This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to an event or persons is purely coincidental. The Rights of the Text are of those of the author and of "nifty.org". Any opinions expressed within this story are purely fictitious and do not necessarily reflect those of the author or Nifty.
Welcome to Chapter 3 of Reflex! Here were see Mark starting his first day at his new school and he meets the bullying Alex for the first time...
Chapter 3
The incident in the woods had left Mark with a strange uneasy feeling inside. He made his excuses at the wedding reception so he could leave early. Henry was clearly struggling with himself and Mark had wanted to help. But now things had taken a slightly darker turn. Why had Henry done that? And did Mark really enjoy it or was he just taken by surprise? He was so deep in thought that he nearly collided with an old lady with heavy shopping.
"Maybe," he thought to himself, "I should just leave him alone."
-X-
Monday morning dawned and Mark was stood waiting at the bus stop. The thick fog did not help his nerves. What if the bus driver could not see him at the stop and just drove passed? He would have to run all the way to school. And then, what if he got there and he was not even on the register? What if someone had to come into his class and take him to one side to politely explain that they had changed their minds and he could not go to the school after all?
Mark wished this bus would hurry up. Standing here, thinking to himself was clearly doing no good. Just as he finished thinking, two dim lights and a large shadow appeared in the fog. The lights grew brighter and brighter. "If I was in a fairytale," Mark thought to himself, "This would be a some sort of magical bus that whisks me off on adventures."
Alas, the double-decker bus that actually turned up made a loud noise a bit like someone with a cough and spluttered to a halt. The breaks sounded like they were complaining with the loud squeaks they were making. The breaks then hissed loudly at Mark as the door slowly slid open to reveal the insides. The bus driver looked very ill, all pale and thin. All the seats on the bottom deck were all filled with pupils who all stopped their conversations to stare at Mark. There was a faint smell of tobacco smoke drifting down from the upper deck.
Mark boarded and tried to act as "normal" as normal can be as he paid for his ticket. With the lower deck full, Mark decided to climbed up the stairs to the upper deck. As the bus juddered forward, Mark found a seat roughly in the middle of the bus. He also found that the smell of smoke was coming from the lit cigarettes in the hands of a group of guys at the back of the bus.
"So you're the new guy?" one the smokers called from the back.
Mark pretended he had not heard and looked out of the dirty window. He heard footsteps behind him draw nearer and nearer. Mark could ignore him no longer and so turned to look. There stood a tall, brown-eyed boy with short black hair. Cigarette in one hand and a bottle of water in the other.
"Are you deaf?" the boy said loudly so that his mates on the back row could hear him.
"I'm sorry, I did not realise you were talking to me." Mark replied as politely as he could. "I'm Mark." Mark held out his hand.
"Is that your uniform?" the boy asked as though Mark had not said anything.
Mark grew a little cold inside when he realised that, while everyone on the bus was wearing their school shirts only, Mark was sitting there with shirt, tie and sweater. He was in full uniform.
"Yes." Mark replied, trying to sound confident.
"I didn't realise it had to be so wet," with that, the boy threw the contents of the bottled water at Mark, drenching him. Mark jumped up in shock.
"Oh! Getting tough are we?" the boy asked over the laugher of his mates. He grabbed Mark by his now wet collar. "Come on then. Do your worst."
"That's enough Alex!" shouted a girl as she walked down the aisle from the front of the bus. "Leave him alone."
Alex released his grip on Mark's clothes. "Looks like you have a girlfriend, already." He walked off back down the bus. Carrie smiled sympathetically at Mark before she too walked away. Mark took off his sweater, sat back down and looked back out the window. Luckily, the water had hardly soaked into his shirt. A plastic bottle hit Mark on the back of the head and bounced off onto the floor at his feet. It was the bottle that Alex had just emptied. Mark was not going to give Alex the satisfaction of turning around. As he watched the bottle bounce on the floor, Mark noticed a piece of paper. It was folded in half and written on it was...his name. He leaned down, picked it up and unfolded it. It read:
'I know what you did in the woods. I saw you.'
