In the early, hueless dawn of the winter morning, the sky outside Leland's window was black enough to make him wonder if the soft blips of light flickering on, off, on, off, on his bedside table were false. If, perhaps, during some late hour his clock's Matrix-green digits hadn't twitched themselves ahead. The curtains were not drawn, not since he had developed the inconvenient tendency to drowse easily past the blaring noise of his alarm, and yet the night seemed to still be holding the world in the palm of its hand. Bird calls were far off and seldom, as if they, too, were left wondering if their internal clocks had made some sort of mistake; crickets chirped contently from the nether regions below his second-floor windowsill. Leland's wooden floorboards were next-to invisible under the combined blurred quality of his vision and the lack of efficient lighting, his furniture enveloped altogether by darkness.
Hunched over in visible...or invisible, rather...weariness, a scrawny outline shoved away the provocative warmth of his comforter and sheets. His eyes were half-lidded, the dregs of sleep oozing away with deliberate slowness, and his clock, equipped with its unceremonious, blaring alarm, continued to cry out. With all his heart and easily-irritated, groggy excuse for a mind, the boy wished the thing would shut the hell up while he gathered his awry thoughts.
BLEEEEEP! BLEEEEEP! BLEEE-
Leland flung out one hand and it fell without force onto the rectangular device, fingers pressing lightly upon the various buttons. He'd only been unshielded by his insulating covers for several minutes, and already his fingertips were unpleasantly chilled. He felt for one of the buttons.
BLEEEEEP! BLEEEEEP! BLEE....the time is six twenty-three, ante meridiem, or A.M. The date is November fifth, 2007. The day is Monda- the clock began to declare as he found and pressed the first button.
"Don't remind me." the awakening boy murmured vaguely, tapping the second of the buttons dexterously, if noticeably harder than necessary.
The alarm clock - a compact red little thing, not that you could tell in the shadows within shadows of Leland's room - died abruptly, but the gleaming digits remained, bathing a small area of its wooden podium green. Lee sat in almost spine-chilling silence while his thoughts cleared, then lurched forward out of his oversized bed. His bare chest was rapidly declining to the same state as his cold fingers as he padded blindly across the hardwood flooring, reaching out in front of his face at the last second to grope for the wall - and the marvelous light switch screwed into its plaster.
Tack!
Leland flinched as the two bulbs positioned in the middle of his room exploded in light, rinsing over everything and dousing it in familiarity. The common wooden-bladed fan they were attached to, the bulbs shielded by fogged orb-shaped glass, remained stationary. He didn't think he'd ever used them before. Hell, for all he knew there was no cord to tug that would cause the four blades to begin revolving.
Squinting his eyes, which were a vibrant aquamarine even while his thoughts were still hazy, Leland crossed over to one of his two dark oak dressers - one was lengthy, with a wide mirror built into its back, the kind made for girls obsessed with appearances; the other was only half a foot (or so) shorter than himself, and held the majority of his summer clothes. Standing indecisively in front of the longer polished piece of furniture quickly drained Leland of whatever residual warmth he had kept, and it was without flourish that he clawed one-two-three of the drawers open by their ornate brass knobs and ruffled for clothes inside. A pair of charcoal colored carpenter's pants, a nondescript white turtleneck, and a navy-blue short sleeve ended up in his pale hands after a few annoying seconds ticked by; and Lee crammed the rest of his clothes haphazardly back into their correct drawers (hopefully) before standing with them.
As he tugged the cotton material of his second, blue shirt over his head, sending his already-wild and jutting hair into further disarray, Leland sighed as the first pinpricks of timid light peeked uncertainly over the horizon. It took a second to fish out a pair of clean socks from one of his innumerable drawers (honestly - he only needed three or so), another second to jerk them on. Now frowning slightly as the socks did nothing to warm his toes, Lee swept long locks of jet-black hair from his vision. Close to his main doorway, he twisted the knob of a more discreet door, releasing the spherical-shaped handle after giving it enough momentum to swing open. His closet, a miniature walk-in that held an impressive display of jackets, pullovers, shoes, boots, and the like, was lighted using the same switch as his main room.
A complete waste of electricity in his opinion, but he wasn't the one paying bills every month.
Sweeping an inspecting tongue across his front upper teeth, Leland plucked one of the jackets from its place - an oversized black zip-up with one of those folded-down collars that seemed as if they were meant to stand up and protect the back of one's neck; equally detached from what he was doing, he flung the garment over his shoulder and jammed his arms into the sleeves. The white turtleneck's sleeves bunched up, as those kinds of shirts' sleeves tend to do, and he reached into the sleeves through the wrists to tug them back down. A large yawn escaped through his mouth finally, accompanied by a small shake of his head as he peered around the stuffy closet. He sprawled noncommittally onto the brown floor and pulled out the first pair of decent shoes he saw - a set of black "skater's shoes" from what he could tell. It honestly made no difference to him.
