The first 3,500ish are today:
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Life is a very special and precious thing. Most people forget this as they grow accustomed to living it and experiencing it, but the fact remains, even when the perception has changed.
Most normal people would not consider a single drop of dew to be an important, significant or even interesting thing. But to consider it's rise from the ocean, mingling with the clouds, only to fall down upon the world miles from the place it ascended, and then find itself bonding with the life of a single flower, which offers it's pollen to the local insects who would in turn spread it's seeds out into world, it becomes clear that all is special, all is part of a rich tapestry of life.
Such tales rarely offer solace for those who look to their peers and whisper "why not me" to themselves in an air of desperation, wishing themselves to be more than they are willing to work to achieve, or perhaps not able to become.
Our story begins in another world, for there are many worlds and of those many worlds, many variations of worlds that may have been. In this world, special people are quite special indeed. Some in costumes, soaring high above a city, some modest school room teachers who can physically reach into a student's mind and plant seeds of knowledge and perhaps most unfair of all, some who were able to overpower all who stood in their way to steal and bully from those below them.
It is in this world that a little log cabin exists, on the very most outskirts of a thriving metropolis city. In that comfortable little lodge, many of these special people had gathered together, from all walks of life and from different worlds. There were sisters with control over fire, water and plant, twins with control of time and space, a sword fighting wizard and his best friend a fire wielding angel, an electric themed superhero and her young ice powered daughter.
And then there was Craig.
Amongst the residents of the cozy little lodge, Craig was by far the odd one out. Where as his housemates were men and women of great power, odd origin and adventurous existence, he was nothing more than a mere human. Raised in an orphanage and then released to the outside world where he managed to find this wonderful wooden home, and through staying there he watched as the other residents came in, one by one, each with their own unique and interesting stories which would always come up and haunt them in the future. He watched as they become close, made their silly love triangles, fought over and with one another, as some attempted to withdraw into their own worlds and others tried to drag him into theirs.
To say his role was merely observing would, however, be a lie. In the past he had been kidnapped, he had been attacked, seduced by evil schemes and on one regretful moment stood on the edge of allowing his friends to perish.
It was because of all this, that Craig was currently re-examining his life options, as he hung upside down slowly being lowered into a slimy pool of grey sludge. To his right, a tall man with an afro larger than his head was jumping up and down, cackling some incoherent nonsense about ginger crackers and his ultimate revenge. Beneath him, his housemates were battling with an army of killer robots.
It all began a few hours before. Craig's girlfriend was an ex-super heroine called Electrawoman, of course Craig did not know this at the start of their relationship, but over the years it became a tolerated fact. Her nemesis was a mad 70's disco themed villain called Professor Bling, who specialized in robots. A few weeks ago he had somehow escaped from prison and in his bid for revenge, kidnapped his nemesis' precious boyfriend and plotted to cover him in nanobots which would convert him into an evil Electrawoman killing machine of ironic treachery. Alas, this was far from the first moment of this kind of Craig's life, and as he hung there, he had decided that it would not be the last, and he hardly cared to stick around for the next.
The battle did not last very long, as these things are so prone to fizzling out in an unsatisfying way after an intense build-up. The day was saved, the villain was thrown back in prison and the damsel of distress was taken back home.
Which is where our story truly begins.
"Ok…" Craig muttered, upon opening the door and walking through the warming wall of comfort that home often offered those who had returned to it
after any grueling ordeal, "I have officially lost count of how many times stuff like that has happened to me." though he was normally the joker of
the pack, at this time his voice sounded dry and strained.
"Don't worry, Kitty." Tricia replied, wearing a warm smile and giving the back of his ear a light kiss "I'll always save you."
Her words were kind, they were sincere. But it seemed Craig craved neither of these things right now and for all intents and purposes, that was the wrong thing to say.
