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The human stomach is an amazing thing. In childhood the size of a stomach depends entirely upon the dish that is being served. It contains an entire universe of space for something desirable such as ice-cream or an extra serving of strawberries or potato chips, yet is only the size of one microscopic portion of the broccoli being served. No wonder kids are said to have eyes bigger than their stomachs. There is no accurate way to measure how much food there is room for. Adults have a rather dull stomach, though it has problems with foods that in younger years went through the system without hesitation. Suddenly a pizza loaded with pepperoni, sausage, onions, and green peppers sounds less like a food and more like a digestive bomb. Perhaps the most unusual, and amazing, stomach of all belongs to teenagers. It will gladly accept five star cuisine food or peanut butter, jelly, and hot sauce sandwiches. It has the capacity of a child stomach in a candy store, but the flexabilty of an Olympic gymnast.

So it was almost to be expected that shortly after dinner had ended Locke had made his way back into the kitchen for a snack. He set a pot of water boiling and poured some elbow macaroni. Next came out blocks of cheese. Locke's little snack was turning into more of a second supper. Perhaps he was part hobbit. His stomach was growling though. Even he was a little amazed at how quickly he digested his meals and snacks. Heaven forbid he grow anymore. As was Locke was getting pretty close to six feet. The voice changing part of puberty was over, though aparently not the growing part. "If I was a cheese grater, where would I be kept?" he rhetorically asked the fridge. Since it gave him no answer he simply opened it and took out an apple, shoving it into his mouth. He was starving.

Keep moving, Locke commanded his creation. It was pointless really since it was his mind moving the thing, but a little motivational word or two never hurt. Nor did bullets on a marble man. Maybe if Fluffy had a mind of his own he would feel pain and express it to Locke, but the teen felt nothing more than one would if you threw a paper airplane at them. They were a distraction, one that Locke was having major issues with. Just getting the golem to move was challenging enough and he could live without having it get pecked at. This must be what a statue feels like right before the pigeon lands on it. The only upside to working with the marble was that it did not crumble like dirt and sand did.

Bullets were one thing, but a body hitting the golem was another. Granted it hurt the poor sod more than it did damage to the golem, but it still was unexpected. Locke panicked slightly. Never before had something that large hit Fluffy. In the hallway the marble creation did a slow motion bellyflop, melding back into the floor. The person that had been firing at them was now in a sort of turtle-shell/cage/sandwich, effectively trapped.

Locke asked his dad once what the world looked like without his glasses on. A psycho-show merry-go-round of color, had been the response. Flash forwards several years and the teen now knew what he meant. Each wobbly step he took made him wonder if the room would stop spinning around and around and going up and down. "Told you we don't need to kill," he said leaning against a wall to regain his sense of direction. His voice had dropped down even further, and rather then a grandpa voice, it was like two cinder blocks being dragged. His hair had gotten stringy with sweat and no longer covered the scarred eye.

Whatever it was that Locke had found in the darkness started, well, dancing, underneath his fingertips. It skittered, it shifted, it did not stay still. Locke hated that. He could not tell if it was him panicking and that having an effect on the, hopefully, concrete, or if it was the computer program messing even more with his mind. Of course he knew that this was a just a bunch of data, and that he wasn’t really trapped inside of a wall, but logic did not want to coincide with him now. Lovecraft might have been a wicked man for coming up with Cthulu, but whoever decided to recreate it here, they had a mind more twisted than a plate of spaghetti. If he found out who did this, Locke was going to drag them down into the dirt and give them a time out until they knew the amount of panic that he’d been through.

He did not let himself think long about the revenge he was going to get on the programmer. The possible wall might be his only chance to get out of this nowhere and out of the sight of the eyes. When he made a golem, it came up and out of the ground. Hopefully being on the inside of the dirt would make it bubble outwards instead of inwards. If only he could break through… Locke gave it one last hard shove, both physically with his hands, and mentally. It was all he had in him as panic was dissolving him.

