I decided to post a story that I'm slowly writing here. It is non-Magic, but not a fanfic...
But does anyone care? This place barely gets posts as it is, and there isn't really anywhere for people to post their original work for people to read or comment on. In fact, I propose turning this sub-forum into a forum for original poetry/fanfics/short stories, for people to post and review other people's!
And now, here it is, chapter one.
I just sort of wrote this in five minutes, I have an idea of many chapters, and the prolonged storyline, but it’s only notes right now, and this is a rough copy…
Disclaimer, this is probably PG-13, or a little bit over, it may have some sexual stuff or mild drug use in it, but not a lot of cursing or obscenities
Chapter One- Alright
Alexander Nox sat in the front of his computer, staring blankly at the blank screen, his reflection so numb and blank that he couldn’t actually see it, it seemed to merge and then fade away into the screen until he was simply looking at darkness.
The keyboard let annoying clacks as he slowly typed at it, a few times, and then turned away, his face twisted in a mysterious look of disgust, his mind flitting back to memories of the past.
The first time he had had sex was at a party close by. In Orange County, the tradition had always been the same for he and the other teenagers. Every weekend, someone’s rich parents would inevitably be out of town, either on vacation ignoring their spoiled children, or on business to provide for their avarice.
So practically every weekend there would be an enormous party that he always joined. And practically every weekend three or four teenagers died because they were driving drunk or had been hit by drunk drivers, it was as constant and dependable as the changing of the seasons…but no one really cared, after all, that couldn’t actually happen to them. It had been at the age of seventeen at one of these parties that he had lost his virginity, for alcohol and sex.
His alcohol tolerance was oddly high, and he always boasted hollowly of it, the fact that while his friends seemed warm at the cheeks and at the heart, slumping around drunkenly, he simply stared at them blankly and tried to fake a smile, feeling absolutely nothing.
That night, he planted himself next to the alcohol cabinet, drinking Courvoisier and tequila, staring expressionlessly at the other children as they danced. It was a vast melting pot of the future bourgeois and hedonists. Although the majority there was Caucasian, anyone that dressed smartly, had a nice car, or looked attractive was allowed in, as long as they knew someone, race aside. Football players, street racers, rappers, writers, cheerleaders, even the traditional nerd, it didn’t really matter as long as you were mildly rich and attractive.
As for Nox at that age, he was vaguely handsome, in that he had the clichéd look of someone dark and mysterious. His skin was tan, and his hair was a shock of attractive black spikes, and there was a dark, shabby goatee at his chin. He was dressed in a drab black jacket and gray shirt, and his eyes seem to at times reflect nothing, as if they were deep pools where one could see their own reflection, but nothing within. And coupled with the fact that his parents were rather wealthy, he was a popular, yet odd part of the popular clique.
He was quite well known in the school for being unique and mysteriously charismatic.
He was rebelling against the fake and the conformant by pretending to be the rebellious advocate against them. He reveled in crushing people’s beliefs although he had none of his own. He was a coward in the end, deep down, but he also believed that everyone around him was as well when it came down to it.
Alex had been a genius, a child prodigy, an artist, a math expert, a scientist, a poet, a novelist, all these things, but had gone from one to the other, slowly losing interest in each, never finishing anything, nothing ever truly making him happy.
He rose from his stool next to the alcohol cabinet, standing shakily and then stumbling forward, his friends laughing and making unintelligible noises over the loud booming music that was enjoyed at that time in history, “hip-hop”. He realized then that he was drunk, or at least rather wasted and let an uneasy smirk cross his face as he made his way down the living room, peering about.
He had noticed that a girl was staring at him, with an odd misty expression across her face. He remembered her name as “Angela”, vaguely, although it could have well as been “Melissa” or “Ashley”, one of the many popular names for white females in Orange County.
She was indeed vaguely attractive, or quite beautiful, he couldn’t tell which. For him, females were more something to use, to use for inspiration for his writing, or to simply treat in the same manner as his friends who happened to be boys. There was nothing further to be done with them.
His glance suddenly fell on another girl his age trotting past him, but it was too discreet for anyone to notice. Melissa Stern, beautiful by all standards and smart as well, she was no supermodel of course, but she had fair hair and a nice face that hinted at a patrician upbringing. Indeed she was simply the latest in a long stream of girls of similar nature and appearance that he had secretly admired, all through elementary school even. He felt his gaze wandering to her long legs, to her kind face, to her blue eyes, and wondered why he was so mesmerized by them. He could come up with simply hundreds of thousands of adjectives to describe them, but no words to explain why he felt this way. They were simple body parts, nothing more, why did he find them so beautiful? How did he even bring up his definition of beautiful? Perhaps this was what he’d been programmed over the years to be mesmerized, by the media, by the people around him. But he supposed that that was how one defined oneself, by the entities and objects around themselves. One of these very entities around him shook his shoulder.
