Accidental Servant: Chapter 1

If I would’ve stayed in America, then maybe all of this could’ve been avoided. No crazed English monsters, no drunk gods, and no evil spirits who want to slit my throat. But of course, my dad had to get a job here of all places. I missed living in the rural countryside where I could fix everything around me. In a city like London, I was helpless and scared. None of that though compared to what was going to happen today.

Have you ever had those days where it felt like the entire world was like, “Ha! You thought you were going to enjoy yourself for once? Pffft… guess again!” And then to prove just how truly evil the fates were, they would yank the carpet of reality right from underneath you and laugh as you plummet closer and closer towards disaster.

No? Just me?

Nah, I’m kidding. Everyone has those bad FML days. Even celebrities with big jewels and fat wallets. I mean, they must have diarrhea every once in a while. Us peasants can’t be the only ones. Wait, I’m getting off track. Where was I…? Oh! Right.

Mother Earth in all her fury was set on destroying me like a cockroach.

You might think I’m over exaggerating, my mother thought so too, but I swear that the world was out to get me from the moment I woke up. Maybe it was because my parents had the nerve to give me the name “Hercules”. I mean, who does that to their child?! I couldn’t go through school without being called Forever Zero (blame Disney for that one) or Himcules (I couldn’t help but think that this one was pretty clever). There were others, but my mom might read this. I’ll just leave it at that.

But seriously, how many people wake up to a rodent licking up the leftover drool and saliva sitting on their lips? Please, tell me that I’m not the only one who’s dealt with this. And I’m not talking about some cute little mouse you see on Tom and Jerry with an innocent smile and adorably large ears. No, this one greeted me with beady, soulless black eyes, sharp ragged teeth reminiscent me of a spoiled banana, and the thing essentially looked like a really angry toupee.

As the genius teenage boy I am (who totally didn’t need autocorrect to tell him how to spell the word “genius”), I acted accordingly. How may you ask? Well…

I might’ve shrieked like a little girl and almost swallowed it. MIGHT have… not that I would ever do something as silly as that… What? How can you not believe me? I was a man and simply flung it off… after I finished screaming and choking on a mix of rat fur and spit.

“AAAAAAAHHH!!!!!” I jolted up into a sitting position. Unfortunately, I had forgotten about the shelf that my father had ingeniously nailed to my wall right above my bed. Being a graceful being, my skull made a loud thump as it flung into the thick slab of wood. It would’ve been one thing if it was an empty shelf, but this one had a line of hardback books sitting on top. So, while I screeched and gripped my head, a copy of Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” made the ever so elegant fall right into my crotch.

Let me tell you now, having over 1000 pages of a Russian author bound together by cardboard and linen accelerating downwards and landing right in your most sensitive of spots is not the most pleasant experience. What. So. Ever. I’m pretty sure I still have a bruise from it bouncing off of my hip bones.

“Mom!” I managed to croak out, gripping my groin as I pathetically toppled off of my bed. It would’ve been rather dramatic and possibly romantic comedy worthy if it wasn’t for the fact I was letting out a prepubescent shriek that sounded like that girl from “The Grudge.” Luckily, the pain of my shoulder ramming into the floor distracted me from the other aches.

Now, my mother is a rather chill person. With all of the medical stuff I’ve been through, she’s just learned to “go with the flow” and keep calm. I love her to death and I know she feels the same, but that doesn’t mean she always LIKES me. There’s a big difference, and that’s something you learn early in life if you want to survive. That morning, she did not like me at all.

The door slammed open, the sound echoing around the room as she forcefully flicked the light on. “What the heck is wrong with you?!” she screeched, her face popping into my field of vision. Her eyebrows were furrowed, sharp creases lining her forehead. It would’ve been funny if it wasn’t for the pain I was in. “It is 6:49!”

