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gabriel-gabdiel · 4 years ago

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【Draft】Fantasy of Evolution Chapter 1: The Quiet Kid in Class

Here’s the draft of my original piece of fiction. It’s here for backup purposes.

Enjoy.

Darkness without light is an abyss. Light without darkness is blinding. You cannot have a coin with one side.

(Unknown)

***

Fantasy of Evolution

An Urban Fantasy Story by Abdiel

Here's my first-ever original work I conceptualized from scratch. Hope you all like it. Enjoy.

Disclaimer: This work may reference copyrighted material, the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. It is believed that this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. All copyrighted material referred to in this work belongs to their respective owners. All rights reserved.

***

Chapter 1: The Quiet Kid in Class

***

Somewhere inside Our Lady of Fatima School in Mandaluyong, Metro Manila...

Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, and Azrael. Or was it Uriel?

'Those were the Four Archangels, right?' the young 14-year-old boy by the name of Florante Galang thought, talking to himself in his mind as the rain poured all around him.

What a dreadful month this had been.

Anyway, Michael or Mikhail was the most famous archangel whose name meant "Who Is Like God". He was the greatest of God's angels and the most godlike of the four. With his flaming sword, he was the seraph who ultimately cast the angelic traitor Lucifer out of Heaven and into Hell.

Meanwhile, Raphael, Rafael, or Israfil was the archangel whose name meant "God Heals" or "God, Please Heal". The healing angel who bound the Archdemon Azazel under a desert called Dudael. The Angel of Life and Healing.

Then there was Gabriel or Jibrail. His name meant, "God Is My Strength". The strongest warrior angel of the four. The seraph that was closest to the humans who regularly appeared among prophets and holy persons. He was the Angel of Strength and Righteous Power.

Azrael or Samael, meanwhile, was the archangel whose name meant "Angel of God" but actually had the reputation of being more of the "Angel of Death". He was rumored to be the angel who killed all the firstborn sons of the Egyptians during the time of Moses as part of the Seven Plagues of Egypt.

In Jewish mysticism, he was even considered the embodiment of evil. The most demonic of the archangels who never fell from grace.

Some contend that the fourth angel of the Four Archangels was Uriel instead of Azrael, whose name meant "God Is My Light". The archangel responsible for "changing" the Orb of the Sun as the day wound down from morning to night. The Solar Angel.

Those were the strange thoughts swirling inside Florante Galang's brain for whatever reason as he stared breathless at the strange apparition of a goddess(?) with an hourglass figure, porcelain skin, and growing white wings waltzing across the long hallway of the entrance to Fatima School.

Who was this? What was this? Why was this...?

Actually, he felt like he'd been walking in that same hallway towards the exit forever until that point, with no light at the end of the tunnel. Only a black nothingness that stretched on forever, interrupted by this strange being of light before him.

The only light he could see was from this strange being before him that triggered his flight-or-flight response for merely existing.

She also sported huge dove wings on her back that spread behind her like a long white feathery banner. As though she were a valkyrie or something. Or an angel.

Were her angel wings what made him think of the Four Archangels?

He should've been thinking about Jesus, Mary, and Joseph instead, to be honest.

'Susmaryosep!'

He sometimes wondered if he was seeing the same things through his eyes that the rest of the world was seeing. After all, everyone could see color but couldn't describe them, so there was no way of knowing if the red he sees was the red other people see.

Maybe there was something wrong with his brain. His mother did say she was tempted to have him take an autism test. However, the cause didn't matter. It wouldn't change the effect.

He stood there, transfixed by her gorgon stare and her tall, svelte body. She strode, her form appearing inch by inch with every gliding step.

The feminine silhouette emerged from the shadows, revealing the horror underneath the silken black cloak of darkness.

She said nothing, but he could feel the malice in her every movement.

Her skin gleamed like pearls in the moonlight. A sensation grew inside him inexorably, rising from his stomach to his throat as he felt his soul claw its way out of his body in anticipation and dread.

Was she a "White Lady" or a vengeful spirit from beyond the grave? Was he being haunted on this rainy day (or night)?

His gaze focused right into the shining, mesmerizing eyes of the goddess staring right back at him.

Beguiling. Alluring. Dangerous. It pushed all his buttons, confusing him.

So what the hell was he looking at?

Was it delirium that made him see a strange woman that reminded him of angels instead of the embodiment of death before him?

A Biblical angel. Both awesome and awful.

She... not that gender mattered to angels... said, "Do not fear, child. It will be over soon."

She approached him with every bone and muscle from her swaying body twitching visibly under her skin.

His delirious mind going blank, he asked the apparition her name.

"Who are you?!" he asked, when he should've instead said, "What are you?"

The pitter-patter of the rain grew louder and louder. The wind blew hard, tousling his thin bowl-cut hair.

"This is the end of the line for you. I won't let you hurt anyone else, Flor. Prepare to die."

Oh no. Is she for real? What did he do to deserve this? How did she know his name? Her voice began to sound familiar though.

Was this the end of the line for him? More importantly, did it matter?

The juxtaposition of beauty and beast almost drove him mad. Like a surreal dream that melted into a formless nightmare. Or perhaps vice-versa.

The haze in his mind then cleared. He recognized who that person was. She was someone familiar. Even in her transformed state he could recognize her face.

She then flew towards him with dove wings and the speed of a man jumping from a skyscraper and falling to his death towards the cold, hard pavement.

Faster than he could even fathom or wonder why she was named after the Angel of Healing instead of the Angel of Death.

His life then flashed before his eyes.

***

Florante Galang's story was a typical one (apparently).

The awkward teenage boy who couldn't make friends. The absent-minded weirdo. The outcast who lived in a world of his own. The nerd who loved anime a bit too much.

'You've heard it once and you might as well have heard it a thousand times before.'

How'd he know he was such a stereotype? From the movies and TV shows he'd watch or the books he'd read. He was the "blank slate" awkward kid in such stories. The default.

Perhaps even the background character. Otherwise, a subject of mockery or wish fulfillment.

They were stories made to appeal to someone like him, after all. Or mock someone like him.

He was not someone people wished to be but what they usually ended up as from the start. An ordinary fellow that sat in contrast against the special ones. The greats.

Most everyone in Fatima High School had their own cliques and social circles, but most who studied there had formed them since grade school.

Because he was a socially inept loser and he transferred there as a freshman, he never had a chance to form bonds with most anyone.

He was, in short, the new kid in school, who then became the quiet kid in school.

'Ugh.'

Even his mother, whom he had a complicated relationship with due to their countless shouting matches and arguments that had her shaming him for being a disrespectful smart aleck (in not so many words), was the one person he was closest to than anyone else on earth.

Yes, even the closest person to him was never on the same page as him.

His mother. The woman who kept admonishing him for misbehaving and putting fear in his heart every time she grabbed a shoe or one of his father's belts (his gentle father himself never laid a hand on him) was also the person he interacted with the most.

Him and his family originally hailed from Makati but moved to Pasig around the EDSA (Epifanio de los Santos Avenue) Revolution. He could barely remember his time in Makati because he stayed there when he was 3 to 4 years old, and he only started really forming memories at around 4 years old.

He could barely remember anything about his previous residence in Makati except maybe that one time he allegedly fell down the stairs as a toddler.

He'd become acrophobic ever since that happened even though he could barely remember the event.

Every time he walked on an overpass or at the higher floors of the mall, he had to move himself far away from the railings and he never looked down, feeling a tingle from head to toe until he got back down to earth safely.

However, the phobia he had over heights was nothing compared to the dread he felt when going to school.

His family, the Galangs, arrived in Pasig around the time Manggahan Floodway... an artificially constructed waterway in Metro Manila... was first built.

He had spent most of his childhood in Pasig, watching his mother and father invest in half of a bungalow that they then slowly built into a whole house over the years by saving up for it.

His memories were hazy, but he did remember when he was about 6 or 7 years old that every Friday, from 7:00 to 7:30 PM, ABS-CBN Channel 2 would air the show, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles".

