For a week, this continued. Two days after Reese watched the video, MyTube deleted the video, prompting Lloyd to text Reese again, asking " If it wasn't real, why'd they take down the video? "
" It was probably too bloody, either that or too many people complained about the video ," ending the discussion.
The internet was going crazy over the video, famous bloggers taking stands on whether they thought it was real or not, and finally, the media had to take action.
Various news networks talked about the video, inviting experts to talk about why they believed the video wasn't real. The government and the military still refused to say anything about the video, sparking even more discussion on whether or not it was real or fake, but by the end of the week things had begun to calm down.
All of the attention on the video had begun to die down, replaced with news of two famous female celebrities throwing hands, and things began to calm down.
Reese left his apartment at the end of the week, driving his car to a Grocer's Mart 10 minutes away. He parked his car, grabbed a cart from the front of the store and began perusing through the aisles when he got a call from his phone. Pulling it out of his pocket, he looked at the caller ID and froze, all the anxiety and fear he'd gone through the last few weeks incomparable to what he felt now as he looked at the words ' Work ' in the caller ID.
His thoughts raced as he debated on whether to answer or not, the phone still ringing in his hand as he struggled with his fear, until the decision was made for him. The phone stopped ringing, but the anxiety he felt remained. Before he knew it, he was at home, without the groceries that he had went to buy, but he was too worried about the call to care. ' They called, what am I going to do,' he thought. 'No, maybe they don't want to see my progress, they're probably calling to make sure everything's going well with the working from home thing. I can't just assume that everything's going to fall apart. It'll be fine, everything's going to be okay. '
Feeling marginally better, Reese decided to call them back now that his small panic attack was over. ' Its going to be fine, there's nothing to worry about. ' He repeated this to himself like a mantra as he found the number and pressed call back. He listened to the phone ring in his ear as nervousness began to sink its claws into him until ' click. ' The phone picked up, and a man's voice came through the phone. " Hello? "
With a suddenly dry mouth, Reese replied, " Hi, this is Reese Argall. You guys called me earlier about something, " sounding far more confident than he felt. " Hi Reese, this is Ed, your supervisor. We just wanted to check up on you, see if the change in surroundings has helped your productivity. " " Ah, yes, yes it has. Its helped out a lot actually, and I've been making a lot of progress on the coding." "That's good to hear Reese, because I've noticed that you haven't emailed anything to the company since the third day you've been here and we would like to see all the progress you've made on the UI." Helplessness and anxiety welled up inside as Ed continued, " Please send us the email within the next 48 hours, we'd greatly appreciate it." "Yeah, yeah sorry. I-Ive been getting kind of wrapped up with my work lately. I'll be sure to send that email here soon." "That's good to hear Reese, I expect to hear from you soon." "Yep, bye." "Bye." As the call ended, Reese grabbed his head as the anxiety and helplessness began to turn into frustration and anger. "Fuck," he whispered," Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK!" The whisper turning into a yell as he let go of his grip on his hair and slammed his fists into the wall, his fist leaving a gaping hole in it. "FUCKKK," he screamed out as all hope he had about avoiding homelessness disappeared, his scream turning unintelligible as he vented his frustration and anger at his situation. ' THUMP THUMP THUMP ' "Hey, shut the fuck up with that yelling shit. My kid's tryna get his homework done," Reese's neighbor from downstairs yelled at him from outside his door. Reese came back to his senses after hearing his neighbors angry voice. Quickly walking over to the door, he opened it and apologized to him. " I'm sorry Garrett, I just got a little overwhelmed with everything that's been going on and had to vent a little of the frustration that's been building up lately. I didn't realize you guys were home yet."
Garrett and his son Bronson were the only other tenants in the building Reese lived in. The entire apartment complex they lived in had been in a state of decline the last couple of years. Because of an increase of crime in the area, the apartment complex slowly lost residents and by now, only 8 out of the 24 apartments in the complex were occupied, despite the fact that the entire complex was surrounded by an 8 foot tall, barbed wire topped fence. All of the residents were spread throughout the 6 buildings that made up the complex unevenly, with one of the buildings being completely empty.
The owner of the apartments was an elderly widow whose husband had died a year ago, so she hadn't paid much attention to the apartments since his death which allowed the apartments to fall into the state that they had.
" Yeah, Bronson got out of school and it was a slow day at the warehouse today so they let me go early today as well. But what about you man, what's going on with you? " " You sure you got the time to talk? Its kind of a long story and your kid's downstairs," Reese asked. " He'll be fine, if he needs anything he knows where I am. " " Come on in then, " Reese opened the door wider and stepped to the side to let Garrett in.