Chapter Three: Here and Now

Behr's head pounded in pain, rubbing his temples, and trying to gain more focus in his vision. Slowly getting up from the ground, grasping against the brick wall behind him. The streetlight in the alley flickered a bit, the light was going out. Making the alley more eerie and unsettling than it had to be.

He stumbles his way out of the alley and onto a streetway, seeing that he was now in Sahara Square. His vision started to become clearer, a few mammals pasted him but did not give him a look, it was a normal thing at two A.M. to walk around all scuffed up and… in different clothes. He noticed himself looked different and walked up to himself in a reflection.

"What the hell?" Behr looked at his outfit in a reflection of a store window. These were no casual clothes he would normally wear. Behr was in black ripped jeans with a rugged leather jacket, with chains hanging from his pant pockets. He put his paw against the window looking at himself in confusion.

Someone tapped on his shoulder to gain his attention, Behr jumps and turns around to see a moth. The moth was wearing a black sweater, and jogging pants, a big enough opening on his back for his wings. The moth looked concerned for the rough looking canine, his eyes were a bit bloodshot from something that the moth seemed to know something traumatic had happened.

"You okay, you seem lost?" The moth looked along the canine's missing fur bits here and there. Behr slowly backs away from the moth, worried that Behr had done something that he would regret. As Behr was trying to get away, he backs into someone else.

Behr falls back to the ground looking at the other mammal he ran into, he was a jackal, tall and skinny, but a bit fierce. His fur was brown and white on the front, but somehow it was black and white on his back. The jackal was almost wearing the same clothes as the moth, but he had a zip-up sweatshirt instead of a pull-over sweatshirt.

The moth gets down and tries to help the dog back up from the ground. "Get away from me," Behr pushes away, and the jackal shakes his head in disappointment.

"We're just here to help you," The moth answered back as Behr scrambles away from them.

"I don't need help, I don't even know you," Behr quickly gets back up onto his feet, fixing his fur on his head.

"You look hurt, you're missing fur all over you." The jackal looked at Behr's missing spots along the side of his face.

"How did I get here?" The moth and jackal looked at each other in a confused expression. Knowing that this canine was going through something they really did not understand. "Tell me how I got here in these clothes, I was just in the hospital, I was asleep in my bed."

"What's your name dog?" The moth tries to approach him once more.

"Behr… I'm Behr."

"Behr, I am Nik, this jackal is my friend Alex. Let us try to help you."

"For all I know you two brought me here."

The jackal wittedly answers, "If we brought you here, why would we let you go just for you to accidently bump into us."

Behr slowly releases tension from his fists and calms down a bit, "You're right… But I still do not trust you."

"We don't expect you to, we just want to help," Nik says while going up to Behr. Behr was not familiar what a moth was like, they were never in Zootopia before. Ever since Zootopia passed the bill to let more than mammals into Zootopia, it really changed everything. They even got the dogs in Howling Point to sign the bill and join Zootopia.

The jackal stood in the same spot looking at Behr, shaking a bit while the moth approached him. "Nik… stop," The jackal steps in front of Nik and has him stay where he was, instead the jackal went up to Behr instead. "How about you come back to our place and we will help you get home hm?"

"Alright…" Behr felt more comfortable around the other canine, the moth was different. Nothing that was bad, just the features of the moth was unrecognized by the dog.

Behr, Nik, and Alex leave the middle of the street and head to the apartment that Nik and Alex live in. Apartments were a little more different here in in Sahara Square, much bigger than the ones that Behr was living in.

The boys walk into the apartment and show Behr to the couch as they walked in. The apartment had a full living room and kitchen connected to it, with an island for people to hang around. To their right was the wall where the bedrooms and a bathroom were. The kitchen even had a sliding door for them to go out on their balcony.

The lost dog sits on their couch, his leg shakes in nervousness. He looks down his paw, they were more beaten than he remembered when he was in the hospital. Behr gulps and kept worrying if the girls were even looking for him.

"Behr, you want something to drink or eat?" Alex, the jackal, walked into the kitchen looking in the fridge as he grabbed himself a drink.

"I'm… good…," Alex nodded and walked over to the couch and sits next to Behr, cracking open his pop and looks at Behr and his weird markings.

"So, you're a dog, right?" Behr broke from his trance from his paws and looks and Alex and nods. "I'm a black-backed Jackal, if you couldn't tell." Behr really was not interested in small talk with the jackal.

Behr pulls out his phone, it had two percent left on battery life, "What's your guy's address? I am going to message my friends where I am."

"SS Apartments, Room 3B," Nik answered as he sat in the lazy-boy across from the couch. Behr quickly wrote down the message in his phone and sent the message to Jinx, hoping she would see it the morning.

"Why were you guys out in the middle of the night… you guys do not seem the type to be crazy or poor." Behr pointed out, as the time was already nearing three AM.

"Well, we usually work out, it's easier to run at night, less people crowding the sidewalks." Nik explained as he took off his sweatshirt, wearing a t-shirt underneath.

"Thanks for letting me come here, I really don't know how I got out there."

"You said you were in the hospital?" Nik asked while he looked over at his friend Alex.

"Yea. I was. And then I woke up there in the alley." Behr looks at his phone again, hoping for an answer from Jinx. "Can you guys say we went out for drinks or something when my friend comes to get me?" Behr wanted to lie, but he himself did not even know what happened to himself.

"Don't you want to get help… You blacked out and can't remember anything between the hospital and that alley," Alex gets up from the couch and takes off his sweatshirt as well, throwing it in his room.

"I'll figure it out, maybe those painkillers just messed with my head and made me forget," Behr was coming up with anything just to make this situation normal.

"Uh yea, we can do that for you though, you seem… Chill to hang out with." Nik chuckled to lighten the mood a bit.

"So, you guys don't mind a random stranger sleeping on your couch?" Behr asked, Nik shrugged and gets up from the chair.

"You do not seem that crazy to kill us," Nik laughs again and starts to head to his room.

Alex grabs a phone charger from his room and an extra blanket from the end of couch and throws it to Behr, "I saw your phone was dying, and we don't like our company getting cold at our place."

"Thanks… again." Alex nods and goes into his room too. Behr was alone in the living room; he plugs in his phone and slowly lays down his head on the couch.

He was scared to sleep again; he knew that is how he got lost the first time. This was not normal for Behr, he never slept walked. Even if he did, you would think that doctors would have stopped him from leaving the hospital.

Behr's phone vibrates, but it was not a message from Jinx, it was a message from Brooklyn. He unlocks his phone and opens the message from Brooke. Reading it in his head, "Behr, I know it's late and you're probably asleep. But I want you to know, I love you. I have had this crush on you since college when we met. You were so sweet, always being that hero even when people did not want you to be. But you have been my hero since day one. I know you probably love Jinx now, but I have wanted too long to tell you this. Behr, I want you."

Behr puts down his phone, know what he just read, might just complicate things even more than it already be.