Chapter One: Guardian Angel. 

Sitting in an empty middle school hallway, I tap my fingers rhythmically against my knees while static white noise fills my head, numbing out my feelings of anxiety. It's much the same as the feeling of “daydreaming,” or the very moment just before true wakefulness at the end of a full night's sleep. The borderline just between sleep and alertness. And considering the things that would surely happen next, the argument could be made that from this point forward, I've never truly woken up at all.

 

 My eyes are still, and the rest of my body is a little slumped in my chair. Gravity pulls me down, but I'm barely conscious of the feeling. My mind wanders as far away from me as possible, launching a rocket right up into the clouds of a night sky. Done entirely on purpose, a conscious effort to drown everything out. Because I don’t think I could possibly handle truly hearing the things I’m hearing right now without doing this. It's a defense through separation.

Down in reality, I'm sitting outside the principal's office doors. He’s recently called in my mother again for the third meeting this year. And he’s surely in there right now, ranting at length to her about my poor performance and social skills. Not the kind of social skills that has you outcast and trampled over when the Bullies call you the ‘weird kid,’ but the kind that has you putting a pencil through somebody's hand when they call you exactly that.

‘It's not my fault!’ I think to myself, my internal thinking voice is loud when my body isn’t around for me to latch on to. ‘He called me a sissy. I can’t just let him do that!'

The latest frustration boils up under my blood again just a little, but it's soon washed away by something else. The fact that I can hear every word they’re saying from behind the doors. I can’t help but pick it up. Even though my mind refuses to stay here, it doesn't mean my physical body has gone away as well. Unfortunately my head still has a pair of human ears, and I can’t help but fixate on the sound with every ounce of available intensity. There's nothing else but silence out here, so it’s all I can really do.  I can even tell that the dean is talking.

"...tremely antisocial. Often instigates the other students with snide remarks then cowers off frustratedly or retaliates back when met with any kind of criticism towards himself. Constantly sarcastic with teachers, and resists listening when he feels he has better ideas instead. He's made a few friendships in the last two years here at this middle school, but they often come or go. Sometimes he even provokes fights with the other students that end up getting physical. He’s had to have been pulled apart by staff at certain times.Things aren't exactly going well here for Jordan, and especially not with his grades."

 

"So what? He's a twelve year old with a bad attitude. What twelve year old doesn't have one? His grades are at least still passing and it's a turbulent time in his life, especially for a young boy who recently lost his father. What exactly are you suggesting to me about my son by telling me all this?" She neglects to mention that my father died when I was eight. Far too many years ago to still be affecting me, right?

 

"I'm suggesting, at least professionally, that we think something deeper might be at play here. Your son is antagonistic but especially fragile, it could-."

 

She stands up, pushing her chair back and placing her palms flat against the table. "He is not fucking fragile! You don't know what he's had to put up with! And you speak professionally like you're some doctor. Well you're not. You didn't go to school for this, you didn't get any PHD, and you're clearly just trying to push ideas into my son's head about this he is not. All you people really are, are overpaid government workers reaping in on public funding. You have no ideas about my son and I think it's high time I take him elsewhere. I’m sick of you people putting these wrong ideas in his head! This town probably just reminds him of his father too much anyways!" 

 

With that, she silences the conversation by turning to leave and storming out the door into the hallway outside. She reaches down into my pool of mental water and grabs my wrist, pulling me back up to the surface and into my conscious body. I'm alert. Back to the real world!

 

"Come on, JoJo!" She says, clearly frustrated but trying desperately to hide it from me. "Let's get out of here. I can't stand this place anymore and I know you can't either." She says before looking at me for a response. I can't get my tongue to move in my mouth, so instead I just nod for her.

 

She looks resolute, nodding back at me before pulling me across the hallway towards the front door of the building. I can see that she's still completely in her officer's uniform, even her gun is still on her hip. She neglected to take it off when entering a middle school for children. 

 

I almost trip on my clumsy feet as I turn back to see the dean standing in his doorway looking very sorry. 

 

'Serves him right.' I think. 'Doesn't he know what I've been through?'

 

It matters very little that I barely know, myself. 

 

The soon summer sun spills brightly into my eyes as we march out of the building and towards the cars. I see our little purple minivan parked against the school's curb, just waiting for us to reach it there. 

 

When we do, my mother pushes my back against the closed door, with her left hand on my shoulder and her right hand in a point at my chest. Her finger is outstretched, threatening to stab right through my clothes and into my flesh.

 

"Jojo, pay attention." She says, and my eyes focus on hers. "I'm sorry that you had to see that today, but I think this is an important lesson we discuss."

 

I nod, showing her my full attention.

 

"Good. Now, did you hear what that man called you?" I nod again and she continues. "You're gonna be a man one day. A strong man. A big man. A man with a great moral code. And when you grow up to be just like your father, I want you to know one important thing about life as an adult." Her finger presses to my chest, between my ribs. Her fingernail almost hurts as it digs into my skin. "Great men never let themselves be called fragile." 

 

Her finger pulls away. "You are strong, JoJo." Her other hand pulls away too now, leaving me standing alone on my two feet. "What are you?" She asks.

 

"I am not fragile." I repeat back to her and she smiles.

 

"That's right. Now it's been a long day for you, my son. Let's go get you some ice cream."

…

Nine years forward.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Present day-present time, Northwest Oregon, in The United States of America. Situated firmly in silence at the back of the Intro To Organic Chemistry lecture hall of Grand Mariallis Health Science University.

 

Twirling the little purple mechanical pencil in my hand to distract me, I stare out the long windows lining the right wall in sheer icy boredom. Trying as hard as I can not to get swallowed up even more into old memories. They always invade my head when I've got nothing to listen to like this. 

 

Twirl. Tap tap tap. Flick. Twirl.

 

Occasionally tapping the eraser against my open book, feeling the way the rubber bounces off the surface and back into my hand. 

