Their Fake World Their Real Tomb

In the middle of the scorched-earth apocalypse, the impossible happened: I got a video call from myself, ten years in the future.

When does this end? Are Mom and Dad going to make it back with the water? What about Toby? Is my brother safe?

The questions poured out of me, desperate and breathless.

But the face staring back at me from the screen didn't look like mine. It was a nightmare. He was covered in weeping, infected sores, his scalp entirely bald and raw. His eyes, sunken deep into a hollow skull, were yellowed and threaded with dark purple veins. He was so gaunt he looked like a skeleton draped in graying skin.

"Apocalypse?" My future self let out a rasping, bitter laugh. "There is no damn apocalypse, Sean. This is a cage. An underground tomb your parents custom-built just to appease their golden boy, Toby."

My breath hitched.

"For ten years, theyre going to bring you a single piece of moldy, expired bread every day, and youre going to wag your tail like a dog, crying with gratitude. To stay alive, youll drink your own filtered urine. When the hunger gets too sharp, youll gnaw on the wooden frame of your cot..."

He leaned closer to the screen, his skeletal face filling my vision.

"And Toby? He isnt missing. While youre down here on your knees, licking condensation off the filthy concrete, hes sitting in the air-conditioned mansion directly above your head. Hes drinking iced sweet tea, holding your fiance, and whispering with your parents about how many more heating elements they can install to make your life a living hell."

I froze, my mind completely short-circuiting.

He pulled his cracked lips back into a agonizing, hollow smile.

"I traded my last breath to get this call through to you, Sean."

"They forgot to lock the heavy bulkhead door today. If you don't believe me, push it open. See for yourself. The apocalypse only exists for you."

The call cut out, leaving a wall of dead static.

My hands shook so violently that my phone slipped from my grasp, clattering onto the cold concrete. All I could see was the reflection of my future selfbroken, ruined, stripped of any humanity.

"No... it can't be..."

I looked up at the reinforced skylight.

Through the thick glass, I could see the desolate street. Scorched, skeletal trees. Cars melted into puddles of metal. Not a single living soul.

The world outside was supposed to be a blistering, 120-degree wasteland.

Ignoring my trembling knees, I scrambled on all fours toward the heavy bulkhead door.

The door was lined with state-of-the-art thermal insulation. To ensure my "safety," my mother had stuffed every seam with fireproof stripping. My father, a renowned meteorologist, had told me himself that the surface temperature had surged past critical levels. He said the streets were crawling with desperate, murderous scavengers. He warned me that without a tactical hazmat suit, I would burn to death within ten minutes.

This door was the only barrier between me and a living hell.

I placed my palm against the heavy brass handle. It was supposed to be scalding, hot enough to sear my skin off.

I closed my eyes, gritted my teeth, and braced myself for the pain as I twisted my wrist.

I barely had to apply any pressure.

The door swung open.

There was no blast of white-hot air. No suffocating heatwave.

Instead, a cool, gentle breeze washed over me, carrying the faint, sweet scent of rain-soaked gardenias. Soft drops of summer drizzle fell onto my parched, cracked face.

I stood there, paralyzed.

A cold dread pooled in my stomach, making my knees buckle. My brain refused to process the sensory reality of the world before me.

There was no apocalypse.

It was a meticulously crafted stage play, designed by my own parents, just to soothe Tobys bruised ego.

This basement wasn't a fallout shelter. It was my coffin.

"Toby, sweetheart, come eat some of this chilled watermelon I just sliced."

The familiar, warm voice of my mother drifted through the air. A violent shiver ran down my spine. I instinctively shrank back, slipping behind the shadow of the villa's brick siding.

The house was beautifully, freezing cold.

My mother, who supposedly had been missing for three days on a perilous run for canned goods, was sitting on the plush sofa. She had her arm wrapped around Toby, sipping a glass of cabernet while they watched a talk show.

My father walked over, gently placing a piece of perfectly seared ribeye into Tobys mouth with a fond smile.

"Our sweet boy," my father said softly. "Right now, Sean is either weeping over your photograph or staring at his skylight in despair."

"He still doesn't realize you didn't run away because of some stupid argument. He actually believes the sky is falling. He has no idea that skylight is just a high-definition LED screen."

"That boy had the nerve to embarrass you at school and try to steal your girlfriend. He deserves to learn what happens when he crosses you."

Embarrass Toby?

Steal his girlfriend?

I had done none of those things.

