He entered the correct hallway at the pre-designated time, wondering if Marissa would truly be there and fully expecting her not to be. This is when he received his next pleasant surprise—or so he thought--when he found her standing outside the entrance to the gym with a wide beam on her attractive face. He noticed that she had since dispensed with the long-sleeved shirt she wore during the school day and was now clad in a more casual but very enticing tank top that fit her petite body quite snuggly, while baring two inches of her midriff in the process.
Unable to suppress a smile, Benny couldn’t help being both ecstatic and incredulous. Wow, is this really happening? To me, of all people? Should I maybe pinch myself, to make sure this isn’t another of my daytime fantasies where she is my passionate co-star?
“Hi, Benny,” she said in the soft, slightly squeaky voice that he found so appealing. “I’m glad you made it. I was getting a bit worried that you stood me up.”
“I would never do that,” he insisted. “I’m glad you waited for me.”
“Of course, I did. Believe me, I wouldn’t miss this.”
She then quietly walked into the entrance of the gym, and he eagerly followed her. He now allowed himself further hope that the Fates and other cosmic powers of the universe had decided to give him the karmic equivalent of an income tax return.
As he entered the room, he saw her standing there and smiling at him in all her lovely glory. Her gleaming expression seemed designed to ease him into putting any remaining fears of fully entering the gymnasium completely behind. It worked, and he did just that.
No sooner had he walked in and approached her than he was startled when Mickey Judge suddenly rushed out of the side door leading into Mr. Robin’s office, grabbed him, and dragged him inside the boys’ locker room with a single strong pull of his athletically-honed musculature. Inside the locker room stood Jeff Wolfe, who wore a vicious sneer as he stepped in front of the door to block a possible exit attempt by their target.
A second later, Jeff opened the door to allow Marissa to enter the usually off-limits-to-girls room, as she was eager to see what was about to take place. This was agreed upon in exchange for her essential part in the scheme.
“Hi, Benny-boy,” was Jeff’s mock salutation to Benny, rendered in an obviously poisonous tone.
“What the hell?” Benny shouted in a combination of shock and horror as reality cruelly crashed down upon him with the force of a wrecking ball. He then turned to the still smiling Marissa. “You set me up, didn’t you?”
“Duh!” she said in response. “Someone give the faggot a gold star!”
“How could you do that?” he asked her in a stammering fashion that reflected his horrific disillusionment.
Her pretty features took on a menacing expression. “Um, maybe ‘cause I hate you? Could that be it? Use what little brains you have, freak!”
“You bitch!” he hollered back.
Mickey responded by grabbing the less athletically built Benny and slamming him hard against the concrete wall. “Don’t you ever talk to her like that! You hear me?”
Benny turned towards the girl whom he now felt incredibly foolish for trusting. “I’ll kill you!”
Marissa extended her middle finger to him and calmly replied, “Fuck. You.”
Mickey then expanded upon that reply by kicking Benny in his gut, causing him to gasp and fall to the floor. “I told you not to talk to her like that! You’re the one that’s gonna be dead, you little punk!”
Benny found that he could take no more, and he screamed in rage as he rushed towards Mickey and punched him clear in the nose. The athlete’s head snapped back upon the impact, but he stood his ground. He then felt a trickle of blood flow out of his left nostril.
“Damn, he made you bleed, Mickey!” Jeff observed aloud.
With a look of pure evil taking over his usually Adonis-like visage, Mickey retaliated with a punch to Benny’s face that sent the shorter boy back up against the wall, followed by a blow to his stomach that brought him down to the floor. Benny spit a stream of blood from his mouth and looked up to see Mickey standing over him with the same expression of abhorring antipathy.
He extended his index finger towards Benny’s face and told him, “I hate you.”
Forcing himself to his feet again while still consumed by his rage, Benny lunged towards Mickey, swinging at him with a stream of vicious punches. His bigger and stronger tormenter was quick to retaliate with an equal degree of aplomb, and a vicious fight began.