 

It's not like the class is really that boring or anything, but it's just really hard for me to sit totally still during lectures. There's always just too much going on in my head for me to be totally statuesque. A little fidgeting with my pencil shouldn't be too much of a-

 

Smack!!!

 

A bright yellow ruler comes slapping down onto my book, breaking me instantly out of my subtle daze. Frantically, I look up to see the professor looking down at me, a little peeved.

 

"JoJo! What possibly has you so darn distracted that you can't hear me calling your name four times for the answer!?" He asks, voice a little rash after thirty plus years of yelling across a gigantic classroom.

 

This is the type of guy that really hates excuses, so I give him a (little) bit of honesty. "Gg uuhhm uh-" I stumble over my words, clearly more unprepared than I thought.

 

How'd this guy get all the way to my desk without me noticing anyway! He must be some kind of pro! 

 

"Uhm, sir I- ..... ... to be honest I don't really have an answer. I was kind of just spacing out. I'm sorry." I plead, my eyes trying to widen a little more apologetically. "Maybe it's been a long day for me?"

 

"It's been a long day for all of us, Jojo. Try to focus more next time. The lecture is almost over now anyway, do you think you're gonna be able to make it through the last fifteen minutes like a proper student? Or am I gonna have to send you out and call your mother?"

 

Fear.

 

"Please don't send me out!!!" I screech, unbecoming of an adult in college, sounding more like a helpless middle schooler begging not to be spanked again.

 

"Fine, but pay attention." He emphasizes before turning heel in his ratty old black leather shoes and walking all the way back to the front of the hall to continue the lecture. "Now everyone! After a momentary lapse, I have returned. Please open back up to section 115 and give a read over the pedigree table shown down at the bottom. ... ...  That!" He pauses to slap another part of the projector screen with his ruler. "Is the key to figuring out exactly what gets passed down from parent to child. Focus here, everyone." The professor highlights a part of the table, and my eyes drag reluctantly down to the book on my own desk.

 

"Particularly this spot right here." I hear him say while I scan across the table over and over and over again. "The relationship between the mother and the daughter. You see, class. The mother here... that's the circle if you're wondering, has a dominant brown eyes gene, but a recessive blue eyes gene. That's important to know, because if you see a little further, the daughter took after all the traits of the mother, which just so happened to be her bl.......... ..... ... .. ." his voice trails off into the distance once again as I can't help but start to feel a little dazed... again.

 

I want to pay attention, I really do! But it's hard, okay? It's been a long week,  and this Friday just can't seem to end. Sue me, damnit!

 

My bright, icy blue eyes wander slowly back off the page and back into the courtyard outside the windows. It's a pretty day out, in the middle of fall. The trees are all orange and red, and Halloween is just a week around the corner. There's so much else to be occupied by! Who gives a fluff about this damn pedigree table anyway! Even just the falling leaves are more exciting than this! That's- ... hold on. 

 

There's someone standing behind that tree. Off in the distance, at the edge of the courtyard, just before the cut grass leaks into the deeper forest beyond. There seems to be something, or someone standing mostly hidden behind a small little trunk. It's extremely hard to make out from this far away, but they seem to be wearing all gray. I can't even- I can't even tell much beyond that. I don't see the place where their shirt becomes pants, or their sleeves end for their hand poking out around the corner. And honestly... I can't even seem to make out any facial features. Almost like somebody just set half a gray mannequin down behind a tree and walked away.

 

I tilt my head, curiously. 

 

And so does the figure. Tilting a matte gray head further out from behind the tree. No features. I can feel myself getting nervous.

 

"JORDAN JOHANNESBURG." a furious man shouts, just a few inches from my face. It takes all my effort not to scream and punch him in the face. It really does. 

 

No, instead I just jolt, lock up, and freeze in sudden terror when I see that the professor has somehow gotten all the way back to my desk once again to yell at me. 

 

"Barely five minutes later and you're back to zero attention! Unbelievable! You've really earned your C- in this class, you know." He says, snidely. "If your father were still here, I'm sure he would have been disappointed in you. He was such a good man! He would've raised someone better." He spits out the last word bitterly.

 

Anger flares up instantly in my chest. Low. Blow. I don't even try to hold it back.

 

"Fuck you, professor Donneham! Maybe if you weren't so fucking bald your wife wouldn't have left you for a prostitute!" I shoot back, standing up resolutely.

 

The professor just goes silent. Getting redder and redder in the face. Oh fuck, I really did it this time. Nice going, idiot.

 

And in an extremely calm voice, the professor says one word. "Leave."

 

I pick my bag up off the floor from under my desk and flip him off before I exit. One last cursory glance out the window towards the courtyard reveals nothing there. I probably just imagined it. It's not like I'm well beyond just making shit up in my head. Nice fucking going, idiot. Now Mom's gonna be pissed.

 

The lecture hall doors close behind me and I scamper off down the long corridors of the old college building as quickly as possible. Hoping to make it home before the phone call reaches. I'm supposed to be an adult, damnit! But I know he's gonna call my mom and bitch at her like I'm just some rowdy school child again. Just like when I WAS actually just some rowdy school child.

 

Seems like even in years of time, I'm still just the very same fucking failure. 

 

Grrrrrrh!!!! 

 

I grumble angrily under my breath as I stiff-arm shove the front doors of the building open. The fall sunlight dancing across my vision in a mix of as many red colors as my mind can perceive. How fitting.

 

Reaching the bus stop takes no time. Rushing out the door with my hands in my pockets angrily picking away at my skin.  Being the first one out the door gives me plenty enough time to catch an earlier,  much emptier city bus without quite as many other students.  Which is good,  because I don't think I'd be able to even remotely handle any more people looking at me today without bursting a fucking gasket.

 

I tightly shut my eyes,  hoping the world outside will vanish too.

 

But the drive is a good few minutes, enough to cool my nerves a little by the time I've reached my stop. The rest of the walk is only a few minutes

When I get close enough to home,  I don't see my mom's Chevy undercover parked anywhere around. Which actually makes me relax into my shoes just a little bit more. 

