All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere
And their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow
(Mad World, Tears for Fears)
October 2
Slowly beyond the distance the sun began to set, a boy with unruly black hair sat quietly on the cliff that overlooked what was left of the wilderness in his two of Amity Park. He was not often found up on the secluded cliff's edge, reflecting in silence. But he awoke there, with his bike and completely unaware of how he managed his way to the cliff.
He looked down at his watch and hoped onto his bike and pedaled through the barren road, hardly ever taken any more, exchanged for a better intercity road.
As he got farther back into the suburban's he passed an old rundown isolated house, where an old woman was standing almost lifelessly in front of a mail box, she arched her tired old body and peered in, saw nothing and stood back in the road and continued her time honored ritual of checking the mail.
He had to hurry soon his mother would expect him to be on time for dinner, her definition of a family dinner. His features hardened at the thought but he let it go as he often did.
The clock on the wall of the dinning room ticked loudly as a family of four sat at a table quietly eating their supper. At the head of the table sat a robust man with graying black hair and dark navy blue eyes that stared bored across the table at a woman with short brown hair and violet eyes.
On opposite sides of the table sat two of their offspring. The oldest, a lanky female redhead with a pale skin and bright intellectual turquoise eyes. The youngest was a teenage boy. The family stayed in silence hardly ever glancing up at each other, the boy in his boredom played with the food on his plate.
Slowly the woman cleared her throat and directed her eyes on her son. "So sweetie how was your day?" She asked in vain to spark some life to her family.
"Dad almost hit Grandma Death." He announced without looking up.
Jazz snorted and Jack gave off a stare in his son's direction. "I wouldn't have if she'd stop standing in the road all the time." He defended.
"That's a terrible name to give her. We should respect our elders." Maddie preached her daughter snorted again.
She glanced over at Jazz. "What?" The girl asked innocently. Maddie shook her head and continued in her quest for a conversation with her children.
"Danny, how was your session with Dr. Spectra?"
Danny lifted his head and slowly looked up at her with tired eyes. "Unimaginative, inessential, redundant, inane, insipid. In other words, it was alright." He rattled off in a disinterested voice.
"Well," Snorted the redhead across the table. "I'm glad your cynical views are as healthy as your vocabulary Danny." She quipped in return her brother smiled ironically at her.
"Hey Jazz, I think I hear something. What's that, you've been rejected from Harvard because you slacked off for a year?" He teased darkly cupping a hand over his ear for dramatic effect. His sister gritted her teeth and looked ready to lunge at him.
"Danny." His mother warned.
"Don't take your negativity out on me. Just go pop another pill everything will be alright later." She quipped.
"Jazz." Maddie hissed.
Danny shrugged indifferently. "Hey, that's what you get for doing your thesis on someone like me. Though you wouldn't know what it's like Jazz? Everyone analyzing you, I bet you'd hate all your flaws found out and put under a microscope. We all know you're insecure Jasmine."
Jazz glared at his and clutched her fists tightly. "Danny you'd better stop." She warned in an angry voice.
"Kids..." Maddie sighed warily.
"Come on, there's still a reason you sleep with Bearburt. What's wrong Jazz? Scared? Or did you just forget your childhood and noticed it slipped away and now you can't go back." Danny challenged.
"Danny!" Jazz yelled angrily.
"Oh no, please stop me if I'm right." He continued smugly.
"Danny, Jazz that's enough." Maddie demanded fiercely.
Danny shot one more look at his sister and pushed his chair out roughly. He stood up and slammed his hands down on the table before stalking off. Jack and Maddie exchanged a worried look. Maddie sighed and got up slowly to follow her son and left the remainder of her family to continue their dinner in awkward silence.
She climbed the stairs up to the second floor and made her way over to a room with a few distasteful posters plastered on it. She lifted her hand and knocked on the door lightly. "Danny?" She called in that sweet worried motherly tone. With no answer the auburn haired woman let herself in.
She walked into the messy gray room and gazed at the scrawny figure lying on the blue sheets of the twin sized bed. She strode over and sat beside him and gently ran her fingers through his hair. "What's wrong son? So moody and gloomy all the time. Where's my little boy?" She mused staring down at the teenager.
"Nothing's wrong with me mom." He mumbled shifting slightly.
She closed her eyes for a moment and breathed deeply then opened them again and met with his striking blue eyes that stared up at her through his jet black bangs. "Sweetie, it's not that we think something's wrong with you...It's we just want to make sure you're ok."
His hopeful trusting eyes grew dark and spiteful. "I knew it." He growled pulling away from her and sitting upright. "You don't believe me." Danny stood up angrily causing Maddie to draw back. "Get out. You guys never believed me. Why should I trust you if you don't trust me? Get out!" He shouted.
Maddie stood up but refused to leave right away. She wanted so badly to reach out and get the son she remembered back. She would've given anything to have that relationship back again. "Danny please..."
"Shut up!" He cut her off fiercely. "I hate you, I hate dad, and I hate Jazz. Sometimes I wish you would all die." He ranted brutally.
His mother withdrew and walked quietly out of the room, leaving the steaming teenager to vent on his own. She slowly wobbled over to her room and found her husband preparing for bed. She entered the dimly light room and collapsed on the bed fiddling with the buttons on her blouse.
