Whispers Hollow: Dawn

August 19 05:46 Fence Street 1, Nigel Creek, Ohio

Fence Street 1 was the only house on the right side of Fence Street in Nigel Creek. It wasn't just the only house on the right side, but the only house on the entire Fence Street. There was a fairly long way to the closest house, if you were to walk between them. It was unusually small and felt out of place with it's now bright red colour contrasting the dark, green forest. It was not a special place. It just happened to be where our main protagonist lives.

The property, like previously stated, wasn't awfully big and the house was nothing to talk about. After the house the road thinned out in a narrow path, leading into Nigel Woods, which laid just a couple of meters away Fence Street 1. It actually made sense, considering that the house was built by a lumberjack.

Sometime during the late 1800:s, the french, workaholic lumberjack Jean Benoît and his family came to the so called "Land Of Opportunity". He went to Ohio in search for a home, and after some drifting, he found himself in a nice and peaceful village where he could work to his heart's content. Aside from being an ambitious lumberjack, he was also a very skilled carpenter and had no problem to fix a decent house for himself and his family in no time.

Life came and went for Jean, no matter how peaceful his life was or how hard he worked. The day after his funeral was it announced that his house had been bequeathed to his youngest son Ronald, who only had good and happy memories bound to it.

Ronald took good care of his old home and spended most of the spare time he had to maintain the house like it was when he grew up in it. He, just like his father, had a burning ambition for work. After a couple of years, working as one of the best personal manager at Nigel Furnitures, he was received an offer to work as a bank CEO in Indiana. After much thought he had to let go off his heritage and sold it to the town's librarian, Joseph Martinez.

The librarian had just been at Fence Street 1 half a dozen of times and didn't even live there. He usually slept in of the chairs at the library after reading a good book, or on the street after spending the night at the local pub. The only use he had of the house was to store his personal belongings and have something to blame his lack of time with excuses like "Sorry, I have to put up some new wallpapers tonight" or "Too bad, I am planning on buying some new furniture". Even when he passed away, he hadn't even bothered to bequeath the property. The house was left untouched and slowly rotted away in it's loneliness.

One day, a young man named Barney Kruger, opened the doors of the old house, which had been locked for over 7 decades. And he, just so happened, to be the main protagonist of this story.

This story took place an unknown time after that. The young man Barney, is currently slacking off in his bed, fully dressed and are on his way to his work. That is, of course, if he could manage to get up and going. Barney had been up all night, reading a book he just had bought and in no time he'd lost track of time. He fell asleep somewhere around 04:00 and had just been woken up by the sun burning his face. He stared up in the ceilings radiant, white colour, which just made it look plain. Barney hadn't been so thoughtful with which paint he had chosen and really regretted it now. It was so plain and boring. It just reminded him of washing powder. Just as white and just as plain. They maybe came from the same place as all plain and boring stuff came from: the laundry.

The laundry was a boring place, but he needed a job and that is what it was, selling washing powder, change money, be forced to hear the latest nonsense that all the idiotic cattle (customers) kept babbling about, being ordered to take care of stinking piles of cloth when the customers felt like it, kick the crap out of runts that sprayed graffiti all over the place. That last thing was one of the great deals of working there. Other great things that came with the work was that he knew almost everyone in the village and what they where like. He knew how they looked, how they behaved and what they did. He was that guy who knew everything about everyone. It might sound cool and useful, but he had little to no use for that quirk. One genuinely great thing was that it was just a dash away from his loyal friend Garrett Greene's pub, "Van Garrett's Head", and that really made his days brighter.

And that's it. Not much to brag or care about. Did other people live these lives? Thought same thoughts? Thinking of their own lives as a never ending cycle of working, sleeping and eating? To be honest, it was really all he ever did. He woke up in the morning, eat breakfast, went to work, sometimes went to the pub, went home, read a book or saw a flick and went to sleep. A whole day passing by with no progress in his life.

Did other people thought their lifes to be as pointless as his where? Barney really didn't hope so. He knew his life had no purpose, but he still had hope that everyone around him would have great, happy, exciting and safe lives. Where was this going?

Anyway, what was he thinking about from the start? The laundry. Other than going to the pub afterwards, he couldn't think of one single thing that was good about the laundry. It looked boring, it had a boring purpose and nothing happened. Thinking to much of it, wouldn't working there mean that one are becoming a part of it? Being a part of the gray monday, being a part of the boring, plain and monotonous laundry, was that his destiny? His life, blending in among everyone else in the history of Nigel Creek that none will remember.

Well, for the moment, it seemed so. And as long as he had coffee and didn't die of age, it was okay for Barney. Dying, bleaching, whithering away into nothing, that was aging to him. And Barney couldn't handle that thought. It was okay to be forgotten in time, everyone will sooner or later be. So it didn't matter what you where or what you became, that future was inevitable. But aging, bleaching...

He looked at his watch again. 05:57. He rolled down from the bed and layed down there for a while, not ready to meet the day.

Now he was.

He rose up, put on his trenchcoat and hat and walked out. Not knowing that this day would be the most important one in his life.