The Battlescars

Chapter 1: Found the hole

Some days the sorrow inside me grows so deep I can feel it in my chest. An emptiness waiting to be filled, like a cavern that decided to break me open, inside out. The mechanical whizz of my alarm clock makes me turn my head. A sigh escapes my lips.

What should I do today? A sane person would come up with a logical list of all the mundane tasks the modern world would have us do. Me? I could go days without getting out of bed. Some days I wondered if I had died in my sleep and was a soul waiting to make it to the other side. 

The whizzing continued. But I didn't have the strength to muster up the will needed to get out of bed. I shut my eyes and focused on the blackness. I tried to drown out the thoughts that threatened to drown me. But the battle could not be won. A vibration near my legs shook the bed. My phone.

A text from Werner: "3pm@ ab poolsyde hope u make it this tym"

Ugh. Textspeak. When will he stop.I  typed a response and hit send before tossing my phone to the ground. I didn't care if it shattered. I didn't care if anything happened or didn't happen. That was the the thing that scared people most about me. Not my frizzy unmade hair, or the way I could never smile: It was the fact that I just didn't care.

I was never one with many friends. I didn't go on road trips or have a group of giggly bffls who I could text in the middle of the night for advice. I don't do friends. Not today, not ever.All I ever had was Werner, and my dad:mostly Werner. We grew up in the same town and met through our fathers. We both grew up with our dads after our moms went off to seek a better life in the valleys of some distant wonderland. Mr. Angfield and my dad were "pongbuds" from college. My dad wasn't a smart man and needless to say, neither was Werner's. They clicked. They would get together every weekend and drink themselves to sleep in front of our tiny box TV while me and Werner played in the backyard of my dad's dingy home. I didn't have many toys but I never complained( not that anyone would have listened). Werner and I mostly played games we made up for each other.

Someday in 2004, during fall, Werner had just turned seven and he'd decided that his sole purpose in life was to become a ninja. So he ran to my house one morning with his power rangers backpack stuffed with his mom's curtains. I woke startled by the sound of his fists on my bedroom door. I opened the door hazily, rubbing my eyes until the vision returned and after barely listening to what he said, shut the door and went back to bed.

The thing about Werner is that he never gave up on me. Everyone gave up on me after the usual three strikes but Werner never ever could. I'd wonder why but I realised it didn't matter. He spent the whole afternoon downstairs in our kitchen, piecing together ninja outfits so we could save the town from the axelplot (all xyco evil losers-something). He couldn't spell from an early age. I finally walked down into the kitchen and he handed me my costume. For a seven year old, he had  his talents.

 "What are you waiting for?" He asked excitedly.

"For this to explode" 

"Just put it on", and so I did. We left for the woods after eating our PB&Js. For some reason, Werner had attached an annoyingly long tail like piece of fabric to the back of my costume. I assumed it was a cape. I didn't bother to ask where he was going but just followed him. His sneakers squealed in the wet mud and I watched as he heaved himself over ant covered logs and hid behind trunks so no one saw us coming. I remember the way the sunlight was reflected off his bright blue eyes. He was a pale kid, with light hazel coloured hair, which I only assumed he got from his mother. His father didn't even have hair. \

After what felt like hours of us hiking through the woods, we reached it. The hole. It was big enough to fit two of my dads. And my dad was a giant. He had to duck through most doorways and his confused scowl was enough to scare any of the girls from school away when they came to work on projects with me. It was a perfect circle, and me and Werner had watched the news lady that had tripped and fallen into it while filming. I don't know how Werner found it but the hole was deep. It looked like a grave, like the one we had buried my mother in, except it was round and way too deep. I watched as Werner circled the perimeter of the hole and ruled my eyes when he asked me for his notebook.

"Do ninjas do stuff like this, Wern?" I asked him, already frustrated by how much time we'd spent in those itchy costumes. It was also starting to get dark and I needed to get home and finish my math homework. That was due two weeks ago. He looked at me like I was speaking an alien language. "The ninja's role is to protect his community". "And we're gonna protect them from this hole?" He just rolled his eyes. " Aliens"He added a few seconds of peaceful silence later. Even as a seven year old I knew that somethings were just too unreal. 

"No, Wern, I think someone's been digging for treasure". Even though my seven year old supermind had several darker explanations. Werner stopped and considered the possibility." Could it have been a meteorite?" Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. Something at the bottom of the pit caught my eye and I knew what it was before I even jumped in. It was a piece of fabric from an old man's shirt. The evening had turned darker and the ever so ominous sounds of the night began. I swallowed and walked on the wet soil of the pit and picked up the cloth. Werner was watching me with his signature curiosity. The fabric was the cuff of a man's shirt sleeve and as I pulled it out of its buried state, Werner's expression changed to one of pure terror. The sleeve of the shirt was soaked in what we only assumed was blood. I let out a scream and dropped the sleeve. Werner screamed at me to get out. He helped me out of the pit and we ran without stopping until we got home.