Captured

A boy notices a strange man in different places watching him.

My name is Phoenix. I have been an adventurer all of my life. People are usually complimenting me on how tall I am for 14 years old and my grey eyes. I’ve got it great, but there have always been many strange things that always seem to happen when I’m around. Like the time I was walking to school when someone came up and asked if he could give me a ride, and when I denied he drove off. Then a few seconds later the same person came out of a ditch off the side of the rode and was standing in the middle of the street about 10 meters in front of me wearing the same raggy clothes as the man in the car. Then after I looked behind me I could still see the car driving away in the distance, as I looked back where the man was standing, he was gone.

     Or the time I was sitting in math class and everyone else still hadn’t shown up yet and a desk

just went flying across the room. Then another one, until one of them hit me square in the face and knocked me out, I woke up in the same class a few minutes later and everyone asked what happened. When I tried to tell them they didn’t believe me, they said I just broke everything in the room for no reason.

    But none of that prepared me for this. I went on a huge field trip with about 30 other classmates five being my friends. We went to New York. We spent the first hour on a bus to go to washington D.C which was fun, until I saw him. The same man from the car that offered to give me a ride. We were at the Vietnam memorial and he was in the crowd staring at me I stopped but the class kept moving. My friend Conor stopped with me and asked “What’s wrong Phoenix?”I looked at his shaggy red hair and said

“That man, I know him.”

“You want to talk to him?”

“No! I think he’s… I don’t know. Let's just stay with the class.”

    When we looked around for the class we couldn’t see any of them, we were lost.

“Can we call one of the teachers?” Conor asked

“No, my phone is dead.” I replied

“What are we going to do?”

“Go to the bus.”

    When I looked back in the man's direction, he was gone. Now that I think about it he was wearing the same clothes as he was when I last saw him.

    We walked to the spot our bus was, but it was gone. We looked around but didn’t see anything. But I did see one man just standing there. At first I couldn’t see anything but a silhouette of a skinny guy, but when I looked closer I saw it was the same guy.

“Conor,” I said seriously “We need to go.’’

“Where, we’re in the middle of New York at 8:00 pm and don’t know how to get around.”

I thought, “Well, let's start walking”

    As we turned to the left I looked behind me, the man was gone. We walked until we made it to a sign that pointed us in the direction of the Martin Luther King Memorial, Where our class was supposed to head next. We ran the rest of the way there and saw our bus. We ran up to the bus with all of our classmates on it. The teachers looked shocked. Like they didn’t know we were missing. The bus doors opened and we got on.

“What are you slowpokes doing?” The teacher asked.

“Mrs. White,” Conor explained “We got separated from the group back at the Vietnam Memorial”

“Why weren't you with the group?” she asked

“We saw a man and Pheo-” I interrupted him,

“We got distracted.”

   She gave us a glare and told us to get on. We sat in our seat and rode to the hotel. But as we were leaving I noticed the same man watching me in the window. It wasn’t scary anymore though, He looked like a nice guy. When we got to the hotel Conor and I went to our hotel room. Conor hopped in the shower and I was alone. I turned on the hotels T.V and changed the channel until I saw “South Park”. I watched that for a few minutes and there was a knock on our door. I walked through the room and looked through the peephole. There was nobody there. I opened the door and looked both ways in the hall, Still no one. I went back and continued watching T.V when Conor came out of the bathroom, “Who was at the door?” he asked.

“Nobody” I replied

“But there was a knock?”

“Yah.”

    He looked at me like I was crazy. I heard some weird loud noises, it kept getting louder until it was so loud it shook the entire hotel. I don’t know what was happening but all of a sudden it just stopped. I looked at Conor to ask him if he just heard the end of the world but he said I was crazy.

    Later, I decided 8 would go to sleep after a while on my phone. At that point I had forgotten all about the shaking.

    The next morning our class woke up and headed out for the city. We got to a subway and took that to the docs. When we got there it was freezing and cloudy. Then we got on a boat to go around the statue of liberty. It took a little while but we made it, I pulled out my phone to take a picture when I heard a loud noise like in the hotel room. When I took the picture I looked at it and saw the statue of liberty was blowing up.

