Damage -- A KS Inspired Novel (Updated 16/07/15)

[Xilirite]

Sooooo before we start, there's a little bit of history behind this. A year ago I started working on a fan fiction titled Word of Mouth. It was posted to the forums and it's possible one or two of you remember it. The story was very loosely tied to Katawa Shoujo, taking place in the same school but otherwise focusing on a completely new cast of characters. A few people recommended I move the story to a standalone format, but I remained on the fence about that until I had an opportunity to write for marks in school. I decided that was all the push I needed to make the switch, and Word of Mouth was canned in favor of Damage. The title change was due to a focus change as the scope became more broad, focusing on a larger group of four main characters rather than two main characters and two supporting characters.

I don't know how much you guys will appreciate a story simply inspired by Katawa Shoujo, even if very, very heavily so, but I hope you enjoy it! I'll be staggering the chapters, but I've already written at least half of the final product. For now, here's the prologue.


Designation


“Can somebody explain to me how we all managed to get to the drinking part of the party before we even confirmed our driver actually had his license?”

I ask the question not expecting anybody to answer. I have the keys to the car in my hand, and nobody to give it to, despite the wealth of options available to me.

“Hey, man, it's not our fault he didn't bother to tell anybody.” Derek says, leaning against a wall for support. He was the one who decided on Phil being our designated driver when he proposed we have this get together, but he never actually told Phil that.

“That wasn't my fault,” counters Phil, “it was you guys not waiting for me to show up before getting completely hammered.” Derek had claimed he was going to tell Phil about his plans once he got to the house, but I think he just forgot. “Maybe if you guys had done some planning-”

“Hey, don't lump me and the others in with this ass, he didn't even let us offer to help set this up!” interjects Steven, my best friend. The two of us have been friends since we were too young to have trouble making them, and the only reason I actually went along with Derek's plan was because Steven said he'd handle any problems that arose. He turns to me. “Tell 'em, Daniel.”

I sigh. I'm the only one who didn't get drunk, mostly because I'm also the only one who didn't have any money to help pay for it. I tried to convince Derek to view it as paying me back for all the money he never gave back, but he was far too stubborn to accept that excuse, and forbade me from drinking 'his' beer. In truth, it was Steven's brother, John, who bought the beer, but because it was Derek who told him to buy it, he says it belongs to him. Now, the accomplishment of being the only person who can think straight has made me the temporary ringleader.

“Why doesn't John just drive us?” asks Amy, Steven's new friend, in a sing-song and slurred manner. He didn't explicitly say she was his girlfriend, but they've been inseparable since they 'met,' which was an event that sounded like both parties were reading off a script, so we made the connection. He's a bit too insecure to really tell us what the deal is with her, and I've known him long enough to know why he's been staging this friendship before they officially get together – he wants to make sure the three of us are fine with a fifth member of the group. Not that he needs to, but he's always cared way too much about our feelings.

John was in his 20s – I forget exactly how old, but young enough that he's willing to buy us beer for a party. “Just because I'm the oldest doesn't mean that I don't get drunk as easily,” he says then. “It's your fault we're in this mess.”

Amy groans then, and Steven has to grab her to stop her from falling right over. She was so drunk, she made everyone else look sharp-witted and well-balanced. “Then...” she stops for an excessively long time. “Then why not Daniel?”

“I don't have a license, Amy.” I reply, exasperated. She asked the same question earlier too, and I have a feeling I know her next question too. “And no, neither does Phil, which is why we're having this problem.”

Phil had been busy crunching on his studies. He was the academic of the group, and he always has important work of some kind to do. We threw the party on his behalf, to celebrate him winning the school's science fair. He kept trying to tell us that the important part that we needed to celebrate was the science fair after this one, but Derek had replied “That just means we get to throw two parties then!” We're convinced he's going to win, not because he's our friend, but because he's scary smart, even if he doesn't use those smarts on anything that isn't education – maybe if he had, we wouldn't be in this situation, but Derek is the one who's really to blame here. He'd had just as much to drink as the others once he revealed he had no license, and apparently he gets mad when he's drunk.

John steps forward then, cutting off the reply Amy was about to throw at me. “I think that if Daniel isn't gonna drive, then I'll have to do it.” He looks at me. “Dan?”

I look down at the keys. I don't have any idea how to drive, but I'm also sober. John has had his license for half a dozen years (I think?), and he's less drunk than the rest of us, but less drunk is still drunk.

“Can we just, like, go home? I'm gonna have such a huge fucking hangover because of this shit!” Phil spits out the words, and I notice he's since slid down the wall and is now sitting with his knees in the air. “I have work to do, I'll never get it done now...” his head lolls around a bit, then he manages to get it to sit still in time to exclaim “Fuck!”

He's definitely out of the question – he's second only to Amy in drunkenness. Derek can handle his liquor, but he had so much of it that barely matters. And Steven failed the last time he tried to get his license, so I don't trust him at the wheel at all.

I also don't trust myself at the wheel.

With that thought, I hand the keys out. “Take 'em, bring us home.”

John obliges, grabbing the keys and then opening the door that we've been crowding around. The Christmas lights on the houses outside are the only things illuminating this part of the street. We're only a few days away from the holiday, but most of my friends don't celebrate. Steven does, which is just another one of things we have in common, so we're eager to go home and enjoy it.

As we load into the car, I grab shotgun. Phil reaches the door just as I lower myself into the seat. “Hey, screw you, I got here first, I get choice of seat!”

I look up at him, smile a bit, and reply “You're the reason our driver's drunk, you don't get any special privileges.”

He's about to reply when Steven grabs him by the shoulder and gently pulls him into the car. Our entire circle of friends is made of people who Steven became friends with and then introduced to each other, and he's always the one to keep everyone cool when tensions start to flare between us, specifically between Derek and Phil.

The two are completely incompatible, but Steven claims it’s not possible for people to be destined enemies. Everything Derek says annoys Phil, everything Phil says is backwards to Derek. I'm not going to mince words here, Derek is a blockhead, but he's fun to hang around with and he's got a weird sort of code that he upholds with his friends. He might screw with you and piss you off and everything else, but he won't let anybody else do it to you. Phil, on the other hand, is a damn genius, but he's a bit of a social outcast. He's not the local weirdo or anything, but he also doesn't really hang out with the 'cool kids,' you know? Derek doesn't like it when he doesn't participate in conversations or when he doesn't come to every social outing, and Phil doesn't like it when Derek opens his mouth to do anything but breathe. If Steven wasn't there to stand between them, one of them would probably be lying dead in a ditch.

As everyone loads into the car and say our goodbyes to Derek, I start to feel anxious. Is John drunker than he looks? Is he actually better at holding his drink, or is he just better at looking like it?

Until I see the streetlamps passing over the car, I'm on the edge of my seat. In the light, we can see if anything's coming at us, and the roads are pretty empty at this time of night.

In the backseat, things are much quieter than I expected. I can see Amy getting a bit touchy-feely with Steven in the backseat. Good for her – maybe he'll drop the charade sooner this way. Phil's fallen asleep, mercifully. With his temper out of the picture, the ride home might even be kind of pleasant.

Then the car turns.

I sit up in my chair. We aren't supposed to turn here – this street is dark. We should have stuck to the main road. “Hey, John, why are we going this way?”

He scoffs, then replies “Everyone knows this way leads to your side of the town faster.”

Everyone isn't an understatement. This road is more crowded too. Not by much, but noticeably so. I'm on the edge of my seat again.

“Isn't there a safer way home?”

He shoots me a look. “You trusted me with the driving, so just let me do the driving, kid.” He turns his eyes back to the road at the same time we leave the housing and enter a small park at the same time our road merges with another road.

Another road. With another car. John isn't looking at the other road.

I shout out, but by then he's noticed it too. He swerves out of the way, barely avoiding the other car, but shooting us off the road. He tries to regain control, but then the car flips over. My leg is pinned under something, and blinding pain shoots up through it and up my spine. The car slams into the ground, and I hit the side of my face on the windshield.

And everything goes black.


We Interrupt this Broadcast


I don't know how long it's been since the crash, all I know is I'm screaming

The first thing I notice is the pain. Pain in my legs, my arms, my chest, my face. Blinding pain, excruciating pain. That's why I start screaming.

Then I open my eyes, and one of them won't listen.

Everything on the left is gone. Not black, or dark, but just gone. I'm vaguely aware that there are bandages covering it, but the word doesn't mean anything to me anymore. That's why I keep screaming.

Then I try to move my arms, and only my right arm responds. I feel my left shoulder move, and the pain gets even worse when I do that. But there's nothing else.

There's no arm

Then there's a bunch of noise, some rustling around, and then a sharp pain in my right arm, and the pain is gone. I feel sleepy. What was I even screaming about? Probably nothing at all.

Then I'm asleep


Tidings


It's another week before I'm really awake again. Sometimes I woke up for a bit, but it never lasted long. But now they've stopped pumping me full of sedative, so I guess they need me to be awake.

