I've been thinking a lot about my current title that I'm working on, under the name PROJECT: FEVER, and have decided to get an idea of audience reception. I am aware that an aspiring writer should never listen to critics, and remember that you are writing for yourself and your pleasure, not the critics. However, as there are many liek minded people here, I'm thinkin' of you Dusk , I'd share the Prologue to see how many 'bites' I get and depending on that I will share more..... sound like a plan?
Prologue
0
July 15th, 2051. End of the school year. Another holiday....
A long journey, trapped in the family four-by-four, on a long road through the woods, to reach the small town they called home....
Father, with short, blazing red hair, green eyes and pale white skin drove. Mother, with flowing dark brown hair, hazel eyes and beautifully tanned skin rode passenger. In the back seat, leant back with arms crossed and eyes closed was the thirteen year old Son. Like his mother, he had a tanned complexion, but unlike either of the parents, he had a head of scruffy black hair. He wore his uniform, as all boys of his school did: anything they wanted provided they wear the black school coat. Today that consisted of a red long sleeve shirt and brown trousers under the big black coat. He had taken the liberty of customizing this necessity, the coat far too large for him, cutting the sleeves from it. He never had been one to conform.
“Looking forward to coming home?” Father asked, half-heartedly attempting to break the silence.
The boy made a neutral grunt of agreement.
“Your grades okay?”
“Pretty good this year,” the Son finally spoke, in a calm, but unnaturally low voice for child of his age; a voice that when heard felt like a warm embrace from a shadow itself: like it was there and inviting, but not actually there at all.
“They won’t last,” Mother chipped in coldly. The beautiful woman was sweet on the eyes, but far more bitter for those who knew her better, “You just wait ‘til next year. You’ll see!” in her ‘I-think-I-know-everything’ tone.
The boy’s mouth muscles twitched, struggling to remain in his contemplative state.
“And he knows it!”
“firetruck you,” he snarled, the warmth in his voice now a flare.
Both parents rounded on him, his father almost veering into a ditch, before quickly regaining control, and diverted his attention back to the road. A long silence ensued, but Mother would not let it last.
“We send you to school to learn....that?!” she spat, her hair spilling into her ever so beautiful face, “We should have sent you to...”
The boy finally opened his eyes, his chilling blue eyes that were alien to his blood, and looked his mother in the eye. In one swift movement, he struck the ranting woman across the face, choking her with her next words. She fell back to her seat, howling in pain and anger. Father began to sweat, but remained rigid in his seat with his eyes on the road, unsure of how to react to his son’s action.
With a smirk of hateful satisfaction he released his seatbelt, and opened his door. He jumped out, coat billowing black behind, into the fast moving empty road. He rolled twice before holding ground on one knee, grimacing from the rough impact as he fell forward onto his hands. Blood had already begun to run down his trousers and from his palms. He heard shouts of his father and the screaming woman from the vehicle he had so gracefully disembarked, which added its own screech as it skidded to a halt, but disregarded both and walked purposefully away from the noise.
It was only Father who came running towards the sight of the scruffy jet-black hair and billowing coat that passed the child’s knees. At the sound of shoes hitting tarmac, the child stopped and when the man finally drew close, he turned to face him. For what seemed like an age, they stood where they were: face to face; Father and Son; on the empty road through the woods, several miles from anywhere. Even the breeze seemed to still. Then they came together embracing: blazing and black hair, white and dark skins together, and the boy could hear his father whispering into his ear.
“Son...Just come home when you are ready. Return to the fam...Please.... I’ll always be here for you! I...”
His voice broke off into what the child knew unmistakably as tears, and a single tear ran down his own cheek.
“I love you Fa...Dad,” he said in a level voice. Mother never approved of the ‘improper’ address.
“I love you too. I love you Son,” the man sobbed openly, unashamed.
With that, they broke apart and slowly, yet all too quickly, the child’s role model, family and old life walked away from him, closing the vehicle’s rear door before climbing in himself. He did not so much as glance back. The man simply could not bear to.
The engine restarted, and the boy watched the bulky green thing move on without him, his calmness lost, and an expression of complete loss and sorrow replaced the cool look and early maturity as another tear rolled down his face; a testament to his real age.
I can never go back...Can I.....?
He gritted his teeth and tried to fight his tears, and as the car finally disappeared from sight, he turned up his collar and walked with head down into the trees, tears rolling down his young face.
*
It was many hours later before he finally returned to his home, and to find it empty. The car was parked in front of the garage, connected to the large old building, and nothing seemed obviously out of place or missing, save his parents.
