I''d been here before.


    I lay on the floor of the closet, light shining in my eyes from underneath the door. My chest was tightening, and my jaw clenching.


    I wanted to cry.


    Jon was on the other side of that door. Despite the weeks I''d spent in this form, there was still an unfamiliarity to the things I felt.


    I was used to the tightening of my chest—the ache in my stomach; less familiar was the drooping of my ears and the sagging of my tail. It was like giving up, emotional defeat.


    Was this my fate? A never-ending kill-or-be-killed scenario with my friend, who looked at me as not just a stranger but as a monster. The friend who got me through school with my sanity intact? The brother of my childhood as the enemy of my life?


    Impossible.


    I''d been here before, waking up on the floor of the hospital bathroom, knowing there was no path forward that didn''t include going through Jon. No path that didn''t cast me as a monster in his eyes, an unnatural evil that needed to be rejected and denied at every turn.


    For the sake of Nia and my allies, I''d pulled myself together long enough to get through Jon before.


    I killed him with my own hands.


    Even knowing the day would loop and his death would be temporary— even knowing he wouldn''t remember much—if anything—it was hard.


    My body, heavy with an unwillingness to accept I was once again in this situation, refused to move, even as the sound of voices reached my ears.


    "I''m going to ask one more time, do either of you have any idea how we got here?" A voice asked, presumably one of the other deputies.


    Jon snorted, and at the familiar sound, my lips instinctively twitched, ready to be in on the joke. "You need to learn to roll with the punches," He said. "Clearly, whatever''s happening is related to those weird vortexes dropping all over the place. It''s the end of the world, man. Are you really worried about a little lost time? We''re literally wearing vests with the words ''Guard the Hostile Alien'' taped to our chests. It''d be weirder if we weren''t confused."


    A few weeks cut off from the world, and I''d largely stopped considering what it might be going through. I''d known even before getting trapped in Forest Lake that the world likely wouldn''t recover in my lifetime. When we left through my escape hatch, we''d be returning to a breaking world, presumably on the same day we got trapped. For me, that all seemed so long ago; for Jon, it had just happened.


    "Let me get this straight, you wake up in a strange place-"


    "Strange place? It''s a Stop''n''Slurp." Jon interrupted.


    "Without any real idea how you got there, and your response is to just go on with your day?"


    "Obviously not. I''m guarding that door, and so are you." Jon replied, the sound of metal sliding on metal telling me he had just cocked his gun.


    "Is that a threat?" the other man growled.


    "If it was a threat, the gun would be pointed at you, not the closet. It''s an observation. Somehow, I doubt whoever put us here picked us at random. We''re supposed to guard that door; we were equipped to guard that door. Besides, I want to know what these aliens that attacked our planet look like. Aren''t you curious?" Jon replied, unconcerned with the man''s threatening tone.


    "You really think there''s an alien in there?" The doubter asked.


    "It''s in there." A third voice said, his tone grim.


    I closed one eye to try to focus my other eye under the crack, but I couldn''t make out much beyond a shelf lying on its side. There were a few loose bags of chips on the floor, but nothing scattered around like you''d expect from tipping over a shelf.


    "Not that I disagree," Jon said, "But what makes you say so."


    "I just know. I can feel it. There''s something terrible in there. Evil."


    "Something evil? Yeah, it could be. Something hostile for sure." Jon replied."


    "You two are really just going to ''roll with the punches'' with something this weird? You wake up sitting on a shelf wearing a badge and a bullet-proof vest with surreal orders on them, and you just nod and go along with it."


    "Hey, what''s your name?" Jon asked.


    "Henry."


    "Well, Hank, if you want to go take a peak inside, I won''t stop you; I''m as curious as anything else, but I''ve seen enough movies to know that if you can''t adapt, you''ll end up dead."


    "Which is exactly what will happen if you open the door." The grim-sounding man said.


    "Are you threatening me:" Henry asked.