TMNT originally aired in the U.S. from 1987 onwards while ABS-CBN went back on air in 1986, right after Ferdinand Marcos was deposed. ABS-CBN got the program later on at a time when local channels imported programs about 2-3 years late.

Nonetheless, he distinctly remembered watching it at that timeslot when he was a kid.

Even before that, he vaguely remembered watching programs of his youth that helped shaped him and his imagination, from Voltes V to Bioman and Maskman as well as Voltron and Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs.

He remembered playing with clothespins and putting them together to form his own Voltron toy.

Programs that made him dream of a time he could become a hero himself, his imagination looking like a vague hodgepodge of pop culture references and shows he watched from childhood to his teenage years.

His father was a curious man. The Galangs had ashtrays all over the house but they were never used. He used to be a heavy smoker but he quit around the time Florante was born.

Florante never met the cigarette-smoking version of his dad, who judging from old pictures, was a thin hippie with long 1970s hair and pants to boot.

His Dad also regularly waited for him with their family car, a Mitsubishi Lancer, to take him home during the first few weeks of school. His school service wasn't ready yet and he didn't know how to commute to school as of yet.

To the good people of Pasig, his father was Engineer Galang. To Florante, he was the home tinkerer. He fixed everything in his home from leaky kitchen pipes to Florante's broken toys.

Even if was something as simple as super-gluing the broken arm of his toy Bioman toy... Blue 3, to be more specific... his father would do it.

It felt relaxing and comfortable to drive around with his father back and forth to school, but Florante took it too much for granted in retrospect. The man had office work to attend to as well.

Then again, Florante was a bit of a sheltered spoiled brat who didn't know how to commute to and from his home. He depended on his father or a school service to take him back to his residence.

Regardless, the jeepney service soon came through and his father was free to go straight to work instead of being bothered by driving his son from home to school and back again.

The thing Florante missed the most when being driven by his father was the small, inconsequential talks they had about life, school, and the future.

Small talk about what he wanted to do when he graduated high school, what his career would be, where his passion lay, and if his love of drawing and art could lead anywhere.

They also talked about what sort of games could or couldn't be played on his work laptop (Duke Nukem from Apogee, apparently). Or how Florante should stop sleeping with his work laptop in his room, replaying the Simpsons After Dark Screensaver program.

Or whatever happened to that floppy disk (the really big and floppy ones) he had containing a videogame involving a cat that might've been custom-made by one of his coworkers.

Florante also discussed with his father his dreams of becoming an animator who worked at Disney and the like.

He was even closer to one of his older sisters, the one closest to his age. The middle one. His other sister, the eldest of the three siblings, was the one with the strong, abrasive personality. The aloof eldest sister to her two younger siblings.

The middle sister was the one whom Florante talked to the most.

She was usually as meek and kind as a sheep yet sometimes as stubborn as a ram. She was the one he told his made-up stories about angels and demons. The plot he wanted to turn into his own comic book or manga or anime TV show.

He, like many other teenaged boys his age, wished he could draw or write his own stories. After reading snippets and summaries of Dante's Inferno and Milton's Paradise Lost, his mind went running wild regarding the prospect of a series about angels.

God's so-called messengers.

This was why he knew so much about the Four Archangels. He researched about them for the sake of writing his own (fan) fiction using "original" characters.

Sure, his middle sister might be patronizing him by listening to his puerile action stories of super-powered beings duking it out that she'd soon forget a day or two later, but he appreciated her effort in listening to him regardless.

Also, as lame as it sounded, making that story in his head into reality as a comic book or TV show (and making money off of it) was his biggest dream for the longest time. Again, it was a typical childhood fantasy from someone who regularly obsessed about cartoons and comics or anime and manga.

Meanwhile, he didn't have anyone to talk to at school at all. He had no friends at school. He was a friendless loser.

He could talk about almost everything to his father and sister. However, he couldn't talk about "that".

He wished he could talk to them about the bullying and shunning he suffered from school but he was too embarrassed to do so. He was already 14 years old. He should be able to handle things on his own by now.

How could he possibly reveal that he got bullied so bad that he had to act as his own snitch to the teacher just to get them to stop?

Had a teacher not seen the bullying firsthand and told his bullies to cut it out, he wouldn't even have the list as his means of mitigating the flow of abuse from what seemed like everyone.

Even then, he had a hard time making friends with any of his classmates regardless. His social life was dead. He could only make friends with his fellow "Dead Kids" and nothing more.

***

Fatima Grade School and High School of Mandaluyong was also right beside a church, since it was a Catholic school that was founded by Franciscan capuchins.

The church sat atop a hill with a steep, sloping road wherein cars can drive through. The parking area was at the foot of this hillside road. Right below the church was the back of the canteen—the kitchen area—and outside of it was a bricked walkway full of tall trees and what little dirt they were allowed to grow on.

The unexpected benefit of enrolling in Fatima School was the nearby shopping malls. They were within walking distance. Florante was no mallrat but he regularly made a beeline to these malls every dismissal time. He went there to kill time while waiting for his school service to take him home.

The actual entrance of the school was a narrow hallway with concrete pillars and seats enclosed within a chain link fence. The security guard's job was to check your I.D. before letting you inside. Right beside the walkway a separate glass door entrance to the Faculty Room and the Principal's Office for Fatima Grade School.

You needed to travel further within the campus, past the quadrangle, open-air basketball courts, tennis court, soccer field, and tree-lined park in order to reach the L-shaped high school building.

It rained that day, so he had to walk on the covered walkways to spare himself from the muddiness of the soccer field and the wetness of various puddles on the concrete ground.

It was a proper, well-funded private school. With the ached looks of his parents at the start of the year where they had to pay the tuition fee, Fatima should give them their money's worth.

Inside the high school building, beyond the muddy floor mat and within the vicinity of the hardworking custodians mopping up the soppy shoe prints of the milling students, everything was nice, warm, and dry.

Or it would've been nice, warm, and dry had the air not been so muggy. This sort of humidity was to be expected from the Philippine tropics.

What wetness he left behind on the floor mats he could feel from under his collar.

He had felt his breath gradually creep towards hyperventilation as he approached the door to his section. He then held his breath while following two of his classmates through the door.

At any rate, here he was. Back to hell he went.

There was mustiness from the hallway that reached all the way to the classrooms.

This gloomy air all around him reminded him of his first day in Fatima High. He remembered it like it was yesterday.

***

During his first day of school at Fatima High...

His enrollment into Fatima High School was a bureaucratic blur.

He had gone through the motions of waiting in line in a small, brightly lit office in order to get his papers containing his schedule before being directed to his classroom.

At the time, he pulled his hood over his face (he wore a hoodie since it was cold) as he walked through the dour campus full of milling, bright-eyed teenagers and kids, thankfully blending in with the rest of the crowd before being "outed" as a transfer student.

He was an introvert though, so he couldn't muster the courage to talk to any one of them as they all formed their little cliques and social circles.

Meanwhile, he ended up in the company of total strangers because he was the new kid in school.

Regardless, he used the map given to him at the faculty room along with instructions on how to get there.

He checked the room number on the paper slip that the office gave him, and then checked the names on the list pinned on the board hanging on the door. Sure enough, he found his name there.

This was the right classroom.

He took a deep breath (perhaps more of a prolonged sigh) before opening the door to his classroom.

The people in front of him were chatting it up, their school bags beside them. They had no lockers to speak of even though they were supposedly a private school.

He glanced at the multiple gatherings of unfamiliar faces, identifying only two of boys as students he'd seen during enrollment.

With a gulp, he held his own bag in his arms and clutched it close to his chest like a pillow. Or a security blanket. This was a move taught to him in order to avoid getting his bag snatched in places like Divisoria in Quiapo.

His eyes traveled further across the room, avoiding the gazes of the students around him and only looking directly at them if they were staring elsewhere. Otherwise, he ended up staring at the floor or his shoes instead while his head was bowed.

