Hello everyone :) This is my new story, and you may find a lot of parallels between it and my fanfic for PJO, but this one is with Norse mythology :) Please enjoy, and comment and vote!!
The bright lights from the ambulance outside blinded me from the window, sirens howling through the muffling glass. I tried not to look outside, though I already knew they were carrying Josh in a stretcher, ready to drive him off to the AberdeenHospital.
I sighed, inhaling the smell of smoke and chemicals. A floor down, they were still extinguishing the fires from the chemistry lab, broken glass and Bunsen burners littering the place. My right hand twitched, and I glanced down at it, red knuckles clotted with blood that wasn’t mine.
I felt my stomach twist in disgust, and I grabbed my shirt, wiping my hands on it while I looked away. The metallic taste of the stuff still lingered in my mouth, from when Josh had punched me, back in period 2.
I’d just been minding my own business, as I’d been doing all semester, but the jock had managed to throw yet another insult at me while Ms. Morton had been busy with some LST student. I swear, from the moment I’d walked in to St. Frederick High, he’d picked me out to be his new victim. All semester I’d had to endure the jeering taunts, random shoving into lockers, and cafeteria food thrown at me, typical jock vs. the new nerd. It didn’t help that I had zero friends, courtesy of Josh’s threats to the student body, or that I was a nerd, complete with math skills and braces.
But the punch had been the last straw. I’d been fixing my Bunsen burner, ignoring him as usual, when his fist had appeared from nowhere. I’d taken the hit hard, stumbling back into the counter behind me, disrupting the students working there.
“What’s the matter? Braces can’t take one hit?” Josh’s nasally voice sneered, brainless thugs beside him laughing automatically. That was when I’d felt the first flame of anger, the one that had gotten me kicked out of four schools prior to this one. I’d tried to smother it, put it out, but it only got worse when Josh continued, imitating me, “Augh!! Nurthe, nurthe help!! My brathez broke, now I’m gonna look like even more of a pussy!!!” His idiot followers laughed at the stupid lisp Josh thought I had.
My fists ached to smash into his egotistical face, and I twitched, trying to control myself. I didn’t need another guilty phone call to my mom, who’d sigh and start searching for another school that would accept me and my anger issues.
Then Josh had shoved me, so I’d fallen flat on my ass, tailbone throbbing. He let his beefy shadow cover me, while he spat at me, “Losers like you pop up when there isn’t a man in the house, ‘cause you’re too much of a fucking faggot to be one.”
Ms. Morton’s heels clicked as she walked over, sharply scolding Josh. He backed away slowly, giving me a grin from my position on the floor, beneath him. I didn’t wait for the teacher to walk away, or even for Josh to turn before I sprang up, slamming my fist into that narcissistic grin. He’d stumbled, but I hadn’t stopped, hitting him again, feeling all my anger at him from the semester thudding in my veins. I had no idea how he’d found out about my father, but he’d chosen the wrong subject to tease me about. His body was the punch bag I’d been needing for the past five years, and I didn’t stop even when he’d smacked into a flaming Bunsen burner, setting the nearby open binder on fire, the teacher screaming at us to stop –
“Jenson Amundsen. Please enter.”
I blinked, feeling my mouth ache. The flesh had been cut into by my braces, during Josh’s punch, and I tasted more blood while I looked up. Principal McHiggen, graying moustache covering his mouth while his blue eyes stared down at me, gestured to the open door of his office. I lurched up and out of my chair, wishing I could’ve gone to the bathroom to clean the blood off me before having to meet with the principal.
The room smelt like hand sanitizer and coffee, the window behind his desk giving me a nice open view of what I’d been avoiding looking at for the last half hour. The ambulance drove off, sirens getting fainter, and the crowd of students outside still buzzing with excitement.
Principal McHiggen sat in his giant dark blue chair, staring at me while I took the hard wooden one to his left. He continued to stare balefully at me, igniting my nerves. Somehow, I just knew that he was going to –
“It should come as no surprise to you, Jenson, that you’re expelled from St. Frederick’s.”
