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.”