Orphelians: Beginning
BLOODY EYES
I’m the really strange new kid in school. Nobody knows me and nobody’s friends know me, but in my case that’s nothing different; nobody knows me anywhere. I don’t even know myself, and nothing is scarier than that.
OK, I’m wrong: there are scarier things. That’s why I’m here. My coming means your school has cancer and doesn’t know it. It’s weird being bad news wherever I go, but for you it’s a mixed bag. Just like you won’t know who I am if you see me walking the halls, the cancer walks the halls too, and you don’t recognize that even if it walks up to you, smiles, and says your name. That’s why it can be better for you if I show up: because nothing else can do any good.
Nothing else can keep you from dying.
So, like I said, mixed bag.
In this school it started fast. I was already getting the looks. I don’t mean the ordinary stares you get when you’re new. There were a lot of those, like you’d expect. Four preppie girls going the other way down the hall interrupted talking into their cells to stone-face me all at the same time, just for half a second; three jocks stared and laughed, and I heard “there’s a” and missed what; some skater-looking guys standing protectively around a locker like they had their stash there just looked, and maybe thinking I might be one of them, this bony redhead nodded at me. I’m tall, six feet, and kind of thin and move weird, and I dress in old jeans and either a leather jacket or a jeans jacket. None of it was expensive even new except the leather jacket, which I wasn’t wearing today, and maybe they thought I looked like one of them. I nodded back, being friendly, but I knew I wouldn’t be one of them; I wasn’t one of anybody.
It was the other looks that were freaking me out. Already it had happened four times. Twice the looks had come from behind or way off to one side. When that happens, it feels like something is crawling up my back, and there’s a creepy warm feeling like somebody standing right behind me is breathing on my neck. I don’t look around or give any sign I know.
The other two times it was face to face. Once it was in the eyes of a computer geek who passed me in the hall, and once it was in a sideways glance this tall jock girl in a basketball jersey gave me as she looked up from her iphone. When it’s that way, my vision gets this dark flicker for a second, like I’m about to go blind, and something even darker looks out at me from eyes that don’t belong to it. Right afterwards the eyes the look is coming from get red, like they have pinkeye. In a few seconds they go back to normal, most of the time.
“Where to, gimp? What’s in the case?”
Oh, yeah, I have a limp. It’s not too noticeable, but it makes me walk a little funny.
I stopped and looked up. I hadn’t been paying attention, and three kids had moved out to block my way. The one in the center was the one who spoke; he was big, black, maybe six four, and he had a Mohawk and tats of a red guitar and a white skull on his arms, while his two friends had shaved heads. With the straight leg jeans, Mohawk was probably going for a retro punk look.
I looked down at my battered brown instrument case. It was about four feet long, narrow, and looked like nothing special. It is, though, and I hate it when it draws attention. I had already had to open it for security on the way in. Hopefully these guys wouldn’t make a point out of messing with it. I didn’t want the kind of attention I’d get sending them to the hospital.
I shifted the case to my left hand, across my body in front of me, real fast. They blinked.
“It’s my strings. I’m really getting the looks here. What’s up with that?”
“You’re weird looking,” Mohawk said cautiously, but his words just kept me going.
“Not those looks,” I said, kind of worrying out loud. “I mean the Dark Looks, where something else is using a kid’s eyes to look out. It’s creepy, and if it happens enough to people, their eyes start bleeding from the corners. Do you know anybody in school with bloody eyes?”
Their expressions changed even more. I hadn’t meant to say all that out loud; I just forgot. I have this major problem with forgetting, and I mean big-time major problem.
One of the shaven heads got this wary look and started to say something, but without looking at him, Mohawk grabbed his shoulder, and he stopped.
“Nope, we ain’t seen that, and you talk weirder than you look. What’s your thing? Can’t tell if it’s playin’ the world, or you really trippin.”
Great, I thought, as they did a quick fade out of my way, now there’d be stories about me. At least they’d left before I’d had time to answer Mohawk’s question and blurt out what my thing was. That would have just made it all worse. It’s not like I can do anything about it.
Great start, Lem. I haven’t even been in this school five minutes, and I’d made problems for myself already. What was its name, anyway? I should know the name of my new high school. While we’re at it, what city was I in?
I had forgotten. That figured. Oh well, I was on the way to the office. They’d know there.
“Nobody knows me,” I muttered to myself. “Nobody.”
SHE OF CLEVELAND says: GHOSTS! LURKERS!
