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An Unexpected Story
I was looking up a random fact about a certain show when I was struck with an intriguing mental image. In fact I thought it would make a pretty good story. I've always been awful at writing quickly, so I set myself the goal of finishing it tonight. It was only after a few paragraphs that I realized I was writing, for all intents and purposes, fanfic.
It doesn't actually have to be in the same universe as that show. There are no details that specifically tie it to any universe. The point of the story is a character study that could apply to any number of fictional settings. But it isn't like I went out of my way to distance myself from it either, and in fact I was thinking about the show the entire time I was writing it.
So here it is, the first story I've written in three years (screenplays don't count) and my first fanfic of any flavor. Like most of my stories, the character ended up going in a slightly different direction than I had planned, but I'm still pretty happy with it. For 3 hours of effort on a Sunday night.
The meeting runs late again and I'm not able to get out until well past 6. It's already getting dark out as I sprint to my car. They're out there, somewhere. They and other things much, much worse. I know because I saw them once, a long time ago.
She was in my fourth period pre-calc class. Nothing stunning by magazine standards, but there was just something about her. Confidence, like she had some great secret. I never understood why she wasn't more popular. Maybe the guys were put off by it, I don't know. It didn't put me off.
We started with the most cliched setup possible. I tutored her. I was the odd transfer student who got away with talking back to the teacher. Everyone else figured he loved me because I was some kind of math genius and I was careful to never let them see my test scores. Luckily I can talk the talk when it comes to math, even if I can't walk the walk, so it wasn't a completely one-sided arrangement.
The drive home is uneventful, but I keep an eye on my cellphone to make sure I have coverage. Only the slightest ruby glow is left in the west. No problem short of an engine fire is getting me out of this car until I'm in a locked garage. The AAA guy can smirk all he likes, but he's changing the tire.
I really should move south. Somewhere it doesn't get dark so early in the winter. I always decide I will, this time time of year. Eight hours of sunlight is a long time to think about the coming 16 hours of night.
It wasn't the smoothest of relationships. Hell, we were just high school kids, blundering along like everyone else. But it was nice.
It was better than nice, I was in love. Not in a stupid, embarrassing, loudly-declare-your-love-to-the-world-and-break-up-two-months-later kind of way. Just a simple, solid, disturbingly deep love. I honestly thought I would give my life for her.
There were problems, of course. I wished we could spend more time together. I never really clicked with her existing social circle. I sometimes doubted she was as serious as I was. We worked through them, or around them, and by that summer I was letting myself think it just might last forever.
I've been running low on food for several days now. Of course, I can't go to the store after nightfall, which is exactly why I'm running low. Yet more ramen it is.
The night is still there, just outside the windows, only barely hidden by the curtains. I try not to think about it.
TV is good for not thinking.
That was the summer it happened. We were seeing each other almost every day, though she had a night job that kept her pretty busy. Everything was great.
One evening she asks me over to her place. She makes it sound really important, like this is going to change things. Her parents are out of town so I jump to the natural conclusion.
I get there, playing it cool, and we start talking. Maybe I was a little bit too excited, because I wasn't really paying attention at first. It took a bit to sink through my dense, one-track mind what she was saying.
I never thought she was kidding. Nor did I think she was crazy. I didn't even think she was trying to scare me off. I don't know what I did think, actually. But of course I didn't believe her, because that would be silly. I came right out and told her so. Not without proof, I said, trying to be fair.
So we went out for a walk in the warm summer night.
There is a noise coming from outside. I don't dare look out a window to see what it is. Probably just a cat or something. I hope.
Everything she said had been true. The world was not as I had known it. That was my first major revelation that summer.
Now that I was in on the big secret, the rest of her friends were a lot more open around me. I tried to help out however I could. Mostly I ended up making fast food runs, but it was something. From each according to their abilities etc.
It was the most exhilarating, amazing time of my life. It was every escapist fantasy I had ever dreamed of. A group of outcasts protects the world in secret. For a geek, you just can't get more primal than that. And I lived it.
