BF2S Forums Magius Presents: Whispers of the Drakens, book I

II.
A Lingering Omen

    “Mr. Rashalda, are you going to answer the question?”
    “Huh?  Oh, er…yes, Mrs. Barton,” I replied, suddenly quite aware that I was in chemistry class, and my fellow students were staring at me in odd ways.
    “How many times have I told you that you’re in a classroom, and that you can’t doze off at any time!  What if that mixture was nitroglycerin and you were dozing off when you were mixing it!  I doubt you would regard that with little interest.”
    “Er…yeah,” I replied, hoping to avoid another lecture about zoning out in class.  I’ll zone out when you’re not looking next time, I thought sarcastically as she sighed.  She hadn’t caught me off guard today.  Yet.
    “Well, keep up with us, or you’ll have no idea what to do when we start!” she snapped, turning back to the beakers and burner plate on one of the lab tables.  Sighing softly to myself, I quickly turned back to the task on hand, measuring various powdery samples for mass.  I could have cared less.  Looking up, I noticed Kristy Sharon looking in a similar disgusted fashion at Mrs. Barton, a glare that said enough that it didn’t take much thinking to figure out what it meant.
    “Isn’t she such an obsessive perfectionist?” I whispered her, all too aware that teachers have far better hearing than one would think.
    “Yes, isn’t it annoying?  It’s not like she is the most perfect person on the face of the earth; that reservation goes to my former math teacher,” Kristy replied, rolling her eyes behind her glasses.  “I’d love for her to screw up her experiments someday, maybe put in the wrong chemicals from a mislabeled bottle.  You know, like mixing up the sulfuric acid and the ammonia, that kind of thing.”
    “I’d like to have the school stay in one piece, thanks,” I said, then absentmindedly picked up a beaker of lactic acid.  “As much as I love trouble sometimes, it probably would not be worth cleaning up the mess.”
    A shattering glass brought me out of my conversation mid-step, and everyone, including myself, turned to see what happened.  Paul Halsmith had broken another beaker in class.  That, or the school board had forgotten to buy Paul-safe glassware this year, he was generally a complete klutz…I had a feeling this was not going to be a pretty scene, judging by the look in Mrs. Barton’s eyes; she had been rather irritated all class, and I was all but certain she had found someone to make an example out of.  Must’ve been a bad teacher conference week, I thought casually.
    “Paul, that is the second beaker you’ve broken in the past two weeks; you’re like the theorized bull in the China shop, if I ever saw one!”  Her rapid-fire response to his clumsiness, I admit, was rather unforgiving; it probably hadn’t occurred to her yet that the glassware sucked at being heated, it made it extremely fragile; the things were hard as iron though, when it came to dropping them.
    “Well, er, you see, the glass already had a crack in it, you see, and it must have shattered when it…uh…got heated too quickly…” Paul snorted, trying to desperately find a way out of the mess he had fallen into.  I had a feeling it was not going to be fun for him.
    “Detention Thursday afternoon, in my room,” Mrs. Barton said, “For your tone.  I should also make you pay for all the ones you’ve broke, but maybe you’ll learn from this,” She snuffed, turning her back to him, as if repulsed by his presence.
    Still gripping the beaker, I watched Mrs. Barton walking by, absolutely disgusted by how cruel she was.  No hero around to stop her evil ways, heh, I thought sarcastically. 
    What?  Where am I?
    Suddenly I became aware of the cracking of glass, and I looked down to my hand at my beaker.  Or I tried to, because it was now smashed on the floor.  Nice one, Drenar! I thought to myself, since Mrs. Barton was already in a foul mood, I would likely be stuck in detention with Paul as well.  How pleasant.
    “What happened this time, Mr. Rashalda?” she asked me in a rather irritating tone.  “And please, don’t tell me you broke it on the Bunsen burner this time.”
    “Uh, it slipped from my hand…almost nicked myself too, shoddy worksmanship,” I said quickly.  I heard a few people laughing in the background, and I hoped they weren’t making the situation worse.
    “Alright, I’ll give you the benefit of doubt this time, Mr. Rashalda… just make sure no one gets cut by the broken glass,” she said, not even bothering to give me detention; I was spared a most grievous experience for the day.  Shrugging my shoulders in acknowledgement, I grabbed the dustpan Paul had just finished using, and started sweeping up my own mess.  As I swept the glass into the bin, I noticed Kristy still peering at me, as if trying to look into my soul.  Rather than live with this knowledge and wonder what she could possibly be thinking, I turned to face her.
    “It’s just broken glass, not a container of Uranium 238,” I said jokingly as she stopped staring.
    “You zoned out completely for a minute Drenar; I was wondering if you were having some sort of episode; you okay?”
    “Fine, I think,” I said.  “Not a lot of sleep lately, but that’s it.”
