Altered States
+Chapter Nineteen+
Temporary Shelter, New Friends
~*~*~*~*~
Ten year old Kayla Morris skipped happily out into her garage. She had been left with her
seventy-two year old grandmother for the month while her parents vacationed in Hawaii.
Her grandmother was still sleeping when she snuck out of the house. She wanted to play in
her playhouse but needed the dishes she had set aside in a box in the garage.
Walking past her parent’s white cadillac, Kayla’s breath caught when she saw what looked
like a body laying in the back seat.
“Ohmygosh!” she whispered quietly, dropping a dish that was in her hand. The shattering of
the plate on the concrete caused the person in the back of the car to stir.
Kayla backed quickly away from the broken glass towards the wall. Her heart was beating
quickly in her chest and she was afraid that the person would come after her and attack
her. Her fears quieted and then started up again when she saw the face belonging to the
person.
“Ohmygosh!”
Brian looked at the girl, puzzled. He was unsure of where he was and how he got there. His
memory was coming to him in flickers of faces and places, but nothing connected that
meant anything relevant to him at the moment.
“Sh-h-h-h, don’t be scared, I won’t hurt you,” Brian said in a soothing voice.
“Are... are.. you alright?” Kayla asked the person that was getting out of her parent’s car.
His clothes were wrinkled and his hair was a mess. His unshaven face added more of an
effect to the whole total sleeping-in-a-stranger’s car effect.
Brian rubbed the back of his neck, stiff from sleeping in an akward postion all night. “Yeah,
I think so.”
“My name’s Kayla Morris,” Kayla stated as she offered a tiny hand to Brian.
“Mine’s,” Brian stopped for a second to think of his name but nothing came to him.
“It’s Brian Littrell,” Kayla finished Brian’s sentence for him.
Brian couldn’t place the name, but he was glad that she at least knew who he was. Maybe
she could take him back home.
“I’ve got all your CD’s and my room is covered in posters, don’t get mad, they’re mainly of
Howie, but like you too,” the brown haired girl giggled.
‘Howie must have been the man that took me to that place last night,’ Brian thought to
himself.
“I bet you’re hungry, aren’t you? I can make you a bowl of cereal, but you’re gonna have to
eat it in my playhouse, Nanna don’t like strangers in the house,” Kayla smiled.
“I am a little bit hungry since you brought it up,” Brian agreed.
“Here, take my hand and I’ll take you out to the playhouse,” Kayla offered.
Without hesitating, Brian took the girl’s hand and followed her out of the garage towards
the back of the house. Sitting on the ground with landscaped bushes around it was a tiny
white playhouse with a dark green door and two windows with flowered curtians.
“I have to warn you, there’s a lot of posters of that Nick Carter and Justin Timberlake. It
was during my dark period,” Kayla sighed.
Brian managed a slight chuckle at the girl’s apology.
“Okay, you sit right here at the table and I’ll be back in a few minutes with your
breakfast,” Kayla stated as she softly closed the door. Brian watched her skip across the
green grass and then let herself into a sliding door into the house. Within a few minutes
she returned with a bowl brimming with Cheerios, some of it spilling over the sides as she
walked and a glass of orange juice.
“Here you go,” Kayla said as she proudly set the bowl and juice down in front of Brian. She
sat opposite of him and rested her head in her hands, watching him hungrily spoon the
cereal into his mouth. “Did I do okay?”
“Perfect,” Brian answered with a mouthful of cereal, milk dripping out of the corner of his
mouth.
~*~*~*~*~
“I don’t see why I have to go in here with you,” AJ sputtered as we stood at the door to
Greenville.
“Because, dumbass, number one, it was your half-baked idea to take Brian out. Number
two, you didn’t seem to want to watch him all the time we were at the club. Number three
you lost him---”
“I did not lose his ass, he lost himself,” AJ interrupted.
I threw my hands up in the air. “God, it’s like talking to a brick wall. I need to tell them
about Brian before I can place a police report to find him! Judas, do you ever think clearly
AJ?”
“Okay, okay, so after all this, we can go home?” AJ asked.
“Hell no we can’t go home, we still have to look for Brian,” I replied as I hit the buzzer to
the door.
“Well, I’m hungry and I need a shower,” AJ whined.
I grabbed AJ’s arm and dragged him into the nursing home. “And you don’t think Brian’s
hungry or needs a hot shower either?”
Swallowing hard, AJ and I approached the main desk. I hated to do this but it was
something that had to be done, morally and legally. “Yes, I need to see the
administrator to this place please.”
The woman behind the desk stared at us for a moment and then picked up a phone and
punched in a three digit number. “Yes, Donna? I have two men asking to speak with you. I
don’t know...... okay, I’ll send them down.”
I felt like I was going to throw up as we walked down the hall in the direction we were
sent. AJ was lagging so badly that I had to keep looking over my shoulder to make sure he
hadn’t turned around and ran back to the car.
“Hi, I’m Donna Anderson, and you are?”
I looked down at the short, gray haired woman with a reddish complection and a no
nonesence demeanor about her.
“Nick Carter and this is AJ McLean,” I stated quickly as I shook her hand.
The woman directed us to blue plastic chairs that were situated in front of the dark wood
desk that she sat behind.
“So, what brings you here to Greenville,” she asked, leaning forward in her chair.
“My friend Brian Littrell, we um, we sort of lost him last night,” I stated quietly.
“He died?”
“No worse ma’am,” AJ replied.
God, I wanted to smack him in the back of the head for that remark. I stiffened up in my
seat. “No, we sorta lost him at a club that we snuck him out to last night.”
“Good lord,” the woman exclaimed. She reached into her desk and pulled out a ‘Lost
Person’s Report Sheet’. “Let’s start from when you picked him up, I need every detail.”
Chapter 20