    "Henry, he''s warning your dumb-ass. Hey, Mr. Serious, you have a name?"


    "Phillip. Yours?"


    "The name''s Jon, Phillip. Thanks for asking; our friend Henry here was too panicked to be polite."


    "I think the polite thing is giving your name first," Phillip replied stoically.


    "Fuck that. If someone wants to know about me, they should ask."


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    "I wasn''t going to open the door." Henry offered up defensively, "But I don''t understand why you two are willing to crouch behind that shelf and stare at a door."


    "Let me ask you this, Henry. What''s the last thing you remember?"


    "I''d just sat down to eat a late lunch-"


    "Oh, nice, anything good?" Jon interrupted.


    "Just a frozen dinner, nothing special. I''d only just started eating it, too."


    "That reminds me, I skipped lunch. Either of you spot me for a bag of chips? I don''t carry cash, and there''s no one manning the register." Jon said.


    "It''s a bag of chips," Henry answered, bemused, "Just take it, who''s going to care?"


    Jon sighed. "Henry, we don''t just live in a society with rules; we have a society because of rules. Seriously, tho. Neither of you have any money? Whatever, I guess I don''t need the carbs anyway, right Phillip? You look like you lift."


    What were my options here. I could do an illusion, but I''d never tried to create an illusion where I couldn''t see and I wasn''t confident I even could. Not a great plan A. This could be the perfect chance to talk to Jon. My voice wouldn''t be familiar to him, but we''d grown up together, there were a million moments that only the two of us knew about, bringing him around wouldn''t be that hard... except, eventually I''d have to leave my Shadow, and Jon would see my Wolf. While I didn''t know Jon''s memory type for sure, emotional conditioning seemed likely. He''d reacted coldly and suspiciously toward me every time he saw my monster form. Even when I managed to tell him my real identity, he wasn''t willing to give me the chance to prove myself. Would he react any different to seeing my wolf after being mysteriously deputized for the task of guarding me? I doubted it. It was more likely he felt like he''d just started on an adventure, he almost sounded giddy. Soon enough he''d realize he wasn''t Frodo and my broom closet wasn''t Narnia.


    I mean, my Shadow Alcove was /kind of/ Narnia, or rather the Ether on the other side was. I guess that made my Shadow Alcove kind of like the Wardrobe /leading/ to Narnia... Maybe I should tell them my name is Mr. Tumnus.


    I honestly hadn''t expected the Sheriff to give me so long to make a plan. The minutes ticked by, and apart from the trio making conversation and speculating on what they were guarding, nothing happened. I didn’t even know why I was being guarded and not gunned down. Maybe the Sheriff planned to just keep me prisoner. Then again, the Sheriff clearly didn''t respect life enough to keep me alive on principle. Since Jon and friends had been given a guard order and not a kill order, presumably that meant the Sheriff still wanted something from me. Hopefully he  wasn''t planning to torture me for the secrets of my shadow and the invasion or anything.


    It was somewhat tempting to try to trick Jon into thinking I was just some guy, confused as to why he was locked in a closet. But from what I''d overheard, Jon already viewed me as a hostile, and some guy named Phillip was ready to call me evil, and both viewed me as a lethal threat. I knew from experience that that level of distrust wouldn''t be overcome easily. The last thing I wanted was for Jon to start associating his memories of his friend with that same level of distrust. Which meant, for now, I wasn''t willing to reveal my real identity. It was a risk, but waiting probably was my best bet. Worst case scenario, I wasted another loop. Not ideal, but it might be worth the risk for the chance at gaining the Sheriff''s authority.


    Without a clock or watch I didn''t know exactly how long I waited there listening to Jon and friends, and planning illusions and glamours that might help in a pinch, but after about a half an hour Jon was complaining about skipping lunch again.


    "I mean, my whole life I never needed to carry cash. You two are a bit older though, neither of you have a dollar? You know what I''m going to do. I''ll leave a note and my driver''s license. Then I''ll come back and pay later."


