The time is around 11pm and the place is the same couch from before. The long summer of 2001 has given way to a brisk evening in the ninth year of our existence together. It will be the final autumn anything will matter for a few autumns. All is silent as we try to read Aeschylus for our class. A few lights shine down bright from above. A security guard yawns as he passes by, tipping his hat at us.

Drew sighs. Theresa announced a few hours ago that there would be no funny stuff until they got their work done. Drew just wanted to be set free from this painful existence. Go out and spend, they proclaimed. That’ll show those fucking ay-rabs. The mall was its own special existence. The sorority girl with the red, white, and blue acrylic nails from their morning class, which they had stopped going to, passes this hall.

Drew adjusts his position on the couch. He props himself on his arms. By now he has memorized the order of their existence. Everyday he saw Amber, dead over a month now, in a face, or an arm, or a smell. Theresa is silent next to him, not acknowledging Drew so he will focus. It’s these waking moments that are the hardest to bear. They used to be able to just wish it all away, vanish into the woods, into other more non-existent worlds.

Today, it is just Drew and Theresa. All the good dreams and worlds that used to guard them are crumbling. The original evil, that good old friend, is beginning to terrorize them. Sometimes Drew wanted to fight his own War On Terror against these evildoers.

Theresa cleared her throat. Time to go finish The Oresteia.