 

Mom's not home. Thank god. I won't have to deal with that explosion until later. 

 

Fumbling stupidly with the keys for a moment, I finally let myself inside the little suburban house I've called home for the last twenty years of my life. The fact that I'm only twenty at all matters little in that regard.

 

I stop through the kitchen for a moment when I notice a bright yellow notepad stating that my mother's gonna be out for a while tonight with a meeting down at the station, and that there's leftovers in the fridge when I'm hungry. She added a little heart to make me feel better. And it does. But only for a moment. 

 

I turn and walk away.

 

Passing through the hallway lined with pictures of my parents happily together in the early two thousands, but only two or three photos featuring me.

 

 Not like I care or anything, though. It's not like I particularly like looking at myself, even as a child. 

 

I reach my room just as the house phone goes off. I don't even bother going back out into the kitchen to answer it when I damn well know it's that ratty, ugly old man calling to tell my mom how much of a miserable failure I am. He can call as many times as he wants while it's just me here, no one's going to answer him anyway. I hope he chokes on his own ego and dies. 

 

In a huff, I throw myself down into my computer chair and flick it on. Its a decent machine, even after as many years of time as it's been since I first put it together in my freshman year of highschool Clearly outpaced by modern stuff, but I don't really need modern stuff to play Team Fortress 2 and some shitty games on my browser. I just need something exciting to do to occupy my mind again. I can't just keep sitting here and holding in all my anger. It's not good for me.  

For now, I guess i'll just check the news.

When the pc fully boots on, I go ahead and open up my web browser to just snoop by the latest feed. The blank page loads in to show my top recommended results. And unfortunetly for my already stressed mind, its nothing but crisis after crisis after crisis. Food shortages are starting to rise nearly universally across the globe, and more and more small countries start to break out in small conflicts over the growing severe lack of resources. And more and more it seems that my home country of the United States will do little to nothing for any of these smaller countries in need, as there is no profit to gain from helping them. So all I get to see today is nonstop doom. Helpless on helpless people, while I sit here in my nice suburban home doing nothing. It makes me feel oddly pathetic.

I frown, and decide to play something else. Lets do some Team Fortress instead.

...

A few matches later and I'm spent. Tired and drained and honestly not really getting anything out of playing this game anymore. There's just far too many things weighing down my mind right now, and I honestly just can't even focus hard enough on the game to do well at all. It doesn't make for good gameplay while I sit here with an electric ball of anxiety in my chest. I'm absolutely dreading how my mom is eventually going to react to hearing the voicemail my professor left on the house phone. It's always so unpredictable, whether or not she'll be on my side over things. Whether or not she'll even let me properly explain myself. 

 

But this time? It won't even matter and I know it. Nothing I will say will have any effect, I fear this one will be catastrophic.

 

I slither out of my chair in self pity and slide into my bed, entirely having forgotten today’s homework after being ousted from class so abruptly. It’s not like I was there to hear him assign it officially anyway. Cranky old bastard….

Whatever.

I’m tired. I deserve a rest, don’t I? Isn't that what everyone says to do when you’re stressed? Just rest up and try again  tomorrow? Yeah, let's try that.

And with enough willpower and determination, I force myself to sleep.

…

…

…

 

"JoJo!!!" My mom shouts, having thrown my door open and stormed over to the side of my bed while I was asleep, abruptly waking me up. "Wake your ass up right now, mister! You're in big trouble!" She's standing there in front of me, still wearing her police detective's uniform and her handgun on her hip. She's got a phone in one of her hands, gripping the thing with white knuckles.

 

"Nhuuhh?" I shake awake with her hand on my shoulder, jostling me back and forth violently. Being so rudely awakened, my brain throws me into fight or flight panic immediately. "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry!!!!" I shout, flailing my arms around. 

 

She gasps and steps backwards. "Don't swing at me!"  She yells and I freeze, dropping my arms limply. "You have no right to be sleeping right now! I can't believe what you said to your professor! Are you kidding me, he's your teacher not your punching bag!!! God, how many times have you done this already!?"

 

Tears well up in my eyes and my chest tightens instantly, I hate hate hate it when she yells at me. "I'm sorry Mom!! He was just, he-"

 

"I don't care what! You will not make excuses with me, young man! There is no excuse to say something like that to someone! I thought you were an adult. Twenty and still bullying others just like you were in middle school, and just like you were in highschool too! I can't bail you out if your anger turns to violence again, I've already done that far too many times in your life! Always pushing your behavioral problems onto me. What would your father think….." she turns away from me while I sit there wide eyed and stunned, cutting off the conversation at her point of choosing. 

 

She scans my room with her eyes, picking out every detail of the surroundings before turning back to me with a scowl. She's deemed my space unsatisfying again. "And have you even done your homework? You left your computer with your video game on. Don't you dare tell me you started playing your games before finishing your work first, on a day like this."

 

Oh fuck … of course she caught that. 

 

I scramble to try and gain some ground back quickly. "U-uh yes! I just wanted to play some games afterwards…" I mumble about, hoping she'll drop that line of thinking before she gets even more furious with me.

 

She doesn't. "Show me." Her eyes squint perceptively. 

 

"Wwwhat? Show you what?"

 

"Your homework." She grinds her shoe into the floor. "Prove to me you aren't lying right now."

 

"Okay no, no I haven't! I haven't done it yet!" I cover my ears with my hands frantically.

 

"Grrrrah!!!" My mom growls furiously before she crosses her arms and turns around. 

 

I sit there cowering and rocking on my bed, just waiting for something to happen, anything to happen to make her scream at me again. But nothing comes.

 

It takes me a moment to realize it, but her breathing has deepened from behind my muffled ears, her shoulders have dropped, and her furious expression must have melted off her face, because I hear her start crying. First a little jitter, and a sniffle, but not too long later and she's sobbing into her hands. Shaking and bleary eyed, my mother turns around to face me again while I sit in self disgust over making her cry again. 