“Hey man, that Ashley over there has her eye on you.”
Alexander sighed and peered over at the girl with the odd look on her face once more, Stern disappearing into some corner of the large house. So her name was Ashley, he knew it was one of the three he had guessed.
Nox shook off the hand on his shoulder and turned around with a lopsided grin. He wasn’t necessarily happy to see Thomas McDonald, 17, but that was just his default face when greeting acquaintances. Usually the look on his face he usually had was a deep scowl, his heavy eyebrows arched as if he was angry. It was also his father, Kevin Nox’s default face, and perhaps that is where he had received it. He always remembered fearing his father as a child; the large man would always have that serious look on his face, even when his mouth was curved in a warm grin.
Thomas started chattering on as they strolled towards the kitchen for more alcohol. The boy always seemed to find something to chatter about that I had never heard of, some obscure video game or Japanese animation, not that the young man in black minded numbing small talk. What really annoyed him was that McDonald actually thought he was capable of doing the things he saw in his shows, and often confided in how he’d like to perform some intricate move in whatever stance wielding some odd exotic weapon and butcher some jock or popular teen.
It wasn’t really that Nox was on the side of the jocks, or on the side of the less popular students like Thomas. He realized now that he had an innate hate for all of them. It was much easier to hate everyone around you than to love everyone.
He felt an utter contempt for people like him, and he felt and utter disgust for people not like him, of course, because of this, he did hate himself. Yet, he knew, as long as his hate for other people was higher than his self-disgust, as long as that simple fact remained, he would endure.
He had no idea what he felt for the people who flocked around him though, often under the guise of acquaintances or “friends”. At his best, he thought them a source of great entertainment and fun, at worst; he thought them something to take advantage of.
The young man waved Thomas away as Nox continued walking, making his way towards Angela (Or was it Ashley?) and gave her a confident smirk.
Twenty minutes later they were engaged in vaguely furious love-making, both naked, both fresh to the world. He lay atop her in the bed, thrusting and shaking, as she made odd grunting noises that seemed to be of pain or perhaps joy, the line between those emotions was so vague those days that it hadn’t mattered.
He had felt like ravishing something beautiful, destroying something beautiful, and that was the primary reason he had joined in on the mating game. He had hoped that the new sensation would give him some great change, ebb the flow of his hormones, or at least make him feel heaven.
Now as he thrust, almost robotically, he felt…alright
It was nothing mind-numbing, it was awkward and disgusting, but it felt…alright.
He stared forward at the mirror in front of him, staring at his emotionless face as he thrusted over and over into the girl below him, her legs wrapped around his back.
His face seemed oddly sad and mournful, but it was more or less his default expression, his face hadn’t really changed since he had begun.
He stared at his reflection, continually robotically making his movements, wondering to himself if the girl below him was growing impatient, he could see by the clock that he had spent an ungodly amount of time inside her, but he wasn’t truly much closer to feeling that unbelievable surge of pleasure that supposedly signaled climax. He had read Kinsey, after all.
He made no sound as he finally came, or he thought he had, he wasn’t exactly sure, he did sort of, and he felt…alright…but he didn’t know if it was done. He could’ve gone on for hours, he didn’t really feel any great change as he came, and he simply thought it was about time to finish.
Nox rolled away from the girl, who was lying, her face warm and red, and perhaps peaceful, her chest rising and falling; he would’ve found it sublimely beautiful if he gave a damn about her.
But he went on to more parties, and more girls, (feeling no love or pleasure in his acts of sex. He realized now that the act of sex was simply to form a memory that seemed better after the act, so one could hold the memory of their past sex act above them and madly strive for another. He also realized now, oddly enough, that he cummed…poetry…He released his imagination into these girls, leaving him drained of imagination and creativity, number than before)and more alcohol and marijuana and more people died, and more and more steps in his “brilliant” education, but it seemed nothing really changed within the bubble of Orange County.
He really didn’t care much about the world, and often asserted that if given the means, he would annihilate it completely without any thought to the contrary. But nothing really changed. He felt…alright. It simply left him with a underlying promise to himself. He was not Alexander Nox, he did not know Alexander Nox. Alexander Nox was something within him, something he would have to take care of and nurture. And one day, he swore, the world would know that name, and know that person, Alexander Nox, that he truly did not know, either in infamy or for greatness, it did not matter.
Alexander Nox turned away, having been fantasizing and reminiscing his past for a good ten minutes, simply staring at a point in the gray wall, silent and not moving. He was twenty years old now, on the way to becoming a successful lawyer, or at least his parents insisted he would be. He had no dreams, no realization of his future, no aspirations, no hope. But that wasn’t the problem.
The problem was…
He leaned back in his chair, baring his teeth manically towards the ceiling and letting out a feverishly deep breath.
