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[spiderspag]

Hey guys, and blaat lol.

Well here's the blurb and first chapter for a novel I'm writing called Delles Glade. It's going to be a psycological suspense/supernatural kinda story... you prolly won't get it, and I'm not about to tell you everything (as then you will know the entire storyline before I've even written it) but have a read anyway...

BLURB:
Delles Glade

Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Perhaps you’ve passed through it before. A sleepy little town nestled in a picturesque little valley. A long time ago it may have held some sort of significance in the world, perhaps it serviced the local mine, or was the crossroads of two often-used routes. Perhaps it was a popular tourist destination, or had that little place you stayed in once. It probably is still the charming place that you remember; only now, nobody has a reason to go there anymore. The mines have long since closed down. The routes have moved away. Those who had been there have forgotten it. But it will always linger in the back of their minds, like a shadow bearing down upon its caster… because in the end, everybody must go back to Delles Glade…

Delles Glade
By Justin Alick

CHAPTER ONE

Alison Hawke was going to Delles Glade.
She had been driving for several hours now, past both some of the most uninteresting and most breathtaking countryside she had ever seen. The sun had risen before them like a re-born phoenix and had sailed across the cloudless sky, glaring down at them as they travelled. It was now beginning to set. Alison had wound up the window some time ago as the outside air was getting cooler and she no longer needed the fresh air. She yawned, wiping her eyes with her hand and began tapping the steering wheel to the beat of the song that played on the radio.
Jarrod, her son, was there too. He had quickly grown bored of the drive and had slept for most of the way, but now sat sprawled in the passenger seat of their coupe, coloured pencils strewn about him, an open scrapbook on his lap. A look of intense concentration was set upon his face as he scribbled furiously on the pages. Alison glanced at him with a bemused smile. She was never able to do anything of the sort during her own childhood, being highly susceptible to motion sickness, and rarely had the attention span to concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes anyway.
Which reminds me, she thought; keep your eyes on the road.
There was so much of his father in him. The piercing blue eyes. The mop of black hair. Such a serious boy… just like his father had been. The thought made Alison Hawke sad. From his mother, he had inherited a small stature, narrow face and aptness for music. Both he and his mother played instruments; yet whilst his mother played many different instruments, Jarrod devoted all of his time and energy into his favourite: the violin. His mother’s cello and her son’s instrument lie side by side on the backseat at that very moment, both packed inside heavy velvet-lined cases. He did not, however, share his mothers blonde hair, green eyes or freckles.
The song on the radio changed, and a smile of recognition played across Alison’s lips, and she began to hum along with the tune as the car drove into the afternoon.
Wake up little Suzie,
Wake up little Suzie,
We gotta go home.
The shadows began to lengthen, and dark trees began to close upon the road from both sides.
“Another forest, Jarrod,” Alison sighed in a singsong voice. Jarrod did not look up.
“It’s pretty here, isn’t it?”
Jarrod grunted his assent, again without looking up, and Alison rolled her eyes. So much like his father, she thought.
They drove on, and within a few minutes were deep inside a thick forest. It grew darker. The sky changed from a deep blue to a violet, and a sprinkling of stars began to twinkle down upon them.
“Are we there yet?” Jarrod asked quietly, so much so that Alison had to turn toward him and think for a moment to take in what he had just said.
“Are we there yet?” she repeated with an automatic smile, and took a breath to answer. “Not…” But no answer came. She clucked her tongue and frowned. Were they there yet? She had no answer for him, and this unsettled her for a moment, the fact that such a simple question, one that her son had asked her countless times over the course of the trip, to which she would usually automatically reply Not long now, son should make her so suddenly unsure of herself. It was as though she wasn’t sure where she was headed, let alone how far it was to get there. Alison then caught the twinkle of light through the trees, and a large sign sailed out of the darkness and past them. It read:
TALL VALLEY- Sanctity, Solitude, Serenity.
Which, Alison thought as she glanced at the modest scattering of houses, sheds and the single church that apparently made up the entirety of the thriving metropolis, might have been more efficiently described as small.
The car then passed a second sign which read:
RANGE BYPASS ROAD TURNOFF- 800M ON LEFT.
Much to her relief, Jarrod’s question was thereby answered for her. Alison smiled.
“That’s enough driving for tonight, honey. We’re at the crossroads.”
