LOST LIVES

Chapter ???: ACQUIREMENT

Somewhere better...with the nearly lost.

The streets of Ostracine all felt the same to me. It didn't matter what day of the week it was, what time it was, or if anything was going on anywhere in any of the streets. They all felt the same to me.

From what I have looked over what I thought, I found that it wasn't the overall vibe of the town that caused me to think this way, it was the buildings that lined the streets. The houses all looked identical layout-wise, and even the paint job kept a somewhat monochrome streak through most of the streets. I guess I found all houses to be the same here. Well, in the residential part of Ostracine anyway.

For some reason though, there was one house that intrigued me. One big house. A house on a large hill that hid behind the hills that surrounded the town of Ostracine. Or, it was a house at least. It was a big building house with the "house" part on one half and the other being only the framework, foundation, and space. At "home", we were constantly told not to go to that house when we got back from school for any reason: exploring, smoking, making out with someone in the creepy-crawly floorboards, stealing, bragging, or anything at all, we were not allowed. I wanted to explore it and NOT make out under the creepy-crawly floorboards like the two pairs of high schoolers that have done it at "home" before. I say "around" because it wasn't clear if one of the incidents saw three people doing it.

It left most of my housemate's minds pretty quickly. Others, not so quickly. Some of the older orphans got caught trying to get up there and some got pretty close to the front door. Once they got home, they received a scolding and some punishments.

Oh right. I guess I should clarify who I mean by "them" and "home". I'll explain it then. We're all orphans. We live in an orphanage in Ostracine. I don't know if I made that clear through the diverse ages of the cast. I guess I should've made that clear. My bad.

Anyway, It left everyone's minds. Except for mine. One Friday when I finally got to my room after coming back from school, I decided that enough was enough. I wanted to see what was in the house. I wanted to be an explorer who dares to step afoot in places where no one else goes to.

Even the creepy crawly floorboards.

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And... done. That was the last of the things that I needed to pack in my backpack. Let's see if I have everything.

Flashlight, granola bars, combat knife (for obvious reasons), emergency lantern, and water bottle. Yep. That's everything. It's only a look around and back. Nothing too special.

I tightly tightened the string on the drawstring backpack that I had and hoisted it over my shoulder. Thank goodness that I have my room with no one else. Sharing a room with other kids would put silence as a necessity on top of the need of secretly needing to pack in the afternoon. Sure I was lonely most of the time, but that meant more time for me to have fun. At least, that's how I spin it.

I put on a dark hoodie and some all-black sneakers that I had with black sweatpants. It seemed essential to me to wear all black. And thank goodness again for laundry day being yesterday. I didn't feel like stealing one of the girl's leggings right when school ended before anyone got home.

I headed over to the window. Our orphanage is a two-story building with pipes that lead to the exposed girder on the sides of the house. Don't worry, I have experience; it's rat-free.

I crawled out my window on the second story and used said pipes and girder to find my way to the ground. I know those pipes are sturdy from the times that I had snuck out before to shop late at night. Once I found my way to the ground, I speed-walked across the road, past the next set of buildings in an alleyway, and made my ascension up the first hill. It surprisingly didn't take much longer to make it to the second hill with the large house. Everyone who got caught doing this is either a terrible runner or a loud megaphone.

This was it. I turned the knob and walked into the main living room while turning on my lantern. To the right room was the damaged part of the house that I had talked about, and the left room looked more finished and looked to have a small library.

I took the left room. I don't feel like either getting tetanus or finding rats on the exposed side. The next split path in front of me is the stairs to the upper floor with the library, a kitchen to the left, and a fireplace to the right with a bookshelf.

I go up the stairs. The library doesn't look that bad. It's the library that we have at school. One interesting thing about the library when I got there was that there was a table in the middle of the whole library with one book laying down there. Another interesting thing about it was that it looked like the destruction of the house looked like it was coming from the space in front of the table. The wall behind the table was just...gone. Like someone used an explosive spell or a rocket launcher, or something.

I decided to check out the book at the table to start my snooping. "All About Spirits." Looked interesting. Flipping through the pages in the book showed many different rituals for different kinds of spiritual resurrections, and other pages showed great detail in what spirits exactly were and what kinds there were.

I was almost finished with my ten-minute skim of the book when I decided that I wanted to see if the rituals did work. Looking through some of them, most seemed to involve ingredients that I didn't have or locations I couldn't go to. One of them, though, only needed me to say some gibberish syllables very loud. I'm not even going to try to say the words for you to know. Partly because it would take too long, and partly to watch you suffer within the writer's absolute exhaustion as he is writing this at 12.34.

Anyway, I said the shit, and...

Nothing happened. Great. I did that for nothing.

I decided to put the book in my drawstring backpack to keep. I probably said the stuff wrong, so I kind of want to see if I can get one of them correct-

"AARGH! FUCK! FUCK! OW! UHhhhhhh..."

Immense pain threw itself onto my body, forcing it to ragdoll itself onto the ground as I twisted and turned. It felt like something was cruising through my body, or more accurately, FORCING its way through my body. It went on for what seemed like an hour before I was left trembling on the floor.

What the hell was that? Something I inhaled? Something I touched? ...The ritual I did? No. I probably inhaled something. Yeah. That's what it was. That was it for me. I wanted to go home.

Immediately, I grabbed my backpack, sprinted as fast as I could with a limp, and zoomed out of the house. Dawn was almost upon the town, so I sped and walked down the hill, past the buildings, across the road, and to the building that we called home. I climbed up the pipes again, this time knocking over one, causing a lot of noise. I didn't care. I just wanted to get to my room and rest my worries away. I got inside, dropped my backpack on the floor, took a breather, and then finally went to bed. I was ready to sleep for a whole 11 hours to heal myself and get myself together, but I would have to be woken up at six for chores since the weekend was today.

Why do I even like exploring? Even I don't know to this day...