The final Chapter 5 of A Text to Save the World! Finally...Sorry that I didn't finish it earlier.
So, Tiger, the next chapter is yours! You shall create Chapter 6...I'm excited to read it.
Here you are! Hope you like it, and, just for the daily mention of TCF...The M'kalister Park album had better come out soon!
Chapter 5
“You Don’t Want to Know”
All that filled Flicker’s head was mind-numbing shock. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t breathe.
“You’ll…you’ll…”
“Inject you with the Starfall Syndrome. And, Flicker, I assure you, you would die. In less than an hour, actually, given the fact that with an adult, the virus takes an hour to work. You, however, are much smaller. I might give you forty-five minutes.” Notch spoke as if evaluating how long a carton of milk would have before it went bad.
“You’re…you’re…you’re crazy!” Flicker said without thinking.
Notch’s eyes were green; a deep, dark, mesmerizing green. It was impossible to look away from his eyes…There was no emotion in them.
No…there was emotion. Flicker simply couldn’t read it.
“Well?” Notch said softly. “Why are you still here?”
Flicker cocked his head. The truth was; he wasn’t sure. It was surreal. And at the bottom of it was the fact that Flicker didn’t really believe that this stranger would actually murder him in cold blood.
As if reading his thoughts, Notch shook his head. “Don’t underestimate me, Flicker. I’ll prove to you what I can do.”
Flicker was incredulous. “What? Look, Mister, let me get this straight. First you send your little…Hope Riley person to me with a cell phone so you can text me the phrase “Don’t do it” instead of talking to me in person. And yet the very next day, you pulled me out of school and drove me all the way out to this warehouse, where you immediately tell me that if I ever joined forces with some woman named Simile, you’ll kill me with some poison.” Flicker threw his hands in the air. “You’re nuts! I don’t believe you!”
“Oh, really?” Notch pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and tossed it over to Flicker. “Here’s proof that I am who I say I am.”
“And who do you say you are?” Flicker asked, glancing down at the phone.
Notch just barely smiled. “Who do you say that I am? Make your own assumptions, but just read the screen on the phone.”
It was an older model; a flip phone. Flicker shrugged and opened it up. The dim screen flickered to life and a text message suddenly appeared from thirteen years ago.
To: Notch
From: Jacqueline Peterson
Flicker stiffened. That was his mother’s name. He looked up at Notch, who merely gestured for Flicker to continue.
I don’t know who you are, or how you knew my husband, but before he died, you knew him somehow. No one can tell me how Evan died, no one. I know it can’t take away the grief, but perhaps it can alleviate it. I want to know in what heroic cause he died. I want the details of the mission. He mentioned your name once, and when I found a scrap of paper with your name and text number on it, I only assumed that you could shed some light. Please, Notch, whoever you are, how did my husband die?
Flicker eagerly scrolled down, in spite of himself. The next text appeared.
To: Jacqueline Peterson
From: Notch
You don’t want to know.
Flicker had the same response as his mother.
I do.
Flicker hesitated, then he slowly scrolled down to read four words that stopped his heart.
To: Jacqueline Peterson
From: Notch
I killed Evan Peterson.
__________________________________________________________________
Flicker had stared at the phone for one moment, an expression of dawning horror on his face. He had opened his mouth as if to say something, anything, as if to scream.
Instead, he had run out of the room without another word.
Notch smiled. Hope was in the other room on the computer, working on a school assignment. Good. She was behind on her schoolwork, anyway. She was involved in this too much, he thought. Then again, it wasn’t as if she had a choice. He had taken away her normal childhood thirteen years ago.
Did he regret it? In a way, he supposed, he did. But regret was not something that Notch did well. Reliving the past was pointless; too much like running around in circles.
Yet, perhaps, reliving the past was a way through.
In fact, the only way through.
For Notch had forgotten. He needed to remember, and he wasn’t certain why. He didn’t know how much he had forgotten, or whether it really was important. Specifically, he needed to remember Simile.
Notch crossed over to his desk and opened a drawer, revealing a drawer full of cell phones. He dug through and found the one he was looking for, and quickly scrolled down the history. He needed to find the beginning…the first text message on the phone. The first text he had ever received.
To: Notch
From: Simile
I’ve seen you on the Town Hall forum. I’ve seen your potential. I was wondering if you would mind working for me.
A sinister smile crossed Notch’s face. Oh, yes, she saw his potential. She had seen his potential as no one else ever had. He remembered receiving the text, now, and remembered feeling a childish excitement at receiving something so simple.
He had found Simile. No, she had found him. Picked him up off the street and dusted him off, so to speak.
First he had loved her for it.
Before everything changed.
Simile was beautiful. Charming. Personable. Noble.
What man wouldn’t fall for her?
Notch brushed away all of the memories. Yes, he had wanted to remember, but not this much. He stood for a moment, silent, staring at the text message, then with a sudden speed, he slipped open another drawer. It was full of various bits of paper and phone numbers, but he bypassed most of the files, digging through to the very bottom. There, lying crumpled below an old, ripped newspaper article, was a photograph.
Notch picked it up, smoothing it out. The picture was of a smiling man with black hair. A red-haired woman leaned on his arm, resting her head against his shoulder. Her hand rested on her stomach, which bulged slightly, an obvious expression of her pregnancy.
Notch tried to remember exactly where he had gotten the photograph. He thought it had come from a background check that Notch had made fifteen years ago on the man.
As he gazed closely at the man in the photo, Notch nodded slowly in approval.
Flicker Peterson, indeed, looked a great deal like his father.
-President Fantasy