Mark quickly looked around at Alex who was still being congratulated on his perfect throw with the bottle. He was sure they had never met before but he seemed like the only culprit of the poison letter.
-X-
They arrived at school shortly before 9am. Alex could not resist pushing passed Mark to get off the bus first. Mark decided to get straight to work finding his registration classroom so that by the time the bell rang, he was outside it ready and waiting for the teacher. Slowly, the crowd outside the classroom grew larger until all the pupils were outside. Then, the double doors to the stairs flew open and a tall, thin older man with little hair and a grey moustache came striding towards them. He made his way to the front and unlooked the door. This was Mr. Grimslow.
"Come on," he said impatiently. "Hurry up! Please put your mobile phone away, Carrie, before I take it,"
The class filed inside. Mark sheepishly hung around at the front of the classroom while all the others took their usual seats so he could sit in an empty space. He eventually found one, at the front and near the door, next to a muscle toned boy with short cropped hair and piercing blue eyes. The boy smiled at him and was just about to open his mouth to say "hi," when there was commotion at the back of the class room. Carrie had flung her chair back diving at the boy behind her who was waving a letter in the air. Mark couldn't help but groan a little when he finally realised that Alex would be in his form. It looked like Alex had just snatched the letter from Carrie who must have got the letter out of her bag when she put her mobile phone in it.
"Hey look, sir!" Alex shouted holding the letter too high for Carrie to reach.
"Give it back! It's mine!" she shouted.
The teacher got up from his desk and snaked his way between the tables. He snatched the letter as Carrie stood shaking.
"Let's see what's so important," he said unfolding it. He read it out loud:
"I know what happened three years ago. I was with Alex when it happened."
Mr. Grimslow grinned a toothy grin. "Well, well. This is very cryptic."
A look of panic spread across both Alex and Carrie's face. They both made a violent leap for the letter and almost knocked the teacher off his feet. They both grabbed the letter which tore under the pressure. Mr. Grimslow stabilised himself. His face turned red with anger. "Miss Evert and Master Manning! Get down to the headmasters office right now! I suggest you calm down along the way!"
"Welcome to Grynde Hall High," the boy next to Mark whispered to him causing Mark to snigger slightly as Carrie and Alex left the room. He quickly wished he had not made a sound as this seem to have attracted Mr. Grimslow's attention to the new student in his class.
"And who are you?" he asked Mark as he made his way over to the front of the room.
Mark opened his mouth to talk but with the fear he now had towards Mr. Grimslow after his fantastic introduction, a few small sounds came out.
"Speak up," said Mr. Grimslow a little louder.
Mark cleared his throat. "Mark, Sir."
"Oh, so you are the famous Mark."
Mark was aware that every eye in the room was on him. He decided to wait for Mr. Grimslow to speak some more and so said nothing.
"I was not expecting you in my class. You are not on the register. It's probably an administration error. Why don't you go down to the Headmasters office to see what is what, hmm?"
Mark was not sure if Mr. Grimslow was being polite or intentionally creepy but he took the opportunity to get away from him and left the room.
As Mark entered the stairwell, he could hear voices from the floor above. Instead of Alex and Carrie going down to the Headmasters office they had gone up a few steps and were whispering to each other.
"Alex," Carrie was whispering. "How could they know? Are they watching us all the time?"
"Spying more like. They could be anywhere," said Alex.
"But what shall we do? Who were you with?"
"I dunno," Alex replied a little abruptly. "But I do know we are just going to carry on as if nothing has happened. They will get bored soon enough..."
Remembering that he should now be at the Headmasters office, Mark set off down the stairs.
-X-
It turned out that Mark was supposed to be in Mr. Grimslow's form after all, much to Mark's dismay. Mr. Holdsworth, the headmaster had his secretary print out Mark's timetable and for the rest of the day, Mark had a good time. He had English and Science that morning and luckily the boy who Mark had sat next to at registration was in both lessons. His name was Kyle. He told him about how he had a friend called Reece who was currently on holiday in Spain.
