Tequan Azaria
2011-04-08 14:39:52 UTC
Chapter 1
He slammed the front door and many bolts instantly fell to the floor with irritating sounds. He had just vandalized Alexa Witwer's door and he could honestly say he didn't care. He had a scowl on his face and he was furious. Zipping his black leather jacket up to the neck, he stomped across the painstakingly unkempt lawn, then stuffed his hands in his pockets.
The dark night was cold, foggy and unusually silent. The street was deserted. It's not like he actually saw that there was no one in the road, the fog was too thick. He could barely see a metre from his nose. But the implicit silence said it all. There wasn't even a single sound from any animal whatsoever. No footfalls of pedestrians. Or rumbling of cars. Just silence. The night was just dead and uncommonly still.
Kieran Beltar walked in no particular direction. He just had to be anywhere other than his mother's sister's house. He kept thinking of what had happened just minutes ago. He could vividly see Aunt Alexa's reaction the moment she had laid eyes on his school report card that documented the month's particularly dismal performance.
A grave lour had twisted and distorted the hideous plastic smile she always carries around. Her large brown eyes narrowed to become mere slits and her nose flared. She had stood with one hand on her hip and screamed, "Boy! D'you know how much your school fees costs?"
Kieran had recoiled and apologized. But he might as well have been cursing her. She kept raising her voice, going on and on about how hard she worked everyday to provide for his ungrateful behind and that she didn't deserve to be paid back with such garbage. She had called him every name she could think of as she angrily waved the report card everywhere.
Kieran had apologized again and again as he tried to give reasons why he failed, but Aunt Alexa, of course, wasn't having any of his pathetic excuses. All Kieran had managed to do is nod and think of how embarrassing it was to be given a telling-off in front of his aunt's giggling kids who were both younger than him.
Kieran had forced himself to imagine being in his aunt's position and understand why she was so angry. She was a single mother whose husband had took off with another woman the day their second child was born and had never heard from him since. She had two children, Aubry and Abriella, who were both meticulously spoilt, good-for-nothing gits who thought they owned the world and everyone in it. She had been forced to support a child she never even so much as liked after both parents died ten years ago in a car crash. On top of that, she had a crappy job as an overworked but underpaid secretary - at least that's what she claimed. All those aspects on one person were bound to yield an overly large quantity of bad attitude.
But Kieran's tolerance of this dispecable attitude disappeared when she insulted his father, Katay Beltar. He really didn't remember much about his father. He died when he was only seven but he was sure he was never an 'ugly moron' like his aunt had put it.
Kieran had been suddenly filled with great anger intensified by ten years worth of bottled up feelings. He found himself retracting his hand from giving his aunt one might slap that echoed and reverberated through the whole dining room in which they'd been standing. That's when he stamped out, leaving a full grown adult frozen in shock and her children stupidly gaping. Dumbstruck. His only regret was that he hadn't given that foolish old hag the thorough beating she deserved.
He came back to reality when he heard the crunching of dry leaves and the snapping of twigs under his feet. He was now walking into an old and abandoned tree plantation a block away from his aunt's house. It was very dark in there. Kieran almost turned to go back but then the thought of what he had done to his aunt stopped him. No doubt she was furious. So he decided whatever atrocities wreathing in the plantation were better than the fury that awaited him.
He continued into the darkness until he found his favourite spot in the deserted land. A particularly large tree with thick branches. It was as lifeless as it was leafless, however, there was a certain comfortable spot high up between branches where he always came to sit and relax alone. Away from people - especially his aunt. He supposed that's how his feet had found their way to the plantation without him really thinking about it. He was angry and depressed and the only private place he could do that was in that tree. He climbed up.
He sat for a long time in the absolute silence. He was now calm, thinking a little more clearly, the implications of his actions becoming ap