But my parents had taken a handful of Toby's venomous whispers and used them to sentence their own flesh and blood to ten years of psychological torture in a dark hole.

Hot, bitter tears spilled over my cheeks, dripping onto my hands.

Just ten minutes ago, I had forced myself to drink half a cup of stagnant, yellow water to save a single moldy crust of bread for my parents. I had starved myself so they could live.

I had truly believed that if I just endured, if I was just strong enough, our family would make it to the other side of the end of the world.

I caught my reflection in the patio glass.

My knees gave out, and I nearly collapsed onto the wet grass.

My lips were split and bleeding. My skin was yellowed with dirt, and my hair was falling out in clumps near my temples.

I looked like a gutter rat.

And according to the video call, this was just the beginning. I was going to get so much worse. I was going to die down there, believing their lie until my very last breath.

I bit my own arm, squeezing my eyes shut to stifle the sob clawing its way up my throat.

On the living room wall, a new family portrait hung in a gilded frame.

I wasn't in it.

In my place stood Toby, flanked by my parents, with his golden retriever sitting at their feet.

"Ah."

I swallowed the suffocating grief, turning silently toward the garden hose lying in the flowerbeds. I grabbed the nozzle and let the cool, clean water gush into my mouth.

Over the past year, my parents would occasionally bring back half a plastic bottle of lukewarm, brackish water. Drinking a single capful of that felt like a gift from heaven.

I had been pampered for twenty years; I never knew plain tap water could taste so sweet.

But the image of my future, skeletal self remained burned into my retinas, cold and unyielding.

My hand trembled against the plastic hose.

"Fine."

"You want a post-apocalyptic wasteland?"

"Since you went to all the trouble of building this beautiful stage... Im going to make sure you get to play your parts to the very end."

I slipped quietly back into the basement.

I pulled the heavy bulkhead door shut, sealing myself back in.

The stifling, stagnant air of the cellar instantly wrapped around me, threatening to suffocate me. The cool rain outside felt like a dream I had already forgotten.

I crawled back to my spot in the corner, pressing my face against the thumb-sized ventilation pipe, and watched the simulated red dust swirl on the LED skylight until sleep finally claimed me.

In my dreams, I lived those ten years.

I dreamed of the simulated "deaths" of my parents during a scavenge run. I dreamed of surviving on their meager, pre-staged rations.

The hunger and thirst were constant, gnawing monsters.

The basement walls in my dream were covered in desperate messages written in my own blood.

Several times, I had tried to throw myself open to the "scorched air" outside just to end the misery. But the bulkhead door's handle had been rigged to run scorching current, searing my flesh whenever I touched it. It was locked from the outside.

And even then, in my madness, I had believed my parents locked it to protect me from the savage survivors outside.

I dreamed of the day the food ran out. I was eating dirt and splinters.

Then, the door opened.

Toby stood there, looking down at my broken body, howling with laughter.

"You absolute moron! You actually believed the world was ending?"

Behind him stood his wifeBridget, my former fiancelooking at me with profound disgust.

"How pathetic. He looks like a hairless mole rat. Is this really the great heir of the family?"

My father grabbed me by the few remaining strands of my hair, dragging me out into the light.

"Stop playing dead. The rations I left were more than enough to keep you alive!"

"If you hadn't bullied Toby, we wouldn't have had to go to such lengths..."

"Slap!"

The sharp sting across my cheek snapped me awake.

I opened my eyes to see my father looking down at me, his expression tight with irritation.

He was wearing a heavily scuffed, spray-painted hazmat suit. Fresh, synthetic blood was smeared across his shoulder.

"Sean! Why do you have a fever?"

Perhaps it was the sudden intake of clean water, but my body had gone into shock. My forehead was burning.

My father looked exhausted, his eyes performing a perfect imitation of paternal despair.

"Sean, your mother and I are putting our lives on the line out there just to bring you a single bite of food."

"It's a wasteland out there! A literal wasteland!"

"Because you fought with your brother and drove him out of the house, he missed his chance to get to the shelter. We can't even find his body! Im begging you, stop making things harder for us, okay?"

If this were yesterday, I would have wept with guilt. I would have fallen to my knees, begging for his forgiveness.

Now, looking at his sweat-streaked, theatrical makeup, I felt nothing but a cold, heavy disgust.

"You love acting so much?"

"Lets see how well you perform."

I lowered my head, letting my shoulders slump in manufactured shame.

"Im sorry, Dad. I didn't mean to get sick. Maybe... maybe I should go out there with you next time. I can help scavenge. I can help keep us alive."

