The sun was shining brightly, casting a faint orange tint on just about everything it’s rays touched. There was a refreshing breeze blowing from the north, not too strong and not too weak. Some would say this was the perfect afternoon condition for taking a walk.
Alex stared at his feet as he slowly made his way through the crowd of people he will never know, ice-coffee in hand. The earphones of his mp3 player (he couldn’t afford an iPod) were hooked up into his ear, the song I wish I sang like Marvin Gaye playing quite loudly.
It was just one of those days where everything seemed to go wrong. He had managed to fail, albeit barely, both his Chemistry and Geometry exams. Sure he was assured that he would pass but that didn’t stop him from feeling bad about it. Plus there was all that other stuff that happened between the first bell signaling the start of classes and the final one signaling the end of classes like the fact that he spent the entire lunch time brooding because life was biting him in the ass again.
Soon enough the bus stop came into view. The sign with the big bold words “BUS STOP” was put up by the corner of 6th and 7th street, a brown Victorian bench, like the ones you see in parks, beside it. For some reason very few people actually waited at this stop making it an ideal place for him to sit, think and, sometimes, read his books and comics in peace. This was his, for a lack of a better term, ‘brooding and chillaxing spot’.
Today however it seemed like he had some company. “Great.” He muttered as he shoved his free hand into his pocket and curled it up into a tight ball. Just his luck. The one time when life bit him in the ass and he really wanted to be alone, he couldn’t. Juuust great.
A few steps later Alex realized that the person he had to share his spot with today was in fact a girl, and a very pretty one at that. She had long blondish brown hair, hid her hazel eyes behind eyeglasses which made her look, in his opinion anyway, cuter. She sat cross legged and was reading the book Veronika Decides to die, a personal favorite of his.
The girl looked familiar. Alex knew he’s seen her somewhere before. A party maybe? Or… Oh yeah! The girl’s name was Jen Wilder if he remembered correctly. She’s the girlfriend of Ty. They were introduced to each other at Chase’s good bye party last month.
Hmm. Just his luck indeed.
He took a seat beside her, making sure that there was a good distance between them, and tilted his head to the left, letting his cheek rest upon his knuckles as he leaned on the bench’s iron railing.
The girl was really crush worthy. Absolutely crush worthy. God, he really wanted to talk to her. He tired playing out conversations in his head, but somehow it always ended with him making a fool of himself by saying stupid. One even ended with him being attacked by a giant monkey. How he ended up with that conclusion he may never know. Maybe he could just charm her with his dazzling personality and salvage this day into something decent?
Yeah. Riiiiiight he thought.
1
He wasn’t handsome, he had his average looks to thank, he didn’t have a dazzling personality, unless you count sarcastic and slightly perverted admirable traits, and was a really bad conversationalist to people he didn’t know. Plus even if he did try and so something, it’s not like anything was ever going to happen. She was already with someone. The minutes passed quickly. He had already finished his coffee and still nothing interesting happened. Wait, no, he hadn’t let anything interesting happen.
Alex pushed himself off the bench and stretched his arms high above his head. He threw his empty cup toward the hole of the trash bin and missed. Christ. Was there really a big cosmic being out there out to get him today? Was there a big invisible sign somewhere on his body that was telling everyone and everything to screw him over? After drudgingly throwing his trash into it’s respective bin, turned and walked away with every intent on going home to crawl under his bed sheets and die.
Don’t look over your shoulder, don’t look over your shoulder… he reminded himself in fear that Jen might think he was some sort of weirdo or something. He looked past his shoulders and saw that Jen was already walking away. Good then. At least she probably didn’t spot him ogling at her.
He wallowed in self pity as he walked home. The words of the pope (or he thinks it was the pope anyway) was stuck in his head. He once said that life is an eternal struggle. It’s will be filled with constant sorrows and pains and of course some joys here and there up until god takes us. In short: Life’s a bitch and then we die.
