I promised  I would showcase another main character in my upcoming first Fantasy Novel I am currently working on, called the – “The Fourth World“.

This character’s name is Calvin.  He will actually be the first character to be introduced in my Novel in the first two chapters.  I must stress  that he is not THEE character…there is no THEE character.  He is no Harry Potter, he is no Bilbo Baggins or Frodo,  the world will not soley rest on his shoulders but it will rest.

You met Ivy last week.  Now meet Calvin…and remember all these characters and the story itself  are a work in a progress, to be changed as the winds change in their mysterious paths around the Earth. Next week, I will introduce you to another character, Omar, to wrap up my main characters intros.

Enjoy.

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Calvin had always believed in magic. He didn’t care what anyone else thought. They could doubt all they wanted. There was a hidden world which we could not see sitting right in front of our faces, most everyone was too busy, too blind, or too stupid to see it. Calvin saw it in the trees as the distant winds kissed the leaves which flew through it’s branches. He spied it dancing in the fire amidst the embers at night; little tiny sprites hopping from log to log amidst the flames playing a game of tag. He smelled it in a wild rose growing in a crowded field of jostling weeds flinging its pheromones to attract the butterflies to alight upon its silken petals. He heard it in the babbling brook as the water played upon the rocks behind his home whispering to the frogs as it traveled on downriver. He felt it in the rough stone he caressed in the palm of his hand; an ancient power from ages past unearthed from the deep bowels of the earth from the crumblings of a mighty stone titan long dead. It was everywhere if you would only choose to see. The magic spoke to him because he chose to listen and he almost understood what it is saying…

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Chapter 1 – Reality Sets In

         Calvin tasted the blood that trickled down to his upper lip  which flowed from his nose. It had a sweet metallic taste. He liked the taste of his own blood. Calvin wasn’t a weird person don’t get him wrong, he wasn’t not into to that kind of stuff.  He just liked to sometimes pretend that he was Conan the Barbarian backed up against a wall, and that he was fighting an angry horde of ghoulish creatures hell bent on gutting him like a fish and eating his entrails as he watched. With sword in hand he would hack and slash, limbs would  fly. He would be scratched all to hell and bleeding from a dozen different wounds and smiling insanely because this could be his last day alive so why not go out smiling like a true warrior would upon meeting his death well met in battle. Yeah, he liked to have his mind go to places like that rather than be anywhere than where he was right now.

“Hold him down dammit he’s a squirmer! Fucking idiot, you see what he did to Omar? He’s crazy man!” Omar had it coming, Calvin told myself as he lay on the ground struggling under two other boys who each probably outweighed him by a hundred pounds.  They wouldn’t have caught him if one of the bystanders hadn’t tripped him while he was trying to get away. Trying to get away, besides talk bullshit, that’s all he ever did, until now.

Calvin was not a violent person, but he would admit, it had felt pretty good to see the plastic lunch tray connect solidly against the side of Omar’s head and watch him go down in a daze, not to mention the stunned looks of his buddies who were now holding him down who had put Omar up to flipping his lunch tray to the ground as he had walked on by. It was classic man, just classic.

“What the hell are you smiling about you sick bastard. I am so gonna end you, just wait. I always knew you were a weird little fucker. That’s why you don’t have any friends.”

Aah, Jake the jerk off, as Calvin liked to call him, a man, or boy better yet, of not many words. He guessed Jake’s dad couldn’t buy him a vocabulary to stuff inside that brain of his. His dad was more the type that likely bought him a good weight set and a big box of protein bars cuz he was crushing the hell out of Calvin’s left shoulder with his knees as he lay there on the ground.

“Get the fuck off me!” he yelled at them while his face was being pressed firmly into the dirt. He might as well have been yelling at the moon for all the good it did.  He was a punching bag to them. A distraction out of there boring day of the life they called school. He provided a service to them he guessed. They needed a reason to feel special while they were here.  Everyone wanted to feel special.

“Hey watch this Neil.” Jake said to the other kid that was holding Calvin. It was amazing, but Neil was actually more stupid than Jake was. The Smithsonian would have been really pleased to know a Neanderthal was still walking the earth. Neil had a prominent forehead, a squashed face which held a perpetually dull look, and knuckles that dragged the ground as he walked almost upright. He would have look great stuffed and mounted. It was a wonder he could tie his own shoes.  Oh wait, was that Velcro for laces instead? Calvin had a pretty good view at Neil’s feet at this particular time so he had a plenty of time to check them out.

“Whut?” Said Neil responding dumbly to him as Jake bent down close to Calvin’s ear. Then he heard it, the long drawing in sound of phlegm back into the throat.

It landed with a splat on the top of his forehead and traveled like a river down into his right eye blinding him and causing him to lose it entirely. Calvin thrashed and heaved and went into what he liked to call his insane berserker barbarian rage. This had little effect, but it did cause Jake to fall off from kneeling on Calvin’s back which eased some of the pain he had been feeling. He would take what he could get.

Calvin realized in that instance, that the audiences that come to fighting events come to watch entirely for selfish reasons.  It is not to support the fighter; they want something out of it for all the money they plunked down. Apparently being stuck at school was the payment and he was the entertainment and distraction for most of them this day.  They just stood around watching his shame to unfold. His pain in some sick way, was a voluntary or involuntary morbid thrill you got when watching a horror movie unfold knowing you feel bad for the victim, but not really because but what can you do?  They convinced themselves they were just a spectator to it all, that they were allowed to be insulated from it, please don’t ask for me to lend a hand they say, you must be crazy. Calvin was just another pathetic soap opera to be talked about between their friends at lunch hour, or in a text message or online, to be kept at a distance, and to not bog their day down. It was the status quo around here for most of them.

Their hand was on the dimmer switch that controlled the light of Calvin’s life into theirs and they could choose to let it in however much they thought they could take. Right now all those hands on all those switches were set to full off. They didn’t want to see him…just what was done to him. Calvin in that moment, hated them more than the ones who picked on him on a daily basis.

“Break it up! Break it up!”  The loud high screeching of a woman’s voice cut through the chaos that was his crazed mind and through the crowd of onlookers as well. Mrs. Kitchen, a teacher and woman of enormous proportions waddled over her way through the ring of kids to see what had caught all their attention. He heard her gasp out aloud so theatrically when she came upon the scene that Calvin almost laughed out loud.

Jake and Neil quickly let him go to show her they weren’t just trying to shove his head into the dirt and make him eat it.  He saw the crowd starting to disperse around him, the bloodshed was over; be about your way miscreants.

Calvin slowly got up from the ground and wiped the spit and grass clippings from his face with the sleeve of his shirt.

“Would someone like to tell me what’s going on? I found Omar back there picking himself off the ground and now I find Calvin doing pretty the same thing over here. What’s going on?” Her voice went to a higher octave on the shrill level factor if that was possible and she put her hands on her very wide hips, tapping her foot impatiently expecting an answer. Yep, she was your typical stereotype, they do exist.

“He hit Omar for no reason.” Neil said pointing at Calvin like he was fingering some criminal in a police line up.  Jake just kept quiet. 

“Is this true Calvin?”  She asked.

“Yes and no,” Calvin said, “Yes, I hit him, but I wouldn’t say it was for no reason. He had it coming, they like to provoke me.” and be damned with the consequences, Calvin was done caring anymore.

“Let’s see what Mr. Granderson has to say about all this. Let’s go.” She marched them all into the schools office area where they sat and waited while all the parents were called…..