My fathers face went stiff for a fraction of a second.

He quickly masked his panic with a heavy, theatrical sigh.

"The survivors out there are desperate beasts, Sean. You wouldn't last five minutes."

"Besides, we only have two functional suits. If anything happens to you, your mother and I wouldn't be able to go on."

"Get some rest. Ill go see if I can find some fever reducers in the ruins."

He stood up, turning his back on me without another word, and heavy-handedly shut the thick bulkhead door.

"Click."

The tiny piece of sheet metal I had wedged into the strike plate earlier rattled softly.

I crept over, carefully manipulating the metal shim to keep the latch from fully engaging, and pulled out the small garden trowel I had hidden down my trousers earlier.

I pried the door back open.

I crept up to the glass pane of the back patio, moving like a shadow.

Inside, my father was peeling off the stiff hazmat suit with a look of deep revulsion. He grabbed a bottle of rubbing alcohol, scrubbing his hands raw.

"Useless brat," he muttered, spitting his words. "How did I end up with a son like Sean?"

"Always causing problems, always a burden. I swear, he needs another ten years down there to finally fix that rotten attitude of his."

Toby stepped up, affectionately wiping the dark theatrical grease from my fathers cheek. He wrapped an arm around my fathers shoulders, cooing playfully.

"Dad, you've worked so hard!"

"It looks like Sean still hasn't learned his lesson. We should seal up his main ventilation pipe. If he has a fever, he can just sweat it out!"

"Or we can turn up the heating rods. Let's see how cocky he is when it's 104 degrees down there."

"Oh, and we should add some zombie-dog sound effects to the LED sky screen! We can just tell him the virus mutated and the infected are roaming the streets."

Toby gushed about his plans to torture me, his eyes gleaming with excitement.

My parents hesitated for a moment, but then nodded with indulgent, doting smiles.

The blood in my veins turned to ice.

If it hadn't been for that video call, I would have been subjected to these monstrous cruelties for ten agonizing years.

My mother turned on the television, pulling Toby down to sit beside her. She handed him a bowl of freshly peeled grapes, her eyes warm and tender.

"We'll take it one step at a time," she said softly. "This isn't just about making you feel better, Toby. It's about correcting his character."

"Your father and I have calculated his rations perfectly. He won't starve, but he won't have the strength to act out. Until he learns how to be a proper, humble brother to you, we cannot afford to be soft-hearted."

"Brother?"

I would never be a brother to a parasite.

Toby was my mothers favorite student. After his own parents passed away, she had brought him into our home.

In the beginning, I had been happy to welcome him. I wanted to share my family.

But he had repaid me with a campaign of systematic ruin. He framed me for burning his school projects, claimed I orchestrated his bullying at school, and accused me of hiring thugs to assault Bridget just so I could "possess" her.

At the mention of my name, my mothers expression hardened.

"Once hes broken and goes back to being the obedient, quiet boy he used to be, we'll let him out."

She tapped a button on the smart remote, but as she glanced at the security feed, her brows knit together.

"Where did that boy go? Why isn't he on the camera?"

My heart leaped into my throat.

Toby leaned closer, gasping.

"You're right! He's completely gone from the main feed!"

"Did he... did he figure it out? Did he escape?"

Cold sweat broke out across my back. I gripped the wooden handle of the trowel tightly.

But my father let out a dismissive snort.

"Escape? The master key is in my pocket. How could he get out?"

"Besides, that insulated door gets hot enough to peel his skin if he tries to tamper with it. He's far too soft to even touch it."

"He's probably crying in the blind spot of the bathroom."

My father swiped the screen, bringing up yesterdays footage.

"Remember how picky he used to be? Yesterday, I threw him a half-eaten piece of dry salami, and he bolted it down like a stray dog."

"Your plan is working beautifully, Toby. He's nearly tamed."

My mother pinched her nose in disgust, as if she could smell the stench of the cellar through the screen.

"Tamed? He looks like an animal. No dignity at all. It's embarrassing."

I let out a silent, cold laugh.

What was I to them?

A dog to be trained?

Toby rested his head on my mothers shoulder, sighing softly.

"Since Dad told everyone I was lost in the wasteland, I wish I could go down there and see his face myself."

His eyes gleamed with sadistic anticipation. Naturally, my parents couldn't bear to deny him.

"That's easy enough," my father said warmly.

"Put on a respirator mask. I'll tell him you're a survivor who helped us forage for his fever medicine. Hell be weeping with gratitude at your feet."

