"It's a ghost town. It's fine. No one's even been out here in years. Plus, why are you complaining now?" Stupid looked over at Strawberry with a stern look.

"Keep your eyes on the road. I'm just saying you should pay attention to your gas tank. I don't wanna run out of gas due to another joyride with you like last time, Stupid", Strawberry said to his friend.

The two men sat in the driver and passenger seat of Stupid's car as they cruised down the unmaintained highway. They were both named Mike, and had the same initial of their last names, and no middle names. To set themselves apart and for ease of communication, the Mike with a large red mole on his cheek was called Strawberry, and the Mike who thought he was smarter than he was, was called Stupid.

Their nicknames, of course, were given by each other.

After another twenty minutes of driving, the car started slowing down significantly. Strawberry looked at the gas gauge, and it was as he expected. "I told you we needed more gas before coming out here!"

Stupid retorted angrily. "I know my car better than you. You don't even know how to drive."

Strawberry pointed to the gauge. "Well we're out of gas now. How are we going to get back?"

"I have extra gas in my trunk just in case this happened. We didn't even do what we came for, so we're still going. Come with me. I'll put something in the tank later." The car stopped. Stupid took the keys out of the ignition, opened the door, and got out, leaving the driver's side door open.

Strawberry undid his safety belt and got out as well, but he closed the passenger door with a loud slam. "Where are we even going?"

Stupid had no idea where they were, but he had enough ignorance and bravado to just keep marching anyway. The houses in the area had their paint flecked away, and their stucco peeled.

Some of the windows were broken, and the holes of most of them had dried-up spiderwebs blowing in the light breeze. Some vines grew along some of the buildings, but the weeds were more prevalent in what used to be brick-lined personal gardens.

There were only pieces of fences; wooden planks rotten and laying in the grass-deficient dirt. Some of the planks had so much dirt and mud caked onto them from who-knows-when, that grass had started to grow in the dirt clods; their roots growing into the wood.

Stupid stepped over what remained of the steel wire that used to keep the planks upright, and simply stepped on the ones already horizontal or close to it. Down a hillside was a small circle of trees, and a white building that seemed to be white for reasons besides paint sat in the center. Nearby this scene, was what used to be a river, now only a dirty stream.

The path down to this crumbled white building was paved, though the pavement had cracked and been overgrown itself. Enough of the ground was still cement that it could be walked on safely, but the tall grasses and goat head thorn weeds had to be stepped over carefully.

Strawberry, getting to the part of the path that led downhill, stayed at the top of the hill where it was even with the road behind him and the porches of what used to be houses on each of his sides. "I'm not going down there!" he yelled. "It doesn't feel right."

Stupid heard him, but kept going. After a couple minutes of walking, he got to the white building, peeking over a bush that used to be decorative, but had since gone wild and unmanicured. There was something that looked like they used to be benches made of wood, but they weren't usable anymore. One of them seemed to have buckled in the center under the weight of the moss that had since grown on it, just like one of the buildings up top had.

There wasn't really anything there. But that wasn't good enough for Stupid. Looking at where he expected a door to be, he found... no door. There were branches that had fallen from the trees overhead at some point in the past, but they didn't look to weigh much, despite their size, and they were easily pushed out of the way.

Stepping inside the unroofed construct, he pulled a white candle out of his cargo pants pocket, set it on the floor in the middle of the ruin, lit it, and walked away.

Strawberry had stood and watched, paced back and forth for a couple minutes, then decided to push on a sliding glass door that was already open, but the yellowed glass door hadn't left enough room to actually be entered. Another foot of scraping it in the tracks was all that was needed.

There was a recliner in front of Strawberry, the carpet dusty. But the recliner fared worse, as it had since become the home of some mice. The kitchen was a mess, with what were probably clean dishes having been put in a drying rack on the counter, but they had never been put away. After quietly investigating without touching anything, Strawberry heard Stupid coming back up the broken pathway, and came back outside.

"Nothing." Stupid said to Strawberry.

"What were you looking for anyway?" Strawberry asked.

"Something worth something. Something at least interesting."

"Well since you look disappointed, I'll guess there was nothing there. Nothing up here either. We should probably leave."

"Yeah, let me put some emergency gas in, and we'll go back", Stupid agreed.

"If you use it half the time you leave town, it's not emergency gas. It's just gas."

Stupid didn't respond, but instead just led his small party back to his car. He did as he said, and they were gone again.

----------------------------------------------------

Hours later...

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Invisible to human eyes, an orb drifted at the top of the hill, right between two abandoned houses, at the top of a broken pathway. *Strawberry paced back and forth, growing impatient*

Another orb, equally undetectable, floated towards the aforementioned one. *A child ran out of the back door of his grandparents new retirement home, with a popsicle in his hand. "Grampy look what Gramma gave me!"*

The orbs collided.