short story 2

I met Alex in middle school. He was always really shy. He usually sat by himself, at least a seat away from anyone else. After a few days of class I decided to sit by him. He looked discouraged, it seemed he had forgotten his book for that class. I proceeded to hand him mine. “Here,” I said, “I don’t need it anyway.” Alex looked at the book for a moment, hesitated, and then reached out, like a cautious animal and took the book slowly.

“Thanks.” he said dully.

“I’m Daniel.” I said, extending my hand.

“Alex.” He replied. Looking at my hand like it was diseased or something. I sat down, feeling a bit defeated, but that didn’t stop me. Something about this kid was different, but he seemed alright, there was something, something good in him. Now I know the cause of it, as will be explained later in the story. His energy was good, that’ll explain it well enough for now.

I kept talking to him as days went by. I always sat beside him. I would just talk small talk, random things usually found interesting by middle school boys. Things like girls I liked, video games I had played, or movies I had seen. He would mostly just listen at first, occasionally giving small, usually single syllable answers or comments, but as time went by he loosened up a bit and began talking. We found that we had a lot in common and quickly became great friends.

This was a big deal for me. I had moved around a lot in elementary school. I was always the new kid, and never had many friends, in fact, being small and kind of geeky, I was often picked on. This didn’t change in middle school, except, we had lived in that town long enough that the bullies actually knew my name instead of just calling me “new kid.” Alex was a bigger kid, not big as in chubby, but big as in strong.

I was telling him about this one day when he said to my surprise, “I have the same problem.” I asked him what he meant. “My brother, he bullies me a lot. He’s a lot older than I am. He does things that I don’t really like, and when I tell him so he beats me up.” he explained. He made a kind of confused face, then sighed. “But he’s always there for me. He’s alright, I guess.”

We walked outside for the end of the school day, when one of my usual bullies approached us. “What’s up Danny boy?” the bully jeered. He looked over to Alex and made a face of mocking surprise. “Oh, and the silent kid! Knew you’d end up hangin’ out with a dork like Danny.” The bully, named Kevin, laughed loudly. I looked to Alex, who was looking up above Kevin’s head. I looked to see what he was looking at, and that was the first time I saw Alex’s brother, Jacob.

Jacob was a full head taller than Kevin. His eyes full of anger. Kevin saw us looking behind him and smiled. “Let me guess, you’re trying to trick me into thinking there’s a teacher or something behind me, aren’t you losers?” he said. We both shook our heads slowly, still looking up at Jacob. I was honestly scared. The look on Jacob’s face was truly terrifying, and Kevin finally turned around to see him and scoffed.

“Who the hell are you?” Kevin said, looking at Jacob like a piece of rotten food. Jacob reached down and grabbed the front of Kevin’s shirt with one hand and lifted him into the air. Kevin was then silent as he stared into Jacob’s hateful eyes.

“Jacob!” Alex yelled, and Jacob blinked, dropping Kevin hard onto the ground. Kevin crab walked away quickly then got himself up and began to run away. Jacob looked at Alex, still angry. He tilted his head to me. “Who’s this?” he asked. His voice was low, and emotionless.

“He’s my friend Jacob. Leave him be.” Alex explained. “We need to go.” Jacob said, as he looked at me, turned, and began walking away. Alex looked to me before following him. “Here, you should come over and hang out, I have some things I want to show you.” he said and handed me a slip of paper with his address on it. I nodded and he followed Jacob.

I stood there for a moment. Before they had left, Jacob had looked at me, looked me straight in the eyes. I felt as if I couldn’t look away, and I felt all of Jacob’s hatred burning within me. I finally shook the feeling and went home.

Alex and Jacob had lived on their own since a year before I met him. Their parents had died when they were very young and they ended up moving from foster family to foster family over and over again, until Jacob was old enough to take care of Alex and become his guardian. They lived in a small house in an old part of town. It stood only one story up, but they had a basement, which I was never allowed to go down to.

I went to Alex’s house later that day. I entered and we went into the kitchen, which held the door into the basement. As Alex and I stood in there and talked, Jacob came up from the basement. He looked at me once again with that look as he closed the door. I could swear I saw his eyes begin to get lighter when Alex said firmly, “No, Jacob.” Jacob smirked and walked down a hallway and into what I assumed was his bedroom.

Alex then led me to his bedroom. It was small, the only furniture he had was his bed. He had many other things, like CDs and books, but they all sat on the floor in little neat piles. Alex sat on his bed and I sat on his floor, looking through all of his books and CDs as we talked about school and the different music artists that we both liked that I found as I looked through the piles.

“I want to teach you something.” he suddenly said, breaking the current conversation about one of those artists. He hopped down from his bed and sat in front of me.

“Alright.” I said. I felt a little strange. I had no idea what he was about to teach me.

