Ethereal

Part One: Chapter one

Lyrics from some Opeth tracks were of great influence and aid. 

This novel is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be constructed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Although it is worth mentioning that some of the plot twists, fictional events and character personalities were the outcome of major influences on the author's life.

Dedicated to Noor El Adawy for she was a notable  inspiration.

Chapter One:

Authors often start out their novels by describing the weather and stating the time and place and so, in an attempt to arouse the curiosity of the reader and direct him to the right place in the back of his mind in which he would see and visualize the events to come. But however much effort the author has made to make his first few sentences intriguing, I always find myself lost to the matters of time and place as I flip the pages. I think its a human nature and of course, defect, to not pay attention from the first time to all aspects.

But without any further ado, It was one miraculously warm April night in the Tyresta forests southern Sweden. Although the weather was fine, relatively speaking, our adolescent's fingers and feet were almost numb, he was walking, stumbling, passing by the trees, dark thin figures they seemed. Nothing moved, it was all too still. Totally contradicting to how the Tyresta forests were in the morning, there were always tourists and the natives guiding them and occasionally kids playing around with their dogs, teachers and their students on field trips, families and so on.

Back to our adolescent. It would have been right to say that it was rather reckless of him to be wandering in this particular isolated part of the woods at this late hour, but he wasn't actually deciding on where to wander. He was intoxicated, high on marijuana which was known to be spread among people of his age. His friends barely allowed him out of the party in this condition, he was completely lacking perception of reality and tripping over and over, but he said he was going home, the fools took his word for it and little did they know.

Maybe if they hadn't allowed him out non of this would have happened, he thinks regretfully to this day.

Our adolescent's name was Mikael, Mikael Åke Van. He was nineteen years old, born to a perfectly normal family, mother, Elsa Van and father, Åke Van. He also had a brother who was studying abroad, somewhere near Scandinavia. Mikael ended his route just before the shore of the Stensjön lake, he sat down facing the water, sucked the smoke from his joint, then let it escape from his lungs to the air, and again. He was lost in thoughts, hard it was ,though, due to the lack of his sobriety.

"Who am I?" he thought, for a few moments he sat there, motionless, staring at the sky's reflection on the river, a full moon it was. "What am I doing?" a violent cold blow of wind came along, but he was too numb to feel it. He was numb, physically and emotionally. "But I've been feeling that way for a very long time, all the same.." he shrugged and tossed his joint with putting it out first.