"I don't want to be saved." he grumbled, pacing to the center of the room, spinning to face both his girlfriend and the rest of the residents who poured in behind her. "I always get saved. I always get endangered. I get lied to. Protected. Sheltered… I'm sick of it!"
All the faces looked to him, with differing expressions, some of muted shock that he would burst out like that, some with judging sneers and at the very back, one which looked away with sad eyes. Tricia herself just stared dumbstruck that she would be shouted out for a show of affection after busting her butt to save him.
"You've been through a lot tonight." said Cari, the tallest of the people there, "I'll get you some hot chocolate and you can get an early night." her hand reached out to calm him down, but Craig recoiled back and shook his head.
"No, no, I don't want to be nursed. I'm not a baby. This is how it always is with you people, isn't it. You're like a bunch of old ladies craving gossip and strife to fill your lives with something interesting. You want these things to happen, so you're able to save the day, comfort the victims, build up more tension and stuff…" Craig responded slowly, looking across all of the faces.
"Like you!" he said, pointing to Stressed "You're always !%#$%*## and whining to Tamara that you want a new adventure, yet you never make any motion to go out and do anything. You just want to whine about it, and she's worse. She just acts like an eternal victim when no one even gives a crap about her anymore, let alone wishes her harm."
As expected, Stressed stood out infront of his girlfriend, a look of aggrivation plastered over his face "Who the hell do you think you are?" he demanded, but before he could take another step forward, he was held back by a large blonde man.
"Perhaps it would be wise to take a moment to consider that he does not mean what he is saying" the blonde, Lee, said holding his best friend back.
"Oh, I mean it." Craig shot, turning his attention now to Lee, "and I think you are just as bad, you weasley git, ever since you got to this place you've been working your hardest to make everyone love you, even if it turned two sisters against one another."
Unable to really argue this, as it is true that his actions had caused a violent rift in the relationship between sisters Cari and Navi, he backed off. Though it hardly seemed Craig was finished with his angry explosion.
"Then you have Navi, who is more or less manufacturing new ways to make herself look pathetic, Sapphire who's shutting herself away in her room waiting for someone to ask her why she's so angsty and then…" with this he paced forward and glared at the crimson haired girl floating at the very back of the pack "you."
The girl was still looking away, but at being singled out she looked at her persecutor with a look of sorrow, before spinning and flying away.
As this happened, Tricia rushed to her boyfriend's side and clutched his arm, whispering "Kitty…" to the air. "Please, just get some sleep, you wont feel this way in the morning."
He looked amongst the faces sharing a mutual fear and loathing of the situation and then he nodded to his girlfriend. "Fine… I'll see you tomorrow" he took one of his hand in one of hers, though his eyes lingered off to the side.
She squeezed back and used her free hand to turn his face to look back at her so he could see her eyes which were filled with unfaltering love "Feel better, my Kitty." And she leaned in and gave him a soft kiss. For a moment it seemed to have quelled her troubled love's anger, but after the moment had passed he stormed off upstairs.
"So… I thought that went rather well", Lee blurted out to the room in general after Craig had left.
Upstairs, Craig was storming down the hall of bedrooms to the one which was his own. He only paused once, to open a door with stickers and a novelty banner reading "Kay's Room", he looked in to see a eleven year old child, yet another abnormality in his odd and fantastic world, a gift from the future. His own daughter. She'd been living with them for three years, though he was not informed of her relation to him for the majority of the first year.
For that moment, he lingered in the door and stared at the young girl, wondering wether it was a blessing or a curse that he, a 23 year old, should have a fully grown daughter already. Carrying this, and other troubled thoughts with him, he made his way to his bedroom and plumped down upon his bed.
It had been a long day, much had happened and his emotions were in a spin. Thinking over the words he had said, and how much of it he had truly meant, he finally allowed himself to fall back into an uncomfortable and troubled sleep.
