Carrier - Preface & whatever of chatper 1...

I WILL finish this at some point in my life. just not rite at this second. I just thought it would be nice to post some. for yur pleasure completely.

-shopstie

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PREFACE

My eyes darted with inhuman speed to the spot where the voice had originated. There was nothing strange happening in that area. Only the normal action and mock-drama only high school hallways can withstand. A dark-haired boy stood in the exact spot that I swore I heard the voice come from. The voice had been filled with worry, sadness and fear, but the boy who stood in that spot seemed to be carefree and happy. He was laughing at something one of his many surrounding friends had said. He was laughing. Why was it that I had sworn I had heard his voice crying out for help just moments before?
I tried to focus in even closer on this boy, curious of the strange happenings that were occurring involving him. However, before I could completely focus in on him, a hot flash of pain overcame my entire body, and the visions began. He had looked me in the eyes. He had to have looked me in the eyes. That was the only way this kind of pain could be inflicted upon me. I was beginning to see his tragedies.
As soon as I could control myself, and feel that I was actually in my own body, as myself, on earth, I immediately started resisting the visions.
It wasn’t working. Nothing was working. No matter how I resisted, no matter how hard I tried, I was still seeing this boy’s lifelong tragedies. What was happening to me? I could always resist visions. I had been trained for years on simply how to resist the visions. There wasn’t one person in the world that could stop my resisting. But it was happening. There wasn’t one way I knew—and I knew just about every way there was—that could keep me from seeing every way this boy had suffered in his lifetime.
My head shot up, my eyes searching again for the boy. No more than a second had gone by for every other person in the hallways of the torture chamber each of them called high school. It was when I spotted the boy that I knew something was going terribly wrong. It was completely obvious that this boy had not looked me in the eyes. He hadn’t even noticed me, standing alone by a row of green metal lockers. I wasn’t supposed to see visions unless someone looked me in the eyes. It wasn’t possible. I was born to see these visions, but I never saw them unless I and another looked each other straight-on.
This was abnormal—no, this was past abnormal. This was impossible. But it was possible, and, just as I heard a scream of terror and saw a blazing fire burning a building to its smoldered foundation, everything and everyone around me disappeared to blackness.


CHAPTER 1

I stepped onto the yellow school bus with a feeling of uneasiness flowing through my veins in the place of blood. I knew I probably should’ve been excited for the upcoming day, but, for me, the start of my freshman year in high school was far from exciting. Those mere 24 hours would probably be the most nerve wracking time of my entire life.
The visions I saw each time I looked into a person’s eyes were terrifying to me as a small child. No human on earth was truly born to carry the burden of the power that had been bestowed upon me.
“Hello,” the man driving the bus greeted, a strange, crooked smile spreading across his face. I focused my gaze just below the bridge of the man’s nose, avoiding contact with his sidewalk-colored eyes. He wasn’t old—middle aged—but the way which he carried himself and spoke reminded me of a grandfather, slow and smoothly, without much of a care in the world.
“Hello,” I replied briskly. The driver’s hands gripped the large wheel which he used to steer his bus, while his torso was turned to face me.
“What might be your name?” he asked. I watched his hand move towards a lever, then, as he embraced the handle with his palm, pulled it towards himself. The thin double doors of the bus swished shut.
I stood in the aisle of the bus, immobile, not sure how to answer the man’s question.
The driver saw my hesitation, and spoke before I could think much about how to word my reply. “If it makes it any easier, I’m
“Ashley,” I finally replied, readjusting my gaze to a spot just below his nose. “Ashley Carmody.”
“Ashley Carmody,” he repeated quietly back to me. He thought about it another moment or so. It was almost as if he was thinking back to his younger years, grasping for something he just barley remembered at the sound of the syllables of my name.
I stared at him skeptically as he thought.
“Ashley Carmody,” he repeated again, head turning to look me straight-on. The gentle gaze his eyes held grabbed my attention before I had the strength to pull away.
I gasped.

“Cass!” a voice griped. “Cass! Please, Cassie! Cass!”
It was my voice that was moaning those words—but it wasn’t really my voice. It was his. This wasn’t really happening—this had already happened. This was the kind old bus driver’s memory of tragedy. I was him, seeing this scene through his eyes.
“Cass!” I was shouting even louder now, shouting into the darkness. But it wasn’t darkness—I could see that now—it was light. Light that was pouring in from a window on the other side of the room. Light that was sparkling off the skin of the woman who lay in front of me, still as death.
It was then that it hit me—how could I be so stupid? This woman, young and beautiful, lay in front of me, everything about her completely lifeless. This was the bus driver’s earliest tragedy.
This was the death of the woman he loved.

“STOP!” It was me shouting now, not him. What was happening to me? Why was I screaming? Why was I seeing these visions? My brain spun with waves of curiosity as my emotions took over my thoughts, leaving me hungry for the next chapter in the bus driver’s vision.
I had begun to stop the resisting of my visions that had become, in essence, natural. I had to get a hold of myself. How could I allow myself to be exposed to my visions? I was already scarred by the visions I had seen at a young age, when I had no control over them, and I knew it would only hurt me further to see any more tragedies.
“Ashley?” the kind voice of the bus driver came. He sounded too close—I didn’t like the feeling of slight claustrophobia—but at the same time, much too far away.
“STOP!” I shouted again, the voices in the driver’s tragedy still ringing in my head. My body twisted and contorted in the small amount of space that I seemed to be trapped in.
“Ashley?” the voice was even more concerned now, hovering in the air above where my head should’ve been. “Ashley, what’s wrong?”
I heard the sound before I felt it—the solid thud of bone and flesh against metal. I cried out suddenly, my hand flying to the back of my head which had undoubtedly come in contact with a sturdy piece of metal.
“Ashley, grab my hand.” I could just barley see, through the blurriness in my eyes, a long, thin arm attached to an outstretched hand in front of me, very close to my face.
I tried to reach out to grab the hand, but I found nothing but air as I grasped for something more. I sucked in a breath of air and let it out again in a rush. A moaning sound escaped my chest.
“Ashley, I’m calling 911.”
I sucked in more air.
“No!”