Thank you, everyone, for the reviews! They really mean a lot!
Paris, sorry, hon! Posting this Wip was spur of the moment. And I promise more Avatar soon.
Heath, you found one of my faults! Thank you! "Justs" are like nail biting for me; I don't realize I did it until it's too late. Thanks for the constructive crit.
Hope you all enjoy the story! Thank you for your time. Anna ~~
The Judas Touch
Chapter 2
Seth jumped as the front door slammed. His gaze darted over to his mother, who sat sipping a sup of coffee on the other couch. The TV blared a movie. His mother quickly muted it, and set the remote and her cup on the small table between them.
"Sandy? It that you?"
Sandy Cohen, Seth's dad, stalked in, tossing his briefcase on the couch. "You know, there ought to be a law against idiot drivers."
"I thought you loved the challenge, honey?" Kirsten stood and placed a soft kiss on his lips.
He returned it and then scowled, shaking his head at her as she dropped back onto the couch. "You didn't hear?"
"What? We've been watching Gladiator."
"The 55/West Coast Highway interchange's all snarled up. Some idiot tried to drag race through traffic with this fog coming in and caused a pileup. Can you believe it? Idiots." He scooped up the remote and flipped to the news. "Look, fifty cars. Fifty! I would've been home an hour ago but all of the roads out here were blocked with traffic."
"Dad, isn't the Rover four wheel drive?"
Sandy shot Seth a dirty look. "Not in the neighbor's extended yards it isn't."
"Whoa look at that jackknifed truck!" Seth crowed, pointing at the television.
Sandy slipped onto the couch beside his wife, pulling her close again. Not wanting to witness parental displays of affection, Seth notched up the volume on the TV, leaning closer to catch the gory details as the well endowed red-head announced them.
".and that leaves an estimated seventy-eight people injured. Most of the injured have been taken to HOAG as it is the nearest hospital. Others are being routed to other area hospitals. At the bottom of your screen you will see a number to call for information on loved ones. In other news there was a hit and run accident on Via Lido between a motorist and bicyclist. The driver has not been identified. There were no witnesses."
The scene shifted to a stretch of road that Seth identified as a steep, nearly deserted patch on their route home from school. At the edge of two major housing communities, it had a sidewalk paralleling the road that passed in front of an empty extended lawn stretching moat-like up to a wall of bushes hiding houses. He regularly skateboarded along the sidewalk. "A woman walking her dog found the unidentified teenage male bicyclist at the scene. He was taken to HOAG by ambulance shortly before the pileup. So far, the young man has not been identified." The camera zoomed in on the bike and a tattered back pack that sprawled in the road.
Suddenly ice water slithered down Seth's body from his head to his toes. He gaped in disbelief, holding his breath unknowingly.
"The police are asking for your help in locating the hit and run driver. Anyone with any information is to call your local police substation. And now for the weather, Greg?"
"Mom, Dad," Seth croaked, unable to speak well past the bogyman gripping his throat in a chokehold.
"What? You say something, Seth?"
"The TV." Seth motioned numbly at the screen with the remote, not turning to look at his parents.
"Yeah, looks like thicker fog and a cool night." Sandy casually twirled a long strand of Kirsten's golden hair. "Maybe I should toss a blanket over the roses. You think it'll get that cool?"
Seth shook his head numbly, his brain refusing to admit what he knew he had just seen.
"Where's Ryan?" Seth asked.
Sandy and Kirsten both glanced over their shoulders at the kitchen behind them. "With Marissa, I assume. He had soccer practice and then was going to go over to her house," Kirsten said.
Sandy started punching numbers into his cell phone.
"He's not there." Seth whispered, his voice tiny as the enormity of what he'd seen pierced the numb shock. Ryan had been hit by a car. It had to be him. Same bike. Same backpack. Same road.
"Hmm?" Sandy's glanced at him past the cell phone he held up to his ear.
Suddenly, energized by terror and the certainty that his pseudo-brother was dead, Seth leapt to his feet and whirled on his parents, gesturing wildly in time with his words and jabbing with the TV remote for emphasis. "He's. Not. THERE! He's on the news. I just saw his bike on the news. The fucking NEWS. Oh my god, call the hospital." Belatedly, he realized he'd just cussed at his parents, but he was too upset to care.
