This story is offered with the author disclaiming any and all copyright protections under the laws of the United States or any other country. It may be reproduced in whole or in part, or modified by other aspiring authors. It is intended for mature audiences. It is to be a multichaptered work and the introduction is just that - an introduction to begin building the frameworks of each of the characters involved. I promise it will get more interesting.
If interested in this story (or willing to offer constructive criticism) please email me at cascade_nick@hotmail.com and offer your opinion (I'll try to ignore violent flames as best I can).
"Beta Male"
"Once again, you're letting your emotions get in the way of your reason Nick!" I shouted angrily at the kid glaring at me from the other side of the classroom.
Nick suddenly twisted his face into a smile, a very cocky smirk it seemed to me. You'd almost think he had won something here. "And you're deluding yourself by supposing that reason can conquer the passions of the human soul Jon," he said plaintively. "If we all thought like you, the human race would have died out a long time ago."
This kid annoyed me a lot. There weren't very many people who could get me so angry, but everything about Nick made me detest him greatly. I can't imagine why I allowed myself to lose such control in this debate. It was really quite silly, standing there in a high school philosophy class finding myself hating him so irrationally. It's not as if the discussion counted for anything, it's not as if any sort of competitive prize was at stake to give me cause for getting so annoyed. Yet I couldn't help but losing myself in the argument, and, I think in doing so I definitely had probably the lost the debate as well. But for some reason the topic at hand - the role of reason vs. perception and the reality of absolute truth - was one that I really took to heart.
Suddenly it occurred to me why I had gotten so hot and bothered, so to speak. Nick was beneath me. At 6' 2", 220 lbs. of solid muscle perfectly toned by years of athletic endeavor, he certainly was a more powerful physical specimen than I. But clearly I was the superior intellect. After all, in a few months it would be me that would deliver the valedictory address at our high school graduation. I was far and away the best student at our school. Nick was intellectually inferior, yet he had bested me in this philosophical argument. The very idea of a jock seriously challenging me at anything related to academics was inconceivable. After all, I am Jon Gallington, student extraordinaire, and no mere football player is going to compete with me on my chosen field.
Heck, if I wanted to, I could probably make a go at it on Nick's football field if I ever had the desire to do that. I was only an inch shorter than this kid (who was the star runningback on the team despite his enormous size, or perhaps because of it). And not to sound too arrogant, but I was fairly well-built. With a little work I was sure I could conquer football with the same determination I had conquered every scholastic test I had ever come across. It was only a matter of deciding what I wanted, and anything I wanted I was sure that I could achieve. It was all just a matter of self-preparation. I could suddenly see myself standing on the football field handing Nick the ball, watching him run for the winning touchdown, the glory of a hard-fought victory within reach...
My thoughts were interrupted violently by the sound of Nick's words.
"What are you staring at?!"
"I'm sorry, what?" was all I could stammer out. I had indeed been staring. It seemed like a moment, but it must have been nearly a minute. I had just been standing there staring back into Nick's deep, penetrating blue eyes the entire time my inner dialogue was taking place. What was I doing? Beneath me or not, Nick had made a statement and I was expected to respond, and staring blankly into his eyes didn't cut it. But what was the topic at hand? I think I was thinking about hating Nick. Or was I thinking about football? Was I interested in playing football? Why did football suddenly interest me? Why wasn't I concentrating at all? The chattering of noises in my head was mind-numbing, each part of my brain saying something completely different all at the same time. I needed to collect myself, I needed to stop staring, I needed to get out of there, I needed... I needed...
RING! RING! RING! Oh thank God I found myself thinking (not that I believed in such an irrational concept). The bell signaled the end of this period and the end of my confusion. Let's see, I was supposed to start heading someplace else now, and that would be...
"Jon, are you alright? We have gym now, do you need me to take you to the nurse?" I heard Nick asking.
Oh yes, PE class. My memory was not doing so good all of a sudden. "No, I was just dizzy for a second, but I'm sure I'll be fine."
"OK, see you there then."
As Nick left the room I found myself regaining my composure. I collected my books, stopping long enough to quickly reassure my philosophy teacher that I was alright, and hurried to the other side of the school so as not to be late for gym. It was a non-academic subject so it only counted in terms of grading insofar as you attended each class prepared, and I was not about to throw away my near-perfect average on a meaningless gym grade. I hoped I was not coming down with some sort of fever or something, given how weird I had acted in class. That would not do at all. I needed my body to hold together for another month or so as I finished up all my finals and testing. And then I thought again. Well, I'd already been accepted to Harvard. I would practically have to rob a convenience store for them to take away my acceptance at this point. I could probably have bombed all my final tests, still done well in all my classes, and gone on with life as if it never mattered. But somehow I wasn't allowing that as an option, even at this point. I wondered why that was.
