First Impressions

This is another story with Trevor. Quick story I made to keep my writing muscles pumped for school. Also experimented with first and third person.

‘Iri Beach is beautiful at this time of year.’

“That’s what I heard about those parts. They’re right.”

I sit on a laid back beach chair. Trees, their leaves surf along the wind, their branches sturdy and upright, yet also soft and laid back. The houses near here, constructed like they were from Tahiti and Florida, but also had Puerto Rican, Filipino, and Madagascan beach architecture flowing through it. The houses were humble and furtive, yet hearty and whole. I take a bite out of a candy bar, a cocktail of fruity lychee, haw, peach, blueberry with strokes of vanilla, alien Caltulip cherry sourness, and tangy orange berry-ness twanging the deep, rich flavor. It was amazing, to say the very least. Clear, gentle yet full purple skies and a wonderful yellow sun, the silky air tinting the star a lovely rose.

Helps that the ocean’s salt is giving the air such a unique, almost childhood blanket and teddy bear feel. Cozy. I feel right here. Maybe that’s the point. I look at the beach again.

Children playing in the ocean, building sand castles. People, couples of many ages admiring the vista, surfers and wave riders jumping and flowing over the tides.

I feel the wind brush and graze my hair.

Brzzzrt.

Something vibrates my pocket. He pulls the device out. An electronic device that is a cross between a Walkman, a Nintendo Gameboy, a Motorola Razr, and newer smartphone technology... well, antiquated by today. A flat, 2D screen holographically projects over the surface of the device.

He stares at it and nods.

Speaking of which, I should get some groceries. I stand up, and stroll. The trees from before decorate the town, a boardwalk with wood colored in this romantic rose color. Neon lights, holograms, roses and flowers, sleek cars and buses; graffiti and soggy streets; cleaning and maintenance droids. A picture straight from Miami 1999, but with a futuristic kick.

Either case, it’s a rather good place to live."

He keeps strolling. In his helmet, the song “Let it Happen” plays -- softly but not dead.

Suddenly, he faintly trips by a Synagogue.

Trevor looks at it. Long.

The song, even though it was soft, it captured his mind.

Without even noticing it, he was at a church. A catholic church. It was 5 in the morning, and his clothes were dirty and scuffed up.

It wasn’t a basilica, but it was still a neat sight. Tinted, stained, and painted glass showing iconography of Holy Mary, Jesus Christ, all of the traditional figures in the catholic religion.

He was sitting in a pew, with nothing except his coat, and a wallet.

A pastor walks up to him, and tries to say something, except its extremely blurry and faint, mumbly. Eventually though, he nods, and then leaves a giant bout of cash in Trevor’s possession.

The pastor vanished as soon as Trev raised his head.

Suddenly he’s back, staring at the Synagogue. The song switched: “Dirty Car” by Studio Killers plays

The sky was turning a rich purple, and the sun was going red.

“Thank you.” he donates to the synagogue. As soon as he walks by, he sees a few men walk out of the synagogue with a bag of food and water in their hands, them thanking the Rabbi attending.

A mile or two later, he encounters another beggar, immediately donating money to them.

The beggar goes away and the man nods back in return.

Once again, the song captured the man’s mind.

He’s back, but now in his favorite furred coat, on the side of a road, a wall of grass behind him concealing a forest. Rain assaults.

He’s starving, soggy, and cold. He checks his pocket. Nothing.

He checks for a sign, or some sort of direction for anything. Nothing.

The growling in his stomach, it cripples. It was getting dark, darker than tarred mud.

Finally, he checks his wallet.

An ID thankfully, and a card. There was just a cent left.

He sniffles, and sneezes. Each minute, he could feel himself getting sicker and sicker

He climbs inside, setting up a shelter; mud, dirt, and rain cakes him, while sticks and stones tears through his coat and skin. Numbing shivers rattled him throughout the night.

Life flashes forward, and suddenly, he’s on a town street, with a tattered coat, a sign in his hands, and a can.

