Shadow Worlds and Chaos Lights
folder
Original - Misc › -Slash - Male/Male
Rating:
Adult ++
Chapters:
14
Views:
2,347
Reviews:
0
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Category:
Original - Misc › -Slash - Male/Male
Rating:
Adult ++
Chapters:
14
Views:
2,347
Reviews:
0
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Disclaimer:
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead and any likenesses to unoriginal characters are purely coincidental. The Author holds exclusive rights to this work.
Chapter 4
FAR TOO soon to be considered something even close to a good night's sleep, Heedan was awoken by the angry sound of the alarm on his cell-phone. He fumbled with the phone a couple of seconds before he managed to turn it off and then he sank back against the pillows, trusting the snooze function to give him the proverbial 'five more minutes'.
Truth be told, it became first ten, then fifteen, then twenty more minutes before Heedan finally woke, still dazed with sleep, and stumbled to the bathroom and into the shower. The electricity was still off so the water was ice-cold and when he came out of the shower five minutes later with a towel around his waist and another wrapped around his hair, he had goose-flesh all over his body and his lips were an unhealthy shade of blue.
"T—there..." he mumbled, his teeth chattering. "I'm awake...I'm awake!"
Maybe it was the power of suggestion or maybe it was his body's reaction to the cold, Heedan didn't care which; the important thing was that after the shower, he actually felt okay and ready to face a new day. He spent a few more minutes stretching his body and kneading the sleep from his muscles before he went to get dressed, putting on the school uniform of St. Isolder's University: a pair of well-creased grey pants, a white shirt and a black tie with the school's emblem, a pair of angel-wings, on it.
He gazed at his reflection in the mirror. His skin bore the weak signs of the spring's first tan and his long dark-brown hair fell freely around a well-shaped face with high cheekbones, soft, rosy lips and a pair of emerald-green eyes that seemed almost fluorescent, framed by long, dark eyelashes. He knew he looked quite good, though now his eyes were circled with the telltale marks of too little sleep that made him look hollow-eyed, and his lifestyle of always staying inside reading and eating junk food was starting to affect his body, that wasn't exactly top physique, nothing alarming yet but definitely not flattering.
He looked a lot like his father, his mother had told him so, and since his mother was a short, curvy woman with curly, blond hair and blue eyes, Heedan had no other choice than to believe her on that.
When Heedan had gotten old enough to realize that other children had 'daddies' as well as 'mommies' and asked his mother why his father wasn't with them Ailene had hugged him tightly and answered that "I know that your father would have stayed with us if he only could, but he had to leave us," and back then Heedan had been satisfied with that answer.
Later, when Heedan was a teenager she had told him more.
She'd met Heedan's father at a school dance when she was in secondary school.
He had seemed so lost and lonely that she couldn't help herself. She had started to talk to him, and as the evening turned to night one thing had lead to another.
Ailene had ended up pregnant after a single night of passion and against all reason, decided to keep the baby. She had never regretted becoming a mother at such a young age, but it hadn't been easy for her.
Her pregnancy, of course, had become a huge scandal in her small hometown. The incident had made her lose most of her friends and had caused her to get into a huge fight with her parents over it, a fight that resulted in them refusing to talk to her until shortly after Heedan's first birthday, when they slowly but surely had realized that it wasn't that bad to be grandparents after all. Only Ailene's twin brother had stood by her the whole time, and he had continued to be there for them both throughout Heedan's life.
And what about the boy that had been Heedan's father? Well, Ailene hadn't seen or heard from him since the night they had shared together; it was like he had vanished from the face of the earth, something that was really hard to do in such a small town. But Heedan's father had done it; and not only had he managed to vanish completely, but when his mother had started to ask people if they knew what had happened to the boy, she couldn't find a single person in the whole town that remembered him even being there at all. It was as if he wasn't really human.
Still she hadn't uttered one harsh word about his father during Heedan's whole life. Like she had done when Heedan had been a child, she kept telling everyone that asked her that Heedan's father had had to leave them and that she never expected to see him again.