“Have you ever heard about Energies?” he asked. Now, I had never been, and still am not, a spiritual person. He was talking about the kind of thing you hear about in Yoga classes, things like Chakras and Reiki, now I view it as more of a science than anything, after seeing it in action, but more on that later. I promptly told him that I hadn’t and he held his hand flat out to me, palm down.

“Put your hand as close as you can to mine, without touching it.” he said. I hesitated, and looked at his hand like are you serious? He nodded towards his hand and raised it a little. I rolled my eyes and complied. Then my hand became warm, and I felt my nerves in my hand start to tingle, almost like I could feel his hand on mine, though our hands weren’t touching.
“Feel that?” he asked.
“Uh, yeah.” I said. Amazed at what I was feeling.
“That’s Energy,” he explained, “it’s a combination of your spirit, your body, and your minds energy. It’s almost like an electrical impulse, and, just like electrical impulses, it can be controlled.”

I nodded, still able to feel the Energy between our hands. Then I got really tired, and I felt a pull from his hands, I pulled my hand away and looked at Alex with a confused face.

“See? I can control it, and take energy from you, but there are ways you can block that from happening. Here.” He then put his hand on my shoulder, and that feeling of being tired went away. “Now, to block someone from draining you, all you really have to do is avoid direct Energy contact of any kind. That includes looking into someone’s eyes, especially looking into someone’s eyes.” I quickly looked away from him and he laughed. “Don’t worry, I wont drain you again, I just wanted you to know what it feels like.”

“When someone is trying to drain you, or attack you with their Energy, all you have to do is turn away from them, and not look them in the eyes, that’s very important. Especially Jacob. You felt it earlier, didn’t you?”

Suddenly it made sense, so now I wouldn’t feel the way I had when Jacob had looked at me that way. I still didn’t completely believe him, but hey, it was worth a try. So I remembered what he said, and I never did look Jacob in the eyes again, and that weird feeling never happened again when he was around.

-

I remained friends with Alex all through high school, and even into college. Living in a college town, we both ended up at the local college and we even had some classes together. As soon as Alex was old enough to take care of himself, Jacob moved out of their house, and I moved in. It was our sophomore year in college when things got a little strange and when the events happened that changed my life, probably for the rest of my life.
Another person also remained in town, and that was Kevin. Throughout the years he still would mess with Alex and I. Though, as we got older, it didn’t bother us nearly as much, not until one night in late November of this past year. Kevin drove up one night, drunk as he could possibly be and still have the ability to walk, with a bunch of his, also drunk, football buddies. We don’t know how he figured you where we were living, but he found out somehow. They all got out of the car and Kevin started banging at the door.

It was four in the morning so Alex and I were both asleep, but the banging kept going on and eventually woke us both up. I walked out of my room, the room that was previously Alex’s, just as Alex was walking out of Jacob’s old room, now his.

“Who the hell is knocking at our door at this time of night?” Alex asked me. I hadn’t quite woken up yet and my throat was sore, so I just shrugged and we went to the front door, with Kevin still knocking loudly.

As we approached the door a long string of knocking stopped and we heard “Come on geeks! Open the door!” from Kevin on the other side, followed by scattered laughter by his buddies. Alex and I both sighed loudly and looked at each other. Then Alex rolled his eyes and opened the door.
“What do you want Kevin?” Alex asked in an irritated tone.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did I interrupt the married couples alone nighttime?” he asked. His friend made some lewd gestures behind him and proceeded to laugh again. I could tell that Alex wasn’t in the mood to deal with this kind of thing at that moment. I could almost sense him getting angry.

“Go away asshole.” Alex said and began to shut the door. Kevin stopped the door from closing and forced it open, “No no no,” he said, “I wanna see you gay lover’s little love-shack.” He snickered and there was a struggle between the two with the door.

“You want to come in? Alright then.” Alex said and he let go of the door quickly, sending Kevin straight to the floor. Alex and I snickered, even Kevin’s friends were laughing at him. He got up as quickly as he could, being so drunk.

“You’re gonna pay for that geek.” he said and sloppily punched Alex in the nose. Alex’s head was turned slightly from the punch, but he kept his footing. He turned his head slowly back to Kevin, his eyes burning with anger and hate, the same look that Jacob always seemed to have.

“Okay, that’s it.” he said, his voice had become lower, almost layered, like those Hollywood double-voices you hear in movies, but it was subtle. Kevin saw the look on his face, recognized it, and began to back away, but stopped, almost as if he couldn’t move, couldn’t turn away. His friends saw the look and started to back away. Suddenly, Kevin’s body was pulled into the house by some invisible force, and the door was slammed shut, without Alex or I touching it. I could hear Kevin’s friends on the other side of the door, saying things like, “Let’s get outta here!” and “Leave him, this is some ghost shit!” and soon after the car had driven off.