Jarrod breathed a sigh of relief and shut his book, sitting up straight to peer expectantly out of the windows. The graceful arc of the road straightened out, and the night’s destination drew into sight: a small cluster of pre-fabricated buildings built around a large tin shed and a pair of petrol pumps.
A painted sign with faded red lettering proclaimed the establishment as the TALL VALLEY CROSSROADS MOTEL and SERVICE STATION. It looked as unimpressive as it did uninviting.
“We’re here.”
In fact, if it were not for the fluorescent lights that adorned the place, it would have looked entirely deserted. The complex was built inside the corner of a T-junction, and was complete with a slightly askew phone box, a flickering lamppost and several dead pot plants. But none of this deterred Alison: the only thing her eyes saw was the wooden VACANCY sign that hung from rusty chains by the road that, to her great relief, was not preceded by a NO sign. She pulled the car over and parked by one of the prefab buildings which, judging by the narrow verandah and dead pot plants, was the motel.
Jarrod hurled the door open and leapt out with a small “Yipee!” and immediately began to kick small stones across the bitumen, as his mother had told him countless times not to. Alison sat for a moment, adjusting to the lack of motion before getting out of the car and stretching in the night air. The sun winked out between the trees, and a cool wind began to blow like a drawn out sigh of relief. Alison stretched her limbs and considered calling someone from the phone box to let them know of their safe arrival, but then remembered that she had no one to call. With a shrug she walked towards the brightly-lit service station door. She turned to look over her shoulder at her son, who was now skipping stones along the road.
“Jarrod! Are you coming inside?” she called.
“Yes mum!” he replied, and skipped towards her.
Alison walked across the cracked concrete surface of the service floor and pushed the door open and stepped into the office (another prefabricated building,) to be greeted by a middle-aged woman dressed in a plain, grey dress who peered expectantly at her over half-moon spectacles.
“Evenin’, dear,” she said loudly, as if to an audience, whilst shifting her weight with what seemed great difficultly to her hip, which she placed a plump hand upon. “Can I help you?”
Alison smiled and leaned heavily on the counter, stretching her back.
“Actually, we were wondering if we could stay the night in one of your rooms.”
It was at that moment that Jarrod pushed the door open and hopped in, and the old lady instantly beamed at the sight of him.
“Welcome, young man!” she cried. “And who might you be, such a fine looking boy in such a dull place as this!”
“I’m Jarrod Hawke!” the boy in question replied, as if he received such praise all the time.
“Well, Mr. Hawke! I’m Nancy Richards and I’m very pleased to meet you. Would I be able to interest you in some of my humble lodgings for the evenin’?” She gave a wink to Alison, who smiled at the kindly woman.
Jarrod nodded, eyeing off one of the many jars of sweets that laden the counter Nancy stood behind. “Uh huh.”
Alison would usually have nudged her son to correct his manners, but she had long given up. Jarrod Hawke was a shy boy of very few words, and she was grateful for even these few words to a total stranger. It was quite unlike him.
“Well, I’d be honoured to have you both, Miss…” Nancy trailed off, looking at Alison with eyebrows raised expectantly.”
“Mrs.” Alison corrected Nancy automatically, before cursing herself silently. It had been eight years since her husband had died, and could still not get used to the idea that she was a single, if widowed, woman. “Alison Hawke. We’re from the coast.”
“You must have been driving for a long time,” Nancy observed correctly.
Alison nodded as the old woman noticed Jarrod’s stare at her sweet jars. She gave him a smile and reached for one of them, much to the boy’s delight. “Yeah, we have,” she agreed. “Seen all sorts of country. Nice area you have here. Kinda spooky at night time.”
The woman unscrewed the plastic lid off one of the jars, which, to Jarrod’s further delight, was full of chocolate frogs. “It’s a nice neighbourhood. Nice and quiet, not much business but then I was never in this to make a fortune.”
Alison gave her son a playful scowl as he eagerly accepted a handful of chocolate frogs.
“They’re on the house,” Nancy said with a wink at Jarrod, and then straightened and wiped her hands on her apron. “So where are you headed, if you don’t mind me asking.”
Alison paused for a moment, a strange sense of fate closing in about her, before answering woodenly, as if her voice was not her own, “Delles Glade.”
The woman’s eyes twinkled and her lips twitched. “Delles Glade,” she repeated.
Alison was beginning to wonder if her answer was in any way strange when Nancy Richards threw her hands in the air and laughed. “Of course! I should have known. A very popular place, Delles Glade, especially at this time of year.”
Alison laughed too, although she didn’t really think the strange feeling within her had anything to do with mirth. “So I’ve heard,” she said. There wasn’t really anything else to say. “You’ve been there?”
“Who hasn’t?” the old woman said with a smile.