When I wake up, I take a minute to really assess what happened. My head is still fuzzy, but I remember the car crash. I remember hurting my leg, I remember hitting my head, but I don't remember anything happening to my arm. But here I am, a dull ache in my leg, half of my head covered in bandages, and an entire arm missing.

I know I should be reacting. I should be angry, or crying, but I feel strangely calm. Maybe the drugs are still in my system.

I'm missing an arm.

The thought goes through my head for a while, looking for something to latch onto so I can maybe realize what it means, but it fails, and eventually it goes away.

After a few minutes, the door to my room opens. I try to sit upright, but a lance of pain puts a stop to that plan. Instead, I just lie there, and wait for the visitor to come closer. Eventually, the face of an older man, balding and with a grey mustache, looms over mine. “Daniel, correct?”

I open my mouth, make a croaking sound, then try again. This time, I manage to squeak out a confirmation. I hear a familiar voice ask the doctor something quietly, and he responds in turn. I try to place the voice for a moment, ultimately landing on my mother. So my parents are in the room too.

“Well, Daniel, the good news is you're alive. The bad news-”

“Arm,” I say, softly. “Arm is gone. Right?” The more I talk, the easier it becomes.

The doctor smiles sadly. “Yes, unfortunately, your left arm was severed above the elbow during the crash. There's more.”

I clear my throat, with difficulty, and then finish for him. “My leg still hurts, but nothing else.” I leave the rest up to him – it's too painful to talk for too long.

“Your right leg has been damaged, and we believe it to be irreparable. You can still move it, but you will lose the ability to walk on it properly.”

I take a deep breath. Lose the ability to walk? Again, I think about how mild my reaction is. There should be more than this – tears, or objection, or questioning, or something. Not just... acceptance.

“There's more.” He pauses, waiting for me to complete the sentence for him, but this time I don't know what else happened. I look down at my arm, my legs, my chest, everything is still there. Then I remember the bandages on my head.

Once he realizes I'm not going to speak in his stead, he clears his throat, then continues. “You hit the side of your head in the crash, but luckily there was no brain damage and your skull is intact, but...”

“What's the bandage for?” I ask quietly, scared that I already know the answer. What else is under those bandages that could be the problem?

“You've lost your left eye.”

Finally, the weight of what's happened hits me. I've lost my arm, I'll never walk normally again, and I only have one eye. Tears well up in the eye I still have left, and I whisper “All gone?”

That's when I see my father. He puts a hand on my shoulder, tears in his eyes too. “Daniel, I'm so sorry.”

He continues talking, but I filter him out as I think about what life will be like from now on. I'll never do anything that requires balance, or any significant amount of movement or speed. I'll never do anything that takes more than one hand to do effectively. I'll never do anything that requires depth perception, attention to detail. The amount of doors that are suddenly closing in front of me is staggering.

Nothing will be the same. Everything is going to be different. Making breakfast, getting dressed, going up stairs, all the tiny mundane things I do every day. I have to do them all differently, approach all of them from a new direction. I have to approach my whole life from a new direction now.

As my father removes his hand from my shoulder, I snap back to reality. I turn my head to the doctor. I'm suddenly scared to ask the question on my mind. If this is the state I'm in...

“The others...” I can't finish the sentence. There wasn't any noise in the room, but the second the words are out of my mouth, it gets quieter regardless.

For a long moment, nobody says anything. Then the doctor opens his mouth, inhales, closes his mouth, and then opens it again. “Daniel, I'm sorry,” he says, quietly. “You're the only survivor.”

Nothing. Nothing happens in my head, because that's not possible.

The words are echoing in my head, time is slowing down around me, but still nothing happens. They can't die. It isn't possible, not if I survived.

“Daniel.” I hear my mother say, but by then I'm speaking, to thin air. I'm telling the world that it isn't possible, that Phil was going to win the science fair, Steven was going to celebrate Christmas with his family, with John, with his new girlfriend Amy, and we were all going to have another party for Phil and then we'd have another one, and then another one, we'd party just because we're alive, just because we can stand together on both feet, see each other with both eyes, embrace each other with both arms, and we'd be little kids playing make believe in the woods for another dozen years, we'd be old men reminiscing about the good times, we'd be together until the end.

The end. This is the end. Their lives are over, my life is over, nothing will be the same, everything is over.

The tears start flowing now, and I can't hear what the people around me are saying. All I hear is the jingle of the keys as I hand them to John, not knowing that I'd see the car before he did. Everyone is gone, and they'd all still be here if it wasn't for me.

Lifetimes pass, and eventually I stop crying. I think people are talking to me, or about me, but I don't know, I don't care. They'll leave one day, and then I'll be alone, and then everything will be better.
I feel myself drifting off to sleep, and give in, hoping that maybe I'll wake up and everything will be back to the way it was before.


Daniel II


It's been about a month since that day. The doctors kept me here at the hospital to see if my leg would heal, but it hasn't. Recently, they've been talking about something else with my parents, but they haven't let me in on what it is.
After that first day, when I woke up, I never cried. I don't know if I'm completely spent or if I've just accepted what had happened, but my eye has been dry since then.

Apparently, this is the day where I'll get released. Maybe I should be excited. I don't know. I've stopped caring. Whenever I try to think of what I'll do when I leave, I get nothing. Anything I do think of involves Steven, or Phil. Sometimes I think about possibly hanging out with Derek, but with no Steven there to link us, I can't think of a reason why. There weren't any classes I was particularly interested in, and I can't exactly join a sports team in my current state.

But it's not my current state. This is just me now. Permanently broken. A defective product.

I didn't know what to do while I was in the hospital. I tried to read, but I couldn't. I'd flip through different channels on the TV, but nothing interested me. I'd just choose a channel and let it wash over me, waiting for the day to end. I'd mark the time by the arrival of meals, waking up to get my first meal and going to sleep after eating my third. If I didn't do that, days would've probably stopped existing, replaced by an empty void of time passing. At least I can count the days. I've lost track of the agonizingly long seconds spent in this bed.

Earlier today I'd turned on the TV and went to some news channel, trying to stay linked to what's going on in the world. When I turned it on, they were talking about some kind of economic dispute, and now they're talking about some double homicide that happened in the middle of nowhere.

Maybe once I'd have been shocked by the story, but not now. All I can think of when I hear about death is the ones I've experienced, and then by the time I'm back in the real world, the story is over. Like now. They've moved back to the economic troubles.

I hear the door open, and sit upright to face the visitor. It used to hurt too much to do that, but now there isn't even an ache. I see my parents first, followed by the same doctor who was there that first day. I'm inclined to hate him, but he's been incredibly understanding since I got here, and I've never been the sort of person to shoot the messenger. The trio walks up to my bed, and the doctor takes a seat on the small stool next to my bed, moving aside the glass of water I'd placed on it earlier.

“Well, Daniel, how are you holding up?” He asks this every day, but I think it's just a formality. He has the nurses tell him about every major development, I'm sure of it.

“I'm fine, maybe a bit better than yesterday.” I gesture towards my parents with my good arm before continuing. “So, what's the occasion? Am I leaving today?”

The doctor's smile twitches, almost imperceptibly, before he replies. “Yes, you're leaving, but not today. You're still going to be here for a few days, but we'll have you up and out of that bed for most of it. We've just got a few things to discuss. First, your eye.” I cringe slightly at the mention of my eye. I've come to accept the injuries, but having other people point them out is a reminder that people on the outside haven't yet. “We don't have to leave you with an empty eye socket. We'd like to offer you a couple of things to put in its place.”

So, what, my eye socket needs to be accessorized? “It's not a fashion statement, it's an injury.” I reply, doing a bad job of keeping the bitterness from my voice.

His smile widens a bit, in the oddly comforting way his smile does, before continuing. “Have you put any thought into this in the past month? Or do you want some time to decide?”

I do need time to decide, but not as long as he thinks. I go over a few things in my head – I'm not exactly a fashionable person. I've never viewed clothes as a style thing, which probably explains a lot about my social life. I'm not interesting to look at, with my plain clothing and the dirty blond mess of hair God dropped on my head and then forgot about. Maybe this would be my chance to give people something to look at. Eye patch. Yeah, eye patches are cool. Eye patches are badass. That should work, I think, before relaying that information to the doctor.

“Well, we have no shortage of those here. Second, we're issuing you a cane, on account of your bad leg.” He says this like it's a snack he's packed into my lunch. Canes are for old men in grey suits and tiny glasses, not for high school students with jeans and an eye patch. Then again, I suppose I should have seen it coming. I haven't been able to walk unless I had a cane, so of course I'd have to use one once I left the hospital.

Noting my lack of objection, he continues. “Finally, you're being transferred to a new school. One that will help you rehabilitate. There are a lot of people just like you there.” His smile widens again, reassuringly.

So that's why my parents are here. They're here to convince me it's for the best and that I have a choice, when really it's already been decided and this is just a formality. They're going to send me away, to a school full of people 'just like me.' And I'm supposed to object, to beg and plead to stay where I am with all of my friends.

