Layers, layers, layers.
     Mom always said when it was cold outside to layer up, because if you’re cold, then you get sick. If you’re sick, then you will get worse, and this would eventually lead to death.
But my mother died years ago, and now there really wasn’t any reason to listen to her. Even though her voice still rings in my head when I do wrong, I ignore it.
     I woke up frozen, with little to no clothes on my fragile body. Just a dirty pair of cargo shorts and a ripped up Mickey Mouse shirt.
     “I’ve been waiting for you, Jebidiah,” a blond girl in a pale blue dress was standing over me. The sight of her made me jump
       She let out a chilling laugh. “Don’t be scared Jeb, you’re in a better place now.”

     A better place? I mouthed to myself silently.

     The girl bent over at me and her smile disappeared. “Don’t act like you don’t know where you are,” she dragged me  up to my feet. ”This is Resin City.”
       With the help of the girl, whose name was supposedly Delilah, I saw the post-apocalyptic world. Children working, running, playing, and eating ants off of the dirt. Men hammering wooden stakes into the ground, and women wandering throughout the place with babies in their arms. Giant stone walls surrounded the city, trapping everyone inside for eternity.
     It was now my turn to speak. I cleared my throat. “W-where and who am I?”
     Delilah pulled out a  white card from behind her blond locks. “You’re Jebidiah Wilson, 16 years old, white, male, born June 30, 2050.”
     I could feel my eyebrows moving closer together as I scrunched my head in thought. “2050? No, that cannot be. It’s 1958.”
     “Well, 1958 was over a century ago. It’s 2066. So it’s either that you’re wrong, dead, or a time traveler. But I highly doubt that because time travel was perfected in 2044,” Delilah told me sternly.
      “Let me see that,” I snatched the card from Delilah ignoring the swift swat she gave me on my knuckles. The card seemed to be legit. My birthday was right, and so were my age, weight, and height, but the years were wrong.
    “This is impossible,” I threw Delilah’s card on the dirt. “There is no way in hell that I am waking up in the future.”
A worker gave Delilah a set of clothes and scurried away. Delilah slammed the clothes into my chest. “Get dressed and we will discuss this,” she grabbed my shirt with the tip of her thumb and middle finger. “And get that rodent off of your shirt. It’s disgusting”

    After I was done bathing and brushing my teeth, Delilah came in and directed me towards a large building.
    “Look, I knew what you we’re talking about back there. I just had to pretend you were wrong so you wouldn’t figure out so quickly,” Delilah said.
     “How do you mean?” I asked as we sat at a table.
Delilah pulled me in close. “I was born in 1992, and on my twelfth birthday I got into a car crash, was presumed dead, and ended up here.”
    “I don’t understand this.”
    “It took me a time to figure this out, but kids up until 18 die in their worlds, and then wake up here. From any point in the past, kids are killed and then transported into the future.”
     “Explain,” I stated.
Delilah stood up and started to feel certain points on my body. She then tilted my head up with her hands and looked down my throat.
     “You drowned a week before your sixteenth birthday,” she concluded.
     “How do you mean?”
     “What did you feel like when you first came up here?” asked Delilah.
    “Well now that you mention it,” I started, “My lungs did feel stuffy when I arrived.”
     “Then there you go,” Delilah sat down into her seat.
     “So do we ever get out?” I asked.
     “Big Brother is watching us from above. We’re told that if we work hard and do our job, then he will transport us back to our old lives as late as 50. But if we’re exceptional, we can get out in as little as a year.”
     I shook my head in shock. “So I can be stuck here for 34 more years?”
     Delilah frowned. “Possibly, but there is a way that you can escape. It’s extremely dangerous though.”
      “I must get out now,” I stood up to walk outside to leave.
      Delilah grabbed my arm. “No,”she sharply said. “You have to wait a while, so the Big Brother will forget who you are over time.”
     Obeying the girl I just met, I sat back down
     “Wait until you turn 19 if you want to escape,” Delilah touched my hands. “So I can come with you.”
     “Why do you have to wait?” I asked.
     “Even though I’ve been been here for a while, the Big Brother is still watching over me closely. I can’t take the chance of escaping now,” replied Delilah.
     “How do you even know that he is—”
     “Because I can feel him!” yelled Delilah as she cut me off.                Without apologizing, Delilah continued. “Once you have satisfied Big Brother, he sends you back to the place you started in, you will be the same age as you were before, and no one will remember the tragedy. But if you were in a bad place before, you get transported to a different and better world.”
     “I don’t think I can last,” I admitted.
Delilah then smiled. “This place is the new frontier. Whether you like it or not, you can learn a lot about people here.” She pointed at a dark girl talking with an adult. “You see her over there? She was a slave. She has numerous stories about her life that you can find interesting. And the boy over there,” Delilah pointed right but I couldn’t see him, “he was an Incan,’ beamed Delilah.
She finally arose and walked to another large building titled “FEMALE DORMITORY”
“You will grow close to the people you meet here,” said Delilah still walking to the stairs. “With advanced science and technology, you will learn to conquer the world.”
Delilah’s speech did little to nothing to change my view on this godforsaken place. I mean come on! Every detail about this situation is impractical. I remember nothing of being in water, drowning, and being transported here. To make matters worse, I have to do unnecessary work that will contribute nothing to an actual cause.
       But deep down, I know that I cannot cry over spilled milk. The best that I can do here is complete my work, listen to Delilah, and do anything I have in my power to leave and never come back again. After a few months, this mysterious “Big Brother” thing that Delilah raves about wouldn’t even know that I disappeared, and he will find more clueless kids to torture with his gaze that can’t be seen.
The future is a morbid place, and I will make that known.