A hazy feeling surrounded him… he wasn’t really sure where he was, but he felt uneasy, like he shouldn’t have been there.
He felt sleepy, and incapable of focusing on anything.
Trying to look around him, the vague environment became progressively clear: he was in a room painted with various shades of blue, dimly lit, and the furniture matched the blue theme of the room.
A blue bookshelf with an impressive amount of books almost completely covered part of one of the walls, the titles too blurry to be comprehensible, and on the opposite wall, a dangerously large window covered by an almost transparent curtain, which gave the impression of being in a very tall skyscraper.
Suddenly, a voice drew his attention.
“Welcome to the Velvet Room. My name is Igor, I am delighted to make your acquaintance”
Turning his head, he noticed a desk, and behind it, sat what probably was the most bizarre person ever.
He seemed rather short even when sitting behind the desk, but his height was pretty normal compared to the other features of his body.
A pair of huge, bulging, bloodshot eyes that seemed could pierce through your soul, the glance accentuated by a pair of equally strangely wild eyebrows, his head with a large bald spot and a crown of silver hair, a disturbingly bizarre grin, and the most prominent feature, a ridiculously long nose, which only added to his grotesque appearance. He wore an elegant black suit with a matching tie, and white gloves covering his hands and long fingers.
“It seems we have a guest with a familiar, yet blurred out and mysterious destiny”
He chuckled to himself, before continuing his monologue.
“This place exists between dream and reality, mind and matter. Only those who are bound by contract, a promise or a deal of some sort may enter. Now, why don’t you introduce yourself?”
Still stunned and astonished by what was happening to him, he barely answered.
“Alex Tennyson”
Gaining more and more of his mental capabilities, the room took a more defined shape, resembling a lot the studio of a psychiatrist.
“Very well. This is my assistant, Christine; she is a resident of this place, like myself”
Extending one of his arms from the pyramid-like position they took, he pointed out to a girl sitting in an armchair near the desk, she wore a blue dress with gold details and accessories, covering her up to the knees, showing just the pantyhose and the matching high-heeled shoes. The long sleeves covered up to the hands, and showed her bizarrely pale skin, she had golden eyes, and in contrast with her elegant appearance, she had a very modern-undercut hairstyle, with platinum blonde curly hair framing her pointy face.
“Welcome to the Velvet Room. I and my master are here to accompany you through your journey.”
Alex couldn’t help but notice that the girl held a voluminous book in her lap, and on top of it, a notebook and a pen.
“Very well. Now, I must ask you to watch these images and tell me what you see.”
Igor called back his attention, and showed him a series of sheets, each with one of the inkblots from the Rorschach test, but even calling upon all his imagination, he couldn’t think of anything.
“I see. Do not worry, everything shall become clear soon. It seems that you will be soon facing a challenge of some sort, an important ordeal, and from the result of it, the fate of the world could become uncertain. You will have to call upon all your strength, but it won’t be enough. This ordeal cannot be faced alone.”
The tone in which he said the last words was eerily knowing, as if he knew what Alex was thinking.
“But enough for now. We shall attend to the details another time… until then, farewell.”
A sudden shake of the bus woke him up, and he found himself still on the same spot where he fell asleep. Looking outside of the window near his seat, he saw the dry panorama of Arizona taking over the view up to the horizon.
“I must have slept for a while there, considering we were still in California as far as I remember…”
Alex thought to himself. Though a late bloomer, Alex was quite the large guy, 6 ft tall, large shoulders and a considerable strength, a somewhat still young face for a 17 year old boy, with masculine features gradually appearing on his face, a clean shaven face (as he still didn’t have a decent beard), and long, dark brown curly hair, matching his almost black eyes. And a detail that upset his parents more than anything, he had two earrings on his right ear, two simple black rings, that sill made his parents shout at him, for the simple decision of piercing his ears
“Sent here, in the middle of nowhere, just because I was expelled… directed to a city with a ridiculous name.”
The reason for his grunting was quite precise: he wasn’t from Sun City, the destination he was reaching, he came from Los Angeles, and he had wished to remain there. The only problem was, his parents, important figures in the city’s economic and political scene, weren’t too happy that he was expelled from a private academy for a brawl with one of his classmates, a fight that Alex swore he didn’t start, but for whom he was still expelled.
And for that, his parents sent him away, not too far enough however, in a small private school in the middle of Arizona, near Phoenix, in the bizarrely named Sun City.