    “Well…if you say so,” she shrugged, turning back to her work, leaving me to wonder if I had zoned out.  I really need more sleep at night, I thought silently, then I decided I needed to know what she wanted to say.
    “Okay, I’ll bite.  What’s bugging you?” I asked.
    “Well Drenar…the lack of sleep lately, you normally come into this class all energetic, ready for the day,” she said.  “Lately, you’ve been kind of off, and yes, I sound odd that I note these kinds of details, but it’s true.”
    “Can you keep a deep, dark secret?” I joked.
    “If it involves anything that I don’t care to hear about, then no,” she said, shrugging softly.
“I’ve had dreams lately, on and off, that keep waking me up,” I said.  “It’s kind of irritating to be honest, but I manage; it’s not like I’m being kept up all night.  The weird part I don’t get is that sometimes, when I wake up, it still feels like I’m…in the dream.” I said, finishing up the cleaning and tossing the broken fragments in the trash.  “But that’s it.  And I probably have too much caffeine for my own good, so I guess that could also be a cause.”
    “Maybe,” she said.  “By the way, you going to finish that experiment with me or not?”
    “I would, but it’s going to take me another fifteen minutes just to catch up,” I sighed, and I was surprised as she slid me her notes.  “On the other hand…more like five minutes,” I said, as we continued like nothing had occurred.

*    *    *

    “It’s your move, Drenar.”
    Is it possible? Perhaps it is no coincidence…no one has ever been able to.
    “Drenar?”
    “Wha…huh?” I mumbled, snapping back to reality, only to find myself looking at a chessboard.  “Is it my turn already James?”
    “It’s been your turn for the last five minutes, Drenar,” replied my somewhat moody friend.  “You’ve been staring at that board as if you expected the pieces to move themselves.  Are you trying to developing telekinesis to compensate for your lack of knowledge of this game, or are you truly at a loss to make your next move?”
    “Oh, yeah I guess I’ll move my knight to D-3,” I said, finally deciding on a move that would set him up for a grand slam in a couple of turns.  My friend James had always been a nerd, and will always be a nerd for the rest of his life, but it is fun to hang out with him.  We play chess in the school cafeteria every afternoon, in an all-out war to determine just who the better chess-player is.  We’re fairly even, so that makes the task all the more difficult in determining a solid victor.  As I looked at his face, with the crooked glasses, the dark brown eyes, and closely cropped hair.  I suppose he’ll never have trouble finding a great career; he is a certifiable genius.  He also had a habit of saying some incredibly blunt things when the occasion called for it.
    “So James, how’s your sister doing?”  I asked inquisitively, as I did every day.  I had met her through James several years ago, and we had also become good friends.  While I was thinking about her, I could imagine her right now… brown-blonde hair, sitting at her desk patiently, with those gray eyes sweeping across the textbook at a smooth pace.  Maybe it’s luck, maybe its destiny, I don’t know… all I do know is that she is one of the smartest, wisest, most beautiful people I have ever known.  And what a horrible romanticist I sound like, I thought sarcastically.
    “You going to listen, or are you going to daydream all day?  They have philosophy class down the hall for that,” James said sarcastically as I dozed back into reality.  “She’s same as always, busy over in the agri-science wing.  Angela always did adore animals, you know,” he said as he moved one of his pawns, putting my knight on F-5 in jeopardy, a move that I had anticipated.  “She’s currently working on a report describing how vital it is to save endangered species, based on abstract effects and…oh, why don’t you ask her yourself, if you’re so interested in it.”
    “Every time I try to call your house for her, some particular brother is busy playing computer games online.  Tell me, my dear Watson, how do you solve that problematic predicament?” I joked, using my bishop to take the pawn on G-4.  “I suppose I will see her at lunch tomorrow…she had something to do today anyhow.”
    “I don’t know, Mr. Holmes,” he replied, pushing his waiting queen to take my bishop in return…A necessary sacrifice, on my part.  “Perhaps you should try a telegram.”
    “Telegrams are so nineteenth century,” I argued, moving my knight on F-5 to D-6.   “Would it kill you guys to get an internet connection that isn’t measured in bytes per second?  The government is not out to get you.  Read my bits: get broadband.”
    “Sure, so I can give the government even more bandwidth to have them monitor my every action?” James said, now aware that his king was slowly being boxed in.  In an attempt to stall my attack, he moved his rook on C-8 to C-6, now threatening my knight.  A wise move, but it would only delay the inevitable.  “They’re just waiting out there, very patiently, waiting for me to say something distinctly nasty, and then bam!  I’ll be in Guantanamo bay as a hostile enemy combatant with no rights and a very grim forty years in prison with no explanation.”