Alexander Nox had not slept for over a month.
I hope whoever’s reading this is enjoying it…I have very long and weird plans for this story and this character (and incidentally, for this subforum)…Just keep on reading.
Chapter Two- Mental Dropout
Alexander Nox stared forward as his Physics teacher almost pranced around on the stage in front of the two hundred or so students, playing the part of the “hip”, different teacher, oddly conforming to nonconformists.
The students around him seemed to laugh as the teacher made another horribly corny joke, and Nox actually winced, frowning.
For some reason, whenever others were laughing at something, he felt like crying, but whenever they were in horrible agony or sobbing, he could not control his perverse urges to chuckle and laugh.
He sighed, Nox always did enjoy large auditorium-like classes, they were impersonal, no need for the instructor or classmates to know your name or even talk to you. He remained silent the entire time, his tape recorder resting in his breast pocket, his mind chaotic, wild and rambunctious at once, although his face was unreadable. Occasionally it would twist into some slight smile or smirk, an expression that one would give to an inside joke of sorts, and it inevitably confused the classmates around him, or the one classmate who had actually noticed him.
The classmate was one of the thousands of almost identical (at least to Nox) Caucasian teenage males who enjoyed skateboarding/surfing, listened to rock, drove trucks, and usually wore obnoxious sandals while they made out with their blonde girlfriends.
Nox despised them (well, as a misanthrope, they were no special target of hate), he despised their blind happiness; he hated it when they made personal physical contact in public. It wasn’t that Nox couldn’t find girls willing to initiate in similar activities, he simply found it all disgusting.
Nox could read the mind of the classmate, quite easily, or so he thought, he always characterized and read the thoughts of those around himself, often quite accurately, human behavior was quite predictable (he often feared that some greater power was characterizing and predicting his movements of characterizing and condescending prediction).
The young male seemed to nudge Nox’s right knee by accident with his left knee, and Nox smirked, realizing the test of physical contact. His right knee remained stiff at contact, but unexplainably, his left knee suddenly shook, as if the wave of physical contact had spread through his body and crashed down, finishing at the opposite knee. He truly despised physical contact, especially when he was barely awake.
He blinked, his eyes blurring with fatigue, and suddenly he saw a door open behind the Physics teacher, a door opening up simply out of nothingness. Nox stared at it listlessly, as if such things were to be unexpected, and continued to watch as the eternally angry visage of his father peered out of the open door and then disappeared back in, closing the door, the entire thing shimmering away once more.
His eyes strained to stay open and then stabilized his body fine once more. He hadn’t slept at all last night, or the night before, or the night before, or the night before…months…months felt like years without sleep, and that’s why he enjoyed it…but lately his nights without slept had blurred into waking nightmares and what he defined as psychopathic hallucination (i.e., the people around him, he considered them such). He found that even awake, he could not escape his mind.
Alexander Nox had never really enjoyed sleep.
It was a bane to his existence, although his body obviously needed it. But he hated the idea of sleep, losing so much time to darkness, tomorrow coming so quickly, and leaving himself prone to the horrific nightmares and planning of his alien mind.
He didn’t really know why his mind was against him, he realized he hated himself, but he’d never seen it translated to reality to this extent. To the extent that he was unable to stop his mind from imagining horrible things. What would it be like to jump out in class and shout obscenities? Or have sex with a decrepit old woman? Or Bill Cosby? Or family member? Or pole? Or dog? What would it be like if that serial killer and rapist was in your house right now? What would it be like if he slit your throat? What would-
His mind was full of unimaginably (Hah) horrible things, and he really couldn’t stop himself, or at least his mind. He felt like he was constantly on the brink of actually following his intuition and common sense, since they were both horribly psychopathic and perturbed. But he never did, he didn’t appreciate awkward moments.
So he hadn’t really slept at all that last summer after he had graduated high school. Not much at all. He had simply left his friends in high school, without much goodbye, simply a formal farewell and no exchanging of contact information, he found them redundant by that time, their dates were expired past the healthy date of consumption, and he only kept in contact with them if they initiated the contact.
He vividly remembered his experience on leaving his high school for the final time. The night before he had actually had a few hours of sleep and a good caffeine rush beforehand, so at the moment of educational departure, he was feeling disgustingly (as he would later muse) sympathetic and sentimental.
Alexander Nox strolled through the dirt of his high school yard, peering at the students milling about, and feeling a great divide between him and them. They would remain here and follow the path he had. Nox felt grave as he stared at them passing by, feeling as if he should apologize to them.
‘Sorry for never having spoken to you, for never having gotten to know you.’
His friends would be in the same neighborhood, and he would indeed stay close by.
Nox had all their numbers and knew where they lived, but yet, he still felt an immense sense of loneliness. It would not be the same with them anymore. He was an outside body from the great microcosm known as high school; Nox was someone else now, no matter how similar he appeared, in hedonism and appearance.