Alex was irritated by all of this. Not that he had any friends there, his personality clashed with everyone else, the thing that made him go nuts was that not only his parents didn’t believe him and didn’t even try to defend him or help him even once, they even sent him away, making him only feel like a burden.
Looking at his phone, he checked the hour: it was quite late, almost midnight, the only thing he could hope was that the reception at the school dorm wouldn’t start an annoying series of questions and paperwork in the middle of the night.
“And now I even begin having weird dreams…”
He murmured, the hazy memories of the dream still haunting his mind. What did the long-nosed man mean with ‘an important ordeal’?
And why did he bother so much about a dream probably caused by the cheap cup noodles he ate before?
The semi-desert soon gave way for a much recognizable city landscape, though much more modest than the familiar landscape of L.A.
Gathering his things, Alex finished just in time, arriving at the bus stop right in front of the dorm complex that his admission letter mentioned.
Fortunately, the old lady at the reception only checked the letter and the ID, to make sure he wasn’t some kind of impostor or something like that, and Alex could finally get some rest.
He lazily took his stuff out of his bags, and then lay back on the bed, looking at what would be his school uniform. He didn’t mind too much, but even if that was a private school, it felt strange to have a uniform.
At last, he barely changed to his pajamas and tucked himself into bed, before finally falling asleep, in the hopes of not having weird dreams with long-nosed old men and pale women dressed in blue.
The following morning, Alex woke up sooner than expected.
Maybe it was the trip from the day before, maybe it was the fact that he had slept on the bus, or maybe, because of the unsettling sight he had an instant before falling asleep.
For a brief moment, less than a second, he saw something rather strange. This time however, it had nothing to do with long-nosed old men or women in blue.
In the dark, he saw a pair of eyes. While the sight of a pair of eyes in the dark would leave everyone with at least an uneasy feeling, the most unsettling fact wasn’t their presence, but rather the fact that he was sure that they weren’t really there, and still, they were still disturbingly real. An unearthly green glow emanated from them, the bright red pupils that resembled embers, and the worst part, despite all of this, was that they still looked undoubtedly human.
And so, here he was, up before the dawn, staring at what would be his school uniform for the days to come. A dark grey blazer, with matching pants, and white shirt, fortunately with no tie, for Alex hated them since they made him feel like he was about to be executed by hanging. On the left side, right where the heart is, the symbol of the school, a stylized sun, with the name ‘Dawn High’ written in golden letters.
Having nothing to do (falling asleep would probably mean wake up late, and after getting expelled from his old high school he didn’t want to start on the wrong foot) and having no interest at the moment in watching TV, he simply got dressed, trying to get used to the feeling of a uniform, and suddenly, the words from the dream he had on the bus returned to his mind.
Shaking his head, he tried to forget both the dream and the unsettling eyes he saw before falling asleep, annoyed by the rapid series of nonsense that happened in that few hours.
“This city must be cursed… first that weird room dream, and now I see green and red eyes in the dark...”
Picking up his things, he decided to take it slow, following the instructions he received to reach the school from the dorms, and began slowly walking, analyzing his surroundings.
The city looked pretty normal, like a version of Los Angeles without the new tall, shining buildings and with much less trafficked roads, albeit it could have just been that it was simply too early in the morning for the roads to be the usual chaotic mess. Walking down the worn out streets, he noticed how the school stood out amongst the other buildings of the city: three huge three stories buildings connected by lower, two stories building, which made it look like a squared off trident, and judging by the bright white paint, once the sun was high enough the building must have been a blindingly bright sight.
Just as he wondered why a simple high school needed such a huge building apart from classrooms, laboratories and sports structures, he noticed a sign on the east part of the building, ‘Dawn Middle School’.
Apparently, the building also housed a middle school
“Pretty smart move for a private school” he thought “securing the school fees right from the start…”
After another quick walk around the block, he returned to the entrance of the school and saw the flow of students entering the building, and joined them, going with the massive group of noisy teenagers.
However, amongst the crowd, he noticed two girls bickering, and more than the argument they were having, it was their contrasting appearance that made them stand out: one was a normal height girl, around 5 ft 7 or so, with long blonde hair loosely tied at the end, keeping the locks from moving too much, and from the glimpse of her face he had while moving, had green eyes and a few freckles; the other girl was notably shorter, at least 3 inches shorter than the girl she was arguing with, but what hit him like a wall of solid bricks was her hair, rather short, messy, and above all, rainbow.