    “Or, you’re over-reacting again, because I just owned you this match,” I said in a calm manner, moving my queen to take his pawn on A-7, supported by my own rook on A-4.  “Checkmate, James,” I said, a slow grin appearing on my face, due to the fact that I had outsmarted him for once.
    “Yeah, so you won…I still beat you the last three games,” he snorted.  “Hey Drenar, I have a question…and this sounds kind of redundant, but how did you ever get a name like Drenar?”
    “Eh?  What brings that up?” I asked.
    “My random question of the day,” he replied.  “I’ve known you for like…cripes, forever, and I still haven’t figured out where your name comes from.”
    “It’s kind of odd, really,” I said, “but since you asked so nicely, I’ll tell you.  It’s a name that my mom came up with when they were creating Dungeons and Dragons characters one day, and since mom was due to have me in a month, that’s the name they decided on.  Dad said it was supposed to come from the language of the elves, meaning ‘warrior of courage’ or something sappy like that.”
    “Ha ha ha, they really said that?” he said, not even attempting to stifle his laughter.  “Man Drenar, I didn’t realize that your parents were that geeky.”
    “You wouldn’t, considering that they…you know,” I said, and he quickly stopped laughing, getting the subtle hint.  “It’s all I have to remember them by: my name.”
    “Yeah, that sucked, what happened that day,” he said solemnly.  “Sorry I laughed.  Anyhow I got to split or I’ll be late for my next class, which is all the way across the entire school,”
   “Same here,” I said, looking at my watch and realizing I had history class next with one of my more preferable teachers.  On my way out, I looked upwards to the skylights and the second floor, noting how nice a day it was.
    Is this possible, after so long?  No one else has…
    “Who said that?” I asked, receiving a puzzled look from a few people around me, as if they had heard nothing.  That was weird, I thought as I headed out the door.
    When I rushed into my classroom just seconds before the bell rang, almost everyone was crowding into the door; no one can resist just rushing the bell, except me.  I am usually the first person in class, so this irritated me to some degree.  Quietly taking a seat, I turned my attention to Dr. Jeffery Nimbul, a jolly old man who loved his job of teaching young minds for the future.  He teaches in a rather humorous manner, aloof and high-spirited, and that is why history has remained one of my favorite classes.    Currently we had been studying the dark ages, roughly after the fall of the Roman Empire to the fourteenth century.
    “All right, all right everybody, settle down, we have a lot to do in such a little time… as usual,” he said, slyly.  “This is the curse of history…if I went day-by-day account of history, we’d never catch up to the present; history is always shaping itself, and it’d take years to review what happened even today,” he added, in an attempt at bad humor; a few people groaned.
    “Now, instead of doing things by the book,” he said, tossing a text behind his desk, and I swear I heard something break, “We’ll do something different, as opposed to memorizing the boring lives of very dead people that no one will care if you know about.  I can tell by your enthusiasm that you’d love to do this,” he said, as a few people cheered lazily.  “Due to the lack of creditable records during the dark ages, the commoners’ life still remains mostly unaccounted for during the eleventh through the fourteenth centuries, especially in Europe.  What we do know is that the lives of those people were fairly simplistic, and by that standard, were susceptible to believing many things that today would seem utterly ridiculous.”
    “Now, can anyone tell me some of the folk tales or myths that may have affected the thinking of the average persons’ life?  Go ahead, fire away; this is a debatable topic, no one’s hear to dispute your opinion,” Dr. Nimbul said, slowly pacing down the aisles of seats.  A few hands went up, willing participants, who always led the classroom discussions.  Huh, I wonder where he’s going to lead us with this discussion, I thought as I made scribbles on my notes and attempted to make half-decent anime of knights slaying evil.  The only thing I really accomplished was wasting time…and ending up with a few lousy scribbles.
    “Go ahead, Ryan, speak your mind,” Nimbul said, pointing a finger at a tall, lanky kid sitting in the corner.  Aside from being six feet and several inches tall, he wore nothing but black clothes almost every single day, and wore chain mail bracers.  The part that nearly made me laugh was the fact that his shirt was stylized and had the words ‘I’m a goth, don’t mess with my demons’ printed on it.  Despite the intimidating outward appearance, he was a very intelligent person with a taste for the theatre and for acting.  One could say that for him, life was just another act on a very big stage.
    “Well, according to many cultures, the medieval ages were plagued by apparent acts of god, and equally frightening creatures such as dragons, manticores, giants, and the like.  Records of this exist, such as Beowulf’s’ encounter with Grendal and his mother, and the dragon that killed him, and many other stories that we all heard about as kids.  None of those stories have been proven utterly true… at least, not yet,” he added in a melodramatic tone.   
    Let’s hope they’re not, or life just might get interesting, I thought as I tried to pay attention; it was one in the afternoon and I was only thinking about leaving.
