User:Toxyca/Toybox

Yes, I said toybox. Don't tell me how to live my life.
Mary Ixana was never one for romantic relationships. With a young daughter, and no husband, she didn’t have time for them either. So much pressure on a single person can break them. One person cannot bear the weight of the world alone. One night, with a gun against her head, she was about to give up. Crying, she slid the gun across the ground away from herself. Who was she kidding -- she didn’t have the audacity to pull that trigger. A knock came from the door. “Food cart!” A young man’s voice came from behind the door.“I’m not interested!”  Mary was in no mood to eat.

“Not a choice!” In walks a man in a slimming black tux. “May I offer you a slice of velvet cake? It’s to die for…” The man chuckled to himself.

“Death is nothing to joke about.” To Mary, that was no such laughing matter.

“Well of course not! I would be offended hearing anyone else doing such.” The man was quite strange. “Now, do you believe in love at first sight, or do I need to walk by again?”

It doesn’t take much more to start a relationship. They lived happily...for a while. They had a single child, Efrain. Just when he was born, the father never returned. The mother was left to care for the child.

She always said that they had met at work -- only a couple of cubicles down, actually. Never really talked to him at the start, but it wasn’t long until they hit it off. Started a family of their own. They had him. Off course that wasn’t what really happened. Efrain knew that was never the truth, but he chose to believe it because it gave him more hope than how the actual story goes.

Efrain Ixana always felt orphaned. With a dead father and a mother who has two part time jobs, he has more time on his hands than he knows what to do with. He always had. Money doesn’t come back, and neither does a father. Up until this point not much has happened in the life of Efrain Ixana. Video games and television sum up his childhood. He lives with enough family member to drive a normal person mad, but Efrain was no normal person. At the age of 15 now, he assumes little responsibility for his own actions. Most people blamed it on his ADHD. He gets poor grades and has little hope of any future in any field of study. His sister, Jess, calls him the world’s next Einstein, due to his high intelligence yet poor grades. At home there is nobody who he feels he connects with besides Jess. She’s actually his half sister, and three years older, but he’d choose her over his other family members any day. There are six in his household: his grandfather (an ornery old man who only ever grumbles to himself), his mother (who is always working), his uncle (a lazy mass of fat that doesn’t do much besides watch television), his uncle’s girlfriend (just as fat and lazy as his uncle is), himself, and his sister. So it’s easy to see why he would connect with Jess. They spent many nights together playing games and watching movies. It was all just silly stupid stuff. But he was okay with that. It got his mind off the fact that he felt alone in this seemingly endless world.

When an important life event is about to happen, it seems as though you know. Somewhere deep down, in the darkest corner of your subconscious, that something is about to happen. The tides of change. Fate’s hand. Nobody bears the ability to escape these things. So when they do catch up to us, there is a moment. There is a moment where you know it is coming. As that moment is concluding, your mind, and heart, brace for impact. Efrain normally took walks late at night. He had trouble sleeping anyways, so he always thought this was the best way to spend his stolen hours. He thought about his father, money troubles, and all the things he was seemingly was too preoccupied to think about during daylight. As he walked home today, he thought about all these things. Through Efrain’s eyes, the world is no bleaker than the darkest thought ever conceived by man -- yet no brighter. His house was coming up around the bend, and an idea popped into his head that was always a topic of thought for him. A thought of death. Of when he will die. Or his neighbors. His mother. Jess even. He pushed the thought out of his mind quickly as he walked in the side door of the house. “What does that clock say to you? Because to me, it says ‘half past your-ass-is-grounded.” His mother threw the words at him like a baseball player would throw a pitch. “Sorry mom, I was just out for a walk. Don’t have to blow a fuse.” His mother still wore the attire of the fair maidens of her newest fast food cashier job. The clock she pointed to read 2:43. “Blow a fuse? Blow a fuse?!? I’ve been worried sick because of you! You go out like this every night and don’t come home until late!” Now she was starting to yell. “How would you know…?” At this point, Efrain was staring at the ground, hoping that it may have the answers to his undying question. “What did you just say?” Now his mother looked scared. The type of scared you get when both heart and mind brace for impact. Still, the redness didn’t leave her cheek, and her blood still boiled.

There are moments when you say things. Awful things. Things that you wish you could catch out of the air, and thus put the back into the mouth from which they came. And whence you say these things, you pull away the few strings that hold this world together. Such a fragile existence should not be toyed with. Yet, we all make mistakes, and such worlds are destroyed. “I said how would you know, mom? You were never there! You were out working, but you were never there! The school projects, the crushes, the meals. I was always alone. I will always be alone. I have always felt like a...a...” What did he feel like? He has trained himself to not feel anything anymore. Now, he was the one who was red in the face. “Freak? I know how-” “No you don’t.” And with that, Efrain marched to his room, slamming the door behind him. The rest of the night was spent with his thoughts. And the sounds of his mother’s attempts at silencing her sobs.

And Efrain knew what was coming. The strings had been pulled. His world was about to fall apart.

Efrain’s eyes burst open. He looked at the clock. Still only 4...but something had woke him. It sounded like small animals coming from the kitchen. He shifted his weight upwards and got out of bed. He walked to the hallway to see what the noise had been, and as he did, the noise grew louder. Now it was more like a bear than a pack of small rodents. Turning the corner, he saw a tall figure standing over the cupboard. His hands were filled with a collection of small, shiny objects. Efrain approached the figure standing before him as slowly and quietly as possible. When he was right behind the figure, he slowly moved his hand with an outstretched finger, prepared to initiate a conversation with this person. The tap initiated a series of event that even Efrain couldn’t see coming. Once the shoulder was tapped, the man it was attached to spun around. With a flash of bright light coming from the mans hip, the man fled and Efrain was brought to his knees. Efrain layed there, think warm liquid pouring out of his chest. It’s all going to end here. This was it for him. A miserable life ends in a miserable way, as to be expected. Time to close his eyes...then the lights flicked on. A girl...no, Jess ran in. It was hard to tell, as his vision was getting fuzzy. “Oh my god…” She was standing over him now. Her hands were shaking on his chest. “Efrain…” Tears formed in her eyes. Efrain could see now something hanging over her head. A number. “Efrain, please…” The number was four. He couldn’t see anything anymore, except that number. Jess’s voice rang in his ears sounding distant. “Efrain, don’t die.” Three. “You can’t!” Two. “Efrain, please!” One. And with that, the world around him went black.

