Just Another Day
©Eric Thomas, 2013
Ai sat in the computer lab, a series of
images flickering in bright reflections across her face.
Next to her sat a man with features
strikingly similar to her own.
Looking at the two together, though,
there were enough differences in their features that one wouldn’t suspect them
to be so closely related as half-siblings.
Where his skin was the almost brownish
quality of those in Southeast Asia, hers could almost be said to be Caucasian
if not for the slight copper present.
Slightly slanted, amber-colored eyes
stared out from her face, while his eyes were a bright shade of green bordering
on cyan.
Her muscles were finely sculpted from her
weekly cheerleading, while he was lanky and built not unlike a scarecrow,
standing at a full six inches taller than her.
How they carried themselves, even
sitting, was what made them appear vastly different to the casual observer.
Ai, even sitting relaxed before the
computer, appeared reminiscent of a coiled predator.
It was clear to any who cared enough to
look that her mind never relaxed, something constantly occupying her brain.
Her half-brother Alex, though, sat back
in his chair with an easy smile, watching her work.
A camera sat on the desk between them,
with a long black cable running into the back of the monitor.
She smiled softly at her project,
thoroughly piquing Alex’s curiosity.
“So,” he started conversationally,
“working on anything good?”
Grinning, he leaned forward in his
chair, getting a better view of the video editor in front of her.
The new view didn’t help him understand
it any better, though it did let him
know the subject of the videos.
Grinning, he sat back once again and
gave a low whistle.
The sound didn’t break Ai from her
seeming trance, though by the slight blush that formed he knew she’d heard him.
“You seem to be in a good mood…
Wouldn’t have anything to do with things on that camera, would it?” he
inquired.
“Yeah, no. You think I’d edit something
like what you’re thinking on campus?” she retorted with a narrowing of her
eyes.
He smirked at her brightening blush.
“Are you going to make me guess at
what’s made today such a good day for you?”
“Better than good, actually,” she
retorts.
“Hmm… What could it be? What could it be?
Oh, right, I meant to ask before, but then you got absorbed into your own
world. How’s the whole Rachel thing going? Are things working out well for
you?”
The blush grew brighter, and he fought
hard to not laugh.
“It’s… um… going a lot better than I hoped
it would,” she muttered.
He smiled at her tone, bringing back
memories of his own.
“Getting serious?”
Ai absentmindedly scratched at her
scalp, her blush growing brighter by the second.
“Who knows?”
“Who knew girls were so complex,
right?” Alex asked with a snort.
“Smartass,” she muttered under her
breath.
“It’s one of my finer-tuned skills!” he
retorted.
His grin faded some, and his expression
became considerably softer.
“Seriously, though, things’re going
well?”
“I think so… I mean, Rache’s birthday’s
coming up in a few weeks and we’re planning on hanging out for it.”
“Not necessarily couple-y,” he pointed
out.
“At any rate,” she continued with a
cough, “I kind of, uh, wanted to give her something unique. Not just for the
birthday or the fun, but for the whole saving
my ass from homelessness thing, too. So I figured, I might as well put my
expensive education to good use,” she said with an ever-brighter blush.
“What does one make for that kind of gift? I imagine eviction-evasion
isn’t the biggest seller in Hallmark,” he laughed.
Grinning, Ai nodded at her screen.
“Hence the unique gift!”
Alex laughed at the sight of her large
grin, the sound finally bringing her eyes away from the screen.
“What?” she demanded with an
embarrassed huff.
“It’s a good thing, I think. Seriously,”
he mused.
Misinterpreting his grin, Ai almost
glowed neon as her eyes narrowed.
“Hey, Laura’s more than enough for your
brain. Leave my housemate-”
“I meant seeing you smiling like that,”
he laughed. “Mind out of the gutter.”
“My mind lives in the gutter,” she pointed out.
“Oh, I’m well aware. You definitely got
that from dad,” he laughed.
She snorted at that, shaking her head
in an attempt to will her skin less red.
That she made no comment on his
statement wasn’t missed by Alex, who merely grinned more.
“And how’s Laura doing, hmm?” she evaded, grinning as his own face took on a
slightly flushed tone…
Rachel sat in the back of her
classroom, studiously keeping her eyes glued on the monitor before her.
She sat alone against the wall, her
hand steadily working on her current project.
Five other students occupied the room
as well, all of them sitting in the rows as far separated from her as possible.
It wasn’t exactly a wonder that they
avoided her.
While not going out of her way to draw
attention to herself, she also made the barest of efforts to conceal her
interests.
Among them was her fascination with the
Gothic culture.
It hadn’t taken long after her move
near the campus for people to notice that she wore black and silver,
exclusively with a very rare exception or two.
While she hadn’t put much thought into
finally being free to dress how she wanted, it was an unfortunate choice to
wear her club gear to orientation.
Even sitting in the back, her fishnets
and leather dress, down to her calves though it had been, had earned her quite
a large number of stares and whispers both.
While the college itself had many
students, her degree program, unfortunately, didn’t, and so being avoided had
been a forgone conclusion.
And so there she sat in the room,
wearing thicker-than-normal eyeliner and lightly caked on white makeup.
Combined with the thinly framed glasses
resting on the bridge of her nose, her eyeliner made her hazel eyes seem to
almost glow, which also unsettled the other students.
The teacher roamed the room, checking
on their work.
When he came to her desk, the man made
a huffing sound in preparation of whatever Lovecraftian monstrosity she’d
invented for the newest project.
