Status: Feedback is appreciated.
Oasis
The Boy
Far into the future, there was a boy.
He had light tan skin, shined bronze by hours of outdoor play. He had tousled brown hair, the same as his charming father’s crown. He grinned crookedly with milky-white teeth, the front tooth chipped in a story that got wilder with every retelling of his. He had brilliant parents, a scientist and a teacher, who bore the happiest expressions when together.
Why is this all in the past tense?
Because he lost all of that.
<><><>
It was already a scary night.
Thunder rumbled, and lightning struck the ground with flashes of blinding light. Wild winds whipped their switches through the day into the seemingly golden moon. The news channels accredited the strange weather to some scientists’ working. Head of said scientists, Edward O. Bechtel, was interviewed several times by what seemed like millions of sites with a smug expression. He answered the same thing to the same question: “this will revolutionise the industry. The world, in fact. My team has been putting this together for three decades.” A strange grin. “Do not underestimate this, folks.”
But the boy was old enough to know that when adults thought the truth was too much, they lied.
They lied.
Joey was not normally scared of storms. Storms were merely natural occurrences of nature. Living with a scientist and a teacher of science let you privy to some information unknown (and also pretty damn useless, in Joey’s previous words) to your classmates.
But this storm was difference. It was because of science. Not part of science, part of yellowing textbooks lying around tables. Man made this. If Joey learned anything from History class, anything man made was bound to be disastrous at one point or another.
But Joey put the thought out like a light near to burning. He knew things, things that were normal for him to know. Like drugs. Drugs existed. So did people that used them. Using them was bad. Easy, simple textbook answers. Joey’s specialty.
Joey knew other things as well. Things he did not want to know. Secrets, people told him, putting a shushing finger to their mouths. Normally, Joey was also very bad at keeping secrets, nodding where he did not understand, losing what few acquaintances he had because of it. But he did not mind. He thought. He was unsure of that.
But this person in particular was special. Joey nodded, and he did understand. He wished he did not, he said to a tattered bear. Of course, there was nothing he could do to stop understanding, so he accepted it and moved on.
His train of thought was stopped by another deafening rumble of thunder. It was nearly like an earthquake, shaking the books and toys that lay about. Joey did not like this; disorder was the bane of the Navarro men, his father had joked. But Joey did not dare move. He felt like even touching an inch of his derby shoes to the floor would electrocute him, as unscientifically proven it may be. It only stressed him out more.
The cold sweat damping his shirt turned frigid when a familiar ringing sound came through the halls.
At last. Familiar.
Joey ran to the living room at a pace that his Gym teacher would be proud of.
“Hello?” An unsure voice came through the phone.
“Thank you, Jesse,” Joey replied, a quiver to his voice. The words came out like a stutter.
“Thank the lord of phone numbers. Joey, I have something. Something very important. Like, Green Day CD important.”
“You have a Green Day CD?”
“Sadly, no,” for the first time in the day, Jesse sounded joking and nearly Jesse-like. His serious tone returned right after, more serious than ever expected from the movie fanatic. “Remember that secret you told me?”
Joey was sure he looked like he came out of a pool now. “Yes?”
“I got these papers about it. It’s really—like, very disturbing. It’s scary.”
“Wha—t does it say?” He drew the word out, a significant tone drop. It was clear Jesse would be nowhere near Jesse-like for the next few days.
“It’s classified information. If I say it, you’ll be in serious danger.”
“Am I not in such a state everyday?”
“Please, Joey. Say no.”
“That is one of the many instructions I will not follow.”
A watery sigh from the other end of the line. “Fine. The things they’re doing at the lab, it’s not—not good. Terrible, really. They’re—” A shriek so loud Joey nearly threw the phone to the window. “What the hell are you doing?! Holy crap, man, get out! Get out! Get out, you creepy—weirdo—ass! Holy crap! Who are you? Get away from me! Sh—” He was cut off by a wave of static. Joey rocked on his heels quicker and quicker, his chest seeming to be bound on by a rope becoming tighter by the second. His breath came in short pants, as though he had been running through the night. Joey wished so dearly to run, but his black shoes seemed to be glued to the floor.
A breathy, deep voice came through the receiver. “Shh, shh. Shut your mouth, little boy, or I’ll hit harder than that next time.” His voice was like rough stones, scraping across cold asphalt. “Now, who are you? Do you hear me? Remember, I know where you live. I can track you, and I will. Do what’s best for you, and ANSWER ME!”
Joey did not answer, instead breathing less and less and sweating more and more.
He dropped the phone to the floor, still hearing the angry shouts of the kidnapper through it. Joey couldn’t hear the man through the pounding of blood through his ears. He tried to think, though that seemed as impossible as all this was. A roaring thunderstorm caused by an experiment. His best friend getting kidnapped. The fact that this was his life.
