Chapter 2: Living

As I got out of the shower I very quickly dried off and got dressed, my usual outfit of my black pants pants, black sweater, black shoes, and my Amon Amarth beanie. I wouldn't have to get dressed so fast if this goddamn place had a hot water heater, but rigging the pipes to the city pipe system was hard enough, so I dealt. I walked over to the mirror above the sink and check my white hair for any sign of fading. Boar and me dyed our hair on a regular basis, to show our "individuality". That's what we told a lot of people anyway, but it was really to piss off the local punks.

I walked up to the doorway and looked at the marks we had put on it since we had moved in here 8 years ago. My final mark was at 5'8 and Boars was at about 6'1. It made me feel diminutive, because not only was I pretty much a stick, weighing only about 140 pounds, and despite being fairly strong myself, Boar reminded me of a human tank. He worked out constantly and weighed about 200 pounds, most of it being muscle. However, what I lacked in strength, I made up for in intelligence. Not common sense intelligence, but more like tactical and "school-smarts" intelligence. This is the reason that I had an almost even record with Boar, especially when you consider that his only strategy was to run in, hypothetical guns a' blazing.

Whatever the case was, the trip down memory lane was fun, but we needed to get going. I wanted that car. I was the only one that had a license too, so that made it mostly mine by my logic. Anyway I brushed my teeth quickly and put on some deodorant and walked out of the bathroom. I walked into the kitchen and saw Boar with his usual display of a big ass bowl of dry cereal and Penthouse splayed out on the T.V. trays in front of him. I walked over to the cabinet and opened it, to find a new box of strawberry Pop tarts in it.

I pulled the Pop tarts down and opened the box and pulled one of the packs out. I opened it and walked over to where Boar was sitting and asked, "So, is that a new issue or an old one?" He didn't even look up and replied, "It's an old one, but a damn good one." He reached his hand into his bowl and his hand hit the bottom, making him look up from the magazine. He then stood up and picked the bowl up and took it to the sink and dropped it in. I took a bite out of my Pop tart.

He turned to me, his "69" jersey, faded blue jeans, and worn out tennis shoes helped paint the familiar picture that I was familiar with. He motioned for me to stand up and said, "Alright man, lets get going." I took a bite out of my Pop tart. I stood up and quickly chomped the rest of my Pop tart and threw away the wrapper. I stood up and grabbed my royal purple trench coat and my Boken (traditional wooden sword) and picked Boars coat from the ground. "Hey boar, you may want this. It was freezing yesterday and it'll be freezing today." He turned and looked back for a second and made a "Pfft" noise and walked out the door.

I waited. About 5 seconds and he ran back inside and he quickly grabbed his coat and flung it on, shivering madly as he did so. Slowly the shivering receded and he said, through still chattering teeth, "A-alright lets g-g-get going." I opened my mouth to say something about him being a dumbass, but before I had a chance he exclaimed, "Don't you say a g-goddamn thing!" I laughed and when he turned around I said it anyway which promptly triggered a punch to the face.

As we walked to the car dealer, me nursing a bloody nose, I got that strange feeling again, and this time it stayed for more than 3 seconds. It made me feel off, like something was following us. Like it needed us. I turned around and saw something, like a person, but two things were wrong. One was the way it seemed to not be completely solid, like a mirage. The other was the way it didn't have an arm.

I tapped my brother on the shoulder and quietly said, "Hey, there's another one." He stopped walking and turned to look. He saw it and he stood there and waited, as did I. As it got closer I could tell a few things about it. One, it was a woman; Two, her face was black, like it was bruised or burnt; Three, her head looked a bit caved in. She got closer and she realized that we could see her she began to say something, but it was too quiet to hear.

She kept repeating it, over and over, slowly getting closer, but slowly slowing down. She began to wobble and I saw her legs give way. She didn't hit the ground though, because in a flash, Boar had dashed forward and caught her. He lightly laid her on the ground and began to listen to her. I walked to where they were and looked down at the woman, the words "Help me" repeating over and over. Blood was pouring from the wound, despite one thing. She was a ghost.

We had seen some like her in the past, but never in this kind of condition, never bleeding. The chain was gone as well. We hadn't seen one without a chain at any point in the past. It was odd. Then something began to happen. A hole slowly began to open in her chest, but that wasn't all. She began to scream the most bloodcurdling scream I had ever heard.

Boar cringed at the sound and the hole in her chest began to grow wider, her screams becoming louder and more horrifying with every passing second. Then she began to fade, her screams receding. Boar looked up at where I stood and said, "She must be passing on." I shook my head, "No. She's not. If she was she wouldn't be in any pain, or at least, that's what I think." He turned back to the woman, almost completely gone now, no longer screaming, no longer bleeding. The hole finished forming and then she was gone. Just like that.

Boar stood up and asked me, "What the hell just happened?" I shook my head again and said, "I just wish I knew, but what I do know is that it isn't good." We turned to walk away from the scene and we heard a very loud, very annoying voice, "Well, well, well, if this isn't a Double Dose of freako I don't know what is!" A man with bright blonde hair walked out of the shadows, the large group of his gang following him.

"Damnit Reiichi, can't you leave us alone? This really isn't the time." I said this always, every time that this pain in the ass showed his ugly head. Every time I said it, he always replied with a nice, "Fuck you freaks." This time he added a little something for our enjoyment, "What was that whole little scene just now? Talkin' to air? That's a new level of freaky, even for you guys!" His gang promptly laughed with him. Boar stayed quiet oddly, so I spoke for him. "You know, I just have to ask, how long have you been at this? Since Jr. High, right? So would you mind explaining to me why? You aren't tough, so you got a gang, you aren't smart, so you kept the gang, and you certainly aren't a very pretty sight, so you beat people up. Did I hit home?"

A vein that popped up in his head and the priceless look on his face answered that for me. He pointed at us and screamed, "Kill them!" His guys charged, brass knuckles, sticks, and aluminum bats in hand. Of course we retaliated, and hard. Boar was the first to react, his feet moving in a blur and his fist crushing the face of the nearest guy. I just watched, that's all I wanted to do this time. Boar ducked underneath a bat and grabbed the attackers wrist and flung him into another one of the gang, knocking him to the ground.

A brass knuckle slammed into his side and he fell over for a second, but before the other guy could land another blow, Boar recovered and hit him with a hard fist to the gut and a hard uppercut to the face. A bat hit him in the side of the head, making him stumble to the side, which was taken as an opportunity for another who then slammed a stick into his gut. This made him double over and then one of the guys lifted a bat to hit him, but he never got a chance.

A wooden sword hit the guy square in the face, the crack of his broken nose easily heard. He fell to the ground in a crumpled heap and another tried to attack, but I managed to block and swept his legs out from under him. I then raised my foot in the air to stomp, but was struck by a brass knuckle to the face, sending me airborne. I hit the ground hard and the guy raised his fist into the air and it slammed into my chest, cracking a rib or two and then he raised his fist to hit me again, but before he could his hand was grabbed by another, much larger hand.

I turned and saw Boar standing there, bruised and bloody, a miserable heap of unconscious bodies on the ground behind him. He lifted the guy off of me and with his other hand, helped me up. The guy pulled his bare fist back and hit Boar in the face, barely fazing him. Boar said to me, "You want this one? After all he broke your strategy." I stood up and cracked my neck and pulled my Boken back, "You know me so well man." Then I swung.