My stomach clenched painfully, while I nodded, limiting my gaze to anywhere but his hard eyes. I was inspecting the china dog figurine on his desk, when he spoke again, “From your records, I understand that this is the fifth school in the past five years that you’ve attempted to settle into. Perhaps, in the following year, you should…take a break.”
Reluctantly, I raised my head to meet his stone eyes, feeling their coldness seep into me. I didn’t say anything, but he got the message that I didn’t understand what he was suggesting.
He twitched his mouth, his moustache moving up and down quickly. I stared at it while he rephrased, “That is, perhaps you should seek some…professional help before you rejoin the student population elsewhere.”
Great. Now my ex-principal was telling me to see a shrink. I kept my sarcasm to myself, staring down at the flecks of dried blood still on my knuckles.
I heard Principal McHiggen harrumph, and finish, “I’ve taken the liberty of informing your mother of this unfortunate incident. She will be arriving tomorrow morning. I expect you to be fully packed and departed by no later than 12 pm.”
I nodded again, recognizing the dismissal speech. I’d heard it four times before. Getting up, I walked heavily over to the door, thoughts full of the walk of shame I still had to encounter before I could reach my dorm. It involved going through the entire school, students whispering at me, and then walking outside past the crowd to the dorm building, and them through that to my room at the very top…
“Jenson.” I paused, half-turning to see Principal McHiggen’s bushy moustache for the last time. His blue eyes had softened a little, while he gave me a piece of advice, “For the next school you go to: Don’t let them get to you.”
I mumbled a ‘thank you’, moving sluggishly out of the office and down the stairs. Here started the walk of shame, complete with gawking students and school officials.
By the time I made it to my dorm, I was covered with snow, and tried to shake some of it off my jacket and into the hall before I stepped into my room. I flicked on the light, cheeks still burning from the cold and my classmates’ stares. Taking off my jacket, I looked up so I could hang it in my tiny closet, but froze.
My dorm looked like a bomb wreck. Clothes had been thrown all over the place (well, more than usual), my pillows had been sliced and feathers dumped everywhere, and there was a nice slogan on the wall above my bed.
I stayed in the doorway, dripping melted snow onto the carpet, staring at the disaster my room had been made into while I’d been at the principal’s office. My cheeks felt on fire as I heard several people making their way up the stairs, close to where my trashed room and I were. I reached behind me, and shut the door quietly, making sure to lock it this time. The school administrators usually didn’t let us lock the doors, but this was for more my safety than the student body’s. I dropped my jacket on the floor, not caring that it was still soaking wet. Then I got to work, glancing at the clock that read 4:33 pm.
When I was done cleaning, the clock was blinking 8:56 pm. My room looked relatively normal, feathers all picked up and shoved into green garbage bags. Most of my clothes were in there too, some weird and gross liquid poured over them. It smelled strongly like gasoline and piss, which I was guessing wouldn’t get washed out. The wall I’d been scrubbing at for the past hour, iPod plugged into my ears faithfully so I wouldn’t hear my partying dorm neighbours, still had a shadow of the words painted in the same shit my clothes had been doused in. It made me pissed off, having to clean up the words fucking bastard as punishment for hurting just one of the kids that had been making my life hell. No doubt, as retribution, it had been his friends that had trashed my room, but even if I went to Principal McHiggens he’d just quietly turn his back on the situation. He didn’t have to care about me, because I wasn’t a student anymore, and yet I still had to clean up my room since it was school property.
I threw the sponge into the bucket of soapy water, hearing the splash as it sent a spray of water onto the carpet. The wall was as clean as it was ever going to be, so I slumped down in bed, making sure to turn up my iPod when a banging started on my wall from the room next door. My bags were packed with the little possessions I had left, waiting at the doorway for me in the morning. They cast long shadows in the room, from the rising moon outside my window. It showed the empty field between the school and the dormitory, riddled with molehills and covered with a thin layer of snow. Beyond the school, to the right, was the dark forest where I’d spent the most amount of my time. It was probably the only thing I was going to miss about Washington.
