Scratch

Prologue               
               The year is 2008. Your name is Gregory Andrew Dalton. You are just like the average 13-year-old middle-class male living in America right now, except for one small thing: You are currently employed by the United States government. Nothing major, just lending your superior brainpower for the good of the country. Oh, and doing the occasional recon only suitable for a child, er, teenager. You have an IQ of 147, but you try to conceal it in hopes of fitting in with your middle school colleagues. You get average grades, mostly Bs and Cs, but you could do better. You never thought your work for the government was anything to worry about; until now, your records were highly classified and you rarely did any work. Sometimes you even forget that you were a US agent. But on the morning of February 8th, all that changed. Someone had found you. You knew.

Chapter 1
               Pre-Calculus, Period 2. You are flicking paper footballs at the person sitting in front of you, who repeatedly turns around and hisses, “Knock it off.” You chuckle softly, but stop doing it, if only because you’re out of paper. You fumble with your pencil, rolling it across your desk and balancing it on your nose like a mustache, much to the amusement of your classmates. It drops to the ground with a loud clatter.
               The dart went flying past your head at 100 mph. In a stroke of luck, you leaned down to pick up your pencil just as the attacker pulled the trigger. You felt a slight gust of wind on the back of your neck as you got back up. You glance left to see a dart firmly lodged in the bulletin board behind you. You quickly look around for the thrower. You see no one, though you hear a faint rustle in the plants and see a glimmer of clothing as you look away. You turn back to the bulletin board and wrap your fingers tightly around the dart, slowly prying it out of the cork. You examine it; no markings, just a plain black dart. What the—, you think, but your thoughts are cut off by your math teacher.
               “Eyes up front please, Mr. Dalton.” His menacing stare feels like it pierces your soul and sees right through you.
               You spend the rest of the period staring up at the ceiling, pondering this dart incident and generally zoning out.

Chapter 2
               You go through the rest of the school day on high alert. But, nothing happens out of the ordinary, until the walk home. Everything is fine until you turn onto Cedar Street, when you start hearing murmurs, like two people silently collaborating. You occasionally begin to see flashes of clothing, and frequently, you glance behind you, to see if the followers are still there. This is especially odd because no one walks home the way you do. You decide that maybe it’s just a coincidence and continue on. Suddenly, you hear three pairs of feet rapidly battering the sidewalk, and turn to see three men, two armed with baseball bats, and the third wielding a metal club. So much for subtlety. Then, your instinct takes over. Run, it tells you. Run until you can’t run at all. And who can ignore instinct? Not normal people. They’re bearing down on you now.
                 You take off sprinting, and had you seen yourself run, you’d swear you just broke the land speed world record. You run faster, faster, faster, your lungs burning in your chest. Up in the distance, you see your house. Maybe you can make it before they get to you! Too risky, you think. They’re too close. You look over your shoulder to see the three figures menacingly approaching you, scarcely 10 feet away. You rush across the street, and the trio follows you, just as expected. Leaping to the curb just as a bus passes by, you sprint at top speed into a bush, just when your view is blocked by the bus.
               The three rush across, and then stand, puzzled upon not seeing you, on the sidewalk. You hear one of them, the one with the metal weapon, talk in a deep, rumbling voice. “Let’s split up. I’ll go left, you two go right.” His companions quickly follow directions, going right down Cedar Street. The other one stands for a minute, then rushes off down the street in the other direction.
               You stay in that bush for an hour that day, and when it’s finally safe, you climb out and cautiously walk home.
               That incident freaked you out so much, that when you got home, you locked all the windows and doors, then went up to your room and locked yourself up until your parents came home. You vowed to buy a small, concealable weapon tomorrow. You told no one about what happened on February 8th, 2008.

Chapter 3
               You have no idea who those guys were, and what they wanted with you, but one thing was clear: they didn’t want to invite you to dinner. You have the rising suspicion that someone has it in for you, but you don’t know who, or why. There never really was anything that would make anyone want to harm, much less kill, you. Well, except for—No, there’s no way anyone could find out about that. Unless…

Chapter 4
               You’re falling, falling, falling… Falling, falling… Far below, you see something. It’s… it’s… SPIKES! You try to scrabble and avoid them, but no matter where you move, they’re there. You’re falling, falling, falling…
               And then you wake up. It’s been three weeks, nearly to the day, since February 8th, and you still haven’t told a soul. For some reason, you’ve had this dream every night since then, but you haven’t thought it odd until now. You’ve looked for omens in it, but it’s basically just you falling through the darkness, and then you wake up. Every time. You glance over at the clock on your bedside table to your right. It’s 2:17 AM. You mumble something not exactly kid-friendly and gently shut your eyelids. You try to think happy thoughts.
               Suddenly, you feel someone watching you.  You snap open your eyes in fear. Then, a man slowly rises from the floor to watch you. He has a very lean face, with a narrow nose and beady gray eyes gazing back at you. He has a devious smirk on his face, and he looks half-insane with his mangled graying beard. He has thick medium-length black hair. Despite this, he has a fairly well-built musculature, and he looks as if he could beat you in a fight. Which is probably true, since he is holding a knife.
                 You try to scream, but you’re gagged.
                 You try to lash out, but you’re bound. You take one final glance at the alarm clock before passing out. The time: 4:13.