Sandy's massive brows flew up in surprise. He glanced at Kirsten, then dialed a different number. "I think I will. Just to be sure."
"They just showed a hit and run on the news. The bike, Dad. That was Ryan's bike. Ryan's backpack. I know it was. I know it was. I can feel it in my GUT!" he cried through clenched teeth. Then he stared at his parents with shock-glazed eyes. "Ryan's been hit by a car."
**
All he knows is that he's male and he's alone. The sun hangs like a watery orange eye over the horizon, visible in flashes between the buildings as he walks. A tang of salt in the air dances with a hint of wet chill, tickling the back of his throat and making him cough. He doesn't know if he's getting sick. He feels strange, his head hurts, body aches, feet move like he's under water, but he can't pinpoint what's wrong. That would take too much effort. He shivers into his jacket, thankful that he has something to protect him against what might be a cool night. He stumbles over a crack in the broken sidewalk, swaying and stopping before a large window. Inside, Christmas lights twinkle and Santa puffs a pipe as he circles a sparkly tree on a train. The tinsel drips like tears and all he can think of is Puff the Magic Dragon as Santa stokes away.
He grins. He thinks he's always liked Santa, but somehow he feels betrayed. He can't remember presents, only loud voices. Only pain. Involuntarily, he flinches and hugs himself. Christmas is a fuzzy memory, wavering and dancing away when he tries to capture it. He looks up, catching his reflection in the darkened glass. Taking a step to the side, he falls into a ray of light from the setting sun, bathing half of his face in amber repose, the other half in shadow.
I have blue eyes, he thinks. With hesitant fingers he reaches up to touch a bruise on his forehead, a bump above his left brow, and lets them map an unfamiliar face. There was no blood, only a pale bruise, just forming, possibly. His bruised forehead crinkles as he tries to remember what happened to him. The memory is a slippery bar of soap that he can't catch.
This is me. Who am I? Is this bruise why my whole body hurts? Why my ears are ringing? How did I get here?
He tries to concentrate, to remember, but that makes his head explode in knives of pain. The world fogs around him. He sways and throws out a hand to the cool glass. He stands there, one trembling hand pressed to the glass to keep him upright, and takes slow, deep breaths until the world solidifies around him again and the oxygen dulls the knives in his skull. In the reflection he watches a puff of breeze ruffle his short dark blond hair. His gaze trails down to his chin sees only a faint glimmer of reflected gold.
Don't need to shave yet, he thinks. I haven't been gone long. Gone from where?
A woman walking a manicured poodle stops to peer into the store window. He looks up at her, hoping she might recognize him, give him some answers, tell him the way home. Her ice-blue eyes slide over him. She sniffles in distaste and hastens away with her dog in tow.
He shoves his hands into the pockets of his jacket, frowns and peers back into the window, wondering what she saw when she looked at him. Suddenly, the sun gasps a last burst of orange light, as if warning him to run inside because night was falling. The sun loses the battle and the street plunges into darkness.
After a moment, he notices that the streetlights nearby are broken, that the only light comes from across the street in a thinly wooded area. Fear ripples through his belly. It's dark. He doesn't want to be alone in the dark but he doesn't know why. Without looking for cars, he darts across the street, falls over a short fence and makes a rumble-tumble beeline for the light. Light is good. Dark is bad.
In the pool of crystalline light, he stops, gasping for breath, sides aching, head pounding, ears filled with a beating rush of blood. He squeezes his eyes shut against the pain, but that only makes him dizzy, so he steps back until his rear connects with something hard, something smooth. Opening his eyes, he sees he's stepped just out of the circle of light, and leaned against something tall and warm. He slides down, staring at the shapes around him illuminated by the single light. He slides down until he sits with tendrils of steam rising from the damp ground around him, the stone behind his back radiating the heat from the day and warming him through the leather of his jacket. He sits perfectly still until his head clears and he can think again, until the rush in his ears dims to the soft ringing of distant church bells. He stares at the stark crying concrete angels and figures of Mary holding her baby that are thrown into stark repose all around him by the single white light bulb.
Recognition shimmies past him, blowing cold on the hairs at the nape of his neck before slithering back into the darkness he's living in.
