Awake - Chapter I and II

Sorry, it's kind of long, but Chapter One is very short, so I included Chapter Two as well. ^^ Let me know what you think.

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Chapter One

As Rising looked out at the streets in front of him, he sighed deeply; it was one of the same scenes he’d been looking at for one whole year, and he was starting to wonder where all this was going. After all, how long could someone live without food, water, or even having someone to talk to besides himself?

That was just it: Rising had no idea if he was dead or alive. He had woken up standing on the sidewalk in what he knew now was New York City, looking out at the very street beside which he now stood. All he remembered from before then was a room too plain to belong anywhere but a hotel room, then an explosion of orange. He had no knowledge other than that as to what was happening to him. He didn’t even know what his real name was, since he doubted that any sane person would name their child Rising.

He had no family. He had no friends. As far as he knew, nobody he passed could even see him.

For the first few days of his current situation, he had run crazily up and down the streets, asking people if they would – or could – help him. He screamed for hours on end, infuriated by the hopeless feeling of being in limbo. Obviously no one answered him or even seemed to hear him, and he eventually accepted that something must be wrong with him. There was rarely so much as a glance in his direction, and when there was, the person didn’t really seem to see him. They always stared ahead as if they were looking straight through him, a very unnerving sensation indeed.

All Rising wanted was to know who he was. He was fairly sure that he was fifteen years old, though he couldn’t grasp how he could know this. If he had appeared here one year ago, how could he be fifteen? Could there have been a life before this one, in which he was fifteen?

There were so many questions. Too many unknowns loomed in front of him without any chance of becoming answers. It was absolutely maddening. He got the feeling of being alone in a crowded room – seeing people all around him but being unable to contact them or know anything about them. He recognized no one, could distinguish no face from the crowds that surged through this city from day to day. All he could do was to wander, and that he did. People-watching was his only possible pastime, since he couldn’t pick anything up or touch anything: he passed through anything he tried to lay a hand on. He simply stared out of the eyes that he thought were either gray or blue, wishing someone would come to his aid.

On the three-hundred-and-seventieth day, someone finally did.

Rising was wandering down a street he knew he had walked down before, in a state of justified frustration, as always. As he was pondering his strange and seemingly useless existence for what felt like the thousandth time, a man looked at him. It was not like the other times, when someone would happen to glance in his direction. This man looked at Rising, really saw him, and as if he knew Rising was there.

The boy was completely shocked. He stood there in the middle of the street with his mouth hanging open, and the man smiled with understanding. He came to a stop in front of the stricken boy, and Rising absent-mindedly noticed that the man was not much taller than he was.

“Why, hello,” He said, and those were the first words ever spoken to Rising that he could remember. His kind, middle-aged face was very welcoming, and the boy could not help but to be totally bemused.

'He-hello,' Rising said, but his voice didn’t sound at all like the man’s. Where the man’s voice sounded hoarse and breathy, Rising’s reminded him almost of a wind chime: crystal-clear, pure, all silver. He had used it before, but having nothing to compare it to, he’d thought it normal. Only now did he realize that his voice was definitely out of the ordinary.

When the man heard Rising’s voice, however, his grin grew wider. His dark blue eyes shone with a light Rising didn’t understand. It wasn’t quite malicious, but more like triumphant. He shook it away, however, and listened to the words now coming out of this man’s mouth. “My name is Jon Amylace – you may call me Mr. Amylace. Will you walk with me?” Mr. Amylace asked, and Rising nodded, dazed. What else could he do? He needed answers, and this man obviously had more than Rising did.

Mr. Amylace set off in the same direction he had come. Rising followed, a look of confusion on the face he had never seen. So many thoughts were clamoring for his attention, and most of them questions. Shaking his head as one might to get rid of a fly, Rising pursued Mr. Amylace through the crowds, noticing that the man had to push through the people and continually mutter, “Excuse me” and “Pardon me,” while Rising simply passed right through them. He’d always known that there was something wrong with him.

Mr. Amylace soon came to a stop in front of an empty bench on the edge of the sidewalk.

“So, son, what’s your name?” Mr. Amylace asked casually, sitting fluidly on the bench while still staring up at the boy. As Rising knew he couldn’t sit on the bench – he couldn’t feel things whenever he tried to touch them – he remained standing, hoping he wasn’t being rude.

'Rising, sir,' he said politely. 'Rising Daestra.' As soon as he said it, his mind erupted into a tangled, overlapping chaos of questions. Since when had he, Rising, possessed a last name? And was that what that was? A last name… Rising’s curiosity erupted, and he wondered what this could possibly mean.

The man smiled again, and said, “Wonderful.” Mr. Amylace didn’t seem to wonder about Rising’s name, which was odd to him. Did Mr. Amylace know something Rising didn’t? “So, what do you want to know, Rising?” Apparently, he did. Rising only blinked in confusion. So many questions…which one to ask first? Mr. Amylace understood his confusion. “Let me explain. Rising, my boy…you do know you’re dead?”

