Unsettling Reality

A Chapter by Benjamin

second chapter

As i went down to the kitchen in the mourning i was fully awake for an awful reason. Usually when i wake up i am groggy and don’t usually walk up straight. The thing that really showed that i had a bad night sleep, which that my almost translucent hair was heavily matted to my face and neck.

When my sister came into the kitchen she realized what had happened, i had had another attack. They weren't very common but they were always triggered by stress and they are always dangerous to my health especially if it was during my sleep. The thing that i suffered from was unknown to scientists. I had first developed this unique problem after learning that my father had been killed in the explosion at the military base.

My sister then asking the question that i had been dreading since the attack which i didn’t feel like answering but i knew i would have to when my mom came down. "Blaze what stressed you out enough to bring on the attack this time" she said in a very worried look on her face. I knew that she had a right to be worried about me, after all last time i had had an episode i had ended up in the hospital.

But that did not change the fact that i am not in the mood to talk to her about what was me so stressed. Then as i was about to make a witty and sarcastic remark my mom walked in. and i know she had herd Alexis talking because she looked like she was waiting for my answer. Although i was not about to tell them what was bugging me so much. This is to be expected for a sixteen year old boy.

"It is none of your business Alexis. And even if it was i wouldn’t tell you anyways since you would already know about it!" i said with a half-smile. She knew me well enough not to persist because i would never give up when i set my mind to something. Another factor is that she could just try and eavesdrop on me and my mom when our mom made me say what was on my mind.

Knowing that i was safe until later in the day i decided to go take a shower to try and clear my head of what was stressing me out. I then headed to my room upstairs and entered it. My room was a deep shade of red that almost looked like dried blood and had pictures of mystical creatures like elves, dragons, pixies, angels, devils and all sorts of creatures from animes. I headed to my walk-in closet and grabbed myself some clothes without looking. I folded them and went back to my room.

As i exited my closet i walked to the door to the left of my bed and turned around and examined my room. Standing where i was my closet was to my left and the door to the hall way to my right. And at the opposite wall frame there was a theatre system hooked up to a variety of electronic gaming systems and also acted like my computer. I had three huge bookshelves filled with games but twice as many of bookshelves lined the walls were crammed with books that i had read and re-read multiple times.

When i entered the door behind me i went to turn the shower on so that i could warm the water before i could take a shower. But then i decided to take a bath so i put the stopper in the bottom of the tub and started the taps. I went to the door and turned the fan on by a switch that was located at the right side of the door. I went to check how much more water was needed in the bath there was still a lot to go.

I looked around to see if there was anything i could do to wait. I looked in the mirror and wondered not for the first time why i had absolutely no acne. Although i had a few features that were not exactly normal for someone going to high school. The first being the tattoo of a flame covering a lot of my right cheek from the corner of my right eye then expanding on the way down then shrinking as it reached my chin. The second would be a scar that goes through my right eye horizontally.

I got the scar on my eye ball the last time i had a severe attack while leaning over my bread buttering it. Now you would think that since it is a clean slice that the knife that sliced my eye while i was falling well it wasn’t. It was a staple that had been used to fix the counter and had been pried loose by me that very mourning. I had lost vision in that eye and the doctors had said that it might be permanent or it may go away in time. That was four years ago now, i want exactly upset that i didn’t have the sight in my right eye.

The last was even more unnatural which was my left eye. It was actually multi-colored, one side of it was grey and the other was green and if that wasn’t odd enough I don’t actually have an iris in my eye. The entire pupil acts as one. It also was a smooth transition between the colors though. If a stranger were to look at my medical history on my DNA and my abnormalities they would be astounded and would probably revoke my record as false. Because the eye is explainable. It is called a chimera effect were there are two strands of DNA in one person. It is better explained as the opposite of twins.

Out of the corner of my eye i see that the tub is almost ready. I take my clothes of and enter. Thinking about my problem i slowly start composing myself and getting ready to explain to my mother what the reason for my attack is making sure that it is actually the reason. After i finished i put on my outfit which consisted of black boxers, gray sweat pants, black button up shirt and a tie. I then remembered that i had plans for today. I was gathering with my friends at the mall. I hadn’t wanted to go all that much but it gave me a reason to leave the house.