    “That’s a good start Ryan, but how do myths come into existence?” Nimbul slyly asked taking his turn at being the inquisitor.
    “All myths are, generally speaking, rooted in the basis of fact, no matter how ridiculous they may seem.  The point is, they are what they are: myths, nothing more than fantasy tales to keep children’s imaginations sharp; many of these stories are based on largely exaggerated eyewitness accounts, and more likely than not misinterpreted during the predictable chain of people who heard it and passed it on to the next listener.  For instance, many people who have claimed to have seen mermaids have later been disproved when it was observed that, on occasion, dolphins stick their heads above water, and appeared very similar to what they described,” Ryan said.
    “Very good Ryan.  Anyone else?  Don’t be shy, we’re supposed to be having fun today,” Nimbul chuckled, pointing to a girl with dark brown hair in the front.  “Tell me, Jennifer, why would people misinterpret these sort of commonplace things?”
    “A lack of common sense maybe, or the fact that religion still dominated the way of life back then.  Or, people wanted to draw attention to themselves,” she added, causing a few people to joke around that they had just seen a griffon fly overhead the previous day.  If anyone mentions Hogwarts, I’m going to laugh uncontrollably, I thought with an amused look on my face.
    As all this was unfolding in the classroom, I was dozing off again, a habit of late that has started to surprise even myself. But, I keep having unusual dreams at night.  This last one had been the strangest of them all; I had this uneasy feeling in my heart, as though something was…different.  I didn’t know how, or why, but I somehow just knew.
    “Drenar?”
    “Oh, sorry… brain’s turning off, it’s quite stifling in here,” I said quickly as I snapped back to my senses.  “The answer was…five?”
    “In math maybe, but good guess,” Mr. Nimbul said, evoking a few laughs as I tried to shrink from view, which was virtually impossible considering I was near the back row as everyone turned to look.  “Actually, there were about five or so different reportings in the last year in England of people seeing some sort of flying creature at long distance.  The same thing, here in the United States, and in Europe all throughout the continent, always in rural areas.  It’s interesting to think that people make these sightings even today, when science and forensics have replaced myth and legend with fact…or fiction.”
    “Yeah, what I meant to say exactly,” I said, recovering quickly.  In the corner of my eye, I saw someone shaking their head, as if he knew something to the contrary. 
    “Mr. Deshandrea, if you will,” I heard Nimbul say as he raised his hand.
    Nicholas Deshandrea…when’s the last time I actually saw him say anything in class? I thought as I looked at the silvery blond kid who had raised his hand.  He had transferred to the school about two years who always kept to himself, and almost passed for the stereotypical surfer type.  We had chatted I think at most, two or three times in that span of time.  I didn’t know much about him, other than what I could inference from his actions.  No one else knew much about him either; he was generally extremely shy.
    “I don’t think it’s really a question of proof or disproof, I think it’s a question of interpretation,” he said as he spoke in the soft voice he had.
    I seriously doubt that, I thought.
    “True, true… but there have been some undisputed things like a sighting of what allegedly was some sort of UFO over Mexico city several years ago; no one can deny the fact that thousands saw it,” Nimbul said, trying to keep the topic interesting.  “Imagine though, for a moment, if half of everything peasants believed was true: that there were monsters and demons amongst the people of the world…wouldn’t that be an interesting blow to our history class?  Everything we knew, everything we thought was true, was nothing more than a convenient lie to cover the truth…oh wait, that’s the Matrix movie…sorry, I keep forgetting this isn’t sci-fi class.  Imagine the possibilities… interesting, isn’t it?”
    Somehow, the only interesting thing that happened was me getting shivers up my spine, and everyone else laughing at his bad joke made it worse.
    “It’s true that we often are biased against what we don’t know,” Nicholas said, sitting up in his chair with renewed interest.  “It also explains the fear of science during the early days of the renaissance…did they not imprison Galileo in his home for his beliefs and his astronomy calculations?”
    “Someone has done their reading for today, for once,” Nimbul said, and this got a few half-hearted laughs.  “Who else Mr. Deshandrea?”
    “Copernicus, a few other notable names, shall I continue?” he asked.
    “No, that’s quite fine, but you’ve raised an interesting point: back then, they were regarded as heretics.  Today, they are often regarded as the great grandfathers of science abroad: in the end, despite the criticism they received, they were proven correct, and we recognize them for that.”
    “So perhaps in the end, those people who spoke about strange creatures, or unexplainable phenomena, may one day be proven correct as well?” Nicholas said.
    “Perhaps,” Nimbul said, and I started dozing off once again in class, not even whole-heartedly paying attention; it was probably due to my lack of sleep the night before.