"You look so much like him, Heedan," Ailene had said one evening, shortly before Heedan had left for the university. "Especially your eyes..." she had sighed and added, still lost in memories of her one-time lover. "...He had such sad eyes...So guilty."
Heedan smiled a little at the memory and met his own gaze in the mirror. It could have been a trick made by the light but for a flash of a second, he almost thought he saw another face looking back at him, a pale and skinny face with tear-filled eyes in the same colour as his own; the other's whole being a vision of sadness, guilt and broken hope. But before he could fully focus on the other face, the illusion was gone and he only saw himself again.
"Hey! Wait!" Heedan exclaimed, giving the mirror an almost desperate look as if daring it to change again. When nothing more happened, he stuck his tongue out at his own reflection in a moment of pure childishness before straightening his tie and putting his hair into a tidy ponytail.
By now, the sun had risen far enough that it shone straight into the apartment and robbed it of all the mystery the moonlight had given it earlier. It was, in fact, a really scruffy looking apartment even though Heedan had done his best to keep it clean and homely. The daylight revealed a collection of mismatching, second-hand furniture, all in different stages of wear and tear. The few walls that didn't have bookcases against them were more or less covered with posters and photographs in an attempt to hide the worn-out wallpaper that hadn't been in fashion for the last few decades, and colourful rag-rugs covered the linoleum that once had been green but now had faded to a dirt-gray colour.
Sure, it wasn't fancy, but at least Heedan knew that he got what he paid for. This apartment didn't belong to campus but was let by a private landlord that specified in letting to students, retired and low-paid people who were interested in cheap apartments rather than well-situated ones or a nice view.
This particular apartment complex, for example, lay on a shady backstreet, hidden between a pornographic store and the Salvation Army's shelter for the homeless, but it was closer to campus than a lot of other apartment complexes in town and was, indeed, really cheap, which left money over for Heedan to pay for more important things, like buying more books for his research and paying for courses and seminaries, so he was happy with it most of the time. Okay, so it was annoying when he didn't have electricity and hot water, but such things came with the cheap price and he could handle it.
Heedan made a quick search through the clutter of books and papers on his desk, stuffed the ones he needed for school into his backpack of blue denim and dropped it on the floor by the kitchen table as he went to get the morning paper that lay neatly folded outside the door.
On the way back, he passed the dead refrigerator and took out some breakfast; a lukewarm soda and left over pizza from the day before, and he put everything on the table.
Not even bothering to sit down Heedan put a slice of pizza in his mouth and opened the newspaper, skimming through the news that reported the same misery as usual, mixed with ads about Slimfast diets and miracle work-out machines that promised you the body of an athlete with only five minutes training a day. He ignored the sports section, read his horoscope with an amused smile, because horoscopes in newspapers were at least something he didn't believe in, and flipped to the comics.
And then he saw it, there in the middle of the open newspaper, just so that it covered today's comic strip of 'Hägar the Horrible' was a small piece of paper, not bigger than the palm of his hand, and on the paper some words written in red ink. The memories of what had happened during the night came rushing back at him and a cold shockwave spread through his body.
Agwe Idin Ricven Tana Mu'atsu
Heedan stared at the paper but he could no longer see the words. The world around him became blurry and made the red ink look like it was stains of blood instead of letters. The world spun around him, and he felt like he was going to faint.
The sound of his cell-phone alarm brought him back to reality and he shook his head to get rid of the dizziness.
It was the second alarm for the day. It had happened far too many times that Heedan had become immersed in a book or lost in a daydream during his breakfast and quite simply lost track of time, so therefore he had set his cell-phone-alarm not one, not two, but three times every morning; first when it was time to wake up, then when it was a suitable time to go and finally, the third time, when he had to go if he would make it in time for school at all.
As Heedan bent slightly to pick up his backpack from the floor he happened to look down at the table and all colour disappeared from his face. The newspaper he had been reading lay folded at one side of the table and in front of him was instead a pair of scissors, a glue stick, and a scrapbook he had bought earlier to collect newspaper articles about things he found interesting, but yet hadn't started with.
The book lay open and upon the first page, the mysterious papers, both the one from the book and the one from the newspaper, had been pasted.
Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us!