Whatever it was seems to have gone away. Bedtime.
It was a game. It was real, but it wasn't real. I stayed safe while others went out and did the dangerous part. And they were never really hurt, so it was just good clean fun all around.
Except in August things started going wrong. The research (powered by my pizza) indicated that because of recent tectonic shifts -- never mind. The point was a new big bad guy was uncomfortably close to being able to end the world. For the first time everyone was very tense and I began to take it seriously.
She was walking me home one night when we were jumped. They weren't after me, of course, and I got tossed into a tree. When I came to I was alone.
I lost no time running to the others. Without their leader they were pretty useless. Just about as useless as I was. The best thing anyone could come up with was to grab some weapons and storm the bad guy's base. Which is exactly what they did.
I went home.
I lie in bed, listening to the second hand of my watch. I'm not sleeping, not really. Not at night. Winters are pretty bad this far north. Maybe I'll get fired this year, but it hasn't happened yet. I zone out thinking about moving to the tropics. Or getting a place in Alaska and one down in Tierra del Fuego. It's almost like dreaming, only not as restful.
Night can be very loud if you're listening for it.
School started again in a few weeks, my senior year. I saw them around, so things had worked out somehow. I don't know the details, because I never talked to them again. I watched, from a distance. Maybe I was looking for an opportunity to explain, or maybe I was just torturing myself. I don't know any more.
I could always tell when something big was happening. It was easy to read it in their faces now that I knew what to look for. It happened a lot that year, every few months. I never knew what was going on.
Toward the end of the school one of them disappeared. He just stopped coming to school. I never even heard the official explanation, much less what really happened.
She made eye contact with me the next week, for the first time in months. It wasn't a look of anger, or contempt, just sadness. Maybe she was thinking I could have saved him somehow, had I been there. But all I could think was that it could have been me instead. I turned around and never saw her again.
I suppose they're all dead by now. You can only play the odds so long, and their odds never seemed that good to begin with. They knew it, too.
I hope there are other groups out there like them. Because I know how close the world is to chaos and horror. I know how close the night is. And I can't do anything about it.
It doesn't actually have to be in the same universe as that show. There are no details that specifically tie it to any universe. The point of the story is a character study that could apply to any number of fictional settings. But it isn't like I went out of my way to distance myself from it either, and in fact I was thinking about the show the entire time I was writing it.
So here it is, the first story I've written in three years (screenplays don't count) and my first fanfic of any flavor. Like most of my stories, the character ended up going in a slightly different direction than I had planned, but I'm still pretty happy with it. For 3 hours of effort on a Sunday night.
The Night
The meeting runs late again and I'm not able to get out until well past 6. It's already getting dark out as I sprint to my car. They're out there, somewhere. They and other things much, much worse. I know because I saw them once, a long time ago.
She was in my fourth period pre-calc class. Nothing stunning by magazine standards, but there was just something about her. Confidence, like she had some great secret. I never understood why she wasn't more popular. Maybe the guys were put off by it, I don't know. It didn't put me off.
We started with the most cliched setup possible. I tutored her. I was the odd transfer student who got away with talking back to the teacher. Everyone else figured he loved me because I was some kind of math genius and I was careful to never let them see my test scores. Luckily I can talk the talk when it comes to math, even if I can't walk the walk, so it wasn't a completely one-sided arrangement.
The drive home is uneventful, but I keep an eye on my cellphone to make sure I have coverage. Only the slightest ruby glow is left in the west. No problem short of an engine fire is getting me out of this car until I'm in a locked garage. The AAA guy can smirk all he likes, but he's changing the tire.
I really should move south. Somewhere it doesn't get dark so early in the winter. I always decide I will, this time time of year. Eight hours of sunlight is a long time to think about the coming 16 hours of night.
It wasn't the smoothest of relationships. Hell, we were just high school kids, blundering along like everyone else. But it was nice.
