Twenty-Five O'Clock Ch. 1

This is a story of a man who knows little about himself and what he is capable of doing. His name is Simon Magus and he lives in a small suburb of Detroit. He was, at the time, just a normal guy living in a normal town. He attended the local high school and got fairly good grades, at least by his parents' standards.

Simon woke up in the modest suburban home he lived in. The home belonged to his parents, but they were gone a lot of the time so Simon eventually thought of the house as his. It wasn't much to him though being a three-bedroom three-bath house, although this might seem to be a somewhat big home to others. Simon rolled out of bed to get ready to go on with his mundane life as he knew it. He took his usual morning shower and had his usual morning slice of toast and peanut butter no matter how he had burnt the toast was. Simon then went out to the garage and got in his car and drove to school.

Simon was driving his beat up and slightly abused 1989 burgundy Dodge Dynasty. He drove in the right lane of the two-lane highway was the at the north side of the suburban city. This small highway took him all the way from his house to the school he attended. Simon was lazy this way; he usually avoided driving routes that forced him to make many turns or switch roads often. This usually made the car ride longer, but he did not mind the least bit if it took him five minutes or fifty minutes to get anywhere. This was not always good due to the fact that he would often daydream or focus on some point of stress in his life and he would occasionally crash. His crashes never amounted to much, usually a simple "are you alright," and, "I'm fine if you're fine." Although he had numerous car accidents, none of them were ever over five miles an hour and usually in a traffic jam with the people screaming out of their windows with the birdies flying, but this never really bothered Simon. It was just something that happened occasionally and his insurance would suffer a little each time but that didn't bother him too much.

After about ten minutes of driving, Simon thought he was being followed. Every few minutes he would look in his rear-view mirror and see the same large, black Oldsmobile. Simon made a detour down a dark and narrow side street. The olds followed and turned off its lights. It was still early morning and the sun had not yet risen. The olds now blended in with the darkness of the early morning darkness. Simon didn't like the being on such a dark side street and turned back onto the main road. He once again looked into his rearview mirror; only this time he did not see the black Oldsmobile. This was both disturbing and comforting to him. At least he wasn't being followed but it was strange how the creepy black Olds just disappeared on him like that. There really wasn't anywhere for it to go that quickly, and if it had thrown itself into reverse there would probably have been tires squealing or something. But most importantly he wasn't being followed anymore, although he was probably just being paranoid in the first place. Simon figured that he should just continue on to school before he ended up late.

The school that Simon attended was just a typical high school in a suburb. The school was held in a two-story brick building and most of the first floor was partly buried under a hill. The parking lot was a bit small for the population of students that drove. There were also swamps on three of the sides of the parking lot, restricting any expansion to it. A long, curvy service drive linked the parking lot to the road that went to town. Simon pulled into the parking lot about five minutes before class was to start. He quickly got out of his car and locked it. While running toward the school, Simon noticed that same creepy, black Oldsmobile that was following him earlier and it still had its engine running. He looked at his watch and began running to class again.

"Your late Simon," said the teacher as Simon ran into the classroom.

"Sorry," Simon said sitting at a desk in the front of the room, "it won't happen again." The classroom look fairly normal with pictures of Albert Einstein and dusty chalk boards lining three of the four walls. There were also grades posted near the door and any current assignments that were going to be due within the next week. The cinder block walls were painted a yellowy white and the floors were carpeted in green carpeting while the ceiling had white ceiling panels. Four hanging reflector lights and one florescent light in the center of the room lighted the room and the desks were arranged in a grid pattern facing the front board. There were no windows in the room for anyone to look out of because the room was located in the part of the building that was partially buried under the hill.

