Belial - a fateful night (Vol.1) ✅

Chapter 1

Shit, I'm late!

With fast movements he tried to dress, brush his teeth and pick up his things within the minimum of time.

5 minutes until the subway leaves, I can make it in time... hopefully.

If not, then he would have to wait for the next one which he certainly wanted to avoid. The following subway was the one with all the commuters from within and outside of the city who arrived at the station and went to work in the companies and shops downtown.

I can make it in time, come on Aleks. They didn't call you Mister Homerun in your old school for show.

With less than graceful movements, he sprinted towards the subway station, being careful not to run over people, which unfortunately was not so easy. Two Minutes left.

Heavily breathing he reached the entrance of the subway station, only to realise that today again the only people that were travelling were the ones to whom the words sport or consideration for their fellow human beings were completely foreign. That's why they stood in the middle of the escalator and extended themselves wider than a bodybuilder during a contest. Then it would have to be the stairs. He reduced his speed a little, because he wanted to avoid breaking his own neck, and ran down the stairs towards the track.

The subway was already waiting and he heard the suspicious beeping announcing its imminent departure. Come on, come on, come on. Then the doors closed.

Completely out of breath, he dropped his bag and sat down on the next available seat. Success! God, that was bad for my heart. Whatever, now he would at least arrive on time. On the very day of an important test, he didn't want to arrive too late. If Rika hadn't tinkered with his phone yesterday, the alarm would probably have gone off on time. Little witch. But as a budding doctor, Aleksander had to remain calm. After all, he had made it through his five-year medical studies and was already working as an intern in the nearby hospital.

After his pulse calmed down, he clawed his headphones out of his bag and closed his eyes to the sounds of One OK Rock as the tunnel lights flickered in the windows. Subconsciously, he knew that Rika had nothing to do with him oversleeping. No, it had been something else. A dream, or more precisely a foreboding. It wasn't the first time he dreamed about things that would happen in the future, or that some bad feeling saved the life of a person who was going to die. No, he had seen something tonight. He was in a dark alley in the pouring rain and he died. Please, let it be just a dream.

The subway stopped and people poured out and into the subway, so it slowly began to fill up. A tap on his shoulder ripped him out of his thoughts. Zack, a 6'3'' tall brownhaired Texan with a boxer cut, grinned at him mischievously and made it clear with a hand gesture that he should move over a little.

Aleks took off his headphones and was greeted with a "Yo, what's going on shorty" and a handshake.

Shorty... Aleks could not be described as small, after all he was about 5'11'' tall, but for Zack, all those below the tip of his nose were dwarves or shorties.

"You look tired. Lack of sleep?" Zack asked, who made himself comfortable next to him.

"I'm ok, I just had a weird dream."

Zack's cell phone rang, which he pulled out of his pocket. "Rika will meet us at the main entrance. Apparently, she stayed with her "friend"."

Why "friend"? Well, for Rika it fit to be put in quotation marks, because she was a 5'6'' tall man-eater from Massachusetts with long curly brown hair and a pouty mouth that screamed "Kiss me". And apparently it triggered an uncontrollable protector instinct in every male being. So, she never lacked "friends". Unfortunately, these relationships never lasted long because she took her relationships very seriously and she was honest to the point of being blunt. Aleks took honesty seriously as well, in fact he had never lied before. However, Aleks unlike Rika who said everything on her mind without any filter, said things discretely or remained silent. Arriving at their station, Aleks and Zack left the subway and walked together towards the university.

At the entrance, both were greeted with an aggressive hug and a loud "Lexiiii" and "Zackzack".

"Why do you pull such a face Rika, has your boyfriend broken it off?" Zack asked, when he saw he saw her dim, reddened, makeup covered eyes.

"Leaving me? Pah, I've ended it. Wasn't my type anyway," she said with a pout.

"Let's focus on today's exam. After that we can go to Pete's and you can tell us everything," Aleks offered as a mediator when he saw Zack and Rika getting ready for a battle of words. Thank God, this seemed like an acceptable compromise, and so the day and the examination went by without further incident. But for some reason, Aleks didn't let go of the foreboding.

"Cheers!!!" With full glasses, the three of them celebrated the last exam of their studies. Zack emptied half his glass in one go and put it down with a less than elegant movement – one could also call it an attempt to break the table with a damn glass of beer – on the already soaked beer mat, whose advertising had already been scrubbed away by the previous thousand customers.

"Finally the holiday, I can't wait to stretch out my limbs and relax. I mean after such a horrible exam. But hey, we did it," a well-healed Rika said, whose eyes had been stuck for a suspiciously long time at the table next to them, where a group of handsomely built men sat, celebrating a sports victory.

Aleks grinned and leaned back relaxed. Yes, it was finally done. Five years of taxing work, stress and hardly any leisure time. Without his friends, he would probably never have gotten through it. They might be a bit crazy, but they were special and unique in their own way. I don't need to start there, after all, I'm the biggest freak among us. This foreboding...

He was abruptly ripped out of his thoughts when Zack jabbed him in the side with his elbow to get his attention. "Earth on Aleks, stop dreaming. They can't be more beautiful than a joint meal with your friends."

Aleks jokingly replied: "Then tell me something exciting Zack, for example, how Professor Miller ripped you apart in the exam. It's a miracle that you came out of there alive."

"As always, a heart of stone without a drop of pity. Luckily, he focused on Kellan, so I got away with a blue eye. I bet Rika got her 2- with a cute blink," Zack laughed.

Rika gave a melodramatic snort but she was not actually offended. Mockingly, she said "Well, I'd run away if I had a face like yours, clink, clink" and blinked exaggeratedly with her eyelashes.

Aleks could barely hold in his laughter over his friends' lubricated theatre. God, today was really the best day in a long time.