So this has been sitting in my google docs folder for a few days and I thought I might share it with you. It's the current first chapter of this story I'm writing about two boys that attend a boarding school on a remote island - one of them is Don, a pretty normal dude who just wants to get on with his life, and the other one is Bernard - a child genius who worked out how to summon demons with computers when he was 12 years old.
I'm a little apprehensive about this for several reasons:
- I think I used too much complex language.
- I think I overdid things.
- I think I underdid things.
- I think Bernard's personality so far seems confused.
- I think I slipped into the past tense a lot when I was trying not to.
I'm posting it here so you guys can tell me what you think. Would you read this? And please don't think I'm fishing for compliments here, It's just that after deleting so much crap off of my computer and feeling bad later on I genuinely don't trust my own opinion on my own writing any more.
Chapter 1
It’s dark. Damn, that’s a cliché first line right there, isn’t it?
Believe me; it’s not that I’m not trying here. There’s a waste paper basket filled to the brim with crumpled up first lines next to me right now. You’d think that something as trivial as your own experiences would be easy to write about, but I think I lost the capacity for intelligent divulgence of information somewhere around the tenth canned soft drink from our stockpile. Incidentally, that was round about the time I started basically paraphrasing myself, coming up with things like “It’s not light.” and “The environment I find myself in is lacking in luminosity to the point where anyone finding themselves in a position where they have to stand in the room where I am might as well consider themselves cognitively impaired in terms of their ability to interpret the visual input from their own retinae.”
But you know what? It’s getting late, I need to loo, and I can already hear the faint sounds of my newfound cousin preparing to pull another all-nighter in the workshop. If I’m forced to choose between my ridiculous, sugar-induced lovecraftian prose and something as baseless and cliché as “It's dark” before I escape to dreamland, I’ll go with the latter.
The environment I find myself in is lacking in luminosity to the point where anyone finding themselves in a position where they have to stand in the room where I am might as well consider themselves cognitively impaired in terms of their ability to interpret the visual input from their own retinae. As I fumble for a light switch and fail to find one, I wonder if the nice girl from the school council has played some kind of trick on me. But no. I’ve confirmed it with the other first years. This lighthouse is definitely where my cousin lives, at least during the school term.
Learning this so early on had earlier lead me to further query what exactly was wrong with my cousin’s brain that would cause him to want to live in a place like this. The answer turned out to be many things. Nobody wanted to clarify what. I mentioned it to one of the art teachers when we were being shown around and she started crying - the nice school council girls then pulled me aside and gently informed me that the art department and my cousin didn’t exactly have a sound history. When the incident repeated itself in the maths department with a male teacher, I found myself being harshly informed by the increasingly unkind and irritable school council girls that most of the school and my cousin didn’t exactly have a sound history. At the end, it was difficult to bear the sight of all the other students setting off for their designated dorms, some staring at me with sympathy, others with contempt. All of my attempts at socialising: unsuccessful.
And then there was the advice I’d been given before they’d pushed me through his front door and shut it behind me. “Don’t touch his things, look him in the eye and most importantly, DO NOT let him decide you’re unintelligent.”
It hadn’t been at all early that I’d decided that my cousin might not quite as much of a cool dude as a complete and utter space cadet. But you know what? That’s a baseless assumption. Based on things about him I’ve heard from other people. Which were based on what… experience? Hard evidence? As I reach around blindly for a light switch, I sigh fearfully. Oh lord, am I screwed.
I’m in a stairwell. A stairwell that doesn’t appear to care that a doorway opens onto it in the place where I am and continues on past it regardless. I nearly fall twice while trying to work out where the floor is; if my new front door didn’t open outwards, it wouldn’t open at all. And then there’s the decor. Seriously, who puts that on their wall?
More importantly, who lives in a place like this? That’s a question much more deserving of the italics, and at any rate I’m about to find out. I tear my eyes away from the mangled image visible if only a little in the light of a small window behind me, and decide swiftly on going down. Then I trip, fall, catch myself with my hands, and decide to instead focus on finding down, which turns out to be the other direction.