Kevin’s body stood there, suspended into the air, unable to move, Alex just looking at him with that infuriated look. I had taken a couple of steps back, unable to speak. Then Alex started to walk with Kevin’s body always right in front of him, floating there. Kevin’s face was locked in a look of uncontrollable horror. He looked like he was trying to open his mouth to scream, but couldn’t. Alex started walking to the basement.

I followed behind him as if in a trance, I couldn’t believe what was going on in front of me, and I couldn’t say anything to stop it. We went down to the basement, and I stayed in the corner right by the stairs, but Alex led Kevin to the middle of the square old basement room, and just stared at him. Alex had his back to me, but I could see Kevin hanging there. Kevin’s whole body began to tense up and shake, almost like he was having a seizure of some kind. I slumped back into the corner, and sat on the cold hard floor. Kevin’s body continued to shake as a blue light emanated from Alex’s body and seemingly reached out to Kevin. It was at this point that I realized that Kevin’s body wasn’t seizing, he was trying to get away, but couldn’t. He began to shake harder as the blue light came near him. It finally reached him and his body stopped moving. Then it pulled back and a form of Kevin came with it, made of the same blue light. Kevin’s physical body slumped down to the floor as his very soul was pulled from his body. At this point I finally screamed, but I couldn’t look away. Kevin’s physical body shriveled up and became a half decayed corpse right then and there. His spirit floated and flailed in front of Alex. Then it began to compress, as if someone was crumpling it like a piece of paper. Ghost-like blood began to pour from every orifice of Kevin’s spirit and “evaporated,” for lack of a better word, almost instantly as it hit the ground, until it was as shrunken and decrepit as his physical body. It kept compressing down until it was just a crumpled ball of blue light, which floated back to Alex. I heard the clicking sound of teeth and saw a large flash as the blue light disappeared.

I began to cry and hid my face in my hands. Alex was just standing there, when I looked back I screamed and then passed out. What I had seen was Alex, but it wasn’t him. His face was shrunken like the corpse before him, but still had color. His teeth were long and pointed, and stuck out from his lips. Then there were his eyes, oh god his eyes! They were all white, and glowing in the darkness, and blood ran like tears from them all the way down his face.

I woke up with a start. I was in my own bed. Alex was sitting in a chair next to my bed, his back to me. When I woke up he turned to me. I half expected to see the horrible face I had seen before, but it was his real face, and he looked as if he had been crying. I backed away from him on my bed. He nodded.

“You should be scared of me.” he said. “I’m a monster.” Another tear fell from his face. I relaxed a bit at that moment, and moved back towards him.
“What…I mean…What did you?…” I started to ask, but I couldn’t form any sentences.

“Last night? What happened last night? I killed him! That’s what happened! I took his soul and I destroyed it.” he became frantic at this point. Looking up towards the door to my room. “We have to leave, it’s not safe here anymore.” He stood up and put his hand out to me. I flinched away from him. “I wont hurt you.” he said. “You have to trust me, we need to go, I’m still me.”

It took me a second, but I got up and followed him. He led me outside and stopped right outside the door. Our car was parked right on the street right out in front of the house, but there were three figures before us. One was leaning up against the car and the other two were standing straight up. They were all in long black coats with hoods. The one who was leaning on the car stood up and removed his hood.

It was Jacob. “Brother, you know what has to happen now.” he said and looked to me. Instinctively I turned away from him, not letting his eyes meet mine, knowing what it would do.

Alex put his arm out to his side in front of me protectively. “No.” was all he said.

“He obviously knows too much.” said one of the figures to the side, a man.

“He gives it away with his mind.” said the other, a woman.

Alex screamed and threw both of his arms out at this point, a wall of blue light going to either side. He the brought his hands together and the walls met and an explosion of light hit in the center, sending the three others flying outward and to the ground. I felt my body lift up as Alex carried me with unseen force to the car. As he led me there he said, “You have to get out of here, just keep going until you can’t go any farther. Wait for me to contact you and tell you where to go next. I’ll see you again, I promise.” His voice was now prominently that double voice.

The car door opened by itself and the car started. I was sent into the car. I looked out to see Alex for what I thought was the last time, his face was that horrible voice of the Ojos Blancos, as he later told me they were called. His eyes were crying so much blood, and they were sad and pleading, not angry like the night before.

“GOOO!” he yelled in that double voice as he put his arms out again to form a shining blue shield around the car, and I sped away.

I’m sitting in my fifth hotel room now, typing this out for you, to warn you all. I’ve seen Alex twice since that day. He has explained all about the Ojos Blancos. They spend their days hunting, and preying on humans. They devour souls in order to stay young. They live among us everywhere, they could be anywhere. I wont look people in the eyes anymore, and I suggest you do the same. Alex had been one of the few that had been born with pity for humanity, and refused to eat their souls, at least, until that night. They protect me now, but I’m always on the run, always watching my back.

I’ll be leaving here soon. Just, watch out for them, and don’t look into anyone’s eyes, or you may never look away....

 

yep, a long story is called a book.