More hollering came from the room next door. I ignored it, closing my eyes, and turned up my iPod till it was at an ear-splitting volume. My pulse was slower than the beat, while I let my thoughts go, deaf to the world outside my room…
…Waves crashed against something hard, rocking whatever I was in. I got the feeling that it was dark, musty, cold, and that they were others with me. Some kid was yelling at us to raise our spears, while something emerged from the black water around us. I couldn’t see it clearly, but it had a snake-like shape, water streaming off of it. But when it opened its mouth, instead of a hiss it had a wolf’s howl, turning my blood to ice. I HATED wolves, hated them, and there was a pack of them coming across the water for me. They were sprinting, tails stream-lined behind them for speed, lips lifted to show pink gums and sharp canines. Behind them, some figure exhaled, and suddenly the water evaporated, an actual ball of fire turning it to steam. Someone laughed, a deep sound that vibrated my eardrums, and then the boat was being pushed by the wolfs, the smell of their wet fur clogging my nostrils, pushing and pushing until the boat tipped to the side –
“AAAHAHAAAAAAAAAH!!!” something screamed in my ears, making me shout and spring up. Another thing smacked my lightly in the face, and my fingers raced for it, grabbing the thin cord…
…of my earphone. I blinked, seeing my room dimly lit, and turned slowly to my left. My iPod had a dark screen, though it was still playing music, as it had been doing all night. “We come from the land of the ice and snow, where the midnight sun and the hot springs blow,” I recognized the lyrics from Led Zeppelin, resisting the weird urge to laugh at my freak out.
Yanking out my other earphone, and turning off my iPod, I stored it in my hoodie pocket, before stretching. My body felt stiff and cold, reminding me of the weird dream I’d had. I paused, trying to remember it, but the details slipped away from me quickly. All I could recall was something about spears, and a wolf pack.
I shivered, abruptly throwing the dream to the back of my head, and stood up. The bucket of water was still on the floor, so I picked it up. The metal felt freezing against my hand, and I turned to stare at the clock reading 5:43 am. It was a Saturday, so most of the kids didn’t get up till around 10:30. I was free to roam the grounds a bit, undisturbed, before my mom got here.
My stomach clenched at the thought of meeting my mom, and the tense car ride back to California. I switched my thoughts again, picking up my bags and dropping the bucket off at the cleaning room downstairs. I left my bags at the front of the school, but kept my iPod with me, in case my things were raided again. The air outside felt like it was biting my face, but the cold woke me up more. The wind was harsh, and it sounded creepy in the dead of early morning, so I plugged my earphones back in and listened to more Led Zeppelin, aimlessly walking around the school grounds. It was actually kind of peaceful, without all the people around, though it made me feel lonely and rejected.
I snorted, thinking, That’s not a new feeling. The wind clawed at my clothes while I ventured timidly into the woods, sitting down in the sudden darkness the canopy created. In here, I couldn’t even see the sunrise, already half-way done. The log beneath me was slick with dew and moss, random fungi growing on the decaying trunk. I stayed still, keeping my eyes trained on the nearby blackness leading to the deeper part of the forest. It wasn’t for bears, as the school warned us about, but for another creature I’d grown used to seeing during the semester.
The first sight of them had made me fall over, off the log and into a mud puddle behind it. I’d thought I was going crazy, but when I’d returned the next day, and the one after that, I’d still seen them. I knew they could see me too, their mossy eyes staring at me as they passed. I’d never actually tried to approach them, because I knew they were shy, kind of like me.
Sitting here, the coldness of the morning making me shiver, I caught sight of one walking towards me. I immediately looked down, so it wouldn’t get scared and run off, adrenaline making my pulse louder. Its quiet footsteps got closer, until I felt it right beside me. I glanced up casually, gluing my mouth shut at the sight of its bark-skinned face so close to mine.