The whole world seemed to come crashing down around Rising’s ears. He was dead…what Mr. Amylace had revealed made sense. That was why no one saw him, why he couldn’t feel objects he touched, why he had appeared one day on the streets of New York City. These people were living, and he was not. It all came down to one thing: he, Rising, was a ghost.

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Chapter Two – Morgan

Morgan couldn’t clearly remember the day she’d been told the news. It had been a normal day before the crisis, going through the monotony of high school just like she always did – that she did recall. But when she’d received the urgent pass telling her to get to the main office immediately, things weren’t so normal anymore.

The pudgy woman with the crazy red curls – the one whose name Morgan could never seem to remember – stretched the phone out as far on its cord as it could, nearly pulling the cradle off the desk, so that Morgan could reach it. Then, in an unnaturally quiet voice, she leaned over and said kindly, “It’s your mother.”

Her tone was far too sympathetic to reassure the trembling girl one bit. It was a voice one used when disasters struck, a voice to comfort, to soothe; it was terrifying when one had no idea what needed soothing.

A million things were scurrying frantically around the insides of her mind – someone had cancer, her house had burned down, her family members were all dead. She was shaking even more as her sweaty fingers took the phone and pressed it to her ear like a lifeline. She whispered cautiously, “Hello?”

Her mother hadn’t even been able to tell her what had happened, her speech greatly hindered by thick, dry, noisy sobs. The woman at the front desk was forced to be the one to tell Morgan that her boyfriend was tragically and prematurely dead.

Understandably, she hadn’t taken the news well. She felt numb, the pain not yet pouncing on her as she knew it would; she stood there, expressionless, fingers relaxing their firm grip on the phone until it fell onto the countertop. The loud noise startled her, and that was when she fell into the void she’d been expecting: a dark, cold place full of too much noise and too much light. Even the empty air was full of something she couldn’t quite understand – overwhelmed, the girl’s subconscious took over, and she fell now onto the floor in a faint.

She hadn’t woken since – well, not really. Sure, she was mobile, she talked, she faked smiles and constantly assured everyone that she was “fine.” But in truth, she wasn’t all there. Morgan Fletcher, once queen of all crowds she included herself in, had allowed herself to slip away.

See, when she’d found herself so obsessed with something that it took up her whole life, her whole mind, her whole heart… it was turning out to be very hard to begin living without him. This was especially hard for someone like Morgan: well-liked, spoiled, and generally carefree. The only care she’d had was for him, and since he’d gone, she had nothing else to occupy herself with, but for grieving. He’d taken up her entire life, and therefore, most pieces of herself had perished with him.

For this reason (along with a myriad of others), the funeral was absolutely excruciating. There was a slideshow played of his life while it had lasted, from birth to age fifteen – the oldest he would ever get. Morgan barely saw any of it, as her eyelashes were coated with wet, sticky tears. The mascara she’d disinterestedly applied earlier was gluing her eyes shut.

She did, however, see the last picture – one she herself had taken merely two weeks before his death. It showed him as she remembered him, lying on the grass of her backyard, arms folded leisurely behind his head. His bright eyes winked up at her, framed by the thick, dark lashes she’d always envied. It was the most beautiful picture she had of him, so therefore, it was also the most painful.

She’d worn an itchy black dress to her boyfriend’s funeral, one she knew he would’ve hated. It covered up all of her freckled, naturally tan skin, and it made her look like she was twelve years old. But these things tended to happen when her mother dressed her.

Plus, she’d had no alternative options that were appropriate for an occasion like this. And when she was attending his funeral, she really couldn’t care less about clothing. It took up the lowest spot on her priority list, with the highest being the fact that he was dead.

The entire school had endured watching Morgan cry at the assembly formally announcing his death on the Monday after the funeral. Most students knew by them, but as he’d died on a Friday afternoon, it couldn’t be helped. The horrific slideshow was played once again, and as Morgan actually watched it this time, she noticed absent-mindedly that it was actually put together very well. His mother always did have a knack for design.

After that, the principal, Mr. Dawson, spitballed for a few minutes about things like “charismatic nature,” “high-spirited trouble-maker,” and “very popular among classmates.” All of these things were true, but Morgan still felt like screaming. No one could ever fully describe him, and this pathetic attempt was miserably failing. She could have described him much better than that.

And she was fairly sure there were plenty of others who were outraged as well – Mr. Dawson hadn’t lied when he’d said popular. During the slideshow, a multitude of females sobbing had echoed through the uncomfortably large auditorium, while the boys remained stony-faced and somber to maintain their reputations. Morgan could see the light of a Gameboy shining onto the glasses of the boy in front of her, and she felt like ripping it out of his hands to throw at Mr. Dawson. How could this kid be so apathetic? Didn’t he care that the world was ending?!

This seemingly tiny thing was what ended up causing the pathetic, wet kind of sobbing that only toddlers did to come out of Morgan’s mouth, loud enough to grant the glances of every member of the audience. If she’d cared, she would have been embarrassed, but as it was, she barely noticed the stares. Josie, a close friend of hers who’d placed herself strategically beside Morgan in case of this very event happening, squeezed her hand gently. She couldn’t really feel it, only wanting it to stop. It felt wrong somehow. Now he hadn’t been the last person to hold her hand.