But he continued on, his feet light, his body breezy almost in achingly numb heavenly form, occasionally peering back with great remorse at the disappearing school buildings behind him, the tip of the high gym the only thing Nox could make out, as long with the word ‘High’.
Nox turned away, feeling alone and bitter and noticed a young girl passing by him, on the course he was on. He felt disgustingly schmaltzy, but was too overcome to realize his weakness.
He felt like going up to her, speaking with her, seeing if she felt the same way he did about it, yet Nox realized that although all of humanity shared common bonds, they were simply strangers who did not appreciate familiarity, strangers to avoid, to destroy, to use, to despise.
He felt a great, overbearing enormity, a pressure on his body as he approached the gate and the small dirt line that separated the brown dirt of the school from the brown dirt of the path outside it.
Nox realized suddenly that once he past that boundary, he would never be allowed to return, Alexander Nox would never stroll by those buildings, never again, and felt a sense of painful finality in this, overcome by it as he passed the line and stepped out of his school, taking a second to look back, and then turning away and plodding slowly, his head down.
Perhaps Nox had not cherished these days enough, no matter how monotonous, painful, or abrasive, there had been comfortableness in them, in the monotony. Only a year ago he was deep in the oblivion of that high school, with no end in sight, but there was a gray comfort in that. I felt regret…Perhaps he had not been friendly enough, or perhaps he could’ve done this or that, or tricked whoever, or stolen that; regrets are the greater part of a human’s life than the time that could’ve been spent on the things he is regretting.
Alexander slowed by plodding steps and stared up into the heavens for comfort, trying to find solace in the sky, but all he found was a mass, gray, uniform, cloudless universe, that seemed to reflect his soul within.
He had loved (he would later characterize the guilty ‘love’ he felt as simple lust and teenage confusion, love was a paltry farce), hated, ignored, all of these people he would never see again, and indeed Nox felt a sort of hopelessness then, for hate is one with love, as intense, as painful to depart from, all these feelings were singular.
He brooded upon the great feeling of unease inside himself and reached into his pocket as the sound of Pachabel’s Canon in D wafted into his ears. Nox understood now, he understood the odd feelings. A part of his identity had been stripped away, stripped away by time. How many more identities would he gain and lose on his long journey to death? He had been Alexander Nox, high school student; that was his identity, but no longer. Nox knew not the person he was now.
Every other day, when walking home from school, before, he had looked ahead towards the direction of his parent’s large, ominous house, his will stretching towards it, yet now it was oddly different, Nox actually truly felt the aura of his school; he literally felt it, the presence behind him, drawing at him like a magnet as they separated.
Nox did not understand who he was now, who he was then, and felt a numb separation, and then an odd feeling in the back of his head. It felt as if something was being slowly unraveled from him, a part of his mind was being pulled away, and Nox realized that it was a line, a string, that went back to his high school. He could literally feel it, a cord stretching as he walked farther and farther away, and he felt safe, and realized that the memories would always be within him, the cord could stretch indefinitely, he was sure of it. The graying numbness would remain with him, alongside the photographs of his mind.
Alexander Nox was a man only in form, not yet in spirit.
Then suddenly, a simple thought, an urge to run, simple, overbearing, and so he ran as far and as fast as he could, his clothes flapping as he sprinted, body blaring, muscles pumping.
Finally Nox slowed, and felt his body burning, body feet heavy, not of fatigue but of the immense realization that was donning on him. His legs seemed to burn as they felt a year of walking that same path, years of the same monotony had finally taken their toll.
He suddenly felt almost horrifically suffocated and gazed down on his old weathered school jacket, feeling as if it was a reminder of his bond to my past, quickly pulling it off and gazing defiantly at the traffic as it passed by, as if to say,
‘I am Alexander E. Nox! See me now! This is me, this is who I am, you will not get another chance to see me!’
And he smiled when they passed him, realizing the world did not care, and would never care, feeling a fatalistic comfortableness in this.
His hand reached into his pocket once more and Nox’s favorite piece of Wagner blared into his ears, filling him full of vigor as he straightened his back and fascist stomped home.
And so he walked on, under a cold gray sky, swearing that he would fight on with vigor to achieve whatever Alexander Nox wanted.
Unluckily, for the rest of the world, Alexander Nox yearned for the End of all things.
Private Mod Note
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TFEian Empire
Owner of Senori's Soul
Friend of RBS, FFFB, 499, Mythos, House Dimir, Rakdos, and Hyrule.
Dictator of
Wow... That was something alright. Is this based on someone's life or just something you came up with? Personally, i cant find anything to really criticize too much; just some minor spelling/grammer errors. Just a small note: split up the large paragraphs.
