I fought my fears and walked right into the doorway until I was standing just inside the last room. I was greeted by what sounded like the sucking whirl of an old vacuum across the room. I followed the noise to the bed where I saw the familiar blue orb, a little smaller this time, perched up on Calvin’s torso.

The sound was coming from the front of the beacon where it looked to be stuck to Calvin’s face.

“What the fuck?” I yelled.

The sound went silent. The orb stopped moving. It spun around for a moment and seemed to look at me with a faceless gaze.

I stood my ground. I didn’t care what happened anymore at this point. I just wanted to sleep, or die, with my brothers. I waited for the orb to come after me. I wasn’t going to run anywhere this time. I stood strong and waited.

But the orb did not make a mad dash for me this time. After looking me up and down for a few moments, our awkward stare down was interrupted by the instigation of blinking red lights from a machine which was attached to Calvin, and an ear-splittingly loud toning beep which erupted from a speaker in the room.

The orb turned away and wasted no time in speeding to the window. I watched the thing slip slyly through the window of the room and head away in the dark of the night.

I watched the orb get smaller and smaller in the foggy distance out the window until it was just a little tiny speck in an endless field of tall grass. It was almost as if my body wouldn’t let me take my gaze off of the thing until a voice crackled over the speaker system in the room and even I had to laugh at the moment because of the phrase which was repeated over and over again.