Outsiders

CHAPTER 1 - Beginnings

Another day of nonsense, Tenbris thought as he woke up knowingly late for school. He wasn't bothered that he was late as he was also home alone, his parents both had to leave for work early in the morning. In an attempt to wake their son up early, they just gave up. As he locked his doors and stayed up late as he usually does every night. It's way past seven and still, he isn't ready to leave. Instead, he took his time going downstairs to the kitchen looking for something to eat, not for hunger, just out of boredom. He grabbed the box of Lucky Charms out of the pantry and just started munching on it. He looked at the package reading Lucky Charms, focused on the word 'lucky' which infuriated him. He started gripping the cereal box intensely without noticing as a salty tear ran down his cheeks remembering his closest and only friend. He settled the box calmly on the counter and ran upstairs to the bathroom to get ready for school. He wore his usual black hoodie and baggy sweatpants, which was odd, as summer began early this year. It was beginning to be scorching hot outside.
Tenbris pulled up his bike from the garage and rode to an abandoned construction site near his school, hiding his bike a little further away, just so no one could see it and possibly steal it. While he was walking towards the school building, which he could spot in the distance, he heard an unfamiliar voice calling out his name. Looking around his surroundings he wasn't able to find the source of where that voice might have come from. He ignores it at first, "You..." until he hears it again. He quickly looks to his right encountering an alleyway that is ominously dark. He ignores it and keeps going but sees it again and again, almost as if it wanted him to walk towards it. Tenbris's curiosity started building up, so he decided to walk into the dark alley. As he keeps going, he notices his surroundings are completely black as if he has walked into an infinite void. Panicked, he hurries for a way out but is lost. He stumbles upon a pedestal with an ancient dark purple orb with some kind of symbol on it. Tenbris felt as if the orb was calling for him, so he walked towards it and reluctantly took hold of the orb. Suddenly the orb is absorbed into his body and he starts feeling unimaginable pain as if gravity was laying him flat on the ground doing its best to pull him to the earth's core while crushing his bones. His right eye starts breaking into blackness and cracks seem to appear around it. He starts grunting with pain until suddenly he finds himself at the beginning of that alleyway back in reality. He was confused and wondering if it was all in his imagination, but he remembers the pain and how real it felt. Tenbris quickly grabbed his backpack from the ground and rushed to his school.
After a gloomy day in school, he left the building still pondering about what had happened this morning. He cycled back home thinking of any rational explanations, but it was difficult to come across one since what happened wasn't a normal thing to easily identify and tell anyone about without thinking you went insane. The only people he could trust are his parents, but even he wouldn't trust them enough to let them in about this secret. Not after what happened to him when his friend died, his parents thought he went mental, telling them this might just make it worse for him, so he kept this secret from them for a while. Tenbris hasn't been hearing or seeing things anymore, but he has been having dreams, lucid ones. Every night when he's asleep he hears the same voice that he did that one morning. The dreams usually end quickly and so the conversations don't last long between Tenbris and the voice. Every dream Tenbris tries to ask the voice what it is and what it wants, but the voice just disappears with no reply. Tenbris gets confused and paranoid sleeping every night.
That one-night Tenbris went to an arcade not far away from his house. He thought going to a busy place full of noises and distractions might help him get rid of these dreams, but soon after Tenbris hears that same voice in his dreams screaming at him while he was in the middle of a pinball game. Almost collapsing, Tenbris started to sweat and so he headed towards the back exit of the arcade with his hands over his head as he was starting to get a headache. Right as Tenbris was about to push the door a security guard held him by his shoulders, stopping him and telling him to use the front exit and not the emergency one. Dizzying with anger, Tenbris lifts his head up, breathing heavily, staring at the guy as his eye turns dark. The security guard gasps and lets Tenbris leave through the back door.
Looking around, Tenbris sees his surroundings moving left to right like waves. Slowly losing his breath, he shoves his sweaty hands in one of his pockets, pulling out his inhaler quickly using it. Catching his breath the voice proceeds to aggressively scream out "Give it to me!" As Tenbris asks, "What are you, why do you keep asking me that, what is it that you want?!" The voice goes quiet. Tenbris gets even dizzier than he did last time, feeling like something is taking control over him. He thought to himself "I have to keep whatever it is inside me at bay." On his way home, he felt uneasy as if something was lurking from the shadows.
He continued heading back home until he started noticing a shadow with an unfamiliar silhouette growing on a wall of an alley across the street. There were two ladies walking past that alley and right when they moved away from it a giant-crane-like arm was extended out of the alley as it gruesomely dragged one of them intensively right into the alley as she screamed in horror, and within a couple of seconds her screams went quiet. The other lady screams, running out of fear as this slender-like creature showered with blood pulled out the alley rushing recklessly straight towards her crashing into anything on his path to her. Tenbris ran to his house, not looking back as he would know the lady's fate is similar to her friends. panicking each minute after the other, more and more as he watched doomsday unfold before his eyes. People getting eaten in the streets like they were worms for the early predators. His objective was to get back home quickly and in one piece.
Tenbris ran up the steps up to the port and pushed the door which was a crack open. He shouted "Mum! Dad! We need to leave!" As he rushed to the living room to discover that both of his parents were brutally killed.
From what it looked like, it was likely to be one of those creatures, as there were deep scars going across their bodies. Tenbris screamed in rage, so loud that even people outside his house could hear it. Tenbris's and the other houses in the neighborhood blacked out as the objects in the house started shaking like there was an earthquake going on. "No no no, this isn't happening," He said worryingly as he checked their pulses, it was obvious that they were long gone. The carpet sucked thick cold blood from the parents' freezing wounded bodies. Whenever you step on the soaked carpet, you would feel the juicy blood being drawn out as you feel the dreadful chills running down your spine.
Tenbris felt as if he was dragged from the surface of the earth and pulled up into space to see the planet from a long distance. It looked and felt peaceful, but that was just for an instant as he was dragged back to reality with his parents dead in their living room. Not wanting to believe it. Tenbris trembled as their blood was splattered all over him as he continued to mourn. This is when he realized that they weren't coming back.