 

"You would lie to me? Like that, right now?" She chokes out from behind her hands, not even taking them off her face to look at me. "I can't believe you… What would your father think….." she whimpers and walks out of my room. The tension of the air flows out behind her.

 

The painful slamming of her bedroom door accompanied by the quiet click of the lock breaks my solidified state and I collapse onto my bed again, feeling like a lit tank of gas. Overbearing with different feelings to the point of breaking until something inside me clicks, and it's all replaced with harsh noise, a wall of liquid sound. 

 

I curl around myself in my bed and hide beneath my blankets, my arms locking tightly around my legs beneath the cover. My breathing is quick but my mind stutters when trying to make complex thoughts. The feelings before were just too strong for me to handle, and my consciousness does what it knows best in times like this. It climbs out of my body and wanders away. 

 

Like the fire burned it all up and left me used up and dry. Just hollow. Hollow, and angry. Like I wish I could have cried so badly, but the release couldn't ever come, so it had to all just be cut away instead. 

 

It's a violent kind of emptiness. One that takes what it wants and eats it all up. 

…

…

…

When I wake up again a few hours later, it’s to a silent household. My mouth is dry and my eyes are glued shut. 

 

Alarm bells ring in my head over the complete lack of noise in the home combined with my inability to see anything. I get really scared when I wake up to total silence, for some reason, so I normally leave on some kind of fan in the background to help… but I didn't turn it on this time when I fell asleep, only adding to the feeling of anxiety that swells in my chest when i remember exactly why I fell asleep.

 

My hands fly to my eyes to try and pry them apart with my fingers. The cement holding them shut snaps free and I'm greeted to yet more darkness in my room. The little glow in the dark stars I stuck to the ceiling when I was six do little to help illuminate my room at whatever hour it happens to be. 

 

I roll over and peek at the alarm clock across the room. Four A.M. Wow, I really slept. 

 

I should probably get up soon to fix this dry mouth of mine anyway. I've slept too much today. I don't deserve any more rest.

 

Shaking my head, I push the covers off my body and shiver at the coldness of the room. Maybe mom forgot to put the heater on before she went to bed or something. Nonetheless, I push myself up from the mattress and wobble my way through the bedroom door and down through the hallway. My bare feet are little ice cubes on the cold wooden floor of our home. On my way by her door, I peek in for a moment to see my mother's bed empty.

 

Oh no.

 

A momentary slice of panic worms its way into my heart when I remember the last time my mother vanished from the home, but I quickly make myself dismiss it. She wouldn't ditch me again for a week over something as small as this, right? Or, at least I hope it was small. There's no telling how long my mother will be fucked up about this, anyway. 

 

Either way, the panic settles down a little bit into a dull chill in my chest as I finish my way down the hall and head into the kitchen to retrieve a cup of water. There's no way she'll leave again. No way. She's probably just out on a walk or something, she's been known to do that before… 

 

…

 

Yeah. She's out on a walk or something. Definitely.

 

My hand hesitates for a moment when I reach into the cupboard for a plastic cup. Come to think of it, going on a walk right now actually sounds like kind of a good idea. Get some fresh air and enjoy the outside world without having to contend with too many other people at such an early hour. The streets will be empty, and I can walk in the center of the road! How fun will that be? As long as I make sure to get home before mom does, she’ll be none the wiser!

 

I finish getting my water, the cool liquid filling in the dry cracks in my throat soothingly. Yeah, let's go for a walk tonight, too. If she's allowed to then I'm allowed to, too. A little relaxed smile creeps across my face as I make my way back into my room to put on a nice pair of shoes.

 

I go get my pocket knife as well, so I don't feel so nervous walking around alone at night. Just in case! I think to myself as I pull the plastic sheath off.

 

It's a… okay, it's honestly a little ridiculous looking. It's a four inch karambit with a plastic sheath and awesome-sauce galaxy decal on the blade. I originally bought it because, for one I thought it looked cool, like some kind of CS:GO knife, but for two I thought I would learn to do flip tricks with it.  I already like having something fun to occupy my hands with, and who doesn't want to fidget with something cool like a knife? 

 

I mean….. I never did learn to do any, but it was still useful as a regular knife anyway, so I kept it. Plus, it was like forty dollars and they had a no returns policy. :(

 

Attempting to do a tiny little flip around my fingers, it actually twirls just fine in one direction. But doing anything other than that is totally beyond my skillset. I'm glad I've never had to use this thing in a fight before.

 

It slides back into place in its plastic cover, and I slip the attached string around my neck. The knife easily slips behind my clothes (a black hoodie and sweatpants from earlier today) and is totally concealed. Just in case!

 

…

 

I take a moment to myself, to take a few deep breaths while I'm still alone and in my room. I want to think about it as my safe space, the one place in the world I'm able to sleep at night, but it's a little bit hard to stay calm even in here when stress is able to seep back into my mind with such ease.

 

In. Out. In. Out….

 

I need to take a walk.  I don't feel good staying alone here any longer.

 

Once my session is over and my shoes are tied nice and tight, I head back out through my bedroom door and prepare to face the night.

 

My hand wraps around the faded silver doorknob and twists. Pale light streams in across the threshold, the last vestiges of moonlight streaming in just before the sun breaks over the horizon in a few hours. It's going to be light soon… but not yet. 

 

I make sure to lock the door behind me after checking that my house keys are still in my pants pocket from earlier. They are, and I idly wonder how I possibly slept with that keyring in there…. Twice.

 

…

 

Squish squish squish…

 

My gray tennis shoes pick up mud from the damp grass as I cross the front lawn and make my way onto the street. 

 

Ah, suburbia. The same static image of houses copy and pasted for the next twenty streets over having been my morning sight every day for the last…. My whole life. But at least it's familiar, even if it's hardly walkable. 