Awfully cheery view on life for a man of god isn’t it?
A blanket of darkness had already spread across the sky once he reached his average-looking suburban home. He went straight for his room after greeting his parents and declining to eat dinner. For obvious reasons he wasn’t particularly hungry.
Alex turned on his computer and connected to the internet the moment the opportunity presented itself. It was part of his nightly ritual to check his mail, through logging in Yahoo Messenger and stuff before taking a shower and hitting the sack. He typed his password in and logged on and waited until the usual pop up filled his screen.
There wasn’t any alert to any new mail. There was however numerous offline messages, most of which from his cousin Anna. She loved to spam everyone with group message. She scrolled down the long list of messages, disregarding most of Anna’s, but stopped abruptly as a particularly long message caught his attention. It read:
If you don’t eat, hop 3 times on one foots and send this to 15 people within the next 10 minutes and St. Sebastian will reveal to you who your true love is. If you don’t then you will live a sad and useless existence for the rest of your life.
What a load of bull He mused, shaking his head in disbelief. These chain letters really were always full of crap. It’s amazing how many people believe in whatever it says and actually do it. It was depressing really. He was about to click the ‘delete all messages’ button when he hesitated. But… considering how his day has been going it wouldn’t really hurt to be a little superstitious.
2
And so he followed the message’s instructions and sent it to 15 people through the wonders of group messaging. OK so the not eating bit was done and over with but he straight out refused to make a fool of himself and hop three times like an idiot. Alex accidentally hit his big toe on the bathroom wall. So like any normal person would he grabbed his foot in pain and hopped on one foot thrice, fulfilling the final requirement, albeit accidentally.
Crawling under his blanket the boy laid his head on his soft white pillows, an exhausted look on his face. His eyes were starting to feel heavier and heavier as the minutes passed. “Work you magic St. Sebastian…” he said under his breath and then the world went black.
Alex awoke the next morning with a surprised and rather annoyed look on his face. That had been probably the most bizarre and exhilarating dream he had ever, in his entire existence, had. The dream started with him looking out over a gigantic frozen lake. There were strange multicolored floras around him. Some were as big as sky scrapers, others as small as the smallest flower could be. They ranged from, black, to whiter, blue to purple, magenta to fuchsia, all colors imaginable, both known and unknown to man.
The plants definitely piqued his interest. He reached out and tried to grab a small, gold and red plant by his foot. The moment he with it though the small flower melted away and literally slipped through his fingers.
That was strange. Maybe that flower was diseased or something? He reached out and grabbed another flower, a purple and black one this time, and the same thing happened again. It wasn’t just the flowers though. He touched rocks and small trees as well. It always ended with it melting through his fingers and becoming a colorful pile of shiny liquid on the ground. He didn’t even dare touch the gigantic trees in fear that he may drown if ever they melted like pretty much everything else.
There was a clicking sound behind him, like the one hear when you break a twig, and he immediately spun around to find nothing. Well, unless of course you count the green plains the endless green plains now replaced the once colorful and plant filled environment that surrounded him.
For as far as he could see there were only green plains around him and nothing else. There wasn’t even a single tree or flower in sight. It was all just grass, miles and miles of grass. Alex wandered the empty, silent plains for 5 days and 4 nights or what seemed like 5 days and 4 nights anyway. It might have been more, it might have been less. He didn’t know exactly how the days passed in this dream of his. The only actual indication that it was either day or night was the fact that the sun and moon time shared the heavens, spreading their blankets of sky blue and black respectively.
Even though he’s been walking non-stop for days, or something that felt like days anyway, he didn’t get tired. The silence of the place was deafening so it came to no surprise that the moment he heard the soothing humming that filled the air surprised him to say the least. The humming was kinda relaxing in a weird unexplainable way. It was like it was welcoming him back from the cold and into a warm fire.