    “So, what about magic?  Why are there so many references to Merlin and Arthur in pre-Chaucer England?” someone asked some time later, as I sat with my head on the desk, watching the clock minute hand slowly move.  It was almost time for class to end, and then the day would be over.
    “Again, there are no proven theories, but much of our literature and surviving documents speak of Merlin as a wizard of unimaginable power, along with other people who were called, how does one say it, wielders of the elements.  This is all of course unproven, and once more I lean towards the fact that they’ve never been proven…scientifically speaking.”
    “The truth is out there, someone go find it,” someone in the back of the room joked.
    “Thank you George, but I’ll leave that to the science fiction club,” Nimbul muttered.  I however was thinking something different.  Maybe the truth will find me.  What a day that would be.   "Same thing for dragons too, I suppose?"
    "Actually Mr. Nimbul, there's more truth to dragon sightings than you'd think," George interrupted, and I groaned; here he was once again, being the complete nerd that he was trying to prove his crazy theories.  I had heard at least a few of them, including that the Area 51 was moved to our town; I had quickly stopped paying attention.  “Even to this very day, there are some fossils that have yet to be identified.  And let's not forget all the sightings that people claim to this very day, which you yourself mentioned."
    That's pretty much when I stopped paying attention to him and the rest of class, only blindly taking a few notes before the day ended.  I'm so glad that all lectures aren't that bizarre; if they were, I might have gone mad a long time ago.
    Traveling by way of the school bus is not exactly one of the highlights of my day, but it did give me some time to review my lectures on most days.  The younger students on the bus were exceptionally noisy however, as if trying to prove that they were the loudest, most obnoxious people around; then again, they didn’t even need to prove that anymore; it was a given.  I instead concentrated today on watching the landscape fly by; the ride home is like a scene out of a national park, with a few mentionable sites such as the large lake nearby, shadowed by mountains on its western shore.  The cows grazed quietly in a nearby field, oblivious to the frequent visitors and traffic going by at blurring speeds.  If this were the entire world, it would be almost perfection.  Except for the fact that this town is as boring as sin, I thought sarcastically.
    Turning back and with notebook in hand, I began reviewing my notes from history class, neatly written but otherwise lacking in any sense of organization.  One particular note caught my attention, one I had scribbled furiously as someone had shared their thoughts in the classroom.
    “Although it is theorized that most dragons were cruel and evil creatures, this has been timelessly disputed.  Some in fact believe that good dragons existed, to protect mankind; however, this is only a myth, a legend told by grandparents.  Some say that they have entirely disappeared from the world, to keep the people from verifying those legends…”
    Why had I written that?  I must have been dozing off again, not paying attention to what it was I wrote, I thought.  The only thing I remembered was that the strange kid named Nicholas had said it; why I had written it down in the first place baffled me.
    Turning once again to face out the window, I saw that my bus stop -was approaching rapidly.  Grabbing my notes and stuffing them back into my bag, I walked down the aisle without incident from the younger, more obnoxious kids sitting in the front.  My brother, who got off first, had this grim look on his face that told me something had gone amiss for him during the day.  We didn’t say much at all to each other, because there usually isn’t anything worth mentioning.  Ever since my brother had entered high school, I had felt distanced from him.  Pushing aside all other thoughts, I instead listened to the wind rustling through the trees, swaying ever so gently in the otherwise motionless world I saw around me.  Finally, I decided I had enough of the silence; I had to know what my brother was thinking.
    “So Tobias, how was school today?” I asked innocently, breaking the silence like one would break a glass window.
    “Same as always… crappy,” he said, still avoiding gazing at me as we walked beside each other.  “Yeah, Mrs. Riley is such a stickler about essay formats, even though my method is probably better.”
    “Tobias, you can’t be such a lone-wolf all of the time; people have leaders so others can follow them, it’s as simple as that,” I said, trying to ease the mood he had fallen into.  “You know, in this big thing we call life.”
    “Heh, this big thing we call life kinda sucks at the moment; time for a change of venue, maybe I should start leading and stop following,” he said, then stopped as he started coughing.
    “You alright Tobias?” I said, noting that he did look a little more pale then usual.  Between coughs, he gave a wave of his hand to show that he was fine.
    “Just a little tired today, might be a cold coming on,” he shrugged, brushing aside my remarks as if they had little meaning to him.
    “We barely talk anymore, you know; I doubt you’d figure this, but I do care what you’re doing, and who you’re hanging out with every great now and then,” I said, as he raised an eyebrow.  “So, anything wrong?”
    “Nope.  Fit as a fiddle, except for the cold,” he said, killing the conversation before it could even start.  I opened my mouth to say something more, but quickly shut it; it wouldn’t matter; he didn’t really care.
    Figures; I ask him what’s wrong, and he gives me the cold shoulder.  Why couldn’t he make this slightly easier to figure out?   I wondered.