 

Whatever, this is the Pacific Northwest anyway. I'm always at least thirty minutes from a park or forested area even in suburban parts of the city. That's always been a highlight for me if my grassy eight hundred foot backyard got stale. (It often did, with nothing else but a fence three times my height and a patio square of concrete to stand on.)

 

So I set off towards the nearest one I remember how to get to, and make my way through the night taking little time to actually appreciate my surroundings. 

 

The air is nice, getting cooler but I'm cozy in my hoodie, and the atmosphere is impeccable out here under the dim stars, but something about today's events just keeps bothering me. It's hard not to let my mind wander back to the look on my mother's face when she stormed into my room earlier. My brain tends to love fixating on the faces people make when they're mad at me. Replaying the same images over and over again in my head just to make sure I get it. 

 

Even with the niceties of the night, it makes me feel a little sick to my stomach thinking that I caused her to feel that way. I caused her to be so upset. I brought all that on myself, and it's my problem to feel the lingering guilt about it. So I'll never do it again. Right? Or am I just a perpetually doomed failure. 

 

…

 

My foot almost catches on the curb of the sidewalk as I step back up off the road and hobble over to the nearest light pole for balance. I tried to make it all the way to the park, but I couldn't quite do it before breaking down. There's an overwhelming, almost nauseating feeling of pressure in my head.  It's a kind of feeling I know fairly well by now. A frustration that comes from having so much emotion,  but being terminally unable to get it out at all. Like it's all right up to the very edge,  but never far enough to let me cry.  It's numbing,  and I hate it. It only ever makes me feel worse. Even less attached to the world around me,  progressively getting more and more hollow inside as the negativity stays,  but my emotions try to run as far away from me as possible. It's so frustrating. It hurts so much,  but in a way that doesn't ever want to leave me. And yet at the very same time,  it's never enough to cry. Not unless I make that pain real and remind myself that I'm still a human being. 

 

My fist clenches tightly into a fist,  draws back,  and punches the solid metal light pole as hard as I can.  It immediately stings, bringing all my attention forward and into my body as focus. My knuckles are bruised,  and on the second,  much harder strike,  they start to tear at the skin and bleed a little too. The physical pain is utterly gratifying,  and I feel almost real again as my eyes start to tear up. 

 

Little twinkles drip down my face as I cry again for the first time in months. All the intensity of today just built up so far and so fast, I guess I couldn't hold it in anymore. I needed it out so badly I was willing to hurt myself to get it. 

 

Go figure.

Spending so long feeling emotionally hollow and empty and detached, just for it to all explode out of me after one hard day. I doubt this is what it should normally feel like. Like there's something fundamentally missing from my experience. Until all of reality crashes down at once and it breaks my dams stupendously. 

 

It almost feels like emotionally throwing up. Purging my system of all the badness at once. It takes every last little ounce of my willpower to not let out some kind of painful groan. It hurts from somewhere deep in my chest. But the pain itself is exactly what makes me feel real. 

 

But it doesn't last long, soon drying up my reserves in one steady go. The pressure in my chest clears, but I couldn’t get rid of the rest. An incomplete wipe, but enough got out to let me continue once again.

 

It's enough. Because it has to be enough. The tears have stopped and my back slumps against the light pole, sliding down until I'm sitting on the concrete to take a rest. I think I need to sit down for a little while, so I do.

 

The bags under my eyes feel somehow just a little bit bigger in this moment as I lean back and stare up at the stars and moon. Like I've just aged a few years, or something. Like I've just gotten a little bit closer to my eventual death. But I can't really give enough of a fuck about it one way or the other. It's just… whatever. It's nothing at all. 

 

At least I feel a little lighter. 

 

And then, the lights go out.

 

POP!

 

The lightbulb above me explodes with a sudden pressure, bathing the area in total darkness. My voice cracks as I "eep!" in fear, jolting upright in the dark and turning this way and that, frantically looking at my surroundings.

 

But I can hardly see anything at all, so it doesn't matter anyway. I have to force myself to stay calm and not freak out in the dark, my hand darting beneath my hoodie to grab at my knife. My hand grips it and I let the feeling of potential violence different my nerves. I am not powerless, I tell myself and straighten up. I will be okay.

 

After another thirty seconds in the silence and dark, my eyes start to adjust. There's definitely nothing around me that I can see. 

 

It's gotten bright enough now to see in perfect clarity. I'm only about a street away from the park I wanted to walk around in. I could finish the walk and take the ten minute hike in the woods to loop back around. Yeah, yeah! I could do that just fine. It's more than bright enough to see out here now anyway, with the lights…. Wait, hold on.

 

Didn't the light just stop working? But I can see so…. My eyes dart up when I realize it.

 

It keeps getting brighter and brighter and brighter, far too quickly for it to just be the early morning sunlight. 

 

And then I see it. 

 

A falling star. 

 

A twinkle that just keeps getting brighter, a little piece of heaven coming down to earth, catching fire in the air and streaking through the sky.  Causing my surroundings to quickly light up like one of those million lumen flashlights is streaking across the entire street.

 

 It flashes and it's over quickly.

 

Burning and shrieking a final call before crashing with a puff into the ground less than a mile away. Impacting the ground with barely a sound, somewhere deep in the forest. So quiet, I may have been the only one to hear it.

 

Immediately I know I have to go see the crash sight in person. I mean, how many people really get to do that!? I think only like one in a thousand meteors hit the ground! Or was it asteroids? Either way, this feels like a calling! Do people sell that stuff online? I could use it to make a quick buck off some genuine asteroid pieces! Maybe it's even a rare metal!

 

Screw everything else that was happening, I have to see this myself!

 

I quickly jog the rest of the way down the roads and towards the park, coming around the final bend to reveal a large park with all the garnish you could ask for. Little grassy hills and long stretches of flat green field, children's play structures and sets of swings, and lastly, a baseball field directly next to a Frisbee golf field. Wow, they've got everything here. 