Intriquing! An interesting blend of a "hollow man" theme, a splash of Twilight Zone, and a tinge of suspense, is decently crafted into an entertaining read that scares you a bit. Is there any more? However, I actually like it the way it ends, too. (Makes me think he is slowly being converted into a bringer of the Earth's apocalypse by an outside force or something...)
But does anyone care? This place barely gets posts as it is, and there isn't really anywhere for people to post their original work for people to read or comment on. In fact, I propose turning this sub-forum into a forum for original poetry/fanfics/short stories, for people to post and review other people's!
And now, here it is, chapter one.
I just sort of wrote this in five minutes, I have an idea of many chapters, and the prolonged storyline, but it’s only notes right now, and this is a rough copy…
Disclaimer, this is probably PG-13, or a little bit over, it may have some sexual stuff or mild drug use in it, but not a lot of cursing or obscenities
Alexander Nox sat in the front of his computer, staring blankly at the blank screen, his reflection so numb and blank that he couldn’t actually see it, it seemed to merge and then fade away into the screen until he was simply looking at darkness.
The keyboard let annoying clacks as he slowly typed at it, a few times, and then turned away, his face twisted in a mysterious look of disgust, his mind flitting back to memories of the past.
The first time he had had sex was at a party close by. In Orange County, the tradition had always been the same for he and the other teenagers. Every weekend, someone’s rich parents would inevitably be out of town, either on vacation ignoring their spoiled children, or on business to provide for their avarice.
So practically every weekend there would be an enormous party that he always joined. And practically every weekend three or four teenagers died because they were driving drunk or had been hit by drunk drivers, it was as constant and dependable as the changing of the seasons…but no one really cared, after all, that couldn’t actually happen to them. It had been at the age of seventeen at one of these parties that he had lost his virginity, for alcohol and sex.
His alcohol tolerance was oddly high, and he always boasted hollowly of it, the fact that while his friends seemed warm at the cheeks and at the heart, slumping around drunkenly, he simply stared at them blankly and tried to fake a smile, feeling absolutely nothing.
That night, he planted himself next to the alcohol cabinet, drinking Courvoisier and tequila, staring expressionlessly at the other children as they danced. It was a vast melting pot of the future bourgeois and hedonists. Although the majority there was Caucasian, anyone that dressed smartly, had a nice car, or looked attractive was allowed in, as long as they knew someone, race aside. Football players, street racers, rappers, writers, cheerleaders, even the traditional nerd, it didn’t really matter as long as you were mildly rich and attractive.
As for Nox at that age, he was vaguely handsome, in that he had the clichéd look of someone dark and mysterious. His skin was tan, and his hair was a shock of attractive black spikes, and there was a dark, shabby goatee at his chin. He was dressed in a drab black jacket and gray shirt, and his eyes seem to at times reflect nothing, as if they were deep pools where one could see their own reflection, but nothing within. And coupled with the fact that his parents were rather wealthy, he was a popular, yet odd part of the popular clique.
He was quite well known in the school for being unique and mysteriously charismatic.
He was rebelling against the fake and the conformant by pretending to be the rebellious advocate against them. He reveled in crushing people’s beliefs although he had none of his own. He was a coward in the end, deep down, but he also believed that everyone around him was as well when it came down to it.
Alex had been a genius, a child prodigy, an artist, a math expert, a scientist, a poet, a novelist, all these things, but had gone from one to the other, slowly losing interest in each, never finishing anything, nothing ever truly making him happy.
He rose from his stool next to the alcohol cabinet, standing shakily and then stumbling forward, his friends laughing and making unintelligible noises over the loud booming music that was enjoyed at that time in history, “hip-hop”. He realized then that he was drunk, or at least rather wasted and let an uneasy smirk cross his face as he made his way down the living room, peering about.
He had noticed that a girl was staring at him, with an odd misty expression across her face. He remembered her name as “Angela”, vaguely, although it could have well as been “Melissa” or “Ashley”, one of the many popular names for white females in Orange County.
She was indeed vaguely attractive, or quite beautiful, he couldn’t tell which. For him, females were more something to use, to use for inspiration for his writing, or to simply treat in the same manner as his friends who happened to be boys. There was nothing further to be done with them.
His glance suddenly fell on another girl his age trotting past him, but it was too discreet for anyone to notice. Melissa Stern, beautiful by all standards and smart as well, she was no supermodel of course, but she had fair hair and a nice face that hinted at a patrician upbringing. Indeed she was simply the latest in a long stream of girls of similar nature and appearance that he had secretly admired, all through elementary school even. He felt his gaze wandering to her long legs, to her kind face, to her blue eyes, and wondered why he was so mesmerized by them. He could come up with simply hundreds of thousands of adjectives to describe them, but no words to explain why he felt this way. They were simple body parts, nothing more, why did he find them so beautiful? How did he even bring up his definition of beautiful? Perhaps this was what he’d been programmed over the years to be mesmerized, by the media, by the people around him. But he supposed that that was how one defined oneself, by the entities and objects around themselves. One of these very entities around him shook his shoulder.