But they're all dead now, aren't they? Dead because of me, because of John, because of Derek. Now that I put it that way, I'm glad they're not sending me back. I think if Derek and I were to meet again, one of us would kill the other – either I'd die for giving John the keys, or he'd die for not planning ahead properly. Maybe we'd both die and it would be like the party never happened.

But it did happen.

The doctor waits for my reply. He normally keeps going once he realizes I'm not talking, but I guess this time I have to say something. So I do.

“Okay. What else?”

This seems to take him aback. I was right – I was expected to be outraged. Recovering quickly, he replies “Nothing. That's everything we need to take care of. Your parents have already done the paperwork, you just need to sign it yourself.” I was right about this being pre-ordained too. He hands me the forms, and I write my name on them all, taking note of how lucky I am that I'm not left handed.

A new school. On the bright side, nobody will have to see me in this state. Derek never visited, and I suspect he hates me now. That's fine with me. Daniel died, in that car crash, so they sent me to replace him, with less body parts. He can be as hated as he likes, I have my own life to look forward to. A new school is my chance to finalize that idea, the concept of a new life. A life with no old friendships or enemies, nobody to recognize or be recognized by, no expectations for who I should be. Nobody will tell me how much I've changed in the last month, or feel pity for me. Nobody will even look twice at my injuries, they'll be practically normal. There are probably people even worse off than I am – people with no arms, no legs, no eyes, maybe a combination of the three. Will people think I was lucky to get off so easily? Will they ever suspect I was a different person before the crash?

With a smile that seems strangely final, the doctor leaves the room, my parents in tow. They never even said a word. One of the forms was about housing. I guess I'll be living at the school. How long will it be until I say goodbye to my parents for the last time this year?

Then I realize. It's a new year. I slept through Christmas and never noticed the end of the year. For an instant, I long to be the old Daniel again, to be ready to go home for Christmas with my family and to be eagerly awaiting news of Steven's Christmas.

But before long, it's gone. I lie back down, and for the first time since I first woke up, I find myself looking forward. To the new Daniel.

[Mirage_GSM]

I do remember this story, though I'm not sure how much - if anything - has changed or if it went much further than what you posted so far.
What I am sure of is that for any kind of school assignment this would be a straight A.

[Xilirite]

I did, in fact, get a 100% on the assignment :D

Most of the changes that I've made aren't going to be easy to pick out, seeing as the last time it was on here was half a year ago. However, certain things were made more subtle, a couple extra chapters were added, and two of the major characters have had complete overhauls (one of them went from having basically no disability to being wheelchair bound).

I'll post another chunk after I've had a nap, I've had exactly 0 hours of sleep.

[Xilirite]

Don't mind Ben, he's the one leftover from the fan fiction stage of writing that I wanted to keep.



Act 1
Recursion


Life, Second Verse


Two days later, I step out of the car to get my first look at Stephen Farfler High.

It looks a lot fancier than any place I'd ever gone before. The iron gate, as foreboding as it is, looks more like something an eccentric old millionaire would have installed to keep out hoodlums and whipper snappers. Behind it, the school stands, considerably more inviting than the gateway. As I approach the gate, I realize that what I thought was another wing of the school is, in fact, another building. Not one of those ugly portables, but an entire extra building on school grounds. None of my old schools had anything of the sort.

I turn around to help my parents unload everything from the car. I didn't tell them, but I was petrified with fear the entire ride over. I think I'll be avoiding cars for a while longer. When I grab the first suitcase, my father stops me. “There's no need for that, Dan, we'll bring everything to your room. You should just head to class.”

I hesitate for a second, but then I step away from the car. The sooner I introduce myself, the sooner my new life will begin. Then the old Daniel will just be a bad memory. I start putting my feet in front of each other, my cane clacking on the pavement of the path with every other step.

As I approach the front door to what I assume is the main building, I notice that there are in fact two buildings apart from the school. One of them looks like it would be the place I'll be staying for the year – the windows are about the size of a dorm room, and through some of the ground floor windows I see some beds. It has an extremely impractical looking staircase leading up to it, very much a form over function situation. I hope all the stairs in this school aren't so aesthetically minded, with my leg being like it is. I hazard a guess and assume there's an elevator to get through the school, but I'll have to ask if there's a way around the stairs to the dorms.

The other building is substantially more enigmatic. It's smaller, has less windows, and it's right next to a large track. I can see, from where I'm standing now, the edge of more walls behind it, suggesting that the building is more of an L shape. I hazard another guess, with the track being in such close proximity, and say the larger branch of the L belongs to a pool, but the rest of the building could be anything. I guess I'll have to ask about that too.

I reach the main building. The doorway itself is very large and ornate, but the actual door is fairly normal. I can see through the glass that there's a tall, disheveled looking man leaning against a pillar, but nobody else in sight. As I open the door the man perks up, notices me, and smiles terrifyingly broadly. After so long spent in the hospital, I forgot that not all men are blessed with magic smiles.

I take a moment to look the man over. He looks like he showered just long enough ago that he needs another one, and shaved just long enough ago that he should do so again. His eyes peer out from beneath a curiously large forehead – curious in that I don't think it's actually any larger than a normal forehead, but just appears to be – and rest just slightly too close to his equally curiously thin lower face. His cheekbones are very pronounced, like mountains over a valley, or maybe a pit. He's wearing a long brown trench coat. If I had that trench coat instead of this cane, I'd be a video game character. I try to ignore his smile, but it shines through the rest of his face in its awkward manner that I can't help but be bothered by it. He's trying so hard to look happy on my behalf that he looks almost unhappy. Maybe he is.

His smile really is something. It's like he doesn't know how he's supposed to use his face, but he does know what it looks like when other people use theirs. His mouth is twisted unnaturally upwards, showing just enough teeth to be unsettling. His eyes glint like those of a serial killer in what I think is an attempt to look especially interested in me, and his cheeks are slightly squished towards the centre of his face, which makes it look like he's having an allergic reaction to me. Even his body language is off, his strangely casual pose conflicting with his animated expression.

Finally, about half a second after he should have done so, he speaks. “Hello!” he says slightly too loud. “You must be our new student. Donny, was it?”

“Daniel, sir.” I reply, confused by how he managed to mess up my name while looking at his clipboard that so obviously had my student information on it.

“Right, sorry. I'll be your teacher for this year. You can call me Mack.” He smiles, unfortunately, before saying “I don't like being referred to as Mister, it makes me feel old.” He laughs, but the small tone of genuine mirth is quickly drowned out by his awkward attempt to give me time to join in. When I don't, he simply clears his throat, then continues. “If you'll just follow me, I can lead you to your new classroom. Would you like to introduce yourself?”

I don't know why he's phrasing everything like I have a choice. 'If I'll follow him,' as if I could say “No, I'm fine,” and just walk out, never to return. 'Would I like to introduce myself,' like I'll let this creature read the Daniel statistics off his little clipboard to the whole class before seating me. No, there's only one answer for him.

“Sure thing, Mack.” I reply, with genuine cheer. I can't help it – I'm excited. I've just started my new life, and now the new Daniel is going to give his first introduction. It feels good to start over.

He leads me away from the door to the far end of a hallway that branches off from the room we're in now. I see a map on the wall, with some posters, ads for clubs, and brochures surrounding it. I note that the strange third building I saw is actually a sort of T shape, with a pool, athletics department, and a sizable medical department.

We reach a staircase, which Mack almost starts climbing before he stops, two steps up. “Oh dear.” He steps back down, before turning to face me. “I'd forgotten about your... leg.” He pauses before saying 'leg', as if it was some dramatic reveal. It's like he's talking to the beat of some kind of sitcom, and I half expect the laugh track to kick in. “The elevator is this way.”

When we reach the elevator, I almost laugh. The sleek silver of the elevator stands out like a sore thumb amidst the archaic nature of the surroundings. It's like somebody dropped some sci-fi technology into the 50s. Looking around, I notice some odd looking paintings on the wall, including a strangely coloured field of flowers and an arrangement of shapes that, if you squint, almost looks like a face. Probably the result of a misguided attempt to modernize the school's appearance.

Mack enters the elevator first, and I follow him. He forgets to tell me which button the press to reach his floor, but I see him press the number 3, so that isn't a problem. When we emerge into the hallway, I take a look around. I see another painting on the far wall, near the stairs, but it's staggeringly hideous – it looks like one of those schizophrenic self-portraits I saw on the internet a while back, with its insulting mockery of the human facial features sullying the hallway's otherwise warm, inviting feeling. I look back to the other insulting mockery of human features as he leads me to my classroom – room 3-3 – and opens the door.


New and Improved


I get my first look at my class then, and never before have I seen a class so strange.