How did I get here? The knowledge tickles his awareness, then vanishes in pain, kidnapped by the specter of his injury.
His limbs feel heavy. His eyelids open and close in slow-motion, the effort to raise them sapping the strength from his body. Tiredness creeps up from his feet until he thinks the ground is trying to swallow him. He thinks he hears a whisper above the ringing in his ears.
Is someone calling me?
He blinks and looks around at the headstones and angels. Something slinks behind them, gray and soft, fuzzy and cold, robbing the world of the last bits of color.
A needle of fear jabs him in the stomach, but that isn't enough to overcome his sudden lethargy. His limbs have a mind of their own.
He watches the night fog stream down into the dips in the grass, snake around the silent stones, and pool behind the flat ones until it peeks over the tops like vengeful ghosts.
He shivers, suddenly cold, but still unable to make his limbs follow his commands.
The whisper comes again . or so it seems to him.
His eyes fall shut. He wills them open and succeeds.barely. He's alone. No one there to whisper. No one to call his name.
Gently, he slumps to the side, his cheek coming to rest on grass that tickles his nose. Tiny drops of dew sparkle on the blades before his eyes, tiny bits of steam waltzing up to greet the cold fog. As he watches, the fog coalesces into a woman in a gown that billows and flows around her as if she's underwater.
She seems to glide toward him between the headstones. His mind screams to run, but his body refuses to move. She kneels before him, her silver- streaked blond hair haloed by the light behind her, her face glowing as the bulb refracts through the drops forming her misty face.
He blinks up at her, transfixed, giddy because he can see right through her and it doesn't bother him. Somehow it seems fitting.
"Help me," he murmurs, too tired to sustain fear.
A wistful grin turns up the corners of her mouth. Her blue eyes are soft and full of starlight. She is somehow familiar, yet he can't recall her name.
She reaches out with one ghostly hand and strokes his hair as a mother would a small child. As he closes his eyes and sleep tugs at his awareness, he swears he feels her warm fingers rest upon his cheek, swears he feels ghostly lips brush his brow.
"'night, Grandma," he whispers without realizing it, then dives headlong into sleep.
TBC
Paris, sorry, hon! Posting this Wip was spur of the moment. And I promise more Avatar soon.
Heath, you found one of my faults! Thank you! "Justs" are like nail biting for me; I don't realize I did it until it's too late. Thanks for the constructive crit.
Hope you all enjoy the story! Thank you for your time. Anna ~~
The Judas Touch
Chapter 2
Seth jumped as the front door slammed. His gaze darted over to his mother, who sat sipping a sup of coffee on the other couch. The TV blared a movie. His mother quickly muted it, and set the remote and her cup on the small table between them.
"Sandy? It that you?"
Sandy Cohen, Seth's dad, stalked in, tossing his briefcase on the couch. "You know, there ought to be a law against idiot drivers."
"I thought you loved the challenge, honey?" Kirsten stood and placed a soft kiss on his lips.
He returned it and then scowled, shaking his head at her as she dropped back onto the couch. "You didn't hear?"
"What? We've been watching Gladiator."
"The 55/West Coast Highway interchange's all snarled up. Some idiot tried to drag race through traffic with this fog coming in and caused a pileup. Can you believe it? Idiots." He scooped up the remote and flipped to the news. "Look, fifty cars. Fifty! I would've been home an hour ago but all of the roads out here were blocked with traffic."
"Dad, isn't the Rover four wheel drive?"
Sandy shot Seth a dirty look. "Not in the neighbor's extended yards it isn't."
"Whoa look at that jackknifed truck!" Seth crowed, pointing at the television.
Sandy slipped onto the couch beside his wife, pulling her close again. Not wanting to witness parental displays of affection, Seth notched up the volume on the TV, leaning closer to catch the gory details as the well endowed red-head announced them.
".and that leaves an estimated seventy-eight people injured. Most of the injured have been taken to HOAG as it is the nearest hospital. Others are being routed to other area hospitals. At the bottom of your screen you will see a number to call for information on loved ones. In other news there was a hit and run accident on Via Lido between a motorist and bicyclist. The driver has not been identified. There were no witnesses."