 

My jog slows only a little as I still hurry through the place as quickly as I can. The threshold of the woods is at the back end, a slowly solidifying line of shrubs into trees. A quick scan reveals nothing out of the ordinary beyond the figure of a person standing halfway out from behind a tree. It steps backwards and out of sight as suddenly as I see it.

 

Wait.

 

My eyes catch. 

 

Oh. Thank goodness, it's nothing but a strangely shaped offshoot of the tree in front of it, merely being suddenly blown by a gust of autumn wind. 

 

The sweat evaporates from my forehead on tempo with my slowing heart rate. Phew!

 

…

 

Crossing the boundary into the woods was actually a lot harder than expected. The earth is wet and slippery and my traction is poor, especially when trying to go as quickly as possible on foot…in the dark. It was hard enough trying not to slip and fall more than four times in total. My clothes were quickly covered in mud and leaves within the first ten minutes, and I was starting to seriously get lost. 

 

I kept running and running, trying to dodge under tree branches and around bushes in the dark, all while making sure I stayed relatively going in the same direction towards where I thought would be the crash site. But more and more time passes, and I can't seem to find anything at all. I feel like I'm running in circles even though I know I'm not, but it's just so hard to tell out here and I'm suddenly feeling like I went way in over my head rushing in here at this hour. No one seemed to see it anyway, I should've just waited until morning but I ran in like an idiot and my clothes won't keep me warm forever.

 

But right when I felt like all hope might have been lost, and the anxiety of it all started building to too high of a pressure, I heard it… through the wind and the rustling leaves, through the snapping of twigs and the sound of my tennis shoes stomping in the mud, was the surely distinct sound of voices far away.

 

My running halts, immediately slowing to a sneak. Someone got here before me, be suspicious. They might want exactly what I'm after. Or worse, they could be dangerous. Mother always warned us about strangers.

 

The muffled voices get louder and louder until coming into decent enough clarity to overhear. 

 

The sound of a woman, muffled and quiet. Anxious, nervous. Scared of what she is seeing. "...-hat is this thing? It looks like a man!"

 

My skin goes frozen and pinpricked as I recognize the voice of my mother. This must've been why she was gone from home this early. But why here? And why now?

 

"I think it's a pillar man." A second voice sounds, this time a man somewhere in his thirties.

 

"A- a pillar man? What the hell is that?" She asks him frantically.

 

I creep ever so closer in the dark. Keeping perfectly clear of anything to reveal my location. They finally come into view.

 

There is my mother, in the center of a small clearing next to a slightly shorter man. They're both on detective uniforms, with their badges on their shirts as they stand over a small car sized crater in the ground. I can't quite make out what is in it from this distance. I make sure to stay close to the ground after a little shift too close caused one of them to look my way for a moment. Thankfully I'm unseen as the conversation carries on a moment later.

 

"A pillar man is… honestly, I don't think anyone's really sure what they are. I think the first one appeared in the Medieval era, though." He says, putting his hands on his hips.

 

My mom gasps quietly. "The Medieval era!?" She whisper-shouts. "There are more than one of these things!?"

 

"Yes." He says. "History says there have been three so far. This being the fourth. I heard whispers that they might have been some ancient precursor to humans, judging by what they look like. But no one really has any answers as to how they got into space, or why they're falling down now."

 

When my mother speaks next, she sounds dumbfounded, confused, scared. "He's so huge. He looks three times the size of a normal person. But….  Entirely made of stone." The sound in her voice makes me shiver. 

 

"That's not all." The man says before taking a moment to clear his throat. I think he might be her detective partner or something. But the "FBI" letters in white across the back of his jacket (but not my mother's) might suggest otherwise. 

 

He carries on, continuing where he was. "He's carrying 『The Stand Virus.』 Even just a touch is enough to get you." 

 

My eyes widened at that. What is the Stand Virus?

 

"What is… what is the『stand virus?』" My mother asks, filling in my exact thoughts.

 

"It's…" he trails off. "Did you hear about that story in the news last year, about that man in Mexico that took down some-odd twenty or so officers bare handed?"

 

"Why, yes. I did. But I fail to-"

 

"What they didn't tell you, is that it wasn't supposed to be possible at all. I mean, think about it. Thirty officers bare handed is completely absurd. They said he was on some sort of crazy experimental drug or something, and had twenty years of martial arts training. But martial arts training doesn't give you the strength to cave in a man's entire skull with one punch. And the officers interviewed never got their word out beyond a few select ears… they said he never even hit them. That he just pointed and suddenly a force struck them like a truck out of nowhere. They said it was like he had a ghost following him around. He would just point and something would kill them."

"Oh my God…." My mother says, mirroring how mortified I am. She does not like to use the G-word lightly.

 

"The bureau thinks he might have had the stand virus. Something that originates off of these guys. Like a bacteria somehow still living on their petrified skin. We have no idea how it works or how deadly it might be, but in some cases it can grant powers beyond your wildest dreams. And once you've got it, it has a chance to even pass down to your kids. Or at least, that might be the case, but we're not entirely sure. It seems just strange or bizarre strings of events sometimes, but there's often some kind of underlying correlation to one of these things. A parent or a relative carrying the virus from one of the original impacts. It's always something subtle, something totally unexplainable. Totally bizarre."

 

"No kidding… is that why they sent you into town here last week? Did… did you know this would be coming?" She asks, turning towards him with a pale face. 

 

"I'm not really going to discuss the details of that information." He says firmly. My mother puts her hands up a little defensively. 

 

"Okay. Okay. I get it. Why are you even telling me this stuff at all? Why did they put you with me of all people, wouldn't they want you with the chief of affairs?" She asks before straightening up like a rod. "This doesn't have to do with my husband, does it? I always thought his disappearance was a little bit strange. Only to find him so much later looking like… like that. You don’t think it was one of these stand virus infected people do you?" 

 

"『Stand Users.』" The man says, clarifying. “Yes, you may have come into contact with one before. It's inconclusive, but it points there.”