Alison was walking back to the car to fetch her nightbag, clutching the motel room keys in her hand, an odd feeling in the pit of her stomach, as if she was missing something vital. Although night had fallen, the air had not yet taken on any chill. Instead, a warm, sultry breeze blew across her face like a caress. The sky was a deep violet, crystal clear, and the undulating horizon was tinged with a pale green. The pine trees that surrounded the block whispered softly. She stood still, and simply stared dumbly at her surroundings as if realising that she was caught in some pleasant but meaningless dream that she had no real intention of getting out of. An owl hooted somewhere in the distance, complementing the sigh of the breeze perfectly, and it seemed that for the moment, time had stood perfectly still. Then, from somewhere out of the darkness, an image came swimming up at her, A long, dark road. A dusky field. The crumpled wreck of a vehicle lying partway across the road, one headlight flickering weakly, water gushing from the ruptured radiator. Another car stopped not far from it, a group of men surrounding the car, some with their hands on their heads, some trying desperately to talk into mobile phones. And then she remembered. She spun around and was startled to find the old woman standing not far from her, a pile of folded towels in her hands.
“Are you alright, dear?” she asked, a look of concern on her face.
Alison found herself racked with guilt. “Oh Nancy, I’m so stupid! I completely forgot! How could I forget!”
Nancy balanced the towels in one arm and put the other comfortingly on Alison’s shoulder. “What is it?”
“There was a car accident!” Alison cried. “A bad one! About an hour back up the road! I can’t believe I forgot it!” She suddenly felt sick. “I must have been so tired I forgot! There were about three guys there trying to help, so I figured I couldn’t do anything else.” The guilt welled up inside her. “They were trying their phone’s for help, but couldn’t get anything this far out. I’m so stupid! We have to call the police!”
Nancy nodded, and gave Alison the towels. She then took Alison by the shoulders and then stared straight into her eyes. “Alright dear. It’s not your fault. You go to your room and make yourself at home. I’ll call the ambulance and bring you a coffee. Ok?” She shook Alison’s arm slightly. “It’s not your fault. I’ll be along shortly.” She turned and hurried back toward the office.
Alison stood dumbly for a moment, her thoughts spinning wildly, her heart racked with a powerful guilt. How could I be so stupid! How could I be so selfish! She tried to reason why she had passed the accident in the first place but failed. She hoped desperately that no one was badly hurt. Her thoughts then turned to her son, and she realised that she had no idea as to where he was. She turned about, feeling even more angry at herself, and began searching for Jarrod.
“Jarrod!” she called.
He wasn’t at the car. He wasn’t on the motel verandah. She walked desperately around the side of the shed, which, although locked, appeared to serve as a garage, and found her son. He was kneeling on the bitumen, a solemn look on his face.
Sitting across from him was a large black dog.
“Jarrod!” Alison cried in panic, dropping the towels.
Both Jarrod and the dog turned to look at her.
“It’s ok, mum! He’s my friend.”
The dog stared at her with large, glistening eyes, an impassive look upon its face.
“Jarrod, come here right now.”
Jarrod knew that when his mother uttered the magic words, she meant them. He groaned but obeyed. “Don’t be so worried, mum. It’s just a dog.”
“Yes Jarrod, and if it bit you, it would be just an infected dog bite. Come here.”
She held her arms out and pulled her son in close. She felt bad enough as it is, she had no intention of letting her son out of her sight to be bitten by some stray dog. She looked up to give the said animal a reproachful stare, but was greeted only by an empty car park.
The dog had disappeared.
“Where’d it go?” she said out aloud.
“What?” Jarrod twisted in her arms to look around.
“The dog. It’s gone.” Alison’s night didn’t look like it was going to become any easier.
“He probably went home,” Jarrod said, and pulled away to skip back towards the car. “Where’s Nancy?”
Alison smiled, for the moment the dog slipping from her mind. If there was one was into Jarrod’s good books it was with sweets. Nancy must have had experience with children. As if on cue, Nancy rounded the corner.
“What’s the matter? What are you doing around here?” she asked.
“I saw a dog!” Jarrod piped up, obviously having taken to the elderly lady.
Nancy raised an eyebrow and gave a warm smile. “A dog! Why, that’d be ol’ Wally, the local stray.” She gave a hearty laugh. “He’s perfectly harmless but I think that he gave your poor mother a bit of a fright. As if she hasn’t been through enough tonight!”
Alison offered a weak smile, but was clearly exhausted. “Did you get through to the police?”
Nancy nodded slowly. “Police, ambulance, fire-engines, the works. They’ll be there sirens blaring in about a halfer; though thankfully they’re coming from the other way, and we’ll be able to get to sleep soon.” She picked up the towels on the ground. “Looks like you got quite a fright. But you can rest easy now. Your room’s ready. I’ll fetch you some fresh towels. You get in there and make yourself comfortable. You’ve got a long drive ahead of you.”
Alison looked up, confused. “Long drive?” she asked groggily.
Nancy laughed again. “Why, to Delles Glade of course.”
Jarrod looked up at his mother as she blinked slowly. “Right,” she breathed. “Of course. To Delles Glade.”

