Chapter 1 (minor editing)

Thanks again for your responses from the last post, and enjoy!





Working story title:  A Sudden, Unexpected Blow to the Head.




                    ---now as you turn around and see her, you recognize her.  A wink, and she says,“But remember this: wisdom can only be learned, never taught.”  Then the knife is in her hand and----


Chapter 1.

6:32 AM.

Not the way you wanted to wake up today, rolling on the ground and clutching your head, but it’s taken you time to adjust to the new room.  More  specifically the slanted ceiling and the eastern facing window directly across.  At your all-to-recently abdicated room at your parent’s house, the window faced north, allowing the sun (and you) a slow,  peaceful morning wake up.  Bright sunlight to the face means late, and these days, late means fired.  Not as slow to wake up as your brain, your body brought your unfortunate forehead into contact with the slanting roof above your bed with what felt like a speed in excess of 200 mph.   More wake-up power than Folgers or Starbucks could ever hope for.

A second pounding, discordant to the death metal beat thrashing through your poor impacted cranium, adds its staccato rhythm to your emerging consciousness.  If the cannonball impact of your head didn’t wake them up, the sailor-worthy stream of profanity still gushing from your mouth surely did.  You manage to force your mouth shut around the pain, and roll to a stop facing the ceiling, your hands still grasping the oh-so-generous fountain of pain from your skull.

Only a week in this crappy little room, and you’ve already managed to injure yourself, and bug the neighbors to boot.    Why, oh why, did you have to push it so far at home?

Live in the moment, the tiny Buddha in your head tells you.  The bit of your brain still functioning is amazed he wasn’t forcibly ejected due to your recent concussive altercation.  Still, his voice is enough to bring your mind more or less up to par with your body, and the blood you feel on your hands kicks your old Boy Scout training into gear.

Come on now.  Apply pressure until flow has ceased and you can check the wound.  No loss of consciousness; concussion unlikely but still possible.  Do not move the subject unless necessary.  Clean out wound, first with water, then with antibacterial.  Apply poultice.  Check throughout day, and clean / replace as necessary.  Easy.

The lamp and alarm clock on your nightstand fight to the last staving off the invasion of your groping hand into their territory.  Though their foe be injured, their effort is all for nought as they fall, defeated, to the floor (your lamp with a crash that brings another irritated thump from below), and your hand closes on your now defenseless spectacles.  The world clears a bit, and the bed (more sympathetic to your cause, it would seem) aids in helping your upright.

The impact must still be reverberating through the house, judging on how hard it is to keep your balance.  At least the metal band seems to have finally taken a breather.  You remember to duck before entering your tiny bathroom closet, and it only takes a few seconds for the rusty fluid issuing from the tap to transform into something resembling water.  Though the site of your reddened hands causes a momentary spike in your heart rate, it’s clear that the bleeding has stopped already.  It probably wasn’t so bad a wound; it just bled a lot, as head injuries tend to do.   Your conclusion is proven after a quick wipe of the grungy mirror brings your bespectacled mug into view.

If one were to describe you in one word, that word would be ‘skinny.’  Not ‘thin’.  Not ‘fit’.  ‘Svelte’ would be doing you a favor.  No, you’re far too skinny for that.  Despite your best efforts at the gym, despite all you eat and your less-than-healthy lifestyle, you haven’t gained a pound since senior year in high school.  You know (hell, you’ve been told on a near daily basis where you work) that some people would kill for a body like this, but, as per usual with this kind of thing, to you it’s been nothing but irritating.  Hundreds of hours of sports and workouts, and strangers can still count every bone in your body at a glance.  Oh, and they try.  Hoo boy, do some of them try.  If you hadn’t had to live with the looks before now, you’d be even less secure than you are already.  Mr.  Universe you ain’t, but at least it’s made you decently athletic.  The searching grey eyes staring at you from the mirror carry accusations of a lifetime of vanity, and, sheepishly, you return your attention to your wound.

Steps one through four completed, you finish and step back into your room just in time for your alarm clock to kick off your inner-cranial thrashers’ second setlist.  Clearly unsatisfied with the rapid fire wake up screech, your downstairs neighbors add their own polyrhythmics to the mix.  Between the two of them, you can tell the mosh pit’s here to stay.  At that moment, the weight of the world is quite nearly enough to tip you back over onto your bed in the customary ‘fuck the world, I’m going back to sleep’ position you practiced to perfection in college; it's only the sight of your freshly emptied wallet on the ground near yesterday’s jeans that keeps you, however unsteadily, on your feet.  You rub your eyes, and the headache lessens a hair.

See?  The day's looking up already.A few deep breaths later, and you’re back.

Come on.  New job.  Got to focus.  Get breakfast.  Get dressed.  Acquire car keys.  Acquire coat.  Leave, lock door.  Head for steps.  Return.  Unlock door.  Go inside.  Acquire shoes.  Leave, lock door.  Head for stairs.  Quick nod to the nice girl who mans (womans?) the lobby desk, and you’re out to the parking lot and on your way.

You poor bastard.   You were so close to avoiding it all.  Blame your father for giving you his punctuality.  Blame your mother for bequeathing unto you her perseverance.  Hell, blame anyone you can.  But now the course is set, and there’s no way out of it.

Good luck.  You're going to need it.

____________________


She woke up exactly where she remembered going to sleep.  That’s a relief.  The opposite case was rare, but one could never be sure.  She slid up the wall behind her and stretched before contorting her body in a practiced set of movements. Luxuriously, she began cracking the knuckles of each her fingers, followed by her toes, her knees, and the base of her spine.  (A cat bearing the scars of local fire-cracker wielding children screeches in post traumatic terror and takes off into the early morning gloom.)  Then she reached up.  Down.  Up.  Down.  Left.  Left again. Right.  One more right.  She stretched the muscles in her legs and arms in rapid succession.  A quick combination (two straight lefts, duck to one more low left, right hook, quick side kick to low sweep and rise to axe kick) and she’s satisfied.  Breathing lightly, she leaned back against the wall again with her arms folded across her chest.

The sun hadn’t yet risen enough to reach this part of the alley, and though it is still quite cold, she didn’t seem to feel it.  Traffic is light, and besides the occasional far-off siren, the city was remarkably serene.  She took a sip from a bottle of water she found in the pocket of her thin black coat, and ran a hand through her  hair, before throwing the empty bottle into the closest trashcan with a sigh.  Briefly, she wondered how bad she smelled, and scratched the side of her nose in quiet contemplation.

It’s been a while since I’ve eaten anything, she thought with a shrug.

She bent at the waist, stretching her legs one last time, and tapped the toes of her sneakers against the pavement.  Each of her toes could clearly be seen under the threadbare surface, and the soles left a bit more of themselves on the ground with each tap.

A quick nod.  First things first.

She carefully rearranged the refuse she had moved the night before, and scuffed out the prints her morning routine had left in the grime.   With one last quick glance over her temporary settlement to reassure herself that she wouldn’t be followed, she moved silently to the mouth of the alley.  She checked left.  She checked right.  She checked left again.

Old habits die hard,  she thought, and began to run.




That's it for chapter 1.  There was a lot more to write, but I wanted to keep it in fairly digestible chapters for my sake as much as yours.  I apologize for any mistakes, but I was too excited and tired to do much more to it before posting.  Anyway, what do you think?  Interested at all?  Criticisms?  Love / hate it already?  INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW.

For the record, I also plan on posting this on DevArt, so you might check over there later if you want.