literature

Observer

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    Observer by Turtlecollector

    I walked along the edge of the cliff—park on one side, dull gray ocean on the other.  I expected nothing more than that color at five in the morning.  But who would?  I had to say, it was colder than I’d expected.  My thumbs were stuck in the pockets of my jeans, and even those weren’t warm.  Switching my hands to the pockets in my hoodie would’ve made sense, but I didn’t want them to get too comfortable.  Hands needed to be alert.  At the ready.  Wielding, and flexible.

    Sadly, the cold got rid of the last two necessities.  I shuddered, and decided my hands could use a few minutes of comfort.  Just a few.  Maybe more, but who could say?  Both hands were now neatly clenched into fists in the pockets of my hoodie.

    I turned toward the ocean with a tilt of my head.  A few gulls were perched on an arrangement of rocks, watching the tide sleepily.  One eyed me, squawked, and jumped a few paces away.  It obviously wasn’t happy about seeing someone in La Jolla, at five in the morning, watching it try to sleep.  I smiled at it, and it squawked louder.  A few feathers came off its body as it flew away, desperate to leave me.

    “Tch.” I muttered, reeling my head back to the sidewalk.  “And they say those birds are idiots.  They take risks when it’s safe, squawk when they’re threatened, and leave when they sense danger.  What’s stupid about that?”

    I kicked at a shell on the sidewalk.  It rolled a couple of feet before small dark legs scrambled out of it, righted the shell, and scurried away.  I shrugged, found an empty shell, and kicked that as I went instead.

    The sidewalk swayed to the right, coming closer to buildings.  I wanted to avoid them.  Too many people for what I wanted.  Needed.  Had to do.

    Wind blew through the fabric of my hoodie, pushing my cold tanktop against my back.  It continued to brush against me, running along my wrists and pushing black hair into my face.  I shook it away, reclaimed my hands from my pockets, and swung the hood up and over my head.  Better.  Probably safer, too.

    I froze.  Turned my head toward the buildings.  Smelled the air.  I sighed, and decided the buildings could use a visit after all.  Fresh coffee was brewing, and I made the decision that I needed to buy some if I wanted to keep going.

    I jogged across the street without worry of being hit.  It was still dark, after all.  The lights of a car would have been easy to see.  And if there was a car…?  Well, I could jump.  That was always an option, though a bit of a last resort.

    Up the sidewalk, a turn to the left, and a few entrances down was the Starbucks.  Bells tinkled over my head as I entered.  The tired cashier smiled only when I took my hood off and shook the bangs from my face.  I smiled back, hiding myself behind it.  She didn’t need to know what I’d been doing, or what I planned on doing.  Nor why I needed something to keep me awake and at my best.

    She’d been saying something.  Damn, I missed it.  Expecting that she’d said what all baristas say, I responded with a nod.  “Morning.” I glanced briefly at the menu, even though I already knew what to get.  “Twelve-ounce Americano.  Please.”

    She started chatting about how it was a good choice, and about how cold it was this morning, and at some point she might have begun a discussion with herself about a boyfriend.  Maybe hers, maybe not.  I didn’t care much.  I mostly grunted, nodded, and smiled silently as my response.  My eye twitched.  She was tempting me at that point.  The coffee was already brewed, just sitting behind the counter.  No cream, no sugar.  Just a cup of strong espresso, if she did it right.

    With an embarrassed giggle, the barista moved my cup to where I could get it.  I took it with one hand, and handed her a few bucks with the other, leaving before she could give me change.

    Out the door and around the corner, I tilted the cup to my lips and drank.  It was bitter, it stung, and she’d put whipped cream on it for God-knows-why, but it was coffee.  It warmed my body and heated my fingers, making them usable and wielding, like they should be.

    Hood back up and left fist in pocket, I crossed the street.  I didn’t even need to look.  The car came at me, and then under me as I set a hand out on the hood, pushed myself into the air, and landed simply on the other side.  Not a drop of coffee was spilled.

    The driver didn’t even honk.  He slowed, and I knew he’d checked in the mirror to make sure he’d seen right, but he kept driving.  Unfazed, I continued in my same pace to the sidewalk, and returned to walking.  The shell was where I’d left it, but I let it be.

    I made quick work of the bitter, scalding, whipped cream-topped Americano.  I tossed the cup into the next trashcan I saw, licked my lips, and stuck my thumbs back into my jeans.

