Ishmael

Ishmael

A Chapter by Jake
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The intro chapter of Ishmael, one of the main characters of Fate.

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            A young man was sleeping in his bed, tossing and turning in his nightmares, knocking his covers off of the bed.  He let out a quiet mumble, as if talking to unseen demons in his dark room.  Then he sat up, clenching chest, feeling a pain like he had just had a knife thrust into him.  He knew he was awake for the day now, and rose out of bed.

 

            It was five o’clock on a Saturday morning; the sun’s light caused a slightly brighter shade of blue over the edge of horizon.  The world around him was still jet black with the blanket of night still wrapping the house, holding on to the time it had remaining before the sun would burn it away.  The July air hung thick, causing Ishmael Erikksen to cough before adjusting his breathing rhythm to account for the humidity in the air.

 

            He slowly shuffled out into the hall outside of his room, scratching at his head and letting out a large yawn, smirking at the thought of how stereotypical of a movement he had just made.  He flipped on the light in the bathroom, and shut the door quietly, trying not to wake his parents.  Ishmael used the toilet and washed his hands examining his face in the mirror.

 

            The face that looked back at him looked tired and worn, especially for his being only 17 years old.  Dark streaks highlighted the area below his green eyes, evidencing his recent lack of a good sleep.  His dark brown hair was greasy and messy, as he expected it to be this soon after he slept.  The features of his face revealed his Middle Eastern ancestry, despite his Northern European skin color.

 

            The house went black again when he flipped the light switch and walked downstairs, almost falling halfway down.  He caught himself and looked down as he made it down the last few steps, not wanting to risk a second stumble.  A fluorescent light above the stove in the kitchen flickered to life as he hit the switch on his way to the pantry.

 

            He rummaged through the cereal shelf of the pantry, finally resting on an off-brand version of Corn Flakes.  He poured the cereal into a small glass bowl and went to the fridge, only to find an empty milk carton.  A curse quietly crossed Ishmael’s lips, remembering that he was supposed to pick up more last night on his way home from work.  He closed the fridge and ate the cereal dry, cringing at the lack of flavor, regretting his choice.

 

            The crunching of the fresh cereal became a background noise as he retreated into his own thoughts.  It was the third night in the row he experienced the same dream, and he was beginning to grow quite sick of it.  It wasn’t that he was angered by it waking him up, for it worked better than his alarm usually did, which he had actually forgotten to set the night before, he realized in the eerie silence of early morning.

 

            The dream always occurred in the exact same fashion every night, never even straying with one color on his clothing, one change in his breathing rhythm.  It was always mid-winter, a light snow falling in the bitter cold, an occasional breeze causing the snow to angle in its graceful descent towards the earth.  The snow on the ground was about halfway up his shin, chilling has feet as some fell into his worn running shoes.

 

He was always running through a field towards a wooded boundary, trying to escape someone who he never looked to see, only knowing that he could not let them catch him.  The sense of imminent death caused him to think only of escaping into the forest, where he could possibly lose them in the shadows of the trees.

 

He would always make it through the first hundred yards through the woods, giving him a sense of relief as he was able to shake his pursuer.  He would slow down to a light jog, holding his coat collar to his mouth to warm the air as he breathed.  It was then that a dark figure would jump in front of him from behind a large oak tree and thrust a large, strangely warm blade straight through his ribs, cutting both his right lung and his heart.  The combination of pain and rapid bleeding clouded his vision as he fell to the ground.  He was never able to get a clear view of his killer before waking up, breathing heavy and feeling ghost pains where the warm knife had stabbed through him.

 

            He rinsed out his bowl and set it in the dishwasher, where it would wait for him to start once he had returned from work that day.  He slowly walked back upstairs, consciously avoiding the spots in the floor where creaking was notorious to occur.  The towel carelessly thrown over the back of a chair in his room was still damp when he grabbed it to take a shower, smelling of mildew from the day old shower water.

 

            Steam quickly filled the small bathroom as Ishmael showered, still pondering the dream.  Having the dream a third time sparked a small concern deep within his mind, disturbing all other thought just enough to annoy him.  He leaned on the shower wall lazily as he thought of what it could mean, letting the almost scalding-hot water run over him with the sort of freedom that water tends to possess, weaving it’s own paths down whatever it hit.

 

            The fact that it had occurred in a bitterly cold, snowy region was the detail that confused him most, seeing as he lived in the small town of Gigante in Southern California, and had never actually seen more than a light dusting of snow before.  Moreover, the area looked like that of the Minnesota and Wisconsin regions that he had seen in a few of his high school textbooks.  He could not think of any reason for his being in that area, as he had no relatives in that part of the country.  In fact, he could not think of a single person he knew anywhere close to the upper Midwest.

 

            The other part of the dream that concerned him was the obvious point of his death.  He knew that he had plenty of people that he had angered over his time on the planet, but none that he could think of that would hate him enough to kill him.  He was generally liked by most people around him, and would have plenty of people to help him should he need it.   So why was he running alone in the Wisconsin countryside and getting killed in a forest?

 

            He let out a deep sigh as he shut off the water and stepped out of the shower.  Lines spread across his face as he tightened it in a reaction to the bad smell of the towel as he dried off, getting dressed into his work uniform.  The logo that was embroidered on the uniform was that of a local burger stand, Erikksen Burgers, that his uncle had started twenty years back when he was fresh out of high school.  It was nothing more than a small building with a couple of deep fryers, but he paid decent and was well liked by his customers.  Adding that to the fact that he was the only uncle that Ishmael knew, and it almost made up for the fact that simply looking at fried foods made him sick.

 

            He left the bathroom and headed back downstairs to leave.  When he reached the foot of the stairs, his dog Strider greeted him, his brown eyes begging to be let outside.  “Sorry, Strider” Ishmael whispered to the 2-year old black lab with a hint of pity in his voice, “you know I can’t let you outside this early.  Just go back to sleep and wait for Mom and Dad, okay?”  The dog tilted his head before walking back to his favorite corner of the living room and lying back down.  He watched Ishmael leave, then closed his eyes and fell back asleep.



© 2008 Jake


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Added on February 9, 2008
Last Updated on February 13, 2008


Author

Jake
Jake

WI



About
I am a 16-year-old from Wisconsin who is very much into music, but I also enjoy writing on occasion. I play many games and read quite a bit, and all serve in part to help form what I write. more..

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