A Walking Chestnut - Rewritten

Chapter 1: Home is where the family is

Down the street of a small city near the edge of nowhere, between nothing junction and dead dream boulevard, walked a young man wearing as unassuming a getup as a man could ever wear under the hot sun of late spring.

A black v-neck t-shirt, a pair of knee-length olive green shorts, and a grey cap. The only article of clothing that differentiated the man from any other run-of-the-mill person out on the street, was a steel chain necklace with a small Star of David attached, the tiny metal hexagram tucked under the man's shirt, away from the sun's rays.

And that man's name was Samuel Cohen.

And he was a piece of work...

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Samuel Cohen, or Sam, sometimes Sammy, had a normal early childhood.

He grew up in a loving home with loving parents and had an adorable loving little brother who was just a bit over four years younger than him.

He had an awesome uncle and amazing grandparents, and everything was perfect.

Until it wasn't.

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It was a foggy autumn day, sometime in the middle of October, when Sam returned home from school only to find the house empty.

That wasn't that unusual for the boy, his mom worked long shifts at some no-name warehouse, his father basically spent half his life at the local synagogue, and his little brother liked to visit his friends and hang out at their place instead of coming home from school, so Sam simply assumed to himself that that day was one of those rare instances where everything fit together to make him the only one home.

And you know what that means? He's got the television all to himself!

As soon as Sam finished his homework, he turned on the TV and entered the streaming service his Uncle decided to get the family, he opened up some random action movie about spies, a mission-impossible clone, and started his real study session.

Sam liked to watch these types of movies and also shows about police officers that for some reason have Ice-T in them.

He knew the movie sucked, you didn't need to be a cinematic connoisseur to understand why the film got 61 on Rotten Tomatoes, but Sam didn't care about the movie. As far as he was concerned, the real movie started when the characters started to run.

He watched that chase scene from that movie four times in a row, having to turn back the film every ten minutes just so he could rewatch that one scene, noting down in his mind all the little details he could about where the stunt performers placed their hands, the position of their bodies before they jumped, which actors had wires and which didn't, he noted it all.

That movie, that cheap 6/10 clone of a much more successful and better-directed movie, would end up being Samuel's most hated movie.

Not because it was that bad, it was a boring movie that would in any other case be a forgettable moment that he would not remember. No, the reason that the movie earned its place as Sam's most hated work of fiction is because 1 hour and twelve minutes into the movie, The phone rang.

"Hey, That ringtone's the same as our landline," Sam pointed out with a chuckle, And he was correct, the phone in the movie had the same ring as Sam's house's landline.

And it was because of that tiny little detail, that Sam did not hear the actual phone in his house also ring at the exact same time, and thus did not answer.