    My target was an alley.  It was getting closer, only a few blocks more.  That was where I was supposed to find them.  Them, and the soon-to-be victim.  Or victims.  Sometimes I was the one that created victims, but today, I was an observer.  An observer of what?  Not sure yet.  Maybe a murder, maybe a mugging, possibly just a petty theft.  Maybe something else, something more morbid.  Sadistic slashings have been popular lately.  I smiled again, scaring away a curious early-rising ground squirrel.

    I pushed back the too-soon jittery feeling of the full-strength Americano, and kept on, hopeful the coffee wouldn’t screw things up for me.  Just a few more alleys, and I would be at my destination.  Something would happen—was happening—and I should have been there twenty-two seconds ago.  Twenty-three.  Twenty-four…

    I changed my pace to a speed walk, improving the chance of getting there a little on time.  Nothing much would be missed.  A few lines of dialogue, some confrontation—but not much.  Nothing too interesting, too important.  But, dialogue and confrontation set up a back story.  And a back story was what I liked best.

    I slinked across the street to the buildings again, hugging my right shoulder to them as I kept going.  A doorknob and a few nails pulled at me, but I kept on.  Kept walking.  Kept with the plan.  Everything I’d come to do, to witness, was just past the door and at the next alley.  All I had to do was turn the corner, and I’d be there amongst the shadows as an observer, watching the scene play out.

    Swinging my bangs into my face, and the hood lower on my head, I hunched my shoulders, licked my lips, and turned right into the entrance of the alleyway.

    My plan?  The plan?  Act drunk.  Stone-cold drunk.  Not the kind where you’d stumble over air, or swear like there was no tomorrow.  The kind that made you confused.  The kind that, given the circumstances, could allow me to have an ‘alibi’ for being there on the streets at five in the morning.  If it didn’t?  Well, that’s where improv comes in.  Just improvise.

    I couldn’t be so drunk that I’d stumble into the triangle of light in the alley, but I had to act drunk enough so whoever was in there would just tell me to get lost.  Because that’s what they did.  If you were incoherent—even if they were incoherent—they’d tell you to go.  They’d tell you that you didn’t see anything, that you should just keep going.

    Well, I didn’t plan to keep going.  I planned to observe.

    I slunk and swayed into the shadows of the building I had been pressing myself against, though now on a different side.  I scanned the scene, counting, noting, and watching everything I could before they spotted me.  Apparently, I was wrong.  I wasn’t late.  It was perfect timing, just like always.  The groups had just met.

    Four guys on the right.  Two my height, one a couple inches taller, the one at the far end a half foot shorter.  The shorter one was scrawny, and fidgety.  He was the newbie.  Probably old friends, but with a new hobby.  Ergo, the newbie.  The taller guy?  Backup.  Brawns.

    I noted the two others.  One just had brown hair and dull eyes.  The other, the one that stuck to the skinny kid, had details.  Strong jaw, fit frame, and a black beanie to match his black eyes.

    Two girls on the left.  They were the soon-to-be victims of the unforeseeable crime.  The Blonde was tall, lanky, and wore more pink than a flamingo.  The Brunette actually made sense.  She didn’t wear a skimpy tanktop like her friend.  No, she had sense.  Lots of sense.  It was a wonder they were together, friends or not.  Like yin and yang.  Hot pink on one side, dark blue on the other.  The Brunette?  She made sense.  She wore a quarter-zip white jacket over what I assumed to be a blue tee-shirt.  She had jeans, and tennis shoes.  Much easier to run in than a pencil skirt and pumps.

    Honestly, what the hell were they doing together?

    My eyes drifted to the guy in the beanie.  Right as his eyes drifted to mine.  Ah, yes, I was screwed.  I’d been caught.  My shoulders had straightened out of habit, and I’d subconsciously brushed the hair from my face so I could take a better look at the six in the alley.  There was no doubt in his mind, his first-timer mind, that I was not drunk. 

    Hell, I was about as sober as they came.  The thought of alcohol going down my throat felt wrong.  It’d slow my thinking.  Not like others—no, alcohol would make me be like the others.  Unknowing of the tiny details.  Of the ticks a person could have.

    So, no.  I was in no way, shape, or form, drunk.  I’d staggered and given a sloppy smile, but it wasn’t enough.  I’d straightened my back, righted my vision, and for God’s sake my hood was down now.  My eye twitched.  I’d screwed myself with my own want to be seen.  It was a stupid want, but it was what happened.