In this class, which was a sociology class, there was a girl that Simon noticed. Her name was Angela and she sat a few desks over from Simon, and every once and while Simon would catch her looking at him in a creepy way. He didn't think much of it and besides not many women looked at him at all or even acknowledged his existence, so he let it be. He thought that she was particularly cute with her shoulder length blonde hair. She was also fairly smart and was normally a very happy and cheerful person. It was a shame that Simon didn't get to talk with anyone from class to often, but with him working and trying to keep up with all of his studies, it was really difficult. The teacher made the class write a paper on the effects of drugs in the social environment. This was to be an in-class assignment so the rest of the time in class would be spent in silence, but it was just a half-day so there really wasn't much time for the class. After about half an hour the bell rang and the students left the class. The rest of the time at school was spent in pretty much the same fashion, getting to class and sitting down and writing a paragraph or paper on whatever the teacher felt like reading that day.

Simon snuck out of school a little early to get a head start on the traffic trying to get out of the poorly designed school parking lot. He saw the black Oldsmobile again just sitting there with the engine still running. The windows were tinted fairly dark making it almost impossible to see the person driving it or if anyone was even in it. Simon was bothered by this car and the fact that it was probably stalking him, but there was no time for any of this, he had to get home so he could get his homework done and get to work. Simon passed the black car and got into his own. Just as Simon's car pulled out of its parking spot, the black Oldsmobile pulled out and began to follow Simon's car. Simon drove to the end of the service drive and pulled out on to the main road toward town; the black car followed. Feeling a little spooked about the whole situation, even though it might just be his imagination, started to speed up and try to lose the creepy black car. After a few minutes, Simon's car was pushing sixty miles per hour down private residential roads. Simon was zipping around corners at insane speeds causing his tires to skid and screech and make thick black marks on the pavement or dirt.

Some time and over twenty miles later, Simon finally convinced himself he was rid of his chaser, he slowed down to normal speeds and started to head towards work. Driving to work was a short trip from where he eventually calmed down. He pulled into the parking lot of the local department store where he worked. The parking lot where he worked was almost full except for a few near a secluded corner where the parking lot lights were all burnt out and all but forgotten. By this time the sun was setting and Simon was in no mood for having to walk all the way to the store from the far corner of the parking lot, but he didn't see that he really had a choice in the matter. While driving toward the very few open parking spots left, Simon noticed the black Oldsmobile sitting in one of the parking spots that he had just passed.

The engine on the black car was not running and through the heavily tinted windows, which one of the few parking lot lights was shining on the window, he saw the outline of a person. This caused Simon great concern, but he thought the whole thing was probably just in his imagination and went on to parking the car. Simon parked in the most distant spot in the parking lot and let out a deep sighed at the thought of walking all of the way, nearly a quarter mile, just to get yelled at for being late and maybe getting fired. He started walking toward the store. After a few steps he heard a footstep behind him, but before he could turn to see who was there, if anyone was really there, Simon felt a stinging pain in the back of his neck and spread up and down his spine. Then all of the sudden his eyes blacked out and his knees buckled and the last thing he remembered was that he heard a footstep.

Simon woke up disoriented and alarmed. The last thing that he could remember was that he was walking through the parking lot at work and he had heard a footstep. He couldn't remember if anything happened after that. All he could see was the blindfold that was covering his eyes, and all he could feel were the handcuffs that bound his hands. There were some faint sounds that Simon could barely hear, but he knew that these sounds were being made by the person, persons, or whatever that had abducted him. Then all of the sudden, after nearly a half an hour since Simon woke up the sounds went dead and there was complete silence. Nothing. Not a sound. A silence that he thought what space must sound like. Then piercing the silence like a supernova in the thick blackness of space, a thunderous stomp that shook the ceiling and caused most of the dust that had collected there over the years to fall to the ground. There were more loud sounds like the footsteps of a giant.

Simon was very frightened at this point. His palms were sweating along with the rest of his body. All he could do was imagine what the person or creature looked like that was making those thunderous steps while he waited for that thing to eventually find him. He imagined all sorts of creatures and terrors that could possibly await him; everything from a person resembling an evil Andre the Giant to something resembling the Borris Karlof Frankenstein with horns, wings, and long sharp talons. Once again the all sounds stopped and Simon was left in the quiet. Then his worst fear came true, he heard a door open right in front of him. That could only mean one thing to him, the terrible creature of his imagination found him and was going to do some terrible nasty things to him and cause a terrible amount of pain.

