Electric
written by Jade Lovegood-Scamander
Alex is new at being an orphan. Unsocial and distant, he's never really liked being around people. But one night, during a summer storm, he's struck with an idea. Felicity. Follow Alex's journey and watch him create his dreams--and fall in love with them. I'm still working on this, I only have the first chapter
Last Updated
05/31/21
Chapters
3
Reads
391
June third, two thousand thirteen
Chapter 2
8:15 AM
Alex
Alex rolled over and rubbed his eyes. His mind was still blurry: a flash of light, a heat in his fingers, convulsing, flying. His clock continued to flash 12:00, clearly in need of fixing. His mind had no motive to fix his clock, though. His brain was determined. He was a man on a mission.
Well. Not a man. Not yet, anyway. In a year, yes, he would be a man, hopefully no longer on a mission. He sat up and returned to his desk, looking at the crumpled paper in his wastebasket and smoothing out his mistakes. Self-Piloting Airplane, one read. Alex rolled his eyes and pushed it aside.
Not a single molecule of space remained on any of the crumpled papers, so Alex threw them back in the basket and used his hands to search on his desk. Under all the clutter and various other objects, his hand fell on a smooth sheet, buried underneath the other things. He fumbled for a pencil in this fashion and sharpened it to a point.
Alex’s idea flowed from his head onto paper; he worked (and worked) for an hour and a half, perfecting, erasing, re-perfecting. His nearly new pencil had been sharpened so many times that all the green, laser-etched writing on it was gone. Once the paper was complete, Alex felt more relaxed than he had in ages. He looked down on it through different eyes, reading and reading.
The title of this sheet, unlike Self-Solving Rubik’s Cube and Extension of Arm, was simple. His eyes flitted over the big word at the top of the paper: Company. He checked and double-checked his work: the arm muscle wasn’t too defined, the fingers were the right length, the face had eye cavities. He made sure everything was right.
After looking it over and thrusting the paper aside, Alex surveyed his room. He would find nothing under the heaps of clothes, he knew, but cleaning was a waste of time. There was likely nothing to be in the rest of the small excuse for a house, either: Alex didn’t like to waste materials.
Unfortunately, he did have a knack for wasting ideas. As he kicked over the trash can in frustration, all the crumpled, rejected ideas spilled out onto the mess of the floor. He swept them all in the basket and started towards the door, hoping to scrape together enough materials for Company, when he saw the picture again.
It was like a magnet so powerful, he had to stop. So he did. There was no use fighting against it. He stopped and shuffled back towards the frame, to feel it, to see it.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Alex was new to being an orphan. His mother had-- as his father put it -- “passed on,”, although Alex couldn’t see where she’d gone--when he was nine, still young. After that, his father would spend a lot of time in his room, that began to smell strongly of sour fruit.
Alex didn’t like people; perhaps because he learned to embrace his solitude, shut up in his room all the time, or maybe it was because his ideas burst out of his head in waves that could not be ignored. Before his mother had gone, he used to attend a school, where he would do nothing but scribble his ideas in his notebook. Robot vacuum. Instant hair growing solution. Quick-dry paint.
“Garbage!” his father had screamed one night, when Alex had just thought of the A.I. Exterminator. Alex’s excitement had been greater than his sense of logic, and he had shown his father the drawing. “This--is--rubbish--all--of--it--” He had torn out the pages of the notebook, one by one, and put them through the shredder. “Imagination, making your head spin off your neck. You’re”-rip-“just”-rip-“like”-rip-“your”-rip-“mother.”
Alex stared sullenly. He didn’t cry. He didn’t scream. He didn’t argue, or sulk, or even gasp. He narrowed his eyes and made his mouth into a straight line, watching years of work disappear.
He wanted to retrieve the papers, just to have something to hold on to, but his father was in the way, reeking of alcohol and carrying a glass bottle threateningly. Alex shoved his hands in his pockets and ran. He didn’t think he could ever stop running, for when his brain said to rest, his feet kept going. He heard a yell behind him as he reached the front door, but heedless of it, his hand reached for the door handle, itching to open.
He paused. His father would expect him to run. He would call some runaway hotline and Alex would be carted away, off to some facility where they measured his mental health and his father would be left alone.
With great restraint, Alex had pulled his fingers away from the handle and turned, streaking down the hallway to his room. He closed the door and barred it with a piece of wood, then climbed under his bed, wishing for it to stop, just stop. His father, his idea wave, life. Just stop.
The next morning when he woke up, his father was gone. Alex thought maybe he couldn't handle a child, searching from room to room, hoping he had left maybe a note. Too many dreams, making his head spin off his neck.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Alex stared at the photo, memories crashing over him like waves. He allowed himself to stare at the picture for a few more minutes, at the smiling woman he barely remembered and at the man who used to be his father, consumed by grief and alcohol. That was two years ago, Alex thought, thinking of the runaway incident. When I still wanted his approval.
