Fan Fiction ❯ Of a Former Time ❯ The Problem with Realization ( Chapter 1 )

Series: Of a Former Time

Chapter name: The Problem with Realization

Rating: I think PG-13 should do it. I've had some trouble in the past with not rating things right…

Author: Stagnant

E-mail: Phoenix1015@msn.com

Beta:

Notes: This whole story takes place something like ten years from now, but this chapter is mostly a flashback to the days of now.

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I never seem to let realization hit me. Why should I when I know that it will only scare the crap out of me? That's also why I tend to not think things through. I know what I'm doing and I fully understand the consequences of what I'm doing. I always do. In the back of my mind, I know. But I never quite realize it. I don't dwell on anything. Some people say I just don't care, or they simply allow themselves to believe I'm incredibly arrogant. Or ignorant. Take your pick. Others actually admire my "bravery" as they put it. Really, I'm just a scared little shit. Twenty-seven years old and I'm still looking back ten years. Back to when I was seventeen.

It happened on a chilly Thursday night sometime in October. It was my junior year of high school. My parents had gone out to eat that night; they had had, according to my mom, a stressful day and didn't want to cook. They asked if I wanted to come, but I said no. I had to study for a huge English test and I could not afford to fail. My teacher was such a prick and I was pretty sure he was out to single-handedly ruin my future. So I had to study. I got no slack in that class.

After about half a mind-numbing hour of trying to memorize the first eighteen lines of the prologue to Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, and only being down to "The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne", my head started to feel as though I had been beating it on the table I was working at. The fact that I was getting this feeling around the seventh line made me think that I really needed to take some aspirin before I attempted to get any further. My aspirin search eventually led to a full-blown break complete with a bag of Hot Fries and a Cherry Coke. I figured that was okay, though, as I was repeating what I knew of the prologue to myself over and over during the impromptu break. My justification was this: by the time I had downed the last of my Cherry Coke, I could spit out the first seven lines like nobody's business.

I was about to go back to my homework to tackle the eighth line when I heard it. Someone was rattling the knob to the back door. I felt my body go rigid. Nobody used the back door. My mind strayed to every horror movie I had ever seen. I swallowed. No, I thought. Don't be stupid. It's probably just one of my lame-ass friends trying to pull a fast one on me. Yeah. That was the only logical explanation, right? I felt a nervous little smile creep across my face. I slowly forced my head to look in the direction of the kitchen window; you could see the back door from there. I was probably just Chase, the little fucker.

My head finished its quarter circle turn to the window. I froze. What I saw through the haze of the dirty window, could not be Chase. Chase was not that big. Nobody I knew was that big. My fingers loosened as my mind raced. I dropped the can I was still holding onto. It hit the linoleum floor in a clatter like thunder. Like the ring of a gunshot.

The man outside appeared not to have heard the explosion. He just continued to work at the doorknob, seemingly oblivious to the storm I had created in the kitchen.

I realized for the first time that my heart was trying to escape the confines of my chest. I noticed that my breathing was so slow and shallow that my lungs were screaming for the air I was neglecting to give them. My body was rigid with fear. I couldn't move. It seemed like a physical impossibility. I was such a punk at school and had a rep for being pretty tough, and I couldn't even move. Hell, I could have peed myself if my bowels would've moved. I could feel the blood slowly drain from my face and extremities as I turned pale as a ghost.

You have to move. You cannot stay here. My brain was telling me this. My brain was yelling to my body that if I didn't do something, I would die. You have to move! My body was not listening. Did not even seem interested in paying attention. MOVE!!

My brain finally drove my consciousness back to reality. What am I supposed to do? Where am I supposed to go? I yelled at my brain for answers, but it had gone silent. Fuck you, was all I could come up with as a retort to the silence. It looked like I would be doing this solo. I just had to think. There was no way I was going to make it outside with him right there. I was too irrational to even think of just using the front door. I was willing to bet that if he had come here on a killing spree he would look under beds and in closets. All I could do was think for what felt like five minutes. I jumped as I heard the sound of glass being smashed by an intolerant fist. Apparently, patience was not a virtue this guy held in high regard. There had to be somewhere I could go.

It came to me in a flood. Remodeling! After putting it off for forever, my dad was finally remodeling the kitchen. The intruder had gone downstairs so I practically flew to the back of the kitchen. I squeezed into the tiny cubby hole where the new stove would be going. For now the old stove had been partly pulled out so that it was still more than halfway in its little nook in the wall. Measuring, my dad had explained to me when I had given him a questioning look.

