So The Story Goes: JBaz Continued

Carl continued to stare nervously out of the kitchen window, unintentionally making eye contact with the strange man in the driver's seat, now sitting suspiciously at the end of their drive.

Carl remembered seeing that box truck, months earlier, circling the neighborhood, when a handful of their neighbors, were taken to the hospital for minor burns and cuts.

He remembered the logo. “Begin Again, Live Like You Are Someone Else.” The truck itself was pretty average, almost camouflaged.

He remembered thinking how strange it was that they had all been kept for observation and released days later, for injuries that appeared to be worse than first believed. Each one returned looking just a little different, with remarkably subtle changes.

Vanessa had burned her neck with a curling iron, her burns were described by the EMT that treated her as being surface burns, but they ended up treating her for second degree burns. When she returned home, she wore a mask and Carl noted that her hair length and color had changed.

Raul had burned himself while adjusting the muffler on the Harley he had recently purchased off Facebook marketplace. Somehow, he had fallen head first into the running bike’s muffler, burning his cheek. He returned home with some newly formed facial hair, just covering his wound.

While Scarlet and Randy experienced similar injuries, when the firepit they had been cleaning on their patio, exploded, causing minor cuts and burns over their face, chest and necks. They also returned days later looking slightly different than before. Carl had even mentioned to Jaylene that more than their appearances had changed. They acted as if they didn't even recognize him at all.

Since they had all happened individually and at separate locations, everyone just wrote it off as an random accidents, much like his appeared to be today. But when he spotted the truck again in the cul de sac, he felt deep down in his gut that something was amiss.

Quickly wrapping his burn, he turned to see a strange man coming around the side of the house to his back door.

"Carl," Jaylene said again, "you are really scaring me and the kids." Before she could say anything more, Carl was shoving them into the panic room off of the dining area, "do not open this door for anyone," he warned her. And as she screamed his name again, the door slammed and the lock latched, in her face.

When they first began looking for houses in the area, Carl was adamant about having some kind of safe haven for just this kind of emergency.

Jaylene thought it was a silly fear, but with what Carl had been through in the years before they met. It was a concession she was more than willing to give him. He used it as his “man cave”, and on occasion he ran drills to keep everyone in check.

Jaylene never could have imagined that the nightmares Carl had survived would ever come to visit him again.