Joey had no answers.
So he ran.
It was even scarier outside.
The thunder was louder. The sky was darker. The flashes were brighter. It all seemed to grow closer, like the cold knife of truth. Fortunately, Joey was always a fast runner.
He scrambled through the flat blades of green, the usual fragrant smell of nature now a burning plastic. Too metallic, too artificial. The wind whipped his dark hair about, and he arrived at Crusoe University looking like a runaway.
(He would be soon, but he did not know nor hope that.)
“Dad!” He called out to the disarrayed halls. Papers flew around, and books slid on the floor as easy as an ice rink. Joey was about to bolt to some other place—he honestly had no idea. Can you blame him, however?—when he saw a tall man, with a gold-striped scarlet tie and hair like a shock of black curls.
“Joseph! Joseph!” It yelled once it saw him. Dr. Navarro ran towards his son, his ripped, unbelievably dirty sleeves enveloped his son. “Oh, thank God you’re safe. I can’t believe they haven’t called out school tomorrow—the government these days—”
Before his father could run into a lengthy rant of ‘why the government was failing the country’ (something Joey was planning to use for his thesis, with how much Dr. Navarro ranted), Joey interrupted. “Where’s Mum?”
Dr. Navarro let go of his son, wild dark eyes darting to and fro the chaotic corridors. “At work. Go to my office, Joseph. I have to do some work.”
“Work?! At this time? Dad, you just said that even the college level should be suspended. How are you supposed to do work?”
“Joseph, be quiet!” Dr. Navarro hissed. He recognised his harshness, and his face softened to a man Joey recognised. “This is important. Very important. Go to my office. Now.”
Joey did not hesitate. When his father got mad, he got mad. The last thing he needed was to have a screaming match in this Oz-travelling-level disaster.
Joey ran up the staircase, dodging coats and ruined thesis papers. He positively slammed the door closed, taking in breaths slowly and deeply. It seemed time had slowed down. Here, it was calm. Collected. Like his father.
Then he thought of the storm outside.
That was Dr. Navarro.
The brown tweed coat hung on the coatrack was accompanied by a familiar hat: a dark grey with googly eyes on it. Joey smiled, wider than he had all week. By now, the feeling of wanting to laugh was a stranger, reintroduced by the old friend memory.
He fondly remembered the story behind it. As a young child, he had been in this same office, just less pictures, and less bags under his father’s eyes. You would think a man with a doctorate in the sciences would know better than to leave a six-year-old with glue and googly eyes.
But apparently, Dr. Navarro had not been paying attention in parenting classes.
A quarter past three p.m., Joey’s father found a scrawny little boy wearing his ruined fedora, all the pride in the world fit into a high pitched laugh. Joey hadn’t actually stuck on the eyes. It was just slathered on enough to parade around until they both got home. Then Dr. Navarro stuck it on properly, immortalising Mister Fedora.
The warm, fuzzy feeling we know as happiness did not last long.
Just as Joey reached for Mister Fedora, the coat rack shook with the force of a blue whale’s fin. He stumbled to the ground, seeing an splash of crimson on his elbow. It was static shaking at first, with nice little breaks for Joey to scream horribly. Then it became worse than any earthquake drill would have prepared him for, constant shaking chipping paint and throwing dust to the ground. Joey rushed to go under the table, but quickly abandoned the plan after seeing the table was now a splintery, broken mess.
He brought a weighty tome over his head, one about sound and vibrations. Joey hoped his father wouldn’t mind a broken book or bone or four.
Joey stood up, bringing—or rather, limping—himself to watch the horrors unfold from the window. After all, the glass couldn’t break any further; most of it was already on the floor.
The grey, convoluted clouds seemed to form a tornado. The only reason Joey knew there were clouds was because several of them were bursting out streaks of lighting in brilliant colours: golden yellow, the bright red-orange of lava, white with a glow of blue, a purplish-cobalt, a shocking pink. Joey had read that true power, the raw force of nature, was what true beauty was.
He had not understood it until that night.
Joey looked out the window, but angled his head down. The inevitable was coming. Why wait?
He snatched Mister Fedora from a passing wind, and dropped the book to the floor.
Oh, well. I should’ve brought my Harry Potter cloak. That way I could check off skydiving on my bucket list.
Joey felt an odd feeling to grin. So he grinned, quite oddly. Adrenaline coursed through his veins, pounding in his ears and cooling the heat of fear.
He felt the concrete wall becoming the floor. No time like the present.
“GERONIMO!”
Joey roared the word from the top of his lungs, hoarsely and louder than any time in his fifteen years of life. The cold wind slicked his dark hair back, and it rushed through his ears like a zooming car. He was flying, flying, flying.