Since the first day of school was a time when the seating plan hadn't been planned out yet by their designated advisor, he silently searched for a seat at the back while other students who were a mix of graduates of Fatima Grade School and newbies like him started to mill inside their classroom like herded sheep.

It was there that he met her. A girl with silky long black hair and a shy smile.

The bell rang with such franticness that like in a game of "Trip to Jerusalem", he ended up sitting down on a seat right beside her.

***

Their homeroom teacher, some forgettable 40-year-old guy serving as their class advisor, did a roll call on everyone present.

He waited and raised his hand when his name was called. He then made a mental footnote to wait for the name of the girl beside him to get called.

Philippine private high schools, unlike those from the U.S., had classes held in the same classroom for the same section instead of multiple classrooms with assigned subjects and teachers.

It was the teachers that moved from section to section and room to room instead of the students. The latter setup where students went to Math or Science class was more of a college thing in the Philippine Islands.

In between classes and within the same room they'd been staying in the whole day, Florante attempted to chat up the pretty girl he ended up sitting beside with, first by introducing himself and then calling her by her name as revealed by their homeroom teacher.

Her name was Laura Reyes, by the way.

"So Mandaluyong is a lot different than Antipolo, huh?" he asked her after she mentioned where she was from. My, their school sure was a long way from her home!

"Very different," she said, not quite looking at him.

"The roads there go high up on an incline, right? Since you're near the mountains or something," he added, referring to the highlands where Antipolo was located. "Must be a long, tough commute."

"I guess," she replied vaguely. "Well, not really. It takes about 30 minutes if the traffic is clear. It's not that far away."

"Oh. Okay," he said before both went silent once more.

Uh-oh. He was running of topics to discuss with her. Dammit.

She wasn't quite giving him the cold shoulder, but she wasn't the one keeping the conversation going either.

Also, he couldn't believe Laura of all people didn't know about the tale of "Florante and Laura" by Francisco Baltasar or made the connection between their names when he joked about it earlier.

Or maybe it was for the best that she didn't, since making such references to a stranger you just met was kind of cringe-inducing.

Someone else cleared their throat. 'Her' throat.

"Hey, Laura!" said the bespectacled girl in front of them as she did a sideway glance at the two. "Who's your new friend?"

"Oh. Uh, this is... what's your name again? Flor?"

He sighed then said, "Florante."

He winced whenever people shortened his name like that. "Flor" was a girl's name, for goodness's sake!

"Oh, sorry. Florante it is." Laura smiled at Florante vaguely then turned towards the other girl. The cute one with the glasses.

Laura and the bespectacled girl had an easier time with their small talk, presumably because they attended the same grade school and weren't transfer students like he was.

He also couldn't help but feel like the other girl was giving him a wary side eye. He hoped it was his imagination. The last thing he wanted was to look creepy to the girls on the first day of school.

"...Nah, I'm staying with some relatives in Metro Manila," Laura replied to the nerdy girl asking her the same question Florante did earlier regarding the commute from Antipolo to Mandaluyong.

"Oh really? Cool. I'm from Makati," the nerdy girl replied.

Now wait a second. Why did Laura answer her question but when he asked the same thing, she didn't tell him about staying with relatives in Metro Manila? Ugh, this girl.

Beautiful as Laura was, she was also quite rude!

She didn't need to pretend to be nice to him. If she didn't want to talk to him, she could've just given him the cold shoulder like many of the girls from his old school!

"Hey, Flor!"

"It's Florante," he automatically corrected before noticing it was the girly nerd who beckoned him by name. "Uh, yeah. What is it?"

"Where are you from? What class were you back in Grade 7? Or are you an accelerant from Grade 6?"

"Accelerant?" he repeated. He was familiar with the term.

The girl later explained that when at Grade 6 or 12 years old, a student with good enough grades could skip Grade 7 and go straight to first year high school as an accelerant.

He clarified, "No, no. I'm a transfer student. This is my first day at Fatima."

"Right. Welcome to Fatima High, then!" the girl with the glasses said. "The name's Jenny, by the way. Jenny Tolentino. I'm an accelerant from sixth grade."

He nodded absently. "Florante Galang," he reintroduced himself to this mousy girl with short hair, noticing her baby doll face behind coke-rimmed glasses for the first time.

She looked of East Asian descent, but Florante couldn't for the life of him tell if she was part Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. Chinese was a safe bet.

***

The rest of the morning of his first day in school passed in the same fashion as before: With him engaging in awkward small talk with either Jenny or Laura that was interspersed with introductions, note-taking, and discussion of lesson plans galore.

The homeroom teacher had Florante, several other transfer students, and "accelerants" from Fatima Grade School introduce themselves in front of the class full of Grade 7 graduates who already had their own cliques and friends by now.

His social anxiety got him to stammer an introduction to the class, blush tomato-red, and trip over himself on his own two leather shoes as he made his way back to the seat.

He cringed and didn't meet Laura's eyes. He looked so uncool.

They then had their next class with a strict middle-aged woman for a mathematics teacher covering one of the most boring subjects of all time.

Their advisor and home economics teacher was a young woman straight out of college by the looks of it, dealing with her first teaching job and showcasing a strong aura of "substitute" teacher even though she wasn't one.

Her name was Cathy, if he recalled correctly. Or Miss (Cathy) Estrella. She was kind of cute, if a bit goofy and had a tendency to pronounce her Ls as Ws like Barbara Walters or Elmer Fudd.

After three classes had passed, he began recognizing several of the faces in their first-year section.

More and more people ended up talking to Laura even though she herself was an accelerant from the sixth grade amongst mostly seventh graders. She was particularly popular among the boys in the group: No surprises there.

Her beauty hadn't only caught Florante's eyes, apparently. The rest of the class's male population wanted to talk to her. Even the females wished to chat her up as well. She had that aura of friendliness around her.

There were several brave enough to ask her about how much she liked Fatima High so far and why she decided to go there instead of a school closer to Antipolo. Maybe even an all-girls school.

Most of her answers were mostly terse and diplomatic, like with him.

She did reveal to Jenny that she already went to an all-girls school in elementary, which was part of the reason why her parents had her transfer to a co-ed one: To help her become more prepared for a co-ed college life.

This then led him to curiously tell Jenny, "Hey, I thought Laura and you were accelerants with how buddy-buddy you two were acting. But didn't you say you were an accelerant?"

Jenny shrugged. "I am. But I met Laura earlier when our families came over to school and paid the tuition fee on the same day. She's a nice gal." She then whispered to him, "She's cute, isn't she?"

He turned away, his hand holding up his lightly blushing face while his elbow rested on his desk. "She's all right," he mumbled.

He heard Laura giggle at Jenny and say, "Hey, I'm right here! Don't talk behind my back!"

Jenny herself laughed. "No, we weren't! We were talking right in front of you! We don't backtalk! Right, Flor?"

Florante forced a smile at the Chinese-looking girl and nodded.

The Galang boy then got a better look at the nerdy Jenny. Aside from those huge tinted glasses that looked almost like goggles and seemed to belong in the 1970s, she had short, neck-length curly hair.

She wasn't bad looking herself.

She talked to both him and Laura in between subjects and lessons, but mostly to Laura, who at least talked to her in return and wasn't as evasive with her answers as she was to him or the other boys in class.

Jenny acted more like the nice girl she described Laura as, at least.

As for him, he could only smile and nod as she prattled on in between classes and teachers, telling Laura about the Fatima campus. He didn't try to keep up and figured he'd learn more about Fatima on his own.

During lunchtime, Florante ended up sitting at the far end of a full lunch table with Jenny and Laura along with several of their other new "friends", their classmates.

Florante forgot their names as soon as they spoke them, his mind focused more on Laura.

He debated to himself whether she was waving him off the same way she waved off the boys who were probably hitting on her back at their classroom.

One of their classmates, he did remember.