The door was not locked, and with a sudden chill he realised that he hadn’t expected it to be. The front door led directly into the sitting room, and faced the staircase that ascended to the bedrooms and bathroom. It was here he sat, at the foot of the stairs, for hours that turned to days, only moving for necessities and waiting for a familiar face to come through that door. Even his forsaken mother would be of some comfort to him, but as the third day drew to a close, the thirteen year old boy knew that his father had abandoned him.
For time unknown, the child stayed home alone. As fortune had it, there was plenty of food in the house, but he did not eat much. He took his bedding from the tiny room he felt he had been ‘imprisoned’ in for so much of his life, and moved it all down to the sitting room. Soon, with the aid of his father’s old tool box and a lot of rip-work, he made a long ‘hammock’ of rags, strung across the length of the living room with a large number of nails in the wall at both ends. Customizing things had always been in his nature.
But the basics were easy. Things got a lot tougher. He began feeling strange bursts of energy, often leading to headaches and dizziness. But the blackouts were the worst, waking from something far from sleep in the midst of destroyed furniture, torn clothes and other broken objects, always feeling hot and at a complete loss of memory. The wreckage was almost certainly his work, so why could he not remember?
Time came and went totally irrelevantly, and the boy lived on (of course), always cautious of the next episode (as there certainly would be), and fighting to control himself. He lay in his long makeshift hammock in a plain white vest and jeans (holes singed just above his right knee and another just below his left) hands behind his head, eyes closed.
Remain calm. Think Clearly. Be ready...
This was the state he was found in.
0.5
The boy awoke in his hammock one morning to the sound of rattling at the front door, which led into the sitting room (now also his bedroom): somebody was trying to get in. As a marksman is well practised for the shoot, so was he. Instinctively he reached into his father’s toolbox, now kept under his hammock, and drew a large, heavy wrench. The door finally clicked open and the boy hurled the tool with extreme force and precision at the newcomer. There was a splintering crunch as the projectile took a chunk out of the old oak door and crashed against the wall in a small explosion of pale orange plaster, before clattering to the floor. The marksman had missed his mark, but not by far, as a large, pale white head came around the door. The boy’s hand froze as he caught the glint from the blackglasses, his hand already hovering over his box of projectiles, as the man’s body came through the door.
He was a large man in an expensive black suit and pale blue shirt full of belly that hung over his trousers, his shoes polished to perfection. He was old, with deep creases across his forehead, his eyes hidden by the small blackglasses mounted on a large protruding nose. Despite being almost totally bald, he had a long, bushy moustache of the purest white, whiter than his own skin even, like two small bleached fox tails.
It took a moment, but the boy, rising from the hammock and taking a few steps forward, finally recognized the aged intruder.
“Grandfather?” he breathed.
“Ha ha! Child, you almost killed your own blood!” the man raved happily, “It has been quite a while, Grandson.”
A look of hope spread over the boy’s face, reflecting his youth, but quickly disappeared, “They’re not here.”
The wide grin also faded from his grandfather’s wide face, “Yes, a week now? Getting on two?”
The boy remained silent, searching the empty black lenses in vain. His grandfather seemed to almost forget him, and did a once over of the room. It was a large room with faint orange wallpaper and a wooden floor. It had a burgundy leather sofa (not long ago it had contained two), a large plasma screen television and a vast fire place dominating the room. It was a sitting room for those who could afford to make it so, but now there was wreckage of all sorts cluttering the floor and by the doorway to the kitchen was where one end of the ‘hammock’ was now pitched.
He smiled and, almost as if thinking aloud, said “I thought you would have a little more imagination, you know. Your own house and all you show for it is this rag?” He had turned to look at the wall, now with many more nails in than it had a week ago, and a great number more than it had had two weeks ago.
“How did you know? How did you know they were gone?” the boy’s warm shadow of a voice rose in tone slightly as he slipped of his rag sheets and stepped towards the old man. However his grandfather was still scanning the room, and did not answer.
“Grandfather!”
“Child, not for a moment believe that I am here for no reason, nor by mere coincidence,” he snapped impatiently, still facing away from him, but he could see his white moustache bob with every word. His voice becoming stern, “Do you have any idea what your future could hold? Surely you don’t intend on living here in solitude until you can no longer keep yourself alive?”
“What do you...?”
The old man turned to face him at last, creases deepening across his forehead, “You have something nobody else has! You have no idea!”
“But Grandfather, I have nothing.”
