Note: Got bored one day and this happened... Have fun and tear it up! ^_^
Chapter 1
Pale light shone from behind, silhouettes dancing across the hard cobblestones, frenzies of people rushing to get home. This happened most everyday, and, sometimes, not all of them made it inside. That was bad—for them, that is. If they didn’t get inside on time before the lights went out then these people would find them and take them away. I don’t know where, they never found me. That’s only ’cause I’m good at hiding of course.
It usually gets really dull having to be alone at night when the yellow ball falls down and a white one with dark spots replaces it. It’s not all so bad, a few days ago I found a book. It had a lots of words, I didn’t know what most of them meant. But that was okay, it had these things called definitions—found that inside it, too.
It turns out that bad luck also means hapless. I thought that was just when someone was unhappy, but that meant disappointed or some other words… I forget. But as I said, I found this book, and then, I found a fountain (a fish was spitting out water on top of a ball). I poked it, and asked it where I was, but I didn’t get an answer. Nope. Not one. It just kept spitting water into the bowl underneath it. It was a rude fish, very rude. It didn’t even glance down at me. So I left.
***
The next morning I swear someone could have been hitting me with a bat. But it was stick. And they were poking me, not hitting. It was girl doing it to, I didn’t know her, so I grabbed the stick and pulled her down. She didn’t see me do it. They never do. I’m too fast. Her face hit the ground a second later and she started screaming at me. What did I do anyway, she was the one poking me. I screamed back at her. Maybe she wanted a screaming contest? I had one before, it was with this lady in dirty rags. She was fun, but I lost. And left.
“What the heck was that for!” the girl shrieked.
“Why were you poking me?” I asked, shouting back.
“’Cause I thought you were dead!”
“Why would you think that?”
“’Cause you were lying on the ground and not moving! Not even your chest went up and down like breathing!” she paused and took a breath, then continued in her loud voice. “I was just checkin’!”
I blinked at her with a confused expression—ever since I learned that confuzzled wasn’t a word. She stared back at me, I think we were having a staring contest. We sat there for a few seconds, and then she blinked. So did I.
“Breathe?” I repeated. I smiled briefly, I won the contest, she didn’t seem to notice though. I thought that was rude, she should have congratulated me.
“Yeah, it didn’t look like you were breathing.”
Blink. She doesn’t even care I won. Blink, blink.
“What are you? Stupid? Don’t know what breathing is?” she demonstrated and sucked in air, her belly puffed out. Then, she did the opposite and her belly squished in.
“Now I do,”
“Stupid.”
Blink. “I don’t… breathe.”
“What are you talking about? Yeah you do, everyone does.”
“Nuh-uh, not me. I can’t.”
“Your stupid. Yeah you do.”
“No,”
“Yeah.”
“No,”
“Uh, ye-ah.”
Pause.
“What are you staring at?” she spit out, literally. I felt something wet fall against my cheek, it was faint though. I don’t feel much, never did.
“You,”
“Why?”
“’Cause, I’m watching you breathe. I can’t, so I’m watchin’ you do it. Learning.”
She raised an eyebrow and scooted back. “You’re weird,”
“What does that mean?”
“What?”
“Weird. What does it mean?”
“It means… means…” It didn’t sound like she knew either. “It just means your weird, okay?”
There was a long silence between us now, this girl and I. It just occurred to me then that the yellow ball had risen above me and was staring down at us, watching us talk. Maybe it was doing that thing I heard the other day when these two people passed me.
“That’s eavesdropping!” one said, explaining to the other how it was bad and that your not supposed to do it.
But what was it dropping on us? It wasn’t dropping water like it was last week. Nope. The blue paper was
blank, no balls of cotton glued to it today. I stared up at it for awhile and wondered what eaves were. The yellow ball must be bad, I thought. It shouldn’t drop its eaves on us.
“Your gonna go blind.” the girl’s voice snapped me back into reality. I had forgotten she was there.
“What?”
“You can’t stare at the sun or your gunna go blind.”
“Blind?” I turned my head to a side. “Wait, aren’t you too young for a child? And who says it’s yours anyway! What if I want it?”
She groaned, scrunching her face up into a scowl. “Blind means you can’t see, stupid. And I mean sun, not s-o-n, son. The sun is that bright thing in the sky.”
I looked up. “The yellow ball? That’s called… the sun?”
“Okay, look,” the girl explained, rolling her eyes and breathing out heavily. She did that breathing thing again, I thought that was weird.
Why could she do it but I couldn’t? I didn’t think that was very fair, it couldn’t be. She wouldn’t even teach me how. She must be selfish, I thought as she went on. She shouldn’t show off like that. I watched her take in another breathe and frowned, Show off.
“I’d love to play another game of 20 Questions with you, but I’m hungry and I gotta get home anyways.” she got up and turned around.
My stomach grumbled and I felt it tighten. Sort of. “I’m hungry, too.” I didn’t know if I really was or not, but I wanted to talk more.
I wasn’t done yet and this girl was interesting, she knew so many things! She must be really smart… despite the fact that she could be rude and selfish at times. But other than that I learned a lot from her. That yellow ball was called a sun, and “blind” meant not being able to see, and then there was that breathing thing… I decided to ask her later how to do it—if I remembered.
The girl turned back around and rolled her eyes, again. “Fine, come on. My mom will fix us something to eat.”
Pause. “What’s a mom?”
***
A stout man in an uncomfortable, sky blue uniform strutted down the dimming street. Tall lights flickering on with each of his short steps. Two girls were just ahead of the man and he smiled, remembering his own children. He stopped and turned towards the lamp post beside him.
Two thick stacks of papers were tucked neatly under each armpit. He set them down and took out tape from his back pocket. The man looked back to where the two girls were and caught the last site of a foot making its way into the house. As he turned back, he set one of the papers on the post and taped it down.
WANTED: HIGHLY UNSTABLE EXPERIMENT
DESPCRIPTION:
DARK BLACK HAIR
LIGHT GREY EYES
SMOOTH COMPLECTION
EXPTREMELY QUICK HEALING
The man looked over the flier once more and made sure the tape was secure. Then, piling the other papers back up, he left.
