Chapter two

Ah yes, good ol' chapter two, please enjoy.

During lunch, I sat down in between Shilo and Greg in a table around a small bend in the cafeteria where no one could see us unless they were in the three tables surrounding ours in the corner. I sat down with my slice of greasy pizza and started eating. I wasn’t at all hungry, but I knew I needed to eat. Shilo fidgeted in her seat and nudged my arm. “What?” I asked. She looked up and nodded towards a boy with dyed blond-brown hair that goes down to his cheekbones in a bowl shape, and had a shirt perhaps what looked like ten sizes too big for him. He was big, but not pretty. He had five boys following him, all pretty skinny and gangly, and I emphasize the gang part.
“Hello Karlos.” Shilo said.
“Hello Z von creep.” Karlos said to me, emphasizing the creep part. His goons laughed.
I didn’t even look up at him and kept eating. “Not today Karlie, I’m really not in the mood for a three stooges act.” I returned. Greg smiled at this and hid his face in his hands.
His face turned red. He held his black cowboy hat with two fingers as he thought, “And I’m not really in the mood for a-“ He paused, thinking of what to say next, “another funeral tomorrow!” He finally got out. His buddies laughed again. “Yeah, so I hear your little insane mommy and daddy died. I hear they saw ghosts before they went!" The teenagers laughed even harder. My anger was rising. Normally, I would just ignore him and that would make him even madder, but I didn’t feel normal today. I finally looked up at him and saw his smug expression across his face. I grinned and spoke, “Y’know, you really should learn some manners, before it kills you.” I didn’t really want to have another popularity battering, especially today. They were paranormal experts, so they studied the supposed ghosts, and spirits of our world. I don’t really see how they got so rich doing that, but they were gone a lot on out of country trips, mostly Asia and Germany. I knew they were working on these trips, but there was no way they got so much money from investigating ghosts. I also knew they were on one of their trips when they died and how seriously they took their work. “So, what was the last thing your mommy said to you?” Karlos said to the air. He wasn’t directly looking at me.
“Was it… I see dead people?”
I snapped. This last comment totally went out of the nice insult box. I stood out of my chair and kept my eyes towards the floor. Karlos and his hoodlums “oo’d” as I did so. “Looks like I ripped someones poor little heart out!” He, thinking that he was getting more popular by making fun of me, was actually hurting himself. I didn’t really think of this at the time, and walked around the table and glared and poionted at him from maybe a foot away. “If you ever, EVER speak of my parents like that again, I will rip your heart out, and not figuratively.”
He looked mildly fearful for a split second then regained his composure.
“Try me.” He whispered, trying to sound brave.
“I will.” I said, tapping my head to the side a little. I grabbed his neck and drove him towards the wall. He screamed. Karlos’s face was priceless. Little Zieky vonkreep just totally owned the self proclaimed strongest kid in school in a test of speed. His goons pulled me off of him, but I got a nice punch on his eye that knocked him down, and would leave a mark before they grabbed my arm. I smiled, Karlos’s expression changed from completely surprised, to burning anger. He cursed at me and stood up. “You’re dead Vonkreep!” He knew I was pinned from every angle, so he grabbed my shoulder and drew back for a huge punch.
I knew what was coming, so I looked at Shilo and cocked my head to one side as if to say, “so what?” She looked completely flabbergasted at my actions. Her eyes were as wide as a coke can. Greg shrugged a small shrug saying, “don’t look at me!” I smiled slightly. I knew even though I was beaten in this fight, the larger fight was already won. His reputation was ruined, he was beaten. People would look at him as a whimp now. My job was finished, beat me up I don’t care. It seemed like I could see his fist in slow motion as it flew through the air towards my face. I flinched, but nothing happened except for a slight tingle on the outside of my right hand. I opened my eyes and saw him drawing back his fist with a perplexed expression on his face. He tried it again. Drawing back and punching with all his force. I watched this time. His fist went through, that’s right, through my head. I saw the workings of his fist, blood veins, vessels, and fat. Ew. I felt my hand start to burn as I fell through the arms of Karlos’s goons. One of them screamed and started to run away yelling, “Demon child!” I didn’t know what just happened. What is this? I thought. The burning on my hand grew. What the hell is happening to me? I grabbed my hand and started to run towards the cafeteria door. The halls were totally empty. All I could hear were my footsteps ringing through the halls. I ran to the bathroom and slammed the door open. The burning was getting out of control. I turned on the cold water and stuck my hand under the ice cold stream. It didn’t help. It just got worse as I felt it climb up to my arm. It felt like I was on fire. No, like I had it in molten lava. I didn’t scream, mostly because it was so painful I could barely make a sound. I fell to my knees and lowered my head. Why? I wondered. I could feel the consciousness slipping. I fell on the bathroom floor and could feel no more.





