Thank you, Finwitch1, for your review. Please keep reading.
Everybody, tell your friends to R&R. Please review - that way I'll know you're reading. Plus, it'll help fuel my ego - like I need that, right?
Well, here's Chapter Three . . .
Chapter Three
Heath Edmunds propped up his feet. It was nice to get away, even if only for a moment. As often as he had read these books he still loved them. It wasn't really an escape - well, maybe it was - but, the characters just seemed to come to life. Work had been hard lately. What, with the Christmas crowd and all, it was amazeing that he was able even now to find a small respit. Still, he'd take what he had.
The phone rang. 'Man,' he thought, 'every time! Well, I guess I should answer it.' "Hello?"
"Hey, Heath," the voice on the other end said. "Can you pick up a shift, please? Someone just called in sick, and we're rather short handed."
"Yea, I'll be there in twenty minutes," Heath sighed as he put down his book. This was why he hated Christmas. It seemed that no matter how many shows were on about the 'True meaning of Christmas' no one he actually met seemed to put it into practice. 'I've gotta get out of the retail industry. It's sapping the life outa me,' Heath whined to himself.
Twenty-five minutes later he pulled into the mall parking lot and threw on his uniform shirt as was getting out of the car. "You know, all I want for Christmas is a life!" Heath grumbled, and walked in.
It was aweful. Eight hours of mind numbing tedium would have been preferable to what he had to put up with. The level of sheer idiocy to which mankind had stooped was mind-boggling. Didn't people know that there was more out there than a pretty pair of jeans and a matching tee? To see customers wrangleing with each other over the simplest of items made Heath want to howl in fustration. 'Everything always seems to go wrong for me, no matter what I do,' he complained to himself as he gathered and folded the clothes stewn about the store. 'It's like something, or someone, doesn't want me to succeed. Here I am in a dead end job with no end in sight. But, this is the only thing I know. What else can I do?"
"Just wait, your time will come. I've got plenty for you to do, so enjoy the peace while you have it," said a dry voice in the back of his mind.
"Peace! Sure!" Heath mocked. "Man,why do you keep popping up like that? Stop being so cryptic!" Of course, the voice never answered back. It would do this every so often: pop up and make some impossible declaration, then go silent. Truth be told, Heath was growing somewhat tired of his little friend upstairs.
"Who are you to say what is possible or not?" the voice retorted.
"Oh, now you respond, huh? Why don't you just say what you mean. Is it so hard?" Heath taunted, but the voice was either gone or simply refused to comment again. Either way was fine with Heath. 'Finally, a little peace to my own thoughts," he grumbled then put it out of his mind.
Later, back in his apartment, with his shoes off, his feet propped up again, and a book in his hand, he took a deep breath, "At last, a chance to myself. Hopefully I'm not disturbed this time." Heath took a moment to contemplate. He knew that he was destined for great things. He could feel it in the fiber of his being. And it wasn't just a feeling either. He also had somewhat of an intuitive nature. He could sense things. He instinctively knew things that he had no way of knowing. Like, the other day, he knew that some guy named Jack Kastle would buy a blue sweater from him. It wasn't one of those things where he woke up thinking about it. It just came to him. He was standing behind the cash register and there was a man in line. It all of a sudden popped into his head that this man would buy a blue sweater, and that his name was Jack Kastle. Sure enough, when the man got to the register, he suddenly remembered that he'd forgotten something. When he returned with a blue sweater and handed Heath his card to run, the card read "Jacob Kastle." Most people would flip, but Heath simply shrugged it off. It happened all the time.
That wasn't it though. Heath knew for a fact that there was a type of perception out there that defied common logic. He knew when things were true, (that was another part of his 'talant') and he knew that the "so-called-sixth-sense" everybody scorned was indeed a reality. Yea, sure, there were those "soothsayers" and what-nots who gave it a bad name; but it did exist. And, try as he might, he couldn't shake the feeling that Fate had something rather over-the-top in store for him. That voice he'd heard earlier that day kinda confirmed it.
All of these things were reasons why he so enjoyed reading about Belgarion of Riva. To him they weren't just stories. They were confirmations. In some way he knew, again, he didn't know how; but he just knew that there was something real about them. And so, when later that evening, as he was finishing up the last paragraph of Belgarath the Sorcerer and saw a strangely clad young man walk through his door unannounced, Heath calmly looked up from his book and with aplomb said, "Good evening, Belgarion, welcome to my home."