Walking downstairs o rushed to the kitchen to grab a muffin. It wasn’t a normal sized muffin either even with my huge hands i have a tough time holding them in one hand. I went to our fridge to get some 2% milk and poured myself a glass. Eating as fast as i could and downing the glass of milk i went to put my black casual jacket which was very plain. I almost made to the door but my mom had the ears of a ninja!

"Where do you think that you are going Blaze" i could hear the anger in her voice and knew that i was trying to get away before she could interrogate me about what was going on in my life. Before she could start her interrogation technique i said "i promised my friends that i would go to the mall with them to look at the new store opening".

My mom then gave me a suspicious look because she knew that I loathed going to the mall even if it was with my friends. I let a sigh of relief pass my lips when I realized that I was actually being allowed to go out with her knowing I had had an attack. But I didn’t let her time to reconsider her decision and ran out the door from our house. Well it’s not really a house more like a mansion. It’s five stories tall and is a hundred feet long in each direction forming a huge square. I untied my bike from the post positioned a few feet away from the door. Putting the chain around my handle bars and took off down our long driveway.

When I got to the end I had to stop to unlock our gate that were made of steel and close them after I got out. I then started on the five kilometer bike ride to the mall where I would have an hour to waste before my friends arrived at the mall. Half way to the mall I had to stop to make sure that my heart beat wasn’t reaching to high. Because my attacks can also be triggered by my heart rate going over 190 beats per minute.

It was a good thing I stopped my heart beat was at 180. It wouldn’t have gone up that much in only two kilometers however the way here was mostly uphill and did not go up slowly. I got off my bike and sat down on the side of the road to take a breather so that I could lower my blood pressure. Although I’ve got to admit that my mom’s idea of getting me a specialized watch to monitor my heart beat as well as tell the time was actually great. It had saved me in a lot of situations where I had gotten near an attack but had avoided it.

When I was finally back to normal after about five minutes I set off again, however this time I paced myself. When I got to the mall there were no cars in the parking lot. So I decided to go straight to the area where I could tie up my bike. After I had done that I looked at my watch and saw that I had forty-five minutes until my friends were supposed to arrive and about an hour until the store opened.

I checked if the walk way where I was standing was clean enough to lie down and it was. I lied down on the hard concrete side walk and started to watch the clouds drift back. That is when I noticed that there actually were not any clouds in the sky today. Disappointed I sat up and looked around to see if there was anything that I could amuse myself with. I decided to count the number of light poles there were in the parking lot and how many parking spaces there were. This took up about thirty minutes; I counted a total of twenty light poles and five hundred parking spaces.

I considered what I could do to keep myself occupied with for fifteen minutes. Looking around there wasn’t much a few cars had arrived but none of them were employees and more importantly my friends were still not here. So I decided to see how many steps I could take before they arrived. Ten minutes later I gave up when I reached a thousand three hundred and twenty one.

I let out a huge sigh when I realized that I had a few minutes left, although considering that most people have experience the few minutes that seem to stretch out and never end, I was completely and utterly bored beyond anything that I have ever experienced. A few minutes later came the realization that my friends were running behind their schedule and I might have to wait a lot longer. In the anguish that I felt I realised that someone was /trying/ to sneak up on me.

I say trying because as everyone that knew me, had experienced the imponderable pleasure of being scared by me when they realized that I had been following right behind them for a long time. They also knew that along with my ninja stealth I had heightened sense of hearing. This is made very hilarious when you consider that I have size sixteen feet and weigh 210 pounds. Everybody that I scared always ask how I was able to sneak around without making any noise and how come no one was able to sneak up on me.

The answer was very simple! While playing my video games I had picked up the ability to pick up on extremely slight movements anywhere in my peripheral vision. So in simpler terms I was just very observant.

The time had finally arrived for my friends to show up and my fears were proven wrong as my friend Neo drove up still keeping his set goal of always being on time, which I was very happy for. As they parked as close as they could next to the handicapped spaces, I could see that a lot of people had been invited by Neos’ sister Ray. I could tell that he was not enthusiastic about having so many people in his moms’ minivan at once.