After a couple of minutes of feeling around for the walls and nearly doing accidental splits when my brain repeatedly decides that this next step will definitely be further forward than all of the others, I see a light below. I have no idea how many times the staircase has spiralled, but it’s a welcome thing to find somewhere that actually does have lights. A living area, it turns out. With a bathroom. And two bedrooms. And a real kettle. Which would all be ideal, except the second bedroom is so full of boxes the door won’t close and the toilet smells horrible - not just the normal 'liquid arse dipped in honey' horrible, really really bad. Also, I’ve just realised that the stairs in the lighthouse have gone downwards far further than they should have, and that means I’m actually probably just a little bit underground by now, which, if your worst fear is being buried alive, doesn’t really work out for you.
The ceiling makes a quiet creaking sound and I respond by spending about half a minute in the doorway, face likely plastered with something akin to a strait-jacket clad lunatic's best 10-yard-stare as I quietly fight off the urge to give the already foul smelling toilet some vigorous use. Then, I slowly move out of the area and take some deep breaths. I count from 1 to 10. I count from 10 to 1. The walls stop closing in. Everything is fine. I am taking control of this situation.
The boxes definitely need to move, I decide. And I might as well do it now myself because the yet unnamed person who sleeps in the other bedroom is not a nice man and would probably not be impressed if he found I’d borrowed his bed. Unfortunately, I don’t get time to indulge my box moving fantasy; there’s a loud noise downstairs, and I’m suddenly covered in my own cold sweat. The noise itself isn't really something describable or even remotely interesting to know the context of, but I’ll try anyway - a clattering. It sounded exactly like someone had deliberately and purposefully pushed over a pile of CDs, and it came from downstairs.
Most people would do something ‘sensible’ and yell “HELLO? IS SOMEONE THERE?” as loudly and obnoxiously as possible. In a scary movie, this would be to let any lone (or accompanied) horrors know that there’s fresh food upstairs in bulk, with sound effects; In an action thriller, it would be a similar situation except instead of alerting a monster I would’ve just indicated my presence to a lunatic with a gun who is likely not looking to make friends. Beyond that, I’ve not got much else to go on. In a comedy, this wouldn’t happen. In a romance, this wouldn’t happen. In a Mystery, it’s the same situation as the action thriller but it’s much more likely that this wouldn’t happen.
All in all, yelling is not a good idea. Somehow, a far better idea (the movies agree) is for me to actually go down and investigate myself, and so I find myself sneaking even further downstairs.
And this is when I find something amazing. Because about 2 stories down, the walls around me just stop, and the staircase continues down into a large, open chamber with pipes running across the ceiling and exposed wiring hanging down. The walls are made of metal, the ceiling is supported by thick set steel beams without the aid of pillars, and there’s screens everywhere, each showing some random aspect of something - 3D visualizations, calendars, countdowns, color tests, the works. And, on top of that, there’s all sorts of dangerous-looking equipment around the place. The place is a health and safety nightmare, but boy is it amazing.
As I reach the floor, my mobile phone buzzes loudly in my pocket - no signal. I’m going to chalk it up to being pretty far underground for now but there’s some sort of transmitter machine set up on the desk beside me that could definitely be contributing. I walk over to it and aim it sideways, hoping for a better signal. What happens instead is my phone signal does not improve and the wall I’ve just aimed the transmitter at starts turning a ghostly shade of blue, so I cut my losses and aim it back at the ceiling before I destroy the planet or something - well. I don’t know. maybe the transmitter thingy just turns things blue. Maybe that’s why there’s a bicycle frame hanging in the air above it that’s slowly becoming increasingly, dazzlingly blue as well as the patch of ceiling behind.
Experimentally (and stupidly, might I add) I stick my hand into the active range. It begins to turn blue. I don’t know what I expected, but look worryingly at my now faintly blue (and weirdly numb) hand and decide not to touch any other machines I find in case it falls off or something.