-
I awoke the next morning to the sound of a buzzing alarm. I should have instantly knew that to be odd, as I do not own an alarm clock, but my head was hurting and I was not thinking properly. I think with all the excitement of the kidnapping and subsequent rescue I'd ignored the fact that my body needed food and drink. It responded by rebelling in the form of exhaustion and headache. So, I woke up and spent my morning in a daze. Shielding my eyes from the harsh spring sunlight, I threw on some clothes for the day and made my way downstairs. The house was suprisingly messy, given how spotlessly clean it had seemed the night before. Nothing major, just certain oddities, extra dust about the place, unswept carpets, subtle things which nag at the mind but do not draw attention.
I skipped through the living room, which was in far worse condition and made my way to the kitchen. The counters bore scars of people cutting without a board, stains from coffee spill and other subtle clues that people actually used it. Stuff you'd expect to see upon walking into a kitchen of a large-scale commune such as our lodge. I spotted Cari sitting at the dining table, nursing a bowl of cereal. An unsuffisticated breakfast, considering she routinely made full on fried breakfast most mornings. She didn't say anything right away, so I made my regular steps to the coffee maker, which had already brewed up a pot. I poured it out and gave it a quick swig, hoping that the caffeine would kickstart me to sobering. It was. But not in the right way. It tasted rancid, stale and horrible. My eyes watered to have to swallow it, aparently Cari caught my expression, as she chose that moment to speak up.
"Bad, huh? See if we buy that brand again…" her voice was more lethargic than the eternally happy and bubbley woman I had spent the past five years living with. It was about that moment that I started actually registering the massive amount of change that had effected my home overnight. The give away was seeing Cari from the front. The girl I had always known had vibrant blue hair which reached down her back. The one who sat infront of me, well, she was the same woman with the same voice, but that vibrant blue hair was now a cheap dye job which worked in streaks and highlights leaving brown hairs loudly announcing how fake the job was. Her pointed ears were replaced with regular round ones and her bright and cheery smile was now a thin and tired look of apathy at the very best.
Noticing that really knocked me for six. I gaped at her, jaw dropped and wordless. Blinking and attempting to regain myself, I just mumbled a simple reply "Yeah, that'd be nice.". I had no clue what was going on, and from the looks of it, my single sentence had been a conversation ender in Weird-Cari's ears. She returned to her breakfast, as Tamara walked in. At the very least, she looked about the same. Her ears were also round, and she seemed less eternally depressed as before. Infact, she was smiling. That was odd.
"Morning, Tamara." I ventured. Assuming that acting like a shellshocked fool would probably not be the best way to get through this increasingly bizarre morning.
Her smile spiked for a moment as she waved "Morning, Craig. Finish that English assignment?" she asked, dumping a bag she'd been carrying against the fridge and popping it open to get herself some food.
"Assignment?" I pathetically mumbled., glancing at the bag and seeing it coated with badges and pins bearing quirky little statements.
"Oh, man. Craig? Hale's going to throw a fit if you don't get it in by the end of the day. Do you even remember it?" she must have read my blank expression as a straight out no, because she continued "I thought a paper on graphic novels as a legitimate literiture medium would have been up your alley. God knows you were happy enough to let me borrow your copy of Watchmen."
Whatever land I had woken up in, I was certain now that it was not my own, and I was not really prepared to be dealing with all of this at once, so I raised my coffee cup in sign that I had what I came for and made up an excuse "I've got to look through my stuff, I must have finished it early"
That seemed to satisfy Tamara, as she just scoffed and muttered "You would."
Sneaking out of the room, and back up the stairs, enroute to my own room. I was significantly freaked out and in a mild state of panic. Fortunately my body had forgotten about that whole headache thing, or the bitter taste of dark roasted crap which was kicking about my mouth. I'd have been home free, but one of the doors opened, and it was about that moment I realized that there were far fewer rooms than there were last night.