So much screaming. I saw hints of blue, and green as I heard people, groups and masses of people screaming, horrible, terrifying screams of pain and death. I was scared, but who wouldn’t be? I finally saw shapes of people running every which way, and a girl. The most beautiful thing I had ever seen holding my hand, her eyes purple, like mine leading me through hallways of fire. Most of the people we saw running passed us were engulfed in flame, oblivious of our presence and soon to die. It was the most horrifying, but beautiful thing I had ever experienced.

I woke with a start and saw the blue and black stripes that were my rooms ceiling. I remembered what had happened and sat up. How did Karlos’s hand just pass right through me? My arm! I uncovered my arm revealing… nothing. I was half expecting burn marks, or for it to be completely gone. I thought it was kind of random that it even happened. I was frustrated, I had no idea what happened. I sat up and felt completely rejuvenated. I finally noticed Hilga sitting in a rocker chair reading a book. “Good morning.” She said.
“Morning? How long was I out?” I asked.
“Two days.” Was her simple reply.
Two days?! “What have I missed?” I said quickly.
“Oh, nothing much.”
“Who found me?”
“Greg, he said you were on the bathroom floor muttering to yourself about something called a Spinnerette. At least, that’s what he says.”
Spinnerette? “Never heard of a…Spinnerette…” I mumbled.
“Well you have been talking to yourself in your sleep.”
“What did I say?”
“Just some…stuff.” She grinned.
“Hmm?” I said impatiently.
“Oh, just stuff about someone named Shilo and the sort.”
I blushed. “What?! Oh come on, you know that’s passed.”
“Yeah, ok.” She grinned even more and went back to reading.
Whatever. I thought, I have more important stuff to ask. “So.” I continued.
“Yes?” Hilga looked up again.
“Who knows that I-“ I paused, “I passed out?” I said, curious of who knows about what happened.
“Only your principal, me, Greg, and Shilo.”
“How did she know?”
“She called to see what happened.”
“Ah.” I muttered, kind of embarrassed that I made someone worry about me. Then I realized something.
“Oh right, Hilga. How long have you been sitting there?”
“Pretty much the whole time, I just left for meals.”
At the mention of meals, my stomach rumbled in protest of not being sated. “Did I eat anything?”
“No, you wouldn’t accept anything. I felt like I was feeding a baby that didn’t want its applesauce.”
“Heh, sorry.” I laughed.
“Let’s get you something to eat.”She stood up and motioned for me to follow.
I walked down to the dining room and sat down on the mahogany chair at the head of the table. Hilga brought in two plates of pasta and set one down in front of me, and one for her. I ate while thinking of what happened a few days ago, and my dream. Who was the girl? How did my face not get pummeled by Karlos’s fist? What was a Spinnerette? None of it made sense. I finally came to the conclusion that I was probably just going mad. In which case, it was most likely because of all the recent deaths in my life. I wondered when I would come next. I scarfed down the rest of my pasta and walked in the kitchen to put my plate in the sink. I needed to tell Shilo what was going on. I told Hilga I was going to Shilos and that I would be back sometimes around six. Good thing it was only eleven. I couldn’t believe I slept two and a half days. Went up to my room and grabbed the backpack that was hanging on the door. I headed out the door and grabbed the skateboard on a rack on the porch. Shilo had taught me how to simply ride one, and a couple tricks. Although it seemed now that I was better than she was. Poor, clumsy, Shilo. I silently wished I could drive by the time I rode out to the end of the driveway, which was around half a mile. I rode for about five minutes on NW Cumberland road, which was about half a mile away from the end of my driveway when I noticed a small group of kids hanging around the outside of a house. They looked vaguely familiar as I drew closer. Oh crap. I thought. It was Karlos. I slowed down and tightened the chain I had around my wrist. I slowly rode on the other side of the street and hoped they wouldn’t see me. “Hey, Isn’t that-“ I heard one of them say in a Mexican accent. I kept riding as I heard another one say, “It is! Yo Karlos, it’s Zeik!” I looked back as Karlos looked around until his eyes met mine. “You!” He screamed. Him and his gang started running for me. I kept trying to stay faster than they were, but they were quick little buggers. They seemed to be catching up with me around two bends in the road. I could