...and I'm back with the fifth chapter of 'Birthday'!
I cant apologize enough for the two month long hiatus. Special thanks to Continuum Regained for lighting a well deserved fire under my arse
enjoy
Spinning
By the time Alvin took running to the streets, the storm had come alive. Vicious and wild, it beat thunder against the wind of its icy feral roar and ripped apart the sky with metal claws of lightning.
He didn't stop for a bus or pause for any of the dozens of cars that slowed down, considering him.
He didn't want a ride.
He didn't need one.
Alvin needed this. He needed the wind to tear at his clothing and his clarity, clearing his mind as it rubbed his exposed face raw. He needed the icy rain to pound against him and through him, fueling his mind as it froze over the muscles straining to haul his bones.
While he ran, the storm ran with him. Bounding forth like a comrade swathed in an armor of black clouds, it helped him rationalize. While he ran, it kept him sane because surely…
Alvin watched the storm opened its mouth and released the moon. Watched as its penetrating beam hit and highlighted a figure running as he was just across the street. A figure whose white shirt shown like a beacon as it ran, pushing warm startled bodies aside as he had and turning to look over its shoulder the moment he himself chose to, its silver eyes shining.
Because surely he was slipping…
Moon beams fell like searchlights from the sky, slicing through certain increments of darkness and decorating the puddles that rain had beaten into the gravel. They shone like heaven sent guides as he ran and Alvin let the circles of white liquid light lead him all the way back home.
When he finally saw his house approaching in the distance, Alvin noticed a second car parked in the driveway of their massive property and, considering this, decided that he would enter the large mansion from the back. He couldn't stand the thought forced pleasantries at a time like this. Not when he still had so many thing to sort out. Not when he still needed answers.
The winded chipmunk stood outside in the stinging rain for only a moment more, looking up at a shaded window that was dark despite the bruised black of the night sky.
There was only one person he wanted to see.
Simon
Alvin flung open the screen door and took the stairs of swollen wood up two, three, four at a time and when he finally made it to the upstairs hallway, he went straight for his bedroom door. The fact that that neither of his brothers bedroom lights were on didn't escape Alvin's notice and something tugged persistently at the back of his psyche, dissenting to this effect.
The chipmunk violently shook his head, attempting to fling the new surge of inquiries threatening to invade his already loaded mind. It was something he'd ponder on later.
Right now, he needed a clear head.
Alvin took a deep breath and mentally steeling himself, firmly grasped his doorknob and pushed the door open…
…only to be confronted by a sharp burning scent so strong that it scorched his throat and drew water from his eyes.
Alvin quickly shut the door behind him and instinctively brought his hands to his face, his nostrils aflame.
"Simon?" he called. What the hell? Alvin squinted into the darkness of his room with stinging eyes, vaguely pinpointing the scent as similar to the peppermint haze that he'd smelled on his brother earlier. Only now it seemed as though the perfumed cloud had intensified itself ten-fold, transforming into a thick suffocating fog with sharp putrid edges.
The stormy night sky had shrouded his bedroom in a deep curtain of darkness and Alvin was just about to turn and grope for the light switch when suddenly, in a flash of brief lightening that brightened the room and shook the walls, Alvin spotted him.
With the room suddenly dark again, Alvin's eyes focused on a shapeless still form sitting silently by the bedrooms only window. Every once and awhile, the sky would push out a peal of thunder that let thin strips of light flash through the open blinds. It was in these moments that Alvin could just make out the icy pallor of his brother's right hand and the silver gleam of the "S" emblem dangling from his shoe.
It occurred to Alvin that Simon had been watching him from the moment he'd stepped through the door. His brother had watched him and had not said a thing.
His stomach clenching , Alvin backed up and fumbled for the light switch. His slippery fingers flipped it up and down.
Dead.
His lights where out. Shit.
Despite himself, Alvin felt the wall of resolve he'd set around himself begin to crumble, the tumbling stones knocking the flight out of every question he'd prepared to aim. There was something about this atmosphere. Some air-born wrongness that had fur bunching and his toes curling within his shoes.
He no longer wanted answers. He wanted to run.
"Alvin."
Alvin stiffened. Without a face to pin it to, his brother's voice seemed to come from everywhere.
"Have you brought them, Alvin?"
Again the minty stench pushed forward, causing Alvin to choke. Mentally, he began to scrape away the fear snaring his thoughts. Something was coming! Lighting struck something just outside his window…
A tree goes down, its trunk and inhabitants left to God. What a storm!
Faster!
Faster!
" I… my car.." The stink shoved its reeking fist down his throat. Stuck its foul fingers into his eyes.
He couldn't breath! He couldn't think!
"Alvin..."
Another peal of lighting brightened the room. Briefly, Alvin could see his brothers eyes for what they truly were…
Hard gray crystals of hate…
The smell of Burning leather…
The sound of slapping rain...
What are you doing!
What have you done?
"...My car was...I was.."
"Have you brought them?"
Thunder pounded the roof and Alvin's words slurred, his vision dimming.
The stench had gripped him by the lung.
Gripped him by the neck.
snapping forward
The sight of flying glass.
Spinning...
Spinning..
Spinning…
"Car crash!" The stench left him suddenly and Alvin bowed forward clutching his chest. "I was in a car crash!" he wheezed. Alvin coughed, clearing his lungs.
Clearing his mind. The burning sensation left him completely.
"That's why you never got your cuff links..." Trembling fingers traveled upwards to the back of his neck. "That's why I've been in pain and.." He shut his eyes tight, struggling.
"…and…" mental fingers uncovered a new layer, one that stilled his breath and caused his eyes to widen at the impracticality of it all.
"And...you knew that!" Alvin straitened abruptly, a new found mix of anger and surprise fueling his pulse and clenching his teeth. "You knew it from the moment you told me to go get them!"
Silence.
His brother said nothing for a moment and then, in one steady movement, the other chipmunk leaned forward out of the shadows. Alvin saw then that his dress shirt was filthy and that the bangs on Simon's forward where damp and limp as though he too had been running in the rain.
"Alvin, didn't you?"
hm. Some of you thought it was going to end there, I bet.
that's all for now. I'm afraid
Review and tell me what You think.