"Your son said he hated me." She announced to Jack who was brushing his teeth in their master bathroom.
The man wearing pink pajamas spit into the sink and washed his mouth out with water. "So he's my son now?" He said pulling the floss out and began threading it back and forth between his teeth.
"Jack please...There's something wrong with Danny." She sighed distraught fully tugging at the spirals on the note book she'd snatched up from his nightstand before exiting.
"Well, we pump him full of so many pills. Is it any wonder he's so moody?" Jack suggested a while walking back into the room hitting the bathroom light switch on his way out. Maddie got up and went to the closest to retrieve her teal night gown.
"Jack you know the Doctor said we had to. For his own good." But in response she received a muffled grunt in distaste.
Quietly she sat on the bed beside him and opened the notebook and began reading. "And another thing, I don't like the idea of us intruding on his dreams too." Jack announced watching his wife thoughtfully skim through the pages with the scratchy writing.
His wife ignored him and began to read aloud. "'One second chance is luck, two second chances is tragedy.' 'The clock goes full circle unless the pendulum is halted.' 'Time moves backward and forward but never straight.' 'The domino effect is irrelevant, it can be stopped if you're willing to bend.'"
Jack smiled and snatched the notebook away, he turned through the pages himself. "Our Danny seems like a philosopher, not a psychopath."
"We never said he was psychopathically disturbed." Maddie defended quickly.
"Now I like this one." Jack stated pointing his finger on the page. "'When it all comes down, wave at a stranger. You might've met them or you'll meet them sooner or later. Besides in the end we all have to return the favor.' Ha pure genius." Jack said proudly slamming the book shut and throwing a victory glance at his very critical wife.
"I think we aren't giving him enough credit." Jack sighed conjuring up all the seriousness he possessed.
The woman was about ready to fight the statement, but she decided against that loop again. For some reason she just couldn't make the situation make sense to her husband. Breathing deeply Maddie decided to change the subject. "Did Jazz go out?" She asked.
"Yes. You don't think that she really didn't get into Harvard, do you?" Jack questioned. Maddie shrugged and slipped beneath the covers beside her husband.
"I bet she did. Goodnight sweetie." They shared a kiss and turned the lights out.
Meanwhile Danny sat in his room lit by a single dim lamp. He stared down at a sketchbook of things that seemed to dance in his mind. He ran his hand over the soft paper and lead and stared at his now grayed palm. "There's nothing wrong with me." He persuaded aloud. "I'm just different."
He laid down and stared at the ceiling fan, it was just him, his thoughts, and the whirring fan. He watched the blades circle in a swift pattern above him the soft sound echoed in his ears. For a while, perhaps hours he traced the movement with his finger his brain throwing a thousand ideas at him all at once.
Names, voices, faces, things he knew others he didn't. He sighed lightly letting his eyes close for a moment. The way he saw it he'd been messed up from day one, a ghost obsessed family, he was never meant to be normal. Of course two years ago they immediately dropped the ghost lust after his little accident.
"Oh yeah, now they care about our well being." He scoffed.
To say it was little was in fact an understatement. But he always hated to make a big deal out of nothing, he wasn't dead, he wasn't mutated. He was still just Danny Fenton, the ex Ghost Hunters' kid. The town knew him, the town always knew him and he was very well aware that they'd whisper and point as he walked by.
'Yeah that's the boy who was nearly killed by Jack and Maddie's sick obsession.'
A smiled tugged at his lips, they didn't know him. The truth was they didn't want to and he was just fine with them living their viral lives without him. Turning over the boy let the tiresome groggy feeling halt his thoughts and let him drift off into darkness.
"Danny. Wake up."
He turned over.
"Wake up Danny."
Empty blue eyes snapped open and stared sightlessly into the darkness, he was still very much asleep. Being half aware made him nearly float of out bed and walk thoughtlessly down the stairs. Once again the deep dark voice called to him.
"Danny. Come Danny."
He padded lightly against the living room carpet and sought his awakener. Realizing it wasn't calling from inside the house he made his way over to the door. It clicked once as he opened it and muffled a grunt as he shut it behind him. Danny walked outside into the dew covered grass and stood there, awaiting instructions.
His blue eyes scanned the perimeter of his front yard until finally it feel upon a cloaked figure standing beside the trash cans that were sitting on the curb to be picked up by the break of dawn.
"28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds." It announced, its bright red pupiless eyes staring through Danny from behind the dark purple cloak.
"What are you?" Danny asked lacking any sort of courage in his voice. He squinted in attempt to grasp the image but was failing miserably. It remained silent behind it's cloak just staring. "Tell me!" Danny demanded.
"28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds. This is when the world will end."
AN: Voila, my first full length AU story coming forth. If you've seen Dannie Darko and understood it, this will be similar, not exact but similar. The charctes will drift in and out of their canon personalities for very good reasons. And this is going to be a huge complicated project for me because I'm twisting two things into one and one and working in the philosophy and theories along the way. Reviews and opinions will be greatly apperciated. Have fun with this, I know I will.
p.s. I don't own Donnie Darko or Danny Phantom.
