The Pollen-Heart Fantasy Project : The Original Twenty Chapters

Chapter I: Angel Lopez

Act I
02/27/2025

Angel was walking home with his friend Miguel on that Monday afternoon. Angels back started to perspire under the dark sweatshirt from the scorching California sun. The back of his neck had gotten irritated after showering in hot scalding water the night before. He scratched it ferociously.

Miguel looked over at him and said
" Hey weird question, but you still a virgin?" The random question made Angel feel even more uncomfortable booth physically and mentally. He responded, " Yeah, well I wanna lose mine when I'm like in college or something." He was a senior, and was still destined to have his first kiss yet.

Miguel continued, " So your gonna find the first girl you find then check it off the virginity list." Angel mocked him by saying " What about you huh, where are the chick's you've been talking about?" The clap-back gave Miguel a speechless look. He gave a chuckle under his breath as he said " You know I been seeing some pretty-little-something ." Angel responded "  Wait isn't she like the third one this week." Miguel said " You know how it is...I like to share my love" Angel said "Well it isn't love if you go against their back and call yourself a player to everyone." 

It went silent between them for a few steps as they got closer to the intersection. 

Angel continued " Have you bought your cap and gown yet?" Miguel gazed off into the other side of the road and said, " Yeah I'm still waiting for it to arrive or to ship or whatever. I just hope it didn't come in and some random dude stole it from my front porch." Angel said "Yeah that would suck. You know you can buy them from the front office right, and you just pick them up." 

They reached the intersection between Park and Franco street. Angel waited to continue down Park while Miguel waited to go down Franco. The red hand with five appendages turned into a glaring white figure granting access for Miguel to walk. Angel noticed a girl waiting at the other side of the street by the light post; her face was unrecognizable. 

They gave each other the hand shake of solitude and ended it with a fist bump. Miguel turned and said " See ya next week." Angel gave a slight smile and said "See ya" mouthing it so he didn't have to say it out loud since Miguel was already running to the other side. Angel waited for his turn when, in a regrettable decision, he looked down the street to see Miguel walking away with the girl with short brunette hair holding hands. This was definitely one of the girls he mentioned as the "pretty little something."

He felt a small form of abandonment as they folded hands in unison and walked away like angels flying into heaven with no earthly sin. This feeling wasn't surprising, even if he's had a crush on Miguel ever since they met last month.

Yet Angel really didn't know how to feel. He felt lost.
He's had fantasies about other guys since he was in 6th grade. Specifically, when a peer sitting next showed off his small boner pushing against his shorts, but what was a innocent tease gave into an amplified caged desire for men. In terms of girl's, He's never seen a woman's body as a sexual desire. In most cases it reminded him of his passed mother. A naked body to him was just as a natural as a tree trunk or a lake. In terms of men, they were like fully bloomed golden poppies in the ripe month of April, and he was the honey bee.

Angel settled home. His father, Samuel, was not around at this time as he occasionally came home late at around 8 or 7 in the afternoon. He passed through the front door to see his aunt Camilla sweeping the kitchen floor with a plastic green broom. She looked up and gave him a smile. " Ya regresé Tia." She continued sweeping and nothing else. This action wasn't uncommon since she was mute ever since the day her father cut off tongue when she was a child for unknown reasons, but Angel was glad he died in prison back in Mexico. He was clearly a drunken psycho path. She was still a bad-ass despite her shortcomings.

He laid his stuff on his bed and closed the door behind him. He put his headset on and played some music. He began to remember the girl that was with Miguel. He somehow couldn't get them out of his head no matter how hard he tried. He pressed his mind onto other things such as tomorrow. Anyways who cared...

Tomorrow was his mothers forty second birthday and the 6th anniversary since her passing. He began to play the song, "Linger." He tapped into his memory and began to reminisce the car rides to his grandparent's house when he was a small child. The overcast clouds and cool fall breeze as he played with his younger aunts and cousins in warm comfy sweaters outside. His grandparent's used to lived close to the ocean almost a mile away, so they would ride their bikes down to the shore to collect shells and swim in the cool pacific ocean. Sometimes they would head down to the beach during summer night's, and to their surprise the water would be warm and mild instead of harsh and cold like in the mornings. 

Nowadays, he rarely went to see his mothers side of the family. And for his grandparent's, they had moved to Colorado a few years ago. But in two day's he would spend a day with his grandmother and his cousin at the cemetery. He closed his eyes as the next song began to play. The sun found his eye's through the window as he began to doze off.

He woke up at around 7 pm. The head phones made his right ear red with pain. He got up and headed straight for the bathroom. He did his business and continued to the kitchen. His house was quite. The only audible sounds came from the ventilation system. He looked through the crack at his aunts door and saw her sitting on the couch watching TV. He decided to go to the backyard for some juice in the refrigerator. The yard was prominently more spacious than the house. 

He gazed over at the lower west sky as the sun made a tropical cake of colors behind the hills. The stars dazzled to the east of him as the moons brilliance took over the day in increments. He knew skies like these didn't last and were worth the view. He seated himself on a plank of wood  under the large tarp. The orange, yellow and blue colors slowly died on the high Cirrostratus clouds. A panoramic vista that went easy on the eyes. Time slowed in the essence. A plane flew through the sunset toward the incoming night. It was close enough that Angel imagined latching on and flying away into a distant land.

He turned on his phone and was welcomed to a notification from the reminder app saying that he needed to wash his dad's truck before he was home. His dad wasn't home so he put the phone back into his pocket and decided to wake up early tomorrow and do the deed. 

Winter usually brought a gallon's worth of rain so he usually got away with it, but it was almost spring and with it was it's heat. He got up from the plank of wood and walked over to  the tree that stood in the perimeter of the yard. He examined the branches to check if their were any signs of foliage. Last time he checked the first tree to the right had little green buds on its bare winter branches, but today he noticed that some of the buds had not grown in any exponential way. It was too dark to completely analyze them. He was always fond of the way the leafs feel in synchronization from left to right in the fall and vice versa in the spring.

His neighborhood went quit and calm when the sun went down, yet he didn't have anyone around to go to he needed company. But that was expected from one with little to no friends. He looked over the east to see the factory that was being built three blocks away. There was this kind of unfamiliar awe that came from it. It was also where his dad was working for the past three months. He could hear the echoing sound's of hammer's and chainsaws, and it's grey concrete pillars with steam billowing into the sky like two cigarettes.

The sun temporarily ceased to exist as the temperature began to die down. He looked at the dark clouds in the sky and saw the small star's between them. He began to think about Miguel and the girl again. She didn't look familiar at all, she was most likely from another school. 

He burrowed his head on his shoulders as he began to feel the burden of loneliness. The sound of a bell persisted near where the tarp was.

He narrowed his eyes as he walked toward the tarp. Unnoticed by Angel was a shadow of an animal with a long furry tail, looking kind of fat around the sides. He stood still as he examined if it was anything to worry about. In a wide circle he kept his distance from what could really be nothing. The darkness didn't make it easy for him to see. 

The trashcans were there along with his dads toolbox. He noticed that one of them, specifically the black one, was shaking. He figured that it was just a feral cat. He didn't want to bother it so he left it alone and headed back inside the warmth of his house. Soon after he departed a bright golden hue radiated from within the trashcan.