AN: thanks to halliwellmb for your anonymous review, and yeah, I'm an hp fan, though I haven't read the books in a while.
I woke to Mom banging on the fuckin' door as usual on schooldays.
I dragged myself out of bed, convinced that it had all been a dream when I saw the big tome next to me.
Oh, god. Couldn't it have just been a dream? Though it could still be a dream. I hid my face in my pillow. Waking up and wishing that my reality was a dream was developing itself into pattern.
I peered at the pillow out of the corner of my eye. I could just drop the book in the garbage can. Or burn it up. Or both.
I suddenly smiled into the pillow at my genius.
All I had to do was—oh, wait. Silly me. I'm not a witch. I was gonna use a match. The nice, normal way of putting things on fire. I was positive that my thoughts about setting things on fire wasn't normal, but I cast those aside.
I got up and walked past the trash can, then strode to the bathroom for a quick shower. When I was finished I went down to the kitchen to get some food.
Damn was I grateful you bought bread and butter in the store, together with tea.
"I'm making scrambled eggs. How much do you want?" grandma asked. I looked into the frying pan and realized that she must have been referring to the burnt mess inside.
"No thanks, I'm fine," I said and poured myself a cup of tea.
"Can't you stop drinking tea? You'll get yellow teeth," grandma said. She was an opinionated woman, and had an upfront way of expressing herself.
"Good thing I don't care then," I said.
"Naughty," mom said. Nails against the blackboard—Nearly Headless Nick would've called that music. Grandpa winked at me.
"Don't bother 'bout the old hag," he told me. Talking shit about his wife was his way of trying to fix things, which usually just got worse after his tinkering.
I took a sip of tea; the taste of blackcurrant melted across my tongue pleasantly.
"Prepared for school Benji?" Dad asked. "You've got English, right-o? Are you doing grammar? I remember being quite good at it."
"Yeah, English. We're doing a romance novel," I explained. "Twilight."
"I see that you've learned new, strong and intellectual words, son," he replied.
I wasn't about to tell him that I had learned them since John got me hooked on Discworld-novels, the greatest invention since punk. But thinking about it, they were probably invented around the same time.
"What does it mean?" Jimmy asked.
"Yeah," Joanie piped in.
"Twiligh-"
"Dad, that's the name of the book. Sorry," I told him. Surely he was alive during the craziness of it all? Or his memory is as useful as his non-existent brain.
"That's still good, Ben," Grandpa said.
"I know," I smirked. I drank up my tea and picked up a blueberry muffin.
I then walked up the stairs to my room, threw in some school stuff in my bag and went to school, after having the ritual hug with mom.
At school I met with Simon, my best friend, and John, the gay bookworm. Gina, another friend, was at home sleeping.
In English, Mrs. Frodds was as usual saying that Twilight was a wonderful book, along with Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice. I hadn't read any of those, but of course I'd heard of them.
Then, another class later, we had lunch in the cafeteria.
"How was your Sunday, Ben? Mine was a fucking hell," Simon said as he sat down next to me.
"Different, and creepy," I answered, thinking about Cole. The man could've been a pedophile, or…ah, my imagination.
"My Sunday was great," John piped up. "I worked in th-"
"That's great John. You worked. Did you get paid?"
"Of course not. I was helping out," he replied, looking completely geeky in his nerdy clothes, a turtleneck and khaki pants, not jeans.
"Met anyone?" Simon intoned. "Older guys have experience, so I've heard."
"For the last time, I'm not gay!" John exclaimed, and attracted a few glances.
"So you're not happy?" Simon asked.
"Har har, that's the oldest joke in the book, Simon. Keep your mouth shut, if you please." My bets were on John and Simon, the irony of them becoming a couple.
"John, you don't ask someone to shut the fuck up, you tell them to do it," I said.
Simon sniggered.
"Just because I don't swear," John said haughtily.
"Snob," Simon said. John stuck out his tongue in retaliation.
In short lunch was nice, and normal, as was the rest of the day. Nothing not normal 'bout it. Urghh, I was beginning th think like the damned Dursleys.