[Blonde-Unknown]

ok i would read that but its huge...

[CodeCat]

Stories need time to be appreciated...

[Blonde-Unknown]

i am going to read it.. i was just bust when i looked at it first

[Ion Cannon!]

Read it all, its quite good as well, nice and detailed looking forward to reading more of it.

[Stinger]

It's good and I like what I've read so far, but be very wary of your tense.

Take this for example...

His mother’s cello and her son’s instrument lie side by side on the backseat at that very moment, both packed inside heavy velvet-lined cases.

... this strikes me as odd as you jump from past to present tense.

Also, a little suggestion, notice the effect you get when you take this sentence:

Jarrod grunted his assent, again without looking up, and Alison rolled her eyes. So much like his father, she thought.
They drove on, and within a few minutes were deep inside a thick forest. It grew darker. The sky changed from a deep blue to a violet, and a sprinkling of stars began to twinkle down upon them.

And give the anti-hero/character a more immediate thought process:

Jarrod grunted his assent, again without looking up, and Alison rolled her eyes.
So much like his father.
They drove on, and within a few minutes were deep inside a thick forest. It grew darker. The sky changed from a deep blue to a violet, and a sprinkling of stars began to twinkle down upon them.

See how the little things can make a difference? It's almost like a pause from the narrative.

Again, I like what you've written so far and hope to see more from you.

Edited by Stinger Missile Site, 23 May 2006 - 21:33.

[Foxhound]

I like that little description on its own. I'll read the whole thing in a bit.

[spiderspag]

The Object
A Short Story by

Justin Alick


The Object
Dedicated to Nathalie


The boy lay flat on his back, gripping the blanket tightly as he gazed at the stars upon his ceiling. A thousand questions whirled within his head. The house had finally fallen silent, and the air within it carried a blasted quality that made it seem as though a bomb had gone off inside a few moments ago. For all practical purposes, one may as well have. There came a tapping at the door, which the boy pointedly ignored, then rolled away from and buried in the pillows as it swung open to reveal the tall silhouette of his father, framed in the rectangle of light.
‘Son?’ he asked gently, repeating himself when there was no reply. “You know that… your mother and I both love you very much.”
‘Go away!’ came the muffled reply.
The man in the doorway hung his head as if he were a man condemned. “It’s true,” he protested in a soft voice.
‘Is it?’ his son cried, throwing the covers off and sitting upright to confront his father with angry, teary eyes. ‘I heard what you said, Dad. About none of this being important. Where’s me and Mum in you’re “big picture?” Don’t we matter to you?’
His father opened his mouth to speak, but his son cut him off. ‘Go away Dad! Me and Mum don’t need you anyway. Just go.’
There was a long, awkward silence then, during which the boy glared at the wall, and his father fidgeted with his cufflinks, before speaking. ‘Son… I want to tell you a bedtime story.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ the boy said flatly.
His father winced but came and sat on the bed anyway, reaching out to place his hand on his son’s shoulder, but settling for the covers when his son pulled away. ‘There once was a young man who worked as a TV repair man in the big city,’ he began.
‘Dad, seriously,’ the boy protested, but his father cut him off with a placating look, before continuing.