I had told him before that using a minivan would get him into these kinds of situations when someone needed to go somewhere. As he got out of the minivan I was still amazed that his hair could look so weird. I know that my mom’s was unnatural but his was just down right creepy. One day he could have his hair spiked in cones, the next it would pull these weird tricks and be completely strait and reach to the small of his back. Although I had never seen him with short hair or medium at that. The thing that was even better about his hair was that it never got into his face unless he wanted it to.

As the people piled out of the van I counted how many people I would have to spend the morning with. In total there were five people not including Neo and me. Ray started to introduce her friends to me. She started from the left and went to the right. First there was a girl named Sandra, another named Beca, and the last named Juno. The two to the right were guys, and their names were Argo and Tony. I looked at them and realized that they were twins.

Then Ray pops in and says “Yeah Argo and Tony are twins” while beaming. I gave her a look that told her that I had figured that out already on my own. I looked down at my special watch and realized that there were only a few minutes until the store open.

“You guys the store is about to open, where do you guys want to start at; the movies or the shopping area?” I said pushing my bangs to the front of my face. Neo and Ray stared at me like I had told them that I the world was ending. Of course I knew why, it was because I had actually volunteered some places to go which is actually the first time that I had. “I’m just in a good mood you guys and I wanted to speed up the starting and not just stand here trying to figure out what to do after its open.”

They looked at me suspiciously but left it alone since Ray had some friends with her. After a few minutes of discussion they decided to go with my first suggestion of the movies. When we got to the theatre in the mall we had to decide which movie we were going to go for. When we asked the ticket booth they said that they only had one movie available for seven people. “Yea sorry about that you guys but it is a three old kid’s movie.”

As we walk away from the theatre disappointed that we could not get into any of the movies we wanted Ray realised that we still had the rest of the huge mall to go through and spurred us on by saying “come on you guys this is only the start and there are many more places to enjoy ourselves in this mall.”

Argo gave a grin to Tony. “That is what ‘she’ said!” they announced simultaneously high fiving each other. Everyone was laughing except me and …. well actually it was just me who had a straight face. This took the twins by surprised and they looked confused as to why I hadn’t laughed at the joke.

This made Neo and his sister start laughing even harder. “You guys will have to do a lot better if you want to try to make Blaze laugh!” Ray said still trying to get over the fact that the twins had had an extreme case of confusion and that their faces had looked really funny when they had contorted to show it.

“We accept that challenge and expect to beat it!” they said in unison. Which, I knew was going to get on my nerves if they kept doing it. I then tried to arrange my hair again so that it would cover my face better, so that Ray’s friends didn’t see my eyes. Except that when I did shift my hair one of her friends noticed my right eye. I think it was the one called Beca. Her eyes went wide and she backed up and tripped over a chair.

“Beca what is wrong? Are you hurt? Do you need help?” Ray asked immediately thinking she had gotten dizzy. When Beca got her wits back she pointed to me and stuttered, trying to get out that my eye was demonic. Ray looked up and realized that Beca had seen my right eye and stated “Beca he isn’t demonic it’s a scar on his eye.”

This got the rest of the group to turn towards me except Neo who already knew about it. I sighed as I realised that once again I had become the center of attention. I still had trouble when people looked at me trying to get a good look at my face, especially my eyes. I had learned though that it was easier to sit people down and show them. The alternative was having Argo and Tony pestering me for the rest of the time that we hung out at the mall.

“You guys sit down and calm yourselves and then I will show you my eyes.” I said this as they looked at me about to ask me a lot of questions. When everyone got settled I sat down and parted my hair so that everyone could see my face clearly. “It isn’t that amazing you guys.” Trying to make sure I didn’t stutter with ten eyes staring at me. Although by the looks I got when I said it I had been wrong.

Argo stated in a dazzled tone of voice “Dude, how can you say that! That is the awesomest thing I have ever seen!” all the while gaping at my face. The others said similar comments that made me more nervous and put my hair to its original place so that it covered my eyes.

I knew just by the way this day had started out that it was not going to be fun. Considering that I still had to face my mom when I got home. That would mean that I would have to face what had caused me to have one of my attacks.

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