After school, John, Simon and I walked out of the doors of the school together. When we saw the school bus turn the corner, John gave Simon and I a hurried goodbye and ran like hell in the direction the bus had gone. Trust the quiet ones to spaz out.
Simon turned toward me. "Yours or mine?"
"We'll go to your place," I said. "Crazy grandparents and their fuckin' belief they understand today's youth. I think it makes 'em feel younger."
Simon laughed.
We walked the short distance to Simon's, talking about school, movies, music, etc.
Simon lives in an apartment with his dad, the sort of guy who just didn't grow up. He was still the same as he was when he was fifteen, still the same Twisted Sister fan. Pft, Twisted Sisters…you could spend a lot of time mangling their lyrics, which pissed him off and made you laugh, and the more you laughed the more pissed he got.
Simon opened the door to the apartment building eighth his key, and we climbed the two flights of stairs up. Through the door of the apartment you could hear We're Not Gonna Take It.
Simon opened that door with another key. We walked in, dropped our bags onto the floor together with our jackets. It gets cold here, not like California or Florida, this is Seattle, where it really just rains.
To the right was Simon's room, to the left of it was his dad's. Straight forward was the living room, and to the left was the kitchen. Behind the kitchen was the apartment's only bathroom.
"Hiya, dudes," Simon's dad, Gabe said. He's as big as a fuckin' walrus on a fat-only diet, and had a pronounced balding spot around the top of his head. There was always the heavy scent of cigarettes that surrounded him too.
"Dad, we're here to have fun, not to talk to you, so fuck off," Simon said. His dad's face fell slightly, and his shoulders sagged.
We went into his room, which is twice as big as mine and could still be called small. Simon an I had a fun time, watching porno and eating chips.
At six p.m., Gabe decided that I should go home, after having received a phone-call telling me to go home.
I walked the streets slowly, deep in thought. I was looking down, stepping on every crack in the cement when something burning hit my stomach. I groaned and fell backward onto my ass. After a moment of disorientation, I looked up and saw a man walking toward me. He was dressed in black with slithering tribal tattoos , and there were two women on either side of him.
One of the girls opened her mouth and spit out something that looked like needles. I instinctively raised my arms and fell onto my back at the same time. When I managed to raise myself up from the ground, the demons, I guess they were, had frozen, but looked ready to snap out of it.
"Die?" I asked experimentally, testing my magic ability. Nothing happened. I took a deep breath and stood up, wincing at the throbbing pain in my gut.
Sweet, fuckin' Jesus I shouldn't be standing up.
Then the demon man un-froze and threw a ball of fire at me. I side-stepped and mimicked the movement that he had made, which produced a smaller version of his ball of fire. Fortunately for me, the demon didn't have the sense to dodge.
Then the women started unfreezing and I focused on a spot behind them, only to see if I could do the same thing as the thing that I had done to Cole yesterday.
And it worked a mere second before the needles would've hit me. I was starting to get pissed, and threw another fire ball at the demon to my right.
As the other one turned around, I hit her and she flew a few meters. I quickly walked closer to her and threw another ball of fire.
"Fuckin' demon cunts," I muttered. Just had to ruin it all.
"So you do believe in demons then?" Cole drawled from behind me.
I jumped, a few meters up, literally. Fuckin' neat. Another power to add to the never-ending list.
"Levitation," Cole supplied.
"Amazing," I huffed as I floated back down to ground-level.
Cole peered at the subdued demons behind me and quirked an amused eyebrow.
"Did…" I licked my lips. "Did you hire those demons to go after me?"
"Of course not." Something about the way his face stiffened slightly told me otherwise. He paced around me, still surveying the demons from a distance. "You seemed to have handled these just fine," he said.
For a moment I stood there, looking at him looking at the demons, then I bent over slowly and retrieved my bag. I turned around calmly and walked backward until I was sure he wasn't going to do anything, then I turned and began to sprint down the street.
I didn't know why he'd done it, but I wasn't going to stick around to find out.
As I ran, I could only visualize the tome in my room…the tome that I had planned to burn earlier.
That tome was gonna help me kill Cole.
AN: review and say what you thought of the chapter