He landed.
And he fell
He had light tan skin, shined bronze by hours of outdoor play. He had tousled brown hair, the same as his charming father’s crown. He grinned crookedly with milky-white teeth, the front tooth chipped in a story that got wilder with every retelling of his. He had brilliant parents, a scientist and a teacher, who bore the happiest expressions when together.
Why is this all in the past tense?
Because he lost all of that.
<><><>
It was already a scary night.
Thunder rumbled, and lightning struck the ground with flashes of blinding light. Wild winds whipped their switches through the day into the seemingly golden moon. The news channels accredited the strange weather to some scientists’ working. Head of said scientists, Edward O. Bechtel, was interviewed several times by what seemed like millions of sites with a smug expression. He answered the same thing to the same question: “this will revolutionise the industry. The world, in fact. My team has been putting this together for three decades.” A strange grin. “Do not underestimate this, folks.”
But the boy was old enough to know that when adults thought the truth was too much, they lied.
They lied.
Joey was not normally scared of storms. Storms were merely natural occurrences of nature. Living with a scientist and a teacher of science let you privy to some information unknown (and also pretty damn useless, in Joey’s previous words) to your classmates.
But this storm was difference. It was because of science. Not part of science, part of yellowing textbooks lying around tables. Man made this. If Joey learned anything from History class, anything man made was bound to be disastrous at one point or another.
But Joey put the thought out like a light near to burning. He knew things, things that were normal for him to know. Like drugs. Drugs existed. So did people that used them. Using them was bad. Easy, simple textbook answers. Joey’s specialty.
Joey knew other things as well. Things he did not want to know. Secrets, people told him, putting a shushing finger to their mouths. Normally, Joey was also very bad at keeping secrets, nodding where he did not understand, losing what few acquaintances he had because of it. But he did not mind. He thought. He was unsure of that.
But this person in particular was special. Joey nodded, and he did understand. He wished he did not, he said to a tattered bear. Of course, there was nothing he could do to stop understanding, so he accepted it and moved on.
His train of thought was stopped by another deafening rumble of thunder. It was nearly like an earthquake, shaking the books and toys that lay about. Joey did not like this; disorder was the bane of the Navarro men, his father had joked. But Joey did not dare move. He felt like even touching an inch of his derby shoes to the floor would electrocute him, as unscientifically proven it may be. It only stressed him out more.
The cold sweat damping his shirt turned frigid when a familiar ringing sound came through the halls.
At last. Familiar.
Joey ran to the living room at a pace that his Gym teacher would be proud of.
“Hello?” An unsure voice came through the phone.
“Thank you, Jesse,” Joey replied, a quiver to his voice. The words came out like a stutter.
“Thank the lord of phone numbers. Joey, I have something. Something very important. Like, Green Day CD important.”
“You have a Green Day CD?”
“Sadly, no,” for the first time in the day, Jesse sounded joking and nearly Jesse-like. His serious tone returned right after, more serious than ever expected from the movie fanatic. “Remember that secret you told me?”
Joey was sure he looked like he came out of a pool now. “Yes?”
“I got these papers about it. It’s really—like, very disturbing. It’s scary.”
“Wha—t does it say?” He drew the word out, a significant tone drop. It was clear Jesse would be nowhere near Jesse-like for the next few days.
“It’s classified information. If I say it, you’ll be in serious danger.”
“Am I not in such a state everyday?”
“Please, Joey. Say no.”
“That is one of the many instructions I will not follow.”
A watery sigh from the other end of the line. “Fine. The things they’re doing at the lab, it’s not—not good. Terrible, really. They’re—” A shriek so loud Joey nearly threw the phone to the window. “What the hell are you doing?! Holy crap, man, get out! Get out! Get out, you creepy—weirdo—ass! Holy crap! Who are you? Get away from me! Sh—” He was cut off by a wave of static. Joey rocked on his heels quicker and quicker, his chest seeming to be bound on by a rope becoming tighter by the second. His breath came in short pants, as though he had been running through the night. Joey wished so dearly to run, but his black shoes seemed to be glued to the floor.
A breathy, deep voice came through the receiver. “Shh, shh. Shut your mouth, little boy, or I’ll hit harder than that next time.” His voice was like rough stones, scraping across cold asphalt. “Now, who are you? Do you hear me? Remember, I know where you live. I can track you, and I will. Do what’s best for you, and ANSWER ME!”
Joey did not answer, instead breathing less and less and sweating more and more.
He dropped the phone to the floor, still hearing the angry shouts of the kidnapper through it. Joey couldn’t hear the man through the pounding of blood through his ears. He tried to think, though that seemed as impossible as all this was. A roaring thunderstorm caused by an experiment. His best friend getting kidnapped. The fact that this was his life.