feel exhaustion starting to creep up on me as I rode. I didn’t want to get Shilo involved, so I looked for a way to get them off me before I got there. I saw a small cluster of trees. The opening being around the next corner, I quickly jump off my skateboard, grabbed it and ran into the small grove. I threw my skateboard to the side and noticed this small clearing was surrounded by a wooden fence. It was closed off, I had no other escape route if they found me here. I quickly climbed up a tree and waited maybe twenty feet in the air for them. I heard heavy footsteps right outside of the entrance to the circle of trees. I couldn’t see anything thanks to the pine needles covering my vision to the entrance, but I could hear their heavy breathing. I heard more footsteps catch up with the first pair. “Where’d he go?” I heard Karlos say desperately.
“I don’t know, he just turned the corner, and was gone!” one of his friends said breathlessly.
“Hey, there’s nowhere else he could have gone, except for that.” Another crony said. I could imagine one of them pointing into the grove. I heard one of them shh the others and started walking towards me. A small wind picked up and I could feel small raindrops land of my arms through the branches. I then saw one of them walk under the tree I was in, and if he looked up, he would have saw me in an instant. I froze, all except for matching the movement of the tree I was completely still. I recognized one of Karlos’s followers, Reed. He was new, and sort of a go with the crowd kid, easily persuaded, and a total sucker. I didn’t know he was part of Karlos’s gang already. I saw two others beside him searching around on the ground for me in the bushes. I heard another one call the three below me over and they ran to look. They obviously found my skateboard. I silently climbed down to the second to the bottom branch and hung from it with my legs to look around. None of them were looking at me from what I could tell, so I climbed down, and tip toed my way out of the grove. I turned my head from looking at the goons and saw Karlos standing just to the side of me, leaning on the fence like he was the coolest kid in town. He spoke, “Hey, Zeik.” I rolled my eyes. His voice totally wasn’t doing what he wanted to. He kind of sounded like a duck. At this thought I chuckled a little bit. “What was that?!” He yelled at me totally losing control of himself at one little hiccup in his plan of making me scared.
“Oh sorry, I just saw you.” I said, still smiling. This totally made his face flare up in anger. “That’s it von kreep! You and your little hellish way of making me suck at school ends now!”
Clichéd remarks, Woohoo. I thought. He got off the fence and tried to punch my face from the side. I easily dodged this thanks to his telling me so from body language maybe two seconds before hand. One of his goons came out form the grove holding my skateboard, “Hey look Karl! We got a skateboa-“ He stopped as he saw me. “Hey boss I found him!” He said, trying to be funny. I snatched my skateboard from him and pushed him into a bush. Karlos started to charge me again, so I swung my skateboard around and whacked him in the head. He fell to the side holding his ear as I started running away down the street towards Shilo’s house. I heard Karlos groaning as his buddies came out from the cluster of trees surprised to see him on the ground, their friend getting out of a bush, and me running away with my skateboard.

The first chapter.

This is a story I made up while listening to Evanescence and Crossfade. It's just the first chapter, but I'll post more later. Enjoy!


I often think about dying. Such as, if you just fade away into nothingness, or if you see yourself rising out of your body. Well, seems how my life recently is consumed with death, I probably should think of it. My name is Zeik- well, my full name is Ezeikielanas Vonkrii, weird huh? Thank my parents. Yeah, they were a couple of crazy old coots, but they were my overseers, my mom and dad, and I loved them. And here I was, looking at their caskets, both slowly being covered by small damp clods of dirt.
My sixteen year old sister Brya, and seventeen year old brother Arco both died six months ago from a gas leak inside of a restaurant. But it wasn’t the gas that killed them, it was the following explosion.
Both of my grandparents also died from natural causes six months before that. I had no other relatives, seems how they were all killed off too in various ways. So I’m pretty used to death slipping away most of my family by now, but these were my parents, and they were all I had left.

