| Fiction |
Tomorrow’s Light
Written by Drew Clements
Conceptualized by Drew Clements and Bryan Hester
(Part Two - III)
Tomorrow shut the door to her bedroom.
Her entire body was fatigued; muscles ached and her head pounded. It was as if she had run ten miles! Not that she’d ever done that before, at least, not consecutively. Nonetheless, the feeling was there and it hurt.
She plopped down on the edge of her bed, which was situated off to the left of her door, against the wall.
“Maybe I can make it through tomorrow without any weirdness.” The thought bounced around her head, “Yeah, right, like school isn’t a bunch of weirdness in the first place!”
High school had not been the fun and cool time she’d expected back in elementary school. She tended to distance herself from others because of her supreme dislike of stupidity. Not to say that she didn’t have her moments, she just hated the pettiness and pure immaturity that filled the student body; the mindset of the typical high school student irritated her. Perhaps she was a bit pretentious, but when it came down to fart, sex, and poop jokes, the idea of being pretentious wasn’t a bad one.
“I hate poop jokes.”
Only two months left in the semester and she was already counting down the days to Christmas vacation. Nothing truly bad had happened this year to cause her to wish it all away; she was just tired of the whole thing. Last year, tenth grade, was the year in which she found herself becoming the introvert. Of course, it was a boy who spoiled her year by being a jerk. Worse, the girl she thought was her best friend was in on it.
Tyler Richards, her first true boyfriend had been nothing close to perfect. His constant verbal abuse had caused her to fear that physical violence was on the horizon. Fortunately she ended the relationship before anything could happen.
Stephanie Watson, her best friend, had decided to make a move for the ex-boyfriend, despite Tomorrow’s warnings. In the end, Stephanie had found that her Tomorrow’s fears and warnings were right, but by this time she was too infatuated with Tyler. Tomorrow could only watch as her best friend fell to the abuse of her ex and soon, at the request of Tyler, cut Tomorrow completely from her life because of his fear that she would ruin their relationship.
It was a sad situation that Tomorrow had tried many times to remedy. She even went as far as telling Stephanie’s mother, which apparently amounted to nothing. This last move had officially destroyed the friendship for the future. The whole thing hurt her more than she would let anyone know; she spent many late nights crying in her bed. The idea that her best friend could end up psychologically torn or worse, dead, from the abuse that she was receiving from a tenth grade boy cut her deeply.
“Ow.”
Her thoughts were brought back to now as the pain in her head began to stab deeply; her muscles suddenly contracted violently. Each of her joints bent and brought her limbs into a horror of false rigor mortis; a fetal position of pain was her new stance. In the back of her mind she imagined someone tapping her body with a hammer and it shattering into a million different pieces. She knew she wasn’t quite that fragile, but that didn’t mean she didn’t feel like she could have easily been shattered.
This had gone beyond the strange and, what she thought to be, isolated events from earlier. This was an all-out assault by some unknown… what? Disease? Who knew?
It was time to tell her mother, there was no other way. She needed help, answers, whatever.
Tomorrow tried to stand, to get out of her room and to her mother, but could not. Her body would not move from its crooked, frightening fetal position on the bed.
“Mom?” Her weak voice attempted to call out. She tried to scream louder, which wouldn’t have been a hard thing to do had her vocal chords not been seizing due to the unbearable pain. It was like someone had pulled a rubber band tight and was flicking it with no effect.
Instead of continuing her calls, she did the only thing she felt that she could do; she closed her eyes. Seconds later she was completely unconscious, unable to feel any pain.