"Hello? Is this the police station?," Thomas called from the opposite side of the phoneline. He was standing in a small phone booth.

"Yes, how may we help you?," a woman's voice said.

"I believe I was probably kidnapped."

"I'm sorry, sir. But, could you please make this a little clearer? Were you kidnapped or not?"

"I...I don't know how to put it. But, I think someone is trying to..." he paused for a fraction of a second, "kill me."

"All right. Where are you right now?"

Thomas peered around himself. There were some specks of mud stuck to the sides of the glass, so it was a bit difficult to make out his surroundings. He felt agitated and stressed out, like he was going to get an abdominal cramp any time soon.

Damn. What in the world am I going to do now?

Thomas tapped his foot lightly on the cement floor, feeling frightened and almost completely unaware of whether he was, in fact, aware.

"Hello?" the woman called from the phone again.

"Um..." he said.

Thomas looked to his right and barely made out the sidewalk through the dirty glass walls that surrounded him. He then spotted Earl, who was walking directly towards the phone booth.

Drat! Can he actually see me through this wall?

But, then, he noticed Earl staring straight at Thomas' eyes.

God. His eyes are so beautiful...

I've gotta get out of here. He knows where I am. I've gotta run.

Thomas let go of the phone and let it hover over the cement floor. He pushed open the door and dashed out and ran. He ran away from the man who called out for him.

Earl walked to the phone Thomas was previously using, reached down, and lifted the dangling device. He placed it on his left ear and listened to a woman saying, "Hello? Hello? Sir?"

And he hung up.

He looked towards the direction in which his Tommy ran. He looked shamefully down at his shoes and turned around, proceeding to walk back to his mansion, where Diane would be probably be waiting for him.

----

Thomas ran out of breathe and he grasped onto the fence he was walking beside. He wrapped his fingers tightly around one of the many wires that intertwined with eachother. With that wire, he held himself up. Sweat slowly dripped down his forehead and he felt his thoughts fall away with the droplets.

When his breathe finally steadied, he looks around himself to make sure he lost Earl, that man that played with his mind, heart,...and body.

Letting go of the wires, he walked to a nearby rock and sat down on it. Looking around the surroundings, he noticed that this was a small clearing of grass in the city. Earl's mansion was probably about ten miles from here. He knew this place because he came here quite often as a child, playing baseball with the neighborhood kids. He couldn't believe that he actually ran this far.

As a child, there was this one boy that he liked a lot. His name was Anthony and he had a deep crush on that boy. His eyes had a strange brown tint, almost red, and with a tint of black in it. His hair was light brown like copper. He had a well defined chin despite the fact that he was probably only 6 and he was very polite. Thomas remembered when that boy came to him one day and held his hand. They both just sat there, watching the rest of the boys play their baseball games, silently glancing at each other as the sun set. When the rest of the boys had left, Thomas felt that he could not handle it any longer and he leaned forward to brush his burning lips against Anthony's. That was when Thomas' own mother came...and stopped everything.

And Thomas thought about his past in this sort of way...until he felt something softly land on his left shoulder.

He looked to his side and suddenly jolted up when he saw the person that had just touched him. It was a boy, probably around eighteen years of age. The slight turn of his head revealed a severe deformation of its left side, from Thomas' angle of view.

That deformation surprised Thomas and he yelped in surprise and the boy jerked his hand away.

"I...I'm sorry," the boy said. "I was just wondering if you were lonely or...something. You looked pretty sad."

Sad? What is he talking about? Shouldn't he be sad himself, with that horrifying complexion?

The boy noticed Thomas staring at that part of his face and he hurried to cover it with his hand.

"Um..." the boy said, almost stammering in the process, "do you have a home?"

"Not anymore, I think. I ran away."

"Oh...okay... Well, I-I was just wondering if you did because I could take you to my place. It's not far from here and you'll need a place to stay on this day because it's pretty cold. It's Autumn..."

Thomas felt himself shivering. He had forgotten to bring a coat. He didn't notice how cold it was until now.

The boy then stepped forward to Thomas and took off his own wind-breaker and placed it lightly on Thomas' back.

Warmth filled Thomas.

"Um...yeah. I think I'll need a place to stay," Thomas said, with a half-smile and a look of defeat.

"Good. I thought you might." He takes Thomas' hand and Thomas felt a sudden rapid thump in his chest that didn't fit right with the rythmn before it. It was his heart and it sped up.

Walking with Thomas' hand in his own, the boy turned his head around to look Thomas square in the eye, "by the way, my name is Anthony. What's yours?"

Could it be him? But, no. His face doesn't look similar.

"Thomas."

Anthony nodded and as soon as a blink of an eye, they had already reached an apartment and had already begun to walk up the staircase to the doorway upfront.

Oh, no. Another house to get used to...

But, when Thomas entered through the door, he felt a sudden breeze of invisible peace. He felt a sense of space despite the fact that this was significantly smaller than Earl's mansion. And the mansion felt more crammed in.

Some clothes were scattered all over the floor and Thomas felt a little insulted by the fact that this boy that had the same name as his childhood crush brought him here. But, he felt that he would begin to like this apartment, even if just for that night.