8. Fault

Dax looked over my shoulder, getting all worked up. He flashed a wide, toothy, freaky-looking grin. “Gnomes have the coolest sports on Elämä!” he exclaimed.

CHOICES is the first book in the Chronicles of a Hero fantasy series. This is the story of Wendell P. Dipmier, who I’ve been writing about since 1990. I hope you’ll join me on this new adventure….as I tell the honest, complete story of this amazing 17 year old, exclusively on Life of Fiction.

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Chapter 8

I’ve always had an obsession with speed.

I enjoy going fast in cars, on motorcycles. Heck, even my cousin taught me the basics on riding horses and I pushed that. It’s also an aspect that annoyed Evan, because I enjoyed collecting speed facts.

Did you know the Earth rotates at 1000 mph? It’s orbiting the sun at 66,500 mph, while the sun and its system are circling the core of the Milky Way galaxy at 600,000 mph, making one complete revolution in 200 million years. The Milky Way orbits a super cluster of 2,500 nearby galaxies at over 1,000,000 mph and simultaneously moves outward through space at over 300,000 mph. 

What does all that mean? Well, if we take these calculations into consideration, we will come to the same conclusion every time. We’re moving pretty fast.

When life gets rough and out of control, I think about these celestial objects moving through space with such precision. Just think of what would happen in just one of these giant globes, or worse, the collection of globes, spun off course? But they don’t. Our universe keeps plugging away, racing down the highway at optimum speeds in balance with all the oncoming traffic. Some say it all happened by accident. Yeah, I don’t buy that. It’s too organized, too perfect, and that’s not how chaos works.

Me? I think it takes specific laws, organized minds, and invisible hands to direct the stellar traffic down the trackless highways of galactic space. It’s what gives me hope when I do my thing and make a mess of everything around me.

Nothing happens by accident.

Yet, there I was,…a living ‘accident’.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. 

I was a nobody. No one paid attention to me. I didn’t have aspiring goals, for starters. Not because I couldn’t think of anything or lacked the desire to achieve specific things. The Universe had proven to me it didn’t matter what I wanted. When I focused on a certain goal in my life, bad things happened. 

Wanted to train to get on the cross-country running team. Every time I tried, dogs chased and mauled me. 64 stitches in total. So if it was unlikely I’d achieve what I wanted, why bother? Wanted to be a cross-country skiing guide for the blind, so I tried out for that. Hit a tree and broke both legs.

Not me, the blind guy.

Beautiful, amazing girls never had an interest in me. It just didn’t happen. Then it did. The truly odd thing about it all was that it didn’t matter that I was a nerd. It didn’t matter that I was awkward. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t the robust athletic jock like Evan. I was just…me. Kyliene liked me anyway. 

It had to be a dream.

Only it wasn’t.

I bumped into a beautiful girl…and she accepted me. She liked me, and I liked her. She and all her friends had accepted me for who I was, where I was, without question. I would have stayed to know Kyliene better. She was worth the time.

Now she was gone.

Killed by a monster.

Now I know monsters are real, too.

‘This is not your fight,’ it had said. A haunting whisper on the chilly breeze seized my chest. Grasping at it, understanding was just on the edge of my mind. Then it was gone.

Tha-THUMP-Thump.

I flinched as an elder moved into my peripheral vision.

Shadows.

It was a shadow…on the river bank. I’d felt the shove from behind, falling forward to into the river.

I was dead. That’s where I heard it first. That voice…

‘Go home.’

Terror, ripped from my gut, erupted through my lips in a muffled cry. “Ughaaaah!” Things like this just don’t happen. Not to normal, everyday people. Not to nerds like me! My chest heaved, lungs gasping for breath as the panic took me.

Once again making his senses shrink, I remembered the foul, sticky breath caressing my neck. That laughing in cruel mockery:

THIS ISN’T YOUR FIGHT, BOY.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

GO HOME…OR YOU AND THOSE 

WHO LOVE YOU WILL SUFFER.

Dozens of hands silently lifted Kyliene’s body lovingly from the ground. People helped one another up, comforting each other, softly consoling, encouraging…and wadding slowly back towards their homes. Arm in arm, the people dispersed while speaking reassuring words. The Iskari passed me without notice, without a word. I’d slumped down against the small stone wall, a juxtaposition of a tormented mind and body.

Frozen.

When someone brought up the subject of magic, all I could think about was how cool it would be. To learn spells, to have powers and affect my surroundings. For some strange, stupid reason, I never considered how magic might me used against me. What I would have to guard against. Some kind of spirit had gained its way into this guarded society and brought a dead body to life. What freaked me out even more was that it had looked right at me. It talked to me. It knew who I was.

That fact made me shiver. ‘Those who love you will suffer.’ The words preyed on my mind. It forced me to consider the one question I didn’t want to answer.

Was Kyliene’s death my fault?

“Stop it,” Doubt said. “Mentally and emotionally flogging you is my job.”