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The Million Word Story:


Once upon a time, there was a boy.

His name was Kyle. He was a high school student in a small town in California. He had an average number of friends, and a nice family. He had a good life. But that was all about to change...

It was a warm day in February, dry and pleasant as it often was in his small town .

Kyle was walking home from school, thinking about the day and the things he and his high school friends had been discussing about the week-end coming up. He looked up from the sidewalk as a rather noisy car rumbled past him and watched idly as it turned into a driveway a hundred yards behind him. He was a bit surprised, because he knew the house had been vacant for some time -- the owners had left almost two years ago and it had not been sold; at least not as far as anyone knew. But the people in this car didn't hesitate or slow down much when they came to the driveway. To Kyle it looked like they knew where they were going, and had been there perhaps many times. This made Kyle suspicious. He was more than usually smart, and in the last couple of weeks he'd been noticing the kind of small things that passed most people by. For example, Ruth Winters at number 15 hadn't opened her bedroom window all week. This was odd, because he knew she liked to sleep with fresh air in the room.

Likewise, old Mr Jenks at number 28 had left his newspaper on the porch for three days running. Kyle used to have a paper route on this street, so he knew these people and their routines. It worried him when routine changed, because he liked to know where he was. His math teacher had said this was part of his condition, and that he shouldn't try to change it - not that Kyle wanted to.

'That's just who I am,' he'd said to himself. 'If other people don't like it, well ... they can just go blow themselves up.'

At age 15, he'd thought this was a pretty funny line, and had kept laughing at it all day, hiding his mouth behind his hand, until his mom had scolded him and sent him to his room. Nowadays when he thought of a funny line he kept it to himself. He didn't like being scolded.

But Kyle was not as slow as he appeared. He was actually rather smart and resented being sent to his room. Imagine that, a 15-year-old treated like a child! Did she not know that 15-year olds were once considered men, often leaving home to work and make lives of their own? Did his mother not know that he was capable? Well, he would certainly show her.

Yes, he was angry, but consoled himself by the fact that his mother knew nothing about him. She had, after all, sent him to live with Victor.

Victor...

Kyle's biological father had passed away after a heart attack about two years ago. Kyle's mother knew that Kyle would still need a male figure, a Dad, to guide him through his teenage years. So she hastily married a man named Victor, hoping he could help Kyle. This of course turned out to be a bad mistake; they divorced after a mere two months of not-so-happy marriage.

Unfortunately, Kyle's mother insisted on sending him to Victor. So, every second weekend, Kyle was forced to endure Victor's presence. What this amounted to, Kyle began to understand, was his mom finding a way to not have to deal with a 15 year old who hated being treated like he was 7, and Kyle having to learn how to deal with Victor.

Not surprisingly, after a few months of going back and forth, Kyle and Victor worked out a guy's understanding, meaning a way in which they could stay out of each others' way and still give the impression to Kyle's mom that things were warm and fuzzy over at Victor's, everyone was eating their vegetables and Kyle was gaining some kind of independence by spending time with a man. The fact of the matter was that Kyle hadn't even had a real chance to grieve his dad before his mom panicked and set off to find a replacement, so even though Victor was harmless and not such a bad guy, he never really had a chance to have any kind of real relationship with Kyle because nice guys don't replace natural dads, even when the new version is nicer than the first one.

Kyle's dad was a carpenter, a hard worker and at some level, Kyle knew his dad loved his mom. But he drank a lot and didn't have much of an emotional arsenal for handling relationship challenges like common sense questions about money, discipline and time together, which Kyle's mom often asked expecting a reasonable response. This translated into Kyle having parents that cared for each other, but couldn't seem to build a bridge much closer than friends or room mates, built tenuously over the rubble of their mis communications over the years.

And so, Kyle spent his time in the outdoors as much as possible, roaming his neighbourhood, getting to know the old folks, the lonely ones, the eccentrics and the hobby-ists who were willing to have him sit beside them on a stool learning how to build bird houses or take apart lawn mowers rather than sit at home waiting for his parents to misunderstand each other.

For this reason, Kyle had a personal interest in these strange newcomers. They weren't just driving up the driveway of a house that had been abandoned for two years, but a driveway he had cut across, delivered papers on, tripped and scraped his knee on while chasing dogs from the neighborhood. It was, well....one his hangout spots, and it seemed oddly rude that someone came and went without him knowing something about it. He knew at some level this didn't really make logical sense, but the world of young people is felt not reasoned over, and so it was with a mixture of curiosity, concern and defensiveness that he began to put together the strange goings-on of his neighbors' habits lately. And given these new folks, coming and going up the abandoned driveway, were the only new thing happening around here lately, he wondered if the two things were connected.

He had no idea....

But series of events are always easier to read in hind sight, and it would be a long time before Kyle would be able to explain to anyone -- let alone himself -- how the strangers and the people he knew were connected. By the time a few minutes had passed, he had all but forgotten the drive by, and after putting his stuff away from school, logged on to his email at home to check and see who was chatting. It must have been a day for strangeness, because there was a really weird message from his friend Andrew. And for a message to be weird from Andrew, it had to be pretty different.

Here's what it said:

"Hey, Kyle, it's Andrew here. I need you to come down to the old Travis' farm later - at about 8pm, if you can. It's pretty urgent; I've got something important to tell you. I'll explain everything when you get here. Bring a torch."

Kyle read the e-mail twice, trying to work out what Andrew was planning to do. He decided that he might as well go out - his mother wouldn't mind too much, as long as he could think up a reasonable explanation. It would probably earn him an hour of yelling and worrying from his mother, who would tell him to wrap up warm and be back by 9, but if Andrew said it was urgent...