The one who brought up the "Florante and Laura" connection they had that made Florante's eyes light up, only for his shoulders to then slump when he turned and saw Laura tell the guy off, "Gross! Stop fooling around, Gerry! I just met him! C'mon, you're embarrassing Flor!" with a giggle.

'Gross'? Aw, come on, Laura!' Florante thought to himself, his heart sinking while he did a nervous chuckle at the cruel joke. Did he actually gross out Laura after all?

Laura and "Gerry", the jester who brought the "Florante and Laura" connection up, then laughed at the thought, all the while reassuring Galang that they were just kidding.

"No hard feelings, bro," said the tall guy named Geronimo "Gerry" (pronounced "Jerry") Jacinto who made the joke in the first place. Florante did his best to laugh things off, hiding his quivering lower lip with his hand.

Galang took a good look at the smart aleck who brought the subject up.

This person was the size of a tall rock with the mind of a sock. Comfortable to wear but once taken off, easily lost. He was also the kind of man who looked like he'd spent the last decade worrying about his penis size.

No, no, Florante was being needlessly mean to the jokester. He was big, tall, and had a huge head. Not exactly a good-looking guy but a witty and confident one. Also, among the boys there, he seemed to have the most rapport with Laura, if not the most memorable one of the bunch.

Gerry was more of a "Florante" to Laura than Florante was. Although they just met, they were already getting along famously.

On the bright side, he was glad he never made that Florante and Laura joke to break the ice with Laura.

As the chatterbox Jenny talked the ears off of the crowd of boys and girls surrounding Laura, the withdrawn Florante saw them arrive at the cafeteria.

"What are those weirdoes doing anyway?" someone at their table asked.

***

Sitting at the corner of the cafeteria, as far away as possible from where Florante Galang and Laura Reyes's group sat, were these pale-faced, dark, and brooding Fatima High students.

The term "Goth" was more of an American trend than a Philippines one, but that was the best way to describe these people.

'What was their problem?' Florante thought to himself. He wasn't the only one staring holes at those people though.

They weren't gawking at Laura, unlike most other students of the first year class of St. Francis of Assisi and even other classes.

Instead, everyone ended up gawking at them for a change, including Galang and Reyes.

By the way, in Fatima School, all of the sections were named after saints. Florante belonged to First Year St. Francis. As for those other people, he overheard Jenny stage whisper to Laura, "They're from St. Valentine, right?"

One of Gerry's friends confirmed, "Yeah, some of them belong to St. Valentine," referring to First Year St. Valentine of Rome.

There were five of them, four boys and one girl. They weren't talking to each other. They weren't eating either, with each of them holding trays of untouched food.

Apropos of nothing, Galang noticed they were an eclectic and diverse group from multiple high school years.

The shortest male of these Fatima students had spiky hair standing up like a black bush or a shadowy fire. He was also the most boyish one of the group.

Another one, the girl, had hair in a bun with side bangs as long as her back ponytail. She was about the same height as the bush-haired boy and had an almost elfish or pixie-like quality to her smallish face, body, and gait.

Still another, the one with the tanned skin and brusque physique, had shades colored light enough for him to claim they were glasses. Not only did he wear shades indoors—he also sported a jacket indoors too.

The happiest, smiley-faced one of them with the long, thick hair just also happened to be the palest one of the group, even though both the girl and the "midget" boy had alabaster skin themselves. He also looked like a serious weightlifter for someone supposedly so young.

Finally, there was the really tall, lanky young man. Taller than Gerry. Skinny as a rail yet as tall as a basketball player. Maybe 6'9". Maybe even seven feet. He might as well be eight feet high from the looks of him and his lengthy arms and feet.

Look at the height of that human being. If he was a human being.

However, there were in the Philippines with a height average of 5'1" so he was probably just 6'5" or something.

He definitely didn't appear like a high school student for sure. More like their guardian or butler. "He looks old for a freshman," remarked Florante.

Gerry himself corrected, "Tanga (Stupid)! Only the midget and girl are from St. Valentine. The rest are from different years. Celestino is a fourth year student."

Florante frowned but did not dare glare at the bigger Jacinto.

Instead, he repeated the name, "Celestino..." as his words trailed off while he stared the tallest student of the weird bunch.

Now that he got a better look at him, he identified that this Celestino person had half-Caucasian or "mestizo" features.

He might not even be half but full Caucasian by how white he was and how sharp his nose got.

He might even be of Spanish descent, which was a sought-after attribute among Filipinos, whether they wanted narrow noses that were "matangos" as opposed to flat noses or "pango".

It rooted from the colonial days of the Philippines when it was a colony of Spain for 300 years then of the United States of America for almost 50 years. The foreigners intermarried with the natives, and their half-white, half-Spanish, or half-American offspring tended to be treated better than the rest by society.

It came to the point that looking like a mestizo by surgery and skin whitening procedures resulted in better treatment by everyone else at large, which in turn led to such appearances being part of the standards of Philippine beauty.

It was "Colonial Mentality" in action, if you would.

Then again, if Celestino hadn't been born with that (Spanish?) family name of his, Florante would've sworn he picked that name himself because it sounded cool.

Speak of the devil, as Galang said the name, Celestino suddenly met eyes with him.

Celestino initially had shut eyes that opened into narrow slits and seemed to glow underneath his bangs that formed a curtain of hair over his face.

Florante balked at the tall, scary dude with gangly limbs and a weird stringy hairstyle that parted to the side and formed a bobcut with hair moving outwards from his head like antennae, giving his head a diamond shape.

Celestino looked at Jenny for a second before his sharp eyes flickered back to Florante.

Florante looked away first, a flush of crimson embarrassment making him drop his eyes with a shudder.This also had him almost bump into Gerry, who then jibed, "Oooh, does someone have a little crush on him?" with a pat in his back like the asshole that he was.

Jenny herself giggled with an unsure smile, looking at Florante as she asked, "You okay, Flor?"

Galang nodded to Tolentino with a nod. When the ruckus was over and people stopped staring at the strange "circus" troupe, Florante stole glances at all the five strange high school students.

Aside from the shortest kid of their group and the pale-faced girl, the rest of them looked like they could be college students instead of high school ones, or even outright teachers around the same age as Ms. Estrella. Or even older.

Even the shorter people of their group looked a bit too old to be freshmen or high schoolers. Like they were 30-year-old actors playing the role of teenagers in a Hollywood high school movie or something.

Just as they were different they were also the same in a strange way.

They were walking contradictions of themselves in terms of their inhumanly beautiful appearance that verged on the uncanny.

Uncanny because they looked like the airbrushed or manipulated photographs on a fashion magazine. Or walking paintings from the Renaissance. Perhaps even sculptures shaped from marble, silver, or bronze.

Aside from the tanned "moreno" or "kayumanggi" one that served as the black sheep in their white-fleeced herd, they shared chalk-pale alabaster skin that bordered on being albino, dark eyes with shadows underneath them, and gangly limbs that matched them more with each other than their high school uniforms.

They looked like they hadn't slept a wink for weeks or months. In fairness, all five shared perfect, straight, and angular features carved straight from marble.

Who did they remind Florante of?

"They look like The Addams Family," whispered Gerry to his friends, which had them erupt in laughter.

To Galang's chagrin, he agreed with Gerry. Took the words right out of his mouth, even.

He himself might've said, "Children of the Corn", but he doubted that present company would even be familiar with such a reference.

However, their appearances weren't the reason why Florante couldn't look away from them.

He felt something familiar about them. Déjà vu, perhaps?

They group of five then looked away from them. From all those stares.

They looked away from one another and from the other students. Like there was a bird or a plane in the distance that caught their attention had there not been a wall or a ceiling obstructing their view of the sky.

The girl rose from her seat, her tray of untouched food and unopened soda remaining still as she walked away with a stride and sashay of a model before she glided up the steps of the exit, her silhouette across the light permeating from the outside creating ghostly afterimages behind her.

Florante's eyes darted back to the four remaining males, who sat like statues or students posing for a group picture. Unmoving. Like the famous painting of The Last Supper at another angle.