"Hey, bro" came a familiar voice. I turned to the opened door and saw an unfamiliar man. He was atheletic, had curled brown hair, slightly taller than I am and, well he looked like a grizzled jock with a heart. The kind that appear in John Hughes movies which feature the kind hearted jock that doesn't exist in real life which make girls fall in love with the wrong type of guy. "Still half asleep, huh?" he said, reading my vacant look. "No worries. Tamara downstairs yet?"
It hadn't fully dawned on me by that point, but I had my suspicions at that moment of who I was addressing. "Yeah, she's downstairs… stressing over her English assignment." I felt that last addition was an inspired touch. It worked like a charm, he gave me a shoulder nudge and brushed past me downstairs to catch up with Tamara. In the world I fell asleep in, the only one who would ask about her would have been Stressed, or "Tyler Dawn" as he goes by. But in my world, he was more of an evil twin than a cool older brother.
That more or less sealed my absoloute need to find out what the hell was going on and why I had woken up in The Twilight Zone. I picked up the pace and hurried to my room. Now that I was more awake, I could notice that it was my room, if I had more pride and personality. There was a bookshelf full up with various fantasy novels, comic books, video games, figurines and other such superficial additions. My wardrobe was also a little bit more full than I'd left mine in the world I remembered.
I frantically searched through the room and found a bag which contained a whole bunch of school books, notebooks and the like. Apparently in this world, I was a college student, pressumably as well as Tamara and possible Cari and the other man who called me "bro".
My search continued, under the bed I found a briefcase which I opened to find a rather high end camera incased in foam, with a flash attachment, alternate lenses, filters and batteries. Also under the bed was a rather formal looking leatherbound book. I pulled it out and gave it a once over, to discover that it was a journal. Giving a smile of delight, I opened it eagerly and flipped to the last page with writing.
-
January 26th, 2008.
"Another dull and dry day. Nothing interesting happened at school, just some tests and lectures. Tamara is still bugging me about giving her tips and tricks for writing her project. I told her to do it the heck herself. She'd probably hate me if I wasn't Tyler's bro. Whatever. I don't really care. I'm getting sick of things here. The photograhy course at CoSC is a pile of crap. The proffessor doesn't know what the hell he's doing. I could teach that class. Not that I really care. Even when I get this degree, what am I going to do with it? Get a boring job. Make money. Fall in love. Have kids. Die. What's the point in that?
I'm so fatigued with the mediocrity. I want to be a photographer, but what's the point when there's nothing exciting to take a photo of? Soccer matches and aeroplanes? There's nothing interesting in that. Bridges, rivers, trains, trees or sunsets? I hate sunset photos. So cliché. So boring. Why am I even bothering. I got into this stuff because I loved comics, and thought that if a story in still pictures would be amazing, then maybe I could tell a story of life in them, too. I can't draw anything for myself, so I'd still be able to do it. But no. Life isn't worth telling a story with. It's too boring. Normal. Even if I became a police photograher, I'd only be doing crime scenes. Chalk lines and disrupted effects. That's not exciting. The crime itself probably wouldn't be exciting. Not like in movies and comics and books. I really wish that things were like that. That I could run out and get a picture of a caped crusader magestically soaring between two skyscrapers. That would be an artistic shot. Or the glow of a magic spell against the caster's face. All these worlds I can visit at my bookshelf. What I would give to be able to step into the pages and be witness to true adventure. True excitement.
Ah well. Tomorrow's the graphic novel assignment. It better get me top marks. Doubt anyone else in the class cares even half as much about all this than I do. Hope it goes well."
-
It seemed like it was written by me. Same handwriting, same structure, except he seemed to favor periods where I rely on commas. It would also seem like he has the exact opposite ideas on what a good life would be.
I intended to read more, find out about the college, about the odd versions of the housemates, but I was being called. Deciding the best way to get through the day would be to play along, I grabbed the college bag and hurried downstairs.
-------------------------------------------More tomorrow, if anyone cares.