Andrew was probably Kyle's closest friend. He was also 15, a few months older than Kyle, and they had known each other since they were about 10. Andrew understood Kyle. He didn't treat him like most other people did. He treated him like a teenager - a friend. He was a pretty average guy, and a strange message like this from him was rare. Usually he would spend time explaining things, so that he wouldn't have to repeat them again and so whoever he was talking to fully understood him. Kyle readied a torch for the trip later.

"Dude!" Andrew said. "I can't believe you brought a torch!"

"Why wouldn't I?" Kyle said.

"You're such a lame-o," Andrew scoffed. "If I said, 'Bring a dead rat,' you'd have done it, wouldn't you?"

Kyle looked away and shrugged his shoulders. He felt like he'd fallen into a trap. Andrew was his best friend but sometimes he didn't think so.

"So what's the story?" he asked. "Why all the excitement? You got a boner again and wanna brag about it?"

Andrew brought his forehead close to Kyle's. "Gonna show you something you ain't gonna believe, pupkin. You know that time you took me down to your sister's wedding shower? When we looked through the window and saw all those hotties wearing short skirts? I ain't never forgot that. Highlight of my short life. Well take a ticket and open your eyes. This is gonna chew your cud and spit it out."

Kyle relaxed and looked around the room. The Travis farm had been deserted since '98, when old man Travis had upped and left his wife and family to start a new life with a fireman in San Francisco. No one liked to talk about it much, and Mary Travis had taken Delbert and George Junior back to Tallahassee, where she married a drummer in Faith Hill's band. She'd left all the furniture and kids would come down from school and sit in her big sofa that she'd ordered in from Denver and smoke dope and gamble. Kyle liked the place well enough, but he never felt comfortable there. It was like something from back East - fancy curves on the chair, bits of gold on the mirrors. Hell there were even gold taps in the john.

He said, "I don't ever understand you, Andrew Diggs, and I never will. What the hell is it you want me to see?"

Before Andrew could reply, they were both startled by a loud noise from an adjoining room.It sounded like someone tripping, falling down, knocking things over in the process. Kyle looked at Andrew, who looked surprised, but not all that frightened.
" What was that?" Kyle said in a low voice.
Andrew held a finger to his lips signaling Kyle to be quiet. He then walked very slowly toward the door to the back room, where the noise had originated. He neared the door, stopped, stretched his right arm forward slowly and grabbed the door knob. He glanced back at Kyle, who was frozen, standing in the middle of the room. Kyle's heart beat picked up dramatically as Andrew readied to open the door. He watched in slow motion as the door was jerked open. Something was already telling him to run even before the message was relayed to his brain.
A man stood in the center of the other room. Blood dripped from his bony hands. In his right hand was a long bladed knife from which blood also dripped. Andrew passed Kyle before he could reach the door. They stumbled, struggled through the opening and were outside, running, running for their lives.

" Stop," Kyle gasped. " I can't run any more."

Both boys collapsed to the ground, neither of them knew how far they had run or for that matter where exactly they were now. They lay there for several minutes, unable to get up, talk or anything else except struggle to get their breathing back to normal, which took several more minutes

Finally Kyle said. "Wa...Was that wha...what you was going to show me?"

" No man, are you crazy? That... that was old man Travis."
Kyle paused, taking in what Andrew had just said. "What? Are - are you sure? I thought he'd gone away?"

"Me too." Andrew said, quietly.

"How do you know it's him? What's he doing here?"

"I don't know... I've seen him before; I'm pretty sure it's him. But... I can't think why he'd be here... and with that..." Andrew trailed off. The image of the man holding the knife stuck in both boys' minds.

"What did you want to show me anyway?" Kyle asked, after a moment. Andrew shook his head.

"It doesn't matter."

"Well then..." Kyle said, after another minute had passed. "Where are we? We should get home. Tell someone about this."

The boys looked around them. They were in the middle of a field that had stopped producing crops a long time ago. Most of the plants in it were yellow and dried out. They lined the ground so there would be a crunch every time anyone walked on it.

"I don't think I've ever been here." Andrew muttered. Kyle pushed back a feeling of worry. He didn't want to have to go back past that house again.
It was starting to feel to Kyle that the neighbourhood he had lived in for so long and felt he knew like the back of his hand was becoming a pretty strange place. When he was walking home from school that day, all he wondered about was if the new girl in class was going to email him like she said she would. Now he was standing out in the middle of no where with Andrew, running from watching old man Travis slice himself and trying to figure out who was staying in a house that had been abandoned for almost two years.

When Kyle got home, he found an email waiting for him from Andrew that said "As soon as you get this, come to my house. Bring defibulator." Kyle departed immediately departed for Andrews house bearing a defibulator. When he got there Andrew said "Ha! I can't beleive you brought a defibulator! If i told you to bring a machette you would bring it!" Kyle felt like a moron. "Anyways," continued Andrew,"I thought we should go investigate the Mr, Travis mystery." So they went back to the farm house. They entered the house, and it was very spooky. They heard a noise behind them and they looked around to see Mr. Travis holding a wine cork! "AAAA" said Andrew and Kyle. Mr. Travis began advancing toward them and thrusting the wine cork. Suddenly, Mr. Travis began to tug on his hair and all his skin slid off like a mask to reveal a an alien! The alien in a deeply disturbing voice said "You are going to help me! My space ship crashed here and to fix it I need 190.5 litres of gasonline in order to get the spacehsip moving." Andrew said "What if we don't help you?" The alien said "Then i will put you through..."