The scene shifted to a stretch of road that Seth identified as a steep, nearly deserted patch on their route home from school. At the edge of two major housing communities, it had a sidewalk paralleling the road that passed in front of an empty extended lawn stretching moat-like up to a wall of bushes hiding houses. He regularly skateboarded along the sidewalk. "A woman walking her dog found the unidentified teenage male bicyclist at the scene. He was taken to HOAG by ambulance shortly before the pileup. So far, the young man has not been identified." The camera zoomed in on the bike and a tattered back pack that sprawled in the road.
Suddenly ice water slithered down Seth's body from his head to his toes. He gaped in disbelief, holding his breath unknowingly.
"The police are asking for your help in locating the hit and run driver. Anyone with any information is to call your local police substation. And now for the weather, Greg?"
"Mom, Dad," Seth croaked, unable to speak well past the bogyman gripping his throat in a chokehold.
"What? You say something, Seth?"
"The TV." Seth motioned numbly at the screen with the remote, not turning to look at his parents.
"Yeah, looks like thicker fog and a cool night." Sandy casually twirled a long strand of Kirsten's golden hair. "Maybe I should toss a blanket over the roses. You think it'll get that cool?"
Seth shook his head numbly, his brain refusing to admit what he knew he had just seen.
"Where's Ryan?" Seth asked.
Sandy and Kirsten both glanced over their shoulders at the kitchen behind them. "With Marissa, I assume. He had soccer practice and then was going to go over to her house," Kirsten said.
Sandy started punching numbers into his cell phone.
"He's not there." Seth whispered, his voice tiny as the enormity of what he'd seen pierced the numb shock. Ryan had been hit by a car. It had to be him. Same bike. Same backpack. Same road.
"Hmm?" Sandy's glanced at him past the cell phone he held up to his ear.
Suddenly, energized by terror and the certainty that his pseudo-brother was dead, Seth leapt to his feet and whirled on his parents, gesturing wildly in time with his words and jabbing with the TV remote for emphasis. "He's. Not. THERE! He's on the news. I just saw his bike on the news. The fucking NEWS. Oh my god, call the hospital." Belatedly, he realized he'd just cussed at his parents, but he was too upset to care.
Sandy's massive brows flew up in surprise. He glanced at Kirsten, then dialed a different number. "I think I will. Just to be sure."
"They just showed a hit and run on the news. The bike, Dad. That was Ryan's bike. Ryan's backpack. I know it was. I know it was. I can feel it in my GUT!" he cried through clenched teeth. Then he stared at his parents with shock-glazed eyes. "Ryan's been hit by a car."
**
All he knows is that he's male and he's alone. The sun hangs like a watery orange eye over the horizon, visible in flashes between the buildings as he walks. A tang of salt in the air dances with a hint of wet chill, tickling the back of his throat and making him cough. He doesn't know if he's getting sick. He feels strange, his head hurts, body aches, feet move like he's under water, but he can't pinpoint what's wrong. That would take too much effort. He shivers into his jacket, thankful that he has something to protect him against what might be a cool night. He stumbles over a crack in the broken sidewalk, swaying and stopping before a large window. Inside, Christmas lights twinkle and Santa puffs a pipe as he circles a sparkly tree on a train. The tinsel drips like tears and all he can think of is Puff the Magic Dragon as Santa stokes away.
He grins. He thinks he's always liked Santa, but somehow he feels betrayed. He can't remember presents, only loud voices. Only pain. Involuntarily, he flinches and hugs himself. Christmas is a fuzzy memory, wavering and dancing away when he tries to capture it. He looks up, catching his reflection in the darkened glass. Taking a step to the side, he falls into a ray of light from the setting sun, bathing half of his face in amber repose, the other half in shadow.
I have blue eyes, he thinks. With hesitant fingers he reaches up to touch a bruise on his forehead, a bump above his left brow, and lets them map an unfamiliar face. There was no blood, only a pale bruise, just forming, possibly. His bruised forehead crinkles as he tries to remember what happened to him. The memory is a slippery bar of soap that he can't catch.
This is me. Who am I? Is this bruise why my whole body hurts? Why my ears are ringing? How did I get here?