“Nothing?! OH-HO-HO!” he leaned back, which looked remarkably like a large egg tilting, and laughed long and loud. His laugh was like a screeching roar, the bushy moustache bouncing with a life of its own, but all too quickly he was forward and serious again, “Dear boy, do you really believe that you are like everybody else?” He raised a white gloved hand to his temple in thought before looking up again, “Have you not been suffering for some time now? Insomnia? Loss of memory perhaps?”
The boy did not reply, but merely looked at his balled fist, opening it and flexing his nimble fingers, frowning. However, his grandfather had seen the answer in the child’s eyes. His small blackglasses gleamed, and when the boy finally looked up, he saw his own chilling eyes staring back at him.
“You want to control that. You want your memories. You... not even I understand fully what is at hand here!”
On saying this, the large man noticed a heavily burnt sofa, one of burgundy leather, tidied away to the far corner of the room, half in and half out of the cupboard under the stairs. He only noticed now the light smell in the stuffy air of the scorched material.
“But how?”
Once again the elderly man’s glasses gleamed as a wide grin broke across his face, “Grandson, I am a man of great intellect!” Tapping his bald head with a gloved knuckle, “You know, I am one of the world’s leading scientists, and together we will...hmm... fix you, if you take the term.”
The boy looked down at his feet. No he didn’t. He didn’t understand most of what was going on. What was wrong with him? What is this thing he had that interested his grandfather so? He had no family besides the man before him, no real life or friends. At this he bit down hard on his lower lip, holding back the tears of loneliness. All he had was this forsaken house, and a slowly depleting store of food. He was only thirteen for Christ’s sake! One thing was sure in the boy’s mind however: he needed answers.
Slowly, turning on his heel, he returned to his hammock, closing his eyes, and lay in the way he had become accustomed to, wishing the world away.
“I know this is difficult,” the elderly voice came from close by, suddenly morose, “but things will get out of hand if you don’t learn to control yourself.” He heard a clattering sound on the floor as his grandfather kicked away shards of plates. “If you grow up with these problems, in fear at that, who knows what will become of you!”
The child in the hammock bit back the retort that rose to his lips; something about him not being afraid. He would have been lying. He was very alone, confused and afraid. He lay still, taking it all in, stretching the silence.
“How long have you known?” the warm, soft voice came at last.
There was another silence, this time broken by Grandfather’s response.
“I’ve had suspicions for years: suspicions that there may be some...unique piece to your puzzle, if you catch my drift? You have your very own project in the central laboratory! Yes, ever since a very early age, you have had files with your name on in the database.”
“And you never cared to tell me that I’ve been a part of one of your little experiments?”
“You could not understand! The information was to be kept from you for a later stage in your life, but I suppose fate has its way ultimately. Even as a scientist, I can accept that. Your father knew....”
“My father?” he spat in a mixture of surprise and resentment, before questions came to him that he should have asked before: “Where is he now? Dead, maybe?” His eyes flicked open, his cold blue eyes fell on the old man, and not even he could not resist a flinch. His eyes were frightening, sharp and dangerous. Grandfather hung his head in silence. He feared those eyes, but he had also seen the flicker of flame in his grandson’s eyes.
“Is he?” the warm, dark voice becoming hot and more forceful, yet mesmerising at the same time. His chilling gaze locked onto the large man’s glasses. He now looked like an egg tipped forward.
The man sighed. “I don’t know, in all honesty.” He thought under the cold glare, finding the words before looking into the chilling eyes, “We were going to tell you together, your father and I. He decided that he would leave you to me. He didn’t want to disrupt your progress, you must understand, but...” He turned from the boy, shaking his head, and gazed out of the window across the room, by the corner with the television in it (it was remarkable how the set had not been scathed by the child’s unexplained wrath) and his blackglasses were now catching the full glare of the rising sun. “He wasn’t supposed to have left! Not now. Not at all...”
The old man said no more, but it was enough: the pieces were coming together. He began to understand. He had been abandoned. Father had left him. Grandfather turned and stepped towards the hammock, his beady eyes hidden behind the black lenses.
“I won’t force you to do anything you do not wish to, Grandson, but for the greater good please come with me. I will help you hone your abilities. I will teach you to control the fire inside....” He extended a hand to the boy, “But of course, the choice is yours.”
For a minute, the boy just lay there.
I need to find the answers... Power...Fire inside... Knowledge... Knowledge is...power, right?
When he opened his eyes, the hand was still there. So the boy with the scruffy black hair took his grandfather’s hand, and got up onto his feet.