After a couple of more minutes, all four of them left the table altogether in unison. They strode with the grace of dancers or athletes, including the muscular one.

The one named Celestino never looked at Florante's way again. Like he was a bug who was below his notice.

He'd later learn their names. The short guy and girl of the same age were fraternal twins: Kalantiaw and Dalisay Hidalgo.

The bronze-skinned one with the shades was known as Alonzo Estanislao. The extra pale, extra jacked one with the creepy smile and caveman hair was named Jacob "Benjo" Benjamin.

Finally, the tallest, lankiest, and oldest one of them was called Francisco "Kiko" Celestino.

What strange, old-timey names. The nicknames sounded about as goofy, cutesy, and silly as a typical Filipino nickname, but the actual names themselves sounded old. Almost ancient.

From the Year "Nineteen Kopong-Kopong", almost. Or a time before the Philippines went from a Spanish colony to an American colony.

***

Florante Galang remembered how his eyes flickered back and forth from his worn leather shoes to the table where those five weirdoes sat during his first day of school at Fatima High.

He wanted to learn more about those—for lack of a better term—Gothic or Goth kids who wore jackets and trench coats in the tropics unironically.

They didn't have a name for their "gang", but the rest of the school did.

They were called the Dead Kids mostly to make fun of them and their cringy, pretentious lifestyle. Like the way they sat around and didn't really eat during lunchtime.

He wanted to ask more questions about the Dead Kids and their gangly cult leader Celestino, but both Laura and Jenny were themselves newcomers to the school and Gerry intimidated him.

He'd eventually get additional information about them through word of mouth and small talk from the rest of his classmates as the rest of the school year unfolded.

Like info on whether or not they'd always lived in Metro Manila, Mandaluyong City, Cainta City, Quezon City, or Pasig City all this time. Maybe they moved from Makati to Pasig like his family did.

They'd apparently been around since last year. They were transfer students.

Last year, Celestino was immediately moved to his third year in high school, Estanislao and Benjamin entered first and second year respectively, and the fraternal Hidalgo twins joined them only this year as freshmen in high school.

Because the Galangs themselves recently moved to Pasig, Florante was unaware of how recently Celestino himself moved in town.

Rumors had it that they were all foreign exchange students, hence their half-foreign looks. The only one who remotely looked native Filipino was Estanislao.

The rest looked like the typical half-Chinese, half-American, half-Latino, or half-European models Florante would see on television. Come to think of it, the tan Estanislao could be half-Mexican or half-Moroccan for all he knew.

After all, the Philippines was itself a melting pot of cultures, with it being a colony of both Spain and America for years. Even centuries, in the case of Spain.

Regardless, he felt a curious surge of relief and pity for these beautiful people. As pretty as they appeared, they were considered as the outsiders of Fatima High. They were perhaps even ostracized or bullied by the rest of the student body.

Something that Florante could relate to.

The way the people around them reacted to their strange mannerisms reminded Florante of how people back in grade school treated him for being such an asthmatic crybaby.

He was relieved he wasn't the only newcomer in Fatima. And he wasn't the most interesting spectacle among all the newcomers to arrive in the high school either, so everyone's bullying was more "spread out" and such.

Thank goodness.

As the first quarter of the school year neared to a close, Galang started moving predictably further and further away from the Reyes and Jacinto group for various reasons.

He started eating more and more by himself instead of their group.

He could barely talk to any of those quick-witted smart alecks, except maybe Jenny, who probably talked to him out of pity or to help him save face. Or maybe because she was just that talkative.

During one of those numerous lonely lunch breaks, as he gazed as the supposed Dead Kids, he froze as one of them... Kalantiaw this time around... looked up and met his gaze.

At the time, Florante was actually staring at the cute wallflower Dalisay, who did remind him of Wednesday Addams from the Addams Family, only for him to get caught snooping by a set of sharp, angry eyes of a certain midget brother. The Pugsley to Dalisay's Wednesday.

Those eyes shooed him away from staring any further at the cute Goth chick sister.

Dalisay's twin brother didn't appreciate all his staring. If looks could kill, the short boy with bushy hair had flying daggers for eyes.

'Ow, the edge.' What would that midget do to him anyway? Chop him to bits? Burn him to ash? All with a stare? Jeez.

As sarcastic as Florante's thoughts were, he still stood down from the stare down like the little bitch that he was.

Come to think of it, what sort of name was "Kalantiaw" anyway? It was almost as pretentious of a name as Celestino, but at least Celestino was a family name that was passed down for generations.

Kalantiaw's parents didn't have the common sense to pick a better name for their son that wouldn't lead to teasing and bullying.

Ah, but Florante quickly realized that wasn't one to speak about being called names, teasing, or bullying. It wasn't as if he could pick on the shorter kid in real life or anything: Only in his mind.

As his wandering eyes returned to the group, he noticed that Estanislao was also staring at him. his glance holding some sort of unmet expectation.

'Oh no, not this again,' he thought, afraid of a confrontation with the Dead Kids.

He quickly ate the rest of his lunch when he should've eaten the rest of the bitter words swirling inside his head, deciding to wander around the bleachers or the tree park near the children's library where he sometimes hung out (alone) as well.

However, the lithe and agile Estanislao caught up with him.

"AH!" Florante yelped.

"Hey, you know it's rude to stare, right?" Alonzo said to Florante.

Galang gulped, stuttering, "S-Sorry, I won't do it again!" cringing as he said the words.

The taller second year student with sunglasses smiled at the shy kid. "I heard of what happened to you and your classmates. Must have been rough, huh?"

Florante's lower lip trembled, his gaze not meeting Estanislao's, only for him to meet the piercing stare of Kiko Celestino.

The "leader" of the Dead Kids had the strangest expression on his face. A furious, almost hostile one. What did Florante do to deserve such a look?

He noticed that Celestino's eyes were as pitch black as midnight in the deeper parts of the province. In places where urban development had not yet started and electrical posts, much less lamps, were at least 30 minutes away.

Bewildered, Florante looked away again in time to almost stumble face-first into the canteen floor. He caught himself with the assistance of Alonzo grabbing him by his arm.

"Whoops. Careful there, kiddo," the shades-sporting lad said. Strangely enough, Florante could hear the "grin" in his voice. "You don't want to add ammo to all your classmates' teasing of you, do you?"

Unbidden, a flashback of him playing alone in the playground while the basketball varsity team snickered at him miming Rambo putting on his red bandanna flashed in his head, making him shudder and cringe.

A basketball varsity team that included the promising tall freshman, Gerry Jacinto.

He shouldn't have done it anyway. He looked stupid, playing by himself, pretending to be Rambo in the intro of his cartoon series (he never saw the actual R-rated movies).

"SorryIwon'tdoitagain," he mumbled in one breath, apologizing once more just short of doing a Japanese bow and backing away.

"No need to apologize for that," Estanislao reassured, letting go of Galang before lowering his polarized sunglasses and giving him a cheesy wink. "But remember, Flor Contemplacion, I've got dibs on Hidalgo's sister."

"I wasn't...!" Florante said, wondering how he knew his name (kind of) when this was the first time they had talked, but Alonzo cut him off.

"You sure, Flor? Hidalgo caught you staring. Better watch out for him. And me."

As the Dead Kids again left as a unit and barely dug into their lunches, Florante surprised himself by calling out to Estanislao, "My name is not Flor! It's Florante!"

'Flor is a girl's name,' he added to himself.

***

As luck would have it—whether it was bad or good luck was anyone's guess—Florante ended up in the same club as three of the Dead Kids.

He had decided to be part of the Art Club for this school year.

The others elected to go to other clubs like the Computer Club or the Science Club. There was even a Literature Club, which was where Benjo and Kiko ended up in.

Oh sorry. Benjamin and Celestino. Why was he thinking of them in such familiar terms? He barely knew them.

Regardless, the Hidalgo twins and Estanislao ended up in the same club as Galang.

