The Chaos Nexus

My name is Owen Wilkinson

I rose in a sweat, my body feeling calm, but my mind felt as if I had just experienced years' worth of life in a flash. As if I had just been shown something. Something I was supposed to know. Something I would come to know eventually. My emotions raced between fear and relief. It was the strangest emotion I had ever felt up until that point. It was dark, and I felt all dried up, despite the sweat.

I got out of bed, standing still on my two feet for a little while. I still felt unimaginably strange, as if I had lived years more than I already had at that point. I felt as if I was a grown-up visiting his old childhood home. I was nostalgic, scared, and sad. For what, I couldn't tell. I felt as if I hadn't been in my bedroom in years. Had I been that deep in sleep? I wondered to myself.

Then, it spiked again. That intense feeling. There was no build-up. There was no rise in tension. It just spiked. However, this time, two images flashed in my mind: Fire, and the words, "I'm sorry," in some somber context that I didn't quite understand yet. Why did that happen? What did those two images have to do with each other? And why did they feel so important to me then? And even now?

After standing in the dark for so long, I finally collected myself and went to switch on my bedroom light. I felt for the light switch in its usual spot and flicked it on. The moment the light illuminated my room, I felt a surge of buzzing vibration spread throughout my body, and my hand was drawn to, no, stuck to the light switch. No matter how hard I tried to pull, I couldn't move. Is this electricity? Is this how I die? Am I dying? God, please, don't let this be real! The thoughts raced through my head.

The bedroom light flickered, and I could somehow feel every light throughout the entire house. And not just the lights. I felt every little electrical device in the house. Even the car in the garage, as its alarm started going off. In that same surge of buzzing vibration, I felt every single electronic device in - and near - the house start flickering, malfunctioning, and going haywire. My mind had already felt so much at that point, and it was my body's turn to feel as well. So many feelings, so many sensations, and emotions, that I struggled to comprehend.

What is happening to me?

Everything went dark. I died. Or so I believed at the time. I only passed out, I believe now. Yet, I was still "conscious" in some strange way. I was aware of things - abstract things - happening, but none of them were around me in the real world. They seemed like more flashes. Or visions. I was falling through a dark tunnel of flashing visions, but I struggled to comprehend what they were about. I only caught glimpses of dialogue from them as I continued falling.

... see yourself? Is that how you think we see you?

... worried about... usual self...

... all this time?

... can forgive you.

... in you that grows by the day.

I didn't know what any of that meant at the time, but I vividly remember it. All of it. Because now I know that they were flashes of memories - not of the past, but of the future - that belonged to me. They were my memories. And despite those flashes of foresight, I still knew nothing about what was to come. About what it all meant. About who I'd become, or who I'd end up meeting.

But I knew they were important.

The dark tunnel became darker until it vanished into nonexistence. I became aware of my body again, after what felt like years of falling through that dark tunnel. I felt a cold wetness on my skin. I slowly opened my eyes to see my father on the phone, moving his left hand wildly. I then took notice of my mother looking down at me, in tears. I was lying flat on the floor, front side up. My hearing slowly returned next, right after hearing the last memory in the tunnel: I'm sorry.

I heard the car alarm sounding off from the garage and my father giving our home address to whomever he was talking to on the phone. My mother took notice of my eyes moving and let out a yelp before calling my father's name. Father turned to look at me and began crying. I had seen him cry before, but only when he was intensely happy. Never before had I seen him cry with fear in his eyes.

He kept the phone to his ear and bent down to tell me, "An ambulance is on its way here, son." My mother only looked at me in silence, not uttering a word. She was too shocked to say anything. I don't blame her for it. After all, both of my parents thought I had been electrocuted to death. There was a moment when they believed they lost their only child. My mother told me they thought I was dead before I opened my eyes, and by then, they'd already spent several minutes figuring out the chaos and calling an ambulance. No parent should go through that.

Amid the emergency sprinklers showering in my bedroom, the car alarm sounding, and my father speaking to emergency services, I closed my eyes and gave in to the surrounding darkness.

I was the reason we had to buy a new refrigerator, blender, and house alarm system. I managed to fry those things during the surge. It's funny, now that I think of it. At the time, those things meant nothing to my parents, compared to me, and they meant just as little after I was found to be alive and well in the hospital. Replacing them was nothing. But it would be nothing that would be able to replace me. That same nothing.

Sorry, I'm not trying to be overly "deep" here or anything. These are only my thoughts, feelings, and memories that I'm writing down. I'm here to tell a story, remember?

But not just my story. The story of Felicia, Jackson, and... Nolan.

Now... where to begin?