It looked like a girl, with silver birch skin (it looked like the actual bark of the tree made up her skin), brown moss irises, and leaves mixed with branches for hair. She kept her mossy eyes on me, while I blinked at her and tried not to gape.
Several moments passed, while I breathed cautiously and tried not to scare her off. The wind blew, making her hair…or, uh, branches, rattle. She was silent, and I thought she couldn’t speak, until the wind stopped blowing and I heard her voice, like birds chirping, “Be careful, Jenson Amundsen. We Ljósálfar cannot protect you when you leave the school grounds. There is a malevolent being who strays near where you are headed. Be warned.”
Then she shut her mouth, turning and almost smacking me in the face with her branch-hair, and walked off silently into the dark of the woods. I realized my mouth was hanging open, and shut it quickly, still staring after her. I wondered if maybe the smell of the liquid soaking my clothes was making me high, since I definitely could not have had a….what did she call herself? A Ljsalfer or something? Whatever she was, she wasn’t human.
I continued to stare into the darkness after her, hearing her bird chirps in my head still. What was this ‘malevolent being’? A fragment of my dream caught up with me, the figure of a snake-like creature. Was the forest-thing warning me about snakes?
I shook my head, feeling the urge to smack it against a tree. I was clearly hallucinating, if I thought one of the weird creatures I’d been seeing all semester had actually spoken to me. Standing up, I walked out of the forest, the frost crunching beneath my sneakers. The sun had fully risen, and I checked the time on my iPod, reading 7:55 am. My mom was going to arrive sometime within the next half an hour, as she always had for the last four years. I sighed, walking back on the field between the school and dormitory, not daring to look back at the forest.
I sat down on the cracked sidewalk outlining the school, kicking pebbles from around my feet. I changed the band to Breaking Benjamin, trying to ignore the cold of winter in my thin hoodie.
I’d been sitting there for three songs, when I’d felt something moving beneath me. Right where I was sitting, there was a sort of vibration, which I pointedly ignored, until I felt an actual push from beneath me. Underneath the sidewalk.
Something muttered a curse word, and then a muffled voice shouted at me from beneath the sidewalk, “Hey bud! Get yeur ass off me roof! I got work ta head ta!!”
Without thinking, or just out of curiosity in my obviously crazy state, I stood up from the sidewalk. I looked down, and saw the sidewalk being pushed up, like a manhole cover. The slab of concrete finally got heaved up and onto the grass, revealing an earthen hole leading into the dirt. A scraggly, familiar small shape scrabbled up and out of the hole, rolling onto its feet and wiping dirt off its chef hat and jacket. The school chef turned to me, spitting in the grass near my feet, and shaking his small stubby finger at me, “You shud know better than ta sit on a dwarf’s house!! No breakfast for you!!”
He waddled off in the direction of the school, after shoving the slab of sidewalk back over his hole, fixing his too-large hat. I stared after him, sure I was going insane. I’d always just thought that Chef Liten was a midget, but since when did midgets live in holes under the sidewalk?
I stayed in that position, watching Chef Liten open the school door with some difficulty, and shut it behind him. Then I sat, firmly staring only at the ground in front of me, while song after song played. I didn’t want to look up and see some other hallucination of my brain. Maybe Principal McHiggen was right; I needed to see a shrink.
8:30 came, with the crunch of tires on gravel. I looked up, seeing my mom’s familiar beat-up navy Second-Series Honda Accord rolling to a stop in front of the school entrance. I stood up quickly, jogging back into the school and grabbing my bags. No one seemed to be up yet, thankfully, and my bags were untouched. I hefted them out to the old car, my mom waiting by the trunk.
Her light blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail, so her disappointed face could stare at me while I loaded the bags into the car. She shut it, going around to the other side of the car while I settled into the passenger seat. The car shook as she got in, slamming the door beside her and starting up the engine. It growled, loud as usual, and she pulled out of the school parking lot without a word or look at me. I was glad too, because staring at her aging pale face made me feel like I’d failed her again.