Agwe Idin Ricven Tana Mu'atsu
Heedan swallowed and shook his head again. His mouth became dry and he felt a couple of drops of cold-sweat run down his spine. "What's happening to me?"
At the same moment he said those words, his cell-phone started to ring for the third time, Heedan jumped, and with a noise that sounded more or less like a whimper, he grabbed his backpack and rushed out of the apartment.
Truth be told, it became first ten, then fifteen, then twenty more minutes before Heedan finally woke, still dazed with sleep, and stumbled to the bathroom and into the shower. The electricity was still off so the water was ice-cold and when he came out of the shower five minutes later with a towel around his waist and another wrapped around his hair, he had goose-flesh all over his body and his lips were an unhealthy shade of blue.
"T—there..." he mumbled, his teeth chattering. "I'm awake...I'm awake!"
Maybe it was the power of suggestion or maybe it was his body's reaction to the cold, Heedan didn't care which; the important thing was that after the shower, he actually felt okay and ready to face a new day. He spent a few more minutes stretching his body and kneading the sleep from his muscles before he went to get dressed, putting on the school uniform of St. Isolder's University: a pair of well-creased grey pants, a white shirt and a black tie with the school's emblem, a pair of angel-wings, on it.
He gazed at his reflection in the mirror. His skin bore the weak signs of the spring's first tan and his long dark-brown hair fell freely around a well-shaped face with high cheekbones, soft, rosy lips and a pair of emerald-green eyes that seemed almost fluorescent, framed by long, dark eyelashes. He knew he looked quite good, though now his eyes were circled with the telltale marks of too little sleep that made him look hollow-eyed, and his lifestyle of always staying inside reading and eating junk food was starting to affect his body, that wasn't exactly top physique, nothing alarming yet but definitely not flattering.
He looked a lot like his father, his mother had told him so, and since his mother was a short, curvy woman with curly, blond hair and blue eyes, Heedan had no other choice than to believe her on that.
When Heedan had gotten old enough to realize that other children had 'daddies' as well as 'mommies' and asked his mother why his father wasn't with them Ailene had hugged him tightly and answered that "I know that your father would have stayed with us if he only could, but he had to leave us," and back then Heedan had been satisfied with that answer.
Later, when Heedan was a teenager she had told him more.
She'd met Heedan's father at a school dance when she was in secondary school.
He had seemed so lost and lonely that she couldn't help herself. She had started to talk to him, and as the evening turned to night one thing had lead to another.
Ailene had ended up pregnant after a single night of passion and against all reason, decided to keep the baby. She had never regretted becoming a mother at such a young age, but it hadn't been easy for her.
Her pregnancy, of course, had become a huge scandal in her small hometown. The incident had made her lose most of her friends and had caused her to get into a huge fight with her parents over it, a fight that resulted in them refusing to talk to her until shortly after Heedan's first birthday, when they slowly but surely had realized that it wasn't that bad to be grandparents after all. Only Ailene's twin brother had stood by her the whole time, and he had continued to be there for them both throughout Heedan's life.
And what about the boy that had been Heedan's father? Well, Ailene hadn't seen or heard from him since the night they had shared together; it was like he had vanished from the face of the earth, something that was really hard to do in such a small town. But Heedan's father had done it; and not only had he managed to vanish completely, but when his mother had started to ask people if they knew what had happened to the boy, she couldn't find a single person in the whole town that remembered him even being there at all. It was as if he wasn't really human.
Still she hadn't uttered one harsh word about his father during Heedan's whole life. Like she had done when Heedan had been a child, she kept telling everyone that asked her that Heedan's father had had to leave them and that she never expected to see him again.
"You look so much like him, Heedan," Ailene had said one evening, shortly before Heedan had left for the university. "Especially your eyes..." she had sighed and added, still lost in memories of her one-time lover. "...He had such sad eyes...So guilty."
Heedan smiled a little at the memory and met his own gaze in the mirror. It could have been a trick made by the light but for a flash of a second, he almost thought he saw another face looking back at him, a pale and skinny face with tear-filled eyes in the same colour as his own; the other's whole being a vision of sadness, guilt and broken hope. But before he could fully focus on the other face, the illusion was gone and he only saw himself again.