He tries to concentrate, to remember, but that makes his head explode in knives of pain. The world fogs around him. He sways and throws out a hand to the cool glass. He stands there, one trembling hand pressed to the glass to keep him upright, and takes slow, deep breaths until the world solidifies around him again and the oxygen dulls the knives in his skull. In the reflection he watches a puff of breeze ruffle his short dark blond hair. His gaze trails down to his chin sees only a faint glimmer of reflected gold.
Don't need to shave yet, he thinks. I haven't been gone long. Gone from where?
A woman walking a manicured poodle stops to peer into the store window. He looks up at her, hoping she might recognize him, give him some answers, tell him the way home. Her ice-blue eyes slide over him. She sniffles in distaste and hastens away with her dog in tow.
He shoves his hands into the pockets of his jacket, frowns and peers back into the window, wondering what she saw when she looked at him. Suddenly, the sun gasps a last burst of orange light, as if warning him to run inside because night was falling. The sun loses the battle and the street plunges into darkness.
After a moment, he notices that the streetlights nearby are broken, that the only light comes from across the street in a thinly wooded area. Fear ripples through his belly. It's dark. He doesn't want to be alone in the dark but he doesn't know why. Without looking for cars, he darts across the street, falls over a short fence and makes a rumble-tumble beeline for the light. Light is good. Dark is bad.
In the pool of crystalline light, he stops, gasping for breath, sides aching, head pounding, ears filled with a beating rush of blood. He squeezes his eyes shut against the pain, but that only makes him dizzy, so he steps back until his rear connects with something hard, something smooth. Opening his eyes, he sees he's stepped just out of the circle of light, and leaned against something tall and warm. He slides down, staring at the shapes around him illuminated by the single light. He slides down until he sits with tendrils of steam rising from the damp ground around him, the stone behind his back radiating the heat from the day and warming him through the leather of his jacket. He sits perfectly still until his head clears and he can think again, until the rush in his ears dims to the soft ringing of distant church bells. He stares at the stark crying concrete angels and figures of Mary holding her baby that are thrown into stark repose all around him by the single white light bulb.
Recognition shimmies past him, blowing cold on the hairs at the nape of his neck before slithering back into the darkness he's living in.
How did I get here? The knowledge tickles his awareness, then vanishes in pain, kidnapped by the specter of his injury.
His limbs feel heavy. His eyelids open and close in slow-motion, the effort to raise them sapping the strength from his body. Tiredness creeps up from his feet until he thinks the ground is trying to swallow him. He thinks he hears a whisper above the ringing in his ears.
Is someone calling me?
He blinks and looks around at the headstones and angels. Something slinks behind them, gray and soft, fuzzy and cold, robbing the world of the last bits of color.
A needle of fear jabs him in the stomach, but that isn't enough to overcome his sudden lethargy. His limbs have a mind of their own.
He watches the night fog stream down into the dips in the grass, snake around the silent stones, and pool behind the flat ones until it peeks over the tops like vengeful ghosts.
He shivers, suddenly cold, but still unable to make his limbs follow his commands.
The whisper comes again . or so it seems to him.
His eyes fall shut. He wills them open and succeeds.barely. He's alone. No one there to whisper. No one to call his name.
Gently, he slumps to the side, his cheek coming to rest on grass that tickles his nose. Tiny drops of dew sparkle on the blades before his eyes, tiny bits of steam waltzing up to greet the cold fog. As he watches, the fog coalesces into a woman in a gown that billows and flows around her as if she's underwater.
She seems to glide toward him between the headstones. His mind screams to run, but his body refuses to move. She kneels before him, her silver- streaked blond hair haloed by the light behind her, her face glowing as the bulb refracts through the drops forming her misty face.
He blinks up at her, transfixed, giddy because he can see right through her and it doesn't bother him. Somehow it seems fitting.
"Help me," he murmurs, too tired to sustain fear.
A wistful grin turns up the corners of her mouth. Her blue eyes are soft and full of starlight. She is somehow familiar, yet he can't recall her name.
She reaches out with one ghostly hand and strokes his hair as a mother would a small child. As he closes his eyes and sleep tugs at his awareness, he swears he feels her warm fingers rest upon his cheek, swears he feels ghostly lips brush his brow.
"'night, Grandma," he whispers without realizing it, then dives headlong into sleep.
TBC