    The taller of the guys stared point-blank at me, following his friend’s gaze.  “Hey.  Dude.  Wha-da-ya-want?”

    Well, maybe that was the drunk.  That, or he was trying not to freeze his tongue in forty-five degree weather.

    I turned on my heels, leaned my back against the cold brick of the building, and lifted my leg so the flat of my right foot rested against the wall.  Digging my fists further into the pockets of my hoodie, I shrugged casually, avoiding eye contact.

    “I was walking.  Is that more of a crime than what you were going to do?  And now I’m standing.  That too complicated?”  I tried not to smile, but it was always so fun to bother them if I got caught.

    The guy opened and closed his mouth a few times, as if he wasn’t sure if he should get his friends’ approval first.

    Beanie-guy strode to the spot beside the tall guy, chin jutted and chest puffed.  His black eyes roved over me, scrutinizing what he could—which wasn’t much.  I was in a pair of gray Converse, dark-wash jeans, and a pullover hoodie to match the shoes, too loose for them to see what my body type was.

    I grinned inwardly.  It was Grade-A athlete material, the type that sports stars only wished they could have by luck alone.  And yet what did I do?  Well, I hid it.  To everyone else, I passed for a plain guy.  Simple.  Black hair, though piercing blue eyes, as one of the girls had said once.  Piercing, like the daggers…

    Beanie-guy was closer.  I’d gotten distracted.  Again.

    “Dude.  What are you on?  Didn’t you hear me?”  He demanded, trying to puff his chest out even more, which only made him look inflated.

    “No.  And I don’t really care.” I sighed, close on total irritation.  “I won’t do anything.  Just do whatever.”

    The guys looked like they were considering this, though all of them had become as fidgety as the scrawny newbie.  The girls, on the other hand, actually seemed to be debating whether they could escape or not.  Now, both of them had sense.  Good.  Maybe they’d know to scratch at anyone who attacked, to collect skin cells, and possibly blood.  DNA was good, if they wanted to press charges.  If they wanted to be left alone, however?

    Bad idea.

    The other guy with dull eyes watched me for a while, when suddenly, his eyes didn’t look so dull anymore.  They looked like mine.  Livid, intent on observing everything and a single thing at once.  But they weren’t mine.  They were close, but it wasn’t the same.  He wasn’t me.  He was a sidekick, a guy with blunt features that made him look like the default for videogames.

    “Hey.” He called, with some actual intelligence.  “Who are you?”

    I smirked.  This time, on the outside.  Beanie-guy and the tallest took a step back.  And I hadn’t even smiled yet.  Too easy…

    I had some ground rules.  If I got caught, I tried to blend in, like I was part of the group they’d left behind.  Or, I encouraged them I was just passing through, and that I wouldn’t rat them out.  No matter what I saw.  No matter what I heard.  What I felt.  Smelled.  Got splattered with.

    If that didn’t work, if they started asking questions, then I changed course altogether—not an observer.  A helper.  Defender.  Just something else to do.

    Step One.  Freak the hell out of them, and maybe they’d back off.  If they didn’t, they were idiots.

    I stretched my smirk into a hysteric grin for them.  They backed up further.  A run through the hair with splayed fingers, and they glanced at each other.  Foot down from the wall, and straightening my back to my full, normal height?  The tallest one gulped.  I was as tall as he was without slouching.  Only a two-inch difference, but enough.

    Maybe they were idiots.  Maybe they weren’t.  They’d responded, but they hadn’t left.

    Step Two.  Make them impossibly uncomfortable.  Or more so, if Step One did its job right.

    I swiveled, leaning my elbow into the wall where my head had been.  The grin was still on my face, and hysterics still in my eyes.  “Something wrong?  I thought you had some girls to mug.”

    Step Two was accomplished.  They gaped at me like I was covered in blood, holding a knife, blade pressed to—

    Distraction.

    “Dude…” the guy in the beanie said again, as if that was the only way to start a sentence.  “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

    I closed my lips, changing my expression to a coy smile.  “Me?  You’re the ones who’re keeping these girls here in an alley.”

    The again-dull-eyed guy thought he could whisper to his friend and not be heard.  That one, at the very least, was an idiot.  “He’s a psycho.  Let’s bail.”

    Step Three?  Repeat Step One and Two at the same time.

    I took a steady step forward, and moved my hands so the thumbs locked on the pockets of my jeans.  “No, I’m not.” I grinned again.  “I just like watching.  There’s a difference.”

    Step Three definitely accomplished.

