Carver

It was, believe it or not, a dark and stormy night, and our hero had been lying in the fetal position in the corner of his room for six and a half hours, weeping like a little girl who'd just had her favorite doll sodomized by an angry gerbil. Possibly two.

"Duncan?" The voice coming from the hallway sounded sweet and caring, almost close to worried.

Unable to form any solid sentences (or words for that matter), the corner-clinging man let out a whimper in response.

"Are you in your room again? Get out here, the game's starting!"

The man used all his force and managed to get himself up onto his knees. Crouching as fast as he could, he made it to the door just as the caring female voice from outside the room grew closer, and, rallying all his might, he managed to get up and turn the lock.

The sweet, caring, almost worried female voice instantly lapsed into something slightly different.

"Godd*mmit Duncan, you antisocial motherf&^ker!"

Yes, our hero had risen to the occasion yet again, and now lied triumphantly in a heap of tears and self-loathing, like the champion he truly was.

"If you don't come out here this instant, I swear to God-" her yelling was accompanied by pseudo-rhythmic pounding on the door.

Crouching back to his favorite spot, Duncan tried his best to ignore the girl's rude behaviour. Suddenly, he stopped moving.

There it was again.

He let out a loud sigh at approximately the exact same moment that another loud sigh came from the hallway. The two were completely different in nature, of course. The latter sigh expressed disappointment, resentment, and an overall disgust at the agoraphobic antics of an antisocial friend.

Duncan's sigh, naturally, was because he felt it again.

The goosebumps, the high-pitched wail in both ears, the dizziness, and of course the tingling feeling in his left eyelid.

The Hunter was loose.

Duncan jumped to his feet, grabbed his
green jacket from the nightstand, and let out a loud cough.

"Listen Gail, i'm really not feeling well. I'm gonna take a quick nap and then i'll join you guys, alright? I promise."

"Whatever," the voice replied, coated in a tone richly sprinkled with indifference.
Angry step-stomping soon ensued.

Within seconds of the woman's apparent departure from the door, Duncan had climbed out the window of his second-story bedroom and onto the roof of his house.

Drenched like a drowned sponge, he looked up at the sky towards the uncountable bullets of water attacking him, then in front of him as he shook his head.

"Fruckin' rain."

He took a couple of steps back, positioning himself on the middle point of the roof. Staring straight ahead at the big Sequoia tree, he wondered if today would be the day he finally missed.

How perfect that would be, he thought. No more drama, no more pain, no more mysteriousness.

But the "frucking monstrosity", as he frequently referred to it, was impossible to miss and he knew it; at half the width and twice the height of his house, it was one of the reasons Duncan had chosen that particular spot to plant his abode after finding out about his "gifts".

He took a deep breath. Closed his eyes. Started to run. Two seconds before reaching the end of the roof, he opened his eyes again, and, just as he reached the edge, he jumped.





"Where's Dunk," the short, blonde guy in the lazyboy chair asked, only half-interested in the answer. "He's almost out of beer."

"You mean we're almost out of beer," the now-calmer female voice replied.

A silence arose as the three friends stared at the flatscreen tv in the center of the sparsely decorated living room.

Gail turned to the lazy boy.

"We've gotta do something about him, Vin. He's been at it again. I've been over twice this week and i haven't seen his face once."

Vin, as he was apparently called, shrugged. "What can we do? He prefers to be left alone, there's nothing we can do about it. He is who he is, doll. We can't change him."

"I'm not saying we have to change him, just... I dunno, fix him, i guess." She stared vacantly at and fiddled with a colorful woven bracelet that hugged her left wrist loosely.

Vin nodded, then turned to his friend in the sunglasses who was still seemingly staring at the screen.

"Dude, you've always had a way with Dunc. Go talk to him."

Dude answered without moving: "He's not here." To which his friends responded, in unison; "Huh?", and to which he re-responded; "Nothing."





Wet, tired, and perched atop a giant-@$$ tree, our hero surveyed the quasi-picturesque town.

After five minutes of trying to peek into the house where the town hottie resided, our ever-responsible hero shifted his focus back to the matter at hand. And not just because he realized the hottie wasn't home. No, really.

He closed his eyes tightly, and concentrated on the darkness.
Once the faint blue circles appeared, he followed them with his face. They swirled, danced, converged, and finally became one; dark-blue and shaking slightly.

Duncan opened his eyes and took note of the highlighted house as the ring faded slowly. It was an easy one to remember; three houses down from Brenda, whom he swore to himself he would ask out one day.

Maybe.

He slowly passed through the makeshift opening three feet below the top of the seqouia, grabbed onto the rope secured there onto a steel rail, and slid all the way down.

About thirty seconds and one horrible case of rope burn later, our hero was safely on the ground and taking the shortcut through the woods to town.

I hope I'm too late for once, he thought.
This thought was of course accompanied by a mental note to buy a new carabiner or some gloves, or at the very least some soothing balm.

Rope burn can be frucking brutal.




"We gotta do something, guys. Look, first I'll go and talk to him, then Vin goes and then Jones." The golden-haired Gail had a hint of hesitation in her voice that would probably not be detected by any normal person.

"Won't work and you know it," said the man in sunglasses who you've probably deduced by a process of elimination would have to be Jones. "Especially since, you know, he's not here."

Gail let out a scornful scoff. "Yeah, you keep saying that, but it makes no sense. I literally talked to him a couple of minutes ago."

Vin agreed with this statement, nodding quietly at Gail and then looking curiously at Jones.

The man in the pure black sunglasses shrugged. His face still directed towards the television screen, he nodded slowly in the midst of his shrug, as if to say; "Hey, what can i tell ya."

Gail sighed.

"What i don't get, J, is why you even wanted to come over. After years of not talking to each other, why on earth did you all of a sudden decide to visit Duncan?"

Jones' physical shrug subsided but lingered in his articulation. "I just got a feeling. At first I didn't understand it, but now I do. Tonight is the night."

Gail raised an eyebrow at Vin, who returned the favor.

"Besides," Jones said to Gail without turning to face her, "someone's got to be here to defend him when you're being a b*tch."





Each step on the streets added a loud clap to the already deafening applause engulfing our determined champion; a symphony of perpetually crackling drops that surely should have teared at the very fabric of the thin cloth that was his sanity.

But, luckily, as he approached the quaint little green house, two distinct thoughts entered our brave hero's mind one by one. And these thoughts were each accompanied by befitting feelings that amplified and were amplified by them, and this all in turn drowned out any and all aural anarchy.

The first thought was obvious; this night was going to be unlike any before it. He didn't know why or how, but he knew that whatever happened next, this night would end differently than it usually did.

The second thought, which was much more subtle, came right as he heard a loud shriek coming from inside the house.
"Fruck. In time again."

If he was lucky though, this one might be as weak as the last four or so were and the fight could be short at least.

He rushed in through the open front door. Without a moment's hesitation he ran through the living room and into the kitchen guided by nothing but instinct.