*** Chapter 2: Cousin Micheal day 1 ***

My eyes opened and nothing made sense, I had been in the garage dancing with my cousin Liliana, but now I was lying down on the rug of the living room. I first thought that something had happened to me, but I was perfectly fine, in fact there were people all around me waking in the same way I was.

Feeling anxious, I stood up and looked around, everyone was as confused as I was.

Nobody moved, the air was so tense that it felt as if the atmosphere would crack at the slightest hint of movement. The moment was broken by the opening of the back door.

Santos had come in from the back, his reaction was unexpected. His expression was grim, though he appeared slightly better when his eyes scanned the room.

“Santos,” I called out to my cousin. His name is Santiago, but that’s probably a name only the oldest of our cousins know since everyone has always called him Santos. “What’s going on?”

“We are somewhere else,” he replied cryptically.

“Somewhere else?” I asked, what does that mean?

“I think everyone should go and look outside,” he replied.

“What do you mean?” I asked, confused by his answer.

“Outside,” Santos repeated. “Go do the look.”

The prick!

“Alex?” I looked around until I spotted my cousin. It was also the first time my mind registered the fact that everyone in the living room was a male.

“Yeah?” Alex grunted.

“Wait,” I turned towards Santos. “Where is my mom and our aunts?”

“Kids are upstairs,” he replied. “I put all the women in the master bedroom.”

“You put them…?” that sounded strange.

“Yeah,” he replied. “It was only me, my younger broski, and David up for a while.”

“Come on Alex,” I said, heading for the back door.

Alex and his brother Tony followed behind me, we made our way around the backyard looking for what Santos meant.

“Hey,” Tony called out to us. We turned to look at him and he was pointing upwards. “I don’t think those mountains were there before.”

He was right, the house should not be surrounded by mountains, not even hills. The more I looked, the stranger everything seemed. There was a much thicker forest and the usual things that surrounded the house were gone. In fact, as we made our way around the yard we noticed that the land seemed to have been cut out of its original place in a perfect circle.

We walked back to the house and several members of the family were flooding outside looking around. My father, Miguel, waved me over and asked me what was going on. I explained the things that I had seen.

Afterwards the family confirmed it with their own eyes.

During all this time the sun began to rise revealing the strange new place to them all in better light.

Most of the family went inside, the women went to the kitchen to prepare food enough for everyone, while the men sat down around my grandfather, Aurelio Fortino. The kids had gone outside along with most of the older cousins, but I wanted to hear what the men were going to discuss.

“We need to think about what we are going to do now,” my uncle Rodrigo started. He is the oldest of my uncles.

“We have water,” uncle Raphael stated. He is Santos’ father and one of the younger uncles of the family with older sons. “Santos found a lake right next to the house. It's just to the east of us.”

“East?” uncle George asked, it was to him that the house belonged.

“Yeah,” uncle Raphael replied, showing him the watch on his wrist, it was one of those fancy ones with a real working compass.

“What about food?” uncle Lucio asked, he is the second oldest of my uncles. “We have some in the house from the party, but there are so many of us, it won’t last us at all.”

“Santos is already at the lake,” uncle Raphael said. “He went with the fishing gear in the storage, if he can get some fish, then we at least won't be starving for a little longer.”

“But that’s all meat,” I spoke up. I wasn’t allowed at the table, but I could hear them from over at the bar, where Alex and Tony sat with me. “We are going to get sick if we don’t have enough vegetables and fruits.”

“He is right,” uncle Mariano agreed. He is the third oldest uncle. “We are in the middle of nowhere, I’ve been checking my phone and I have no signal.”

“Yeah,” Alex added, “Neither do we.”

“Right now we need to think about securing food,” uncle Mariano said. “If we get fish from the lake that’s a start, but we need more than that.”

“We have beans and potatoes in the pantry,” uncle George said. “But, even if we plant them now, it will take months before we can harvest them.”

“Somos de rancho mijos,” my grandfather finally spoke up. Everyone turned to him. “We come from humble lands, we ate from what we found in trees and on the ground. We ate from what we grew and what we caught. We are not too old to have forgotten how to do that again. We have wild lands around us now, more trees, that just means more to take from the land.

“For now let us start by getting water we can drink and fish we can eat.”

“We are going to have to build some things,” uncle George said. “The plumbing is no longer working. That means no toilet and no showers.”

“I work with plumbing,” uncle Juan spoke up. He was married into our family through my aunt Ramona. “Maybe I can connect the plumbing to the lake.”

“We have an incredible lack of pipes,” uncle Mariano pointed out.

“We’ll shelf fixing up the plumbing for now,” uncle George said. “We do, however, need outhouses. We can dig those up today and worry about the rest as we go.”

“Then let’s put the boys to work,” grandfather said, and with a wave the men of the house stood up off the table and headed out. We too were motioned to join them.