“Smash him, Mickey!” Marissa screamed.
After several moments of furious mutual pummeling, Benny was clearly receiving the worst of it, having his lip split wide open and the right side of his face swollen. He was soon knocked back into the wall by a particularly strong blow. Mickey then kicked the object of his wrath hard in the chest. His smaller opponent quickly fell to the floor again.
“Jeff, grab his arms!” Mickey hollered to his friend and accomplice. “Hold him! I’m gonna give him a nutcracker!”
“Yeah, crush the family jewels!” Jeff shouted back as he leapt upon Benny and held his arms in as tight a grip as he could muster.
Benny began struggling and kicking wildly, doing all he could to prevent the very painful assault that Mickey was determined to inflict upon his anatomy. He continued to let his fury flow through him like lava erupting from the maw of a volcano, and he managed to hold Mickey at bay for several seconds.
“I told you to hold him!” Mickey yelled.
“I am, man, but he’s struggling like a mad dog!” Jeff replied. “Hurry and give his lower bits the treatment!”
“Do it!” Marissa shouted as she ran forward and stomped her foot down on Benny’s stomach as hard as she could. This painful move caused him to gasp intensely as the wind was forced out of his lungs.
But as Mickey then ran forward to deliver the planned punishment, Benny suddenly summoned the will to kick forward with his right leg, striking his aggressor exactly where the athlete intended to hit him. The tall sportsperson winced in pain, involuntarily clasped his hands over his throbbing extremities, and fell back against the opposite wall.
The still raging young boy then bit as deeply into Jeff’s right hand as he could, causing the larger youth to bellow in pain and release his grip. The young athlete looked at the bite indentations in his skin and turned back to Benny.
“You are so dead, you little punk!” Jeff shouted.
Realizing that his rage, no matter how great, could not bring him a victory in this situation, Benny ran towards the door with Jeff in pursuit.
“Get ‘im!” Marissa yelled to Jeff as she tended to Mickey.
“I’m okay, I’m gonna kill him!” the recovering Mickey spat as he likewise took off after their fleeing target.
Benny knew he wasn’t likely to outrun his faster pursuers, but somehow the realization of what he would receive if the two champion hockey players caught him filled the boy with sufficient adrenalin to enable him to swiftly clear the corridor. Benny shouted like a banshee in agony to attract any possible attention to his plight by the remaining school security guards and custodians as he fled in desperation. Upon turning another corridor, he nearly ran into Daniel Woody, a security guard and good friend of Mickey and Jeff, standing there.
Woody grabbed the angst-ridden boy by the arm before he could rush past him. “Hey! What’s going on here? Why are you still in the building? Dismissal for the day was a while ago.”
Seconds afterwards, Jeff rushed around the corner, followed within moments by Mickey. “We were just chasing him out of here, Dan… Mr. Woody. We have hockey practice, and he came back there to bug Marissa.”
Benny gritted his teeth, the fury still coursing through him like a vat of highly corrosive acid. “You are so full of…!”
“Enough!” Woody yelled at Benny while shaking him harshly. “Get out of the building, and don’t let me catch you causing trouble here after closing time again! Got that?”
Mickey looked Benny straight in the eyes, the glare of pure unadulterated mental bile pouring from his expression like a wave of streaming solar particles from the Sun. The tall athlete then clearly lip-synched the word “Monday” to Benny, the meaning being immediately evident.
Benny promptly pulled away from Woody’s firm grip once it relaxed a bit and rushed out of the building as ordered.
His mind was filled with thoughts of revenge and hatred, with as many of those ill feelings directed at his own person as against his three tormenters. He silently cursed the Fates for their cruelest act against him yet. And in a lifelong series of cruel events, that’s saying something, he mused to himself sadly as he rushed down the streets of Buffalo’s East Side, with no heed for what direction he was heading.