The very first thing I notice is the dull, yet simultaneously neon green hair of one student on the far side of the room, styled in the least appealing manner possible, as though her hair stylist wants to start shit with the basic principles of physics. Hair sticks out in every direction, forming spiraling patterns that seem impossible. I force myself to look away and continue scanning the room. Next to her is a scary looking black haired girl who isn't even looking at me. Does she even know I'm here? Something about the intense glare she's giving her book makes me think she's not a pleasant person. As for the other girl, I don't trust people with magic hairdos, and most people who dye their hair bright neon colours tend to be a little bit on the strange side, in my experience. I don't think the two of them will be any friends of mine. One student appears to be missing an ear and an eye, and another student is missing both her hands. I see a boy at the back of the room with a cane like mine, but he looks like the whole world just pissed in his morning coffee, so I decide I'll give him a wide berth. In the far corner of my room, I see an especially large student, who's too busy sucking on his hand to look my way. Neat.

Other than that, there are many students who don't stand out at all, and nobody who looks like they're particularly eager to make friends with the new kid. A lot of them don't have anything physically wrong with them at all that I can see, which makes me painfully aware of how obvious and numerous my injuries are. Most of these kids have one problem that they can hide from everyone else, but I have three, and they've got bright neon signs pointing to them.

“Hello class, sorry for the late start, I had to pick up our new student here. Everyone, say hello.” I notice that the green haired girl exclaims “Hello!” much louder than anybody else in the class room, and obnoxiously so. There's silence for one second, then another, then on the third second I realize this is when I introduce myself.

“Um... Hi.” I say, stupidly. Then, my confidence growing a bit, I continue. “My name's Daniel Muyan. As you can see, I've had a bit of a nasty tumble,” I gesture up and down my body with my stump, and get a low murmur of laughter in response. “I hope that I can see eye to eye with most of you, and stand hand in hand as well.” More laughter, a bit louder. I notice that the laughter is almost always started, finished, and dominated by the green haired student. I hope that doesn't carry over into conversation too...

I pause, consider continuing, but then step backward, signalling to Mack that he can conclude the introduction. Making light of the injuries I have feels... good. Like they can't hurt me if I call attention to them and marginalize them. I wonder if those kind of jokes are common around here, or if maybe the laughter was because I was breaking some sort of unspoken rule and was already the laughing stock of the class.

Mack finishes the introduction with a bit about where I'm from and how he hopes I'll be a model student and other boring formalities. Before he seats me, he asks “Would you like a tour of the school? Our class representatives would be more than happy to show you around.”

I consider it, but not for long. I don't think there's anything I want to find that isn't on the map I found on the lower level, so I should be able to find my way around the school pretty easily for the first few days, until I've learned the layout by heart. I relay this information to him, and he gives me a long, hard look for no discernible reason before directing me to a seat near the centre of the room, closer to the back than to the front. There's only one desk between me and the scary looking chick. I consider myself lucky not being seated directly next to the green haired one – I don't even want to imagine how many headaches the poor guy who sits there gets, with her astoundingly loud voice shouting every word like it's the most amazing thing anybody's said all week.

Eventually, Mack clears his throat to get the class’s attention, to limited success, and begins his lesson. Mack's teaching is as scatter-brained as his smiles are off-putting. He's really passionate about what he's teaching, no matter the topic, but he jumps from topic to topic, forming the big picture out of order, and it makes it really hard to keep up. If I was the type to take notes, I could see this becoming an issue, but I tend to just try to remember as much as possible and roll with it. He has this manner of speech that makes every bit of information that leaves his mouth immediately pass right through your head and back out again. Combined with the mesmerizing dance his facial muscles are engaged in as they attempt to replicate strange things like “smiles” and “frowns” and “normalcy,” a class with him is painful to sit through. I'm clearly not the only one anxious to get out of the class – I spy one girl walking right out, in full view of everyone. Nobody moves to stop her, and I'm tempted to do so myself before I realize that, given the school we're in, it's possible she has a condition the necessitates her leaving.

It's a strange thought. I spent a month thinking about how hard it would be for everyone to adjust to my injuries, but already I need to force myself to think about everybody else and their disabilities before I do anything. Nobody here even looked twice at eye or my arm (although Mack seemed unnecessarily awkward when he mentioned my leg), but I've probably glanced at the kid without an ear four times in the past hour. This is the exact opposite of what I thought would happen.

It's about two o'clock when class ends, but apparently the school closes early today. Checking the timetable, it says that dinner is served in the cafeteria after six, so I still have about four hours to kill before I can head down there. Now seems to be as good a time as any to explore the rest of the school. After all, I have nothing else to do.

On that note, I head down to the lobby, to check the map and plan my route.


Lay of the Land


The school is a lot larger than I expected, but luckily it seems most of the rooms are specialist rooms. I doubt I'll find myself using the room for the visually impaired very often, nor will I be using the pool or the track. The library is confusingly placed right in the middle of three classes, and it looks like there's a lot of rooms in the school that nobody ever uses. I can piece together why the school is designed the way it is – The very recently installed elevators, the unused rooms, they all point to this being a normal school until some point in the past ten years. With less students, so too are there less classes, so many rooms are abandoned now. If I had to guess, the medical department probably used to be more athletics stuff, but with so many physically disabled students, the athletics took a backseat to the healthcare.

For some reason, I can hardly contain my happiness. I cross from the main building to the dorms with as much spring in my staggered steps as I can muster. A light layer of snow rests upon the ground, and it crunches satisfyingly with every footfall. I find myself wondering if walking on ice will be harder because of my bad leg, or easier because of the cane, but I can't really decide on which will have a larger effect without testing it, and I'm not exactly foaming at the mouth to tempt fate by trying to fall over.

I open the door to the dorms and a wave of warmth flows past me. It isn't cold outside, just chilly, but the heat from inside is welcome all the same. I take a slip of paper from my pocket to read my dorm number. Room 115, I manage to discern, even if whoever wrote it was determined to make it as illegible as possible. I look around to find some hint as to where to go, and a sign reading 110-119 catches my eye. It isn't far from the entrance to the building, so it doesn't take long for me to reach the door. I dig around my pockets again and pull out the key my parents gave to me, who presumably got it from the school. I unlock the door and turn the knob, ready to see my new home.

The first thing I notice is that it's a lot more boring than my room at home was. Like the rest of the school, the room is warm. Not temperature wise, but aesthetically, with beige walls and yellow lighting. Compared to the stark white lighting and blue/white colour scheme of my old school, the whole place just feels more pleasant. On the far side of the room, next to a window, I see my bed. The closet door is ajar, and I can see that all my clothes have been put away and sorted by colour – no doubt my mother's doing – and my suitcases are shoved wherever there's room around the clothes – no doubt my father's doing. Other than the bed, there's a desk and a chair, a bedside table, and a rug my grandmother gave me a few years ago that my mother insisted I take with me, to 'remind me of home.' I make my first in a long list of goals to be to find a way to lose the thing. The last thing I need is to have even more reminders of my old life around me.

There's a distinct lack of bathroom in here, I realize. There must be one outside somewhere. I remove my jacket, hanging it over the back of the chair, and then open my door. As I walk outside, I nearly slam into somebody as they emerge from the door opposite of mine.

“Sorry!” I hear the guy exclaim, backing against the wall. He looks right at me, and I at him. The guy is big – football star big. His shoulders are wide, his arms well-toned, and he's tall too. He's wearing his school uniform, but it's only half buttoned, the tie not fully tightened. His head looks like an especially smooth-edged brick, and I almost think to classify him as being appropriately intelligent until I see his eyes. They're sharp, studying my face in the same way I'm studying his, and they give the impression of a lot of thought going on behind them. He's making similar judgements about me right now, I can gather. I try to focus on making my eye look as sharp, but I think I end up just squinting at him for a second.

After a couple seconds of the two of us just awkwardly looking each other over, he finally says something. “You must be the new kid. You're not in uniform, and that room is unoccupied.”

An astute observation. “Yeah, that's me. Name's Daniel.” I stick my one hand out, leaving the implied question in the air.

He takes my hand, noticeably glancing at the loose sleeve hanging by my side, and answers the question too. “Mine's Hurk.” He says, with a hint of reluctance. I get the feeling he knows his name sounds stupid. “My parents are from America, but I was born here. It's supposed to be short for Hercules, but it kinda just sounds like I'm coughing up a lung.” He smiles as he says this -- a good, genuine smile.

“I knew a guy once who had a coughing fit when he tried to tell us his name for the first time." I don't know why I'm telling this story, but he seems interested, at least. "Dude was called Cougher for a year.” He laughs at this, although I don't really think it's funny at all, then releases his grip on my hand. I like the guy – he seems like he's a pretty decent dude, and for some reason, I was worried that people like him would be hard to come by.

“If you're here, I must be really late.” He grins sheepishly before clarifying. “I slept in pretty bad, but if you're here then it must be almost time to get dinner.”

A quick glance at my watch disproves this observation pretty quickly. “It's not even three yet, man. You can easily make the afternoon classes and still have time to eat.” Then I look at him quizzically. “Hold on, you slept until three in the afternoon because you didn't wake up eight hours ago?”

