Thursday, December 3, 2009

Excerpt from as of yet untitled novel 1

Alex Prescott felt normal in the very core of his being. Every morning he ate the same whole grain breakfast cereal drowned in skim milk next to his younger brother and older sister. He waited with them for the bus wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and worn-but-not-ragged tennis shoes. The bus ride passed quickly over meaningless chatter with the same friends he'd had since kindergarten. At school Alex passed notes in class while homeroom teacher droned monotonously about the civil war. After school the afternoon was spent enjoying the freedom at one friend's or another's riding bicycles or hashing over every detail of the most recent "big game". Every evening he pedaled home for dinner, told his mother school was "fine" and teased his younger brother, lovingly of course.

And so it was for much of Alex's young life, each day closely resembling the day before. Details changed, his father purchased a new SUV and Alex's mother began ferrying his friends to and from school in the comfort of the rather luxurious little vehicle. His sister left for college on a full ride scholarship to state, pride of the entire family. She lived a mere half hours drive away however and visited the family at least twice a month. Alex grew several inches from an average boy to a quite lanky teenager, and a fair bit of awkwardness came with the territory. In nearly every way imaginable Alex seemed almost a poster child for normality, a new standard in being extraordinarily average. As most stories do however our tale focuses not on this rather dull time in Alex's life but the very extraordinary and unfortunately often unfortunate events that began Christmas day of Alex's freshman year of high school.

Rather little is known about the actual event other than shaky eye witness accounts and the recollections of Alex Prescott himself, though that is now a precious commodity. What we do know however, is that somewhere around five in the morning Christmas day the Prescott family cat was sharpening its claws on one of the wires when the fuse shorted and set the modest tree ablaze. The cat, which also is believed to have caught on fire in this initial short, yowled and sprinted from the room upstairs directly into Alex's bedroom. Upon hearing the commotion the entire family chased the likely flaming cat in disbelief, eventually catching it and likely dousing it in the upstairs bathroom. Somewhere at this point smoke had begun to fill the entire downstairs and began creeping upstairs to the shock of the Prescott clan, which included Alex's older sister home on winter break. Though why they didn't try to wait for firefighters is unknown, we can only conclude that the Prescott's attempted to exit the home. As they fled in terror however, a support column in the living room collapsed, bringing the upper floor down on their heads. Firefighters arriving on the scene recall hearing a tremendous cacophony of breaking wood and bending steel.

What happened next however has stumped the few who, like I, have attempted to uncover the unfortunate trials of Alex Prescott. Conflicting eye witness reports by several neighbors claim Alex walked from the burning rubble, unscathed but for a single terrible slash across his eyes. Another neighbor claims he crawled out, carrying a smoldering cat in his arms. One firefighter reports to have carried the boy out in his arms, though none now living can confirm this. All reports however corroborate on one detail however, the vividly frightful scar over his eyes. This we can assume safely then is the source of his mysterious marking. And his Blindness.

This was one of the alternate beginnings i had written for my story, I ended up dropping the fire altogether and making Alex blind from birth. I'll probably post more here since I don't feel like editing now and I'm stuck on the second installment. TTFN

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