The man is there, hunched over the a computer screen. He scrolls madly. Scavenging. My beads of sweat make my feet squeak against the linoleum floor.

Quicker than the blink of an eye, he spins and his eyes catch mine like a fish caught on a hook.
“Ahh. Perfect. You didn’t get lost.” He claps his hands, and I make no move to run. There’s no point.
“What do you want?!” I scream, partially out of desperation, but also because I’m hoping that someone might hear me if I scream loudly enough.
Ssssshhhh.
He puts his fingers to his lips, giving me the same mesmerizing smile.
I can’t move. He strolls towards me and places his hands on mine.
For some reason, my hands feel like they belong in his. When he guides me to his computer, I follow without question.
“Look,” he says, nudging me to look at the screen. I slowly shift my gaze to the screen, my eyes taking time to make sense of the information on the screen.

It’s my parents. Their life insurance information, their social security numbers, date of birth, birthplace, and everything else that I know and don’t know about them.

“$896,000,” he murmurs into my ear, “for each of them.”
My legs begin to buckle, but he holds me up.

“Double! I’ll give you double!” I cry out. But he laughs at me like I’m some child.
“The money’s just the tiny souvenir though,” he says. As he begins to organize his desk and puts a wrapped box into his backpack, he asks, “Cancer, huh?”
“What?”
“The man’s got cancer.”
By now, I can’t even contort my face any more to express my surprise. It hurts too much. I just observe him like a dumbfounded child. Maybe I am a child.
He shoves the laptop into his backpack, picks up a couple plastic bags with the ubiquitous “Have a Nice Day” smiley faces from the table and stuffs them quickly into his backpack. He approaches me; my body tenses, ready for a blow, but instead, he proceeds to pat me on the head.
“Good boy,” he mumbles before slinging the bag over his shoulder and walking back towards the hallway from which I came. I scurry towards him, trying to see how he gets out. Unfortunately, he turns around and says that I have to get back in my cell. That there’s a bigger surprise awaiting me. I don’t resist anymore, knowing that if I’ll try, it’ll just be more beatings for me.
Every time I take a step, I feel weaker and weaker. I’m back in the cell and this time, he doesn’t give me that creepy smile as he shuts the door close.

Eight years. That’s 2,922 days that he’s been who knows where. Under our own feet? In some other country having forgotten about us? Kidnapped and working for some lunatic? The sheer number of possibilities makes my head hurt.
We had just moved after my mother had received the notice from the State. His status transition. From missing to death in absentia.
No one seems to be home, so I probe through the myriad of cabinets in the living room furniture, trying to find the mailbox key.
I’m on my last drawer. Certainly, the key has to be here. If not here, where else would it be? I stick my hand in, feeling for any sign of metal.
CLINK! It’s here. As I stretch out my palm to grab the key, I feel my hand also pick up a piece of paper.
What’s this, I wonder to myself. I shine the dust-layered paper under the lights to inspect it. It’s a envelope, still sealed, but crinkly from age. I gently tear it to inspect its contents. Inside, I find a handwritten note.
“Oxycodone, methadone, codeine, hydrocodone, Nyquil…”
I recognize the second drug. It’s for relieving pain. In high amounts, causing unconsciousness.