    "I hate to be the one to tell ya guy, but  Forest Lake has been swallowed by the the Green Haze. Besides, the world is over, whatever survives this green plague isn''t going to use American money. Nobody is going to get your note, no body is going to ring up your bag of chips, just take it." Henry said.


    "I''m Not sure you''ve noticed,  but we''re all wearing deputy badges. You''ve heard of being deputized, right? That means it''s our job to not let it end. We do that by holding to the standard of law and just."


    Henry Scoffed, "Whatever you say Lancelot, but I was never deputized, at least not by choice."


    "You were." The Sheriff''s voice said, accompanied by the sound of his footsteps entering the store. "Like all of you, I have only spotty memories of how we got here, but I always give my deputies a choice, Henry. I can show you the videotape if you need proof."


    //Video Tape?// I wondered before nearly gasping as I had an epiphany. //Has he found a way to 50-First-Dates the time loops—to leave himself video messages that could survive the resets? How?// I’d not spent much time worrying about memories or keeping records, because I was apparently that short sighted. Even just putting messages on clothing with electrical tape was incredibly clever, but there were limits. I already knew from experimenting in the bathroom, that setting a spawn point affected anything on my person; clothing, bags, hats, items being held, etc, would all be included at respawn, so would anything I was dependent on, like a chair. It almost worked on Jenga rules. The loop wouldn''t remove a piece that would crash the tower. But that kind of thing didn’t have great precision. A note written with paper and ink would be smudged to illegibility without using a dedicated Crystal like Alice had done, but even then, the area was small.


    It was the video tapes that was the real winning idea, and I could potentially see Alice’s technique working on film, although I suspected it would degrade enough to make digital tape useless, so I’d need to find some decades old equipment at a pawn shop or something.


    I sighed. For all I’d been living with the time loop for months, I wasn’t exactly taking to it like a duck to water. I needed to be better about using the quirks of the apocalypse to my benefit. The privilege of retaining all my memories meant I wasn’t trying to solve this problem. Of course obtaining memory crystals was dangerous and useful enough already that I’d done very little experimentation with other applications. Still, there was promise there, the Sheriff’s use of memory crystals to organize and deputize new people was proof of that.


    Taking some deep breaths, I sat up. In a moment, I expected the Sheriff or one of the deputies to shove the endoscope under the door. No doubt, after killing me the first time, they''d tried to claim my memory crystal and Shadow. As Alice had discovered while doing brain surgery, and Pastor Kay had discovered when making drones, humans only had crystals in their heads when they were alive. Whatever I was, I was human enough that still seemed to apply to me, or no doubt I''d have once again woken up without any memories of my Shadow or anything else since the Vortex touched down. I wondered if Sori would bother getting involved again. I didn’t really know enough about his motive to guess. Luckily it didn’t come to that.


    I missed some of the conversation as my mind wandered. I repositioned and looked around when I heard someone approach. There was the sound of what I assumed was the endoscope sliding under the down, on a whim, I grabbed some fresh towels off a shelf and lined the bottom of the door, blocking the camera as well as most of the light. Since I''d taken the Shadow from Kay, my Aura had been significantly dimmed. While I had a lantern and flashlights in my Shadow Alcove, groping along the wall revealed a light switch and proved my past preparation unnecessary.


    "Hey Now," the Sheriff said as I blocked the camera, "Let''s not be uncooperative here. We both know that portal can''t take you out of there, so why not cooperate and see if we can both walk away satisfied."


    I opened up my Shadow Alcove, positioning the entrance against one of the side walls, so it would be harder—maybe impossible—to hit me by shooting through the door.


    "Sure, let''s just gloss over the fact that you just killed me, a sapient person, on the off chance that my death would benefit you."


    "All is fair in love and war, and you, whatever you are, person or not, are certainly part of this war. Besides, I think we both know it wasn''t your first death. At the very least, it''s unlikely to be your last."