A Hero's Beginnings
Narrative
Thin, spidery fingers hold up a piece of paper to cover the disapproving eyes of a stern woman. “Student council president at school, 5 AP classes, and a 4.0 GPA. Quite an impressive curriculum vitae for a high school Junior,” she says unsmiling. “Well it’s getting late and I have other business to attend to. This should conclude our interview. Congratulations,” she says, rising quickly from her chair. “Good luck with your internship.”
“Thank you so much Stacy,” replies Luna, extending a hand.
Stacy ignores her entirely and leads her out of the room. “I trust you remember the way back?”
“Actually I-“ Before Luna could ask whether the way out was left or right, the clicking of Stacy’s heels had already faded into the end of a dark hall. Luna looks around in dismay. It was much darker than she remembered. Seriously, was it right or left? “Oh crap, my bag!” She turns back and presses her face to the glass window by the door to peek through the room. Her bag was under the table, but the door was already locked.
At the left side of the hall were several heavyset doors. At the right was the shadowy darkness that Stacy had disappeared into. I should probably look for her and ask for help, thought Luna. Right it is. As Luna approaches the end of the hallway, she notices a whirring sound growing louder and louder. Finally, she reaches a dead end. A door is left ajar on her right, and the sound is so strong now that she feels the ground reverberating slightly against her feet. With a tremulous hand, Luna very quietly presses the door open.
At the center of the room is a large, round platform circumscribed by lights that fade in and out. Stacy is nowhere to be seen, but there are no other doors to lead out of the room. Making her way deeper into the room, she notices a glowing light behind her. The whirring sound she was hearing came from a cone-shaped machine with an orb end pointed towards the platform. Luna bends forward to take a closer look.
As soon as she looks into the eye of the orb, a ray of light bursts forth and ripples through her body, throwing her several feet into the air and onto the platform. “What the hell is this place?” Luna hastily makes for the door. “Forget the bag. I’ll come back for it tomorrow.”
Luna rubs her temples as she closes the front door behind her. “I’m home!” she calls out, knowing her parents might still be at work.
“Well it’s about time!”
Turning, Luna sees her dog Daisy run towards her with a wagging tail. “Is someone here?”
“Come on and feed me, human. I’m fucking starving, man.” Luna blinks several times in disbelief, then pales when she slowly realizes that the voice was coming from Daisy. Dumbfounded, she takes a few dizzied steps back while Daisy gets on her feet.
“Can you understand me?” Daisy asks in a deep, rugged voice. Luna falls back and shrieks. “Holy FUCK, you can hear me!”
Shaking her head vigorously, Luna crawls backwards towards the staircase and holds onto the rail for dear life. “No no no no. I must have had one too many cups of coffee this morning.” She stands and heads for her bedroom, ignoring Daisy who is following closely behind her. “I’m going to lie down. I’m going to close my eyes until this headache goes away. And I’m going to wake up.”
Luna lies down on the bed and covers her face with an arm. Daisy sits on the floor and looks up at her. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but you gotta admit this is some cool shit.”
Luna looks at Daisy closely, at the pink ribbon on her curled hair, and her soft puppy eyes. “What you looking at?” Daisy asks in a gruff masculine voice. Luna groans and turns her back. “Go away.”
“No. This is like that rom-com with Mel Gibson where the girl can only hear men’s thoughts. Or are you like Eliza Thornberry who can only talk to animals?”
“Oh my god, how do you even know these things?”
Daisy hops on a stool and leaps onto the foot of the bed. “What do you think I do all day, chase squirrels? What if you can fly? We have to test your powers!”
Luna sits up, looking interested by skeptical. “Okay, but how?”
“I’ve got just the thing...” Nearly thirty minutes later, the doorbell rings. A pizza delivery man is holding two boxes and waiting patiently at the door. Luna hands over a few bills from her pocket.
Lousy tip. Luna’s jaw drops upon hearing his thoughts, half-perturbed and half in shock. Noticing the change in her expression, Daisy leaps forward and barks viscously. “Bark bark, bitch!”