“Hey man, that Ashley over there has her eye on you.”
Alexander sighed and peered over at the girl with the odd look on her face once more, Stern disappearing into some corner of the large house. So her name was Ashley, he knew it was one of the three he had guessed.
Nox shook off the hand on his shoulder and turned around with a lopsided grin. He wasn’t necessarily happy to see Thomas McDonald, 17, but that was just his default face when greeting acquaintances. Usually the look on his face he usually had was a deep scowl, his heavy eyebrows arched as if he was angry. It was also his father, Kevin Nox’s default face, and perhaps that is where he had received it. He always remembered fearing his father as a child; the large man would always have that serious look on his face, even when his mouth was curved in a warm grin.
Thomas started chattering on as they strolled towards the kitchen for more alcohol. The boy always seemed to find something to chatter about that I had never heard of, some obscure video game or Japanese animation, not that the young man in black minded numbing small talk. What really annoyed him was that McDonald actually thought he was capable of doing the things he saw in his shows, and often confided in how he’d like to perform some intricate move in whatever stance wielding some odd exotic weapon and butcher some jock or popular teen.
It wasn’t really that Nox was on the side of the jocks, or on the side of the less popular students like Thomas. He realized now that he had an innate hate for all of them. It was much easier to hate everyone around you than to love everyone.
He felt an utter contempt for people like him, and he felt and utter disgust for people not like him, of course, because of this, he did hate himself. Yet, he knew, as long as his hate for other people was higher than his self-disgust, as long as that simple fact remained, he would endure.
He had no idea what he felt for the people who flocked around him though, often under the guise of acquaintances or “friends”. At his best, he thought them a source of great entertainment and fun, at worst; he thought them something to take advantage of.
The young man waved Thomas away as Nox continued walking, making his way towards Angela (Or was it Ashley?) and gave her a confident smirk.
Twenty minutes later they were engaged in vaguely furious love-making, both naked, both fresh to the world. He lay atop her in the bed, thrusting and shaking, as she made odd grunting noises that seemed to be of pain or perhaps joy, the line between those emotions was so vague those days that it hadn’t mattered.
He had felt like ravishing something beautiful, destroying something beautiful, and that was the primary reason he had joined in on the mating game. He had hoped that the new sensation would give him some great change, ebb the flow of his hormones, or at least make him feel heaven.
Now as he thrust, almost robotically, he felt…alright
It was nothing mind-numbing, it was awkward and disgusting, but it felt…alright.
He stared forward at the mirror in front of him, staring at his emotionless face as he thrusted over and over into the girl below him, her legs wrapped around his back.
His face seemed oddly sad and mournful, but it was more or less his default expression, his face hadn’t really changed since he had begun.
He stared at his reflection, continually robotically making his movements, wondering to himself if the girl below him was growing impatient, he could see by the clock that he had spent an ungodly amount of time inside her, but he wasn’t truly much closer to feeling that unbelievable surge of pleasure that supposedly signaled climax. He had read Kinsey, after all.
He made no sound as he finally came, or he thought he had, he wasn’t exactly sure, he did sort of, and he felt…alright…but he didn’t know if it was done. He could’ve gone on for hours, he didn’t really feel any great change as he came, and he simply thought it was about time to finish.
Nox rolled away from the girl, who was lying, her face warm and red, and perhaps peaceful, her chest rising and falling; he would’ve found it sublimely beautiful if he gave a damn about her.
But he went on to more parties, and more girls, (feeling no love or pleasure in his acts of sex. He realized now that the act of sex was simply to form a memory that seemed better after the act, so one could hold the memory of their past sex act above them and madly strive for another. He also realized now, oddly enough, that he cummed…poetry…He released his imagination into these girls, leaving him drained of imagination and creativity, number than before)and more alcohol and marijuana and more people died, and more and more steps in his “brilliant” education, but it seemed nothing really changed within the bubble of Orange County.
He really didn’t care much about the world, and often asserted that if given the means, he would annihilate it completely without any thought to the contrary. But nothing really changed. He felt…alright. It simply left him with a underlying promise to himself. He was not Alexander Nox, he did not know Alexander Nox. Alexander Nox was something within him, something he would have to take care of and nurture. And one day, he swore, the world would know that name, and know that person, Alexander Nox, that he truly did not know, either in infamy or for greatness, it did not matter.
Alexander Nox turned away, having been fantasizing and reminiscing his past for a good ten minutes, simply staring at a point in the gray wall, silent and not moving. He was twenty years old now, on the way to becoming a successful lawyer, or at least his parents insisted he would be. He had no dreams, no realization of his future, no aspirations, no hope. But that wasn’t the problem.