Stuffing a pair of black cotton gloves into his pants' pocket on the way out, Leland stepped easily from the closet. He shut the whitewashed door behind him with the toe of one foot, and was already fleeing his room as it snick'd closed.
A hallway connected his room to a lone bathroom at one end, and a staircase - complete with ridable wooden banister - at the other. The teenager made a halfhearted tromp into the bathroom to stare dismally at his wild, unmanageable hair, brush his teeth for all of twenty seconds, and use the toilet (complete with fancy blue water. His parents didn't skimp on anything, no siree).
After that a glance at his ever-present pocketwatch (plain silver, and always resting warily on his dresser for pocketing once he selected a pair of pants daily), the faintest tinge of urgency prompted Leland down the spiraling staircase and into what his parents insisted he call the Lobby. The Lobby was nothing but an area of useless space where guests loitered about listlessly until Mr. or Mrs. Kincaid could figure out what they were going to do with them; sure they had coat racks and hat racks and all-those-other-racks, but it was still lifeless. And eerie.
Leland's frown turned into a scowl as he glanced first towards the kitchen, where he was supposed to make himself some semblance of a healthy, nutritious breakfast each morning, then towards the door.
Fifteen after seven o' clock. That was the time his watch had projected, and he had set it, as he said to himself "by the school's time". It might've been the same as his house's time, but he had never really investigated the matter. Who cared? What did matter was that he had at least a good twenty-minute-trek to school from his large, gaudy house, and the late-bell rang at a quarter-till eight.
"Anything'll do..." Leland admitted to himself, glancing around the sizable kitchen for...
"Ah."
There it was. A large glass fruit bowl, spilling over with bananas, apples, pears, and some other fruit he didn't care for. He much preferred his fruit chilled, but his parents were more fond of appearances than material things like flavor. Flavor, he reminded himself with a cynical grin, is for the weak.
Biting carnivorously into the flesh of an apple (and what a joke that is...carnivorously - Get it?), Leland retreated back into the Lobby, snatching a brown messenger's bag from the cleanly Lobby carpet. Carpet meant to be the color of fresh, delicious wine. Which, naturally, reminded Lee of scarlet blood, flowing freely over their floors.
No matter, he had to get to school before his mind truly began to get away from him.
Swinging the bag's strap over one shoulder and snatching the green apple from his mouth sans a mouthful of juicy flesh, the blue-eyed boy swung open the front door.
Hunched over in visible...or invisible, rather...weariness, a scrawny outline shoved away the provocative warmth of his comforter and sheets. His eyes were half-lidded, the dregs of sleep oozing away with deliberate slowness, and his clock, equipped with its unceremonious, blaring alarm, continued to cry out. With all his heart and easily-irritated, groggy excuse for a mind, the boy wished the thing would shut the hell up while he gathered his awry thoughts.
BLEEEEEP! BLEEEEEP! BLEEE-
Leland flung out one hand and it fell without force onto the rectangular device, fingers pressing lightly upon the various buttons. He'd only been unshielded by his insulating covers for several minutes, and already his fingertips were unpleasantly chilled. He felt for one of the buttons.
BLEEEEEP! BLEEEEEP! BLEE....the time is six twenty-three, ante meridiem, or A.M. The date is November fifth, 2007. The day is Monda- the clock began to declare as he found and pressed the first button.
"Don't remind me." the awakening boy murmured vaguely, tapping the second of the buttons dexterously, if noticeably harder than necessary.
The alarm clock - a compact red little thing, not that you could tell in the shadows within shadows of Leland's room - died abruptly, but the gleaming digits remained, bathing a small area of its wooden podium green. Lee sat in almost spine-chilling silence while his thoughts cleared, then lurched forward out of his oversized bed. His bare chest was rapidly declining to the same state as his cold fingers as he padded blindly across the hardwood flooring, reaching out in front of his face at the last second to grope for the wall - and the marvelous light switch screwed into its plaster.
Tack!
Leland flinched as the two bulbs positioned in the middle of his room exploded in light, rinsing over everything and dousing it in familiarity. The common wooden-bladed fan they were attached to, the bulbs shielded by fogged orb-shaped glass, remained stationary. He didn't think he'd ever used them before. Hell, for all he knew there was no cord to tug that would cause the four blades to begin revolving.