I've been thinking a lot about my current title that I'm working on, under the name PROJECT: FEVER, and have decided to get an idea of audience reception. I am aware that an aspiring writer should never listen to critics, and remember that you are writing for yourself and your pleasure, not the critics. However, as there are many liek minded people here, I'm thinkin' of you Dusk
, I'd share the Prologue to see how many 'bites' I get and depending on that I will share more..... sound like a plan?
Prologue
0
July 15th, 2051. End of the school year. Another holiday....
A long journey, trapped in the family four-by-four, on a long road through the woods, to reach the small town they called home....
Father, with short, blazing red hair, green eyes and pale white skin drove. Mother, with flowing dark brown hair, hazel eyes and beautifully tanned skin rode passenger. In the back seat, leant back with arms crossed and eyes closed was the thirteen year old Son. Like his mother, he had a tanned complexion, but unlike either of the parents, he had a head of scruffy black hair. He wore his uniform, as all boys of his school did: anything they wanted provided they wear the black school coat. Today that consisted of a red long sleeve shirt and brown trousers under the big black coat. He had taken the liberty of customizing this necessity, the coat far too large for him, cutting the sleeves from it. He never had been one to conform.
“Looking forward to coming home?” Father asked, half-heartedly attempting to break the silence.
The boy made a neutral grunt of agreement.
“Your grades okay?”
“Pretty good this year,” the Son finally spoke, in a calm, but unnaturally low voice for child of his age; a voice that when heard felt like a warm embrace from a shadow itself: like it was there and inviting, but not actually there at all.
“They won’t last,” Mother chipped in coldly. The beautiful woman was sweet on the eyes, but far more bitter for those who knew her better, “You just wait ‘til next year. You’ll see!” in her ‘I-think-I-know-everything’ tone.
The boy’s mouth muscles twitched, struggling to remain in his contemplative state.
“And he knows it!”
“firetruck you,” he snarled, the warmth in his voice now a flare.
Both parents rounded on him, his father almost veering into a ditch, before quickly regaining control, and diverted his attention back to the road. A long silence ensued, but Mother would not let it last.
“We send you to school to learn....that?!” she spat, her hair spilling into her ever so beautiful face, “We should have sent you to...”
The boy finally opened his eyes, his chilling blue eyes that were alien to his blood, and looked his mother in the eye. In one swift movement, he struck the ranting woman across the face, choking her with her next words. She fell back to her seat, howling in pain and anger. Father began to sweat, but remained rigid in his seat with his eyes on the road, unsure of how to react to his son’s action.
With a smirk of hateful satisfaction he released his seatbelt, and opened his door. He jumped out, coat billowing black behind, into the fast moving empty road. He rolled twice before holding ground on one knee, grimacing from the rough impact as he fell forward onto his hands. Blood had already begun to run down his trousers and from his palms. He heard shouts of his father and the screaming woman from the vehicle he had so gracefully disembarked, which added its own screech as it skidded to a halt, but disregarded both and walked purposefully away from the noise.
It was only Father who came running towards the sight of the scruffy jet-black hair and billowing coat that passed the child’s knees. At the sound of shoes hitting tarmac, the child stopped and when the man finally drew close, he turned to face him. For what seemed like an age, they stood where they were: face to face; Father and Son; on the empty road through the woods, several miles from anywhere. Even the breeze seemed to still. Then they came together embracing: blazing and black hair, white and dark skins together, and the boy could hear his father whispering into his ear.
“Son...Just come home when you are ready. Return to the fam...Please.... I’ll always be here for you! I...”
His voice broke off into what the child knew unmistakably as tears, and a single tear ran down his own cheek.
“I love you Fa...Dad,” he said in a level voice. Mother never approved of the ‘improper’ address.
“I love you too. I love you Son,” the man sobbed openly, unashamed.
With that, they broke apart and slowly, yet all too quickly, the child’s role model, family and old life walked away from him, closing the vehicle’s rear door before climbing in himself. He did not so much as glance back. The man simply could not bear to.
The engine restarted, and the boy watched the bulky green thing move on without him, his calmness lost, and an expression of complete loss and sorrow replaced the cool look and early maturity as another tear rolled down his face; a testament to his real age.
I can never go back...Can I.....?
He gritted his teeth and tried to fight his tears, and as the car finally disappeared from sight, he turned up his collar and walked with head down into the trees, tears rolling down his young face.
*
It was many hours later before he finally returned to his home, and to find it empty. The car was parked in front of the garage, connected to the large old building, and nothing seemed obviously out of place or missing, save his parents.
