Star Killer

Chapter 2

     Pounding. I jolt upwards and look around. Pounding. I peer at the bottom of my door and see a faint light. Pounding. I shakily raise myself off of my mattress and stumble to the door. Pounding. My hand rests upon the rusty knob and I hold my breath. Pounding. I yank open the barrier between the noise and me. Silence. In front me stands the man that created the noise. He is silent.

     Mr. Adler the chemistry professor stands before me in rumbled up clothes, his tie flung over his shoulder. Upon his face rests a grim scowl and it remains there as he shoves past me and strides confidently into my room. I stare at the back of his head before I close the door and lean heavily against its solid frame.

"Come right on in I guess"

     He doesn't answer me. Instead Adler goes to the window and unfurls the tattered shades so they fall unsteadily and cover at least most of the glass. Through the holes dull red lights can be seen, the only indication that night has fallen and everyone else should be asleep. I should be asleep.

     I groan and fall slowly to the floor, "Are you going to talk or just run around like the paranoid mad scientist you are?"

     Hearing these words, he turns around to face me with a tight-lipped smile and stuffs his hands into the pockets of his coat. "Mekhi, you do remember what tomorrow is right?

"Tomorrow is the day after today. The day nobody really reaches but continues to strive to make it those few final steps and release them from the never ending today. Tomorrow shines like a new dawn and brings promises of change and hope." I pause from my speech and look him in the eyes while giving him a teeth gritting smile before continuing. "Tomorrow is what it is going to be soon if you don't kindly exit and let me pass back out."

     Silence hangs in the air and my eyes stare into the stormy waters that make up his piercing gaze. No one moves. Silence.

     Suddenly a twitch of a lip and a sparkle of an eye is enough to break his composure and his teeth flash in the darkness. A smile.

     Adler flops backwards onto my mattress and I sit on the floor next to it, a small smile on my own lips. We take the moment to revel in the light atmosphere before it shifts back to being harsh and thick. We both knew the matter buried beneath the airy mood.

     His head turns towards me. "The test is tomorrow. Mekhi, I beg you, please. This is your one chance of making something out of yourself in the colony. You have to survive."

     I lift my hand and wave it nonchalantly in the air, feigning an apathetic mood. I put my all my effort into trying to seem effortless; I need him to not worry. "Adler... maybe I don't care about being a somebody to a place that is a nobody."

     He lets out one of his signature groans and pinches the bridge of his nose. I know I am causing him stress but I also know I have to continue my act or we'll both fall apart like two puzzles that lack any pieces at all.

      His eyes close. "When will you ever accept that this is your home and you're lucky to simply be alive Mekhi? All you do is slack off and complain about how sad and pitiful your life is. You aren't going anywhere soon, so stop wasting your time moaning and actually try to help your planet survive. I know what you've lost. I know that you feel alone, but you aren't. You need to realize this ocean isn't a trap. It's a barrier between our safety and the dead zone that surrounds our home. Grow up. You'll understand eventually that you have everything you need here."

     Silence. I feel sharp pain in my chest. Silence. Reflections at the edges of my eyes. Silence. My breath hurts to exit my lung. Silence. I wont ever understand.

     I open my mouth but nothing comes out. I take a deep breath. I open my mouth again. "I don't understand."

     His hand makes its way to my shoulder and gives it a light squeeze of reassurance. I let out a breath I had been holding in my chest and look up at him. "At least I'm not a Wierzen stable boy."

"I guess it is good you aren't in that crap profession." He mutters out, barely loud enough for me to hear.

     With this terrible joke, we burst out in loud barking laughter.

"Yeah, shoveling shit isn't my favorite thing in the universe... and that's saying something since I live in the Stonce system!" I gasp out between breaths as I sit up and hold my sides to make the sharp pains go away.

     Adler joins me in sitting up and neatly folds his feet under himself. It was only with his close friends or when he was alone that the true man inside of him came out. The calm and collected façade he shows on a daily basis to his students has always just been a cover up. Without it, he would probably break down and stop functioning completely. He is just as lost as I am.

     Back before the expansion of our sun, Adler was a young thirteen-year-old boy that attended an academy for the poorer families that couldn't afford a private education for their children. Nevertheless, he pushed on and became one of highest-ranking students, even joining classes above his year. His family couldn't escape the sun, much like my family couldn't. No matter how hard I try to convince myself to be sad that he was stuck in this hellhole with me, I was too selfish to fully commit to it. I've always been secretly happy he is cemented to this planet. He is the only person I've ever had within the past seventeen years of my life. After my parents demise, I had no one until he wandered upon the shuttle that held me prisoner at the bottom of the ocean. He snuck me home and hid me in his closet, too afraid that his parents would turn down the option of another mouth to feed.

     Every night he would sneak me half of his rations and read me tales from a book he had insisted they take with them when they departed to their new home under the water. He rarely went to bed full and his health was never truly stable because of his lack of meals. This young boy, barely old enough to look after himself, kept me alive for months until the school officially was pronounced habitable for young students to live in.

     A smile lazily stretches across my face at the memories built between Adler and I. My brother. I turn to stare out one of the holes in the shades to try to skip out on the mushy scene that would take place if he saw the emotional expression written on my face as we both lay motionless and take the moment to just breathe.

     After a few more moments of the silence, I grow uncomfortable and loudly throw myself backwards onto the mattress. "I want to leave."

     Those four simple words, words that slipped between my lips without even giving them a second thought, cause Adler's shoulders to slump downwards. He lets out a dull sigh and his eyes are locked on his hands folded upon his lap like they are the most interesting things in the world. He refuses to look up at me and I instantly feel wrapped up to the point of suffocating on my own guilt. In this moment, his face seems to age twenty years and I swear I catch a gray hair or two on his head.

     He lifts his head to give me a sullen look full of the misery and pain of the last seventeen years. His normally bright and proud eyes are now dim and ancient.

"You'll die."

     I shrug my shoulders. "I know."

     Without a second word, Adler stands up and quietly exits the room and abandons me with my thoughts. So much for getting anymore sleep.

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AHHHHH Its been too long since I've last worked on this!! SORRY