Lackluster

Chapter 1

There are times in a person's life where they know that things are about to change, irrevocably, undeniably. When each path is laid out before you as threads on a tapestry, begging for you to follow them through to your destiny.

There are times where you can see the sudden crash of waves across the paths in the sand, wiping away everything that you had left behind. Washing clean the very impression of every step that you had taken before. Leaving no trace that you had ever stepped down this path.

And then there are the times when life leaves you blinded. Walking forward with hands held aloft. Asking you to trust your own instincts even as you are robbed of your senses. Given only the vague sense of foreboding claustrophobia as the darkness weighs heavier with every passing breath.

Whether this was any of these, I would never be able to tell. And even if I could tell, it's doubtful that it would have changed anything.

After all, I was nothing special. There were no heroes in my ancestry, no legacies to fulfill. Except for maybe that one guy whose name I can't pronounce, we think he might have been some kind of rich dude, but that was a pretty distant relation and our family can't prove it anyways. Which was really a let down to my parents, let me tell you. They were hoping for some kind of payout or knighting ceremony or something, who knows.

But to get back on topic, I was nothing special. I wasn't handsome, or beautiful, or strong, or courageous. No unique prophecy claiming that I was the chosen one. I'm not the sort of person that these sorts of stories are usually written about. Honestly, I was just trying to live my life and avoid falling behind on my bills. Which was tough when you consider that I just worked at the local convenience store, Barney's, named for the man who owned it, Joseph Barnabas. Minimum wage, no job security, hardly any benefits. And I haven't had a single paid day's vacation in my life.

All twenty four years of it.

I was an average student in high school, I played a year of soccer at that level, but I'm pretty sure it was just because they didn't have enough people try out anyways. I didn't bother the next year. I managed a few honors classes, so maybe there was potential there, but never really felt like I needed to put in the effort. So for the most part, I just coasted, hung out with my relatively small group of friends. Wasting away time until I could get out and find a way out of my small hometown.

When the teachers tell you that something is important, please listen to them. It's a bitch to try getting into anything but a junior college if you don't have something special about you.

So that's what I did. Junior college. Ended up dropping out of that shortly after moving out of my parent's place, having tried to go to some fancy big city, where the living wages were high enough to choke the life out of anyone who didn't make more than six figures in a year. It didn't take me long before I was moving back, head hung low.

You know how you hear all those success stories of people who became billionaires without graduating college, crafting grand companies from their garages, I call bullshit on that. The majority of us just end up trying to get by. Living paycheck to paycheck.

You could say that life was pretty lackluster. But it was life. I wasn't drowning in debt, so I counted that as a win. Especially when I could occasionally splurge on something nicer for myself.

I honestly think that's where things started to go wrong.

Working the store meant that I had lulls between the main rushes, they never really lasted very long, but a good enough time that I could occasionally waste my time scrolling through deals on my phone, flipping between three different apps. There were times where I got really good deals on higher end items that I could have never afforded otherwise. I actually got this really cool computer for gaming that way, and had a blast with it whenever I got a chance to go home and decompress.