Chapter 1- "The Name is Jonny" (Jonny)

Jonathan "Jonny" Bowen awakes in a strange room with no memory of how he got there, only a voice prodding him along.

1

          “It is time for you to wake up, Jonathan Bowen.”

          He could just barely make out the words over the ringing in his ears, and the acute pain he felt crashing through his head wasn’t making things easier. He kept his eyes firmly shut, with both hands over them, yet a bright light still seemed to shine through. Weakly, he mustered a response.

          “Don’t call me that…the name is Jonny.”

          “In that case, please wake up, Jonny Bowen. There is much to do, and we cannot begin without you.”

          “I’m up, I’m up…” Jonny whispered, grimacing as he moved his hands and started to slowly open his eyes. He couldn’t remember the night-or day-prior, so he could only assume based on past experience that he’d either passed out after a wild night at a friend’s house after throwing up on the cat, or had passed out after a wild night on a park bench, and was currently being eyeballed by a questionable individual.

          Neither outcome was favorable, so Jonny felt a mixture of relief and trepidation when he opened his eyes and found his surroundings completely foreign.

          “Where in the world have I found myself now?” Jonny wondered aloud, taking the place in. It seemed to be a two-room, rinky-dink apartment.
          One of the two rooms was the bathroom, containing a toilet, small bathtub, cracked mirror and tiny sink. Everything else, from an old, dust-covered stove, sheet-less bed, orange loveseat, and TV were packed into the other room, and based on the conditions of his surroundings, Jonny found it hard to believe the place was inhabited.

          “Please, stand. Tidy yourself up. You’ll want to make a good impression for the others, I’m sure.”

          Jonny heard the voice once again, and tried to locate it as he stood up, his muscles crying out as he did so. Whatever he’d done the previous night, his body was regretting it.

          “Is somebody here?” he asked, directing the question at nobody in particular. He couldn’t tell where the voice he kept hearing was coming from, and yet given the cramped room he was in, there wasn’t much room to hide. “Don’t be shy,” he said. “I don’t bite, I promise.”

          There was no response, and Jonny began to question if he’d just been imagining the voice all along. It was either that, or somebody was speaking to him from a separate location via some sort of microphone.

          His first few steps were a bit awkward, but by the time he’d crossed over to the mirror, he’d regained his footing. Looking at what he could make out of his reflection in the dirty, cracked mirror, the first thing he noticed was his chin. He had only the faintest of stubble, and this was good. It meant that, at most, he’d been out for a day or so.

          “So I wasn’t out for three days like in Venezuela. That’s good. Now so long as a “woman” doesn’t pop out of a trapdoor in the floor, I can safely chock this up as “Still not as bad as July 12^th, 2009,” so I can’t be too bad off.”

          Even if it didn’t elicit a response from the mystery person who had been talking to him, hearing his own voice calmed Jonny, and he had a feeling he’d need to be thinking rationally at a time like this. He started examining the room in more detail, looking for some sort of clue that might jog his memory as to where exactly he was, and how he had got there.

          After about ten minutes, he gave up the hunt. He’d examined a few drawers, a dresser, and even underneath the loveseat, and found nothing.

          “Are you going to stand there forever?” Right when he was about to write the voice off as a product of his confused state, Jonny heard it once again. And this time, he was wide awake.

          “Ok, enough games,” Jonny said. “Seriously now, I know that in my presence you’d probably feel inferior, but that’s no reason to hide like this. Please, show yourself. I bet we could be fast friends if only you’d let me see your face.”

          “I’m afraid the two of us will never be friends. However, if you’d still like to see me…” A quiet metal thunk echoed in the room, and the door inched open, ever so slightly. “…by all means, step outside.”

          Jonny took small steps as he approached the door. Surely, he thought, whoever was speaking to him was standing outside, and had just unlocked the door.

          He touched the handle, and it felt warm in his grasp. He briefly had an urge to slam it shut, to barricade the door somehow, and find another way out. But the notion was ridiculous. There was no reason to be afraid. To prove this point, if only to himself, he took his hand off the knob, and pushed the door wide open with both hands.

          There was nobody on the other side. Jonny stepped out, and found himself in an empty, narrow hallway, with other doors on both sides of the wall, and a set of stairs at the end.

          “What happened? Did you get scared and run away?” Jonny asked, but to no avail. After a moment with no response, he shook his head, and took a better look around.

          On the door he’d just left was a number, “324”. Moving down the hall towards the stairs, he saw the numbers lowering. “Hey, so tell me something. Is this some sort of apartment complex…or the world’s most unsettling motel?” Once again, he was met with silence.