“Well, kind of.” He rubs the back of his neck before continuing. “I was kinda out in the city all night with my friend. We didn't get home until sunrise.” He looks really embarrassed about it, like he's confessing to a murder or something.

Impressed by how spot on his guess was, I start reappraising exactly who this guy is. He's built like an athlete, but he's sharp as a knife, picking up on some very minor details I didn't even consider.

“Hey, just in case you're thinking of sleeping through the rest of the day like me, new students have to check in with the head nurse.” He points out the door before continuing. “It's the big building, shaped-”

“Like a T, yeah, I know where it is. Thanks for the info, I'll stop by right after I find out where the bathroom is in here.”

He points me to the bathroom, pats my back, and then begins to leave. He stops mid-stride, turning on his heel to face me. “How would you like to sit with me during dinner? New kids tend not to transfer to Farfler with friends from their old school, you know what I mean?”

I imagine how I'd handle it if Derek was here too. I don't know if I'd be able to face him, even now. I don't even know if he blames me for the crash, like I do, or if he blames anybody. I don't think I want to know, either. Better to just move on, get some new friends. Hurk is a good start. “Sure thing, man, I'll see if I can find you.”

“Great!” he exclaims excitedly, a huge smile on his face. He must be really eager to make new friends to get this excited over something so mundane. He turns once again to leave, hurriedly buttoning up his uniform. I don't have time to remind him to tighten his tie before he's gone. I guess he'll just have to figure that part out himself. I head into the bathroom that Hurk showed to me, planning out where I'll go next.

On my way out of the bathroom, I catch my own eye in the mirror. My hair is longer and messier than it was before, but there's a patch around my missing eye where it's extremely short. In that same area is a patch of scarring, from the bridge of my nose to just about my hairline. Other parts of my face have some scarring too, especially my chin and cheekbones. To my left is the loose sleeve of my shirt, hiding the stump from view. It looks like I got mauled by a bear. Maybe that would've been preferable to the reality of the incident.

As I enter into the hallway again, curiosity gets the better of me and I knock on each of the doors in the hallway. Most of them are empty, their residents either in classes or still waiting for the tragedy that will send them here. However, when I reach room 118, I hear movement from the other side of the door. Then, the click of a lock.

Then another click, and another, and another, and still more clicks. I try to count them but eventually I stop trying and settle on 'exactly too many' as the number of locks on this door.
When the door finally opens, it’s only partway. I can see the door is kept from opening by a chain, meaning there are even more locks to go on this thing. “Who is it?” says the occupant of the room, who is either very sick or very unfortunate to have been cursed by such a nasally voice.

“I'm the new kid here, I just want to get to know my neighbours.”

There's a pause, then “Did they send you here?”

I'm forced to pause and re-evaluate my hold on reality before responding “No, I'm pretty sure I sent myself.”

The door closes in my face, rudely, and then there's one final click and the door swings open. On the other side is a wiry thin kid, with jet black hair left uncombed. He wears glasses so thick I can barely see his eyes through them. He's clenching his jaw as he stares at me, and he picks nervously at the collar of his shirt. “Are you totally sure? We can't rule out the possibility of mind control.”

Is this guy for real? Mind control? An ambiguous 'they?' A dozen locks on his door? I feel like one of us is missing some key information, but I'm not entirely sure which one. “The only voices I hear are yours and mine, so I'm fairly certain there's no witchcraft going on right now.”

“Alright, great!” His relief is almost palpable, as is his obliviousness. He thinks I'm being serious about the witchcraft, doesn't he? “Here, come in, man, it isn't safe out there.”
Immediately regretting the decision, I step past him into the small room. I say it's small, but it’s actually the same size as mine. The difference is his room is an absolute mess. His bed has been pushed aside to make room for a box fort with walls that are nearly a half dozen layers thick. His windows are covered by cardboard, likely from the same boxes as the fort. At least a quarter of the left wall, from the window up to his desk, is home to a collection of pizza boxes almost a foot high. His floor is covered in bits of duct tape and small strips of cardboard. Judging from how thick his glasses are, I doubt he even knows they're there until he steps on them. I notice a large stash of canned goods and bottled water hidden behind the door, along with a first aid kit, a sleeping bag, a flashlight with batteries, and other supplies that wouldn't look out of place in a bomb shelter. There's an overwhelming smell of garlic, which I guess is from the tower of small boxes, of the same brand as the pizza boxes, labelled 'garlic bread.'

He grabs the seat from beneath his desk, which is covered in paper plates and cans of pop, and pulls it out, gesturing for me to take a seat as he plops down on his bed, narrowly avoiding sitting on an unfinished slice of pizza that I hope he was eating when I knocked. I slowly sit down in the seat, fully aware that I'm past the point of no return. This might as well happen, you know? If this is the way my day is going to go, I guess I'll just have to deal with it.

He's rubbing his collar between his thumb and forefinger again. It must be some kind of nervous tic. “Alright, what I'm about to tell you doesn't leave this room!” He glares at my shoulder as he says this, trying and failing at making eye contact. I get the feeling that what he's going to say has left this room a great deal many times, and I'm just the latest in a long list of poor souls.

He begins to speak, his voice taking on a poorly executed ominous tone. “This school isn't like your regular school,” he begins, failing to see that Farfler isn't the kind of school where that kind of statement works well. “There's a dark secret, a secret so dark as to make all other dark secrets look like...” He fumbles for a moment, before finished the simile with “something very bright and not very secretive.”

I can already tell he has a way with words. “Tell me, have you noticed anything odd about this school in the time you've spent here?”

“Well, there are a lot less limbs than my old school.”

He shoots me a dirty look, but the effect is lost with his eyes hidden by his glasses. “I mean besides that. Haven't you noticed how many suspicious people there are?” I don't know what he means by suspicious, and he doesn't appear to be ready to clarify. “Have you noticed how they waste no time in trying to get the new kids under their thumb?”

“Nope.” I reply. “I've noticed nothing of the sort.”

“Listen to me man, this shit is going to blow your fucking mind!” He ignores me completely and is almost shouting, wild with barely contained excitement. “I think that this school is going to be the site of a great battle, one that will take place very soon. A battle between good and evil, between light and dark, between us students... and the warlocks.”

I can't help it – I start laughing. He makes a sound in the back of his throat like a dying seal when I interrupt him. “Hey man, what's so funny? This is serious, dude, a matter of life and death!”

Blinking away the tears, I manage to begin to calm down. “You honestly think that this school has a secret cult of warlocks preparing for war?” I chuckle once more, before regaining my composure at last.

“I don't think, I know. All the signs are there, you just have to look for them!” As he says this, his voice gets louder. I start to stand up, preparing to leave before he tries to turn me into a skin suit. “I have graphs! They prove it!” I'm at the door now, and as I close it behind me, I hear him yell out “You have to listen, they'll eat you alive!”

The door shuts, and so does his mouth. Back in the hallway again, I think for a long moment about what just happened, before deciding that doing so isn't really healthy. I suddenly realize that I never even caught the kid's name, and he never caught mine. Maybe it's better that way. As I exit the dorm, I silently thank fate for having the generosity not to take my sanity away during the crash.

[Mirage_GSM]

I did, in fact, get a 100% on the assignment

Naturally. Did you submit all of it or just the prologue?

[Xilirite]

I submitted the first 2 acts (50%) of the book. I got some really high praise and a lot of extremely helpful advice that helped me make the thing even better -- the google doc I have this saved to lists him as a special thank you due to how much I appreciated his contribution. Love that guy to bits.

I don't know how the whole length thing works here, as there's that one post saying to keep it low, sooooo I don't know how frequently I should update this.

[HoneyBakedHam]

I'm confused...with the English & sounding names, this takes place on our half of the Pacific, doesn't it? If so, why would there be no "Mr. Muck"? We typically use Mr or Mrs or Miss when addressing our superiors, not like Japan (where they just call them by their title or just solely last name).

Also, if this does take place in the Western world, why would Hurk explain about his folks being from the US? I can understand if he was in Canada or England or something, but he used it to explain why hia name was weird. In an English-speaking surrounding, he could've just said " Name's Hercules, Hurk for short" and left it at that.

[Xilirite]

[HoneyBakedHam]

I had a feeling that if it wasn't taking place in the US, it'd be in Canada, our Frozen Wasteland Neighbor of the North.

[Xilirite]

[Sharp-O]

Finally got the time to read this. Glad to hear you got 100% on your writing assignment because anything less and you'd have been robbed!

I'd say that you've done a pretty cool adaptation here, Xil and I've enjoyed reading what you put up so far Keep up the good work!

[Xilirite]

Thanks for all the positive feedback guys! We're just now reaching the first chapters that I made significant changes to, mostly in terms of tone. Hope you enjoy!



Hellooo, Nurse


On my way out of the dorms, I try to remember what Hurk had told me to do. He said something about going to the medical department for some kind of introductory thing. I don't have anything better to do, so I head towards the only building I haven't been inside yet.