The door was not locked, and with a sudden chill he realised that he hadn’t expected it to be. The front door led directly into the sitting room, and faced the staircase that ascended to the bedrooms and bathroom. It was here he sat, at the foot of the stairs, for hours that turned to days, only moving for necessities and waiting for a familiar face to come through that door. Even his forsaken mother would be of some comfort to him, but as the third day drew to a close, the thirteen year old boy knew that his father had abandoned him.
For time unknown, the child stayed home alone. As fortune had it, there was plenty of food in the house, but he did not eat much. He took his bedding from the tiny room he felt he had been ‘imprisoned’ in for so much of his life, and moved it all down to the sitting room. Soon, with the aid of his father’s old tool box and a lot of rip-work, he made a long ‘hammock’ of rags, strung across the length of the living room with a large number of nails in the wall at both ends. Customizing things had always been in his nature.
But the basics were easy. Things got a lot tougher. He began feeling strange bursts of energy, often leading to headaches and dizziness. But the blackouts were the worst, waking from something far from sleep in the midst of destroyed furniture, torn clothes and other broken objects, always feeling hot and at a complete loss of memory. The wreckage was almost certainly his work, so why could he not remember?
Time came and went totally irrelevantly, and the boy lived on (of course), always cautious of the next episode (as there certainly would be), and fighting to control himself. He lay in his long makeshift hammock in a plain white vest and jeans (holes singed just above his right knee and another just below his left) hands behind his head, eyes closed.
Remain calm. Think Clearly. Be ready...
This was the state he was found in.
0.5
The boy awoke in his hammock one morning to the sound of rattling at the front door, which led into the sitting room (now also his bedroom): somebody was trying to get in. As a marksman is well practised for the shoot, so was he. Instinctively he reached into his father’s toolbox, now kept under his hammock, and drew a large, heavy wrench. The door finally clicked open and the boy hurled the tool with extreme force and precision at the newcomer. There was a splintering crunch as the projectile took a chunk out of the old oak door and crashed against the wall in a small explosion of pale orange plaster, before clattering to the floor. The marksman had missed his mark, but not by far, as a large, pale white head came around the door. The boy’s hand froze as he caught the glint from the blackglasses, his hand already hovering over his box of projectiles, as the man’s body came through the door.
He was a large man in an expensive black suit and pale blue shirt full of belly that hung over his trousers, his shoes polished to perfection. He was old, with deep creases across his forehead, his eyes hidden by the small blackglasses mounted on a large protruding nose. Despite being almost totally bald, he had a long, bushy moustache of the purest white, whiter than his own skin even, like two small bleached fox tails.
It took a moment, but the boy, rising from the hammock and taking a few steps forward, finally recognized the aged intruder.
“Grandfather?” he breathed.
“Ha ha! Child, you almost killed your own blood!” the man raved happily, “It has been quite a while, Grandson.”
A look of hope spread over the boy’s face, reflecting his youth, but quickly disappeared, “They’re not here.”
The wide grin also faded from his grandfather’s wide face, “Yes, a week now? Getting on two?”
The boy remained silent, searching the empty black lenses in vain. His grandfather seemed to almost forget him, and did a once over of the room. It was a large room with faint orange wallpaper and a wooden floor. It had a burgundy leather sofa (not long ago it had contained two), a large plasma screen television and a vast fire place dominating the room. It was a sitting room for those who could afford to make it so, but now there was wreckage of all sorts cluttering the floor and by the doorway to the kitchen was where one end of the ‘hammock’ was now pitched.
He smiled and, almost as if thinking aloud, said “I thought you would have a little more imagination, you know. Your own house and all you show for it is this rag?” He had turned to look at the wall, now with many more nails in than it had a week ago, and a great number more than it had had two weeks ago.
“How did you know? How did you know they were gone?” the boy’s warm shadow of a voice rose in tone slightly as he slipped of his rag sheets and stepped towards the old man. However his grandfather was still scanning the room, and did not answer.
“Grandfather!”
“Child, not for a moment believe that I am here for no reason, nor by mere coincidence,” he snapped impatiently, still facing away from him, but he could see his white moustache bob with every word. His voice becoming stern, “Do you have any idea what your future could hold? Surely you don’t intend on living here in solitude until you can no longer keep yourself alive?”
“What do you...?”
The old man turned to face him at last, creases deepening across his forehead, “You have something nobody else has! You have no idea!”
“But Grandfather, I have nothing.”