Chapter 5
                 Your eyes flutter open, and the first thing you notice is the pain in your wrists, which are unmercifully tied behind you. You’re still bound and gagged in your pajamas, and your thoughts are wandering. You examine your surroundings. You are in a dilapidated wooden cabin with a window and a door, both boarded up. You are sitting on a packed dirt floor.  Somehow you think the possibility of your escaping isn’t one of your captor’s top priorities. You’re tied to a large timber going from floor to ceiling in the center of the room. The splinters dig agonizingly into your back. You try to think of a way out, but find your thoughts quickly jumbled inside your head. You can’t think clearly. You start to drift in and out of consciousness.
                 In. Still no clues as to who did this to you or why. Your wrists are throbbing now, and your whole body feels like a million tiny needles are jabbing into you, like some cruel acupuncture treatment. The room starts to spin, and then everything starts to look blurry. Suddenly you go under.
                 Out. You start to dream about what would happen if you die here, alone. All of your friends whom you didn’t get to say your goodbyes to, all the life that you haven’t had. Your mind conjures up an image of your parents. You know it’s fake, but it seems so real. “Greg, come home,” they say to you, then vanish. You scream for them to wait, you want to talk to them, tell them you will get home somehow, but they’re already gone.
                 In. Suddenly, a voice interrupts your thoughts. “Just what were you going on about?” It’s the man who kidnapped you. You try to say nasty things to him, but you’re gagged so all that comes out sounds something like “mmmgf gfmmm gffd fgfhfdm.” The man continues, his face betraying no signs of emotion. “We’ve put you under a sedative. It should wear off in about an hour or so. Then you will be free to go, after we have extracted our needed information from you. And if you don’t cooperate…” he says, cracking his beefy knuckles. Unconsciousness washes over you again.
                 Out. Now the sedative is really kicking in. All you see is shapes and squiggles of all colors. They slowly fade away into darkness, as if your mind was hibernating. You don’t know how much time passed before you are interrupted by the sliding of metal on the floor.
                 You open your eyes to see a tray slide across the floor, loaded with food. Not that the food is appealing at all. This looks like something they would serve in my school cafeteria, you think with a grin. Today’s menu: Mystery meat and mashed flavorless “potatoes.” You suddenly realize that you’re not bound or gagged anymore. You nearly jump for joy, until you realize the armed guards standing at the door. Two of them.  You dig into your “food” with the provided spoon. Normally, this is where the hero would somehow get out, maybe by digging his way out with a spoon, or getting rid of the guards and escaping to freedom. However, your logical mind rejects those kinds of stories as impossible. You never did like those kinds of books. So you eat, and halfway through your meal, you come to a sudden realization that you are not under the sedative anymore. You can think clearly now! This time you really do jump for joy.

Chapter 6
                 Your wolfing down of the food is interrupted by a small bird breaking through the wood of the cabin and into the room, spewing sawdust everywhere in the process. Then, a sudden realization: the walls are weak. If a bird can break through, then you probably can too. Without warning, you bolt for the back wall, shoulder first, and brace yourself for the impact. And then… BAM! Through the wall you go. Looking back, you notice that you have left a hole in the shape of your body, not dissimilar to the Saturday morning cartoons you used to watch when you were younger.
                 Suddenly, you hear footsteps, yelling, and snapping wood. Suddenly, you catch a glimpse of the guards. You run faster, destined for the horizon. Suddenly, you hear a sharp whistle as something whizzes through the air. Then you feel a sharp sting in your back, accompanied by a dull thud. Tranquilizer dart. And in a moment, you’re down and out.

Chapter 7
                 Your eyes flutter open, and the first thing you notice is how vastly different your surroundings are from the cabin. Everything is stark white: the floors, the ceiling, the walls, even the door, sans doorknob of course.  You feel the walls. Concrete. And no handy explosives to blow them to smithereens. Oh well, you think with an audible sigh. After exploring your cell some more, you resign to simply waiting. You know your captors will be back. They want you for something, you just don’t know what. So you lie in wait. Well, not literally; there’s no place to comfortably lie down. You succumb to just pacing the room, thinking.




MORE TO BE ADDED LATER

So what do you think? Critiques?

Last edited by Aidan (2011-03-05 18:19:07)