As soon as he heard the door open, the footsteps sounded lighter. They had lost their boom and almost seemed soft and agile. This lessened his fear a little, but he his situation wasn't any better with a person that had a lighter step. He still didn't know the intentions of the person that he couldn't see in front of him, or even where he was or when it was. After a few grueling seconds of the sounds of footsteps getting closer and closer, the sound finally stopped once it reached him. Simon was waiting for some nasty demon or at least a drunken lunatic to grab him and hurt him in some way. But this didn't happen.

It was almost worse to not have anything happen. Simon almost wished that something would happen; the waiting was murder to his nerves. Finally, after almost five minutes of waiting in nervous anguish, something did happen. He felt the softest hands brush up against his cheek and slowly move up his face and under the blindfold that restricted his sight. With one swift motion the blindfold was lifted off Simon's head and after a few seconds he could see as clearly as he possibly could without his glasses. His vision was at best fuzzy, even at short distances, but what he could see was what appeared to be a blonde girl.

"Who are you?" Simon asked his kidnapper with a quivering voice. "And where are my glasses?"

"Sorry about that," she said, "the blindfold wouldn't fit over them." After saying this she reached over to a stool that was just to the left of her and picked up the glasses that were setting on them. She continued to unfold the glasses and look through them. The kidnapper put the glasses on Simon and took a step back.

"You?" Simon said with a look of bewilderment on his face. Who he saw was the girl from his sociology class named Angela. He noticed that she was wearing a black dress and the brightest red lipstick. Her hair was fairly short at just a half an inch above her shoulders.

"Yep," she said, "just little old me, and my baseball bat. I was a little worried that you weren't wake up for a while, but now I don't have to worry anymore because you seem to be all right."

"But why did you do this, and what are you planning to do with me?" Simon asked.

"All questions will be answered later," she said smiling, "now you should rest, you had a nasty spill when I hit you with my bat." With that said she patted Simon on the head, did a quick spin, and left the room locking the door behind her.

Simon figured that the room was probably sound proofed to some degree despite being able to hear the footsteps before. He finally looked around the room that he was held captive in. It was a furnished basement but there wasn't much for furniture except for the chair that he was sitting in and a futon in the far corner near the door. He noticed that he was handcuffed to a pipe that was sticking out of the wall opposite of the door. Moments later Angela reentered the room; this time she was wearing an elegant black dress and she left the door to the basement open.

Through the doorway he could see a dark shadow that looked to him like a person. Angela stepped toward Simon producing a syringe from behind her back. Simon struggled with all of his might to break free of his bindings and run from his captor. Despite all of Simon's efforts, Angela got the needle into his arm and he felt a surge of cold under the skin of his arm. Soon Simon's head began to feel light despite his straining efforts to fight whatever drug had been injected into his arm. The room began to spin in his eyes and his eyes were becoming harder and harder to focus. Eventually all went dark and he was once again unconscious.

"Hey, it's time to wake up," said a voice that Simon didn't recognize. The voice was deeper and sounded surer than that of Angela's. Simon had just woken up from his most recent attack. He was still a little groggy from the drugs that were injected into his system and fell asleep soon after waking up. Minutes later Simon's nose was assaulted with the strong smell of smelling salts. With lightening speed, Simon was launched back into consciousness. He found that he was no longer tied up, but that he was free to move. Also, he wasn't in the dark basement but in what looked like a living room lying on a couch. Simon sat up and looked around. He saw a well-furnished room that was well lit and an impressive stereo system sitting in the corner. Angela was sitting in a chair watching everything that was happening in the room. Standing next to Angela was a man that Simon had never seen before.

"Good," said the man, "you are awake."

"See," Angela said, "I told you that he would wake in time."

"In time for what?" Simon asked groggily.

"All will be explained soon, now just get a little rest," Said the man.