Chapter 3: Cosmic Intervention and Warped Perceptions
Benny was unable to recall how many hours had passed since he fled the school. His mind was in a state of complete turmoil, his perceptions blinded by a burning rage. All he knew is that he didn’t want to return home in this state of mind. That carried the risk of having his grandfather tell him yet again that he completely deserved the treatment routinely meted out to him by his peers. The fact that he believed there was actually some validity to this opinion only increased his searing sense of torment.
Considering the season of the year, the hours of daylight were waning by the time Benny realized he had wandered into the Marina, several miles from his home. He hadn’t bothered to send a text to Craig, as he had no inclination to talk to anyone. No other soul was out and about, and the boats tethered to the docks sat quietly on the calm surface of Lake Erie, the moonlight casting a shimmering gleam over the water. The entire area appeared strangely silent as he dropped to his knees and leaned his shoulder against an abandoned SUV which was parked on the grass a few hundred yards from the docks.
The rusty decay of the vehicle’s metal husk appeared to match the mood now pervading Benny’s battered mind. It truly seemed like appropriate company for the troubled young man as the internal rage and tumult continued to boil within his psyche like a bowl of water in a microwave oven. He pounded on the chafed door of the SUV several times with both fists to vent his anger but succeeded in doing nothing more than to inflict stinging pain on his knuckles. The vehicle may have been well past its prime, but the metal plating was still quite strong, and it would not yield to the pitiful blows of any mere human.
Seeing the futility of venting in this manner, the young man fell to his knees and continued to pound ineffectually on the old vehicle’s door; eventually, his hands began to swell as if stung by a swarm of bees.
It was after several interminable minutes of this that it happened. This would be the moment he would forever remember as having changed everything. Not only his own life, but the destiny of the entire world.
The end of all that Benny knew before began when the eerie silence, initially broken only by his pain-wracked sobbing, was suddenly interrupted by something else.
It first made its presence known to him as a bright whitish-blue flash of light that he caught in the corner of his tear-soaked eye. It was intense enough that it caused him to remove his face from where it was buried in his hands and look up into the star-flecked heavens. He then noticed that the entire surface of the night sky was ablaze with that light. It appeared to flare with a level of candela that outshined the Sun on the brightest day, yet it didn’t cause any retinal discomfort. Instead, it seemed to evoke a powerful tingling sensation that appeared to permeate his entire body on a cellular and even sub-atomic level.
The English language—or any other lingual tongue known to humanity—lacked the capacity to readily express what Benny had begun to experience. All he could say was that the light grew increasingly bright with each passing second, and the sensation of being somehow ‘altered’ in a fundamental manner increased exponentially along with it. His mindscape was filled with a kaleidoscope of imagery that he would likewise find exceedingly difficult to describe. The closest he could come to that would be to say that he saw myriad worlds, levels of reality, and beings that even his creative mind could scarcely imagine.
These images appeared to coalesce into what his perceptions roughly translated as a huge triangular construct decorated with flashing star-like lights, all emanating from what appeared to be a series of glass-covered portholes. It had a metallic sheen to its surface that possessed far greater luster than the dull rusted casing of the SUV he leaned against. The construct appeared to hover miles into the sky yet was large enough to take up the bulk of his visual range. A deep whining sound appeared to be emitted by the construct, and it seemed to be attempting to penetrate into his mind as if it was guided by some nigh-incomprehensible intelligence.
Finally, the construct began to vibrate oddly and was soon joined by two other equally large triangular constructs, which intersected each other at distinct angles to form a triad. The three interconnected constructs then seemed to shatter, only to be replaced by what seemed to be the imposing countenance of a man with a flowing mane of cloud gray hair and a long beard of the same color; the face lacked one of its eyes, the empty socket covered by a patch. The face evoked a sense of vastly powerful authority and majesty.