    The newbie might as well have fainted.  I was surprised the Blonde hadn’t, yet.  It wasn’t what I’d said.  It was how.  How was everything.  How wasn’t feigning innocence.  It was coming out and saying the truth.

    Sighing, I rested my body against the building again.  “Are you going to do something?  Or are you just going to stand there staring?”

    Beanie-guy took up his role as leader again, and spoke.  “What do you want?”

    A shrug.  “Nothing.  Not anymore.”

    The newbie was the one to put two and two together.  “You wanted to watch us…?  Watch us do what?”

    Maybe he only had two and one.

    The guy with dull eyes seemed to know what was going on.  “Uh…”

    Or, maybe not.  But he continued, throwing his thumb in beanie-guy’s direction.

    “He wanted to do it.  Blame him.”

    “Shut up.” He snapped in response.

    I slid my attention to the girls, who had gotten much closer to the entrance of the alley.  Another ten feet and they’d be gone.  “Hey,” I put on a different smile for them.  No insanity.  Just a smile, like the one I’d used with the barista.  Fake, yes, but normal.  Within reason.  “Where are you two off to?”

    The Blonde made a noise somewhat attune to “eek”, while the Brunette swore under her breath.

    I nodded my head toward the four guys.  “Well?  Don’t leave yet.  We still have to talk.”

    The Blonde looked like she thought she’d die if she didn’t obey me.  The Brunette didn’t seem to care one way or another.  Both, however, decided not to press their luck.  They returned to their original spot in silence.  A horrified stare came from the Blonde, a finger from the Brunette.

    I had to smile.  It was the first real smile I’d had in a long time.  Weeks, maybe.  Months.  Years.  “Oh, come on.  I wasn’t the one about to mug you.  They were.  Am I really so bad?”

    I wasn’t used to talking to girls.  Not unless it was the barista at Starbucks or the waitresses at the few restaurants I was a regular at.  Girls on the street or at school, I tended to avoid, if I could help it.  I wasn’t used to them.  They were foreign in an observer’s world.

    “You’re just as messed up as they are, though,” were the first words out of the Brunette’s lips.

    I shrugged.  “Fair enough.”

    “And don’t think we don’t know you.” She added, motioning at the Blonde.  “You go to our school, remember?”

    No.  No, no, no.  How?  How could they know me?  It was five in the morning.  I wasn’t supposed to know anyone that early.  No one was supposed to be awake that early in the morning.  So how did they know me?  I let it happen!  I let it happen—someone I knew, probably personally, saw me as an observer.  As something other than normal.

    What a horrible word normal was.  It sounded so fake.  Nothing was ‘normal’.  That was the point of diversity, wasn’t it?  Difference?  Normal wasn’t real.  It couldn’t be.  Normal was just a guideline.  And I was not, in fact, a guideline.

    I swung the hood back over my head, and returned to slouching.  “I don’t.”

    “Yeah, you do.”

    “You’re wrong.  It’s five a.m.”

    “And?”

    I had nothing to say to that.  She had a point.

    She crossed her arms, and I was fairly sure she gave me the finger under one of them.  “I don’t even know what’s going on.  Mind telling us?”

    It was a lie.  If anyone knew what was going on, besides me, it was her.  She just wanted confirmation.  Maybe hope.  Hope that she’d misunderstood.

    I glanced at the guys.  They were watching us, as if they were the observers.  With a sneer, I turned on them.  “What are you looking at?”

    They flinched, the scrawny newbie especially.

    Marching up to what I assumed to be the leader in the group, the guy in the beanie, I changed demeanors back to Step Three.  I swung his neck into the crook of my elbow, leaning in close.  “What do I want…?  I steal from thieves, beat up muggers, kill murderers, and mutilate serial killers.  And that’s only when I feel like it.  Other times… I just watch them.  That’s all I was going to do, until you noticed me.  Happy now?  I could have stayed out of this.  You all could have been on your way by now.”

    His expression went blank, as if I’d overloaded his mind with what I said.  With what I did.

    I leaned closer, dropping my voice to an actual whisper, unlike the guy with dull eyes’.  “Now, tell the pretty girls you’re sorry.  Maybe I won’t stick with my usual routine with people like you.”

    “B-But we weren’t—”

    “Do you want to test me?” I slid a hand to the switchblade in my front left pocket, smirking.  “Do you?”

    He shook his head frantically.  “Sorry.  We’re sorry.”

