The Gamer

Just Another Day

It was six in the morning. The alarm bell rang. Darrell put his hand out lazily and hit the snooze button. He had been having the most peculiar dream he could ever remember. It was not uncommon for him to have dreams. In fact, he often had very unusual dreams. But not any dream he could remember was as realistic and strikingly eerie as the one he had been having a few moments ago before the alarm bell rang.

He got out and made his bed. The times he spent at the boarding school still haunted him, and he, as a habit from old times, never forgot to make his bed.

Darrell was tall, dark-eyed, well built and had dark black curly hair. He was, as most might say, a handsome youth. He lived with his mother at the very edge of Downin, which was located at the foot of a tall mountain called Maidenmount. Legend had it that a heartbroken maiden plunged to her death from the top of it.

There were several legends associated with the mountain. Darrell had been frightened of the mountain after hearing tales about the ghost of the dead maiden told by his grandfather. But soon, he discovered that he feared people more than ghosts or anything supernatural.

He went to the mirror and looked at his face. Most of his relatives told him that he looked like his father. But Darrell would have liked it better if they said he looked like his mother. He was very fond of his mother, and he hadn't known much about his father. In fact, he had only vague memories of his father. So vague that he wasn't sure if it was just another dream. He seldom thought about his father. But when he did, it felt somehow like something he'd rather not think about. The very thought of his father was to him something he'd rather not dwell upon.

He dressed up and went to the dining room, which was adjoining the kitchen. The food was already on the table, and he heard his mother in the kitchen gathering up the cutlery.

She was a tall thin woman with hair as dark as Darrell's and eyes that looked like a pair of two still dark moonlight lakes. She smiled at Darrell.

"You are awake. Finally, I was feeling famished. Did you sleep well?" she asked.

"Yes, mother. As snug as a badger in its hole," he grabbed a chair and sat down on it. "Did you have a good night's sleep?"

"I did like I always do," she said, sitting down. There were fried eggs, sausages, bacon, baked beans, strawberry jam, peanut butter and French toast on the table.

Darrell served himself a fried egg and some bacon with four slices of bread. He wasn't that fond of peanut butter, baked beans or strawberry jam. He used to love strawberry jam. He used to help his mother make strawberry jam every summer. During school holidays, he'd go strawberry picking with his friends in the forest. He spent hours picking red, ripe and juicy strawberries. He'd come home just before sunset, and the following morning, he and his mother would start making jam out of all the strawberries he had gathered the day before.

"What are you thinking so hard about? Is it something to do with your work?" Darrell heard his mother's voice like a distant echo. He looked at his mother, who was looking at him with a worried expression on her face.

"No. It's nothing like that. How are things at school?" Darrell asked his mother. She was a teacher in the local middle school. As a child, he had studied in the same school and had been treated like a teacher's pet because his mother was a regular favourite among both the staff and students.

This naturally made Darrell an easy target for the class bullies to pick on. It didn't help that he was one of the smallest kids in the class either. But Darrell had one advantage over the others. He was athletic. Darrell seemed to be made to be a sportsman.

He was part of the school football team and cricket team. He won first place in every track event.

He was not a genius when it came to studying. He never topped the class, but he managed to get satisfactory marks, which were enough to keep his mother and teachers pleased.