The F.F.F team

Real or Fake

Sure Having friends is nice. If they have the right intentions, that is.

Okio had never found any real friends, he knew when someone was lying and friends don't lie, so far everyone in his life had lied to him at some point.

They weren't white lies either, they were secrets kept from him.

Friends don't keep secrets unless it's bad, and they don't lie with contempt ringing in their voice if it's a good secret.

But Okio had realized all this quickly and he was done.

Friends came and went and he didn't need them, he'd had it up to the sky with trying to make friends. Every time, every single time one of them betrayed him, he found himself caring less and less and beginning to expect it more and more.

Soon he had no "friends" left to betray him, and he wasn't planning on trying to make more.

He walked along the empty street, the lamp post's the only things providing him any light in the dark of the starless sky.

He smiled to himself, even the sky didn't have friends.

The sky was limitless, maybe that was a sign.

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his zipped up, black leather jacket, as a cool breeze whipped against his bare, pale skin. Other than his jacket he was wearing a white cotton t-shirt, jeans, and black boots.

His red hair blew madly in the wind, his bangs falling into his red eye's and he tried to blow them away.

The sound of his boot's clacking against the cracked stone path echoed through the night, the only sound.

It was then that he noticed that the street was very quiet. Too quiet. He tried listening for other sounds, but the only other thing he could hear was the wind.

He halted by a shop door. Whatever the reason for the stillness of the night was, he needed to get out of here.

He went to move again when he heard it.

A bell.

He stepped forward and he heard it again.

Ring, ring, ring.

He was sure this time that it wasn't just him hearing things, and he heard it again and again and again, as he walked towards the obstreperous noise.

He followed the noise to a small house on the corner of the street. It was old and uncut, dead leaves were scattered through the lawn and a dead tree drooped in the corner of the front yard.

The path leading to the front porch steps was cracked and broken with pieces of it missing. The blue wooden fence around the front porch was desecrated with pieces hanging on to others by a splinter.

He walked up the path when he heard the bell noise coming from inside the decrepit house.

It seemed that even the stairs and the porch itself had been diminished by age, creaking under his weight.

He wasn't heavy, he knew that. In fact, he was quite lean, and of average height.

Though the porch felt like it was about to crumble beneath his feet he continued until he reached the front door.

Like the front porch fence, it was painted blue, and the paint peeled in some places making the door even more depressing than it already was.

It was hanging on to its hinges just barely and the bottom corner was missing completely. Okio wasn't sure why he was doing this.

He could turn and leave now. He could bolt off the porch and down the street and never look at this house again. But something within him told him that he needed to open this door, that this door would change the course of his life.