    I swung him around to face the girls.  “Not to me.  To them.”

    His eyes bulged.  “I—We’re sorry!”

    The taller guy bent over to us, scowling.  “For what?  We didn’t do anything.”

    “Dude, shut it!” His friend panicked.

    I released him, and started to walk toward the newbie when the taller guy punched me, sending me sprawling on the ground face-first.

    “Run!”

    Are you insane?

    I was at the tall guy in a second, one hand around his throat, the other at my pocket.  “Try that again.” I hissed.

    His Adams apple bobbed under my fingers.  “S… Sorry…”

    I let him go.  It wasn’t like he’d do anything else, anyway.  Nothing was going to happen in the alley after I’d interfered.  Maybe nothing was going to happen anyway.  It was possible I could have been wrong, location or time, about that place.  The environment was right—double the guys than girls.  Outnumbered, maybe outmuscled.  I didn’t doubt that the Brunette could easily beat the newbie, a stick of a kid.  Poor guy was probably one of the others’ little brothers, come along for the ride.

    Speaking of which, he was standing beside me now, staring up at me.  “What… are you?”

    What.  Not ‘who’.  I hadn’t heard anyone ask that in quite a while.  It was usually ‘why’ or ‘who’ that was asked.  If I let them speak, anyway.

    “Just an observer.” I muttered, tugging the hood further over my face.

    Searching the alley, I found no security cameras.  Good.  No recordings of me.  Nothing of my expressions, of what I said, how.  Nothing.  All good things for me, except for the fact that instead of two witnesses, there were six.  Too many to knock out, and five more than I wanted to kill.  And that was a last resort, just like jumping the car.  But if I was pushed, I’d have to.

    “Don’t think about saying anything about this.” I warned darkly.  “And leave the girls alone.”

    Footsteps followed me as I walked back along the cliff, abandoning the guys.  One pair was soft, the other giving way to the clicks of heels.  Pumps, to be exact.  I ignored them for roughly three minutes before I turned to the ocean, now a lighter shade of gray.

    The Brunette stood beside me while the Blonde waited a dozen feet away, nervously glancing over her shoulder every two seconds.  The sense was gone.  None of the guys would have followed me, if they had any sense at all.  They didn’t, but it was a different kind of sense.  It was the common kind that would have told them not to pursue.

    I sighed.  “What do you want?”

    “I’m sure I’ve got the situation screwed up, but thanks.” The Brunette said.

    Rolling my eyes, I tilted my head at her.  “I hope you realize that if none of you saw me, I would have gladly watched the two of you get mugged.”

    “Hm, and you’re a psycho for that.  But you didn’t do that, did you?”

    “I wanted to.”

    “But you didn’t.”

    “No, I still wanted to.  I just didn’t watch.” I replied bluntly, annoyed at the thankful tone in her voice.  “Don’t think I saved you.  I just brought some sense to those guys.”

    She grunted, her arms crossing themselves again.  “Yeah, right.  Sure.”

    I started walking again.  Maybe she’d get the message.  Maybe her friend would succeed at persuading her to turn around.  I scoffed.  And maybe the seagulls will start being idiots.  I thought, hearing footfall behind me again.

    “Where are you going?”

    Walking faster, I darted across the street, up the hill, and onto the main road through La Jolla.  I didn’t need tag-a-longs.  All I needed was myself.  No one else.  Except the seagulls, maybe.  They made sense, unlike so many people.

    And yet the Brunette made sense.  And she’d made the Blonde have sense, back when they were planning to escape.

    I paused, considering my options.  Continue to my destination, a black Camaro four blocks down, or tell the girls where I was going, and continue to my car later.  I didn’t see too much harm in the latter.  They were on foot, and I’d soon be safe in a car.

    Safe.  Not quite the right word, but close.

    “Ocean Beach.” I muttered, hoping my words would get lost in the wind still biting my back and brushing over my wrists.

    The Brunette and Blonde were beside me.  Why the Blonde had come along with all that had happened, I didn’t know.  But there she was, hurrying as fast as her pumps could take her, right behind the Brunette.

    “At five-thirty?”

    “I don’t see why not.”

    “Because school’s in the other direction.”

    I shrugged at her again.  “Yes, and it can stay there.  Problem?”

    “Shouldn’t we be going there in, like, two hours?”

    I paused, catching her by the shoulder.  She flinched.  “With everything that happened…” A smirk danced on my lips, tempting me to turn it into a grin.  “You’d want to see me at school?”

