Christian, Brotherhood of Life part 2

Christian and the Brotherhood of Life
         Chapter Two

Most people would consider being sent to sit in a car in a parking lot in the middle of summer to be a form punishment, and in fact, that’s what it was meant to be. But for Christian Masters, it seemed more like a minor blessing. It may be hot, but at least it would be quiet, and he wouldn’t have to deal with his little sister or any of those other stupid little girls anymore. There wasn’t much of a chance of him getting in to any more trouble if he just sat in the car for the rest of the day. That was good.
         As Christian walked through the boys shower room, he stopped to pull on his dark colored t-shirt. Since he hadn’t put any more than his feet in the pool the entire time he had been out there, he didn’t even need to bother drying off. This was good, because he had forgotten to grab a towel on his way by the rack earlier and he really feel like taking the chance of going back out there again.
         The young boy hadn’t even bothered to grab his shoes either, so he just walked out to the parking lot as barefoot as he pleased. The pavement in the parking lot was much hotter than the lighter colored ground around the pool, so he planned on being a leisurely stroll ended up being a quick-stepped dash out to the car.
         The fence around the pool was old and rickety, so it was easy to see out into the parking lot from the inside. Christian knew that his mother would be watching him to make sure he went straight out there, and he had wanted to make her watch him walk out there as slow and defiantly as he could. But the searing hot asphalt had put a swift end to those plans.
         Once again, it seemed like he couldn’t do anything the way he wanted to. Christian began to imagine that whoever was in charge of dishing out good luck didn’t know he existed, or worse, did know he existed and had just decided not to give him any.          Most time it seemed like he ended up doing exactly what he didn’t want to, regardless of how he felt about it. Either way, he finally made it out to the old brown car with a blue passenger side back door that his family called their own.
         Christian whined loudly when he tried to open the blue door, only to find it locked. There wouldn’t be any sense in trying to go get the keys. At this point, he would probably just end up getting in even more trouble. Instead, he walked around to the driver’s side of the car where his mother had left her window partially rolled down.
         He wriggled his arm in as far as he thought he could, and for a few seconds, Christian thought he had gotten it stuck. Fortunately, he managed to reach the lock with the very tips of his index and middle finger and pull it up. None too soon, either, as his feet were starting to get terrible sore from standing in the same spot on the hot ground for so long. He mumbled a little curse to himself under his breath for having forgotten to grab his shoes when he had the chance.
         His pasty little arm was left with a bright red mark across it as he tugged it free of the window, but he knew it would fade away soon enough. Better to put up with a sore arm then to put up with backtracking to ask Sheryl for the keys. She probably knew it was locked and intentionally failed to mention that important little piece of information. Christian was glad to be able to get his feet off the hot ground and finally get into the car.
         Being in the car wasn’t much better than being out of it in the end. The air was humid, stuffy and smelled like the old French fries that were hiding under the seats somewhere, and the hot leather seats instantly made his back break into a gross sweat. All in all though, he still thought it was better to be here than back out there.
         After managing to get all the windows rolled down, he climbed into the back seat and laid down across it in a manner when the front passenger’s seat blocked the sunlight from getting on his face. His head was propped on the door just enough so that he was able to look out the window on the opposite side of the car. That way he would be able to see when his mother and sister headed his was after the pool party finally finished.
Christian had just gotten comfortable when something in the corner of his eye caught his attention. There was something peculiar on the roof of the convenience store across the street from the pool. Christian thought the heat was playing tricks on him, but he was sure that it was a person standing up there, dressed in all black except for what appeared to be some sort of bright white mask. Christian sat up to get a better look, but when he looked again the mysterious figure was gone, vanished into thin air as if it had never been there.          
         Probably hadn’t have been, Christian figured. The most logical explanation was that being out in the sun so long had his mind playing tricks on him. With his curiosity at last put to rest, he laid his head back down against the door and closed his eyes.
         It was hot. It was miserable. But it was quiet.