I stared out the passenger window, watching the school slip past. Other stores soon took its place, as mom drove us out of Aberdeen. We passed the hospital, and I shrunk away from its glaring windows, one room inside somewhere holding Josh.
It was silent in the car except for the softer growl of the engine, and the sound of the tires driving on the cold road. I glanced quickly at my mom, knuckles white on the wheel, and eyes staring straight forward. I slouched back in my seat, and her clipped voice broke the tense atmosphere, “Your bags seem a lot emptier than what you arrived with.”
I shut my eyes, rubbing them while I answered, “They really like their revenge there.”
A couple more moments passed, and then my mom sighed, signaling the speech. She started, “Hon, this can’t go on. This the fifth, what if I can’t get you into another? Do you want to live at home all your life, until I kick you out into the street and you become just another bum?”
I gritted my teeth, interrupting the usual lecture I got, “Mom. I know. I’m trying; I almost stayed for a full semester this time-“
“But you didn’t.”
I stayed silent, too mad to respond. I was trying, I’d been trying for years, but it was like the world just wouldn’t accept me. To my mom, it wasn’t enough that I was a problem to the world, I was her problem that she couldn’t accept either.
She sighed again, speaking quieter, “What did this kid do, to set you off?”
Breathing deeply, I spoke through clenched teeth, “He talked about dad.”
The car was silent for a while after that, my mom’s shoulders tight. I felt instantly bad for bringing up my dad, who’d left her before I was born, but it was the truth. I couldn’t help hating the bastard that had gotten my mom pregnant, then got cold feet and abandoned her. She said it wasn’t like that, that he’d been called away, but I knew that was just bullshit to try and make me feel better. She knew as well as me that it didn’t erase the hole that he should’ve filled in our lives.
Mom spoke, clearing her throat first, “Principal McHiggen suggested that you start seeing a psychiatrist.”
I snorted, keeping my sarcastic response to myself. It would only make my mom angrier at me if I’d said it aloud anyways.
The stores outside had changed to trees, while my mom talked again, tentatively, “I agree.”
I turned in my seat, outraged. “You think I should see a shrink?! Because you think I’m a messed-up loser?!”
Her light ice-blue eyes, the only thing I’d inherited from her, flicked to me sharply. I noticed the bags beneath her eyes, and the increase in wrinkles in her face from when I’d last seen her. She snapped at me, still glaring at me, “I never said any of the sort, Jenson. I agree, that you should start cleaning up your act and quit acting like the world’s out to get you.”
I turned back away from her, gritting my teeth and trying not to slam my fist against the window. Mom paused before speaking again, setting her hand gently on my tensed arm, “Jenson. Please. Just listen to me.”
I grudgingly turned back around, guilt thumping in my chest at the sad look in her crystal eyes. They were focused on me, as she swallowed hastily. “Your father…” at the mention of the bastard, I turned away, but her hand squeezed my arm, “No, Jenson, listen.”
I met her eyes again, strangely desperate. Her voice was tight as she explained, “Your father said that you might not like living…living with other kids.”
I resisted turning away again, recognizing one of my mom’s weird phases. She’d start acting doggedly, like she was trying to hide something, which usually involved my dad.
“He mentioned another place, that you might like better. Sort of like a private school, but for – different people…”
“What, did he expect me to have anger problems?” I snarled at her, and then froze. God, I sounded like Josh.
Mom’s eyes got hard, and she responded quietly, “No. Just for different people. It’s not a bad place, Jenson, but it would be difficult for you. Very hard. I still don’t know if you’re ready, but if you want, we can have you try it out.”
I let my eyes roam, past her and to the window behind her. “And when did dad say this? Right before he abandoned you?”