Everyone wore black at the funeral, a color I had seen too much of my life. Even though my family was quite wealthy, only a few people came to witness this perverted celebration of life. The pastor spoke about their eternal souls, and how they lived their life well, but he didn’t know them. Nobody knew them like I did. They just can’t understand what it’s like to lose everyone, everything you hold dear to your life, gone. My rain dowsed dark brown hair seemed black as it draped over my face, concealing one half of my pained expression as I played with mindlessly with the chain bracelet surrounding my wrist. “Shh.” My maid Hilga, or “Second mother” as I sometimes call her whispered to me in her thick Russian accent. “Make their last moments with us reverent ones.” I looked up at her with my curious purple eyes and smiled at her with the last tiny bit of smile I had left in me. She smiled back and stooped down to my five foot eleven height and hugged me tightly.

It was already twilight when the only two living souls left in the graveyard were me and Hilga. “Young master Vonkree.” Higla said quietly as I stared at the two black gravestones neatly pressed into the wet ground. “Perhaps we should leave them be for now.” She said sadly.
“Yeah.” Was all I could muster out in return. She stood me off of the recently rained upon ground and walked me back to my black Pontiac, passing countless gravestones that many other people have mourned over like me. But nobody could have lost so much as me. I got in the passenger seat as Hilga squeezed into the driver side. By now, most children would have been taken by child care services, but not me. Thanks to Hilga, I now am the only Vonkree living in this mansion of a home.
We left Skyline memorial gardens with heavy hearts, as most do when leaving a funeral. The street whizzing by as we drove back to my house. I lived away from most of the city in Portland Oregon. My parents had acquired enough money to buy a recently built mansion at the end of NW Macleay Blvd. We passed by my school Franklin high on the way home. Yeah I know, if you’re rich, why not go to a special school? For some reason, my parents thought that it was best to send me to a regular school, to be regular. They insisted on it, not allowing me to go to any rich school. I begged them a couple times to let me go, but they wouldn’t. I never understood, always being picked on for my choice of appearance, and shy demeanor. Once we got home, Hilga opened my door and I stood up slowly, taking in that I would never see them again. My parents, my whole family was gone. All I had left was Hilga, and she isn’t even blood. We walked up the long staircase to the door, neatly carved with pictures of lions, and angels. I walked inside the familiar walkway to the spiral staircase leading to my room. My house was pretty big, all thanks to my parents being hard workers, they made it so I didn’t have to work much. I didn’t have to work, but they told me to do so anyway. Instead of servants, they put us kids to work most of the time. They always told us that we need to learn how to work before we move out. I knew that work needed to be done to clean the house, but I never wanted to. I was the slug of the house. I only kept my room clean, which was the only part of the house that was mine which I walked into at that moment. It was maybe twenty feet by thirty feet. It’s pretty big compared to some others people bedrooms I’ve seen. I fell onto my king size bed and sobbed the first tears of the day. I don’t cry a lot, I mostly bottle it up and release it when I get home, but it’s mostly just looking depressed and staring off into space, thinking. Today, I didn’t really care. I started to feel tears slowly making their way down to my chin. I laughed. It wasn’t really a humor laugh. It was more of a reminiscing laugh. I started to think of all the good times with my family, when we were at Disneyland for the first time, playing board games with my brother and sister, and watching them crumple their face when they find that my queen had their king in checkmate. I started to drift into the unconsciousness that sleep brings, and I welcomed it.