The next thing I come across is a chess board on a table. Well, I say a chess board, but now that I look properly there’s actually 10 on this one table, along with all the other junk. I reach out to move one of the pieces and some unseen, vibrating force moves my hand onto the piece next to the one I reached out towards. I lift my hand away, then try to grab the piece I grabbed before without meaning to. I find myself holding the one next to that. This is actually pretty weird. I decide to leave it alone.
Then there’s the rubiks cubes. At least 13, if not more, all 5 by 5, and all scattered about on one huge table by a door. I pick one up and make some sad attempts at solving it (not gonna happen, squirrel brains), then put it back.
And then, in the corner surrounded by portable walls on stilts, there’s something else. Something huge. It’s almost completely covered by a blanket and it takes up the whole corner of the room. Naturally, it’s begging to be pulled off, so I walk right up to it and do that.
“What the hell are you doing?”
And then I’m backing off rather quickly, because the thing that the blanket was covering turned out to be a cage, and the thing inside the cage turned out to be the devil’s worst nightmare. Take a cat, and add a lava lamp, a horse, a disturbing lack of any kind of spine, a member of the blue man group, and a head injury. I don’t know what to call it, so for the sake of argument, let’s call it the complaints department. That’s what I’m looking at. And it’s looking right back at me, screaming its contorted, angry little head off.
And suddenly I feel weak, and drained. Like I want to go to sleep and never wake up. Like that’s a good idea and it’s really what I should have done all along. Yes, that’s the answer. Go to sleep.
The person behind me, whoever he is, isn’t too happy about this. Let’s call him the customer services. The customer services has quickly realized what the hell I’m doing and barges me into the wall. “Idiot!” he mouths furiously in my face (I’m sure he shouted but I couldn’t hear anything over the complaints department’s wails) before grabbing some earmuffs from nearby and shoving them onto my head, moving to silence the thing in the cage. This turns out to be quite easy - he takes the blanket and throws it back over the cage, and the complaints department shuts up almost instantly. “Jesus christ.” he mutters, panting as if he’s just run a marathon.
I point gingerly at the complaints department. “Sorry.” I say quietly.
The customer services seems to find this funny. He looks at me, then laughs. Loudly. Boisterously. Uproariously. Like everything is fine, and this is just another day for him. Then he somehow manages to get to my side of the room in 3 strides or less (which in itself is pretty impressive) and grabs me by the neck.
“Listen up, richardhead.” he growls, pushing me against the wall. “If you don’t tell me exactly who you are and exactly what you’re doing in here, I’m going to redecorate the place with your goddamn entrails. I couldn’t give a raccoon’s left buttock whether or not you’re sorry because fu-flipping sorry would not have cleaned up the mess you would’ve made if I hadn’t been here to save your sorry little life just now.”
“I didn’t mean to-”
“Don’t care.” he shouts, pacing away. “I’ve had too much curry to be coping with this right now. Get to the point before I throw you off the roof.”
It’s at this point that I get a proper look at him. He’s my age, with messy black hair and a very damaged lab coat. I can already see the family traits - large nose, big hands, tallness - “You're my cousin.” I realize.
“You what, richardhead?” he replies.
“I’m your cousin.” I clarify as fast as I can, because right now the customer services seems to be far too close to the boiling for any perceivable comfort to be gained in waiting for him to process this. “My dad died in… in some kind of accident, they didn’t tell me,” I explained quickly, “And your dad has to raise me now. So I’ve come to live with you at this school. My name’s Don.”
He looks at me as if this is news to him. “Right. That boy that the student council keep bothering me about. Damn, I didn’t clean up the second bedroom, did I?”
“Um… sorry to interrupt, but what was that thing?”
“What was what?”
“The thing in the cage?”
“Oh, that.” he mutters. “That, uh… that was um… that was my dog - yeah, that sounds pretty good - that was my dog, and he has an uh… think, damn it - an, uh… social anxiety… guilt… issue with, um… society. Yes. Nailed it. Social anxiety something something. And I think it would be better for all of us if you left that... cage alone and never touched that blanket again, because when people touch his blankie, you know, Fleshrip - Uh - Truffle gets very emotional. Yes, that’s right. Truffle gets worked right up, and you know, I don’t blame him, getting his blankie taken off him like that. How could you?”