It was after Lunch and in his third lesson, History, that it happened to him again. As Mark reached into his bag to remove his pencil case, his hand brushed against a folded piece of paper. He removed the paper and unfolded it.
"I know what you did in the woods. I saw you"
Again, Mark looked around him but, as this class was mainly full of people that were not in his form, there seemed to be no likely suspects. He put the paper back in his back and tried to put it to the back of his mind so he could concentrate.
-X-
The rest of the day passed without incident and Mark had almost forgotten about the letters. That was until he got home. Upon arriving, he could see a police car outside. Fearing that his mum was hurt, or worse, he ran for the front door and flung it open, only for it to bounce off a man who was kneeling behind it. He let out a groan of agony.
"Are you ok?" a policewoman in the hallway said to the other policeman who was getting up from behind the door, clutching his nose and a hammer. Mark let himself in.
"I'll be fine," replied the other officer, winching with the pain. "I don't think anything is broken."
The policewoman turned to Mark. "You should be more careful, and try come through doors a little slower," she said to him in a half raised tone.
"I'm sorry," Mark apologised. "I thought my mum was in trouble and..."
"It's ok, Mark," came his mum's voice as she appeared from the kitchen into the hallway carry two cups of tea. One for each of the officers. "They are just sealing the letter box up."
"Why?" Mark asked a little perplexed.
"We've had a letter posted through but it's nothing to worry about. It's probably just someone having a joke."
Mark went cold. Had his mystery letter writer at school written and told all about what he and his cousin, Henry, had got up to at the wedding? "What did it say?" he asked.
Mark's mum handed him the letter from her pocket. This one was different from school. It was not a quick scribble with a pen. This was written with letters cut from a newspaper. It read:
"I know where you live."
"Is it really necessary to seal the letter box up, though?" Mark's mum asked the policewoman. "We don't even know if this is a real threat yet."
"We can't afford to take that chance. If the letterbox is sealed, then this may deter anyone mailing you for a prank. If it is a real threat then they will use other means of getting to you."
"OK," Mark's mum replied. She did not want to have to point out the obvious flaws in this plan.
-X-
With the tea drunk and the letterbox sealed, the police left and Mark went to bed. He laid on his back staring at the ceiling. Who was writing all these letters? Were the ones at school the same as this one that had arrived at home? Mark did not mention the school letters as he did not want to have to retell the story of him and Henry.
Mark could admit to one good thing coming from today. That was Carrie. He found her very pretty and she was now the image he thought of as he wanked his hard cock. Everytime he got near to coming, however, he found that he could not manage it. He kept wanking and wanking until, out of nowhere, Kyle appeared in his head. Instantly, Mark shot a warm thick load of cum onto his smooth stomach.
As he came down from his orgasmic high, he began to feel a little angry with himself. He had just shot his load thinking about Kyle. Why? He was not gay. He had never been with a guy. He hastily formed a plan. The plan was for him to get to know Carrie, ask her out on dates and become her boyfriend. That was sort him out...
-X-
Mark awoke the next morning with his mind purely focused on trying to impress Carrie. He washed himself thoroughly, put gel in his hair and wore lots of deodorant. He was so focused on Carrie that he had completely forgotten about the letters the day before and so thought nothing of the fact that the postman, looking confused, had to pass the morning mail through the living room window.
-X-
Mark's plan did not get off to the best of starts. Things started going wrong the moment he got on the bus. He decided to go on the upper deck again as that was where he thought he had more chance of finding Carrie. He found her sitting a couple of seats back from the front. The seat behind her was empty! He made his way down the gangway when suddenly he tripped and landed face first in Carrie's lap. She shrieked and jumped up, pushing Mark away. Mark had been so focused on Carrie that he did not see Alex sitting in front of her. It was his foot that Mark had tripped over.
After Mr. Grimslow had ordered silence in morning registration and destroyed any hope of Mark having a conversation with Carrie that morning, he decided to give up on his plan, at least for today. He went back to focusing on school and spent more time with Kyle once Mark had gotten over his embarrassment of him wanking to a metal image of Kyle the previous night.
