Allwebco Web Templates · Build your own toolbar · Site Building Articles · Audio, Fonts, Clipart
powered by
bravenet.com
|
|
"What's wrong with him?" Anika asked with a grimaced look across the dormitory cafeteria.
"He's been like that for days," Tomma responded, spitting due to a mouth full of potatoes.
That made Earlen laugh, but Tomma looked at her with such a serious look that she realized it wasn't so funny. "Does he go to any of his classes?" she asked quickly.
"He hasn't been to our math class all week," Tomma said.
"Strange," Anika said. "And he wears those muonic sunglasses all the time, too."
"And that hat," added Tomma.
"Why? It's winter!" Earlen said, looking like she was trying very hard not to laugh again.
"Don't know."
Anika, Earlen, and Tomma sat around towards the middle of the sparsely attended cafeteria, waiting for Tomma to finish the last of her potatoes while watching a lonely figure in dark sunglasses take his tray to a far corner table and sit alone.
"Do you think we should ask him if something's wrong?" Tomma asked, shoving an overly large spoonful into her mouth to clean the plate.
"No way that I'm going near him," Anika commented.
Earlen suddenly looked more sober, "Yeah, I think he's really creepy."
"He hung out with Cecil Matus," said Tomma standing and grabbing her tray off the table.
"Who's that?" asked Earlen, following Tomma over towards Bob's table where he still sat alone.
"He's the guy everyone called 'The Champion', you know, of those energy fights."
"WAIT!" Anika commanded. "Don't go over there."
Tomma and Earlen both turned around, along with many at the surrounding tables. "What's wrong?" Tomma asked.
"You can't just go over there. You don't know what's going on with him."
Tomma got that angry, disturbed look that Anika had learned not to question the hard way. She continued to march over toward the table where the dark figure of Bob was sitting alone, with Earlen and Anika reluctantly in tow.
"Bob! Hey, Bob! Remember me? It's Tomma, from calculus. You haven't been all week."
Bob turned and looked at them with a blank, expressionless face covered with large, black sunglasses.
"Why do you wear those glasses all the time?" Earlen asked partly laughing, partly mocking.
Bob slowly removed the glasses and the hat, revealing his blank, hardened face. Tomma jumped back so that she ran into Earlen who was right behind her.
"What happened to you?" she shrieked.
"How did your face get like that?" Earlen was no longer laughing at anything.
"Those eyes," Anika muttered.
Bob seemed to be in another world, hearing them yet not really hearing them. He slowly turned a face towards them, fiery eyes blazing through black, boiling skin. "They'll use it on you, too," he said. "They'll use it on all of us."
"What are you talking about," Anika asked sternly.
But Bob didn't seem to see or hear them any longer.
Narration provided by Howard Douglas, based on discussions with Tomma Torstig and Bob Breundre.
bravenet.com