Christian had barely fallen asleep when he was abruptly awoken by the sound of the car door opening. He barely had time to move his head out of the way before a pair of sneakers came flying towards him. It was the pair he had left by the pool earlier. His mother wasn’t very pleased she had had to carry them for him since he hadn’t remembered to get them himself. Not that she had given him a chance to, and not that he cared.
         He quickly pulled his feet towards his body and sat up and his mother tossed in the large, open-topped bag stuffed with their wet towels, bottles of lotion and various other pool articles. Sheryl tossed it down rather vehemently, causing it to topple over and spill its contents onto the floor of the car.
         “Start picking all that up,” she barked angrily as she slammed the door shut.
         She opened the front door and climbed into the driver’s seat while Christian’s sister took the front passenger seat. That was the usual seating arrangement for their family unless their father was going somewhere with them, whereas Jasmine was forced to relinquish her seat up front and sit in the back with her older brother.
         Christian didn’t really mind too much though. With things this way, he ended up getting the whole back seat to himself, unless of course there had to take something with them, like a sack of stuff for the pool.
         Sheryl was twisting around in her seat in front of Christian as he tried to collect the things that had fallen on the floor. She jostled her chair around hard enough to manage to hit him in the head with it more than once. Christian imagined it was done more purposefully than accidentally, but he didn’t dare say anything.
         After a second, she finally blurted out, “Where are my-”
         Christian cut her off midsentence when he dangled the car keys by her head. He had dug them out of the bag while putting all the things back in it since he knew she would be looking for them. It would’ve just been one more thing to blame on him if he hadn’t found them for her he thought. He didn’t need to take the blame for any more thing then he already had.
         A few minutes later, and with his mother muttering on and on about how disrespectful he had been that morning, they were well on their way down the road. Other than catching a word of what his mother was saying here or there, it was actually a pretty silent trip for the most part. Christian was actually starting to think he might make it home and would be able to shut himself up in his room without having to hear about anything, but those faint dreams were shattered the second his mother opened her mouth.
         “What were you thinking back there,” she said with a voice similar to a cawing old crow, “Embarrassing me and your sister in front of everyone like that. Haven’t we raised you better?!”
         Christian thought it was Jasmine’s raising that should be in question, not his, but said nothing.
         “I’m just so…appalled…that you would say something like that to little Anna-Belle,” his mother went on, “Even for you, that was just…I won’t be able to show my face around anyone else for days because of this! I just hope you know how much trouble you’re going to be in when your father gets home this evening!”
         And there it was. The forever present and often used ‘when your father gets home’ threat. If it wasn’t bad enough that Christian’s mother believed everything his sister Jasmine told her, no matter how churched up the story may be, it was worse that his father believed everything his mother said much in the same way.
         Christian could remember one time in particular when he had stepped on one of his sister’s favorite dolls, even though it was her fault that she had left it out in the hallway. What started out as a simple accident turned into Jasmine telling their mother that he threw the doll on the floor and stepped on it on purpose, and by the time his father made it home from work, the story had evolved so far that his father was told he stormed into his sister’s room in a rage and proceeded to wreak havoc on anything and everything in his wake.
         After meeting the disciplinary end of his father’s leather belt, Christian had ended up spending the remainder of the day in his room without dinner. The without dinner part he considered punishment, but he never saw being sent to his room as such. That was the only place he ever seemed to be able to get away from anything. Maybe it was only because no one wanted to put forth any effort to actually go see him in his room, but that was just fine with him.
         Somewhere amid daydreaming about what he was going to do once he got home, he managed to make out his mother still going on about everything.
         “Everyone knows she has a retention problem.”
         “Yea, a calorie retention problem.” Christian thought it, but he didn’t say it.
         “You’re so mean, Chris,” his sister had turned almost all the way around in her seat so she could join her mother in chiding Christian. She went on insultingly, “You’re just a big, stupid jerk! No one likes you. You’re never ganna have any friends!”
         Ah, if only he had said something like that to her in front of their mother, she would probably have his head for it. Jasmine, on the other hand, could probably kill him in his sleep and get away with it. To add insult to injury, Christian’s mother would end up being mad at him for getting the sheets bloody. Any sense of justice was lost on his cause.
