I know two lovely people are waiting for additions to the already posted stuff, but I've been dying to share this with you!

Here's chapter 1! I'm hard at work on chapter 2.

February, 2292
Paradise City, York, RSA

I awoke to the familiar sensation of a hand on my arm. Sleepily, I looked over and saw my best friend Mackenzie smiling at me. He wrote something down on a notebook hurriedly and placed it strategically on the small gap between our two desks. My eyes scanned the page quickly. “Get more sleep at night, Bry,” I read and hid a smile. Mac is the only person who feels comfortable enough with me to tease me. I looked back at him, noted the dark half moons beneath his eyes, and scribbled back, “Said the pot to the kettle.”

“You are so lucky I caught you before Mr. Anderson did,” he scrawled back. He was right. Our first teacher of the day had a habit of throwing things at sleeping students. Not too long ago, he had thrown something at me in an attempt to wake me. Mac had instinctively raised his hand to deflect it; I had awakened to his startled yelp of pain.

The bell rang, signaling the beginning of class. Mac and I went back to our studies as the teacher entered the room. This was the way every school day went. For four hours, the teachers pound anything and everything you can imagine –and some of it you can’t- into the skulls of their students. They expect complete silence and we oblige them, mostly because our parents would kill us if we got in trouble. Since Saint Gavin’s School for Boys was the most prestigious in the world, it, likewise, had the most prestigious students in the world. The school was specifically for the elite or the very brightest students. It wasn’t an easy school to live through, although it was marginally easier for me as the head of a mafia.

The phrase “the strong prey on the weak” has an entirely different meaning here. Our classmates pick at one another, trying to make the other back down, and someone always ends up with a bloody nose. Life was different for Mac and me. People shied away from me as a general rule because they thought that if they pissed me off, I’d have them killed. Mac was initially picked on because he was strangely beautiful, and then because he was my friend. Mac has always had a fiery temper, so by seventh grade, they shied away from him, too.

I pondered a great number of different matters throughout that first two-hour period, but I never thought about the subject at hand. I had so many things to worry about that I couldn’t concentrate on school. I wasn’t just a high school student on the verge of graduating. I also had a full-time job organizing, enforcing, and punishing. As a junior in high school, I’d already outdone my father. Sometimes, I wished I could drop school all together. After all, my father had been a competent leader with no high school education. But I knew I never would, because I simply enjoyed the time with Mac too much to drop out.

The bell rang, signaling that it was lunch time. Mac and I lingered and were the last two in the classroom, mostly because it was next to impossible to carry on a conversation over everyone else’s.

“Bry?” Mac started, looking at me with large eyes.

“Hmm?” I returned, looking back at him.

He flushed and hid his face like a girl would. “Never mind. I just forgot.”

I looked at him. He didn’t look like he had forgotten. He looked like he was uncomfortable with telling me. Sometimes, he acted so much like a girl! “Why do you wear your hair so long?” I asked in an effort to distract us both.

He shrugged. “Because I like it, I guess.”

I never understood his attraction to long hair, not in the 17 years I’ve known him. He tended to keep it in a long braid. Adding that to his slender form and lesser height, it was no wonder why over half of our classmates have a crush on him. Whenever I’d feel that inner voice whispering that he was beautiful, I worked hard to block it out. He was my best friend, damn it, and I wasn’t going to betray him like that.

“C’mon, Bry,” he exclaimed, pulling my arm. “I’m hungry!”

I had to smile. Mac could usually read my emotionless face like a book. Happily, he remained oblivious to some emotions. “Okay, okay,” I said, tugging my arm back. “Can you stop pulling on my arm now?”

He let go and flashed me a vibrantly beautiful smile and hurried down the corridor. I was not prepared for that smile. That smile knocked all the wind from me in an instant as purely lustful thoughts began to fill my head at an alarming rate. I shook it, trying to clear it, filling it with old memories, trying desperately to rid my thoughts of that smile. I succeeded marginally and hurried after him.

After all, I was hungry, too. Just, at this point, not only for food.

Fiction: 07/14/09 | Posted By: SinsofMidnight | 1 comment | Personal