“...Bezel! Bezel! We need to leave now!” 

   Someone is frantically shouting my name, but I can’t hear them. I stare through the window of my van, up at the bright orange flames roaring through the windows of my old workplace, and pillar of thick gray smoke climbing the night sky. 

   What’s the fuck’s going on here? Why is my workplace on fire?

   A pair of thin, cold fingers cup both cheeks, and suddenly I feel my soul pulled back inside my body. I turn my head a few degrees to my left, and see a pair of panicked red eyes, shining and glassy with tears, staring right back at me. Emile. 

  “Listen. I know you’re in shock, but we have to leave now. It’s not safe,” Emile’s thin, worn face comes into view. Beside him, a little black and white baby mouse scampers up his shoulders and clings tightly to him for dear life, her pink tail curling around the side of his neck. Its tiny claws dig into his flesh.   

  “Please, let’s go back,” he begs. “Mochi is panicking.”

  A chorus of screeches and squeals rises up from the small carrier cage at Emile’s feet.   

  My chest pangs for the tiny creature, but I’m bubbling over enraged at its owner – the crimson-eyed devil, this weird psychic who swayed me off path of my path of common sense survival.

  “You liar,” I seethed, glaring. “You knew. You fucking knew this place was going to be on fire when we got back!”

  His eyes widened in surprise. 

   “So—-Yes, and no,” he calmly holds out two fingers; his ring and pinky fingers were mere stumps, cut off at the bone. I see the white scars crisscrossing his palms, where it looks like it caught a knife over and over again.

  “I did know. But I didn’t realize when this fire was going to happen; if we can just get out of here, back to your place, I can give you the full story…”
 “Oh, no, no, no,” I shake my head. “I’m not listening to shit until you tell the truth about who — more like WHAT — you really are!”

  Emile put a hand on Mochi, kissed her back and petted her gently.  

  “I’m just…I’m just a future consultant.”

  "Liar!"

  "It's true. I only tell the future, I don't do anything to influence it." 

  He’s lying. I know he’s lying. He’s something much bigger and his silly rats are a crucial part of it. He’s only one of six survivors of that huge massacre ten years ago; how did he escape? I can’t trust him at all. 

  I want to get away from him, but knowing that he’s the one who might be able to restore my family back to our former glory. He might be the only one who can help me .