The thing about high school clubs was that anyone could join them regardless of their year. Whether they were freshmen, sophomores, juniors, or seniors (or first to fourth year) of high school, they could mingle in one class as long as they passed the initial exam.

The Art Club had the motherly figure of Mrs. Marisol Mancenido as their advisor. She looked 20 years young even though she was actually forty-something.

Her approach to proctoring the Art Club was encouraging, hands-off, and motivational.

Her "detractors" would probably claim she was too soft on the kids with the way she babied them and let them do anything they wanted in the Art Club for the sake of their "creative freedom", but she had no such detractors at Fatima High.

Everyone in the high school loved Mrs. Mancenido. She was like a Filipina Julie Andrews mixed with a young Gloria Romero.

She was the nicest teacher Florante had ever met. This was probably why he ended up in the Art Club in the first place despite having no talent in art to speak of.

It was his way to get away from First Year St. Francis. Away from the withering, cold looks that Laura gave to him after she rejected his romantic advances.

How embarrassing.

After all the nice things he'd done for her, like help her with errands like getting her photographs developed or hold her lunch tray out for her, she ended up rejecting him.

If she never saw him that way, then why'd she take advantage of him and turn him into her gopher or something? It wasn't fair.

Then again, the only connection he had with Laura was that their first names coincidentally matched the names of the romantic couple in a Filipino literary classic. The Philippine equivalent of Romeo and Juliet.

With that in mind, he found himself longing for the companionship of another female. Perhaps another one who'd also reject his advances, but at least she was much nicer about it than Laura.

Ah yes. Dalisay Hidalgo.

The Goth chick with the surprisingly soft-spoken voice.

He introduced himself to her in the clubroom one day, saying, "Hey, I'm Florante Galang. I'm from Section St. Francis."

She looked at him and nodded with a thin-lipped not-smile, brushing a stray lock of her hair behind her ear. "Hello. I'm Dalisay Hildago. From St. Valentine."

"Oh okay. Hi."

"...."

So he barely knew Dalisay and it was apparent by their awkward silences when together.

Perhaps starting with a more platonic relationship with Dalisay was in order, yes? He should learn from his mistakes with Laura. He was never popular with the pretty girls. They found him either too wimpy or too creepy.

However, an obvious obstacle kept him from getting close to Dalisay.

First, there was her overprotective brother Kalantiaw. Second, there was another guy from their "friend circle" who was also after her.

They should lay off of him, man. He only wanted to be friends with Dalisay, for goodness's sake.

'Susmaryosep,' he thought, remembering the way his mother would say the same thing whenever she was frustrated before he continued with the current Art Club activity they had for that day.

They had to make their own painting using watercolors. He frowned at the way he used too much water, nearly ripping the bond paper he painted on.

Meanwhile, Dalisay's brush strokes were all clean and perfect, like her. The way she instead used black-colored paper and white paint was a stroke of genius on her part.

Nevertheless, he kept concentrating on his work and stopped himself from peeking occasionally from the screen of his hair bangs at the mysterious yet lovely girl next to him.

This was because during the whole class, he could feel the same girl's brother not relax from his stiff position on the edge of his seat, sitting as far away from them as possible yet telescopically staring holes at them like a hawk hovering over his prey.

A tiny hawk but a hawk nonetheless. Or an angry rustling black bush.

He then peeked at Kalantiaw, regretting his decision immediately.

His crimson eyes glared back, making him feel like a newspaper left out in the rain. A messy sopping pulp not even fit for wrapping around dried tinapa (Filipino smoked fish).

As he flinched away from the male Hidalgo, slinking back against his chair's backrest, Mr. Cool Kid with the tan complexion and sunglasses lounged right behind them (since there was no set seating plan).

Alonzo Estanislao was quite... smiley that day for some reason.

What an insufferable bunch. Was it too much to ask for him to make friends with one pretty girl?

The school bell then loudly rung, which made him jump. From there, the trio of Dead Kids was out of their seats. They fluidly rose and turned in their work to Mrs. Mancenido.

He stared blankly at them, with Dalisay giggling at whatever weird remark Alonzo said, only for the taller kid with sunglasses to strangely reel back from the glaring short, petulant kid brother between them.

They barely talked to Florante and yet he felt more comfortable around them than he did most of his classmates in St. Francis of Assisi.

He had his suspicions on his first day of school, but the first-year class he ended up in was a whole class full of bullies and class clowns. Galang was more often than not always the butt of their jokes. Especially when it came to Gerry Jacinto.

Gerry made fun of everything about Florante, from the way he dressed with an unironed uniform to his old undershirt being practically see-through and threadbare that one time they were changing to their P.E. uniforms during gym class.

Jacinto was so mean. It wasn't fair.

Florante felt more at ease at the Art Club than in his own class and with his classmates.

Regardless, he started gathering his things and turn in his own almost finished work.

He suppressed the anger and frustration that filled him inside, fearing that his eyes would tear up and then one or several of his classmates would notice their redness, leading to more bullying and teasing.

Or he tried his best to do so. For whatever reason, his tear ducts were linked to his temper, which made his angry outbursts come off as tantrums.

He had no other outlet for his resentment. Dammit.

***

In fairness, it was kind of his fault why the boys (and it was mostly boys) from his section were bullying him extra hard.

The outcast of First Year Section St. Francis ended up doing something he shouldn't have done to their class idol Laura Reyes earlier that year

He cringed, wishing again that the ground would swallow him up as he remembered the embarrassing thing he did.

One of his bullies dared him to draw Laura from memory, which in and of itself wasn't so bad. However, in his desperation to win over his classmates, he ended up drawing her in the nude.

Well, that wasn't exactly what happened. Perish the thought.

They had dared him to do it and he teased doing it by drawing a rough sketch with blocky shapes for her body that looked nude but was actually just how artists "built" a drawing through sketching.

Like drawing a circle first before drawing the rest of the face. Or drawing a "nude" body first before drawing the clothes.

However, one of them told (snitched to, really) Laura about it and she caught him red-handed with what looked like him drawing her nude.

"Ew. That's gross, Flor. Stop that."

"N-No! You got it all wrong, Laura! It's not what it looks like...!"

No amount of frantic explanation was enough to keep Laura from thinking Florante was a disgusting pervert, and he even had to explain himself at the principle's office afterwards when several teachers got involved in the mess.

Naturally, the many admirers of Laura Reyes dog-piled him for his cringe-inducing antics, even though it was all his bullies' fault for making him draw Laura nude and then telling on him.

Ever since then, his bullying got so bad that he had to list off names of those who bullied him to get some of his teachers to intervene.

His listing of names mitigated the bullying but made making friends in his classroom or outside of the Dead Kids difficult due to his reputation as being a snitch.

He was looked down upon for snitching on bullies he couldn't fight back against.

***

He wished he was dead. To end his suffering.

If only he could die in the place of someone else. Someone he loved. Like family or friends. Even a lover. A girlfriend. At least that would've been something noble. He'd be a hero. Instead of a bully victim.

What if he died for nothing? What worth would his life be then?

If he were to die now, he wished he could die a nobler death.

However, from his experience of having deaths in his family, death was almost always sad or embarrassing. Nothing remotely romantic, gallant, or dignified about it.

Also, a lonely, sheltered teenaged boy like him had no one to love romantically, to be honest. He barely had friends at his new school, even.

He should've never moved from one school to another. If only his old grade school had a high school to graduate to. It just got worse, though.

For most of the first and second quarter of the school year, he opted to sink deeper and deeper into his Art Club activities with his kind-of friends (more like acquaintances) known to the rest of the school campus as the Dead Kids.

The Art Club tasked them to do any sort of major project for the class as their final test, be it a children's book or comics. Florante opted for comics.

He drew the comics on his sketchbook. On the back of his notebook. On any sheets of paper he could get his hands on. He copied characters and backgrounds from published comic books and posters before he felt confident enough to create designs of his own.