It was better than nice, I was in love. Not in a stupid, embarrassing, loudly-declare-your-love-to-the-world-and-break-up-two-months-later kind of way. Just a simple, solid, disturbingly deep love. I honestly thought I would give my life for her.
There were problems, of course. I wished we could spend more time together. I never really clicked with her existing social circle. I sometimes doubted she was as serious as I was. We worked through them, or around them, and by that summer I was letting myself think it just might last forever.
I've been running low on food for several days now. Of course, I can't go to the store after nightfall, which is exactly why I'm running low. Yet more ramen it is.
The night is still there, just outside the windows, only barely hidden by the curtains. I try not to think about it.
TV is good for not thinking.
That was the summer it happened. We were seeing each other almost every day, though she had a night job that kept her pretty busy. Everything was great.
One evening she asks me over to her place. She makes it sound really important, like this is going to change things. Her parents are out of town so I jump to the natural conclusion.
I get there, playing it cool, and we start talking. Maybe I was a little bit too excited, because I wasn't really paying attention at first. It took a bit to sink through my dense, one-track mind what she was saying.
I never thought she was kidding. Nor did I think she was crazy. I didn't even think she was trying to scare me off. I don't know what I did think, actually. But of course I didn't believe her, because that would be silly. I came right out and told her so. Not without proof, I said, trying to be fair.
So we went out for a walk in the warm summer night.
There is a noise coming from outside. I don't dare look out a window to see what it is. Probably just a cat or something. I hope.
Everything she said had been true. The world was not as I had known it. That was my first major revelation that summer.
Now that I was in on the big secret, the rest of her friends were a lot more open around me. I tried to help out however I could. Mostly I ended up making fast food runs, but it was something. From each according to their abilities etc.
It was the most exhilarating, amazing time of my life. It was every escapist fantasy I had ever dreamed of. A group of outcasts protects the world in secret. For a geek, you just can't get more primal than that. And I lived it.
Whatever it was seems to have gone away. Bedtime.
It was a game. It was real, but it wasn't real. I stayed safe while others went out and did the dangerous part. And they were never really hurt, so it was just good clean fun all around.
Except in August things started going wrong. The research (powered by my pizza) indicated that because of recent tectonic shifts -- never mind. The point was a new big bad guy was uncomfortably close to being able to end the world. For the first time everyone was very tense and I began to take it seriously.
She was walking me home one night when we were jumped. They weren't after me, of course, and I got tossed into a tree. When I came to I was alone.
I lost no time running to the others. Without their leader they were pretty useless. Just about as useless as I was. The best thing anyone could come up with was to grab some weapons and storm the bad guy's base. Which is exactly what they did.
I went home.
I lie in bed, listening to the second hand of my watch. I'm not sleeping, not really. Not at night. Winters are pretty bad this far north. Maybe I'll get fired this year, but it hasn't happened yet. I zone out thinking about moving to the tropics. Or getting a place in Alaska and one down in Tierra del Fuego. It's almost like dreaming, only not as restful.
Night can be very loud if you're listening for it.
School started again in a few weeks, my senior year. I saw them around, so things had worked out somehow. I don't know the details, because I never talked to them again. I watched, from a distance. Maybe I was looking for an opportunity to explain, or maybe I was just torturing myself. I don't know any more.
I could always tell when something big was happening. It was easy to read it in their faces now that I knew what to look for. It happened a lot that year, every few months. I never knew what was going on.
Toward the end of the school one of them disappeared. He just stopped coming to school. I never even heard the official explanation, much less what really happened.
She made eye contact with me the next week, for the first time in months. It wasn't a look of anger, or contempt, just sadness. Maybe she was thinking I could have saved him somehow, had I been there. But all I could think was that it could have been me instead. I turned around and never saw her again.
I suppose they're all dead by now. You can only play the odds so long, and their odds never seemed that good to begin with. They knew it, too.
I hope there are other groups out there like them. Because I know how close the world is to chaos and horror. I know how close the night is. And I can't do anything about it.
no subject
I'm curious-- what were you looking up?
no subject
no subject
(PS write more stories)
no subject