“Are you aware you’re thinking out loud?” I ask him. “Because you are. Seriously. You’re saying everything you’re thinking. It’s really obvious you made everything you just said up.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. That is a dog, 100%, cross my heart and hope to die twice.”
I call his bluff. “If you’re so sure, open the cage.”
He jumps back. “What the hell are you saying? Are you some kind of lunatic? Seriously, you’d have to be out of your- are you out of your mind?”
“Well then, what was that thing if it wasn’t a dog?” I ask.
His face sets. “Fine. You’re going to be living here, so you’re bound to find out what I do anyway. It’s-”
“Yes?”
“Is your hand blue?”
“What?”
Suddenly, the customer services is irritated at me again. “It’s a simple question.”
“Yeah, it is.” I say. “There was a machine as I came in, and I put my hand in-”
“Woah, stop right there, Einstein. You put your hand in an unknown device? A keter? You put part of your own body in a keter thinking it would just all be okay? Even though you knew nothing about it?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, it can’t be that dangerous, it’s just a transmitter.”
“It looks like a transmitter, mister know-it-all. Do you want to know what it actually is?”
“I probably won’t understand, but sure?”
“Forget it. You didn’t touch anything else, did you?”
“Well, I moved one of the rubiks cubes-”
He immediately realizes where I’m going with this, screams something that I’m too much of a pusillanimous individual to write down on paper and shoulder clocks me on his way to the rubiks table, locating the misplaced cube and quickly putting it back in the right place, adjusting it back to the right configuration. When he turns back to me, he’s purple in the face, almost fuming.
“What else?!” he demands. “What else did you touch?”
I’m taken aback by how passionate he is about the arrangement of random objects. “The chess sets-”
“OH JESUS CHRIST ON A MOTORBIKE THE CHESS SETS,” he half-screams, before literally sprinting across the room and inspects the chess sets on the table, hands shaking. “Please please please don’t be messed up please please pl-”
“I didn’t move anything.”
“What? Then what did you do?”
“Nothing.”
He looks at me in disbelief. “Then why didn’t you-”
“You didn’t give me the chance!”
He looks at me some more, then just looks down and shakes his head, fuming quietly. “Ground rule… number one. Do not... touch... ANYTHING... IN THIS ROOM.”
He stays like this for a while longer, and I can only wonder what he’s thinking. Then, he seems to come to a conclusion that makes sense to him and calmly walks back to where I am. “In fact, you know what, forget about what I do down here. You don’t need to know. Don’t ever come down here again. Out.”
And with that, he frog marches me upstairs. “Right. Quick tour of the living area, which is the furthest you will ever go into this building.” He points at the small kitchen area. “That’s our kitchen.” He points at his bedroom - “That’s my bedroom.” he tells me. Then he points at box wonderland - “That’s your bedroom. Do not get them mixed up.”
“I won’t.” I quickly say. “What’s with the bathroom, though? It smells like something died.”
He stiffens. “We’ll come back to that.” he mutters. Then, he remembers something, “What’s your name again?”
“Don. Donald Henesy.” I tell him.
“Bernard Gruel. Silent U, but I pronounced my own name wrong so you’d notice. It’s actually Grel. Just spell it with a U. If you can spell. Which you probably can’t.”
It’s at this point that I realize just how much of a bad impression I’ve made. “Nice to meet you too, Bernard.” I reply. “Sorry about what happened.”
“It’s fine; you couldn’t help it.” his voice is dripping with malice.
“Can you help me with-”
“Move them yourself, starfish.” he growls. “Some of us have work to do. Oh, and if I catch you downstairs again, I will actually decorate the place with your entrails.”
And then he’s gone, and I’m alone again in an entirely artificially lit room under the ground. But this time, it’s not what’s above the roof beams over my head that’s bothering me. It’s what’s under the floor I’m standing on.
Forget about what I do down here. You don’t need to know.
Maybe I don’t, Bernard Gruel. But mark my words; I’m definitely going to find out.
