a white t-shirt, ripped loose jeans, a silver ring on my right ear, a black hoodie tied around my waist, and as the cherry on top, I had tied up my long black hair in a small ponytail with two curly flocks of hair hanging from the front. It felt like a huge waste being all dressed up. Just to sit at the back of the class once more, head leaning on my hand as I was trying to concentrate on the teacher lecturing in front of the class, ignoring the whispering filling up the class.
The last request my mom had made before leaving had been for me to graduate high school.
"You won't get anywhere in life if you don't."
She had said. After that, I really didn't see much of her. Dad didn't tell me at the time why Mom had left, and as the years went by, he just never got around to it.
Won't get anywhere in life, huh. My name is Rome, and ever since I was a kid, I had always wanted that—to get somewhere in life. The majority of people live their lives accomplishing nothing, taking part in nothing, and most of them are fine with that. But I don't want that. For as long as I had been alive, I had always wanted to do something of great importance, something that'd make a real difference in the world. And I'm not talking about becoming a famous actor or a talented athlete. For as long as I remember, I've always had a fascination for stories. Whether it was a grand fantasy or a romantic thriller, I had always wanted for my life to be something worth writing about.
In stories, the main characters always live a normal life just like anyone else, until suddenly an unexpected event turns their life upside down. I was eager to see what my "unexpected event" would be like, so I waited. And waited. And kept on waiting until the second year of middle school rolled around, and nothing worth mentioning had happened. At that point, I deduced that if nothing was going to happen on its own, I had to make something happen. I got really into spirituality and and what not. A word got around the school about a boy meditating in the school showers and drawing weird symbols into his notebook. I took this as a good thing and started randomly twitching in the middle of class, acting possessed, and shouting enchantments on top of the monkey bars during break time. If getting friends had been hard before, now it had become borderline impossible. When I entered high school, I made sure to change up my act, thinking that maybe my life was a romance story. So during our first day of high school, I just sat in the corner waiting for someone to talk to me. And a year later, I'm still sitting in the same corner. Waiting.
"Did you find something more interesting than my lecture on your table, Mr. Rome?"
I threw my head up, looking confused around the classroom. I must've dozed off. The entire class had gone dead silent and were leaning on their chairs, looking over their shoulders at me.
"So what did you find?"
The teacher had stopped speaking and was staring daggers through my chest. Damn, what would a main character say right now? Stand up quickly and start stuttering or firing a cool comment at the teacher. I decided in favor of the comment.
"Erm... nothing aside from a few carved dicks."
No one even cracked a smirk.
"Not even a pity chuckle?"
I laughed nervously as I looked around the room, searching for even the tiniest bit of amusement. The teacher stared at me for a moment before opening her mouth.
"I see. Well, if that's the case, I suggest you..."
"They must've been real~ nice to look at, huh? Is there something you aren't telling us, Rome?"
The entire class burst into laughter. The turd who made the comment had become friends with almost the entire school by the first day, and due to that, almost all of his jokes were always met with laughter.
"Erm... Yeah. I mean, no, that wasn't what I meant! I wasn't especially looking at them."
I was the quintessential throwaway character. I lay my head back on the table with the classes increased laughter ringing in my ears. I peeked over my crossed arms at the classroom. Even Ann was laughing. I put my head back down.
"Some main character I am."
As class ended, I saw Ann running up to the turd responsible for my humiliation. So she was on of his fan girls as well huh?
Later in the day, as I was walking home, I thought about what had happened. Ann was a transfer student from some country in Europe and my current crush.
I had always wanted to fall in love and experience dating someone, but the closest thing I had ever come to that was when I got married to a girl during kindergarten as a part of a game. It's not that I'm bad-looking; I've had some girls confess to me in the past. It's just that I've never fallen in love. I've had the occasional crushes here and there, but never anything that lasted or felt genuine. I had spent many nights just laying on my bed, wishing someone would come along and be the one for me.
I turned the corner and started walking along the street in the direction of our house. You could already see it's roof filled with bird feces and whatever other junk had gathered up there over the years, that no one had bothered to clean up. My family had dropped down from middle class to lower middle class due to mom no longer bringing in any money.
As I started walking across the driveway to my house, I saw a trail of what looked like some sort of dark green liquid leading from my dad's parked car all the way to the front door of our house.
I walked up to the liquid and leaned over. Immediately a strong stench filled my nostrils, making me fall back a few meters. I clenched my nose as my eyes started to tear up from the horrible smell. The stench was familiar, although stronger than normal. It was almost unnaturally strong. But there was no doubt that I had smelled it before.
"Blood"
I jumped up from the ground and ran towards our house.
Why was the blood green, and why did it smell so strong?
I pulled open the front door and saw the trail leading all the way upstairs. But why upstairs? There was nothing there aside from...
"Dads office!"
I rushed up the stairs, and sure enough, the trail led directly to my father's office. As I slowly approached the door I suddenly halted right in front of it. I was too afraid to look inside.
My dad hadn't been at his best for the past couple of years. After mom left, he lost the financial support to keep on studying to become a professional biologist and had to abandon his dream to pursue a more stable career as a middle school biology teacher. Ever since he has been locked behind the very same door standing in front of me researching dead animals. Whenever I had something on my mind or I wanted help from my father, he'd just turn me away and get back to his work.
My hand was shaking as I tried to lift it up onto the doorknob. He may not have been the best father, but I still loved him. I don't know what I would do if something had happened to him.
Suddenly the silence was broken by a ear piercing scream.
I snapped back to reality and twisted the doorknob opening the door.
The room was poorly lit, with only a few monitors on the research table giving it some light. The room's floor was filled with dirty clothing and opened cups of instant noodles. In front of the research table was a skinny man with greasy, unwashed brown hair wearing a lab coat, and on his forehead there was a pair of generic green scientist steampunk goggles. The man raised his head and looked at me with strings of noodles coming out of his mouth.
"Oh, hey Rome. Welcome home"