He mixed and matched the clothes he copied from his big sisters' fashion magazines unto the characters he made that he based on the shows he watched and the people he interacted with.

He even drew comics made of stapled-together scratch bond paper from used printouts, drawing at the blank parts of the paper with pencil sketches and panels made with rulers and whatnot.

Not just for the Art Club. But for himself. For fun. For the attention it got him every time he drew someone's favorite anime or cartoon character.

He even featured some of his, well, acquaintances, and classmates in the scratchy, sketchy comics he made with sparse backgrounds and honestly questionable anatomy.

It was his only way of connecting with people, since he was such a socially awkward kid.

Because they belonged in a quite religious high school founded and funded by Franciscan Capuchins, the superheroes and protagonists of the comics Florante made were all based on Christian mythology, particularly about angels.

He got the idea of making comics about angels one day after reading "Paradise Lost". Or the condensed CliffNotes study guide version of it since he didn't have a copy of the original book and he found reading passages of the poem to be quite boring.

It was part of the series of CliffNotes available in Fatima High's library, which also included novels like "The Pearl" and "Canterbury Tales".

Inside "Paradise Lost" (or its complete summary, at the very least), he learned about the four most famous angels. Archangels, to be exact.

He fell in love with the idea of angels battling demons through the centuries, from the infancy of man to the present.

He also read about demons since every angel needed a demon to fight, right? Even though demons and angels were two sides of the same coin.

He then incorporated many of his classmates in his comics. He even dreamed of them becoming angels and demons in his so-called works.

Some of the characters were his friends, the Dead Kids. Others were his acquaintances and classmates he knew of but barely interacted with. Many of them were his bullies portrayed as antagonists. As demons.

It served as his way of coping. His only method of venting.

He dreamed of the stories concerning all of them in their angel and demon forms and then put them to paper. Even though some of the girls in his class chided him for drawing girls with huge boobs and questionable anatomy.

His quaint little comics served as his dream journal of sorts. His bullies ended up becoming the demon antagonists of his made-up stories, even though he never revealed their names or drew them too accurately enough for them to notice his use of their likenesses in his works.

His comics was one of the ways he dealt with the constant bullying he got from his classmates or even his so-called friends that treated him more as their mascot or gopher for drinks and odd errands than an actual comrade.

They were treating him no different than Laura did, actually.

***

Back to the relative present...

Tonight, Florante dreamed.

He dreamed of doing things he normally couldn't do. Out of wishful thinking. Dissatisfaction. Despair. Hope.

He did it to vent his real-life frustrations elsewhere.

It was during these dreams that his innermost desires were realized. Embarrassing ones he couldn't verbalize since it involved admitting to himself some shameful things.

Like the fact that he didn't have any friends in his classroom. Or the fact that he felt more like a gopher than a friend to the Dead Kids, who were supposed to be his fellow weirdoes, in his desperate bid to belong.

Or the fact that he was one of the most heavily bullied or perhaps the most heavily bullied kid in their class. A "Dead Kid" in his own right.

Regardless, his dreams served as painkillers or Novocain to his bitter, nerve-wracking reality of loneliness and despair as a friendless outcast in his own school.

He was the new kid on the block who couldn't adjust to his new school, but then again he was also bullied back in his old school as well.

Tonight, he could pretend to be "normal" for once, while his brain had clocked out and his consciousness drifted to slumber, his tears staining his pillows at memories he tried to block out.

Traces of these traumatizing past events remained in his psyche, as evidenced by the things that he dreamed about. This allowed him to connect the dots on why he was dreaming what he dreamed.

For example, the beautiful visage of Dalisay Hidalgo quickly crossed his mind, with her smiling at him and actually talking to him while ignoring her brother and Alonzo.

Like that would ever happen. But it was a harmless dream, so it was okay for him to indulge in his fantasies.

She looked so cute. Like an angel, really. A Gothic Lolita angel with a defiant fashion sense that rebelled against their plain school uniform of plaid skirts and cotton button-down blouses.

She was much nicer than Laura, whom he once unwittingly sang a sarcastic happy birthday to thinking it was her gay best friend's birthday instead. When he found out it was her birthday instead, he wished that the ground would swallow him whole.

He inwardly cringed. She must've thought of him as such a loser.

He also dreamed what any 14-year-old boy would dream about.

He dreamed about girls. He dreamed about romance. He dreamed about naughty things.

However, in between those dreams of passion and desire were dreams about his countless regrets.

He dreamed that his bullies would leave him alone. He dreamed about getting real friends, or at least getting closer to the so-called Dead Kids. Even they seemed ashamed of hanging out with him, and they were the school's designated weirdo group!

He dreamed of never doing that cringy thing with drawing Laura's face and placing it unto a nude body (or a rough sketch of one) like some sort of thirsty stalker.

He dreamed that Laura would forgive him or realize what had happened between them was a simple misunderstanding.

He dreamed of him and her becoming friends instead of her giving him the cold shoulder since that fateful day.

He dreamed that they'd fall in love, get married, have babies, and die old together.

Even if none of those dreams happened, he still wanted to become a normal high school kid that wasn't the butt of everyone's jokes, dammit!

But tonight, his dream was different.

More intense. Stranger. Like it wasn't a dream at all.

But somehow, he was aware it was all a dream. A lucid dream, perhaps?

Regardless, it was in this dreamscape where he acted upon his most violent fantasies. He was in control of himself and the events surrounding him this time around, so he got to boss around his bullies for once.

He did in the dream things he couldn't do in real life or even draw in his comics against the so-called demons of his life.

He punished them. Humiliated them.

He then murdered them. He had the power to do so now. In his dream, he had the same powers as the protagonist of his comics. The power of a lightning storm or one of those raging typhoons that regularly battered the Philippines.

Better he do it within the confines of a dream than in real life, right? He could "vent" better that way. It was a healthy, therapeutic method of venting.

However, when he woke up, his dream became horrible reality.

What he had taught had happened during midnight in his dreams had instead occurred in the early morning while classes were supposed to be going on.

He looked down and saw that his hands were covered in blood. Not his own.

'...Eh? What's going on?'

Right before him were the bodies of people on the floor. Many of them his classmates. Some of them not. Several of them burning to a crisp. Like something out of Pompeii when Mount Vesuvius erupted.

'Susmaryosep!'

Wait, what had happened here?

No, he hadn't woken up! He was still dreaming, right? This was all a nightmare!

He then saw her.

The angelic winged beauty made of floating water that reminded him of one of the four most famous angels appeared before him.

She was a breathtakingly gorgeous, angelic woman. Or the huge statue of one brought to life. She looked really familiar, though.

Faintly, as if his half-awake mind was still dreaming in shock and in pure disbelief of what had happened, he wondered what the person before him reminded him of.

He was at the mercy of a terribly beautiful sight from the ether, her strands of hair flowing upwards like they were underwater or a bonfire, her fingertips engulfed in dancing tendrils of water.

Looking at her was like dying from a siren's song, but more visually impactful rather than visceral. So like staring straight into the sun. Or Medusa's eyes.

Except this time, Medusa was an attractive young woman instead of a monster with snakes for hair.

"This is the end of the line for you. I won't let you hurt anyone else, Flor. Prepare to die."

Man, his mind was such a mess. How did he get there? What happened? Who was this beautifully horrifying creature? This biblical angel?

Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, and Azrael.

Or was it Uriel?

Anyway, those were the Four Archangels, right?

...Right?

***

To Be Continued...

The first chapter is finally done. My first completely original work not based on someone else's idea. I've had this title and this work in my head since the 1990s. I'm glad I now have the opportunity to make it into reality.

Farewell, Abdiel

#angels #gabriel #raphael #demons #philippines #fantasy of evolution #original fiction

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ijustwant2write · 8 years ago

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You Look At Me Differently-Ubbe Ragnarsson x Reader Part 2

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Masterlist

Part 1 / Part 3/ Part 4/ Part 5

Summary: After finding out that they are engaged to each other, best friends (Y/N) and Ubbe find that this has put a massive strain on their relationship. Ubbe is adamant that he wants to marry Margrethe instead but he cannot have his way.