Entering through the very plain front door, I emerge into an appropriately plain hallway. To the right, I see what I assume to be a reception office, but there's nobody inside. To the left is a modest waiting room, with a small TV in the corner and a tiny collection of magazines and newspapers strewn haphazardly across the various chairs.

Like the other buildings, there's a map posted to the wall. I look for a room that looks promising, and ultimately decide that the head nurse would probably be the person to check in with first. His office isn't very far – in fact, I can see it from here.
I approach the door, noting the two nameplates that adorn it. One of them reads Head Nurse, and the other reads William.

Sitting at a small desk, I see a relatively young looking guy with black hair. Looking closer, there are streaks of grey amongst the black, clashing with the baby-faced head it rests upon. As he turns to face me, he smiles, obscuring his eyes entirely from view as his mouth stretches out to cover his entire face. I wonder if medical staff are hired based on the quality of their smiles?

He greets me with “Hi there!” as he reaches out to shake my hand. “I've never seen you here before. You must be our newest student!” His genuine excitement to meet me is evident as his smile manages to grow even wider, showing more teeth than I knew people were supposed to have. I lean my cane against my good leg so I can take his hand in mine, and we shake. I realize I'm supposed to confirm his suspicions for him, but by the time the thought enters my head he's already moving on.

He sits back down and clears away the considerable clutter on his desk, moving stacks of paper around in seemingly no order until he eventually finds a folder with my name on it. “Daniel Muyan, is it? Welcome to Stephen Farfler High!”

“Thank you, sir. I'm pretty excited to be here.” I'm not lying, but it sounds like the kind of automatic response somebody who's lying would use. I take my cane in hand again and approach his desk, mostly so I can sit myself on the edge. “So, the, uh, nature of my injuries doesn't need to be explained to you, does it?”

He looks up from the folder to meet my gaze, but all I see are his eyelids. How can he even read the folder if his eyes are always closed? “No, I don't think that any elaboration is necessary,” he responds. “Although, the record is unclear as to the nature of your leg. Do you need any physical therapy to help with recovery?”

“No, it's... irreparable.” The reminder of the permanence of my situation hits much harder than I expected. I thought I'd gotten over my injuries in the hospital, but after spending an entire day walking on my bad leg, I'm much less okay with the prospect of no recovery.

His smile disappears for a moment, but his eyes don't reappear. I wonder if he's even actually looking at me. Maybe it's some kind of stupid joke, to mess with the new kid by never opening your eyes to look at him. Or maybe the staff here are also disabled. Except if that was the case, it wouldn't make sense to put a blind man in charge of the medical department, and Mack looked... not normal per se, but mostly intact. “I'm sorry to hear that. It seems you lost a lot in that crash.”

More than you know, I think to myself, before responding “Yeah, its definitely shaken things up for me.” With that remark, his smile returns, a bit more subdued than it was before. Wanting to change the subject, I ask “Is there anything I have to do now that I'm here?”

With that, he goes into a list of things he has to do in order to get a better idea as to what's wrong with me. “It's one thing to read about the injuries, it's another thing entirely to see them yourself.” he says to me. First, he removes my eye patch, revealing the empty socket beneath, and inspects the scar tissue surrounding it. I hear him tut quietly to himself at the sight of my eye, or more specifically, the lack of it. Then he asks me to take my shirt off, and he makes a few notes about my stump, including how long it is and how much muscular control I have in it. He also takes a look at my other arm, even though I tell him nothing's wrong with it, before moving on to my bad leg. I was told that the kneecap was completely destroyed in the crash, and they only managed to fix parts of the leg. According to the doctor, I was lucky. It should be completely unable to move, but they managed to fix it up enough that I can at least control it. I'll never be able to put any pressure on it though – I can't even stand upright without the help of the cane sometimes.

Once he's finished with the tests, he reads through his notes once, twice, then lowers his clipboard, clearly satisfied. “Alrighty, you're good to go!” He says this but pauses for a moment. “Wait, you should probably know. We have other canes and eye patches in store here, so if you ever need a replacement for any reason, come to me and I'll set you up. Sound good?”

“Yeah, sure, it sounds great.” I'm honestly kind of sick of the checkup at this point, mostly because I've been trying to forget about my injuries instead of answering questions about them all. Checking the time, I can see there's two, almost three hours before dinner, and I start considering my options. I didn't realize it until now, but I'm hungry – I didn't have a chance to eat lunch. I decide to head to the cafeteria for now, until I know the area well enough to start trying out other options. My parents left me a sizable amount of money to spend, but they're monitoring it so I don't waste it all on anything that isn't food and clothing.

The nurse shakes my hand once last time, flashes me the widest grin yet, and then hurriedly rushes me out the door. After being so polite and inviting for the rest of the visit, his ushering me out of the room seems out of place. Regardless, I start looking for a way to pass the time. I consider heading to class, but I'd rather spend the day getting to know the school better. I've got the whole weekend ahead of me before I have to go back to class, and I want to know how to spend it. I start listing off major locations of the school I needed to find. I've already seen my class, my room, the bathroom, the nurse, and there's no reason for me to ever go to the track, but it's all not exactly hard to find. I don't want to head to the cafeteria if I'm not going to get any food, and other than that...

The library!

I've never really been into books, but until I meet a few friends, there isn't much else I'll be able to do for fun around here. I'll probably find something that catches my eye, and maybe I'll even find an author that I really want to read. I remember it being awkwardly wedged between a bunch of classes near the centre of the second floor, so that's where I start my search. I'm vaguely annoyed by how long it takes for the elevator doors to open, close, and open again, but regardless it's only a couple minutes later that I find myself outside the library doors.


Windows


The best word to describe the library is the word library. It sounds like a library, with hushed whispers and the sound of pages turning. It smells like one too, with the familiar musty smell of books older than I am. If it wasn't for the stack of books in braille on the checkout desk, it would be just like every other library I've ever seen.

I approach the desk, but I don't see anybody there. Curious, I pick up one of the books from the stack. I've never seen a book for the blind before. I flip to a random page and run my finger along the paper, feeling the different bumps and failing to comprehend the concept of spending hours of my day reading like this. After a minute, my curiosity is satiated, and I plop the book on the desk.

And it yelps.

I jump away from the desk in a panic, trying to get as far away from the talking book as I can, when I hear a groan, and somebody emerges from behind the desk. I guess she was the source of the yelp, but what is she doing under the desk?

“Owww,” she whines, rubbing her head softly. She opens her eyes, and peers through her glasses to look at me. Her face is framed by her hair just as much as by her glasses, as the long brown strands rest on her shoulders before finally ending. She looks exactly like a librarian – her clothes, her face, the way she carries herself, the glasses, all of them are stereotypical of every single librarian from every single library I've ever seen. I'm amazed by how ordinary this room is, especially considering the extraordinary environment around it. Suddenly, her brow furrows, and she stares at me with an intense fury.

“What do you think you’re doing, making so much noise?” She whispers loudly. It sounds more like she’s hissing than whispering. “This is a library. You are supposed to be quiet in a library!”

“Uh… I’m sorry?” I whisper back. I hadn’t make that much noise, had I?

Her glare intensifies. “I said be quiet!” She whispers again, much louder than any whisper has any reason to be. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

Lowering my voice even more, I reply “I didn’t mean to-“

“Stop talking.” She snaps, as heads begin to turn around the library. She’s causing a scene, and I’m being noticed.

“Look,” I whisper, as quietly as possible. “I just want to know where the fiction novels are.”

She seethes for a moment, before crossing her arms and turning her nose up at me. “They’re down that way. I better not hear your voice at all while you’re in here.”

Eager to end the conversation before I set her off again, I hastily reply “Absolutely, not a peep.” With a huff, the librarian excuses herself. I'll have to try keep her from freaking out every time I try to take out books on her shift, which sounds like it’s going to be one hell of an adventure.

Strolling through the library, I lightly brush my hand across the spines of the books on each shelf, reading the names and authors and waiting for something to pique my interest. Looking around, I can see that I'm not the only one spending my early closing here – The girl who left class earlier is in a corner, absorbed in her book. I'd be lying if I said the scarring wasn't off-putting, and I can only imagine what kind of disaster could cause something like that. Regardless, it completely ruins her appeal in my eyes – or, I suppose, eye. Call me shallow, but I prefer my girls to have skin, not leather. Otherwise, there's a blonde kid with glasses sitting in a chair and reading, and another blonde student, this one a girl, in the visually impaired section of the room.

Just then, my fingers catch on a book that wasn't put on the shelf properly. I turn my attention back to my book browsing, putting the out of place novel back in its place. When I read the title, I take a sharp breath.

It doesn't have a particularly exciting name, or a particularly prestigious author, but holding it in my hand brings back more unwanted memories. It was the last book Steven had ever read. He was near the end when we threw the party, if I remember correctly. I guess he won't ever get to finish it now.

