"Risen" Chapter One

Chapter One

         I crumpled the little piece of paper into a ball, admiring the angry veins that were presenting themselves
upon the back of my fists.  If it was just another round of “F‘s,” I wouldn’t have been so upset. But this time was
different.  I’d seen my mother last night in my dreams again, and somehow I felt as though I’d now disappointed her.
         As I hopped into the black Alero my uncle Larry had left me on my sixteenth birthday, I thought about the
dream again. It had been coming to me for five years now, yet somehow it was always the same.  Except for last
night, that is.
         Usually my mother appeared as a beautiful angel, shining like the sun and spreading out her gorgeous
white wings.  A blue halo circled her head to match her laughing cobalt eyes. And she was smiling. Always smiling.
         Except for last night, that is.
         Last night I saw her, but her wings were wrapped around her midriff, her body shaking slightly. Her eyes
were a cloudy gray, tainted by fear and despair.  I called out to her, as I often did in the dream.  Instead of her
typical wave and pleased expression, she looked me dead in the eye and squeaked out one panicked word:
         Run.
         Maybe she was trying to warn me about how my father would react to my grades.  But that wouldn’t
make sense, I already knew what was coming, and I knew it was going to hurt.  No, it must have been something
more serious than that. But what?  What could Mom, the bravest person I knew, possibly want me to run from? 
I didn’t know, and I kind of hoped I wouldn’t find out.
         I took the long way home, passing by the local bakery.  I stopped in to look for Scott, my dad’s
landlord.  I found him pulling a fresh loaf of French bread from the oven, and decided now would be a good time
to delay my thrashing by a few more minutes.
         “Hey, Scott.  Whatcha up to?” I began as I casually leaned on the counter.
         “Making bread.  What’s it to you?” He snapped.
         His hard words and his harder attitude had long since stopped scaring me away.  After all Dad and I
had moved into Scott’s two-roomed basement when Mom died, and five years was more than long enough to
realize that Scott couldn’t really hurt a fly.
         “I’m here to pay Dad’s rent.  I know he forgot it again.” I replied calmly.
         “Hmph.  Spent it all on cheap booze is more like it,” he grumbled.  I handed him all the cash that
was in my wallet: one hundred and forty-three dollars.  Not even half of this month’s rent, not to mention the
countless other bills my father had skipped out on.
         Scott lowered his eyebrows and glared at the bills when he was finished counting them, but slipped
them into his apron pocket without a word.  He knew I could have easily paid him the full price, but Scott only had
one rule: all the money that we paid him had to be legit.  No stealing, no drugs, no nothing.  It had to be earned. 
And Scott knew that one hundred forty-three dollars was just about the most I could make a month at my “legit”
(aka crappy) gardening job at the courthouse.
         “Tell your dad I wanna see him the next time he‘s sober.” With that, Scott turned back to his oven and
went about his work.
         Whenever that’ll be, I thought to myself as I turned stepped out the door.  The chilly November breeze
struck me hard, sending goosebumps all up and down my bare arms. I hugged them around my ratty, worn "AC-DC"
t-shirt.  One shirt a year.  That was all I could afford, especially now that Dad had decided that paying rent was my job.
         I stepped into the last alley of the day; yes, the dark and creepy one.  Apparently a few people had died
here, and countless more mugged or raped.  But this alley had always been good to me.
         Unfortunately, today seemed to wreck all of my “always” statements.
         Two thugs, one a tall black man with a bald head, the other a short white guy with a backwards baseball
cap.  Everyone in that alley knew what was about to happen.  Of course it didn’t really matter, considering that I had
no money left in my wallet.
         Suddenly I heard my mother’s voice screaming in my head:
         Run! RUN Alex!
         But I just stood there, terrified as they approached me.  Their awful smiles and their twisted, hungry facial
expressions told me that this was not going to be a mugging at all.  I shook all over, my body turning into one solid
block of ice.  I couldn’t have ran if my life depended on it.  Which was quite possibly the case.
         The tall man leaned down to the shorter, stockier one, whispering something that made the shorter one
laugh.  I squeezed my eyes shut as they got nearer, balling my hands into fists.  Mom was still screaming in my
head, begging me to run, when another voice, a voice that felt like a black silk, smooth and cunning, seemed to whisper:
         “It looksss like you could ussse a hand.”
         I opened my eyes suddenly to find myself surrounded by… nothing.  As I looked around, I saw nothing but
swirling, pale fog for miles in every direction.  I looked left… fog.  I looked right… fog.  I looked down… God!  There was
even fog beneath my feet!  Maybe I was having some bizarre, out-of-body experience as the two men in the alley were…
         “Did you hear me, boy?” The voice sounded only the slightest bit agitated.  “I believe I made you an offer, and
you have very little time before it expires.  After all the small one seemed to be moving rather swiftly when I spotted you.”
         Out of the dense mist came a figure that looked so out of place, my jaw fell open.  It looked like a man made
of nothing but pure blackness, shifting and squirming, growing and shrinking.  Pulsing, almost.  Two burning-red eyes
gleamed in its face, two ebon rams horns curled around its solid black ears.  It was impossible to tell its mood, given the
lack of facial features.  However the crossed arms seemed to make it look impatient somehow. 
         “Well??” It hissed.  This thing was definitely bad.  Like, evil, bad.  But my mind suddenly flashed back to the
alley, the two men… and somehow this thing could help.  After all it was simply radiating power and was obviously
impatient to use it.
         “I… um… I…” I stuttered.
         “Yessss?” Its hiss this time was one of pure anticipation.  I saw a flaming forked tongue quickly flip out of the
thing’s mouth, and just as quickly retract.  This thing was eager for me to say yes.  Something felt wrong here.  But
something very definitely wrong was going to happen if I waited much longer.
         “I need a hand.” Short and sweet.  Gotta keep it simple when you’re talking to weird shadow things that are
saving you from being raped.
         “Excellent.”  Just as quickly as it had appeared, the accursed form whipped out its clawed hands to my mouth,
painfully forcing my mouth open.  Its body hadn’t moved an inch, its arms had simply grown to a little over six feet in
length.  I could feel the thing’s claws tearing open my lips, my cheek, my tongue.  I could taste blood.  I could hear my
pained screams.  The thing tensed up, like a snake coiling to strike.  And, with one swift movement, its entire body shot
headfirst down past my gaping, bleeding lips, over my stinging tongue, and down into my throat.  I gagged and twisted about,
but the thing was already inside me.  I could feel it moving around, pressing here, jabbing there.
         But the worst was yet to come.
         I heard a tremendous ringing in my ears, and I had a sudden sensation like something was wrapping itself around
my spine and stabbing razor-sharp points into the surrounding tissue.  I began violently throwing up blood, crying and
screaming and begging for it to stop. 
         Ironically, it didn’t stop.  I jerked straight up as a searing pain set in at my shoulder blades.  I could hear the visceral
sound of skin tearing apart, and could feel something, two somethings, pushing through the holes.  After what seemed like an
eternity, a popping noise signaled that the things were through, and I collapsed.  My vague thought at how I could collapse with
the lack of ground was quickly swept aside when a burning sensation swept from my left shoulder down my side, and grew down
to my forearm.  This time I could smell the skin charring as black tribal-looking tattoos appeared all down my arm and side.
         But it was finally over.  Just as the dark folds of sleep surrounded me I heard but one word, uttered in a black-silk voice:
                Finally.