I am not crazy. I am not schizophrenic, I am not insane, and I am literally smart and capable enough to outperform most of you reading this. Above all, I am NOT, in any possible interpretation of the term, Suicidal.
Let this be the header of this poster, as I, Zaire Remmington, declare that I genuinely think that physics-defying or at least universal, conventional understanding-breaking entities, objects, and phenomena exist. And, I wish to find them.
Join my Club to participate in my cause.
Zaire read the introduction of his poster for the umpteenth time. He raised his eyes and looked forward at his school's notice board, for the umpteenth time, too.
He had ten posters prepared, and he intended to put one on each of the five notice boards and the general announcement boards as well. Starting with, of course, the pegboard in front of him.
Zaire glanced at it once more, then froze in place.
He was hesitating. The best student of the best school in the nation, and he was hesitating like never before in his life. It's almost as if something within him was clawing and dragging him away from the idea of putting his poster on the board.
Why? He thought, I don't understand…
It's not because he wasn't resolved and confident in his cause.
Zaire was more than confident in his thesis; he was certain about it. More certain about him acing in any of the exams he had given or any matches he had ever played.
But a part of his bugged—no, unnerved him.
Zaire has never been a social guy. With his extremely competitive, perfectionist, and overly intrusive parents intercepting anything he does before he does it. Dumb fun, video games, and any such activities were entirely out of the question.
Despite that, some level of fame did come his way simply because of academic and extracurricular achievements, and his pleasing appearance too; which was above average with brown and blonde hair styled in a wolf cut, deep blue eyes, a Greek nose, and angular facial features.
Regardless of the reasons behind the social attention he received, he really didn't want to ruin it by publicly posting something so out of touch with reality that he would become an outcast amongst his peers.
That held him back. That unnerved him. That was the reason he promptly rolled the poster into a tube, shoved it into his bag, and walked away from the notice board.
The rest of the day went by in a blur, and before he knew it, he was leaving his school.
His house was a fifteen-minute walk from the academy, which is why, like always, he began to walk down the road.
If it were up to him, he would prefer not to walk the road. It was dangerous.
His academy had over ten thousand students, and most of them had vehicles and escorts; simply put, the road outside the academy tended to get incredibly crowded. Pair that with the fact that the road was a thoroughfare of the city, and the noise alone was enough to make one go deaf.
Thankfully, the school doesn't forbid the use and carriage of smart devices. Ziare thought, pulled out his headphones, and started a playlist through his smartwatch.
The first video on the playlist was a lecture on how to investigate matters on the internet. It was close to fifty hours long, and Zaire always played it whenever he felt stuck, after he came across it… because 'that' happened.
Brrr! Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r!
"Oh, come on," Zaire sighed and glared behind him. He couldn't even see the superbike, but the deafening noise of its engine revving was enough to pierce through his headphones.
He knew who it belonged to: the big brother of one of the delinquents.
Zaire watched as two guys wearing helmets drove at deadly speed on the road. They just passed him when it happened.
A school bus took a sharp turn to the right to overtake a vehicle in front of it. The collision happened in milliseconds.
Crash–!! BOOM!!
A loud explosion rang out, as the bikers, their bike, the children on the bus, and the bus's rear got folded into one. Sending fragmented metal and bones everywhere.
The world melted into a sickly circus of screeching tires, panicked wails, shattering glass, and the horrifying, wet thuds of the impact.
For a moment that felt like eternity, Zaire was frozen, his arms wrapped over his head in an instinctive, futile defense. The blast of heat from the explosion rippled across his skin, and the acrid smell of burning fuel and something metallic and coppery filled his nostrils.
Then, his eyes registered the clump on the road right next to him.
Marginally bigger than a ball. More pink than red. Wrinkled and throbbing with a growing slowness.
Cerebrum. His analytical mind provided, cold and detached. Brain matter. Child. Prepubescent, likely, given the size of the cranial fragments nearby.
The thought was clinical. Withdrawn. But the reality of it sent a violent tremor through his entire body.
Bile churned in his stomach, hot and burning in his throat. The sounds of distant sirens began to pierce the ringing in his ears, but they felt a world away. His world, the universe, had just been ripped apart, its raw, slimy entrails wiggling on the pavement beside his feet.
Zaire didn't make a conscious decision to run. His body simply took over, his legs pumping before his mind could fully process the carnage.
He scrambled backward, stumbling over his own feet, his eyes locked on the gruesome scene. Then, he turned and bolted. Zaire shoved past stunned onlookers, their horrified gasps lost to the frantic pounding of his own heart.
He didn't look back. He couldn't. He just ran, his expensive headphones dangling uselessly, the playlist silenced, the only sound left being the ragged, panicked breaths tearing from his lungs as he sprinted towards… home.