‘Now, life hadn’t exactly been fair to this kid. His parent’s had split up when he was a boy, and he hadn’t done terribly well at school; he was angry, lonely, and frightened that the big wide world that he lived in was going to eat him up. He tried very hard to do well for himself, mainly by working hard; on weekends, holidays… even in the middle of the night. It was on one such night that he was busy fixing an aerial on the top of a tall building, a skyscraper, that he noticed a strange man with wild hair and a long, brown coat standing on the edge of the rooftop, gazing down at the street below. It didn’t occur to the young man at the time that the doorway to the rooftop was always locked, and that he hadn’t seen anyone follow him up the stairs, but then, these thing’s never really do, at the time. The young man was simply afraid that the other man might try and hurt himself, so he went up to him, and called out: “Sir! Sir! Are you alright!” The man seemed to be saying something to himself, so the young man went closer, so that he could hear it, all the while letting the man know that he was coming closer and that he might want to come away from the edge of the building so that they could talk. Finally, just as the young man got close to the edge himself, the other man said, in a soft, melodic voice: “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“What’s that?” the young man asked.
The older man stood there for some time without saying anything, the wind blowing his hair about, his coat tails flapping, before breathing in the night air and saying: “The sheer uncertainty of it. The mystery. The fact that at any moment, that motor vehicle down there will fail to stop quickly enough to avoid colliding and causing minimal damage to the rear of the motor vehicle in front of it, and not a one of those people down there would have seen it coming. Not a one. Look closely, boy! Isn’t it exciting, not knowing what’s about to happen!”
At that moment, would you believe the young man heard a loud crash from the street below, and looked down to see that a car approaching a queue that had stopped for the lights had done exactly as the strange man had said. Suddenly, he felt very uneasy.
“Uh… sure it is, friend. Come away from that edge and we’ll talk about it.”
The man grinned hugely as he tapped himself on the side of his head, as if it amused him greatly to do so. “But me, I don’t have that luxury. No one does, where I’m from.”
“And where’s that?” the young man asked warily.
The other man turned to the young man then, and he could see that his glinting eyes were of a pure, unblemished white. The man was clearly blind.
“The Future!” he announced triumphantly, and then raised his eyebrow. “You don’t believe me?”
It suddenly occurred to the young man that being alone on the edge of a rooftop in the middle of the night with a crazy person might not have been such a good idea, so he began to slowly back away, toward the door. He remembered that there was a public telephone on the ground floor of the building, and decided to call the police. “Sure I do,” he stammered, trying to seem casual. “What’s it like?”
“Predictable,” the strange man said, regarding the young man with that milky white, vacant stare. “Time doesn't really have any meaning, though. Not much does, come to think of it. It’s all numbers. Not much is left up to chance. We know everything that has and is going to happen, everywhere, everywhen. Where are you going?”
The young man had reached the door and had turned to make a run for it, but froze when the man suddenly called out his name.
“Do you really believe me?”
“How did you know my name?” the young man demanded.
“I’m not sure you do,” continued the blind man, walking slowly toward the repairman, his coat snapping about him like a great cape. “I think that you think I’m deranged. Crazy. Suffering from a chemical imbalance in the brain that’s giving me paranoid delusions. Are you really that certain of yourself, and what you think you know about the world that you could be so quick to judge as to what’s possible, and what’s just crazy?” He was almost nose to nose with the young man now, who felt extremely uncomfortable under the blind man’s gaze and desperately wished that he was anywhere except where he was at that moment.
“Just… please. Leave me alone,” he said.
The blind man seemed to think about that for a moment, and then shrugged and said, “Certainly!” and strode away down the stairs.

