The Dream Stalker

1)"Welcome to Edmond"

The day I was shipped out west to live in Montana was the way I decided my life had officially become just one long sequence of terrible events.

I walked out of the airport with a deep sigh, dragging along my duffle bag that contained what the few things I was able to fit inside. Mt grandparents didn't want to pay for carryon baggage, so I had to leave behind most of my possessions with the hopes that my grandparents would come through on their promise to ship me the rest of my things. If someone had told me just two weeks ago that I would be flying across the country, with nothing more than a measly bag, to move to a small town in rural Montana, I'd have laughed in their face.

Honestly, I hadn't even known what the capital of Montana was two weeks ago when my grandparents first told me where I would be living. Billings was, in fact, not the capital of Montana, but it looked the part. I had been expecting Montana to be a desolate wasteland with scraggy trees and low bushes with, maybe, even a tumbleweed blowing in the distance. That wasn't the case. Billings was just like any other large city with plenty of tall buildings and busy streets. It left me hoping that Edmond, the small town that my aunt and uncle lived in, would be similar. But I knew better to get my hopes up.

Standing outside the airport, I came to realization that it wasn't as cold as I had originally been led to believe. Reading Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park had left me under the strong impression that it started snowing at the start of August in Montana, but being here in September, the weather was roughly around sixty degrees. It was yet another random fact about this state I had been proven wrong about.

I craned my neck to look down the long line of cars packed neatly in the parking spaces as I tried to spot my uncle. He was the one who was supposed to be picking me up. Even though I knew my Uncle Kasey wouldn't be holding a large sign that read 'Aaron Cooke' like people do in television shows and movies, it would have been a pretty cool way to welcome me.

Eventually, I spotted a man who resembled my Uncle Kasey propped up against a rugged white pickup truck. I couldn't remember ever actually meeting my uncle before, I was able to recognize the man from a photograph my grandparents showed me.

My uncle was a tall man with shortly cropped brown hair with grey at the temples. He was dressed in a simple, plain grey t-shirt and jeans. He had a hard-face that looked like it has seen too much of life, and a hawk-like nose was prominent on his face.

I made my way over to him, not quite sure what to say. Random words bubbled to mind, I had to be careful on how I made my first impression. I was going to be living with this guy for at least the next two years after all.

Upon reaching him, I still hadn't decided on what to say. Hopeful the man would come up with his own form of greeting to spare me the awkwardness, I kind of just stood in front of him. The man studied my face intently, yet he didn't make any signs of recognition. His piercing grey eyes give me a once-over before they turned somewhere else. Maybe he was having trouble recognizing me as well?

"Uncle Kasey?" I asked tentatively.

"What's it to you?" The man responded sharply as if I was some big-time cop interrogating a suspect. Part of me was confused by this response. How many people did he really expect to walk up and call him Uncle Kasey?

My eyes must have expressed my confusion as the man appeared to have a lightbulb flicker on inside his head. "Oh, wait...you're Aaron, aren't you? I didn't recognize you." The man preceded to get into his truck without further comment.

I looked around completely baffled. Not sure of any other course of action I could take, I got into the passenger side of the car, hopeful that I was not about to be kidnapped by some weird man, who only happened to look like my uncle. Uncle Kasey didn't even bother checking to see if I was buckled in before he started the truck and pulled away.