"Hey! Wait!" Heedan exclaimed, giving the mirror an almost desperate look as if daring it to change again. When nothing more happened, he stuck his tongue out at his own reflection in a moment of pure childishness before straightening his tie and putting his hair into a tidy ponytail.
By now, the sun had risen far enough that it shone straight into the apartment and robbed it of all the mystery the moonlight had given it earlier. It was, in fact, a really scruffy looking apartment even though Heedan had done his best to keep it clean and homely. The daylight revealed a collection of mismatching, second-hand furniture, all in different stages of wear and tear. The few walls that didn't have bookcases against them were more or less covered with posters and photographs in an attempt to hide the worn-out wallpaper that hadn't been in fashion for the last few decades, and colourful rag-rugs covered the linoleum that once had been green but now had faded to a dirt-gray colour.
Sure, it wasn't fancy, but at least Heedan knew that he got what he paid for. This apartment didn't belong to campus but was let by a private landlord that specified in letting to students, retired and low-paid people who were interested in cheap apartments rather than well-situated ones or a nice view.
This particular apartment complex, for example, lay on a shady backstreet, hidden between a pornographic store and the Salvation Army's shelter for the homeless, but it was closer to campus than a lot of other apartment complexes in town and was, indeed, really cheap, which left money over for Heedan to pay for more important things, like buying more books for his research and paying for courses and seminaries, so he was happy with it most of the time. Okay, so it was annoying when he didn't have electricity and hot water, but such things came with the cheap price and he could handle it.
Heedan made a quick search through the clutter of books and papers on his desk, stuffed the ones he needed for school into his backpack of blue denim and dropped it on the floor by the kitchen table as he went to get the morning paper that lay neatly folded outside the door.
On the way back, he passed the dead refrigerator and took out some breakfast; a lukewarm soda and left over pizza from the day before, and he put everything on the table.
Not even bothering to sit down Heedan put a slice of pizza in his mouth and opened the newspaper, skimming through the news that reported the same misery as usual, mixed with ads about Slimfast diets and miracle work-out machines that promised you the body of an athlete with only five minutes training a day. He ignored the sports section, read his horoscope with an amused smile, because horoscopes in newspapers were at least something he didn't believe in, and flipped to the comics.
And then he saw it, there in the middle of the open newspaper, just so that it covered today's comic strip of 'Hägar the Horrible' was a small piece of paper, not bigger than the palm of his hand, and on the paper some words written in red ink. The memories of what had happened during the night came rushing back at him and a cold shockwave spread through his body.
Agwe Idin Ricven Tana Mu'atsu
Heedan stared at the paper but he could no longer see the words. The world around him became blurry and made the red ink look like it was stains of blood instead of letters. The world spun around him, and he felt like he was going to faint.
The sound of his cell-phone alarm brought him back to reality and he shook his head to get rid of the dizziness.
It was the second alarm for the day. It had happened far too many times that Heedan had become immersed in a book or lost in a daydream during his breakfast and quite simply lost track of time, so therefore he had set his cell-phone-alarm not one, not two, but three times every morning; first when it was time to wake up, then when it was a suitable time to go and finally, the third time, when he had to go if he would make it in time for school at all.
As Heedan bent slightly to pick up his backpack from the floor he happened to look down at the table and all colour disappeared from his face. The newspaper he had been reading lay folded at one side of the table and in front of him was instead a pair of scissors, a glue stick, and a scrapbook he had bought earlier to collect newspaper articles about things he found interesting, but yet hadn't started with.
The book lay open and upon the first page, the mysterious papers, both the one from the book and the one from the newspaper, had been pasted.
Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us! Help Us!
Agwe Idin Ricven Tana Mu'atsu
Heedan swallowed and shook his head again. His mouth became dry and he felt a couple of drops of cold-sweat run down his spine. "What's happening to me?"
At the same moment he said those words, his cell-phone started to ring for the third time, Heedan jumped, and with a noise that sounded more or less like a whimper, he grabbed his backpack and rushed out of the apartment.