‘Some time later, the young man was riding a crowded bus home through the city, his face pale, trying to forget about the crazed blind man on the roof and just wanting to get home to take a hot shower. Just a few stops from his house, when there were only a dozen or so people left on the bus, he felt a tap on his shoulder, and turned to see the old man sitting on the seat behind him, a little smile upon his face. Before the young man could say anything, the strange man held out his fist and opened it.
“Before I go back to the nuthouse, there’s something I wanted you to have,” he said.
“What is it?” the young man asked warily, peering at the object that sat in the man’s smooth palm. It was a little black cube, with an even smaller cube-shaped protrusion poking out of the side of it.
The old man leaned forward and took the startled man’s hands and pressed the object into them with a gleaming smile. “It’s everything you’ve ever taken for granted in this world turned on it’s head, my friend. It’s from the future.”
The young man struggled to repress a sneer. “Right,” he said slowly. “Thanks, but I don’t want it.” He moved to give it back to the blind man but he just sat there with a wide smile upon his face.
“And I don’t need it,” he replied. “It was a gift. A dangerous one- one far too dangerous to simply leave lying around. You see, if you press that button one the side there- yes, that’s it, that little square one; you’ll suddenly find yourself in an unfamiliar place full of unfamiliar people, who will all think that you are completely deranged when you try and explain to them how you got there. And I’m afraid that there will be no coming back.”
The young man felt like his stomach had turned to ice, and willed for the bus to go a little faster. “And why don’t I believe you?” he said, wondering if he should call the driver.
“Because, my friend, you know better than to believe nonsense like this, that’s why. Because you don’t have time to question the things you take for granted. You just want to settle down, have a family, and live a normal life just like everyone else, and not wonder just what it is that’s coming for you. Like I said before… beautiful. This is my stop. Remember, either way, there’s no going back.” He got to his feet and swept out of the doors of the bus and strode away into the night, leaving the young man sitting in the bus with the object in his lap, feeling slightly foolish. The bus moved on. The young man thought about tossing it out of the window, but he was much to environmentally conscious to do that, so he was left staring reproachfully at the object all the way home.
Silly old coot, he thought. What kind of fool does he take me for? He knew that the blind man was just trying to have him on; that he was just a creepy old guy who liked to scare strangers. It probably wasn’t even his fault. But he certainly wasn’t going to let someone like that scare him.’

‘So?’ the boy asked, sitting wide eyed up in his bed like he used to when his father told him stories.
‘So, what?’ the father asked, looking very tired.
‘Did the man press the button or not?’ the boy asked impatiently.
‘Well, no he didn’t. He was going to, he even picked the object up and went to press it.’
‘But why didn’t he?’
‘Well,’ the father said, ‘because he remembered the blind man’s parting words, and suddenly he didn’t feel so sure of himself. Or what he thought about the world, for that matter. He certainly didn’t believe that the man had come from the future, and he wasn’t going to turn the object over to a scientist to see what it was… but then, it occurred to him that he didn’t actually know enough about the world he lived in to go risking everything and prescribing to something he had no way of knowing about. Because to do that would be just as crazy… and even more dangerous.’
‘That sounds silly,’ the boy snorted.
‘Does it?’ The boy’s father stood suddenly, and reached into his pocket and produced the cube shaped object and threw it onto the bed, regarding it with a frightened expression. ‘I’ve had that thing and carried it around for nearly thirty years, and not once have I pressed that button. Perhaps one day you’ll find it in yourself to do so.’
He gave the boy a quick kiss on the forehead, and turned to walk to the door.
‘Goodnight, son. I’ll be back to see you soon.’

The boy sat in dim light cast from the doorway for some time, feeling the weight of the object upon his leg, before he reached over to turn on the lamp, and then sat up and took the object in his hands.
It was cool and heavy, and obviously quite solid. The boy remembered the look on his father’s face as he looked upon it, and frowned, trying to understand what he meant by what he had said. The object looked up at him, dark and conspicuous in his hand, and as he studied the small button on its side, he wondered if he should press it or not. It had only been a few days since he had read a story about a group of aliens who had travelled back through time to kill the dinosaurs so that humans could be born, and although he had enjoyed it immensely, he knew enough to know that was impossible.
If his father truly believed in such things, then he had obviously just read one too many of such books, or had just been more scared by the blind man then he had let on.
The object is just an object, he decided, and nothing more.
But as he moved to press the button, something his father had said echoed within his ears: Are you really that certain of yourself? There’s no going back.
The boy wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but it was that uncertainty that stopped him from pressing it. A cold feeling rose in the pit of his stomach, and his neck prickled. He knew that the blind man that his father had spoken of was just that: a crazy old blind man out to annoy an innocent stranger, and his father was probably foolish to be so scared of the object. But when it came down to it, the boy really didn’t know what it did. The one thing he did know, is that now that he had brought himself to question whether it was as innocent as it seemed to be; and what if the old man were telling the truth, pressing the button was the last thing he felt like doing. He quickly placed it in his bedside drawer, and stared at it with the lamp on. It was a long time before he went to sleep.

THE END.

Edited by spiderspag, 01 August 2006 - 13:35.