I sat down on the grey, ageless grime of the floor and pulled my knees up to my chest. At about that time the man came thumping back upstairs and flipped on the hallway light. I could hear him tying to taunt me, saying things like 'I know somebody's home! Common out! I heard you in here!' My heart leapt into my throat. He had heard the shotgun sound of the can hitting the floor. I cursed my carelessness. There could be no doubt that somebody was indeed in the house. The man came into the kitchen. He looked into the cabinets sitting on the floor and a broom closet. I prayed he wouldn't come to the stove. I guess I should have been a more devout person, because my prayers went ignored.

He came over to the stove. Shined his flashlight over the edge. He smelled like alcohol. I made myself as small as I could and pushed myself into the corner. He chuckled. He had found me. I felt my crotch grow warm and damp. I grimaced as I realized that my bowels had finally let themselves go. Fuck. I thought to myself as a tear threatened to fall over the rim of my eye. But it seemed that my embarrassment would remain my own. The man moved away, still laughing to himself. "I know you're here, and I will find you!" He shouted his proclamation as if it were a mere statement of fact. I shouldn't have been so irrational. The combination of my prayers and my cowardly huddling in the corner had worked.

Eventually the man left the kitchen. That's when something inside me snapped. Realization hit. I could die here. Actually, I probably would. Dead. My parents would come home to an empty house, report me missing, and, several days later, find my pale, rotting, stinking, bloody corpse dropped carelessly somewhere in the woods behind our house. I would never see my girlfriend again. Or my family. Or my friends, cousins, aunts, uncles, or grandparents. Never. I would never get high with my friends in the basement again. I would never listen to that new System of a Down CD I had wanted. I would never take that stupid test over Chaucer I had been studying for. Little things suddenly became important. Stupid, little things. The way my girlfriend played with her hair. How the book I had been reading would end. The lyrics to some song by Green Day. Even the irritating way my alarm clock sounded. Stupid shit that just did not matter. Never again. I was going to be cold and stiff in a box lined with fabric in the bitter, unyielding ground.

I started shaking. Suddenly my voice cracked and I let out a something like a whimper. I was horrified. He must have heard. As if the pounding in my chest hadn't been enough to give me away. Before I knew what I was doing, I was out the backdoor. I had let it slam. Oh, well. Didn't matter. My mind had literally shut down. I couldn't hear the man behind me. Couldn't hear the gunshots. None of it mattered. My body had taken off completely on its own. So fast it had left me behind to wonder what the hell I was doing. I must have blacked out or something because my vision went from nothing but trees to my fists pounding on some stranger's red door.

Then I was me again. I started screaming at the door. At last a pretty pissed man flung the door open and yelled, "Do you have any idea what time it is?!!" I didn't have a chance to answer. I pushed my way inside and slammed the door shut. All the while this old guy was yelling curse words at the top of his lungs, calling me a punk and a delinquent. A throwaway of society. My spinning head slowed down enough for me to yell "CALL THE FUCKING COPS!!!!" The guy didn't look too sure, but the tear I had inadvertently let slip down my cheek seemed to convince him. I fell onto the couch, not caring that I was probably staining the expensive fabric with the piss still clinging tenaciously to my pants. All I wanted was to sleep. The adrenaline rush had been too much. I shut my eyes as the guy came back at insisted that the cops needed to know something of what had happened. I threw a few curses of my own at the man, as I tried to pull my leaden eyelids up. The man didn't leave so, I managed to explain some of what had happened before I was out.

I was woken up maybe five minutes later, tops. And whom did I see? Cops. Shit. What did I do? I shook off the fuzziness that had accompanied my stress-induced sleep. In a tidal wave that could smash buildings down to the ground, it all came back to me. The cops asked me a few questions then took me outside where a police car and an ambulance waited. And my parents. After hearing a big, long speech about something (most of which I didn't get because I was still out of it) I was taken to the hospital for an exam. And a new pair of pants, thank God. The only thing wrong with me was some sort of trauma. A couple of weeks (or months. Hey, Who's countin'?) huddled in a corner rocking myself cured that. Or at least what people on the outside could see. The killer was caught and I got the ever-loving crap annoyed out of me by reporters. None of whom I wanted to talk to. (Funny how I became an undercover reporter.) Anyway, henceforth my habit of keeping true realization from hitting me.

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Well, what do you think? I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do with this. It might stay a one-shot, it might become a series. I don't know. Please R&R. Input is greatly appreciated.

Also, I am in desperate need of a beta if anyone is interested. *grins uncomfortably*