The visage appeared to project information and imagery directly into every aspect of his mind at once, as if he was subjected to a forced download of what he could only describe as ‘cosmic gigabytes.’ The face appeared to say words in a thunderous voice: “Know this. The time has come. All must change. All must grow. All must evolve! You and everything! Harbingers of the new way are needed!”
The young man could swear that for a brief moment the mien of a beautiful, flaxen-haired young woman appeared in place of the terrifying older man’s face, offering a reassuring smile that greatly contrasted with the male face which preceded hers. He couldn’t be certain, however, as the male visage seemed to reappear so quickly.
He couldn’t make sense of the reverberating message, but it bore so deeply into his mind alongside a salvo of unidentifiable symbols that he held his hands to his head and screamed. It was too much for a mere mortal of limited mental acuity to handle. Benny Lonero’s poor little mind was overwhelmed, and the sound of his agonized scream seemed obfuscated by the whining begun by the first construct, which seemed to interpenetrate every part of the universe.
Then… it was over.
***
How long the entire experience lasted, Benny was unable to discern. He was well aware that it wasn’t his imagination, because as he recovered, he could see the last vestiges of the amazing bluish-white light fading into the normal blackness of the sky. It was akin to the sight of the glare from a light bulb quickly fading as its coils shorted out. Further, the tingling sensation which felt as if it encompassed every atom of his body remained, though not as intense as before.
He could barely recall any of the imagery he saw, as if it was too much for his conscious mind to process. But both the intersecting triangular constructs and the imposing male visage remained superimposed in his thoughts like a dream too intense to forget upon waking, or an afterimage burned onto a computer or television monitor.
The normal sounds of the evening had commenced again, as if some mysterious cosmic ‘pause’ button which caused the previous unnatural silence was now turned off, and ‘play’ had been re-started. He felt a constant surge of energy in his body that was extremely euphoric, as if he were being electrocuted in a way that empowered him rather than causing any pain or discomfort.
Variations of one overriding question were foremost in his mind. What the hell happened? What did that… light… do to me? I feel… well, incredible. Invincible.
Benny found himself able to cast aside his fiery rage, if only momentarily, to stand up and take full measure of the changes he could sense having undergone on a fundamental level. He glanced at his clenched fist, which he felt charged with pulsating energy. Turning around, he resolved to both test his newfound mettle and vent his anger
by summoning the courage to punch the strong metal side of the SUV with all his might.
As it turned out, his new level of might proved to be immense. That single punch caused the side of the car to completely cave in, as if struck by the type of battering ram used by law enforcement officers to smash open a heavily bolted door. In fact, the metal of the vehicle had crumpled inwards like a wad of crushed tinfoil. Further, the boy’s knuckles barely felt any pain at the impact.
Incredible, he thought to himself. I mean, totally incredible! I can’t believe this has happened. I’m not sure if my strength is on the level of that Prometheus dude, let alone Ultimus, but it’s way up there! More than the strength of any human being who isn’t, well… metahuman.
He then reached his hands under the SUV, gripped its metal rim tightly, and casually lifted it over. It took but a minute amount of effort to accomplish this. And though he was no expert on vehicles, he knew that SUV weighed well over two tons.
“Un-freakin’-believable,” he whispered aloud to himself. “Benny, you just hit the greatest jackpot in the world. Nobody is going to mess with you again.” The fact that he wasn’t quite the only metahuman in the world then occurred to him, as such beings seemed to be appearing across the expanse of the planet in notable numbers over the past few years. “Well, most people won’t, anyway, and no one without the risk of getting back whatever they dish out.”
I just… so can’t believe this. I have to know this isn’t just part of some weird dream caused by that flash of light. I mean, I know I could have just gone nuts because I finally went through too much at school today. But, the thing is, I read about other strange events over the past few years happening right after some weird flash of light. So, this might be real. It just has to be! Please, God, don’t make me ‘wake up’ and find out it’s not real!
Centurion- Dark Genesis Page 4