Destiny's End
Chapter I: Early Morning
He awakes. Light seeps into his eyes and he has to quickly shut them to avoid the strain. How long was I out? Locke asks himself, not remembering that he had fallen asleep. He must have dozed off while he was reading again; Nietzsche couldn't even keep his eyes open. The sheets crunch as he gets out of bed and he makes his way across the room.
He wonders how he managed to get here, how all the events in his life had led him to this day, to this very moment. He didn't believe it could just be coincidence, coincidence was nothing but an illusion, misleading the ignorant from their fate. Things just don't happen; they happen for a reason. Everything he will ever do is to serve a purpose, but he isn't sure what his purpose could be. And why was fate so cruel sometimes?
Nothing right had happened after his kidney was removed. Before, he would go hunting with his father, who he hadn't known until he was in his thirties, and they would have lunch together, talk about things they had in common, and laugh about past experiences until the sun went down. But it was all a lie, a facade, his father wasn't really his father, at least couldn't ever really be his father, because a father would never do that to their child; use them and then throw them out on the street after they had gotten what they wanted. His father used him, pretended to love him until he got his kidney, then he turned his back on him and shut him out.
And after all that, he had wondered how this could have happened to him, and the more he thought about it, the angrier it made him. He got frustrated to a point where he almost couldn't take it anymore. And it was in a run-down hotel room that he had made a choice, the choice to end his own life.
A maid found him lying face-down in the middle of the room, soaking in a pool of vomit. She called nine-one-one to send over the paramedics. They pumped his stomach and he lived to see another day—maybe the choice wasn't his to make.
After months of therapy, his shrink suggested he go to some help meetings and interact with other people, who were on similarly unpleasant terms with their parents, so that he could try and come to terms with his own. It was there where he had met Helen. She was tall, with long light brown hair, and she had a smile that could immediately make him forget all the sorrow he felt and calm all the anger that writhed within him. And she made him feel loved, something he hadn't felt in a long time, and he would do anything to feel that way forever.
And now he was in Los Angeles staying in some other run-down motel across from the Bank of America. He had come looking for a job with Mattel as a Director of Retail Sales, something his old manager at the toy store had suggested to him and he decided to follow up on it. It paid a lot better than his current job, and since he and Helen were living together now, he knew minimum wage at the toy store wasn't going to cut it anymore.
He barely had enough money to afford this hotel, this hotel that smells; reeks of must and old scents of past occupants. He makes his way over to the make-shift kitchen, opens up a bag of coffee, and lumps the stimulant onto a filter, taking in a good whiff to get rid of the stink. He adds water to the brewer, gets everything in place, and flips the switch.
Some machines break down after extended use, their gears break or their wires fry. After a minute of silence from the coffee maker he began to wonder if its wires had fried. He followed the cord back to the socket to see if it was plugged in and it was. It can't be broken I just bought it last week. He began to question the maker's seal of quality and checked to see if it had come with a warranty—but it turns out thrift store coffee makers don't come with warranties. He picked up the coffee maker and threw it in the trash. "I guess I'll have to do without today."
The smell wasn't the only thing bad about this place. It seemed both of his neighbors were raving drug addicts and the guy across the hall was selling them. They would constantly go over to his room at the early hours of the morning, pound on the door and ask him if he had any blow. He felt like calling the local law enforcement just so he could get some peace and quiet, but he didn't feel like it was worth the risk of having them recognize him in some dark alley one day as "the guy that called the cops." He decided it was better just to leave it be and try to shut out the noise.
One of his neighbors was yelling now, he could here her through the walls. She was saying something to someone, probably her "boyfriend", or some loser that she had just met yesterday that had the "stuff" she needed. It was ironic that the wall she was yelling through was covered with a collage of emaciated faces, an artwork made by some street punk no doubt. And in the middle, the faces proclaimed God is Dead in big red letters.
He tries to forget the girl yelling next door and the faces on the wall, he has to get ready now or he's going to be late. He brushes his teeth, puts his suit on, tightens his tie, and gets ready to leave when he notices something on the floor—his favorite issue of The Metabarons. He picks up the book and sets it on the nightstand. He looks at his watch and reads the hands. 4:29. He turns to the clock on the wall, and it reads the same. That's strange.