Thanks to CaptainLoneStarUSA for reviewing. If I ever get around to watching Kill Bill then I shall read your story.
I'm feeling unnervingly inspired at the moment which is why this new chapter is up so quickly. Hence I'll hold off replies until the next chapter and wait to see if any more reviews arrive first.
Chapter 4: I have to obey him
You should already know that – FrankFairfax hadn't changed much. Not that he'd been gone that long, not today anyway.
Donnie hadn't expected the house to be an exception to this rule, but looking at it now, he noticed that it was darker then the other houses on the street, as if a large shadow hung over it. There didn't seem to be anything around him that could cause this however.
If it was cold he couldn't feel it, or didn't want to. He could hear the rushing wind around him, and he could see a handful of fallen autumn leaves, that had remained on the street in the early winter months, being blown down the road in the direction that he remembered the school bus travelling down.
He cast the image from his mind; he hadn't come to admire the local scenery, or to reminisce.
"You won't like what you see." Frank said, his face unreadable, and still hidden behind the mask.
"Why?" Donnie asked, concern slipping into his voice. Had something happened to them since his death? What was Frank talking about? "What happened? Is every...?"
"They won't see you."
"Why not? I mean, I saw you when..."
Frank's head moved slowly to look at Donnie. Though there were no outward signs, Donnie could almost feel Frank's frustration.
"They won't see you." He repeated, his voice much slower and far colder.
There was silence for a few minutes. Donnie's first instinct was to ask why again, but he abandoned this idea. It wouldn't get any answers, and since Frank was the closest thing he had to a guide in the new state of being he had been cast into, his first inclination was to trust him. Although part of him still wanted to kill him for what he had done for Gretchen. Despite the fact that Frank was the reason the two were together, (first in life and now in death,) the image of the car running over and snapping Gretchen's body still brought forth anger in him.
Donnie took a few steps forward. Initially, his surroundings didn't seem to adjust themselves as he moved. The house did not grow marginally bigger as he advanced; the road he was standing on seemed to have moved with him.
Then the surroundings all moved at once.
The house flew towards him. It came so close that Donnie could see the cracks in the paintwork on the door. Less then a second afterwards, his instincts kicked in and his arms flew up to defend himself against the advancing house before he realised that it had stopped.
The road had been pushed far behind him, it also seemed to have been pushed downwards, the street now looked tilted, and stretched at the points where the pavement met the front gardens of the houses.
A few seconds later, the world around him seemed to snap back into place. The house retreated back to where it was, the road rushed back to where Donnie was standing, only now Donnie found himself a few steps closer to the house.
Donnie returned his hands to his sides. The sudden fear that had gripped him when the house rushed towards him was slowly beginning to fade. After a few seconds, he turned his head around to where Frank had been standing, intending to ask him exactly what had just happened.
Frank was nowhere to be seen.
A smaller, yet still sizable amount of fear gripped Donnie. He was far from ready to do little short of anything it seemed without his bunny suit wearing mentor's guidance, without Frank, he was, and would stay lost; and Frank knew that as well as he did, so why had he left?
Donnie turned back around to face the house, only to find Frank standing about half a meter in front of him. This sight initially startled him, and then led to him feeling understandably irritated.
"What the hell was that?" Donnie virtually shouted.
"Perspective." Came Frank's cryptic reply.
"Perspective?"
Frank didn't respond. He turned back around to face the house moments before the front door quietly opened. Moments later, two weary looking figures stepped out. Both were carrying suitcases.
Donnie couldn't make out who they were initially, but the sight of white hair soon identified one of the two people as his father, Edward Darko. The other appeared to be his sister Elizabeth.
Edward opened the boot of a car he didn't recognise that was parked next to the family car. The two then lifted the assorted suitcases into it.
"Are you sure that's everything?" Though his father was at least fifteen meters away, Donnie could hear him as well as if he was standing right next to him. The voice sounded almost calm, but there was an unmistakable underlying sadness within it.
"Yeah," there was the same sadness in his sister's voice, "Yeah I checked everywhere."
"I'm sorry your mother couldn't be here for this, if she could have gotten someone to take Sam to the..."
"It's ok, she had to take Samantha for an inoculation, it's no big deal. Besides, I'll see her when I come home at the weekend."
Donnie wondered briefly where Elizabeth was vanishing off to. After a few moments he remembered her telling him one morning that she had been accepted into Harvard, where she was now presumably heading.
His father placed the last of the suitcases into the boot and closed it. He then turned around and leaned backwards on the car.
"I only wish your brother was still here to see this." His voice was chocked slightly.
"Yeah," Elizabeth added, her voice was quieter now, "He'd probably be thrilled that there was one less contestant for the bathroom in the mornings."
A short-lived, sad laugh was the response to this.
"Seriously though," Elizabeth continued, "I wish he..." She trailed off, unable to complete her sentence.
Donnie wanted more then anything to walk up to them and show them that he was alright. The fact that they were talking about him like he was gone and he was in fact standing only a few meters away was almost unbearable.
He was about to walk towards them when he remembered Frank's earlier message. They wouldn't see him. He could walk right up to them and they wouldn't know he was there.
And then it hit him.
He was gone.
He was dead, and that was how he would stay. He couldn't go back and pick up the pieces of his old life. Those had vanished the instant the plane engine had fallen through his roof. He couldn't tell his family that he was alright, he couldn't tell anyone that they didn't need to mourn.
Then again, why not. As he had said, Frank had manifested himself, and as he had said, he could do anything he wanted. He had even said that Donnie could, so why couldn't he?
After a few moments of thinking, he could think of only one reason why he couldn't go back to his life, why he couldn't say goodbye to anyone, why he couldn't even take one step forward.
Frank wouldn't allow it.
To be continued.