And the world fell to the ground around him. Such a fragile existence, isn’t it?

/ Hello, I am Steve Goldman, and you are watching Royal Oak Seven Action News. Tonight’s story, a tragic and brutal murder of an entire family on Hawthorn. At 4:55 this morning, paramedics rushed to the aid of a household of six. On the scene, we are getting reports that there was a brutal murder. One attendant, fifteen-year-old Efrain Ixana, was found missing at the scene of the crime. Several valuable items are visibly missing from the scene. More on the story later. For our next story… /

As his eyes fluttered open, Efrain had the life brought back to him. When his sight was fully restored and the pain in his chest died down, he sat up and viewed his surroundings. He was in an old, musty room that had a single table and two chairs. On the table a crossbow and two sleek pistols were reflecting the room's dim light. He searched the walls, and on the furthest from him, he found a large steel door. He approached it, and thrust it open, expecting the worst. Instead, he was greeted with a back alleyway of some city. Not what he expected. He heard rumbling, like something large coming his way. At that moment, around the corner, burst out a woman in full sprint running away from her pursuer. Then came a shadow. Not a shadow on a wall or the ground, but straight through the air. A line of thick blackness. Out of this shadow appeared a teenage boy, about seventeen looking. The twos’ eyes connected. “Took you long enough.” The boy stood there unamused. The hilt of a blade rose from above his left shoulder. “Where are we?” At that moment, the woman, with a screech, threw herself at the teenage boy. He spun on his heels and punched her square in the head and turned back to Efrain as she stumbled to the ground. “You wake up in some random alley and you see somebody who probably just abducted you and you don’t ask who he is first? Rude.” “Never crossed my mind. Anyways, so what did she do, break puppies’ necks?” “Names are things. Ask them.” The kid gave him a sharp glare. “And no. She doesn’t break puppies’ necks, thank you very much. Granted, she may have for all I know.” He turns and kicks the woman in the gut. “Well fine. What is your name, my good sir? Would you like me to get you a spot of tea? Mine’s Efrain, if you were wondering.” “I managed to figure that one out easily enough on my own. Hey, you are aware I took you from the site of a homicide and your name is all over the news?” “...wait, what? Homicide…?” “Yep. By the looks of it you managed to trigger your powers and kill your entire family. Congrats.” “No… no…” Jess. She’s dead. How could she be dead… It’s over. It’s all over. At this point, his cockieness has abandoned him. Efrain falls to his knees and looks at the ground, again hoping that it has the answers. The boy watched him for a moment, curious, before losing interest and turning his focus to the groaning form on the ground before him. The woman was a coughing wreck. The boy wasn’t sure if monsters had lungs, but hers were probably collapsed if they did. He heaved a sigh and summoned a knife to his hand. The woman burst into a golden pile of glitter. “What the…? How did you…?” At this point Efrain’s depression had evolved into confusion. The boy turned back. “Work it out, buddy. Come on now. Haven’t you been attacked yet?” “I mean...wait, what? Attacked?” Efrain couldn’t understand what the boy was talking about. “Do you mean like last night…?” “Last night? Oh, no. That was just a- … Hold on.” A horde of flying angel type creatures flew in from around the bend of the building to their left. He walked to the center of the alley and stood facing the flock, a determined smirk on his face. The first of the angels dove toward the boy. He sidestepped it with ease and spun, the sword leaping from his back and cutting down the creature as it swept past. Two more broke from the flock, set toward him. Moments before their talons connect, the boy vanishes and reappears in the darkness behind it. He brings out a flat, golden disc from a cd case from his hip and whips it toward the confused angels. Two more piles of glitter. He pulls another disc out and faces the swirling cloud of angels. “Anyone else?” The dozen angels streak toward him in response. Maybe monsters don’t like seeing their buddies die? Yeah, that must be it. He teleports onto one of the creatures’ back and drives the sword through it, bringing it to the ground in a shower of dust. The swarm surrounds him as best they can in the tight alley. Efrain can no longer see him through the cloud of feathers, but every few seconds a shower of golden dust would splatter against the walls. “You seem to know what you’re doing. I wonder what these things are…” Efrain couldn’t wrap his mind around any of this. What were these powers...and monsters. Well, if Jess is gone, then he has no reason to push away these concepts being thrown at him. As long as she is gone, then it doesn’t matter where he goes next. He wipes away his tears that had poured down his cheeks moments before. As the final golden glitter fell to the ground, Efrain asked, “What’s your name?” The older boy stood over his sword, thrust into the ground, in a ring of dust. He took a moment to catch his breath before looking back to Efrain. “Nyxil. Um. Nice to meet you?” “Yeah. So, Nyxil, what were those?” “Those,” Nyxil kicks absently at the dust around him, “were harpies. They were probably trailing that lamia to scavenge its food. … That’s you, by the way. The food.” “Sounds cute. Where could we go so I don’t have to be live bait?” “You’re… taking this oddly in stride. Next stop is Long Island.” Efrain whispers to himself, “as long as she’s gone… it doesn’t matter.”