The boxes of pizza spill from his hands. Oh shit, stupid dog! “I’m so sorry—”
“It’s alright, just leave it,” Luna says, taking the boxes of pizza and shutting the door quickly behind her. She looks curiously down at Daisy who returns her gaze.
With a smile she says, “I...can hear people’s thoughts.”
“Fuck yeahhhh! So it’s more like Jean Gray from the X-Men.”
Walking slowly away, Luna holds her head with one hand and places the pizza on a coffee table before lying on the couch. “I can’t believe this is happening.” She pulls her phone from her back pocket and holds it up to unlock the screen. Before she could tighten her grip, the phone slips. Luna winces, waiting for the impact on her face, but it didn’t come.
“HOLY FUCK,” exclaims Daisy. Opening her eyes, Luna sees the phone suspended in the air. This cannot be happening, she thinks as she waves a hand around the phone. Right before she could touch it, the phone falls smack down onto her face. “Ah!”
“You have telepathy too?! It just keeps getting better and better.” Luna rubs her nose. She shakes her head and with a smile tells Daisy, “Apparently so.”
The next day, Luna stands waiting in Stacy’s office. Stacy is scribbling on a piece of paper before she looks up and raises one brow disapprovingly. “Did you need something?”
“Hi, um, sorry to bother you. I left my bag in the interview room last night.”
Stacy grabs several stacks of papers with a fixed stare then heads towards the door. “Don’t touch anything. You can wait outside. Someone will be here in a few minutes to let you in.” She leaves Luna alone in the room.
“Okay...” Just as Luna is turning to leave, a folder falls off the desk. She reaches down to collect the pages and puts them back inside the folder but notices her parents’ name at the top of one of the pages. Inside the folder is a letter addressed to the company about arms dealing and money extortion. She flips the page, and the next sheet is a list of weapons and buyers. Next to each name is the word “exterminated” followed by a price ranging in the tens of thousands.
“What—” Luna hears voices outside of the office and she jumps, heart pounding loudly in her chest. She nervously takes the papers and folds them into her jacket pocket. What you are guys up to, she asks herself. I’m going to find out and stop this.
Genre Sample
“it’s been a couple days since the incident but I’m finally starting to get over the headache and eye strain from the flash. I haven’t been feeling like myself recently but I’m glad I can finally go back to normal.”, Luna thought. “Oh shoot what time is it? 8 o’clock already? There’s no way I’ll be able to finish my school work and still have time to go pick up dinner. Lucky for me there is still good old uber eats. I’ll just order a pizza and get to work” as she jumped into bed she pulled out her phone and opened the uber eats app. She just finished the order when Luna realized just how tired she was. She starts to feel herself falling asleep when she came to the quick realization that she had in fact just dropped her phone with it above her face. Watching the phone start to fall in seemingly slow motion, Luna acts out of instinct and covers her face and braces for impact. After a second of waiting, she opens her eyes and sees through her fingers that her phone is just floating there above her. She slowly moves to move her hands away to fully see the magical anomaly that is taking place right in front of her. She starts to look around the room and see if anything could be causing it. She then waves her hands around the phone to see if there are in invisible strings. “this can’t be really happening “,she thought,” This must be a dream”. She thought to pinch herself and just as she places her fingers on her arm, her phone comes crashing down and lands right on her face. “really? Of course that would happen to me, but what was going on? Did I do that?” She starts to look around and she sees her dog daisy standing by her food bowl judgingly looking at her. Luna gets up and pours a cup of the dog food daisy has been eating for the most of her life into her flower rimmed pink food bowl. As she turns around she hears in a loud deep voice, “This shit again? Every damn day it’s this shitty food, I swear one day I’m going to run away!” Luna looks around the room and tries to figure out where the voice came from, she looks at daisy and says, “daisy? Was that you?” Daisy looks at Luna and says, ”Holy shit did you just hear me?” “Yeah... I think I did...” “Now that you can hear me will you buy me some different food? I can’t eat this shit anymore” “noted, I’ll um buy a different bag tomorrow on my way from school” “Thank god”.