Jack Katel stood on top of a small hill, under the bare oak tree, looking down on the funeral taking place. The funeral of Sam Tekal. Jack was not a very big or muscular man and his long sleeved, dark green shirt and cargo pants made him blend in with the oak tree. Jack could hear weeping of women—the mother and grandmother of the deceased man cried the loudest. Jack turned his head skyward, as it was starting to rain. It seemed as if even God could feel the pain of the family. He felt the bone-chilling wind sweep across his short, graying, black hair. As Jack looked back down, he gazed at the coffin sitting there; he thought about the man inside that coffin. Well, at least the remains of the man, as the cold corpse was mostly just guts and bones.
Jack remembered the eternally sleeping man all too well. He also remembered how Sam died all too vividly…
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The year was 2009. December. Virginia. The time was 0100. Sam Tekal was running down a dark alley, while dogs barked in the distance, he could hear the shouts and scrambling feet of the New American Order soldiers behind him, who, not five minutes earlier, had kicked down the door of Jacks apartment. Jack managed to escape by jumping out the window and sliding out a pole, which led him into the dark streets. Only to have the New American order soldiers follow him.
As he ran through the alley, he could see the beams from the flashlights of the soldiers behind him, which only encouraged him to run faster.
“Keep searching! He couldn’t have gotten far,” screamed a man from behind Sam. For another five minutes, Sam ran, and he never slowed down. He felt like his quickly beating heart was going to come up through his throat and expel itself from his body. The cool night breeze blowing through his long black hair helped him to continue going on. Eventually, Sam saw a bright white arrow on a wall to the right of him, pointing upwards. There was a ladder right next to the arrow. Sam grabbed on and started to climb. When he got to the top of the ladder, he noticed that the bolts holding the ladder to the roof of the building were emitting a bright blue light, and they were extremely loose. Sam was lucky to get to the top before the bolts pulled loose. Sam pulled himself up on top of the building, and, grasping the rusted ladder, pulled it up to the roof with him. The soldiers crowded the alley, not sure where their prey had gone. Sam was safe—for now.
The next day, Sam was strolling around town to see if anyone knew why he was being hunted. As he walked past a newspaper machine, he noticed that right in the middle of the front page, there was a picture of him. Above the picture were the words
Local Superhero Stops a Shooting
The newspaper called Sam a superhero because he had a special power. Sam could see images that nobody else could see. He saw things like arrows, shapes, dots, and luminescent lights. These images had helped him throughout his life. They never led him the wrong way, and they always work for the good of mankind.
As Sam continued walking, he noticed that the images he saw were getting really weird. As he walked past a small knife shop, he saw the door emitting a white light, and an arrow on the ground leading into the store. Sam knew that his visions never steered him wrong, so he went into the store. As Sam walked around the store he noticed that a particular knife had a large arrow floating in the air pointing down on it. It was a switchblade, with a black handle and a golden blade. Sam bought the knife, but he still didn’t know why he needed it.
That night, as Sam sat alone in his bed, he tried to figure out why he was being hunted by the mysterious organization known as the N.A.O. He realized that the only way to figure out why they wanted him dead would be to die and then see what they would do next. The only problem with that plan was that if he died, then what would be the point. Then, as if an explosion went off inside Sam’s brain, he realized that he could fake his own death. But that plan also had a problem, if he pretended to die, then his family would be mortified. If he didn’t do it though, then he would just keep being hunted down like an animal, and he would eventually be murdered. After a couple minutes of thinking, he decided that he would do it, he was going to fake his own death.
