A hazy feeling surrounded him… he wasn't really sure where he was, but he felt uneasy, like he shouldn't have been there.
He felt sleepy, and incapable of focusing on anything.
Trying to look around him, the vague environment became progressively clear: he was in a room painted with various shades of blue, dimly lit, and the furniture matched the blue theme of the room.
A blue bookshelf with an impressive amount of books almost completely covered part of one of the walls, the titles too blurry to be comprehensible, and on the opposite wall, a dangerously large window covered by an almost transparent curtain, which gave the impression of being in a very tall skyscraper.
Suddenly, a voice drew his attention.
"Welcome to the Velvet Room. My name is Igor, I am delighted to make your acquaintance"
Turning his head, he noticed a desk, and behind it, sat what probably was the most bizarre person ever.
He seemed rather short even when sitting behind the desk, but his height was pretty normal compared to the other features of his body.
A pair of huge, bulging, bloodshot eyes that seemed could pierce through your soul, the glance accentuated by a pair of equally strangely wild eyebrows, his head with a large bald spot and a crown of silver hair, a disturbingly bizarre grin, and the most prominent feature, a ridiculously long nose, which only added to his grotesque appearance. He wore an elegant black suit with a matching tie, and white gloves covering his hands and long fingers.
"It seems we have a guest with a familiar, yet blurred out and mysterious destiny"
He chuckled to himself, before continuing his monologue.
"This place exists between dream and reality, mind and matter. Only those who are bound by contract, a promise or a deal of some sort may enter. Now, why don't you introduce yourself?"
Still stunned and astonished by what was happening to him, he barely answered.
"Alex Tennyson"
Gaining more and more of his mental capabilities, the room took a more defined shape, resembling a lot the studio of a psychiatrist.
"Very well. This is my assistant, Christine; she is a resident of this place, like myself"
Extending one of his arms from the pyramid-like position they took, he pointed out to a girl sitting in an armchair near the desk, she wore a blue dress with gold details and accessories, covering her up to the knees, showing just the pantyhose and the matching high-heeled shoes. The long sleeves covered up to the hands, and showed her bizarrely pale skin, she had golden eyes, and in contrast with her elegant appearance, she had a very modern-undercut hairstyle, with platinum blonde curly hair framing her pointy face.
"Welcome to the Velvet Room. I and my master are here to accompany you through your journey."
Alex couldn't help but notice that the girl held a voluminous book in her lap, and on top of it, a notebook and a pen.
"Very well. Now, I must ask you to watch these images and tell me what you see."
Igor called back his attention, and showed him a series of sheets, each with one of the inkblots from the Rorschach test, but even calling upon all his imagination, he couldn't think of anything.
"I see. Do not worry, everything shall become clear soon. It seems that you will be soon facing a challenge of some sort, an important ordeal, and from the result of it, the fate of the world could become uncertain. You will have to call upon all your strength, but it won't be enough. This ordeal cannot be faced alone."
The tone in which he said the last words was eerily knowing, as if he knew what Alex was thinking.
"But enough for now. We shall attend to the details another time… until then, farewell."
A sudden shake of the bus woke him up, and he found himself still on the same spot where he fell asleep. Looking outside of the window near his seat, he saw the dry panorama of Arizona taking over the view up to the horizon.
"I must have slept for a while there, considering we were still in California as far as I remember…"
Alex thought to himself. Though a late bloomer, Alex was quite the large guy, 6 ft tall, large shoulders and a considerable strength, a somewhat still young face for a 17 year old boy, with masculine features gradually appearing on his face, a clean shaven face (as he still didn't have a decent beard), and long, dark brown curly hair, matching his almost black eyes. And a detail that upset his parents more than anything, he had two earrings on his right ear, two simple black rings, that sill made his parents shout at him, for the simple decision of piercing his ears
"Sent here, in the middle of nowhere, just because I was expelled… directed to a city with a ridiculous name."
The reason for his grunting was quite precise: he wasn't from Sun City, the destination he was reaching, he came from Los Angeles, and he had wished to remain there. The only problem was, his parents, important figures in the city's economic and political scene, weren't too happy that he was expelled from a private academy for a brawl with one of his classmates, a fight that Alex swore he didn't start, but for whom he was still expelled.
And for that, his parents sent him away, not too far enough however, in a small private school in the middle of Arizona, near Phoenix, in the bizarrely named Sun City.
Alex was irritated by all of this. Not that he had any friends there, his personality clashed with everyone else, the thing that made him go nuts was that not only his parents didn't believe him and didn't even try to defend him or help him even once, they even sent him away, making him only feel like a burden.
Looking at his phone, he checked the hour: it was quite late, almost midnight, the only thing he could hope was that the reception at the school dorm wouldn't start an annoying series of questions and paperwork in the middle of the night.
"And now I even begin having weird dreams…"
He murmured, the hazy memories of the dream still haunting his mind. What did the long-nosed man mean with 'an important ordeal'?
And why did he bother so much about a dream probably caused by the cheap cup noodles he ate before?
The semi-desert soon gave way for a much recognizable city landscape, though much more modest than the familiar landscape of L.A.
Gathering his things, Alex finished just in time, arriving at the bus stop right in front of the dorm complex that his admission letter mentioned.
Fortunately, the old lady at the reception only checked the letter and the ID, to make sure he wasn't some kind of impostor or something like that, and Alex could finally get some rest.
He lazily took his stuff out of his bags, and then lay back on the bed, looking at what would be his school uniform. He didn't mind too much, but even if that was a private school, it felt strange to have a uniform.
At last, he barely changed to his pajamas and tucked himself into bed, before finally falling asleep, in the hopes of not having weird dreams with long-nosed old men and pale women dressed in blue.