I knew her eyes would be harder than ice, and her voice was colder than it when she snapped back, “Yes, before he left. And he didn’t abandon us, Jenson; you need to get this stupid idea out of your head that he was some bastard. He was a good man, it’s just, we didn’t work out…”
Mom’s voice trembled at the end, and I wished I hadn’t talked at all. I hated when my mom got sad, but hated it most of all when she got sad because of him.
I inhaled, and then tried to make peace with my mom. I looked at her face, but I couldn’t handle her wet eyes, so I went back to staring out the window behind her, showing empty streets.
“What’s the name of this place, mom? The one…he, wanted me to go to?” I tried to speak calmly, though it was hard to talk about him without feeling like I needed to kill someone.
My mom cleared her throat again, sniffing a little, while I stared out her window. Another car was driving up beside us, though its driver must’ve been wacked since it was moving funny. Then I realized it wasn’t a car at all, but animals, moving towards us. Some sense of panic got control of me, and I stared unbelievingly through the window at the pack of wolves racing for us.
But wolves don’t do that, the small sane part of my brain whispered, Wolves don’t go after moving cars on a highway, in midday.
I glanced past them, still unsure if this was really happening, and caught sight of a large, humanoid figure. For some reason it reminded me of my dream, and then a blast of heat warmed my face.
Mom, eyes still on me, not noticing the insanely fast and furry bodies racing onto the road in front of us, was saying, “It’s called Camp-“
“Mom move!!!!” I yelled at her, instincts taking over the stunned part of my mind. She snapped her head forward, and saw the wolves surrounding our left and front. I heard her floor the accelerator, but the engine only growled more. The heat in the car was inching up in degrees, while I sweated and stared unhelpfully at the fanged terrors building up outside.
I was terrified of wolves, from the way they moved, to the way they communicated, to the pure animalistic glean in their inhuman eyes. They were ruthless killers, moving in huge groups, predators of everyone and everything.
The engine growled more, and then I realized that it wasn’t the engine growling at all but the killers outside. Sheer terror made me sweat more than the growing heat, while smoke started from the engine.
“DAMN IT!! The engine’s overheating, why is the engine overheating-?” my mom was shouting, smacking buttons and flooring the accelerator, but the car refused to move. I glanced at the mass of furry bodies outside the car, then held in a scream as the car was moved.
My Mom froze and went as silent as me for a moment, and then the car moved again, from the left side. I stared at the wolves snarling and spraying saliva across the windows as they barked, growling, backing up to slam themselves into the door. The car creaked, tires screeching as the car was moved to the side. I whipped my head to the side, seeing a steep incline beneath us, full of dark trees glittering with a thin covering of snow. The car lurched, rocking back and forth sharply as the force pushed us over the side of the road.
My pulse was out of control, and I turned to my mom, seeing the look of terror on her face. She glanced at me, and then muttered something, turning the wheels at the same time the wolves thrust against us. The car swiveled, smacking some of the animals and sending them flying. I was now on the pummeling side, my mom facing the drop. I realized what she had tried to do, and shouted at her, “Mom, get out, open the door and get out of the way-“
The wolves slammed so hard into the car, I felt it tilting, and knew it was too late. The vehicle groaned, and then creaked as it was lifted up onto its side by the animals. My seatbelt was the only thing keeping me from falling to my left, while all the blood rushed to the left side of my face and my hair swung sideways. I felt another wave starting, and had a clear remembrance of my dream, the pushing wolves and the figure behind them, before the wolves smacked into the underside of the car, pushing us over.
I heard my mom screaming, as glass broke around us, stinging my face and neck. I spat it out of my mouth, hollering at my mom if she was okay, but I couldn’t tell where she was because up had suddenly become down, and then I realized we were rolling, hitting something so hard my bones shook with the force, and we were spinning now as well as rolling down the steep incline. I didn’t open my eyes, in case glass got into them, but swung my arms around, feeling my mom’s hair beside me, the steering wheel, and then I felt my mom’s shoulder, and the metal above me hit something hard, a blinding pain throbbing from my head, something wet and warm gushing down my face-
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