From what he got, it seemed like they were arguing about who got there first.
“… no way AJ, I was way faster than you!”
“You almost made me trip at half the course! How would ya like if next time ah knocked on your shoulder and make ya trip while you’re looking the other way?”
Wondering why someone would race on the way to school, he continued forward, leaving the strange duo to the business.
-Meanwhile, in the principal’s office-
“The readings are clear, sister. The psychic wave scanning over the city last night registered an unusual change in the frequency of the alpha type wave, with a brief peak around 0:30 AM”
A woman with iridescent hair read the papers on her desk, the lightly tan skin of her face accompanying the light frowning, slightly worried, but on the other hand, hopeful it meant what she was hoping for.
Moving her gaze from the paper to meet her sister’s, the same expression of concern and hope could be clearly seen, her expressive blue eyes in contrast with her pale skin, much like her hair, a deep shade of blue, almost black, with mysterious little shining sparks appearing here and there, like stars on a night sky.
“Are you positive? This could mean a lot for us.”
The older one said, already knowing the answer: if someone in the world could find any anomalies of that kind, it was her sister.
“Affirmative. I was controlling them myself last night. We should check if any new inhabitant recently transferred in Sun City. If I’m right, this could be a new start for the…”
What should have been a secret discussion however, was interrupted by a light knocking on the door.
-Back where we left-
The endless flow of moving students was quite familiar for Alex, and he managed to get through it without any problem.
After getting his class schedule at the teachers’ room, he was told that he’d need a badge to have access to the school facilities, and that he’d have to go to the principal office to dispatch the needed formalities for his registration in the school database and the badge.
After nearly crashing into a girl with light pink hair, who then proceeded to overwhelm him with an unnecessary amount of ‘Sorry’ because she was walking without paying any attention, he reached the principal’s office, where he heard the muffled voices of two women speaking in what sounded like a concerned tone.
Since he needed to go to classroom as fast as possible, he knocked lightly on the door, and after a brief moment of silence, he heard one of the voices say “Come in”
The office was well lit, the window on the opposite side of the door facing east, so that in the early morning it could take as much natural light as possible, and had the standard furniture you would expect from the office of a principal of a high school, including a framed Ph.D. in classic literature on of the walls and photos regarding the school in various years.
In front of him, a woman sat behind the desk, greeting him with a warm, maternal smile, her long, iridescent hair shining in the colors of the aurora thanks to the sunlight shining on her.
“Welcome. You must be the transfer student, correct? I’m Principal Celestia, and this is my sister, vice-principal Luna”
She pointed to the woman standing next to her, the contrast in both the skin tone and hair quite obvious, if principal Celestia’s hair resembled the aurora, her sister’s recalled a night sky.
“Thank you… yes, I’m Alex Tennyson…”
He said, still surprised by the very contrasting siblings.
Before he could continue, Celestia interrupted him, already knowing what he came for, having done the procedure quite a few times before.
“You must be here for the ID registration and the badge, right? The notification of your enrollment here came late, so we lacked the time to properly register you in the school database.”
She said, tapping a few keys on the keyboard of her computer, inserting his data.
While Celestia was busy updating the database however, Alex felt a gaze upon him.
Since he entered the room, Luna kept staring at him, as if she was trying to comprehend if he would be an obedient student or a rebellious one, and Alex couldn’t help but feel uneasy.
“Here, all done. You will receive your personal badge next week. For the time being, take this”
Celestia broke the awkward silence, before taking a blue plastic card out of the drawer of her desk.
“Please, enjoy your time here and have a fun and productive school year.”
She dismissed him, with the same warm, motherly smile, in a way that could inspire trust to anyone, and as Alex left, the atmosphere of the room returned to a more serious tone.
“It’s him.”
Luna said, finally speaking again after being silent for the whole time since Alex entered the room
“He’s the anomaly the scanners found – that I – felt. And before you ask me, yes, I’m 100% positive.”
Celestia looked up to her, their gazes meeting, and considered what that could possibly mean, and they hoped for the same thing.
“So, what shall we do sister?”
Celestia sighed, both worriedly and hopefully
“There’s not much we can do now Luna. We can only observe and hope. If your assumption is right, it begins.”