The problem was…
He leaned back in his chair, baring his teeth manically towards the ceiling and letting out a feverishly deep breath.
Alexander Nox had not slept for over a month.
Owner of Senori's Soul
Friend of RBS, FFFB, 499, Mythos, House Dimir, Rakdos, and Hyrule.
Dictator of
Chapter Two- Mental Dropout
Alexander Nox stared forward as his Physics teacher almost pranced around on the stage in front of the two hundred or so students, playing the part of the “hip”, different teacher, oddly conforming to nonconformists.
The students around him seemed to laugh as the teacher made another horribly corny joke, and Nox actually winced, frowning.
For some reason, whenever others were laughing at something, he felt like crying, but whenever they were in horrible agony or sobbing, he could not control his perverse urges to chuckle and laugh.
He sighed, Nox always did enjoy large auditorium-like classes, they were impersonal, no need for the instructor or classmates to know your name or even talk to you. He remained silent the entire time, his tape recorder resting in his breast pocket, his mind chaotic, wild and rambunctious at once, although his face was unreadable. Occasionally it would twist into some slight smile or smirk, an expression that one would give to an inside joke of sorts, and it inevitably confused the classmates around him, or the one classmate who had actually noticed him.
The classmate was one of the thousands of almost identical (at least to Nox) Caucasian teenage males who enjoyed skateboarding/surfing, listened to rock, drove trucks, and usually wore obnoxious sandals while they made out with their blonde girlfriends.
Nox despised them (well, as a misanthrope, they were no special target of hate), he despised their blind happiness; he hated it when they made personal physical contact in public. It wasn’t that Nox couldn’t find girls willing to initiate in similar activities, he simply found it all disgusting.
Nox could read the mind of the classmate, quite easily, or so he thought, he always characterized and read the thoughts of those around himself, often quite accurately, human behavior was quite predictable (he often feared that some greater power was characterizing and predicting his movements of characterizing and condescending prediction).
The young male seemed to nudge Nox’s right knee by accident with his left knee, and Nox smirked, realizing the test of physical contact. His right knee remained stiff at contact, but unexplainably, his left knee suddenly shook, as if the wave of physical contact had spread through his body and crashed down, finishing at the opposite knee. He truly despised physical contact, especially when he was barely awake.
He blinked, his eyes blurring with fatigue, and suddenly he saw a door open behind the Physics teacher, a door opening up simply out of nothingness. Nox stared at it listlessly, as if such things were to be unexpected, and continued to watch as the eternally angry visage of his father peered out of the open door and then disappeared back in, closing the door, the entire thing shimmering away once more.
His eyes strained to stay open and then stabilized his body fine once more. He hadn’t slept at all last night, or the night before, or the night before, or the night before…months…months felt like years without sleep, and that’s why he enjoyed it…but lately his nights without slept had blurred into waking nightmares and what he defined as psychopathic hallucination (i.e., the people around him, he considered them such). He found that even awake, he could not escape his mind.
Alexander Nox had never really enjoyed sleep.
It was a bane to his existence, although his body obviously needed it. But he hated the idea of sleep, losing so much time to darkness, tomorrow coming so quickly, and leaving himself prone to the horrific nightmares and planning of his alien mind.
He didn’t really know why his mind was against him, he realized he hated himself, but he’d never seen it translated to reality to this extent. To the extent that he was unable to stop his mind from imagining horrible things. What would it be like to jump out in class and shout obscenities? Or have sex with a decrepit old woman? Or Bill Cosby? Or family member? Or pole? Or dog? What would it be like if that serial killer and rapist was in your house right now? What would it be like if he slit your throat? What would-
His mind was full of unimaginably (Hah) horrible things, and he really couldn’t stop himself, or at least his mind. He felt like he was constantly on the brink of actually following his intuition and common sense, since they were both horribly psychopathic and perturbed. But he never did, he didn’t appreciate awkward moments.
So he hadn’t really slept at all that last summer after he had graduated high school. Not much at all. He had simply left his friends in high school, without much goodbye, simply a formal farewell and no exchanging of contact information, he found them redundant by that time, their dates were expired past the healthy date of consumption, and he only kept in contact with them if they initiated the contact.
He vividly remembered his experience on leaving his high school for the final time. The night before he had actually had a few hours of sleep and a good caffeine rush beforehand, so at the moment of educational departure, he was feeling disgustingly (as he would later muse) sympathetic and sentimental.
Alexander Nox strolled through the dirt of his high school yard, peering at the students milling about, and feeling a great divide between him and them. They would remain here and follow the path he had. Nox felt grave as he stared at them passing by, feeling as if he should apologize to them.
‘Sorry for never having spoken to you, for never having gotten to know you.’