It was at the end of the day that Mark mind was brought back to the letters. As he was packing away at the end of his last lesson, there was yet another one in his bag reading exactly the same as the other two.
-X-
Things only worsened when he got home. When he arrived, he saw bags packed by the roadside outside his house. His mum was loading them into the car.
"Are we going somewhere?" Mark asked her.
"We've got to stay in a hotel for tonight," Mark's mum replied looking a little flustered. "Someone had pushed this through a window I had open earlier." She handed him another letter:
"We are coming tonight" it read.
Mark felt fear and anger at the same time. Why was Alex doing this?
"We can't let whoever this is drive us out of our home!" Mark said with a little raised voice.
"We've got no choice. We can't take the risk. We can come back tomorrow."
"No! Why should we leave?"
"I've already lost your dad. I'm not going to lose you too," Mark's mum replied, her voice breaking slightly.
Mark's defence crumbles instantly. "I'll help," he sighed.
-X-
Within half an hour, they were in the car and on their way. Where exactly they were going Mark had no idea and with the mumbling his mum was doing he did not dare ask. They drove and drove until finally they pulled up outside a small hotel down a backstreet.
"Wait here," she said as she got out. She disappeared inside.
Mark looked out of the window at the surroundings. It was almost pitch black down this narrow street except for the one street lamp that cast an amber glow. Graffiti daubed the walls. A knock at the window made Mark jump. His mum had returned.
"They have a room," she said through the glass.
Mark got out and followed her in. The inside of the hotel looked as though it had not been redecorated since the 70's.
The room they had was two rooms; one bedroom and a bathroom. The two single beds took up most of the room and there was a small balcony. Mark's mum fell asleep quite quickly but Mark could not. He had spent another day with Kyle and now could not get him out of his mind. What was happening to him? He decided to go out onto the balcony to get some fresh air. He sat on one of the dirty plastic chairs and stared into the starry night sky. Mark was beginning to scare himself with these thoughts.
He was brought out of his trance by someone moaning. Mark looked down into the backstreet. Against the wall across the room were a man and a woman. The man was leaning against the wall with his top off and his trousers at his ankle. The woman was in front of him giving him a blowjob. Clearly they must have thought no one would catch them down this quiet backstreet! Mark started to get hard. The couple were at just an angle so Mark could see the guys hard cock. This man also had a great body. Mark pulled down his PJ shorts and started to stroke his cock. He was aware that it was the man turning him on but he was too horny to care right now! The man started to thrust vigorously and to Mark's pleasure, he pulled out his cock and started to wank it. Mark and the guy shot their loads at the same time. Squirt after squirt of Mark's hot cum splashed onto the balcony floor.
Mark was too busy cumming to noticed that the guy had thrown back his head when he came and was now looking at Mark having his orgasm.
"Hey!" his voice echoed.
Mark hastily put his cock away and ran back inside to his bed.
-X-
The next morning at breakfast, Mark and his mum were sat a table eating when the owner of the hotel came over.
"Excuse me," he said. "Are you Helen Enning? Only I found this posted through the letterbox this morning. Someone must have delivered it by hand because the postman has not even been yet."
Mark's mum took the letter. She opened it and they both read:
"You can't hide in a hotel. I'm still coming for you."
Mark's mum jumped up from the table. "That's it. We are going home! I'm not letting this evil bastard win any longer."
-X-
They settled their bill and were on their way home by midday.
"When we get home, we are going to call the police. I should have done it yesterday." Mark's mum said.
"Who do you think is doing it?" Mark asked.
"I don't know!" his mum replied in a frustrated high voice.
They arrived outside their home.
"Wait here," Mark's mum said as she got out. She walked around the car and started making her way down the garden path.
BOOM
An explosion ripped through the front door knocking Mark's mum off her feet.
Chapter 4 will be posted soon. The next Chapter is when I think this story will really begin. I hope to see you there! Please feel free to e-mail me with your thoughts and suggestions: yettie0711@hotmail.com