Fracture

Prologue.

A young boy kneeling on the forest floor, looking a drowned rat and clutching the limp form of a young girl.

Shards of glass sprinkled around the two.

Then, speech.

“Meli! Come on, Meli!”

The young boy urged, shaking the girl’s thin frame desperately. He was close to sobbing, but holding it in. He couldn’t afford too much noise.

“This was your idea, Meli; you can’t bail on your own idea! Come on!” He shook the girl again, ignoring the water dripping from his sopping hair. His clothes were soaked through as well, sticking to him as he clung to the girl.

Above, dim sunlight just barely managed to cast shadows on the forest floor, and the boy seemed to glare down at the fuzzy shapes. “Do something,” he demanded softly. “Do something! Meli…”

Giving up.

The boy hugged the girl to his body, burying his face in her hair and letting loose a sob. He knew he had to move; he knew he couldn’t stay. And yet he did. He remained there, crying into her hair, unable to continue, as he had promised. No matter what, you keep going. You keep going, Graham!

Those were the last words she had shouted to him, over her shoulder as she ran to her death.

And as the words rang in his ears, he looked up. His eyes went to the skies—or rather, the leaves. The leaves above his head, blocking out the sky, made him feel even more lost than he did already. He used to be hard-pressed to find leaves. Hell, he used to be hard-pressed to find grass in the city. In his home.

He looked up at the leaves and wondered to himself.

How did I even get here? Why did this happen?

And so, the beginning beckons.

--Chapter One--

We start with a boy and his sister. For now, they are safe at home, drying off after the walk home from the bus stop. But this obviously won’t last, as then there’d be no story. So we continue.

The boy’s name is Graham, and, yes, he’s the one you just saw crying on a forest floor. The one who wished for the paved streets and steel buildings of his city. Right now, though, he is lounging on a dull, red and yellow plaid sofa, playing video games. He is still wearing his navy blazer with the golden MHS emblazoned on the front pocket, having only just finished his day at Monica High. The water is still dripping from his brown hair, darker from the wet, with a few drops sliding down his face. None of this—the slight discomfort of a too-formal uniform, and the water dripping all around him—took his attention away from the television screen, though. The flashes of a computerized battle reflected in the depths of his mahogany eyes.

“Gra-yum!” The little girl sang, stretching the name into two syllables. She was a mere nine years of age, and almost the complete opposite of her brother. Where Graham was more of the tall, dark, and handsome type, his younger sister was skinny to the point of fragility, with bleach blonde hair to the middle of her back and classic, sky blue eyes. She was also good at manipulating her brother, who would turn the world over for her but never admit to doing it. “I’m ready to go now.” She smiled toothily at him.

Graham didn’t turn around; his eyes didn’t even flicker away from the screen for half a second. “What’re you talking about, Anna?” he said monotonously. He was more concerned with defeating the creature on the screen than he was with his sister’s assumptions.

“You’re taking me to Crystal’s house. I wrapped her gift already, and you’re taking me there,” she reminded him. If Graham had turned around, he would’ve seen the horribly and brightly wrapped gift in her hands, waiting to be delivered to the Birthday Girl down the street. Graham rolled his eyes, thankful his back was to his younger sister at the moment. Otherwise, she would’ve started crying, and the whole thing would be a lost cause.

“Anna, it’s pouring. I’m not walking you over there when it’s pouring,” Graham answered.

“But you promised!” Anna whined, her mouth dropping in misery. Her eyes got wide in preparation for tears.

“No, I didn’t,” Graham replied.

“Yes, you did!”

“When?”

“This morning! You promised you would this morning!” Anna insisted, punctuating her sentence with a stomp of her foot. The tears were already beginning to prick at her eyes as Graham tried to recall when he could have promised his sister this. As he sliced through some burdensome enemies in his video game, he vaguely recalled Anna cornering him this morning, intercepting him at the door. She had rattled off some request, and he had mumbled his consent without listening.

Oh. He thought to himself, pausing his video game. Oh, shoot.

Graham let his head hang limp against his chest for a moment before rolling to his opposite side to face his little sister. “Anna, it’s pouring,” he tried to reason with her. Her lip trembled. Her eyes watered. “Anna, come on! Do you really want to walk through all that to Crystal’s house?” he tried to reason with her.

Anna sniffed as she looked out the nearest window for a moment. She turned back and said, “Yes,” shakily. Then, she stuck her lip out more. Graham let his head hang down again, letting out a long breath. After a few seconds, his head snapped back up.

“Fine,” he surrendered. “I’ll find an umbrella.” Anna’s tears vanished instantly and her wobbly lip stopped wobbling long enough to stretch into a smile.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Anna exclaimed, bouncing up and down in excitement as Graham pushed himself up off the floor.

“Whatever, Anna,” he muttered grumpily. He trudged over to the small closet beneath the stairs, opening the door carefully, knowing the stack of stuff waiting for him there. He had been the last to clean it, you see, and Graham is an expert cleaner. Except not. “It’s freaking pouring,” he complained to himself as he sifted through miscellaneous boots waiting for winter without their match and coats no one had used in years. He knew there was an umbrella somewhere in the mess, though. He distinctly remembered tossing an umbrella into the clutter.

As luck would have it, there was an umbrella in the mess of a closet. Just one. It was pink, and covered in little cartoon cats with bows.

“Well, that’s just wonderful,” Graham mutter murderously once he found it, examining the guilty umbrella. “I’m gonna get soaked with a Hello Kitty umbrella. Great.” Had he known what would happen along his walk, he might have took the time to find a better umbrella. One he wouldn’t be embarrassed to remember using on the day that changed his life.

“Come on, Graham!” Anna whined, bouncing impatiently from foot to foot as she waited at the door. “I’m gonna be late, you big slow poke!”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Graham answered, scowling as he trudged toward the door. Anna opened it for him so he could open the umbrella outdoors, and then they both stepped out, into the bubble of dry the umbrella provided.

Now, I don’t know what it is about rain, especially the rain in big cities. It might be the smog that mixes with it, or the hot air from so many Earthlings blathering on about nothing so close together, but the rain does something. Weakens the boundaries. After all, Graham had walked across the boarded up hole plenty of times to let Anna stay on the safer, more stable cement of the sidewalk. It was a great cover, the construction-like set up I had created. No one suspected anything when the hole in the sidewalk never got fixed, because construction never gets finished in cities anyway.

But my point is, the rain changed my illusion. Weakened it. So, when Graham walked over the boarded up hole in the sidewalk, two blocks before Crystal’s house, he fell straight through.

People aren’t supposed to fall through.

I’m supposed to be left alone, with very little to do but keep people from falling through. But not this day. This day, Graham fell through.

This day, I had a job to do:

Get rid of the boy before he stumbled upon too much information.

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