I wondered a little too long, because I got to gym too late to change in time for roll-call. I would lose a couple of points for tardiness. As I hurried into the locker room (why was I hurrying when the damage was already done?) I slammed full-force into Nick as I rounded a corner. He fell back, thrown slightly off-balance by the force of the impact. I fell flat on my back and hit my head on the concrete rail that stood before each row of lockers. What a stupid design for a locker room, I thought to myself. To have solid concrete jutting out from the base of each locker. I suppose it was some sort of a ledge to avoid contact with the always filthy floors. Somebody could hurt themselves if they weren't careful of those rails. Pretty soon I wasn't thinking too much anymore, except maybe why I was seeing things in split vision. There seemed to be two, then four Nicks standing in front of me. It was quite disorienting, I thought as I found myself getting sleepier.
I remembered drifting off with the vision of Nick's stunning blue eyes before me. They really were quite striking, I thought to myself. Not pale blue, not boyish. They were a dark sapphire color, sharply defined against the rest of his starkly white sclera. The pupils were so focused they always seemed to be looking through you. Why was I suddenly so interested in Nick's eyes, I found myself thinking. There seemed to be a look of concern there in those brilliant cobalt orbs. I felt fine, just had been knocked off balance for a minute, I tried to tell him but found myself (for once in my life, perhaps) without the ability to speak. As I tried to pick myself up, it came to me in a flash of dementia that perhaps I wasn't quite as fine as I supposed. In a moment I was gone.
Suddenly I could sense of flood of light coming to my eyes. Hoping it wasn't a tunnel (I wasn't going anywhere before I became valedictorian), I found myself drifting towards the light, struggling to open my eyes. My eyelids were slow to respond at first, and my eyes were twitching beyond my control. Then, in a flash, my eyes opened, and beheld the sight before them.
I screamed. Standing over me was Helga, the school nurse, and next to her was one of the coaches from the women's soccer team. The sudden ugliness that flooded my vision - in stark contrast to the deep beauty of multiple Nicks that had accompanied my eyes before their rest - was too much for me. In a minute I regained my composure, and distinctly heard the unmistakeable sound of Nick guffawing from some other corner of the room.
"Hello dear, glad to have you back with us. You were out for about ten minutes or so. You seem to have a fairly moderate concussion from where you struck your head. I don't believe there was any damage. Even so, there is an ambulance waiting to take you to the hospital. They'll run some X-rays to make sure there's no physical damage to the skull and some other tests to check for excessive swelling. Now, you will probably be disoriented for a while now and you may have some short-term memory loss," I heard Helga saying.
"We've notified your parents, and they'll meet you at the hospital. We'll let your teachers know you won't be able to attend the rest of your classes," the lady coach told me. "Nick here has volunteered to collect your assignments and whatnot for you. Is that alright with you?"
"I really feel terrible about what happened," I heard him saying, but the voices I was hearing weren't registering quite right.
"No, it was my own fault. I should have been more careful watching where I was going."
Our brief dialog was ended by my being lifted onto a stretcher by a pair of EMTs. Where had they come from? They weren't in the room a minute ago. Oh well, I just wanted to go to sleep at this point and stop thinking, it was just hurting too much.
"Now, now! Stay with us son, we need you awake," one of the medical men was saying as he shook me and focused a bright light into one of my pupils. These peoples' concern was really getting on my nerves now.
In a way I was glad by the difficulty I was having thinking, because I really didn't want to think too much at that point. I always thought too much. But I needed to get a grasp on myself. I had been acting weird all day, and Nick seemed to have unsettled me in some way. Why was I so distracted around him? Why did he show such concern for me? Why, why... Why did Nick run into me? Yes, I had been in a hurry to get to my locker. But class had already started. Nick wasn't in class, even though I noticed that he was fully dressed and prepared for class. Nick was standing right by my locker, even though his locker was a couple of rows away. My locker was not on the way to the gym floor, either. What the hell was Nick doing there standing all by himself right by my locker? Another bright light struck me as they opened the exit door from the school and the bright sunlight flooding into my eyes drowned out my internal dialogue yet again. I would consider all of this later, for now I just wanted to focus on not focusing on anything.