Joey had no answers.
So he ran.
It was even scarier outside.
The thunder was louder. The sky was darker. The flashes were brighter. It all seemed to grow closer, like the cold knife of truth. Fortunately, Joey was always a fast runner.
He scrambled through the flat blades of green, the usual fragrant smell of nature now a burning plastic. Too metallic, too artificial. The wind whipped his dark hair about, and he arrived at Crusoe University looking like a runaway.
(He would be soon, but he did not know nor hope that.)
“Dad!” He called out to the disarrayed halls. Papers flew around, and books slid on the floor as easy as an ice rink. Joey was about to bolt to some other place—he honestly had no idea. Can you blame him, however?—when he saw a tall man, with a gold-striped scarlet tie and hair like a shock of black curls.
“Joseph! Joseph!” It yelled once it saw him. Dr. Navarro ran towards his son, his ripped, unbelievably dirty sleeves enveloped his son. “Oh, thank God you’re safe. I can’t believe they haven’t called out school tomorrow—the government these days—”
Before his father could run into a lengthy rant of ‘why the government was failing the country’ (something Joey was planning to use for his thesis, with how much Dr. Navarro ranted), Joey interrupted. “Where’s Mum?”
Dr. Navarro let go of his son, wild dark eyes darting to and fro the chaotic corridors. “At work. Go to my office, Joseph. I have to do some work.”
“Work?! At this time? Dad, you just said that even the college level should be suspended. How are you supposed to do work?”
“Joseph, be quiet!” Dr. Navarro hissed. He recognised his harshness, and his face softened to a man Joey recognised. “This is important. Very important. Go to my office. Now.”
Joey did not hesitate. When his father got mad, he got mad. The last thing he needed was to have a screaming match in this Oz-travelling-level disaster.
Joey ran up the staircase, dodging coats and ruined thesis papers. He positively slammed the door closed, taking in breaths slowly and deeply. It seemed time had slowed down. Here, it was calm. Collected. Like his father.
Then he thought of the storm outside.
That was Dr. Navarro.
The brown tweed coat hung on the coatrack was accompanied by a familiar hat: a dark grey with googly eyes on it. Joey smiled, wider than he had all week. By now, the feeling of wanting to laugh was a stranger, reintroduced by the old friend memory.
He fondly remembered the story behind it. As a young child, he had been in this same office, just less pictures, and less bags under his father’s eyes. You would think a man with a doctorate in the sciences would know better than to leave a six-year-old with glue and googly eyes.
But apparently, Dr. Navarro had not been paying attention in parenting classes.
A quarter past three p.m., Joey’s father found a scrawny little boy wearing his ruined fedora, all the pride in the world fit into a high pitched laugh. Joey hadn’t actually stuck on the eyes. It was just slathered on enough to parade around until they both got home. Then Dr. Navarro stuck it on properly, immortalising Mister Fedora.
The warm, fuzzy feeling we know as happiness did not last long.
Just as Joey reached for Mister Fedora, the coat rack shook with the force of a blue whale’s fin. He stumbled to the ground, seeing an splash of crimson on his elbow. It was static shaking at first, with nice little breaks for Joey to scream horribly. Then it became worse than any earthquake drill would have prepared him for, constant shaking chipping paint and throwing dust to the ground. Joey rushed to go under the table, but quickly abandoned the plan after seeing the table was now a splintery, broken mess.
He brought a weighty tome over his head, one about sound and vibrations. Joey hoped his father wouldn’t mind a broken book or bone or four.
Joey stood up, bringing—or rather, limping—himself to watch the horrors unfold from the window. After all, the glass couldn’t break any further; most of it was already on the floor.
The grey, convoluted clouds seemed to form a tornado. The only reason Joey knew there were clouds was because several of them were bursting out streaks of lighting in brilliant colours: golden yellow, the bright red-orange of lava, white with a glow of blue, a purplish-cobalt, a shocking pink. Joey had read that true power, the raw force of nature, was what true beauty was.
He had not understood it until that night.
Joey looked out the window, but angled his head down. The inevitable was coming. Why wait?
He snatched Mister Fedora from a passing wind, and dropped the book to the floor.
Oh, well. I should’ve brought my Harry Potter cloak. That way I could check off skydiving on my bucket list.
Joey felt an odd feeling to grin. So he grinned, quite oddly. Adrenaline coursed through his veins, pounding in his ears and cooling the heat of fear.
He felt the concrete wall becoming the floor. No time like the present.
“GERONIMO!”
Joey roared the word from the top of his lungs, hoarsely and louder than any time in his fifteen years of life. The cold wind slicked his dark hair back, and it rushed through his ears like a zooming car. He was flying, flying, flying.
He landed.
And he fell