 

What!?!The words almost make me jump out of my spot and reveal myself, just to ask him what exactly he meant by that statement, but my little gasp of surprise is enough to get their heads to turn my direction once more for a moment before turning back and carrying on.

 

I will have to ask about this later if I ever get that chance. 

 

"That, and the commissioner thought I might have been better suited partnered up with a sharp mind from the detectives branch anyways. I just…." He leans back and looks towards the sky. "I mean I didn't think it would be happening today." He says.

My mother takes a steadying, deep breath before going on. But it doesn't fully fix her voice. “How have you guys been keeping this so well under wraps? If one guy can take on twenty armed forces all on his own, these 『Stand Users』sound like they could be serious threats to national security!”

“That's just the thing with them. We haven’t been. They’ve been wiping themselves out well enough on their own. That same man did not last very much longer. Contracting the 『Stand Virus』almost seems like a death sentence in waiting either way.” 

My mother just hums at this, clearly at a loss for words as to what to say next.

After a good minute or two of still silence, my mother finally speaks up again. "Should we be alerting someone that this is here?" She asks, nervously. Clearly still shaken by the events of the situation.

 

"Yes, actually. I had almost forgotten. I- do you have your phone on you? I left mine back in the cruiser, I didn’t think to wear my jacket." The man says, patting his pockets. He forgot his jacket on a night as cold as this? 

 

"Yes, of course I do." My mother says, slipping her right hand into the pocket on her uniform to pull out her phone. But she frowns after a minute of holding it. "It… it's dead. I- I must have forgotten to charge it. Wow, I'm sorry. Rookie mistake on a night like this. Wow I'm really sorry." She says, putting it back into her pocket and stepping a few steps back like the man might suddenly fly into a rage or something.

 

"Look, it's fine. I left my phone too anyway. I'll remember this location, let's try to get to the car and back as quickly as we possibly can. We don't want anyone stumbling upon this thing while we aren't here to guard it." He says, turning back relatively towards the direction I came from, or somewhere nearby it. 

 

"Right. It's a good thing nobody else saw this happen. The dead of night can really have its benefits." My mom says, turning with him and starting off down the dirt path I somehow missed my entire time getting here. The man follows after her just behind a moment later. I can hear my mom asking him about what happens when someone contracts the virus just before they're completely out of earshot. 

 

I don't quite hear the answer. 

 

But there's no time to lose in trying to chase after them. If I'm gonna see this thing, I'm gonna see it now while I've still  got the chance. Who knows when they could get back.. It took me an hour through the woods but it could take them as little as fifteen minutes on the path. I have to go now!

 

Rushing out of cover when I know for certain that they're too far enough away to possibly see me, I dart across into the clearing and over to the crater in the grass. 

 

An impact in the ground the size of a car with dirt thrown everywhere around me. It's a wonder how it landed so quietly. And deep within the pit, as sure as day, is the "asteroid." A boulder resembling the fossil of a man. A man's man. A hulking behemoth of a man so large he looks like he could lift a bus with one hand. Fully loaded with rounded muscles of every kind, in every place, a warrior of his ancient species with flowing stone hair that's permanently frozen in gray in the last state it was in. Settled down and draped over the fossilized man's shoulders as he lay there in a curled ball, his mouth jacked all the way wide open to reveal the stone filling in where his throat would be. He's clearly, thankfully, been dead a very very long time. Far too long to ever get up again. Though for some reason I get the distinct feeling I should maybe drive a wooden stake through his heart just to be sure. Or shoot him with a silver bullet. Or some other thing to make sure he stays down permanently. Like dousing him in holy water.

 

But that would mean having to leave and find something. Or worse, it might require me to touch him. And…that's exactly what caused it right? The stand virus? Something that could possibly turn me into some kind of super soldier, or something? Granting me mystic mind powers at the cost of what? Maybe my death?

Am I even willing to take that chance? I realized just then that I might very well be.

Ditch this old life behind for the possibility of adventure? And hell, even if it kills me, what do I have to lose anyway? I am no value to no one.

 

But if I live, I would be granted a life better than I could ever dream of? Maybe this could be my lucky break, just the thing I need to make life feel worth living again. If I survive this, then I’m meant to survive anything.

I bend down in a crouch over the Amazonian looking man. My arm stretched out just before the surface. I consider, briefly, whether or not it's worth the chance that this could be the worst decision of my life. Impulsivity takes over, I frown, and press my palm flat against the cold stone of his right cheek.

My eyes dilate.

It's shocking just how cold it is. Pressing right against dry ice. Like all of the heat has been pulled right out of it. In fact, it's so cold, my fingertips start to freeze-burn. Like the blood in my fingers is turning to ice. It- it hurts!

 

I try to tear my hand away on reflex, jerking away hard, but my hand stays. Stuck to the rock like the world's stickiest super glue as the feeling of ice starts flowing further and further up my hand, burning a painful path of freeze in its wake. A scared whine crawls up and out my throat as I realize this was totally a mistake. 

 

I keep jerking and jerking at it, trying so hard to pull away as painful tears start to flow down my cheeks at how much it hurts. The feeling of my muscles freezing into ice starts digging its way past my elbow and towards my shoulder, my breath getting more and more erratic as I barely hold back a scream. 

 

Is this it!? Is this how I die!?

 

No!

 

My fighting will reacts violently and I renew my assault, pulling harder and harder until- *snap*!

!!!

My arm breaks clean off, just below my shoulder. A sharp but painless shatter, severing with a simple little snap of ice under someone's teeth.

 

The ground meets me roughly as I fall back onto my ass into a puddle of mud. my arm is still attached to the rock but not to the rest of my body. But the torrential downpour of blood I'd expect to see from my arm being severed off doesn't come, and the feeling of cold still burns through my nerves just as though my arm were still completely attached.

I still feel everything through it as it burns so coldly. 