*    *    *

    We came home to an empty house that day, as both of our foster parents were out working.  Our real parents had died in suspect car accident several years ago; I didn’t even find out until partway through the school day, when one of my parents’ friends picked me up and took me and my brother to the hospital.  After that, Diane and Dave Matthews, my parents’ long-time friends who didn’t have any kids themselves, adopted us, and we kept the family name.  It was the only real thing that I could really relate to my past now, and I still missed them, even after this many years.  I hate this silence, I thought some time later as I was reading through my calculus book in my room.  Well, relative silence.  I don’t know how many times I’ve pulled the plug out of Tobia’s radio, or hidden his favorite CD’s of demonic music…or rock, whichever it is.
    Closing my Calculus book, I sat back in my swivel chair, taking a short breather from the obscenely difficult problems. “I’d rather run through traffic than do these right now.  What’s Mr. Salazar’s problem, anyhow?” I muttered, tossing the textbook aside; I’d get back to it later.  Realizing that I had to check some things online, I whirled around in my chair to my computer and accessed the internet, looking for my e-mail.  Various bits of junk mail littered the screen, all of which I scrapped; it’s amazing how desperate people must be to think that there’s a person out there interested in armchairs with built-in cup-holders.  I finally found some relevant mail, a news attachment from the local TV station.  As I opened it up, I could see a picture of a burnt out building, somewhere near the outskirts of town.
    According to local authorities, the two bodies found within the housing that burned down last night have been identified as local police officer Brian McClane and Jack Walson, both residents of the area.  McClane, a veteran of the police force, was found within the home, severely burned and pronounced dead at the scene.  Investigators believe that a gas leak is the cause of the.  Currently the area is scheduled for clean-up, as the families mourn for their loss…
    Very strange, I thought for a moment, pausing before reading the less depressing news around town.  Nothing that interested me in the least, and I wasn’t surprised either.  Gazing blindly at the screen as if something else was there, I noticed I had an unopened e-mail on the bottom of the screen; without thinking I opened it.  It read:

    Thank you for releasing an utmost contagious virus…I will now melt your hard drive and steal all your precious personal info prior to do doing so and go laughing all the way to the bank.  Ciao!

    -Tobias (^_^)

    “I swear I’m going disown him,” I muttered under my breath as I heard him laughing downstairs, apparently aware that I had triggered his instant reply back to him.  Storming down the stairs as though the heavens themselves were collapsing, I glared at my brother, who was no longer laughing, but suppressing loud coughs.  “You aren’t funny, you know that,” I said, unmoved by his pathetic antics.  “Come on, bro, I have more important things to do than read junk e-mail that you send me on a nearly daily basis: don’t you have anything better to do with your time?”
    “It was just a joke, Drenar…  live a little on the wild side, laugh at something for once; after all, no one’s around forever,” he added in a dark, sinister tone that was most uncharacteristic of him.  He didn’t look like himself, either; his eyes were bloodshot, his face lacking that perpetual smirk that he always wore.
    “We may not be around forever, I’ll give you that Tobias, but I at least will make use of my time, you know, constructively,” I said slowly, hoping my words would have some effect on him.  “Look man, I’m out there trying to save the world one homework problem at a time.  I’d like to have some peace, please.”
“Right,” he said with a sarcastic drawl, then shrugged and turned off the computer.  He didn’t care at all, just like I figured.  He’s just so full of hatred and contempt for others, it’s a wonder that anyone can tolerate him for more than a few minutes, I thought as I watched him walk up the stairs, thinking back several years ago when I’d first met him.  He wasn’t a real brother, my parents had adopted him when I was four and he was about a year old.  He had been bullied for the longest time, and I wasn’t there to help him out; he insisted on fixing the problem himself… usually the wrong way that only lengthened the taunting rounds.  I wasn’t going to do anything either: if he wanted to solve it himself, I wouldn’t get in the way.
    A short while later, I heard a car door slam, and I could see my foster mother, Diane, walking up the sidewalk.  I paid little attention as I sat back down at my desk, working on some pointless reflective essay on some historically vague author that wouldn’t matter to me in the five minutes it would take to finish the stupid assignment.  As I heard footsteps in the kitchen, I could hear the scurrying of furry-footed animals running down the stairs, waiting for their feeding at precisely five in the afternoon.  Same old, same old, I thought to myself as I flicked off the light switch and headed downstairs.
    “Hey guys, how was school?” I could hear Diane say up the stairs, who, while trying to be a good mother, wasn’t perfect; this routine was old.