Characters: Ubbe Ragnarsson x Reader, Ragnarssons x Reader (platonic), Aslaug Sigurdsdottir x Reader (platonic)

Meanings: (Y/N)= Your name

Warnings: Some swearing, arguing

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Dawn was breaking as I entered Kattegat. Light spread across the village, casting away the shadows of the night; if only it could cast away my pain. It was still cold, I hugged the shawl tighter around me. After Ubbe had left in the night, I had cried myself to sleep, my dress and the position I was laying in making it a very uncomfortable night. Thankfully no one was out yet, I was trying to make my way to my room without anyone seeing me.

“Sneaking back in? And where were you last night?” I heard Ivar’s voice coming from the blacksmith’s stall. He was sharpening his axe.

I ignored him, something I usually didn’t do. Although Ubbe and I were probably the closest of the group, Ivar had a soft spot in my heart. His brothers constantly teased him about being a cripple, something he couldn’t help. Even though I could not speak about everything with him, we were still good friends.

I heard is body crawl towards me.“You are ignoring me. What is wrong?”

“It is none of your concern.”

“This is about your engagement, isn’t it? I thought you would be happy.”

“That’s the problem, I’m the only one who is glad about it.”

“Do not be jealous or worry about Margrethe, she is just a slave girl, a casual fuck. Ubbe will forget about her.”

“I thought he would but he proved me wrong last night. I honestly don’t know what to do.”

“He has to do this, mother said so.”

“She may be in charge of Kattegat but she does not control his heart! I may as well runaway to avoid the embarrassment.”

He grabbed the end of my skirts, stopping me due to his upper body strength. Ivar’s face looked very angry.“Listen to me, Ubbe is an idiot! He does not understand that this isn’t just about him or you, it’s about uniting two kingdoms so that we may defeat any enemies that come our way.” His grip loosened, a smirk now on his face.“Besides, if he still refuses, you can just marry me.”

I tried not to but I gave into my laughter. He never showed kindness around others, only to me and his mother. We heard some people coming out of their houses, getting ready for the day ahead.

“Go, you look like you need to rest.” he suggested before going back to the blacksmith’s.

It was rare that Ivar was so sympathetic. As he left me by myself, I scurried towards my room, avoiding people and their confused gazes. They would never usually see the princess out at this time. Finally reaching home, a genuine smile started to stretch on my face until I heard his voice.

“(Y/N), I thought you weren’t returning so soon?” he nonchalantly said, crossing his arms and leaning against my door.

“Please Ubbe, let me pass.” I begged, about to cry by just seeing him.

He shrugged, standing up straight. My hand had only just turned the door handle when he harshly whispered in my ear.

“Just know that I will find a way around this.”

I was in shock as he walked away. Ubbe had never acted like this. If course he had expressed his dissatisfaction but this was just cruel now, he knew it was hurting me. Escaping to my room at long last, I threw myself on the bed, curling up and clutching the pillow as some sort of comfort. This was too much. I was going to try and be strong but I didn’t think I could anymore. How was I supposed to marry him if he was to act like this?

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

A few days passed after that, Ubbe had not said anything about the marriage. Everyone was surprised by this, there was no more talk of not going through with this. I had not talked to anyone, or at least talked a lot ever since the announcement. Aslaug knew of my discomfort with it all but wouldn’t call it off. My father was to arriveI next week for the ceremony, a big event I was very scared about.

Ubbe’s brothers were trying to help me through all this. They saw how their oldest sibling was acting and were as confused as I was. I had decided to escape from the wedding planning, walking down to the small river within the woods to get some peace. Sitting beside it and spreading my skirts around me, I took a deep breath. Wedding planning was stressful in itself, having to do it all with someone who now despised you was even harder. The soothing sounds of the running water along with the occasional noise from animals inhabiting the area calmed me down. My eyes remained closed for a while until I heard someone approaching; subtly reaching into my boot, I pulled out a knife, preparing myself from an attack. It was too noisy to be an animal, it had to be human. I heard it behind me, I whipped around, slitting a knee and making the person fall to the floor. They let out a cry of pain before I knew who they were.

“Ubbe! Ubbe, I’m so sorry.” I panicked as I saw him clutching one of his knees, though I had not cause major damage.

“It’s alright, it’s just a scratch.” he hissed.

I backed away from him.“Sorry.” I sat back down in my previous spot. There was no telling what he was going to say so there was no point trying to make conversation. I waited for him to say something horrible to knock me down or go on about how gorgeous Margrethe was looking today. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him sit beside me, also taking in the view.

“Such a lovely place to relax.” he commented.

I nodded.

“Do you find yourself here often?”

“Sometimes.” I mumbled.

“Please speak to me.”

“Why should I after all the things you said to me?”

“We are soon to be married.”

“Not according to you. Go fuck Magrethe’s brains out, if she even has one.”

I could see him tense at that.“I have come to a realisation.”

“No, what you’ve come to realise is that you cannot get out of this. We’re stuck in matrimony whether you like it or not.” I stood up, smoothing down my skirts.

Ubbe leapt up too, stopping me from going anywhere.“Yes we are both in this meaning we need to come to a compromise-”

I scoffed.“A compromise?! Let me guess, you want Margrethe as a mistress? Unlikely!”

“What would it matter if she was!? You heard my mother, we font have to love each other!”

“No, no, no, that’s the point I’ve been trying to make! I confessed to you not so long ago and you left….just left me to wallow in sadness at the thought of someone not loving me back.”

“Someone will love you.”

“And why can’t that be you? You don’t see it do you?” I decided to test him.“Be truthful, do you love Margrethe?”

His eyes widened, a if he had gone mad.“You already know the answer to that.”

“That’s what I thought.” I stated before barging past him

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Here I was again, training with the princes. As always they were bickering over something stupid, acting like children. Why was I here?

Because there was no more need for wedding planning.

Pulling my bow back, I let go of it, watching the arrow drive into the centre of the target. There were four other arrows surrounding it, I hadn’t missed yet. This should have made me happy, I was getting better. Before I could even look away, Hvitserk and Sigurd’s voices got louder, trying to outboast each other because each thought they were the best warrior. I had had enough.

“SHUT UP THE PAIR OF YOU!” I screamed, throwing my bow harshly to the floor.

They were both startled by my sudden tantrum, I had been so quiet over the past week. Ivar also froze, looking between us all.

“Day in and day out it’s just arguments between all of you. You’re the sons of Ragnar, you should be united and strong, not acting like children fighting over a toy!” my voice was still loud though not like before.

They hated to be told off, especially from me. They found it humiliating, especially when it was in public. But I could see Sigurd’s anger rise too.

“Just because the wedding was called off doesn’t mean you have to take out your anger on us.” he knew that it would cut deep.

Before I could say anything back or storm away, an axe flew straight past Sigurd, missing his nose by a few inches, hitting the tree beside him. Even more furious, Sigurd looked to his baby brother who was dragging himself to us. Hvitserk knew to stay out of this, slightly backing away.

Ivar sat next to my feet.“How dare you say such things to (Y/N). You, Sigurd, even said last night that our older brother was an idiot. He has thrown away a perfect wife and a chance to unite two kingdoms. He cannot think straight with that slave girl waving her tits in his face.”

Sigurd lowered his head.

“It is our brother who is in the wrong, not her. Apologise.”

I could see he was slightly enjoying this a bit too much but I wasn’t going to stop him.

“I am sorry (Y/N), truly. Our brother should be marrying you.”

I sighed.“It’s alright.”

They went back to fighting each other, wanting to get away from the awkward silence left afterwards. I smiled down at Ivar.

“Thanks again. You always know how to make me happy.”

He looked up with a smirk soon with a twinkle in his eyes.“Anything for you. Looks like you’ll be marrying me after all.”

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