I woke feeling dried tears on my face, my pillow was soaking. The thought came to me that I must have been crying in my sleep. I got up and I remembered what had happened the previous day. I didn’t know how they died, and neither did the police. They just did. Well, I thought, nothing I can do about it now. They can’t come back. I felt cold by thinking this, but it helped quiet me down. After I took a shower, I wrapped my bathrobe around me and walked over and opened the door to my walk-in closet. I sat down inside and looked at my options for school. Black, black, black, ooh, red! Yeah, I dressed pretty dark these days. I like the dark style of clothing, contraire to my siblings. They had always worn bright cheery colors. Yellow, bright blue, green, they always tried to tell me to be happy, but I was happy. I was as happy as a fifteen year old could be back then. But I for some reason always wore black, white, red, and dark blue. I didn’t really know why I liked those colors so much, but I did. So I decided to wear just simple straight black and white today. I adorned my usual jewelry, a double wrapped chain bracelet with a small crucifix on one of the links, and two rings, one was a jet black ring with a Japanese symbol for love carved out, and the other just had a normal silver sheen. I walked down to the dining room and sat down and the end of the twenty foot long table. Hilga came in with a plate of shrimp macaroni and cheese. Weird for a breakfast I know, but she knew that was my favorite. “Hilga-“ I started to decline her meal. She shook her head,
“Now before you say no to your favorite dish young man, let me say one thing.”
I looked up at her and nodded, telling her to keep talking.
“Your parents would never, and I mean never, want you to be this sad over them. Eat, be happy. For today is a new day, and you already mourned over them yesterday. Just be glad that you are still alive young master Vonkree.” She set the plate down in front of me and motioned her hand to start eating as if that would make me want to. I started to eat.
It was absolutely delicious. And I thought my mother made good shrimp mac n’ cheese. Renewed, but not forgetting the previous day, Hilga and I walked into the garage. I decided I would have Hilga take me in my red Porsche 911 turbo. She could barely fit into the driver seat with her giant six foot eleven stature. I silently thanked myself for not being that tall.
I hate my school. Not because there are too many bullies, or the principal hates me, it’s just because I’m the only person that is like me. Everyone else is either a country person, which is weird because I live in a city, or skater, which isn’t that weird for a city. I got out of my Porsche and put on my red sunglasses, the sun was blaringly bright today. Not fitting for the rainstorm yesterday, and my feelings today. I felt sad, and on the edge. I didn’t want to be teased today.
I walked past most of the kids until I found the two people who actually thought I wasn’t weird. Greg and Shilo were my two best friends at school. Unfortunately, they weren’t the most popular. Greg mostly concentrated on actually doing well in school, and had no choice but to come here. He wasn’t the smartest kid, but he wanted to learn, and that is what made him un-cool. Well, he also didn’t look that popular either. He had the almost coke bottle glasses look that most stereotypical nerds are, but he was a farm boy. So he was strong enough to look after himself most of the time. Shilo was a different story, she loved to skate, but was pretty bad at it. Absolutely clumsy, had no idea what was going on most of the time, and a total airhead, but we love her anyway. She had long black hair given to her by her Indian ancestors, and a pretty face, but she always wore a backwards baseball cap that had some skater logo on it that covered half of it. She always wanted to be better than everyone, but wasn’t. She was too clumsy to be a professional skater, and she didn’t really want to be at school except to be with me and Greg. Yeah, she was cute, and had a crush on me in fifth grade, but we’re just friends now.
I walked over to them and they silently waved at me. I sat down next to Shilo and sighed.
“Hey.” Greg said. His deeper voice resonated through our bodies. It didn’t seem like he would be the type of kid to have that kind of voice.
“Hey.” I said.
“We heard about your parents, are you ok?”
Shilo furrowed her brow, “Of course he’s not ok! Would you be ok if your parents just die-” she paused, “Oh, Zeik, I’m sorry. I-“
“It’s ok.” I cut her off.
An awkward silence followed after this small conversation. Then Greg decided to break it. “So, yeah. I got to go um, study.” He stopped leaning on the bench and walked over to the double school doors. He looked back and waved, then went inside. Shilo sighed and looked over at me. I looked at her and smiled. “You know,” She started, “When your life is down, most of the time, it will spring back up with twice the force.”
“Yeah, right.” I responded.
“Zeik, sometimes I wonder.” She said.
“Wonder about what?”
“I wonder about how you live with all of these crappy things in your daily life. I mean, most of school, we aren’t even there. ‘Cuz, y’know, I’m still a freshman, and Greg just boosted up a grade. So all you have now in your class is Chenny, Reed, and Karlos and his gang.” She said this last name with disgust, “Plus you know about your family.” It really didn’t make me sad to hear about my dead family. “How do you not just curl up into a ball and die?”
“I don’t know Shy.” I said her nickname quietly as I looked at her with my purple eyes. “I really don’t know.”