“Nothing?! OH-HO-HO!” he leaned back, which looked remarkably like a large egg tilting, and laughed long and loud. His laugh was like a screeching roar, the bushy moustache bouncing with a life of its own, but all too quickly he was forward and serious again, “Dear boy, do you really believe that you are like everybody else?” He raised a white gloved hand to his temple in thought before looking up again, “Have you not been suffering for some time now? Insomnia? Loss of memory perhaps?”
The boy did not reply, but merely looked at his balled fist, opening it and flexing his nimble fingers, frowning. However, his grandfather had seen the answer in the child’s eyes. His small blackglasses gleamed, and when the boy finally looked up, he saw his own chilling eyes staring back at him.
“You want to control that. You want your memories. You... not even I understand fully what is at hand here!”
On saying this, the large man noticed a heavily burnt sofa, one of burgundy leather, tidied away to the far corner of the room, half in and half out of the cupboard under the stairs. He only noticed now the light smell in the stuffy air of the scorched material.
“But how?”
Once again the elderly man’s glasses gleamed as a wide grin broke across his face, “Grandson, I am a man of great intellect!” Tapping his bald head with a gloved knuckle, “You know, I am one of the world’s leading scientists, and together we will...hmm... fix you, if you take the term.”
The boy looked down at his feet. No he didn’t. He didn’t understand most of what was going on. What was wrong with him? What is this thing he had that interested his grandfather so? He had no family besides the man before him, no real life or friends. At this he bit down hard on his lower lip, holding back the tears of loneliness. All he had was this forsaken house, and a slowly depleting store of food. He was only thirteen for Christ’s sake! One thing was sure in the boy’s mind however: he needed answers.
Slowly, turning on his heel, he returned to his hammock, closing his eyes, and lay in the way he had become accustomed to, wishing the world away.
“I know this is difficult,” the elderly voice came from close by, suddenly morose, “but things will get out of hand if you don’t learn to control yourself.” He heard a clattering sound on the floor as his grandfather kicked away shards of plates. “If you grow up with these problems, in fear at that, who knows what will become of you!”
The child in the hammock bit back the retort that rose to his lips; something about him not being afraid. He would have been lying. He was very alone, confused and afraid. He lay still, taking it all in, stretching the silence.
“How long have you known?” the warm, soft voice came at last.
There was another silence, this time broken by Grandfather’s response.
“I’ve had suspicions for years: suspicions that there may be some...unique piece to your puzzle, if you catch my drift? You have your very own project in the central laboratory! Yes, ever since a very early age, you have had files with your name on in the database.”
“And you never cared to tell me that I’ve been a part of one of your little experiments?”
“You could not understand! The information was to be kept from you for a later stage in your life, but I suppose fate has its way ultimately. Even as a scientist, I can accept that. Your father knew....”
“My father?” he spat in a mixture of surprise and resentment, before questions came to him that he should have asked before: “Where is he now? Dead, maybe?” His eyes flicked open, his cold blue eyes fell on the old man, and not even he could not resist a flinch. His eyes were frightening, sharp and dangerous. Grandfather hung his head in silence. He feared those eyes, but he had also seen the flicker of flame in his grandson’s eyes.
“Is he?” the warm, dark voice becoming hot and more forceful, yet mesmerising at the same time. His chilling gaze locked onto the large man’s glasses. He now looked like an egg tipped forward.
The man sighed. “I don’t know, in all honesty.” He thought under the cold glare, finding the words before looking into the chilling eyes, “We were going to tell you together, your father and I. He decided that he would leave you to me. He didn’t want to disrupt your progress, you must understand, but...” He turned from the boy, shaking his head, and gazed out of the window across the room, by the corner with the television in it (it was remarkable how the set had not been scathed by the child’s unexplained wrath) and his blackglasses were now catching the full glare of the rising sun. “He wasn’t supposed to have left! Not now. Not at all...”
The old man said no more, but it was enough: the pieces were coming together. He began to understand. He had been abandoned. Father had left him. Grandfather turned and stepped towards the hammock, his beady eyes hidden behind the black lenses.
“I won’t force you to do anything you do not wish to, Grandson, but for the greater good please come with me. I will help you hone your abilities. I will teach you to control the fire inside....” He extended a hand to the boy, “But of course, the choice is yours.”
For a minute, the boy just lay there.
I need to find the answers... Power...Fire inside... Knowledge... Knowledge is...power, right?
When he opened his eyes, the hand was still there. So the boy with the scruffy black hair took his grandfather’s hand, and got up onto his feet.
Edited by Ajexmi