 

The pain overwhelms me more than I can handle sitting up for, and I collapse back further onto the ground, laying flat, as a shivering virus digs deeper and deeper into my immune system through the part of me still attached to the rock. But I don't have the heart to even sit up and watch as the feeling of my life being sucked right out of me through the contact point starts to drain further through my body. It reaches my head and my neck, locking them in place as my body freezes further and further. Passing down my chest and through my other arm, back and down across my midsection and into my legs. My breathing stops as my ribs turn to blocks of ice as solid as the pillar man I was once towering over. My tears stop as well, and I feel my heart freeze in place too. All the way until my brain. 

 

Just as I expect the world to start to go dark, everything seems to get brighter.

 

The feeling of cold suddenly reverses its path, flowing three times as quickly backwards out of each part of me. Heat and movement start to unfix my body from its place, allowing my breathing to pick back up once more as my mind scrambles to make sense of any of this at all. Sweat starts running down my forehead from my panic.

 

All across my body, the feeling retreats until it's back just to where the separation point is. The place where my arm detaches from the rest of me.

 

My body almost picks itself up on its own so I can watch.

 

The feeling, the invasive feeling, continues to retreat beyond the threshold. My senses extending out beyond where my arm should seemingly end before it feels as though my hand is pressing tightly up against some kind of wall. I feel my fingers start to move on their own, digging against something that doesn't  even exist. But as I watch and focus, it's not the hand on the pillar man that is moving.

…

 

A wet, squelching sound starts to permeate the air as the solidified blood, flesh, and bone at the base of my stump-arm starts to separate. A gray worm sprouts out suddenly from within my meat, wriggling in the open air as my jaw hangs wide open in horror. Another worm joins it, and another, digging at the air. I realize they are not worms as a fourth pushes through and joins the others.

 

It's fingers.

 

A thumb, a hand starts to push its way out of the stump of my arm, not losing a drop of my frozen blood to the open air as it progresses further and further into an arm of its own, like I'm growing an entirely new one all on my own. Now entirely matte pale-gray and smooth like plastic or glass. Blemishless and perfect with a tiny bit of shine. But it really isn't glass, and I realize I was never becoming frozen

 

It is porcelain. And it is perfect.

 

A confused but manic grin splits my face as the arm pushes further out beyond and becomes its own shoulder. Then the neck of something gray. An entire figure shrouded in silhouette or shadow crawls its way out of my wound like a slithering newborn, birthing itself from my agony. It falls to the floor after fully excavating itself from my body, and like a ghost, it starts to hover back up into the air just a moment later. As if someone switched off the gravity. Silently hovering a good few feet from the ground in a hunched over position like it has the world's worst stomach ache, thin gray arms dangling out in front of it limply. A ragdoll held up by its back end. Pinched and dangling.

A resonance in the air sounds, some kind of link between me and the figure. A puzzle piece fits into place. Before my eyes, I realize I’m witnessing nothing short of a miracle.

A feeling of utter joy, of utter euphoria floods my body as some unseen part of me is shown for the first time to the outside world. ‘This is what I have been waiting for my whole life!’ screams out from inside my own heart.

 

The arched figure suddenly contorts in my mania, a feeling of air dances across my back as though I wasn't wearing any clothes myself. The silhouette of the figure reverses its bend from concave to convex, still leaned halfway over but now facing me in its silent float.

 

I see her face for the first time, and I'm stunned once again. My smile fades for just a moment. 

 

There is nothing. No facial features and no hair. Very very little in terms of detail. Just six parts of a person, attached together with screwed in joints at the ends of each appendage. Two arms, two legs, and one head. But barely anything else save for a few extremely subtle curves at the hips and chest. Chiseled out of shining gray porcelain, exactly like a glossy mannequin or smooth gray doll, created but unpainted or unfinished. I don't even know how I know it's a her, but something in my heart just tells me. “It” doesn’t exactly fit the bill.

 

Her thin gray fingers, almost like bones, reach up slowly to her "face". They press against where a mouth would be on a human, seemingly as confused as I am to find no purchase. Until, that is, they start to press harder. Seemingly sinking into the glossy "flesh" with ease, as though it were clay or water. Not even breaking the surface. They sink all the way past her knuckles.

 

The almost malnourished looking thin hands wrap around under her chin to grip her jaw, and with a sudden jolt, she tears it down. The jaw snaps open, bursting a hole in her face as the porcelain grown across her mouth shatters wide open leaving a jagged smile of crooked and broken glass that look like teeth. A smile made of nothing but the jagged daggers of a shattered dinner plate. A cartoonishly dangerous look befitting nothing less than a demon or evil spirit. Behind it is a solid black void. What is supposed to be inside her is crucially missing.

But she's beautiful, and I know she's beautiful, because she's somehow still a part of me. And I don't even know how I can tell.

Something was missing my whole life. A second voice. And this is it.

Static warbles through the air, an overlay of a white noise sea sound fills my ears. Someone turned on a television to the wrong channel, and the splitting sound of ‘schhhhhhh’ spilled out. But just like if you stare at static on a screen for long enough, some kind of pattern is recognizable.  Something forms from the sound, puzzle piecing together into recognizable words with slow and deliberate effort. Dialing in on the radio until the right frequency is met. Clear as day and yet totally foreign. Intelligibility in something completely unintelligible. An inference made from incomplete material. I can understand her when I shouldnt, and she feels so specially specific to me.

 

"Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!" the demon laughs giddily, kicking her legs in the air as she rolls over in zero gravity. 

 

"Who- what are you?" I ask, sounding more like a child asking for ice cream than someone asking what the devil is made of. It comes out sounding far more joyful and excited than the situation should allow for. I really should be terrified, but I feel just so happy to be alive!

 

The doll demon flips over to face me, the jagged broken smile getting only wider, shattering a little further up her matte gray face. "My name is 『Rosegold!』 And I am your 『Stand!』"

 

(End Of Chapter One.)

←To Be Continued.