A friend of mine wrote this short-story, that Thorfin26 and myself edited with his approval. After reading over it, I figured I should post it (I have the author's permission, he just doesn't wanna post it himself for various reasons.) The story is pretty long, so grab a
cup of joe, a warm blanket and get ready for a pretty damn good read.
THE FORGOTTEN MAN
TITLE PENDING
A tale of boy frozen in time, with his clingy roommate.
“Steven! Steven! Get up damnit!” Kiri’s voice could’ve stirred a dead boar back to life. She had a particularly devilish way of going through puberty, where her voice seemed to sound like nails against a chalkboard when she screamed. “God damnit Steven, get the forget up! I’m not gonna be late ‘cause you can’t drag your sorry ass out of bed!” She did this every morning, this was around the point she tore the sheets off my bed. When she did that it kinda made me happy though, reminded me I am still here. “You son of a-” I interrupted her before mother could intervene for cursing, “I’m going, I’m going...” “Damn right you’re going Steven, today is the first day we go to the same school... well college rather. Isn’t it exciting? We get to go to college for the rest of our high school years!” I didn’t see the whole excitement in going. It was still school , I still got to learn, and that was about all that mattered to me.
Kiri usually got up early to prepare for school since she took so long. At my benefit it left the bathroom filled with steam, warm and smelling of female maintenance products. I rushed to the bathroom to take my shower and slammed the door behind me in an attempt to conserve time. I quickly stripped while turning the shower head on and fell on my face, cutting my nose. “Steven!” I jumped and hit my head against the cupboard next to the toilet bruising my forehead. I screeched realising Kiri was in the bathroom with me, “Kiri what are you doing in here? You know you can’t be in here at the same time as me Kiri!” She darted out of the bathroom with tears in her eyes. I felt bad about making her cry, but she did scare the stuff out of me. When I finished washing myself off in the shower I ran to the dining room where Kiri had two bowls of cereal. “I’m very sorry Steven. Could you ever forgive me?” I looked at her and all I could do was feel guilt and sadness, for one of the first times in my life. We’ve only been living together for around a month and haven’t known each other much longer. “Don’t worry Kiri, it was my fault for being in such an irrational hurry.” That may have been a lie but I meant every ounce of it. “Oh Steven!” She began to cry again, but then she hugged me after putting the cereal bowls down on the dining room table.
“Whoa!” Kiri stared at the college as if it were largest diamond in the world. “Its not that big a deal, we’ll probably see plenty of things like it later in life Kiri.” She ignored me as usual, “Nonsense! Look at it, it is absolutely magnificent, I mean just take a look at the way the columns curve into the arc of the roof, and the rivets span into the supports of the ceiling.” Its normal for her to go on about architecture, she had a fascination for it really, but she never could get good enough at math to be an architect, about all she could do was set up a problem, she always needed a calculator. That didn’t matter though, since most people didn’t do the math anyways, they had all the computers do it.
We walked into the class quite a bit early, or at least I suspecting seeing the obvious absence in students, then to my surprise, the professor’s voice rang out across the room, “Please children have a seat, you are my only students for these next two years, and you will do well to exceed and set expectations.” Keeping my cool would have been easy, but then Kiri did something really stupid. Kiri lunged forward over two sets of seats, “What do you you mean set expectations? Just ‘cause we can do something doesn’t mean you should expect others to do it.” In a chilling effect, the professor simply chuckled just as loud as Kiri’s screeches. “Do not worry for them my child, they have undergone the same tests as you and weren’t far behind on scores. You should wait for one to finish before judging their intentions and goals.” I thought at that moment that he was simply eccentric, but soon I would realise why he acted this way. The truth was actually quite plain and visible, quite enough we would tell of it day after day in casual conversations and sometimes even professional ones. Our lives were the first of a new generation of leaders. We were the beginning of a new era, one that would rise from the ashes of our ancestors. It was like the beauty of a rainbow that followed a storm who destroyed an entire city.
Folks, that's not even 1/10th of the true story itself. Still interested? Read more here: The Forgotten Man
