The Jemaverse

The Darkened Sword

    Hi person, or alien, or whoever or whatever is reading this. My name is Jemeni! I'm a 13-year-old awesome, African American kid, currently just coming home from a field trip on a Friday afternoon. It was pretty fun, and I had brought $20 with me. Since I'm known to be really bad with money, all was spent. I, however, wouldn't say I'm that bad with money. Those 7 packs of gummy worms seemed to prove otherwise. To keep you from knowing how immature I am with money, I'll try not to tell you about the $10, plastic toy sword I bought. If you can predict the future, you'll know how impossible that would be, since the sword is going to be a really important part of this story. I was on the bus sitting next to my friend Brad. We were pretty quiet on the way home, mostly because we had nothing to talk about. It took several minutes before the bus reached home and dropped me off in time to see my brother, only two years younger, walking up our long, cement driveway. He also just got home from school. Carlos was white, and also adopted. We get along well, but in my opinion he doesn't know how to have fun. He is super smart though, especially with his logic and reason. So while he depends on his smarts, I usually depend on what he calls dumb luck, and little bit of smarts, athleticism and fast thinking, which I call awesomeness. I ran up to him, excited to tell him about the trip. Like he knew I was waiting for him to ask, he sighs.
"Hey Jem, how was your school trip?" he asked.
"Eh," I said while twirling around my sword in a figure eight, "I guess I could say it was pretty Jemazing."
I know how to use swords pretty well because of karate, that Carlos had refused to take with me. When I'm bored I usually teach myself some new sword moves. It was an awkward silence as none of us spoke.
"I got a new sword!" I exclaimed, smiling.
Carlos gave me a confused look. I can tell he wasn't impressed, nor surprised.
"Why do you seem so happy about a cheap, easily breakable, round tipped, plain black handled, hollow, plastic toy sword with a clear, probably light-up sphere at the end of the handle. You can just as easily picked up a stick and it'd be exactly the same, except stronger and way less money than that thing."
I stayed quiet for a while until we reached the steps to the front porch of the house. We walked up the stairs and I noticed Carlos examining his hand.
"Wow, Car, you don't have to ruin my happiness using your true, saddening facts all the time, geez. It takes the fun out of everything." I said while opening the door.
"I'm bleeding." Carlos said, plainly.
On his hand was a very small cut that was barely even bleeding. Knowing he'd want to wash off the blood I went to the bathroom and put on the cold water. My brother came in after putting away our bags. Both our parents were at work so I guess it was my job to heal the small cut he was over exaggerating about. Taking his injured finger out of his mouth he was about to put it under the running water.
"Hey Jem... why put the water so hot?"
"What do you mean? Its cold. Up is hot, down is-woah," I stopped talking as I saw the steam seeming to come off the mirror.
"Maybe I was wrong."
Without assistance, the door slammed shut with a loud bang.
"I think we might be stars in a ghostly horror movie." I commented.
We looked around until my gaze stuck on the fogged mirror and an image was clearing through. It looked like a shadow. A shadow of a man with a purple wall behind it. It had a smile worn on its face. And if you add the expression shown by its eyes it seemed to have a malicious look on its face. I can tell by the red outlined white mouth and eyes. It was a 4D living shadow. The thought of myself hallucinating this vanished when I saw Carlos looking in fear at the shadow man in front of us.
The shadow's mouth moved as it talked, "Can anyone see me? Or is it eve- is this thing even on? What do you mean I should be seeing something... This better not be a.. Oh. All I see are two teenage-looking humans, but I'll take it. PREPARE TO DIE! Or whatever this thing makes you do. I think it'll make you into shadowmen, but... who knows."
Carlos and I looked at the shadow in confusion. After a taking a while to register what just happened, Carlos panicked and tried to open the door, but the knob wouldn't turn. The shadow guy lifted up a huge gun looking thing and pointed it at us. Being honest, I was pretty scared. But with the door stuck closed, I guess there was nothing to do but stand there and see what was going to happen. Out of pure instinct I lifted the plastic toy sword to shield myself when he pointed the gun at me and shot it. I was surprised, I kinda expected to die. But when I opened my eyes, a stream of dark lightning came out of the end of the gun. My sword seemed to be taking the blast. Not just taking it but absorbing it. Shadow started swirling inside of it and the shadow didn't stop coming. The shadow man lost its smile and started beating the machine with its free hand. It tried steering the blast away from the sword but failed.
"Let go!" It yelled. "Turn this thing off!"
Carlos was ducking under the sink counter hands to his ears. The Darkness coming out of the machine was pushing me back. I could tell the shadow was panicking. It was struggling as the machine was humming louder and louder. Finally it blew. I didn't hear it or see it. But the mirror unfogged and I was launched back toward a wall Carlos doing the same. My head hit the wall first and my body followed. Before getting knocked out, I saw Carlos hit the wall next to me, and we both blacked out.