Squinting his eyes, which were a vibrant aquamarine even while his thoughts were still hazy, Leland crossed over to one of his two dark oak dressers - one was lengthy, with a wide mirror built into its back, the kind made for girls obsessed with appearances; the other was only half a foot (or so) shorter than himself, and held the majority of his summer clothes. Standing indecisively in front of the longer polished piece of furniture quickly drained Leland of whatever residual warmth he had kept, and it was without flourish that he clawed one-two-three of the drawers open by their ornate brass knobs and ruffled for clothes inside. A pair of charcoal colored carpenter's pants, a nondescript white turtleneck, and a navy-blue short sleeve ended up in his pale hands after a few annoying seconds ticked by; and Lee crammed the rest of his clothes haphazardly back into their correct drawers (hopefully) before standing with them.
As he tugged the cotton material of his second, blue shirt over his head, sending his already-wild and jutting hair into further disarray, Leland sighed as the first pinpricks of timid light peeked uncertainly over the horizon. It took a second to fish out a pair of clean socks from one of his innumerable drawers (honestly - he only needed three or so), another second to jerk them on. Now frowning slightly as the socks did nothing to warm his toes, Lee swept long locks of jet-black hair from his vision. Close to his main doorway, he twisted the knob of a more discreet door, releasing the spherical-shaped handle after giving it enough momentum to swing open. His closet, a miniature walk-in that held an impressive display of jackets, pullovers, shoes, boots, and the like, was lighted using the same switch as his main room.
A complete waste of electricity in his opinion, but he wasn't the one paying bills every month.
Sweeping an inspecting tongue across his front upper teeth, Leland plucked one of the jackets from its place - an oversized black zip-up with one of those folded-down collars that seemed as if they were meant to stand up and protect the back of one's neck; equally detached from what he was doing, he flung the garment over his shoulder and jammed his arms into the sleeves. The white turtleneck's sleeves bunched up, as those kinds of shirts' sleeves tend to do, and he reached into the sleeves through the wrists to tug them back down. A large yawn escaped through his mouth finally, accompanied by a small shake of his head as he peered around the stuffy closet. He sprawled noncommittally onto the brown floor and pulled out the first pair of decent shoes he saw - a set of black "skater's shoes" from what he could tell. It honestly made no difference to him.
Stuffing a pair of black cotton gloves into his pants' pocket on the way out, Leland stepped easily from the closet. He shut the whitewashed door behind him with the toe of one foot, and was already fleeing his room as it snick'd closed.
A hallway connected his room to a lone bathroom at one end, and a staircase - complete with ridable wooden banister - at the other. The teenager made a halfhearted tromp into the bathroom to stare dismally at his wild, unmanageable hair, brush his teeth for all of twenty seconds, and use the toilet (complete with fancy blue water. His parents didn't skimp on anything, no siree).
After that a glance at his ever-present pocketwatch (plain silver, and always resting warily on his dresser for pocketing once he selected a pair of pants daily), the faintest tinge of urgency prompted Leland down the spiraling staircase and into what his parents insisted he call the Lobby. The Lobby was nothing but an area of useless space where guests loitered about listlessly until Mr. or Mrs. Kincaid could figure out what they were going to do with them; sure they had coat racks and hat racks and all-those-other-racks, but it was still lifeless. And eerie.
Leland's frown turned into a scowl as he glanced first towards the kitchen, where he was supposed to make himself some semblance of a healthy, nutritious breakfast each morning, then towards the door.
Fifteen after seven o' clock. That was the time his watch had projected, and he had set it, as he said to himself "by the school's time". It might've been the same as his house's time, but he had never really investigated the matter. Who cared? What did matter was that he had at least a good twenty-minute-trek to school from his large, gaudy house, and the late-bell rang at a quarter-till eight.
"Anything'll do..." Leland admitted to himself, glancing around the sizable kitchen for...
"Ah."
There it was. A large glass fruit bowl, spilling over with bananas, apples, pears, and some other fruit he didn't care for. He much preferred his fruit chilled, but his parents were more fond of appearances than material things like flavor. Flavor, he reminded himself with a cynical grin, is for the weak.
Biting carnivorously into the flesh of an apple (and what a joke that is...carnivorously - Get it?), Leland retreated back into the Lobby, snatching a brown messenger's bag from the cleanly Lobby carpet. Carpet meant to be the color of fresh, delicious wine. Which, naturally, reminded Lee of scarlet blood, flowing freely over their floors.
No matter, he had to get to school before his mind truly began to get away from him.
Swinging the bag's strap over one shoulder and snatching the green apple from his mouth sans a mouthful of juicy flesh, the blue-eyed boy swung open the front door.