It took a couple weeks to slide herself back into the environment of school. She still wouldn’t speak unless she had to, and dodged the pity of all who asked the horrible question, “Are you okay?” But somehow, she was able to seem normal enough that she soon began to get away with it. They stopped asking, and left her to deal with the grief alone, as she’d originally wanted.

That is, all except for her mother, still annoyingly observant as always. She kept a close watch on Morgan at all times, making sure she was handling things well – or at least, as well as she could have been expected to. Cathy wasn’t waiting for her daughter to go back to normal; she was simply trying to find her daughter again among the mess she’d been so suddenly tossed into.

Of course, then things had to get so much worse. Her only sibling, Kaleb, ten years older than she, had to go and get cancer. Another of the things she’d been worrying about before receiving the call from her mother – she could only hope that more disaster wouldn’t strike.

Kaleb held on by mere threads for the next year just as Morgan did; he went in and out of remission so constantly that the doctors weren’t sure if it would ever stop. Eventually, Morgan was so used to the updates that he had returned to the hospital or was home again that they didn’t bother her anymore. She could simply nod emotionlessly whenever the news came in; there was only so much more she could deal with before she’d snap.

Driving home after another exhausting day of purgatory, she realized that it had been awfully optimistic of her to put on eyeliner that morning. As the mutinous tears slid obnoxiously down her cheeks, they stained their path black, making her look a bit undead. As always, she flinched away from her face in the side mirror. Her reflection was no comfort to her anymore.

She put the car in drive as if nothing was wrong with this picture, having learned to ignore the wetness on her face and the perpetually runny nose. Every time she was alone, this had to happen. All the self-help books her mother kept gifting her with told her that the tears had to stop sometime, but Morgan was beginning to doubt this theory. It had now been over a year since his death, and crying had become merely part of the routine, just like pretending had. It was normal to her, just like eating or sleeping or breathing – something that simply had to happen.

Cathy had told her not to drive it she was crying. She said it was dangerous, that she would get hit. But she didn’t understand that if Morgan went by that stipulation, she’d never get home.

So even despite being inconveniently blinded – by both tears and the rain pouring from the sky like a waterfall – the girl pulled out onto the wet road, her truck’s tires protesting against the wild half-circle. But Morgan couldn’t help the drastic movements: today had been even worse than any day she’d experienced since his death, and she needed to get out of there. Today was his seventeenth birthday.

Morgan had already dealt with his sixteenth, only a month after his passing, and that one had seemed a lot worse in comparison. Before he’d died, Morgan had already been planning an elaborate surprise party to occur on that day, but for obvious reasons, it was sadly precluded. Sweet sixteen was a milestone he’d never reached.

His girlfriend, however, passed that mark a few months before he would have; he’d celebrated it with her, just him, Morgan, and Cathy. Usually, girls with her status planned elaborate parties complete with drinking, unsupervised houses, and a nice selection of illegal drugs, but Morgan wasn’t like that. She’d made sure that this special occasion was private, non-stressing, and definitely legal.

As soon as Cathy had left the two alone – raising her eyebrows at Morgan to remind her of responsibilities, as she always did whenever her daughter was alone with him – their arms were around each other, his nose in her hair, breathing her in as she laughed delightedly. His dark curls tickled her cheek as he whispered seductively, “Happy birthday.” Following that were the delicious words, “I love you.”

She could hear his voice now, as she turned a corner past the supermarket. Except right now, he was saying, “Be happy. Live the life you imagined.”

Morgan sobbed even harder at the sound. How was she supposed to do that? The life she had imagined included him, and it no longer possibly could. How could she follow the advice he’d given her from the grave, when his very post-death state was what made it unattainable?

She was beyond wondering how he could possibly communicate with her, even though she’d watched his body placed delicately into his own special hole in the ground, three blocks from her house in the local cemetery. This sort of thing had happened before – he didn’t speak to her often, but enough so that she was not surprised to hear it now.

As she completed the turn, she was so absorbed in the memory that, despite Cathy’s warning, she wasn’t watching the road. Therefore, she had no way of knowing that there was a particularly foul piece of roadkill occupying the middle of the lane opposite the one she was turning into, or that the driver coming towards her had swerved to avoid it, or that the rain was blocking his vision so completely that he couldn’t see her coming. Morgan was simply in the wrong place at a very wrong time.

She never saw the car directly, just as he never saw her. All she saw were the headlights, coming disturbingly closer and closer as she wiped her eyes in an attempt to see what was happening. Strangely, she looked to the side, and as the car’s lights washed over the seat next to her, she could almost see the outline of a distressingly familiar figure sitting there, his eyes wide with panic. She stared right into his face, desperately trying to make sure that it was him, but that was about the moment that the two cars collided.

It was a series of unlucky coincidences that brought about the end of Morgan Fletcher’s suffering.