His friends would be in the same neighborhood, and he would indeed stay close by.
Nox had all their numbers and knew where they lived, but yet, he still felt an immense sense of loneliness. It would not be the same with them anymore. He was an outside body from the great microcosm known as high school; Nox was someone else now, no matter how similar he appeared, in hedonism and appearance.
But he continued on, his feet light, his body breezy almost in achingly numb heavenly form, occasionally peering back with great remorse at the disappearing school buildings behind him, the tip of the high gym the only thing Nox could make out, as long with the word ‘High’.
Nox turned away, feeling alone and bitter and noticed a young girl passing by him, on the course he was on. He felt disgustingly schmaltzy, but was too overcome to realize his weakness.
He felt like going up to her, speaking with her, seeing if she felt the same way he did about it, yet Nox realized that although all of humanity shared common bonds, they were simply strangers who did not appreciate familiarity, strangers to avoid, to destroy, to use, to despise.
He felt a great, overbearing enormity, a pressure on his body as he approached the gate and the small dirt line that separated the brown dirt of the school from the brown dirt of the path outside it.
Nox realized suddenly that once he past that boundary, he would never be allowed to return, Alexander Nox would never stroll by those buildings, never again, and felt a sense of painful finality in this, overcome by it as he passed the line and stepped out of his school, taking a second to look back, and then turning away and plodding slowly, his head down.
Perhaps Nox had not cherished these days enough, no matter how monotonous, painful, or abrasive, there had been comfortableness in them, in the monotony. Only a year ago he was deep in the oblivion of that high school, with no end in sight, but there was a gray comfort in that. I felt regret…Perhaps he had not been friendly enough, or perhaps he could’ve done this or that, or tricked whoever, or stolen that; regrets are the greater part of a human’s life than the time that could’ve been spent on the things he is regretting.
Alexander slowed by plodding steps and stared up into the heavens for comfort, trying to find solace in the sky, but all he found was a mass, gray, uniform, cloudless universe, that seemed to reflect his soul within.
He had loved (he would later characterize the guilty ‘love’ he felt as simple lust and teenage confusion, love was a paltry farce), hated, ignored, all of these people he would never see again, and indeed Nox felt a sort of hopelessness then, for hate is one with love, as intense, as painful to depart from, all these feelings were singular.
He brooded upon the great feeling of unease inside himself and reached into his pocket as the sound of Pachabel’s Canon in D wafted into his ears. Nox understood now, he understood the odd feelings. A part of his identity had been stripped away, stripped away by time. How many more identities would he gain and lose on his long journey to death? He had been Alexander Nox, high school student; that was his identity, but no longer. Nox knew not the person he was now.
Every other day, when walking home from school, before, he had looked ahead towards the direction of his parent’s large, ominous house, his will stretching towards it, yet now it was oddly different, Nox actually truly felt the aura of his school; he literally felt it, the presence behind him, drawing at him like a magnet as they separated.
Nox did not understand who he was now, who he was then, and felt a numb separation, and then an odd feeling in the back of his head. It felt as if something was being slowly unraveled from him, a part of his mind was being pulled away, and Nox realized that it was a line, a string, that went back to his high school. He could literally feel it, a cord stretching as he walked farther and farther away, and he felt safe, and realized that the memories would always be within him, the cord could stretch indefinitely, he was sure of it. The graying numbness would remain with him, alongside the photographs of his mind.
Alexander Nox was a man only in form, not yet in spirit.
Then suddenly, a simple thought, an urge to run, simple, overbearing, and so he ran as far and as fast as he could, his clothes flapping as he sprinted, body blaring, muscles pumping.
Finally Nox slowed, and felt his body burning, body feet heavy, not of fatigue but of the immense realization that was donning on him. His legs seemed to burn as they felt a year of walking that same path, years of the same monotony had finally taken their toll.
He suddenly felt almost horrifically suffocated and gazed down on his old weathered school jacket, feeling as if it was a reminder of his bond to my past, quickly pulling it off and gazing defiantly at the traffic as it passed by, as if to say,
‘I am Alexander E. Nox! See me now! This is me, this is who I am, you will not get another chance to see me!’
And he smiled when they passed him, realizing the world did not care, and would never care, feeling a fatalistic comfortableness in this.
His hand reached into his pocket once more and Nox’s favorite piece of Wagner blared into his ears, filling him full of vigor as he straightened his back and fascist stomped home.
And so he walked on, under a cold gray sky, swearing that he would fight on with vigor to achieve whatever Alexander Nox wanted.
Unluckily, for the rest of the world, Alexander Nox yearned for the End of all things.
Owner of Senori's Soul
Friend of RBS, FFFB, 499, Mythos, House Dimir, Rakdos, and Hyrule.
Dictator of
Keep it up; i want to read more.
Nice job.
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