And somehow he fell through. It was not the result of anything that he had done, because the wall was no longer there. Things around him were slowly going back to normal. “Ok, that was almost as bad as my nightmare,” he panted, glad to be free and to see that there was no tentacles. Ms. Csendes asked him a question and he needed to catch his breath before answering. Locke unzipped his jacket and tied it around his hips. “I saw nothing.”

"Don't have a cow. Geography was just the names of states and capitals. US History never goes past World War 2, if you have a textbook that doesn't end with 'Someday man will get to the moon', and in high school they start teaching you about Europe, as if there were only two continents in the world," he said quickly, hoping to diffuse her. Yes, Locke was intimidated by a girl. And for good reason. They fight dirty. He might not be able to read thoughts, or even be remarkably in tune with females, but her nearly falling off the dryer and her lecture told him that he had hit on something that annoyed her. Locke would be the first to admit he had not learned everything that he could have from school. Part of it was a lack of funds, and another part was just the curriculum. History is only what people deem to be important, and a map only includes what the cartographer thinks is important.

Having just stepped on a land mine Locke was relieved that she moved onto movies. "It's not just about the shock value," he defended himself and his favorite movies with, "It's the incredible amount of thought and precision behind each one of the traps. Jigsaw puts his victims in a situation where they are in charge, no matter how unlikely that seems. The reason why people get hurt and maimed is they don't take the second to think and see what is there, and what is wrong with them. I'm not saying that what he does is right, but they do point out a fatal flaw with humanity. I can name at least three examples where the people die because nobody thinks that someone else can help them. Oh, and buckets of fake blood can be good. Evil Dead is just so horribly B rated it's not even a horror movie in the end."

Did he read? "Yeah, I guess I read some. I have a library card. No real genre, but I'm not a fan of science, both fiction or non."

"Mississippi River?" Locke asked, a little confused. He'd done ok in geography as a kid, and probably could name the capital of a few states, but he wasn't all that clear on where rivers and such were. "I thought you said you were from Wisconsin." He had some doubts that the Mississippi River started all the way up there. If it did wouldn't they call it the Wisconsin River instead? Twyla said that she had left her home state. So did that mean that she had traveled south before going north? Even if he had ridden in the train across the country and through many states Locke did not consider him having stopped in any of them long enough to claim he'd been there. It would be like saying that he been in them while flying in a plane.

Sadly he did not have much to offer when she asked what interests he had other than music and his mutation. He had to stop and think up what to say. We covered music, and since I said I did more lyric writing then music that leaves writing covered. I talked about Chris and Mai, which is most of it, and Twyla's ruled out the mud. I am boring."Uh, I guess that's about it. I like movies I guess, but everyone does. I try to catch as many horror and psychological thrillers I can talk my step-mom into letting me see. I got all the Saw movies."

"If you stick your right side forwards you still could get hit on the left, and that's where the heart is. Turning sideways will also make you turn your head so that the left side of you neck is a longer target, putting a strain on the muscles so people could see where the jugular is better," Locke pointed out. It surprised him that something he had read from those biology and anatomy books had stuck with him. Not that it made all that big a difference. His golems still had only the vaguest human shape to them, they lacked a neck, and Saph seemed intent on rushing in everywhere blind. He who hesitates is lost might be a pretty good motto for the guy, but it wasn't necessarily the best tactic.

As someone approached Locke ducked into the closest unoccupied room, noticing that Saph had gone a different way. If they had stayed together maybe Locke could inform him that he knew where other people were. More shots were fired and Locke found himself to be lucky enough yet again to not be the target. Was Saph enjoying this? Did he think that even if he got shot on his right side he wouldn't loose blood? Wait... would he? Locke was not sure, but he knew he better do something.

Breathe in for three seconds. Hold for three. Breathe out for three. Locke fell into the pattern, eyes glazing over as he worked his way into the marble. Even the softest parts of it was harder than he expected. He found himself dancing about the stuff that was just too hard, pulling from the floor what he could. The end result was a golem just short of his own height, but with the exception of its hands, considerably trimmer. He stood back up, focus on the golem and urged it forwards. Sweat broke out on his skin.