I debate putting it back on the shelf and moving on, but instead I hang on to it, holding it in my hand. I suddenly realize that I won't be able to brush my hand along the shelf anymore if I'm holding onto the book. Everything will be different, I had thought to myself all those weeks ago. I can't even look for books the same way – I can probably search without touching the covers, but it had helped focus my eye on one book at a time.

I try to keep looking, but my thoughts keep wandering to Steven and my missing arm and the accident, until I finally just give up. According to the clock, I've been looking for half an hour, and I still only found one book. Steven had loved books. He'd come back from the library or bookstore with a stack of books the size of his torso, and within a few weeks he'd be finished all of them. I never shared his adoration for the medium – I'll read a novel from time to time, but the bookshelves in my house are pretty barren. Steven had two bookshelves in his room, each packed with hundreds of the things. When he ran out of room on those, he started stacking books next to them, stopping once they reached eye level. He had about four of those stacks. Before he died.

Even Phil wasn't as big on reading as Steven. He could still be found reading way more often than Derek and I, but I don't think anybody loved it like Steven. He described them as being little portals into another world. “The best books are the ones that give us a new lens to view life through,” he had said once. “They colour everything differently, show things from a different angle, and focus on other aspects of the world around us that our own lenses might not pick up on. Sometimes, if I like them, I keep one of those lenses for myself, and then the book stays with me forever.” Then he smiled – I don't remember him smiling, but I know he did, because he'd always smile at this point in his speech. “I hope you guys find a new lens one day. It might help you grow.”

Yeah, well, I've lost a lens since he said that. I can feel the eye patch, wrapped around my head all the time, a constant reminder that I'm not normal anymore. Maybe that's a new viewpoint right there – the world from the perspective of a broken human, told to go with all the other broken humans where the normal, working humans get to go about their day pretending we're not here.

I sign the book out in silence and leave the library substantially less happy than I had entered it.


Bystander Effect


By the time six o'clock rolls around, I've had an hour to sit on the thoughts that the trip to the library conjured. My mood hasn't gotten any better when I push myself up and out of bed, tearing off a strip of lined paper to act as a bookmark before I leave.

The cafeteria is in the main school building, so I have to walk outside to reach it. It started snowing while I was in my room, and the light layer of snow that rests upon the ground this morning is now up to my ankles. Because the snowfall is recent, much of the ground is undisturbed, and you can see footpaths that have formed due to people coming and going between dorms. I see a path linking the boys' dorm and the girls' dorm, which I take to mean that the opposite-sex dorms aren't off limits.
Once I make it inside, I take a moment to reflect on how much better it is to be warm than to be cold before heading to the lobby. Once I get there, I check the map to confirm the location of the cafeteria. It isn't far from the entrance via the dorm buildings, likely by design. After some backtracking, I find myself inside the cafeteria.

My first thought is that this room was definitely re-purposed, which is just more evidence to my theory on the school's history. The ceiling is way too high and the room way too modern to have been the original school cafeteria. If I had to guess, this used to be a gymnasium, before they moved that to the athletics and medical building. The kitchen is likely built out of the framework of some offices and storage rooms that were previously phys-ed based. Having reached the counter to order my food, a quick glance at the menu explains why. They would probably need the extra space just to allow this many items on the menu. It becomes very apparent that the robust menu is not for our enjoyment, but for our health – Half the food seems like it's made with a medical condition of some kind in mind, and the other half have alternative choices. I end up ordering a simple salad, saving some money until I've found out which dishes are the best.

I remember Hurk asking me to sit with him when I met him back in the dorm. It isn't hard to find him – he towers above most of the other students in the cafeteria, even sitting, by just a bit less than a foot. As I approach the table, I see he's not alone – sitting across from him is the blonde kid I saw in the library. Hurk notices me and waves to me, and his companion turns to face me. Confusingly, he then turns away and mutters something to Hurk, who doesn't respond.

Once I've reached the table, a bit more light is cast upon that exchange. Hidden behind Hurk's exceptional size is a comparatively tiny girl. She's just about five feet tall, and appropriately thin as well, her uniform swallowing up her frame despite being much smaller than the standard uniforms. She has long, off-black hair, but I can't tell what colour it’s starting to lean towards – from one angle, it looks slightly blue, from another slightly red, and when she leans forward to see me better past Hurk a hint of green appears. She has a scarf wrapped around her neck, plain white and surprisingly inconspicuous. I never knew a scarf could look so natural indoors. Whenever I wear one, it ends up looking big and bulky and out of place -- even when I'm outside. She looks me over with her wide, dark blue eyes, and it seems she was the one the other guy was talking to, not Hurk.

Said other guy studies me through his glasses, the tips of his fairly long hair resting on the edge of them as he does. His face is sharp and angular, but not in an unsettling way, and he is otherwise a really average looking guy. He's unbuttoned his uniform jacket, which I'm pretty sure we're technically not supposed to do.

“So looks like you took me up on my offer,” observes Hurk, grinning as he does. He stands up and gestures towards the guy in the glasses. “Daniel, this is Riley.”

Riley raises his hand and replicates Hurk's smile. “Hey, Dan!” he says, cheerily yet without much enthusiasm. As he says this, I notice the fingers on his hand are missing, save for half his thumb. If he sees me glancing at the deformity, he doesn't comment on it, and instead puts his hand back down to rest on the table.

Hurk nods, as if to show his approval for the introduction, before directing my attention to the girl sitting behind him. “And this is April.” He says, with a hint of what sounds almost like pride in his voice. April smiles and waves, much more animatedly than Riley, but doesn't say anything.

Hurk sits back down and I follow suit, taking the spot next to Riley. After we sit down, nobody tries to continue the conversation, and I decide I'm more hungry than lonely, so I don't either. The salad is extraordinarily ordinary, but it's harmless enough that I don't have a problem with eating it.

After about a minute of awkward silence, I realize I'm the cause of it. Riley is avoiding eye contact with me, and April is staring wide eyed at me, her chin hidden behind her scarf. When I meet her eyes, I almost expect her to shrink further behind her scarf in embarrassment, but she doesn't move, instead meeting my gaze. She's smiling, but she remains eerily quiet. Hurk was too busy eating to notice anything, but he glances up to see the two of us staring each other down. He clears his throat and, clearly sick of the silence, tries to start a conversation. “So, uh...” he struggles for a second to think of something to start with, but clearly can't think of anything.
Riley once again raises a hand, this one with no fingers at all, to silence Hurk. “So Daniel, you're the new student?” he asks me, smiling softly. His voice sounds light and focused, and I find it immediately alleviates some of the awkwardness surrounding the table.

“Uh, yeah. I just got here like six hours ago. The school definitely seems...” I pause for a moment, searching for the right word. “...Different, I suppose. Interesting.”

Riley nods in a sage manner. “It definitely is an interesting place. Have you had time to see the school yet?”

I nod as well, in confirmation rather than agreement. “I met a few interesting characters doing so. I met Hurk in the dorms.” I gesture towards him, but I use the wrong arm, and end up just moving my shirt sleeve in his general direction. “I also met some weird conspiracy theorist before I left. And in the-”

I'm cut off by Hurk's booming laughter. A few people from other tables glance at him in derision, but he doesn't notice. “You mean Ben? Skinny dude with glasses and greasy hair?” After another fit of laughter, he takes a deep breath and appears to get a hold of himself. “Word of advice, man: Don't talk to Ben. Dude's a nutjob, and he has, like, four different insane ideas about the apocalypse, and they're all crazier than the last. Last time we talked, he tried to tell me about how the librarian was a succubus.”

“What, the snappy girl with the glasses?” I ask incredulously. “She screeched at me for putting a book down too loudly -- she doesn't seem like much of a seductress to me. How could any sane man think-”

“Exactly!” Hurk interjects. It's kind of getting annoying to be constantly interrupted like that, but I don't want to be rude by telling him to knock it off. “Ben isn't a sane man,” he continues. “The best part is only the guys outside of the clubs know it – he thinks that all the clubs are just excuses for the warlocks to meet, and when he's actually around the students he claims are trying to end the world, he's all courteous and everything. He just ends the conversations so quickly that none of them know what to think about him.”

I glance over at April, who still hasn't spoken. She's burying her face into her scarf. For a split second I'm concerned – I don't know her disability, and this could be an attack of some kind – but then I notice from the way her cheeks are raised that she's smiling, possibly even more than she was before. Quite a few questions rise in my mind, but I think it would be rude to pry, so I look to Riley. Hurk is laughing again, and Riley is suppressing a laugh himself, his mouth hidden behind the palm of his hand.

“So is that why he's here?” I ask Hurk, before realizing I already know the answer to that question – Ben's glasses were so thick that his eyesight must be incredibly weak. Hurk's answer echoes these thoughts. “Of course, that's just why he's officially here. I have this theory that his parents couldn't deal with his rampant paranoia so they sent him away, using his eyesight as a pretext.”