    “Eh, fine.  About on par with the day before… and the day before that… and the day before that,” I said, trying not to let my sarcasm get the best of me.  “Is dinner going to be ready at the same time as yesterday?  And the day before that? And—”
    “Half an hour, give or take a day… or two… or even three, based on how many days you want to be specific about,” she said, trying her best to counter my humor.  I could have fallen down the stairs head first and laughed more than I would laugh at her joke.  With the information in mind, I walked back to my room pondering many things…like how a geek like me ever got a girlfriend…

*    *    *

    “Tobias, can you pass the salt?”  I asked, pushing my vegetables around my plate as if I were more or less dissecting a frog.  Begrudgingly, he slid it over to my spot, and then turned back to his own meal with a rather painful look on his face.
    “Tobias, you okay over there?” Diane said, looking at him with a concerned look on her face.  He looked the worse for wear than before, with a wearied expression, as though he had just run a few miles without a breather.
    “Oh, been better…between the two of them, I’d take the opportunity to have my tonsils removed without anesthesia, rather than go to school tomorrow.  I feel completely rotten.”
    “If you feel any worse, then let me know,” she said, sighing as he got up and left the table slowly, staggering up the stairs.  “Poor kid… looked fine this morning.”
    “His temperament wasn’t too good, but then, what else is new,” I said.  “But then, can you blame him?  Especially considering how his luck has sucked so badly since the day he was born…then what happened on that day and…yeah, you get the point,” I said quickly wishing not to open old wounds.  I still had bad dreams of that day on occasion how it seemed only luck had saved my brother and myself from the fate our parents shared.  “He never has been the popular one in school; if I were around more often maybe I could help shake those bullies off him, but I’m not; not much I can do about it either, which makes me mad,” I said, finishing off the last of my meal and placing the dirty dishes in the pile by the sink.  I wasn’t in the mood to finish my homework; I needed to talk to someone, someone I could trust.  As I walked upstairs, I knew in an instant who to call; after shutting my door, I unhooked the phone and hit one of the instant dial buttons, and waited momentarily for the line to connect.
    “Hello?  Someone asked on the other end of the line.
    “Hi Angela, it’s me,” I said to her over the phone, wondering what to say next; it was so strange, talking to her over the air and not being able to see her face, which is how I communicated best.  “You have a few minutes?”
    “Sure; so, what is it that’s been troubling you?” she asked in her soothing voice, giving me a momentary bit of calm in my cluttered mind.
    “Oh, the usual things: fear of persecution, fear of being poor, getting sick, losing to James at chess, that kind of stuff.  My brother’s been acting funny too, but I’ve just kind of let it slide for now: he’s always acting in one strange manner or another,” I said.
    “Yeah, I know what you mean.  I know it’s something else though, besides your brother… I can tell by your tone,” she said.
    You always know what I’m thinking Angela,   I thought, as I thought about last nights dream… pieces of it were coming back to me now for some strange reason, but disjointed and out of order.  “Well, I guess you’re right, but I’ll get to that later.  The problem is, my brother is acting a bit… weirder than usual, and though this sounds like nothing new, I’ve got thoughts to the contrary.”
    “Like what?”
    “He woke up at two in the morning, pretty much traumatized when I heard him pass by my room, then started muttering strange things…nothing out of my boundaries of strange, but…”
    “But what?”
    “Call it over-cautious, but I think something odd is going on.”
    “Overreacting again?” she asked.
    “Maybe I am… if you had as much time to think about things as I do sometimes, you’d think some pretty strange things too,” I said.  “There was just…something odd about it, I don’t know quite how to explain it.”
    “So, what were you doing up that late in the first place?” she asked coolly, as I paused.  Should I tell her what was beginning to emerge in my memory?  As I had begun putting it together, I knew it was going to sound weird… out-right crazy perhaps.  I think I’m going to chicken out from this one, I thought.
    “Drenar?  Something troubling you?”
    “Umm…”
    “You don’t want to say it because you might sound silly…yeah, don’t worry about it,” she said, once again as if she could read my mind.  Darn, I just lost my last avenue of escape, I thought.  Well, why not.
    “Well, I had… a dream last night…a really weird one, and pretty much the reason I woke up.”
    “I thought you never dreamed at night.”
    “Not often, but yeah, I do dream sometimes,” I shrugged.  “It’s probably nothing—”
    “No, it might be interesting to hear Drenar,” she said, and I could tell she was surprised slightly at my coming forth.  “What was it about?”
    “I honestly don’t know myself…I mean I remember some parts about it, but I don’t know what it meant, only that it was something about a choice,” I said, trying to relive the dream as though it were a memory.  “I only remembered it a little while ago while I’ve been sitting here, but I’ll try to tell it as best as I can remember.”
    “Well then, I’m all ears,” she said as I sat back.
