The Adorned

  Chapter 1

  Understanding

  My bike ride was long and strenuous. The brisk air smacking against my face and cold air slitting through my clothes, left me petrified. The sun hid behind the thick layers of clouds brought by this ferocious winter season.

  I neared the first driveway from that long stretch of barrenness. It was Tim’s place… it hurt so much starring at the entrance, with the piles of newspapers mounded on the entrance like heaps of bone. I bit my lip and felt my frozen tear stick to my cheek. I sniffled.

  I didn’t know what wrought his consequence… how he managed to entangle himself in a situation without consulting his close friends, but, but he’s now an: it, the Soulless Wanderer he spoke about before he became one.

  All the words that he spoke, all the things he said about Soulless Wanderers, could they be in fact true? They’ll seek and seek forever, devouring one soul to the next until it finds his own? Or was that just an added gibberish to somehow spark some interest to those that didn’t really care?

  I’ll see in the end I guess. I have to tell Jessica and Steven about this…

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  I gulped air. I tried to be inconspicuous towards the words: Soulless Wanderers, because Oliver used those words. I thought for a second, pretending as though I was still reading, and wondered if Oliver just got all that mumbo-jumbo from this book.

  I closed the book. I could read, it felt natural as though I’ve done it before. I rubbed my temples and stared aimlessly at the book; Of Fear and Blood… I was curious now; hooked, I had to get the first two: I wanted to read.

  The monitor over the stove flickered on.

  “Sam, it’s thirty minutes before your class starts please drop what you’re doing and leave now.” Jane said, her voice echoing from the small, round speakers magnetically strapped on the fridge.

  I took a deep breath and then left the house.

  I stood there perplexed; dark and ominous clouds consumed the sky. I had trouble swallowing; in fact: I could barely constraint my sudden hyperventilation. Oliver came in mind.

  “Wow,” I muttered, “Again the beautiful assortment of insanity erodes against the blemished sky…” I shook my head dazed. I didn’t even understand the words that came out of my mouth.

  I tightly shut my eyes until the deep black burned and enflamed itself into a crystalline white light; and then opened them back up: bits of blind spots flickered in every corner of my eyesight until everything came back to norm. The darkened heavens were still there.

  With this innate fear I just left towards Mr. Cove’s class in the Jefferson Building.

  Part

  II

  -Deprivation-

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  Jake Hartman

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