         Christian sighed quietly and sunk into the seat as far as he could go. He wished he could disappear into it. At this rate, it was going to be a long ride home. Once again, he wondered just what he had done to end up like this. How had he managed to make fate so mad at him?
         Christian turned his head and looked out the window and quietly watched as the sun set over the tree line in the distance. He always liked the way the sky turned bright pink just before the dark of night set in. It was like the day’s little way of saying goodnight. He appreciated simple little things like that far more than anyone knew.
         The day was slowly coming to an end. In a few more hours, he would be in bed, and it would be over at last. Only for a new day to start though, and with it, a whole new slough of problems. Someday, somehow, he was going to find a way to change the way things were. He had no idea how he was going to do it, though.
         Little did he know, before he saw the sun again, his life would be changed in ways no one could hope to ever make him believe. He only thought things were hard now. He only thought life was unfair. Soon, he would realize that the life he led now was a simple one. Soon, he would wish for days as peaceful as this. But he was no way of knowing what fate had in store for him.
         He closed his dark green eyes and sighed again. The best thing to do now was just to stay quiet and hope everyone would get tired of fussing at him. It wouldn’t happen, and he knew it, but nothing could stop him from hope. Hope was all he had to hand on to anymore.


A pair of heavy leathers boots hit the ground with a thud. Above them stood a tall Native American with a large, muscular body. His jet-black hair was wound into a tight braid that hung down past his broad shoulders. A few stray strands of hair fell over his square-jawed face. The muscular figure linked his large fingers together and cracked his knuckles as he looked around. His dark brown eyes took in every detail of the surrounding area.          
         It hadn’t been long since the sun had gone down. The streetlights had only just begun to start coming on, but even they didn’t offer much illumination. Not that there was much to see. The city pool had closed several hours ago and the empty parking lot was eerily quiet.
         Once he was content that there really was nothing there to be seen, the large man put his big hands on his hips and asked in a deep, meaningful voice, “This is the right place, right, Saki?”          A much smaller, feminine figure stepped into the shadowy area that the flickering streetlight above was casting. She strode up beside him and stopped, crossing her slender arms across her chest. She carried herself in a manner that made her seem more imposing than the man beside her, even though the top of her head was a few inches lower than his shoulders.
         “It’s the right place all right,” his small partner replied in a business like tone as she looked around the empty parking. The silhouette of her short, layered hair swayed gently as she turned her head from one side to the other. She looked up at him and made sure to catch his attention before saying, “What have I told you about calling me that? My name is Sakura. Not Saki.”          
         “Aw, c’mon,” the bug man whined like a young child being scolded by an older sister. “It’s just a nickname. Do I have to call ya Sakura? It just sounds so…foreign. Saki sounds a lot better, if you ask me.”
         “I didn’t ask you, Lodon.” She spoke in a matter-of-fact way that made him rub the back of his neck nervously. She didn’t seem like the kind of person you wanted to offend over a matter as small as a name.
         Lodon shrugged his wide shoulders under a heavy denim jacket before kneeling down and extending his right arm. He stretched out his long fingers and put them on the dark pavement at the base of their feet. It was still warm even though the sun had already gone down long ago. It would more than likely be warm for a long while yet.
         After a moment of silence, the young woman stepped over to Lodon and simply said, “Well?”
         “Yea, he was here,” Lodon answered as he picked himself back up. He ran his thumb and index finger down the sides of his chin and asked in a voice that was more than a whisper, “Smells like death here. Think we’ll be in time, Sakura?”
         “We have to be,” she replied.
         Her big companion grunted as if her answered hadn’t been satisfactory enough for him.
         “C’mon, Lodon,” Sakura said, drawing Lodon out of a deep thought. “Master Percival said it was imperative that we find him tonight. He made it perfectly clear that we have to make sure we get to him before anyone else does”
         “Yea,” Lodon answered quietly.
         The two strange individuals turned away from the public building and began to walk away slowly. A large yellow moving van can down the street behind them with a whoosh. It was gone as soon as it had appeared, leaving behind a parking lot as empty and quiet as a graveyard. The two were gone. Only a lone leave tumbled across the ground in the wake of the van that had passed by.