SHE OF CLEVELAND says: “Nobody knows me.” Hah. That’s truer of me than him, except for you guys. That’s right: I know you’re there. So you found my message board. I’m the only one who can post on it, so don’t even try. If you do, I’m going to have to kill myself or maybe go for electric shock therapy, because the freakin’ board is on my hard drive, not online, and this part really bites, but I thought you ought to know: you’re all imaginary. I created this board and you.
[Multiple Rejected Posts]
SHE OF CLEVELAND says: HEY! Don’t you people listen? I give you just one rule, and you--
NEMO7 says: You didn’t forbid imaginary posts.
SHE says: Oh. Well, yeah, I guess that makes sense for imaginary posters.
HORNDOG90 says: Yee Hah! Way to go, Nemo 7!
NEMO7 says: Our details have been coopted. Only the names remain, and those are changed. Why?
SCHIZO2 says: I hope you did that, She of Cleveland, or someone is hacking us, and nobody’s safe. Oh, and not that I care, but you talk like you’re 50 or something, Nemo7.
NEMO7 says: I do not!
SHE OF CLEVELAND says: Yup, I did it, and deleted all the siggys. Pictures and places in your details? Don’t you want to be safe? Even Avatars show stuff about you. Siggys with links when you’re not online? Really?
NONEXISTENT34 says: You know, madam moderator, you’re coming across as kind of paranoid. I bet you’re not even from Cleveland. Why? Do you have some deep secret?
SCHIZO2 says: Don’t case on her. Paranoid is just another word for careful.
SHE OF CLEVELAND says: You are so right, Schizo2. It’s not so much that I have a secret, Nonexistent34; I am a secret: the greatest secret of all. I’m a seer. I know things before they happen. That’s weird by itself, and dangerous too, but what makes it a million times more dangerous is I’m an Orphelian seer--the last one--and that means that what I see…
ETHEREAL6 says: What’s an Orphelian?
SHE OF CLEVELAND says: you’ll know soon enough, and it so isn’t pretty. Anyway, I’m the most hunted person on earth, in a secret way. If anyone found out I was the Seer--anyone--
SOMATOTYPE68 says: I’m guessing y’all don’t have too many friends offline.
SHE OF CLEVELAND says: True, but I bet that’s true of a lot of people online, and there’s one person that’s not me I know more about than anyone else does, including himself: Lem.
EHEREAL6 says: Who is Lem?
NONEXISTENT34: How did you get to know anyone well?
NEMO7: How could you know more about someone else than he does himself?
SHE OF CLEVELAND says: Lem seems like he’s about seventeen, but he worries he might be older: way older. There are the weird dreams, the musical instrument he carries everywhere, the Voice, the way dogs act around him, his freaky memory, the fits, and why he’s always running into us: the Orphelians. Lem doesn’t understand any of it, but me? I understand--some of it. I know him, Nonexistent34, because sometimes I see his life through his own eyes, as he lives it. That’s because of who and what he is; I know some things he doesn’t about that. Seer, Nemo7.
HORNDOG90 says: So you can see him naked if he’s looking in a mirror or something?
SHE OF CLEVELAND says: OK, I’m getting the feeling your board name fits you really well, Horndog90. Be careful, or I’ll cut you off, and don’t even think about making a joke about that.
[A short pause in posting follows.]
NONEXISTENT34 says: It sounds like Lem’s life really sucks.
SHE OF CLEVELAND says: It does, but it’s really entertaining. I may not have friends--OK, sorry, don’t flame me, I know you guys are now; I mean people who actually exist--but Lem is like this constant webcast I’m always tuning in on, and it is brain-tearing, dog-freaking, spoor-shedding weird. All that happens in the next few days—oops. My bad. Brain tearing doesn’t happen--yet. There will be lots of tarantulas, though, and who doesn’t like lots of tarantulas?
ETHEREAL6 says: Many of them? Crawling all over the place? Ew!
HALLUCINATION16 says: I get needing to be alone, but don’t you want to meet him?
SHE OF CLEVELAND says: Good question, Hallucination16. Sometimes. Wouldn’t it be freaky to see myself through his eyes? I know so much about him, but he doesn’t even know I exist. If I do meet him, it better be soon. In a year the Orphelian Evolution will be done, Lem and I will probably be dead, and so will everybody else. Not existing has its advantages, posters.
HORNDOG90: We’ll all be dead? But I need to have way more sex!
NEMO7: What we are, She of Cleveland, indeed our whole “nonexistence,’ is more complicated than you realize.
SHE OF CLEVELAND says: You’re offensive, Horndog90, and what is going on here? You imaginary types are way feistier than I thought you’d be. If I were anybody else, I’d think I was going crazy, but I’m as sane as you guys are. Going now, and only I know when I’ll be back.
—She of Cleveland