      “Where to start…in my dream, I woke to find myself in the middle of forest, near the mountains: I was alone and had nothing with me but the clothes on my back, and it was starting to storm.  I realize that I should seek shelter, so I climb towards the mountains.  Something draws me there, like a magnet that cannot be resisted.  I don’t know what I’m doing or why I’m doing it, and when I get to the top, no one is there.  Nothing I can see, except for a cave.  Lightning is flashing around me, and I think that it might be best for me to seek shelter inside.”
    “Sounds scary,” Angela said.
    “It was…and that’s not the creepy part,” I said, thinking for a second.  “I turn to walk into the caverns…I walk and walk and walk, not caring that I can see nothing.  It is as though something guides my feet inevitably closer to whatever my goal is.  I emerge from the darkness…only to find myself right back where I started, in the howling fury of the storm.  It is then that I hear a voice distantly.  I’ll try and paraphrase it as best as I can remember.”
    “No problem,” she said, sounding amused.
    “Okay,” I said, pausing for a moment as I thought through what little fragments of memory I could recollect.  “So you have made it this far, only to find yourself once again at the same point you left.  That is a shame…so many out there are lost, treading water in circles until they drown.  Many eventually end up passing up that and seek dry land…others seek the deep part of the ocean, to see what is at the bottom.  You are one of those, people, Drenar.”
    “As I hear this in the dream, I am at first confused: I don’t know who is speaking, or more importantly, how they know my name.  I call out to the darkness demanding answers, wanting to know who is speaking.  I turn around and see a mysterious figure dressed in black robes and a cape, blowing in the wind that forces me to squint my eyes.  He speaks again, in the same voice before.
    “So you live up to expectation, Drenar; I thought you would…what you see around you, everything, is but a veil that covers your eyes.  The people you know, the very core of who you are, are veiled.  I am here to help you see what truly is, and what can be, by removing that veil.”
    “I’m getting chills,” Angela said, and I was a bit frightened of it to, just by remembering whatever I could.  “Oh wait, a window’s open,” she added, making me laugh: she knew when to throw in one-liners to completely mess me up, as I continued.  I knew large sections of the dream were still missing, but I chose not to say this.
    “I know Angela, isn’t it weird?” I asked.  “Where was I…he stands there in the rain, as I do…I have questions, he answers some but leaves many open to suggestion.  I begin to suspect that whatever he offers may be something that would change me forever.  I ask him why he would be so interested in me.  He replies, “You have always been uncertain of who you are…do not deny it, you have gone round and round and only ended up right back where you started, as if your very identity was sealed from you.  I have brought you here to unlock a potential within you that you could not envision even within your greatest dreams.  I am here to help you see who you are and what you can attain, Drenar.   All I ask in return is that you consider what I have to offer in the future…you have lived your life without knowing who your friends are, or who you can trust.”
    “By then I wasn’t sure this was a good idea: in fact.  I had this dreading suspicion that whatever he was avoiding talking about must be something dangerous.  That is when I hear a strange voice in my mind, whispering to me that says—”
    “It says to trust only yourself, for that is where the power lies…no amount of his persuasion can force you to become something you don’t want to be,” Angela said, and I almost dropped the phone. 
I sat there for a moment, shocked…it wasn’t possible that she could have guessed that purely at random.  How did she know?   I wondered.
    “Drenar?”
    “Yeah, I’m still here…but you… how did you know what I was going to say?” I asked her.
    “It was… kind of a guess, since I know how you think sometimes,” she said, which seemed possible; we had on occasion said the same thing at the exact same time, the timing sometimes very uncanny. “What happened afterwards?”
    “I told him no…that perhaps some things are left well enough alone.  Then he spoke something that still echoes in my mind.  “Regardless of your stance, you have no choice in the matter…those who will resist us will be destroyed.  Embrace the person you will ultimately become sooner or later…or embrace your own death.”   At that point, he began to change, and when he was done, I was… afraid,” I said.  “I couldn’t make out the form as he lunged towards me…and the last thing I remember before waking up is something odd happening to me, as death rushes towards me with wings,” I said, still trying not to shudder.  “I woke up shouting Angela… that’s never happened to me before.  I felt like I was there, as if it were happening.”
    “Yeah, that is scary,” she said.  I didn’t speak for a minute, as I considered my options: should I ask her?  Oh, why not… I have nothing better to do, I thought.
    “Angela?  How did you know what I was going to say?”
    “It was mostly a guess…but there is something else, something that I thought of that gave me the insight; maybe I’ll tell you tomorrow,” she said hesitantly, and I let it slide: whatever it was she wanted to reveal, she would do so in due time.  “It’s getting late, Drenar…and I wish I could talk longer, but I have work to do.”
    “Yeah, I know.  Bye Angel.”
    “Bye.”
    Without another word we both hung up, and I just sat on my bed, thinking of the possibilities in silence.  Something is going on, something I can’t comprehend yet…nah, that’s just silly.