My eyes hurt as I try to open them, like ripping a bandaid off of skin after it’s been there for a couple days. The door’s open. I slowly push it, wincing as the door scrapes the metal floor.
“Ahh. You’re finally awake.” I shudder at the sound of his voice, knowing that I have come back to reality. He’s standing above me, as usual. He’s always waiting for me like he knows what I’ll do and when I’ll do it.
“Where did you go?” I ask him. His lips curve a bit.
“A couple chores, but never mind that. You and I are going to take a special trip together.”
“Tri-”
He grabs me by my shirt collar, dragging me across the floor as he heads towards the left side of the hallway. But I thought there was nothing there?
He digs his nail into the wall for some tiny hole. I struggle to lift my head enough to see his actions, but in a couple of seconds a hidden door suddenly pops out of the wall. This was the way out.
He lets go of my collar.
“From here, you’ll be restrained. You’re my friend and all, but I don’t want my friend to leave me. That’d make me sad. And you don’t want to make me sad, right?” He mocks me with his voice as he pulls out handcuffs from his bag and places them onto my wrist.
We’re finally outside. Sunlight lathers my skin, providing me the warmth and comfort I had missed. My eyes can’t tell if it morning or afternoon. The brightness nearly blinds me. Once they’ve adapted to the new environment, it only takes me a couple of seconds to realize where I am.
Boxes are piled high on top of each other and metal crates surround us. I notice a couple of forklifts parked to my right. The sun’s shining through the hundreds of glass windows lining the ceiling. We’re not really outside yet. No, we’re in a warehouse. The warehouse. The one that my dad took me to that day.
The man tugs at my handcuffs, nudging me to keep moving.
Outside, I realize how far downhill the place has gone. The sign that my dad had once proudly displayed now hangs precariously and the door that we leave through has a bunch of holes in it. The man pushes my head down into the passenger seat.
“Don’t try anything. I don’t want anyone to get hurt. That’d ruin the fun.” He giggles as he slams the door. If I can just put my hand out a bit further, I might be able to open the handl-
It’s locked. He gets into the driver’s seat and jams the key in, getting the car started.
He pulls out a disc from his bag and slides it into the CD player. To my surprise, it’s classical music. The man steps on the accelerator and pulls out of the driveway.
He drives slowly, like he wants to enjoy this moment with me. He hums with the piano, and by now, the piece feels awfully familiar. Something that I know I’ve heard somewhere else. But the memory’s not coming back right now.
It’s my old town. I see the CVS that I always frequented for the bags of candy that they sold there. A couple of minutes later is the strip mall. But the Toys*R*us and Staples are in shambles now.
“Feel familiar?” he asks me. I don’t respond, silently thinking to myself. We finally make a stop in front of a house. My house. No, my old house. The one we moved away from. No. Not even moved. We had just left the house there. Back then, all we cared about was moving away, so we hadn’t been patient enough to find a seller. The one Adam used to live in. The one we tried to forget, where we stuffed away our bad memories.
He pulls into the driveway and stops. We sit in silence. I try to count my heartbeats to calm myself down. He just closes his eyes and breathes quietly. After a few minutes, he unlocks the door and gets out. He goes around the hood of the car to unlock my door. As if he has full faith in me, he doesn’t look back as he walks towards the door, leaving me to do as I please. But for some reason, I follow him. I need to know why we’re here.
I can hear the jingling of metal in his pockets. He opens the front door. Every memory from this house that had once been buried erupts. I cringe, realizing how I had buried away. He motions for me to follow him.
Soon enough, we’re in the living room. I see a pile of papers stacked on our table.
“That piece, did you recognize it? The one in the car?” he asks me. I shake my head.
“I’m not surprised. You always said you hated music. Especially the piano.”
My brain immediately freezes. The old warehouse. Our house. Knowing about my father’s condition. The interest in my parents. Kidnapping me. I nearly trip as I try to walk away from this abomination. He quickly rushes forward to thwart the fall.
“You’re not going to faint right now. Not when we are just about to begin our game,” he says.
“G-g-g-game?” He rushes past me, motioning with his hands to follow him. I sulk towards him, bracing myself for whatever is next. He heads upstairs into the room. Into my old room.
“Come quickly or you’ll miss out on the fun. We don’t want that, right?” he beckons. I increase my pace to catch up to him.
When I step into the room, I almost faint again. My eyes feel cloudy as if I have opened them underwater. My parents are right in front of me. Bodies strapped to two chairs. Their mouths sealed with a gag. The flex cuffs around their wrists are flaked with dried blood, their blood.
They’re trying to scream, but neither is audible.
“Why?” I want to scream, but my words come out as softly as possible. I know who he is.
“Why not? But I understand why you’re angry. You don’t know the truth.”
“The truth?”
“About why I went missing.”
“What? Adam, you disappeared for no reason. That’s the reason. And this is how you come back! Like this!”
“But I didn’t go missing. I was kidnapped by guess who?” He pulls the gag out of my mom’s mouth, but she doesn’t continue to scream. She turns her head away.
“I don’t believe you. Why would they do that to you? They’re your parents just as much as they’re mine!” All the softness in my voice is dead. I can only yell.
“Which was why I was shocked as well. But when I escaped that damn warehouse where your dad kept me locked away, I figured it out. I was never your brother. I was adopted.”
The moans. The moans in the warehouse. The ones that I thought were coming from animals.
“I guess I was just another investment; especially with life insurance, all their problems could be solved.”
“Wa-”
“We’re going to start the game.” He walks past me to lock the door. He pulls out the box from his bag. It’s still sealed and he uses his nails to break apart the plastic wrap, humming as he does so. He lifts the top off to reveal a smooth metal knife sheath. The knife is heavily ornamented and looks expensive, saved for this occasion.
“You’re going to choose which one dies,” he instructs me.
He pulls out the knife, admiring its embellishments. 
“Don’t make me, please. Just don’t do this.” I beg him. I drop to my knees and to continue begging, but all my pleas are worthless. I can’t stop him. My brother has been dead for too long already.
“Your mom. Your dad. Your mom. Your dad,” he taunts. After I remain silent for some time, his forehead creases.
“Would you like me to choose, then?” he asks. I can’t respond nor ignore his question. But either way, the consequence is going to be the same. One of them will die.
“Plea-” In a swift and effortless manner, he brings the knife across my mother’s neck. The knife runs through her entire neck with ease, a trickle of blood quickly becoming a fountain. As if fate wanted me to suffer even more, she begins to choke as her body futilely attempts to get oxygen to her lungs. After a couple of seconds, the gurgling sounds cease.
My father is silent, his pleas for help having dissipated a long time ago. He stops struggling as if he has resigned himself to his impending fate.
The man sighs, tearing of some fabric from my mother’s shirt to wipe the blood off the knife. “Well, I made my promise, so I guess we’ll call it quits here.”
Quits! Quits! I can’t let the steam from my boiling anger give rise to any screams. The man tosses the knife onto floor and slings the backpack over his shoulder.
“I forgot something,” he says. He angles the backpack slightly to his left and pulls out a phone. He tosses it to me.
“Call the cops if you want. But it’s hard to hunt a dead man.”
He unlocks the door and strolls out, humming the piano tune as he walks down the stairs. I recognize it. Chopin’s Nocturne in C-Sharp Minor. Opus Posthumous.