Here’s another thing you have to know about my mom before I continue, she’s not exactly a morning person. What with working the night shift in the emergency room, she doesn't get home until about three am. I know, I know… I’m a horrible son for waking her up. But what else was I supposed to do?! Would you have sat there as a rat French kissed you like a grandma who forgot her dentures? Sorry, I just love similes like a mouse- Never mind. Anyway, her name was the first thing that popped into my head!

It was just now that I realized how she kind of looked ready to snap my neck.

“Crap!” I tried to jump up smoothly, but as I got to my feet I realized one step too late that my calf was tangled in my sheets and blankets. And to match the humiliation my mother had already witnessed, I face planted inches away from her toes. Yeah, call me Mr. Herclutz. Oh god, I hope that name doesn’t get started around the school. Trust me when I say I will never be able to live it down.

Sighing deeply to calm herself down, my mom squatted down and checked me over for serious injuries. “Well, looks like your pride is the only thing that’s broken right now. What in the world were you doing?”

“A rat kissed me,” I mumbled, but with my mouth and nose pressed against the wooden floor it came out all garbled and incoherent. I know, this was just getting better and better.

She gave me this weird look as I managed to roll onto my back with a low groan. “…a rat KISSED you?” she repeated slowly, her eyes scanning my face for any other obvious signs of insanity. How she managed to understand what I had said, I have no idea. I didn’t blame her, we had weird days before but nothing as crazy as this. And it’s just gonna get weirder, trust me.

Nodding, I forced myself to slowly sit up, wincing as each of my muscles screamed with soreness. “Yeah, a stupid rat. I woke up with him eating away at my lips. It’ll take weeks for me to get the taste out of my mouth.” The thought made me gag, I was lucky I hadn’t eaten a late night snack. But then I realized that the freaky rodent might still be in here. “Do you see it anywhere?!”

“Hercules,” she interrupted as my head whipped around crazily. Her hands gripped my shoulders firmly, forcing me to focus on her. “It’s gone. If you keep freaking out like that, you’ll end up with whiplash.” Just seeing her calmed me down, like it should for any boy looking at his mother.

Honestly, she’s a very beautiful woman in a weird non-incest sense. Shoulder length blonde spirals of curls, chocolate brown eyes that always seemed to be smiling, and an array of freckles. When I was little, I remember her telling me a story of how the speckled spots I was so ashamed of were really fallen stars that landed on us when God was molding our futures. Then she would joke that with all of our freckles we could make up an entire galaxy. She looked younger with them. On me, I looked more like a someone took a brush dipped in brown paint, flicking it all over my body. It was pure luck that half of them faded away as I grew.

I still was a walking Georges Seurat painting.

Her fingers ran through my fiery orange hair as I sighed, my shoulders slumping forward. “Herc, it was probably a bad dream. You just need to take a deep breath and calm down before you blow an artery.”

“Cause that makes me feel so much better,” I grumbled, rubbing my forehead as a dull headache started to form. Being a redhead already made me more sensitive. Don’t give me that look! It’s true! Studies prove it. Ask google if you’re doubting me. “…did you say that it was 6:49?” She checked her watch, a small frown slowly adorning her thin lips.

“…heh, that’s funny. Time sure flies.”

“MOM!”

She sighed as I jumped to my feet and almost tripped trying to get to my closet, her arms crossed over her chest. “It’s just 6:57, you have over ten minutes until school starts. Freaking out is just going to make you run even later-”

“NOT HELPING!” I shrieked, a toothbrush between my teeth as I hopped around on one foot with my pants refusing to slide on as easily as I needed them to do. “Come on! These fit last week!” This was one of the main problems of being 15 and still going through puberty, I was growing inches taller by the month. My body was like a messed up Nickelodeon cartoon, acne and all. Imagine taking a picture of Ryan Reynolds, got it? Now, add freckles and stretch the image vertically. After you do that, add pimples and the teeth of a horse.

That’s me.