“Interesting,” he mused on finally
seeing her screen.
She could practically feel his surprise
at the bright, bubbly character slowly being shaped from the pen.
While still resembling Japanese anime
in style, the woman on screen was already far brighter than what he’d seen
throughout the semester from the Goth.
Rachel slipped her headphone down and
turned her attention to the older man.
“Thought I’d try out a different style
this time around,” she explained.
“So I see. I’m looking forward to
seeing where it goes.”
And then he was gone, taking the eyes locked
on them back to the front of the room with him.
A woman leaned closer to the other
student at her table, and her eye glanced back at Rachel while she whispered
something or other.
The blonde somehow knew to be offended
just from the man’s responding laugh.
Ignoring them, she returned to bobbing
her head slightly as the music blasted through her wireless headphones.
Her hand moved at her side, scenery
slowly building itself before her eyes from the tablet she drew on.
The character winked back at her as she
absentmindedly drew.
The song changed, and she found the
electronic beats almost hypnotic.
Her hand slowed, and her eyes wandered
upward.
Another laugh sounded through the quiet
pulse of the electronica, and she could only sigh as her thoughts left her.
As her mind left the present, she
pondered briefly on how so much could possibly change while almost everything
stayed the same…
A
seventeen-year-old Rachel King sat at her desk, humming quietly to herself.
A
faint scratching sound filled the otherwise quiet classroom as she sketched.
Others
sat around her, a mutual agreement to ignore each other whilst waiting for the
buses to clear out sitting in the air between them.
Somehow,
the idea of her art or their gossip entertaining the other party seemed utterly
ridiculous to Rachel.
“Hey,
did you hear about the freak show?” one of the women asked.
Rachel’s
ears perked despite her lack of interest, and she mentally smacked herself.
Her
sense of curiosity prevailed through the mental tug of war, though, and she
found her hand slowing as she listened in.
“You
mean that new club, right?” another woman asked with a giggle.
“Yeah!
Have you seen the people going
there?” the third asked with a nasally voice that made Rachel wince.
Unable
to help herself, Rachel turned her head and looked at the three.
“There’s
a new club?” she asked.
All
three turned to stare at her, seeming surprised.
Whether
surprised that she deigned to talk to them or surprised that she had any
interest in their discussion, Rachel couldn’t guess.
“It’s
called the Black Dead, or something,” one of them, a brunette, finally
answered.
“Naw,
it’s weird. There’s a jay in it,” another girl with bright scarlet hair
corrected.
Rachel’s
eyebrow rose up at that.
“D-j-e-d?”
she asked.
“Yeah,
that’s it. Weird,” the last responded.
“Bunch
of freaks. I saw them the other day, getting together on the edge of town. A
whole bunch of Goths and freaks dressed up like vampires,” the redhead laughed.
Rachel
fought a wince, the horror novel in her purse suddenly shining like a beacon to
her mind.
For
a brief moment, she thought the brunette also looked uncomfortable, though the
expression vanished the instant she noticed it.
“Sounds
like quite a show,” Rachel mused with a laugh.
Had
they cared at all, they would’ve noticed the somewhat nervous quality to the
light sound.
As
it was, they returned to their conversation without another word.
As
she turned back to her drawing pad, Rachel’s eyes slipped over to her purse,
and more importantly the Carmilla print hanging out from it.
Somehow,
she doubted any of the three even knew what the story was, much less that it
was a horror, but she suddenly found the book burning in her mind.
It
wasn’t necessarily that she cared much if they saw it, since she made no secret
of her love of horror.
Still,
she imagined that, given the conversation, they’d start spreading rumors in a
heartbeat if they knew she had a book both Victorian and with vampires.
Shaking
her head, she put her attention back on her sketch and listened quietly for the
distant sound of the buses leaving.
Her
mind, though, was suddenly distracted from her drawing.
She
wondered about the club, debating on her thoughts of having such a club so
close to her.
It
wasn’t even an hour later that she decided that she was going.
At
the very least, she might find some good music.
She
was quick to change, and she was gone again from her home with a quick excuse
to her parents.
Another
half hour passed, and she found herself standing in front of the Black Djed.
It
was a relatively subdued building, sitting in what could have served as a
restaurant at some point.
An
Egyptian symbol, made of wrought iron and painted black and gold, hung above
the door.
Rachel
assumed that was the ‘djed’ in question, and briefly stared at the strange
symbol.
It
was a large tower, with three large disks on top of the stand.
Around
its entirety was an ankh, designed with a strange curvature to the arms, which
then each ended in three curved spikes.
Metal
lettering with the same coloring were in lines directly above and below the
symbol to name the club.
A
thrill worked its way through the blonde, and a grin worked its way onto her
lips.
Taking
a deep breath, she worked her way to the door…
Rachel jerked her head to the side,
sighing at the out-of-nowhere distraction.
She briefly ponders on whether she
might have ADHD, but was soon distracted from the thought by her unfinished
illustration.
Knowing that her brain wouldn’t get back
on track any time soon, she backed up her copies of the file and shut down.
With another sigh, she headed for the
door.
The teacher didn’t look up from his
own computer as she leaves.
Just as she passed through the door,
Rachel made an appreciative hum of the painting coming to life from his own
tablet.
With the reminder that he taught the
class for a good reason, she headed for the apartment.
She found herself glad that the weather
reports, for once, had been correct as she started walking the short distance
off campus…
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