Curious, he followed the sound to it’s source. For the first time since he started his trek he reached the end of the endless plains. Black, a deep abyss of blackness that probably spanned for an eternity was all there was and nothing more. By the edge of plains though, just before everything was filled with just black was a familiar looking girl dressed in snow white clothes, who, he soon realized, was the one humming the somewhat magical tune.
3
He quickened his pace. He didn’t know why exactly but he had a gut feeling that he should go to the girl. It might have been the sound calling to him, maybe, maybe not; it really wasn’t much of an issue. The only thing that was important was that he reached her.
The girl was just 20 yards away when he heard a terrible rumbling as if there was an earthquake and a howl that made the hairs at the back of his neck stand. A gray wolf the size of a soccer stadium jumped out of the abyss and grabbed his my the shirt using it’s massive jaws. Before he knew it the plains and abyss disappeared and was quickly replaced by a very familiar looking cityscape.
“HELP!’’ he screamed, hoping against hope that someone, anyone, would hear him and heed his call. But no one came. There wasn’t a single soul in sight other than the girl in white from before who was now standing on one of the rooftops, a worried look on her pretty face.
“GOD HELP ME!” he screamed toward the girl’s direction. His pleas for help seemed to have some effect on the girl because her once worried look was replaced by a visage of steadfast determination.
She ripped off her clothes in a Supermanesqe way revealing a super hero costume underneath. Her costume consisted of a big black X on her chest which covered her boobs, a bare midriff, a black miniskirt, knee-high boots and a simple mask which covered her eyes.
The girl flew up into air and dived down to the city streets. She emerged up in the air once more with a car on each hand. His ‘heroine’ started to pummel the wolf with the cars until finally, it’s grip on his shirt loosened as it started to loose consciousness. The girl dived down to the ground once more and returned with a gigantic spear (where on earth did she manage to find that?) in hand. She impaled the wolf through the heart with her newly acquired weapon, leaving it shaking in the beast’s chest. Finally the creature’s finally let go of Alex and soon enough he was quickly plummeting toward the ground.
In traditional superhero fashion she caught him in her arms and smiled down at the boy. Alex was about to say something when she cut him off. “You’re just another boy crushing on me.” She lowered her face to his and started to whisper into his ear. “Just tell me and get it over with already.”
What exactly did she mean by that? He wanted to ask his heroine that and so much more but opted not to as she leaned in. “Don’t worry. I’ll get it…” she muttered just before their lips were about to meet. Their lips never met though as the next thing he remembered was waking up to the sound of his clock’s alarm.
He went about the day like any other, recapping the dream to some of his friends between periods. That truly was the strangest dream he ever had and, probably, will ever have.
At first he thought it was the chain mail coming true but reality soon caught up with him and he was forced to think otherwise. It was silly of him to think that some superstitious chain mail involving ‘true love’ and a saint would actually come true. The days and weeks passed and the dream turned into nothing more than a memory.
4
A month and a week later, on a lazy Wednesday afternoon that mimicked that ‘fateful’ day’s condition, which was pretty much perfect, life was once more screwing with him. He made his way toward his ‘spot’ and was surprised to see Jen there, sitting in a similar fashion as before, this time reading the book Shakespeare in love.
She acknowledged him with from behind her book with a smile. Usually that would have been his opening for a quick ‘Hi’ or ‘Hey there’ or whatever. Instead the only thing he managed to do was nod at her before taking a seat. She gave him a golden opportunity this time around and still he managed to strike out.
Can you say loser?
He buried his face in his hand and was having an internal battle on whether he should stay or leave. The battle continued for about a minute and the latter side won. Alex was ready to stand up and leave when a calming sound assaulted his ears, filling him with sense of nostalgia. It was Jen, she was the one humming. Where…? He could have sworn that he’s heard it before. It sounded so familiar…
Epilogue:
George Bernard Shaw once said “There are two tragedies in life. One is to not get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.”
Apparently this man hasn’t met Jen Wilder.
5
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