PROLOGUE: Unveil

"A DROWNING MAN
WILL CLUTCH AT A STRAW."

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EIGHTEEN MONTHS AGO

I think I'm dying.

Just watching this, I think I'm dying.

I stood in the crowd and watched as he got up and ran into the house on fire. My eyes dared to shed a tear, and I couldn't help but to feel all the guilt overwhelm me. It took all the power in my will not to go after him.

"He doesn't deserve this. No one does," I say, tearing up in the most humiliating way.

"Hush, Bella. It must be done," my brother said, finality firm within his voice.

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9 MINUTES EARLIER

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It was the end of the world.

Impounded, in a state of solitude, with a book framed within his hands, stood a towering, meager, young man in the obscurest corner of the library. With smooth, unblemished skin battered and bruised, his lips curved up in a smile as his astounding blue eyes, behind bifocals, stalked each electrifying sentence to its end. His dark mop of unkempt, curly hair sprang up-and-down on his head as he chuckled at the character's demise. Upon the cover, marked in crimson red, the words "Confessions of a Murder Suspect" by James Patterson was all that indicated what he was reading. Dressed from head-to-toe in black, this boy remained unaware of what was happening in the stratosphere as this book held him prisoner, much like how the character felt as she was thrown in jail for her parents' murder.

His smile widened the farther he read, never once fading with all that was said in the story. What he was doing wasn't the normal type of thing you'd find a teenager of his age doing on a Saturday afternoon. Normal teenagers would be out looking for some place to roll around in the mud. But of course, he was never normal, and he was always chastised for being different. And though what had been done to him before was not forgiven, he just had to take a break. He wasn't always like this.

But none of that is the point.

The point is that though it was the end of the world, he wasn't ready. He'd rather to stand for hours on end in the library reading fiction to his content. He thought he had better things to do with his dejected life, which by any means did not include dying.

An encore of screeching tires, squawking women and children, cacophonous sirens, preposterous alarm systems, and the sound of crackling wood could be heard. He had found it quite peculiar that the end had come so soon, because as I said before, he wasn't ready to die - at least not until after he finished the book.

Amongst all the chaos, there was also the distinctive sound of a single weeping baby, wallowing in the wavering glimmers of death. This struck a nerve in him. A nerve from his past.

Slowly, his sneer became bleached, no longer enough to keep the pain of past events away. Shrieks of trepidation was all that he could hear now, only reminding him of what he had been through three years ago when he had just started high school.

He had many secrets then. He was also more innocent. He had just left Junior High however, and was naïve. He didn't think for one moment that those secrets would catch up with him to trample the life out of him.

The seniors, at the time, did not take a liking to what he had done. Neither did the other freshmen, sophomores nor the juniors. They had referred to it as infidelity which caused the very Throne of God to shake.

They were just believable rumors.

And so, when the word of his enrollment at Roosevelt High had spread like wildfire, they conspired to make him regret everything. Of course, their actions were uncalled for and only caused unnecessary mental mutilation to Nathan, which would only turn out to hurt them in the end.

On a countless number of occasions, Nathan was ganged up on and dragged into dark alleys where they beat him to a pulp with baseball bats and pieces of stray metal. On one particular night, when Nathan was leaving the school library and they caught a whiff of his presence, they gave him two black eyes. His optic nerve was damaged by the pressure and he was admitted to a hospital for three weeks. A blot clot had developed. He could've lost his sight. It was not until after those three weeks that he was instructed to wear glasses.

Something he had to do for the rest of his life.

At another point in time, he was nearly killed when a captor had pulled a knife on him and carved a blemishing mark around his lower torso. That mark was still there till this very day, and only reminded him of what he had done, or, as his oppressors would have it, what they thought he had done.

They did not hurt him simply because they enjoyed it. They only thought they had probable cause.

He watched his mother die right before his eyes, and he enjoyed it.

But more on that later.

Right now, it was the end of the world; and it was also, in this moment, when a third pair of eyes had started to watch him, and study him.

Now, he had his face scrunched up in irritation as he read the final pages of the novel. It was not because the revelations at the end of story were quite neck-wringing and jaw-dropping, but mostly because the atmosphere was no longer suitable for quiet reading. He had always derided persons who unsettled him while he read. He would always hurl a long train of curse words to his content if it became unendurable, and whoever it is that had committed the conniving deeds would simply want to crawl up in a hole and die.

He had not moved an inch since the end of the world went underway. And he did not intend to until he turned to the last page of the novel. Death could wait. He was pretty sure she could, as such petty people, he thought, were not worth his time.

He then turned the page in the book, sighing contently with the conclusion to the story. It was the last page in the novel - a page every bibliophile dreads no matter the story. Still, the blaring uproars of civilians polluted the atmosphere, and he felt a pang of guilt. He fidgeted with the book framed within his palms. Shifting his weight from foot to foot, he adjusted his glasses and wiped away a drop of sweat that dared to run down his face. He was getting antsy - queasy. He was nervous and no longer able to finish the book.

Abruptly, he slammed the book shut and put it back on the shelf, adjusted his glasses once again and wiped a hand through the mop of tousled hair on his head. He had read most of the book while on his two feet. He does that sometimes. But he couldn't shake the feeling of anxiety that grew in him. He simply had to build once more a wall that hid the actuality of his state of mind.

Heavily, he puffed a breath of air and sighed, "OK," he said. He started to walk, adjusting the jacket he had on. It was still winter and it was still quite cold. He started to make his way out of the library paying his respects the volunteer librarians that had watched him while he read. Secretly, they had a crush on him, but that's, another story.