    The Brunette swallowed.  Glared.  Slapped me.  “You’re in my damn group in English, you idiot.”

    I froze.  I knew her more than personally.  She was an acquaintance.  A friend.  Group mate.  Partner.  And I’d blocked her.

    That was how it worked.  Everything from one side got tucked neatly inside me while the other came out to observe the little things.  Both sides were always there, always awake.  The only difference was that what I assumed to be morals disappeared when I observed.  No ‘sane’ person could survive a day of school in the same skin as one that had not one hour earlier witnessed, or committed, a murder.  It simply wasn’t possible.  The images, if you let them, would show in your eyes.  Then everyone would know who you were, what you did, what you saw.  Everything would come out if worlds overlapped.

    That’s why I couldn’t remember her.  The Brunette with sense, with the Blonde friend that almost had some.  They were from the other world, and had crossed into this one.

    “I wasn’t paying attention.” I muttered, speed-walking to the Camaro.  I did my best not to show how nervous, how uncomfortable, they were making me.

    I wasn’t supposed to know anyone at five in the morning.  Not five, not five-thirty.  It was wrong.  They were different, too close to the guideline of ‘normal’ to be in this world.  The world where I was an observer.  Where I stole from thieves, mugged those who mugged, slit the throats of murderers, and mutilated and displayed the people who called themselves serial killers.

    I pulled the hood even further over my face, as if that would make them forget my features, the things that made me who I was.  “Don’t tell me your names.”

    “What?” The Brunette stopped her previous sentence, the one I didn’t want to hear.  Remember?  I’m—

    “Names make you know people.” I muttered, digging the keys from my right pocket.  I slid the blood-splattered blade into the passenger side door of the Camaro, turning until it unlocked.  “And I don’t want to know you here.  Just at school.”

    She set her hip on the door before I could open it.  Glanced at the Blonde.  Back to me.  “Alright.  I’ll play along.  Now what are you going to do in Ocean Beach, exactly?”

    I checked my phone, at the most recent text.

    I smiled at it, then at her.  “I have a soon-to-be serial killer to hang from the Pier.  In exactly forty-two minutes, if I don’t do anything, three victims will be hung like mobiles.  If I leave now, he’ll be gone before anything happens.  If I stay here, your friend will be victim number…” I stared at her horrified face, doing the math, “Number eight.” I lied.  Maybe they’d let me go if there was a chance of one of them dying.

    Both stared at me for the longest time.  I slid into the passenger seat of the Corvette, and across the leather to the driver’s spot.  I waited.  It wasn’t long before the Brunette and Blonde climbed in afterward.

    I smiled, locked the doors, and began the drive to Ocean Beach.  “So.  You want to stick with me after all?”

    Not quite what I’d planned.  Not at all.

    A glance in the back told me the Blonde wasn’t so sure.  A glance to my right told me I’d get flipped off again if I questioned her judgment.  “What?  I’m not letting you kill some guy that hasn’t even done anything.”

    She picked up my phone from the cup holder before I could say anything.  “You got a new text.”

    “Put it back.  I’ll read it later.”

    “It says they made a mistake…?”

    My resolve broke.  I had to know.  “Read it.  Now.”

    Said former serial killer was mislabeled and misidentified.  He is a con artist.  Ignore him, and go to school.  Also, your friends are very pretty.” The Brunette swallowed.  “What the…?  Is this some kind of sick joke?”

    “No.  Technology just doesn’t work sometimes.  That’s why I ignored it this morning.  The alley was just a hunch.”  I scowled at the pavement ahead of me.

    Technology can’t observe.  It just records.  Why can’t it be more like seagulls?

    “Well,” I sighed, spinning the Camaro into a haphazard U-turn, “I guess we’re going to school.  Try not to tell people about my… hobby.”

First, the font for/in the title is Splinter2 (if it shows up... which it hopefully will)

This started out as me thinking it would be a short story, around 3-4 Word doc pages.  ...In the end, it turned into 11.

Somehow, the story all started out with Kings of Leon's "Temple".  Apparently the lyrics "I've hot my hands in my pockets" sparked this. ^^; Somehow.

It's done for the most part, though I may edit grammar things if I/someone else catches anything.

Second Observer:  Observer: Plague

edit: changed the Corvette to a Camaro for... erm... technical reasons. *aka Corvettes don't have back seats*

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Violous's avatar
This is very well written! This tops the majority of the books I've read from chapters!