             Jonny picked one of the doors at random and tried to open it, but to no avail. Either it was locked, or the door was blocked off somehow, although no amount of force could get the door open. After trying a few more with the same result, he once again made for the stairs.

          It was right after he started going down that he saw another sign of life, standing halfway down the stairs.

          Only he could say for sure it was not the person he’d been hearing, as the one he saw before him now was a young boy, who couldn’t be more than nine or ten years old.

          “Hey, kid, you all right?” Jonny asked. He’d wanted to ask where he was, or how he’d gotten here, but this child seemed just as lost as he was. To start, he looked completely out of place in this run-down, dreary building. He had clean, smooth khaki pants on, with a buttoned dress shirt tucked into them. His short, blonde, and well-groomed hair was neatly brushed to the side, making it look as if he’d just come back from getting his picture professionally taken.

          But he was just staring forward, and did not react in any way as Jonny slowly walked down the steps towards him.

          “Do you have any idea where your parents are? Do they live here?”

          Jonny was only a few steps away from the child now, but he was still unresponsive. Jonny considered just walking past, he had enough problems of his own to deal with, after all, but he begrudgingly knew that he couldn’t in good conscience leave this child here. He was an adult, after all.

          “Can you at least tell me your name?”

          It was then, as Jonny stood on the step above him, that the child looked up and, with tears glistening in his eyes, said “Are you proud of me?”

          The next thing Jonny knew, as if some great change had happened all while he’d blinked, the child was gone in an explosion of flames, and his surroundings were ablaze, the fire quickly spreading.

          “What the-“Jonny began, frantically looking around, trying to process what had just happened. The child was gone, the building was burning…and what about himself? He looked down at himself in dread, expecting to see a bloody mess. He was, however, fine. He’d been standing right in front of the child, but he neither he nor his clothes showed any sign of damage.

          Jonny heard something snap behind him, and he started to move. He jumped down the steps two at a time. He didn’t know how he’d escaped harm, but he didn’t want to chance things again. He could figure out what was going on after he was safe.

          The stairs led to a new floor, although Jonny continued going down, trying to find the entrance. It felt as if the fire was chasing him, his surroundings lighting up only as he approached. After going down two floors, the steps ended, and Jonny made a beeline down the only remaining hallway.

          It lit up all at once, fire spreading along the floor, smoke obscuring his view. From where he stood, it seemed as if the hallway had no end. He couldn’t move forward lest he’d be burned, but, turning around, he saw the fire approaching him from behind, too. He looked up, down, and to his sides, but saw no door, no window, no crevice, no anything to shield him from the flames.

          Jonny decided that if he was going to be burned one way or another, he’d do it while attempting to escape. Any other option would surely lead to his death, but if he just charged straight ahead, maybe he could make it to the exit, and extinguish the flames before it was too late.

          He’d likely be horribly scarred in the aftermath, but anything was better then death.

Steeling himself, he ran forward, directly into the flames.

It didn’t hurt.

In fact, Jonny felt nothing at all as he charged through. At first, he thought his body was just overloaded, and wasn’t feeling the pain. But he soon realized that his body wasn’t being affected at all. He just wasn’t burning.

By the time he’d reached this conclusion, he’d nearly slammed into the door at the end of the hallway.

He heard a familiar voice.

“You didn’t think you’d die here, did you? It’s much too soon for that.”

Frustrated, confused, and afraid, Jonny once again pushed the door open, and this time was met with what he could only describe as a solid blue outline of a human being.

The head, chest, arms, legs, feet…everything was there, just as it should be.

But the defining characteristics weren’t. The entire body was the same shade of dark blue.

“We’re all waiting for you, Jonathan.”

Without even being consciously aware of it, he stepped forward. He was met with a blinding light.

“My mistake. What I meant was, we’re all waiting for you…Jonny.”

Author's Note

I kind of wrote this in a hurry, and as such, it isn't as fleshed out as I'd like it to be, but I kind of want to push ahead and see where things go before getting into the nitty-gritty. Any constructive criticism would be appreciated. (And the reason I have Jonny in parentheses at the end of the chapter name is to mark who the POV character is, as it will change between chapters.)

Reviews

[Wolfwind Words]

Curiously interesting story. I like the 3rd person point of view that this chapter was brought across in. It allows for the reader to watch the story unfold as if they were a fly in the room, rather than through the eyes of the character.
Your description of the surounding areas was a good mix of detail and description, enough to give a feeling but not being overly wordy. Good job on that.

You leave the story in a state of anticipation and anxiety. It leaves a good hook for wanting to read more.

- Aaron

[pancake_monster]

Thank you for the review, it means a lot.