At least I had muscles, that was one thing going for me. They weren’t like Dwayne Johnson or Vin Diesel, but it was enough to make people keep their distance. But at the moment, that thought really didn’t cheer me up. All it did was make me want to rip something apart. Because the universe has a really sick sense of humor, I heard the sickening sound of material splitting down the seams. “…Hercules you might want to try on a different-”

“Not the time!” Really? I thought as I yanked out a spare pair of slacks. Did the world want to mess my day up so much that it even sunk low enough to attack my fashion sense? If it wanted me to change so bad, a simple note would’ve been nice. But NO, that would’ve been way too easy.

Screw my life.

Finally dressed in the ever so tacky black dress pants and white button up shirt (my mother wasn’t going to let me leave her house wearing a Panic! at the Disco tee with the same pants I wore to my uncle’s fifth wedding and neither was I) the feeling like this was my eternal punishment for something I did in a former life sunk in. Please God, I prayed as I flung my backpack over my shoulder, lift this curse. You’ve had your fun, just give me a break.! Please, oh please just let me live in peace.

I scurried down the long staircase that led to the bottom floor of our apartment, almost tripping over my own two feet on the way. Being on the fifth floor definitely had its disadvantages, one of them being it took me forever to get downstairs. One of the reasons being that I had to straighten every single painting that hung on the wall on the way down. Okay God, I thought, Are you done now?

And with the wave of dirty street water soaking me as a cab sped past, I think He gave me his answer.

I took the scarf my mother had hastily thrown around my neck and gagged, wiping my face somewhat dry. Curse London, curse the rain, and curse rats! I wish the black plague would’ve killed them all off when it had the chance. Stupid immunity… stupid life… stupid day.

The muted sounds of the steady footsteps of pedestrians mixed in with the patter of leftover rain that struggled to cling onto the trees’ leaves were somewhat soothing, letting me relax a bit. I don’t know what it was, but the rhythm put me into a pleasant trance. With a moderate case of OCD, the doctors said it was just a coping method. If I didn’t focus on that much, I would be thrashing on the sidewalk because of the Londoners’ lack of symmetry. And if I wasn’t already a freak.

Wind whistled through the streets, making me shiver. I pulled my jacket tighter around my body, squinting as I scanned my surroundings. It was then I noticed something that was very unlikely in London, the thing I should’ve taken as a warning to run as fast as I could.

The streets were empty.

I stopped suddenly, whipping my head around to see if it was just a quick stop in traffic or some sort of freak accident. No, other than the cab that had drenched me there had been no other cars on the street. Why hadn’t I realized it before? And now that I was actually looking, the people I was sure that I had heard walking were gone as well. I was all alone, the only sound being the light blinking of a red stoplight and water hitting the sidewalk as it slipped off of the leaves.

What was going on? It might’ve been about seven in the morning but the city should’ve been full of students rushing to their schools, adults speeding to make it in on time to their work, a few drunk drivers being pulled over by the cops. But no, it was eerily vacant. I didn’t like it one bit, something wasn’t right.

Then I heard footsteps, loud ones. I spun around a full 360, my breath getting heavy. Oh god, I was going to get jumped out here! He or she was gonna tackle me to the ground and stab my stomach until my intestines could paint the streets red!! Don’t judge, I have a VERY vivid imagination. It’s one of my most lovable traits that I am quite fond of.

Back on the topic, I was in the middle of hyperventilating. My chest actually felt like it was about to burst. And as I turned to the alleyway I had coincidentally stopped next to, I got a punch of good and bad news.

Good News: the person running down the path was anything but a mugger or ruthless criminal. He looked just about as scared as I was.

Bad News: he obviously wasn’t going to stop anytime soon and was about to knock me over like a bowling pin.

Before I could jump out of the way, the boy tripped on an uneven piece of the sidewalk and fell forwards fast. Pain burst through my shoulder and chest, his skull making a sickening cracking sound as it collided with my collarbone. I suddenly didn’t have control over my body as I toppled backward, the momentum carrying me straight towards the cement. Seconds before my world flashed white then black, I had an epiphany. One I wished I could’ve foreseen an hour earlier.

I realized that I maybe would’ve better off sleeping in and making out with the rat.