The Shadow Setters Book 1: Prominence

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

The ever increasingly familiar sound of the front door slamming shut and booming around the vast house triggered Jason to open his eyes. Now that he was not eating, he was definitely sleeping lighter, he could feel it. As Jason stirred, he looked around the dreary bedroom. He thought momentarily that he felt imprisoned. The house with its unyielding dark grasp was unwilling to release him, though worse than a prison, it was a place that he could leave at any time if the will was strong enough, if it pained him to do so. But this prison was now his home. There was no doing your time in a dark place only to return to happiness after your incarceration. His dark place was now central to his life and he felt as if it's unwelcome and depressing grip was bleeding beyond the barriers of bricks and mortar and soaking into the very land that surrounded it. 

Jason remained perfectly motionless as he strained his hearing to reach out beyond the walls and windows. He heard the door of the BMW faintly thud, which was his signal to catapult out of the bed and onto the landing in one swift movement, his burst of energy swept up Kato with it as the tom excitedly followed his master in the hope of some potential fun. Jason flew into the spare room at the front of the house and positioned himself behind the windows heavily draped old frilly curtains, peering stealthily round to avoid detection. Outside was inescapable blackness but Jason just managed to pick out the fuzzy glow of the BMW's break lights flicker on as his fathers car waited to pull out of the front drive. He turned back and leant on the wall in relief. After a momentary pause he burst back into life again, returning to his bedroom where he turned his attention immediately to the red glowing digits of his alarm clock. The time was 5.22am. Realising the time and how tired he was, Jason rubbed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose in an effort to shake off the yearning for bed again. He scruffed Kato under the chin as the cat jumped onto his bed to join his master. 'He's leaving earlier and earlier and getting back later and later, and that's on the days without flights. What the hell is he doing up there?' 

Jason continued to talk to the cat, speaking to him as any conversation would be engaged with two people; the fact that one of them was a feline was seemingly irrelevant to the young teenager. In return, Kato eyed his master with an expressionless amber stare, half closed almost in boredom, answering only with his deep purr that probably meant only the fuss received and playtime was important to him and not engaging family issues. 'Well I don't really care how long he wants to work today if that's where he's gone. Its all the more time for us to have a damn good rummage, eh boy?' Jason ruffled the cat's neck briskly and Kato reacted instantly with a playful show of teeth as the teenager got up and began to put his days plan into action. 

He showered and dressed with speed that stamped haste on his future actions. With hunger becoming a real issue to his daily ability to function, the suspicious teenager made the decision to eat. He would be done within a few hours and he could sleep heartily once he had completed his mission if that was the case. Jason ate a brief moving breakfast that accompanied the day's trend, a mug of tea and a mountain of toast that was devoured on his journey back upstairs and into the realms of his father's kingdom. He had not spent time in his father's bedroom for what seemed like many years since his inquisitive early double figured years. Snooping around once again, though at an age when Jason knew that he should know better when it came down to a person's privacy made him feel very uncomfortable. Regardless of that fact, he thought he had a good reason for doing so, Jason felt that he had no other choice. It was more of a case that he might come across things that would make him look differently at his father; things about his personal life that were always meant to remain personal. He knew deep down that there was a tension building between them over the recent events, yet he could not understand why his father was acting differently towards him. If anybody should be hostile out of the two, surely it was himself? All he really knew was that he needed clarity. The man that was his father, a man who he respected and looked up to for so many reasons had began to place question marks after his own name that made Jason uneasy. This was a necessary action to remove any further doubts.