Strangers sneer, and leer. Some strangers dropped a few coins out of pitiful sympathy, and one stranger kicked the can over and laughed at Trevor, before spitting on him. “Get a job!” they said.

Eventually a shopkeeper approaches the man. they point to a sign saying: “No Tramps.” and proceeded to kick him out.

Once again, life flashes forward, this time in a shelter. Total squalor, the place was. Despite the outside’s rather sweet and sleek design, the shelter’s inside had exposed wiring, broken lights, crumbling support beams. The bathrooms were even worse. S**t was smeared all over the crevices and floor. Tampons, syringes, patches littered the floor.

Trevor could barely bear the smell, but just pushed through it, showering whenever he could.

Finally. Trevor reached his tenement, climbing the thirty stories to complete his journey. He checked in and tried to get into his room.

“Eviction notice.”

The song switched “Low Hum, Comatose”

Finally. Trevor reached his Mecca, entering the grocery and picking up a basket.

“I’ve always hated the design of these man. Your natural position for your hands are going to be sideways, not front or behind. I know it’s for storage reasons, but is it so hard to put it on the sides or something?”

He grabbed some peaches, mangoes, tomatoes, eggs, milk, all the usual stuff from a grocery run. He paid and got out.

A new song plays: “Lamento Bolivia”

He walks again, this time on the other side of the street. This particular behavior causes the song to net his mind again, except this time, the sun was bright and high. Trevor was driving with a pair of sunglasses, with his dad and mom right beside him. All of them were laughing hysterically at something said earlier between them.

Trev’s mom leans over and says something. This sends Trevor giggling, as his dad gently elbows his mom in the shoulder, in a sorta brotherly love way.

Finally, in the slickest, sickest, nastiest way possible, Trev drifts to a stop. They get out to see the beautiful sunset of a beach. They set up a camera and take a self portrait of the place. His dad just stares at the sunset, before his mom prods him to join the photo.

He nods and accepts after a couple of seconds and joins the picture. The timer runs, but not before an idea crosses Trevor’s dad’s head, as he picks up his wife at just the right minute. The photo snaps.

It’s a perfect shot.

They laugh at the result, it’s his mom’s turn to elbow his dad. He comments, before she rolls her eyes at his answer.

Trevor was laughing at the whole thing.

Trevor was then suddenly at a hospital. His dad was in a bed, a heart monitor singing bad omens.

Trevor and his mom begins to cry. His dad, despite pain sinking and slipping its burning glass teeth throughout his body, the burning was nothing compared to his heart, as he pushed himself forward to hug them.

One.

More.

Time.

Flatline.

Suddenly, Trevor was back in his car. Tears had matted his car, and a bittersweet sting laid through the air. In a rearview mirror atop, lies a picture of his dad and mom.

Suddenly, again, a beep runs through the air.

His car was nearly out.

Trevor checks a map, a gas station.

He hisses air out of his nose. He switches lanes, and arrives at a pump.

He hears someone crying, and stops everything that he was doing, locking his car, but not before a man with a small gizmo taps it against the car’s lock.

A gun was pointed at his head, and a voice told him to empty everything.

Trevor threw out his phone and most of the contents of his wallet, when a glass door barges open, and the shopkeeper wielding a shotgun stops the mugging. Despite this, in spite of the muggers’ panic, they were still able to hijack Trevor’s car and everything.

Trevor was now left with nothing but a basically emptied wallet, and his coat.

The song ends. And now Trevor is back once more. Except now, he’s at his ship. A powerful ship, about moderately bigger to an X wing stands before him.

He looks back from his ship, his face becomes the portrait of a counter, the face that has seen all of the steps that he’s taken, and looks at the cockpit. It opens, as if it knew that’s exactly what Trevor wanted at the minute.

He looks at his groceries. his hand was aching to let go of the bags, before he notices fluid leaking from beneath the ship.

his head tumbles back to a loud, bellowing groan, as it dwindles to a hissy sigh.

“Goddammit.” before he shakes his head, and vaults into the cockpit.