He turned back to his desk, tearing his eyes away from the picture and back to Company. He knew he had no chance of finding anything in his room, so he took the blueprint (blackprint? grayprint?) and headed to the sorry excuse of a garage to poke around, hoping he could find something more than an empty idea.
Alex
Alex rolled over and rubbed his eyes. His mind was still blurry: a flash of light, a heat in his fingers, convulsing, flying. His clock continued to flash 12:00, clearly in need of fixing. His mind had no motive to fix his clock, though. His brain was determined. He was a man on a mission.
Well. Not a man. Not yet, anyway. In a year, yes, he would be a man, hopefully no longer on a mission. He sat up and returned to his desk, looking at the crumpled paper in his wastebasket and smoothing out his mistakes. Self-Piloting Airplane, one read. Alex rolled his eyes and pushed it aside.
Not a single molecule of space remained on any of the crumpled papers, so Alex threw them back in the basket and used his hands to search on his desk. Under all the clutter and various other objects, his hand fell on a smooth sheet, buried underneath the other things. He fumbled for a pencil in this fashion and sharpened it to a point.
Alex’s idea flowed from his head onto paper; he worked (and worked) for an hour and a half, perfecting, erasing, re-perfecting. His nearly new pencil had been sharpened so many times that all the green, laser-etched writing on it was gone. Once the paper was complete, Alex felt more relaxed than he had in ages. He looked down on it through different eyes, reading and reading.
The title of this sheet, unlike Self-Solving Rubik’s Cube and Extension of Arm, was simple. His eyes flitted over the big word at the top of the paper: Company. He checked and double-checked his work: the arm muscle wasn’t too defined, the fingers were the right length, the face had eye cavities. He made sure everything was right.
After looking it over and thrusting the paper aside, Alex surveyed his room. He would find nothing under the heaps of clothes, he knew, but cleaning was a waste of time. There was likely nothing to be in the rest of the small excuse for a house, either: Alex didn’t like to waste materials.
Unfortunately, he did have a knack for wasting ideas. As he kicked over the trash can in frustration, all the crumpled, rejected ideas spilled out onto the mess of the floor. He swept them all in the basket and started towards the door, hoping to scrape together enough materials for Company, when he saw the picture again.
It was like a magnet so powerful, he had to stop. So he did. There was no use fighting against it. He stopped and shuffled back towards the frame, to feel it, to see it.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Alex was new to being an orphan. His mother had-- as his father put it -- “passed on,”, although Alex couldn’t see where she’d gone--when he was nine, still young. After that, his father would spend a lot of time in his room, that began to smell strongly of sour fruit.
Alex didn’t like people; perhaps because he learned to embrace his solitude, shut up in his room all the time, or maybe it was because his ideas burst out of his head in waves that could not be ignored. Before his mother had gone, he used to attend a school, where he would do nothing but scribble his ideas in his notebook. Robot vacuum. Instant hair growing solution. Quick-dry paint.
“Garbage!” his father had screamed one night, when Alex had just thought of the A.I. Exterminator. Alex’s excitement had been greater than his sense of logic, and he had shown his father the drawing. “This--is--rubbish--all--of--it--” He had torn out the pages of the notebook, one by one, and put them through the shredder. “Imagination, making your head spin off your neck. You’re”-rip-“just”-rip-“like”-rip-“your”-rip-“mother.”
Alex stared sullenly. He didn’t cry. He didn’t scream. He didn’t argue, or sulk, or even gasp. He narrowed his eyes and made his mouth into a straight line, watching years of work disappear.
He wanted to retrieve the papers, just to have something to hold on to, but his father was in the way, reeking of alcohol and carrying a glass bottle threateningly. Alex shoved his hands in his pockets and ran. He didn’t think he could ever stop running, for when his brain said to rest, his feet kept going. He heard a yell behind him as he reached the front door, but heedless of it, his hand reached for the door handle, itching to open.
He paused. His father would expect him to run. He would call some runaway hotline and Alex would be carted away, off to some facility where they measured his mental health and his father would be left alone.
With great restraint, Alex had pulled his fingers away from the handle and turned, streaking down the hallway to his room. He closed the door and barred it with a piece of wood, then climbed under his bed, wishing for it to stop, just stop. His father, his idea wave, life. Just stop.
The next morning when he woke up, his father was gone. Alex thought maybe he couldn't handle a child, searching from room to room, hoping he had left maybe a note. Too many dreams, making his head spin off his neck.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Alex stared at the photo, memories crashing over him like waves. He allowed himself to stare at the picture for a few more minutes, at the smiling woman he barely remembered and at the man who used to be his father, consumed by grief and alcohol. That was two years ago, Alex thought, thinking of the runaway incident. When I still wanted his approval.
He turned back to his desk, tearing his eyes away from the picture and back to Company. He knew he had no chance of finding anything in his room, so he took the blueprint (blackprint? grayprint?) and headed to the sorry excuse of a garage to poke around, hoping he could find something more than an empty idea.