"We can even bring Bridget along. Let her see what a pathetic worm her former fianc has become. It'll give her peace of mind."

To please their adopted darling, my parents were willing to utterly destroy me, body and soul.

My initial instinct was to call the police.

But now, I had a better plan.

I was going to give them the exact apocalypse they had built.

I slipped backward, quietly returning to the dark of the basement.

I needed to be ready before they arrived.

I had spent months studying the bulkhead door. My father had installed an emergency safety latch on the exteriora standard heavy-duty fallout door mechanism.

I remembered reading the manual in his study when I was younger.

Once the manual override lock was engaged from the outside, no key, no electronic code, and no amount of physical force could open it from the inside.

Come on down.

Since you built the trap, you might as well see how it feels to be the prey.

I dragged myself into the dirty bathroom corner, curling my body into a tight, shivering ball.

Suddenly, the LED skylight flickered, displaying a horrifying image of a mutated golden retriever with half its skull exposed, clawing frantically at the glass.

Before I could react, the alarm system blared, and the entire basement began to shudder violently under a simulated blast wave.

The heavy door was thrown open.

My parents, accompanied by two figures in bulky hazmat suits, came tumbling into the room in a state of orchestrated panic.

My father frantically ripped off his respirator, his back drenched in sweat. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a handful of dry dog kibble, and shoved it into my trembling hands.

"The fallout is spreading! The surface is crawling with mutated beasts! The neighbors dog turned and slaughtered its owner!"

"This is all the food we could salvage. Your mother and I had to eat wild rats to survive out there. Keep this dog foodit'll keep you alive!"

The dry kibble was covered in dried saliva. I recognized it instantly; it was the leftover food from Tobys dog bowl.

When I didn't move, my mothers temper flared.

She snatched a crushed, dusty tablet from Tobys hand and forced it past my lips.

"Eat it! Sean, you aren't some delicate prince anymore! We are in the end times; you don't have the luxury of being squeamish!"

"These two saviors risked their lives to bring you this medicine. Eat it!"

"I raised you to show gratitude. Once you swallow it, get on your knees and thank them for saving your miserable life!"

Even behind the heavy plastic visor of the hazmat suit, Tobys eyes danced with sadistic glee.

Bridget looked down at my filthy, skeletal frame and visibly gagged.

I watched their performance in absolute silence.

Then, with a cold smirk, I spat the pill onto the dirty floor.

"Dad, Mom... it's a lawless wasteland out there. How can you trust strangers so easily?"

"What if this is poison? What if they followed you to steal our bunker?"

The room went dead silent.

Bridget was the first to react. She snatched the discarded pill off the floor with her gloved hand, turning toward the exit.

"Ungrateful trash. We shouldn't have bothered."

My mother, humiliated and furious, raised her hand and delivered a stinging slap across my face.

The crack echoed off the concrete walls.

"You spiteful, arrogant little monster! I swear, you are utterly irredeemable! You deserve to rot down here"

She caught herself, cutting her own words off as she realized she had almost broken character.

Toby stepped forward, picking up the pill and grabbing my hand, forcing it into my palm.

"The surface pharmacies are gone. We salvaged this from a frozen warehouse; it's the last dose. Survival is all that matters, Sean."

But as he spoke, his grip suddenly tightened on my arm. With a sharp, sudden jerk, he threw himself backward, crashing heavily against the sharp iron frame of my cot.

He let out a sharp cry, looking at me with wide, terrified eyes.

"You... you tried to push me onto the exposed bolts?"

"I risked my life to save you, and you try to murder me?"

Before I could even speak, my fathers massive hand gripped my collar. He hoisted me off the floor and threw me violently into the bathroom corner.

"I knew you hadn't changed!"

"Stay in there and rot! Don't you dare come out until you're ready to beg for forgiveness!"

"Slam!"

I was thrown into the shallow pool of grey water on the bathroom floor.

The stench of stagnant waste filled my nose, making my stomach heave. My fever made my skull feel like it was cracking open.

But my mind had never been clearer.

The bathroom was the closest point to the exit.

Through the cracked door, I could see Toby holding up his phone, snickering as he took photos of my pathetic state. My parents and Bridget stood by, their faces filled with doting amusement.

"Now."

"This is the moment."

Adrenaline surged through my veins, hot and electric.

With every ounce of strength left in my starved body, I lunged from the floor and bolted toward the bulkhead door.

A furious, stunned roar shattered the quiet behind me.

"Sean! What the hell are you doing?!"