I almost ask Hurk why he's here, but I stop myself. For some reason, it seems like it's improper to ask that kind of question. For a second, I feel a jolt of envy. At least Hurk and April can hide their disabilities – nobody will look at them twice on the street or feel sorry for them for being a poor little crippled boy. Riley and I, myself especially, don't have that luxury. Anyone can look at us and immediately view us completely differently. On my way out of the hospital this morning, we had to walk past the waiting room, and I could feel dozens of eyes on me, my arm, my eye, my cane. “I don't want your pity!” I wanted to shout, just to give them something else to pay attention to, anything but my injuries.
Reality comes back into focus again. I slump back into my chair. That's the second time today I've become lost in thought like that, and the second time today it's completely ruined my good mood. I fork another piece of salad, but I've lost my appetite completely. As I put the fork down, I notice April is watching me again. Her smile is gone, replaced with a frown, and her eyes dart from the fork to the unfinished salad to my face. She cocks her head slightly, as if she's about to ask me something, but no questions come. I smile at her slightly, but it feels fake, and she notices. Her frown deepens, and she studies my face for a moment.

Abruptly, she stands up and begins to walk away from the table, her food left unfinished. Hurk, who was in the middle of telling some story about Ben's antics, cuts himself off as he notices. “April?” He asks, but she just looks at him and shakes her head before heading towards the exit. He gets up to follow her, but she turns around and shoots him a withering glare. They both stand like that for an agonizingly long time, until Hurk slowly sits back down. April, with none of the joy that was plastered on her face a moment ago, turns around and exits the cafeteria, having never said a word throughout the whole of our lunch. I watch her go, as does Riley, but Hurk just stares at the table, as if he could convince the table to bring her back through pure indignation.

Silence falls upon the table once again, but at least this time it isn't my fault. Riley fidgets in his seat for a moment, then speaks, quietly. “You know how she is, Hurk, sometimes she needs to be alone for a little while.”
Hurk glares at him, before snapping “Yeah, whatever Riley, you know best. Just like last time, and the time before that.” His voice is acidic, and he looks nothing like the amusing storyteller he had been earlier. He doesn't break his gaze, and Riley matches his heated rage with a cool anger that seems almost calm.

“Don't presume that you know more than I do just because you dislike me, Hurk. I know you’re worried about her, but she needs space.”

Hurk stands upright, his face red. “Don't tell me what I do and don't know.”

“Don't tell me what she does and doesn't know.” Riley counters, still staring him down. I've been forgotten at this point, but that's fine by me – I don't know what the conflict here is, but it's clearly something I don't want to be a part of.
Hurk looks like every muscle in his body is being contracted, and he shakes ever so slightly with barely contained rage. Whatever just happened, it's a sensitive issue with him. “You do this all the time, Riley. You’re not any better than I am, and don’t you dare presume to know more about the world than I do, least of all about her.”

“She's only been here for a month and she can’t speak. Neither of us know anything.”

“Is that really it, Riley? Or do you just not understand her, and you can’t stand that I might, so you’re assuming I don’t either?”

Riley finally moves, hoisting himself up into a standing position by pushing himself upwards using the table. For a moment I wonder why, but then I notice for the first time that he’s sitting in a wheelchair. His legs are strapped to the chair, so he doesn’t fall over, but he’s clearly straining. I suddenly feel bad for my resentment earlier -- his disability is quite visible, after all. “Listen to me, Hurk. This isn’t about you and I, this is about you and her. Stop trying to make this a personal issue. Just let things-“

“Stop telling me what to do!” He shouts, and once again nearby tables turn to look at us. I try to sink down in my seat to avoid being noticed, but inevitably a few pairs of eyes fall upon me. However, most of the attention is on my two companions, both of whom are standing now.

Hurk finally breaks eye contact with Riley, looking around the room at the people who are looking at him. A silence has slowly spread out across the room with our table being at the centre, as some students at other tables notice the silence and start looking for the source. Hurk's face, previously red with rage, becomes red with embarrassment. He shoots another look at Riley. He opens his mouth to say something, but after a moment he changes his mind, turning and walking away from the table.

Riley continues to stare, his eyes boring into the back of Hurk's head. He's still maintaining his cool, up until Hurk leaves his sight. Then he crumbles, looking exhausted, and collapses back into his seat, ushering in a storm of hushed conversation amidst the other tables.


Fallout


Riley hangs his head for a moment, his hands clasped together on the table, before turning to me. “Sorry you had to see that.” He smiles weakly. “He isn't normally like that, but... This isn't the first time we've had that conversation.”

I search for some kind of reply, and end up with “What exactly was 'that,' anyways? Everybody was smiling and joking just a few minutes ago.”

Riley stares at me, but unlike earlier he looks uncertain. “I suppose after witnessing that nasty business, you deserve some context to things.

“Hurk came to Farfler to learn how to work with the disabled in order to help them get better. He doesn't actually have a disability of any kind, but you're allowed to come here if it's for experience with disabled youth – there are other students in our school who are here for the same reason, like JoJo. You've probably met her: Green hair, loud?”

“I know the one, but not by name.”

“Well, just a few days after he showed up, April transferred here. You probably noticed that she was pretty quiet?”

I had definitely noticed that part, especially considering how much attention she was paying me. “Yeah.”

“Well, we don't know what exactly happened, but she went through something awful, and she hasn't been able to speak. It isn't a physical disability, it's a mental issue, but because it has a severe physical manifestation she was allowed to come to Farfler.”

That would explain her silence, then. Thinking back on it, that does make a lot of sense – she kept communicating through body language, tilting her head when she looked at me and telling Hurk not to follow her by shaking her head and shooting nasty looks his way.

Riley leans back in his chair, falling silent for a moment. His eyes are closed, and he's so still I start to wonder if he somehow fell asleep. Then he sits back up, no longer looking at me. “Hurk met me after he met her, and even from day one he's been trying to help her to get better and regain her voice. I tried telling him that something like that would take months, if not years, of professional help, but he didn't listen. He seems to think he's the only one who can help her.” He smiles, shaking his head before facing me again. “I'm not the only one who thinks otherwise. April hasn't been very receptive to his attempts to 'fix' her.”

I remember how I felt when I saw all those eyes in the waiting room. Just knowing how pitiful they thought I was had been bad enough. I can imagine why she wouldn't appreciate Hurk's attempts to help.

“It's been a month and she hasn't come any closer to being able to speak. She can't even laugh. Hurk thinks that she would've made more progress if she would let him, but I think that she's too far gone to make any progress at all without months and months, and it'll be years before she can speak again.” He hangs his head for a moment. "Of course, that's if she ever speaks again. Which isn't a certainty."

I try to imagine being completely unable to speak for years, but it seems unfathomable to me. Just as unfathomable as never being able to walk properly again, or only having one arm for the rest of my life. The enormity of the disabilities the students here have suddenly hits me, and suddenly I feel just as bad as Riley looks.

“April and I became friends before I met Hurk, but the two of them have known each other since April got here. I think the only reason Hurk puts up with me is because April enjoys my company.” I'm reminded of Derek and Phil, with their uneasy friendship only existing because Steven was there to bridge the gap. “He's normally pretty cool, but whenever anybody tries to argue with him in some way, he gets really scary. I learned pretty early on that you can't calm him down, you just have to make him go away so he can cool off.” Riley shakes his head before continuing. “I don't know if he’s more afraid of being wrong, or of somebody else being right.”

He falls silent, apparently out of things to say. The whispered conversation has transitioned back to normal chatter, the incident between Hurk and Riley all but forgotten by the other students. I look back to my salad once again. If I had kept eating, April wouldn't have noticed anything. She wouldn't have left, Hurk wouldn't have tried to leave, Riley wouldn't have tried to calm him down, and the fight wouldn't have broken out. It's always an ‘if,’ all the little things and all the bad things. If I had called out in the library, the librarian wouldn't have been upset. If I had kept the keys...

I stand up. Riley doesn't look at me when I do, but as I exit the cafeteria, I turn to look at him. He's watching me go, observing me through his glasses. It isn't a stare like April gave me, or a glare like he gave Hurk. It's just this studious gaze, like he can figure me out just by watching me walk. Then he smiles, and raises his hand once more, not waving but still a farewell. I nod in response, turning to leave. I head up the stairs and through the door to the outside world.

I trudge through the snow, the wind stinging my face and the snowflakes hitting my eye. The heavy snowfall that greeted me when I left the dorms has evolved into a full on storm, and it's incredibly difficult to get through it with my bad leg, and it's made worse by the biting cold. I left my jacket in my room. When I finally reach the dorms, I'm shivering from the cold, and the warmth within is welcome.

I open the door to my room, but stop before entering. Hurk's door is ajar. I consider knocking and checking on him, but Riley said he needs time to cool off. I can only hope that he doesn't blame me for the fight as much as I do, come tomorrow.

As I enter my room, I see my book is still on my bed, and my jacket is still on the chair. Cursing myself for forgetting it, I take off my snow-crusted uniform, lay my cane against my bed stand, and lie down. Although it's still fairly early, but I'm so utterly exhausted from the events that unfolded in the cafeteria that sleep comes to me easily.