It was another long day for me. I arrive at my home at around 10:30 at night, feeling exhausted from work. I grabbed my keys from my large, two gallon blue lunch box and carefully unlocked the front door of my house. I entered inside quietly knowing that my parents are asleep. The only visible light in the area was a small oven light that faintly glowed in the kitchen. I dropped all of my personal items into my room, opened up the garage door, and stored my bike away, then closed it again. Usually, my family leaves some of the leftovers on top of the oven. I grabbed the amount of food that I wanted, placed it on one of hundreds of Styrofoam plates, and microwaved my food. It was a Thursday night, which usually meant pizza. I was pleased with that since it was one of my preferred things to enjoy. I stuffed myself with two slices and then downed it with water. Before I went to bed, I cleaned up the kitchen by washing down all the dishes and put them out to dry along with sweeping the floor, putting the food away in the fridge, and finally scrubbing down the counters. Mind you, it's 10:30 at night. It sucks to do these things, especially coming back from work. Why couldn't my sister do that for me? She stays inside most of the time anyhow.

Currently, that is basically my life. My name is Jonathan, an 18 year cart associate who is currently employed at Wal-Mart, the neighborhood market. No, it's not the whole clothing, electronics, jewelry, camping, and other crap all in one. Imagine this Wal-Mart as a grocery store, such as Publix. Anyhow, every two weeks I get paid, some of my paycheck goes to "rent" which my Step-Father enforces. He's this Gun-ho 35 year military veteran who is the strictest man you'll ever meet, but I love him anyway. He's been in my life for about 2 years or more and made me the man I am today. I am about to enter my senior year in my high school career and hopefully wishes to enter into the Air-Force someday.

Well, that's a little bit about me and the things I do. Work has been an extremely rough road for me. As a cart pusher, I often work outside. Oh, haven't I mention I live in Florida, where temperatures there could boil a baby inside a car within minutes? I have to endure the humid heat; sometimes that can feel like the lower 100's. Of course, I keep myself hydrated at all times and not to push myself too far. I even wear a camouflaged hat, like the one designed for the everglades. These few months have testing my mind, body, and soul. All the pain, all the sweat and negative emotions, all the mind-numbing stress I go through no longer exists. From now on, feeling tired is normal, I feel no emotion about my job other than the fact that it's important to keep it, and I am in the best shape of my life. My managers although give me a hard time at times, were impressed at how far I've become. So they've gave me even more hours. Thanks to my Step-Father's extensive "training", I walk, feel, express, and communicate almost like a soldier on the job.

Outside my job, I am gladly myself. I love playing smash bros on the go with my new 3ds xl. Mainly, I play as Greninja, but for whatever reason, I obsess over this fictional character. Greninja can be looked at in different ways. It could be an intimidating force reckoned in some of the meta-games it currently dominates both in ORAS and in smash (Well, was anyhow.), a cuddly friend who would just be there in times of trial and error, or even be entertained as a newfound fetish. Well, fortunately for me, all three of those reasons are rightfully so if you ask me why I love him or her.

That's basically sums up what I am in a nutshell. As I was saying, after eating some dinner, I walked into my room. It's basically lived in, sometimes it looks like a mess because I am just a bit tired or not in the mood to fix it, but I maintain it. I turn on my fan-light, go on the computer for some laughs on Youtube for a bit; maybe even play some rounds in for-glory in smash, just a normal night for me.

So around 11 or 12, I turned everything off, blast my ceiling fan on high setting to keep me cool, changed to some gym shorts, and was about to go to sleep. It was pitch-black, so finding my cute Greninja plushie in the dark was a bit difficult, but I managed to find it by feeling around my surroundings. Just when I went to grab it, cover myself in my comforter, and fall asleep, I noticed something different. In front of my bed, there's my closet. Yeah, there's nothing new here. It has a mirror to check my appearance and has space for my clothing. But, I could recall that I closed it before leaving to work. Why had it been opened slightly? I thought nothing of it, but a tenth of a second later I heard subtle rustling inside…

Well, the worst thing that could possibly be inside from what I image is that a rat of sorts could have ended up in there. So I got up to investigate. As I head towards the closet, a bright red light glowed from the inside. This startled me, so I went on the defense to find out what it is. Immediately, I went towards my closet door and slide it wide open, my right hand encased to a fist in case of an intruder. Almost instantly, I saw something that looked vaguely familiar, but that mysterious presence overtook my consciousness. How? I felt a crushing blow towards the front of my torso, as if I was hit by a speeding car. Since it was too dark to tell what hit me, the blow had made its imprint onto my stomach. From what I can tell, I was kicked, but oddly, its foot wasn't anything solid. I pictured two pieces of muscular bars held together at one point and they spread from that point at an acute angle. Between that, there was a thick layer of padding? This can't be my scuba gear spontaneously coming to life. It must be something else.

As soon as I got kicked, the impact sent me flying back first against a nearby wall. I banged my head against it and fell down, landing atop my bed once more before blacking out. I have no clue how long I was out for, but thankfully, I was able to wake up from that assault. As I open my eyes, I was held upright by something. Whatever it was, the creature had its thin, oddly amphibious arms around me. As much pain I was in, I tried an attempt to fight back, but it firmly held its grip. I freaked out when it somehow salivate my right side of my body; I felt a large, thick tongue drooping nearby. So naturally, I decided to scream as an attempt to call for help. That miserably failed too, its padded hand covering my mouth before I even uttered a cry. So lastly, I just simply waited for death to come. My Step-Father raised me to be a man, so I should die like one too. I closed my eyes and calmly waited for it to finish me off, preparing for the after-life…but it never did.

Instead, its head lay against my left shoulder comfortably, muttering its soothing call.

"Gren…ninja."