It was still the end of the world, mind you.

He stepped onto the pavement of the library parking lot. He looked up. "Time to die," he said stepping off feeling anew, finally shaking the feeling of nerviness that haunted him.

Impulsively disrupting his train of thought, a fire truck sped past him as he stepped onto the sidewalk, driving with such speed that he could die from pure shock alone. It was then when he looked up that he saw the treacherous transfigured flames that revolutionized what he recognized to be his house.

Demoralizingly yet congenitally mutated, the unfeeling monster eradicated everything. It was then that he realized that it wasn't the end of the world. It was just a fire - a fire on his house!

The pain he felt as he laid eyes upon the house was deeper than blood. It was a house that was conveniently located two buildings down across from the library. He simply had to cross the street and walk past two homes to get to his own. But that reality was now one of the past.

He stood there unfazed for just a moment as he recalled the tangible memories that could never be replaced. Those memories were the only thing that kept him going, but now, they're simply gone.

He had then thought about the events of that day for just an instant.

At the end of the world, shouldn't there be four horsemen? Should there not be trumpets proclaiming the arrival of the Almighty One? Carcasses rising from their mausoleums? Raptured people? And fire and brimstone bathing the sins of the earth from the skies?

'Then where were those signs if it was the end?' He said to himself. He had found it quite strange.

How could he have been so cheeky, testing his fate by disregarding death and remaining so serene while doing so? Had he expected to get away with it?

Whatever it was, his veins were known to flow with one hundred percent unadulterated acrimony, but never had he once in his life dared to cheat death. It was ridiculous and was perhaps, way out of line.

The young boy stood there watching his house burn. It was all that he could do.

He was deep in thought, almost forgetting that his house was on fire. Then something struck in him. It could have been another nerve and it could've been his inner demons finally taking over but he didn't know when it had happened. All he knew was that he found himself crossing the street without even caring if he was hit by a speeding train. (What are the odds of that happening in the 21st century?).

He pushed past the multitude that had gathered with their smartphones, slipping under the barricade that the police had formed and walking to the front of the house.

Before you knew it, he came to a halt in front of the raging conflagration of flames.

It was not surprising that no one tried to stop him. Not only was he known to be a very conceding young man to his own itinerary, but he was known to be not known at all. He was an insignificant human being that has nor wants respect from anybody. No one cared about him. And he cared about no one, or so he thought.

He stood transfixed watching hell betray the earth. All he could see were the flickering flames from the black rainbow gyrating in the dance of death. The smoke and heat that were exuded from the flames purged the surface of the house as the commander and chief does his people, shredding the walls like pages from our secret souls, staining the window panes with dark marks as trump cards mark history, and ripping the doors off of their hinges like extraditions of outsiders. He could hear the explosions and the crackling sound of the wood of his home until it made him deaf. As sinister as it may have been, his lungs scoffed at the combusting environ. He breathed as if he were a man on fire. All the sounds around him were drowned out by the adrenaline that rushed through his heart, ensnaring his soul in the suffering that awaits him.

His heart yearned in vainness for the images that blinded him to herald showers from the heavens to could extinguish his throbbing discomfort.

The flames spread across the yard and into the yards of the neighbors. He fell down to his knees. He started to cry, with sore blue eyes. Everything crashed down on him. Dust and smoke clung to his throat. He wriggled. He blubbered. He bawled.

He swallowed whatever moisture it is that was left in his mouth. He endeavored to quench his heart's thirst.

He then realized after what had seemed to be a millennia, that he had left his mother with whom was not well with his brother with whom was just a boy in that house.

Like an addict begging for clemency from the heavens, he threw his head up and howled at the top of his voice - howled because screaming wasn't enough.

Still, no one noticed.

Strutting with tears the tainted rosette of his skin, he looked upon the flaming abyss, and he died.

He got up and howled again - louder than before. His tears turned to blood. His blood turned to fear.

It was clear that they had been roasted alive. Nathan felt penurious and not unconquerable. Nathan felt jacked and not fluked. Nathan felt the need to exterminate, eradicate and annihilate anyone who crossed him; and Nathan swore on his deathbed that whatever has happened to him in the past three years will be paid for, or God rest his soul in this house on fire; for this is the day Nathan lost himself, in the unveiling hour of his fate and to the wishes of the trickster's command.

I think I'm dying.

Just watching this, I think I'm dying.

I stood in the crowd and watched as he got up and ran into the house on fire. My eyes dared to shed a tear, and I couldn't help but to feel all the guilt overwhelm me. It took all the power in my will not to go after him.

"He doesn't deserve this. No one does," I say, tearing up in the most humiliating way.

"Hush, Bella. It must be done," my brother said, finality firm within his voice.

. . .

I dedicate this chapter to my friend @classicoverthinker with whom I recently met. I have taken the oppurtunity at reading his poems from his collection "Nicotine", and I must say they are very entertaining! Check it out! Also check out his Wattpad Block Party post on August 9 and mine on August 16. Thanks!

Dear Readers: I hope you enjoyed today's bit! The story is finally here guys!!! I hope you will stick with me over the chapters to come. I am glad you're here.

Remember, healthy votes and comments are appreciated! :) Frequent voters and commenters get dedications!! ☆☆

Chapter One will be posted within the week. See you then! :)

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Copyright © 2017 Nicaro C. Coke
All Rights Reserved.

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