    When I looked up at the real one it was fine. Then, it exploded. Everyone on the boat screamed in horror. The boat started to rock as waves got more intense. People started falling off into the freezing cold water. I was about to fall in myself but I grabbed a pole and was hanging off the side of the boat. My hands were slipping off as it started to rain. I saw Conor sliding down my direction and he almost fell off but grabbed my hand and pulled me up.

     Then everything stopped. Everything. Birds were frozen in the air waves were stuck in place. People swimming were half out of water not moving. But I still moved. I looked at Conor and waved my hand around his face. He didn't move. Then everything was dark. I was in a pitch black room.

   I sat for a second thinking if I should look for a lightswitch or start banging on stuff. I decided I would find a light switch. When I found it I flicked it up. There was a series of numbers carved into the wall. 13459. Then I noticed a storage cabinet with a lock on it. I put the numbers 13459 into the lock and it opened, the was a knife and matches in it. I took the matches and put them in my pocket and held the knife tight in my hand. I looked around some more and saw a hatch in the ground in the corner of the room.

    I opened it and it led to more darkness. Walked down the stairs grabbed the box of matches and flicked one to provide some light. It only provided a small sphere of light and in the distance of the tunnel was only more darkness.

    I walked for a while until I heard some clicking and some wind blew out my match. I could see some light in the distance and sneaked up to it. I looked in the room and saw the back of a man clicking on a computer. I jersey his head in my direction and said,

“AH, Phoenix. You're awake.”

    Then I realized it was the same man who I have seen repeatedly watching me.

“Who are you?” I asked

    He just stood there and stared creepily at my knife.

“I gave that to you,” he explained “it's yours, you'll need it.”

“Why?” I asked.

He looked at me then said

“Good bye” and turned into dust.

    I stood for a few seconds trying to make sense of everything, then I saw the computer. I ran over to it and saw one file titled “End” I clicked it and it opened. It showed pictures and articles of people dieing and explosions. And when I read the article the first thing I saw was “The end of the world.”

    There was a disease that wiped out most of the population. It started a week ago, Nov. 11th, 2018. But that didn't make sense. It was 2016 earlier. Then the computer screen switched to a screen that read,

“Free”

    I clicked it and heard a loud bang to my right. There was a stairway going up into natural light. I slowly walked up the stairs as the light burns my eyes and makes everything white for a moment. Then I could see it. Buildings were collapsed from explosions, bodies lay on the ground, and the sky was brown.

    Then out of some dirt in the ground there was a small twister that formed into a human shape. It was the raggy guy.

    “You see,” he said “This is your world in 2 years. Scientists released mosquitoes that contained a deadly virus. They said it was harmless and just a minor sickness. But people's bones turned to pretty and the disease spread through air.”

    “Why did they do it?” I asked.

    “They did it as a purge. The population went up so much they decided to bring it down… a lot. There are still survivors, somehow immune. You will be one of them. Everyone else you know, won't.”

    “Who are you? I asked

    “Whoever you think I am.” He responded.

“Good bye.”

    He shriveled back into the dirt.

    Then everything was white. I was back on the boat. Nobody fell of, the statue of liberty was still up, and I continued in life.

    2 years later everyone did die and I came across a nice group of people willing to help me after I had fallen through some old stairs in a house. But there were bad people too. Always trying to kill people. I made it passed some of those people, and now still try to stay alive. I struggle to find food, I find some in old abandoned houses but soon we will run out.

    I'm still greeted every now and then by the mysterious man but only every couple months. No One else I've told about him know what I'm talking about but, I feel like we may all have someone like that. Maybe if you look closely enough you'll notice something similar. Good luck, Survive.

         

     

Reviews

[Christina]

this is a really great story, from the beginning you had me hooked but i also feel like you were kind of rushed to end this story. The ending isn't as descriptive as it was from the beginning so it feels kind of off, like it's not really the end. Maybe you could add what has happened between the course of the next two years that kind of foreshadows the "end" of the world and how Phoenix starts seeing the signs of it all.

[Jane]

OMG THIS STORY GAVE ME CHILLS. I LOVE THE IDEA AND THE CONCEPT!!!The only thing I can think of for improving this story would be to try and use better descriptive language but overall, I really love it! XD