The hours ticked down in the school day as slowly as they usually did; students ran to their next classes and despite the pair having one last class of the day left, Cassie and Larson didn’t bother going. Cassie patiently walked behind Larson as they traveled out of the school.
“Since we’re both at a loss for what we are, let me ask you if you know anything at all.” Larson said.
Cassie tried to step up and stumbled while getting beside him. “Um, besides the fact that I don’t feel like a normal person?”
“So nothing then.”
Cassie shrugged and glanced away as they walked. As the hallways quieted, they exited the school, a gentle breeze greeted them—the silence was deafening. With it being in the middle of the day, stillness painted the street.
“Well, do you know anything?” Cassie said.
Eventually, when they got to the houses neighboring the school, Larson spoke up.
“Not really. I’ve just collected some research over the last six years. Nothing much, but I had to start somewhere.”
“Oh, you’re my age right?”
He confirmed her question with a simple nod. “Wait, how the hell did you not know that?” For the first time, he looked back at her. “You said we were in the same classes.”
“Yeah, but you being weird or… whatever, you could have been like a thousand years old or something. It’s called a chronological age, not your physical age.”
“I’m not.” Larson clarified. “I may not know all of what we are, but one thing’s for sure: we were still born the same as the rest of these Bumilians.”
“Is that what humans are called?”
“In what I’ve read, they call humans that, yes; but it’s strange, because I assume we bleed red blood too.”
“Maybe our blood’s composition is different or something?” Cassie suggested.
“I thought that, but I haven’t been able to find anything to make myself bleed.” He scoffed. “Until you…”
“Yeah, sorry about that.” Cassie looked around as they walked further away from the quaint residential area and into where the homeless would loiter, a bit further away from the school.
It was a damp area filled with trash that blew along the street in all hours of the day. Most, if not all, of the houses were abandoned—decrepit wood left in the shambles of what resembled a neighborhood. The homeless were under worn and torn blankets, resting beside barrel fires that flickered to life as the hours waned.
“Do you live here?” Cassie asked with a slightly skeptical tone.
“Yeah.” He simply said.
The area didn’t look habitable in the slightest. However, Larson looked well off; a dark green winter jacket hung on his shoulders and Larson did have a backpack he brought with him that barely looked a year old.
“I don’t get it. Don’t you have parents?” She asked.
“Yeah, but they were annoyingly human. I pretty much made them regret having children and it made it easier for me to run away.”
“So, they’re not even looking for you?”
“Nope, and I hope to keep it that way.” Larson kept walking with her until they got to the very end of the road they were walking on.
Down there was a house gated off from the rest of the dilapidated houses beside it. The gate that separated the house had a door sized hole out front.
“Though here is where I live.” Larson went through and told Cassie to follow him.
She did and now they were on the porch of the house. Cassie carefully stepped up weary of the floorboards as she walked up.
“This place is pretty run down.” Cassie waited for him to open the door. “But it’s by a rift?”
“Yeah, I got pretty lucky.”
When he opened the door, the inside of the house was nothing like its exterior. The once run down house turned into a clean and fully furnished home. It had two floors and everything looked intact, newly built even. Seemingly none of the problems outside were present in the home.
“Wait, where did you get all this stuff?” Cassie looked at the decorations in the house.
“Where do you think?” He said taking off his coat and throwing it on the couch. “I stole it.”
“B-but you can’t do that! What if people see you?”
Larson looked back unamused. “You weren’t kidding when you said you don’t know anything about our species. You realize we can interrupt wavelengths right?”
“W-we can?”
Larson stared at her and let out a sigh. He touched his temple. “You know, I was going to give you some credit for being able to handle me, but you’re the biggest idiot ever. You don’t know anything about yourself?”
“Don’t try to act like I’m crazy. We could kill someone with a flick of our finger and you think I should try stuff out?”
“I swear if there’s more of us out there, it won’t be them who kills us, but your own stupidity.”
“I’m not stupid.” She retorted.
“Right, I just hope that Math exam doesn’t hold you back.”
“Look, math is hard. It’s not my fault, none of it makes any sense!”
Larson just scoffed and began to lead her up the stairs to a hallway with a few doors in it.
Cassie huffed and followed him. “Anyways, if you’re one person, why do you have so many rooms?”
“This is how the house came, I just fixed it up.”
“Or maybe you’re bringing people over here and-”
“Shut up.” He cut her off. “Humans are defective. I have no need to do anything with them.”
“You don’t even like girls?” She asked with astonishment in her voice.
“Why the hell would I? Most of them are either too concerned about their appearance, or they’re the complete opposite and annoy me because they can’t stop talking about how ‘not like the others’ they are.”
She laughed a bit. “I think most people are pretty. Some people have a uniqueness that I think about a lot.”
“You mean a crush?”
“It’s not like that.”
“Whatever, can we stop fucking around and focus for a second?” Larson went into the very last room up on the second floor and Cassie was presented with a study.
On one wall, there was a bookshelf which was fully filled; but what really caught her eye was the almost empty bookshelf on the opposite wall. Larson went over and picked up one of the few books there before walking back to Cassie.
“We… or at the very least me, are referred to as Fourth Dimensional Beings. We were born normally, through childbirth, but when we were born gave way to us being able to accept the powers that few are given. There are others of us that live in the fourth dimension; but, obviously, they’re not here. The only thing in here that my parents had in common with these guys is that they were interested in things related to spiritually and practiced it often.”
“Oh, my parents have this flower crystal that my dad said is supposed to give your dreams energy.”
“Yeah, essentially it’s people who practice that mythical shit and from there, only a few of them get lucky like our parents did.”
“How many though?” Cassie questioned.
“Well, we’re two. So let’s think about the school we go to. In our grade alone there are four hundred students, we’re the only two who got it.”
Cassie furrowed her brows. “I-I don’t know what that means, but I guess it must mean we’re super rare! Like the zero, zero, zero, zero, zero-”
“Yes, it is like that!” She closed her mouth slowly. “Anyways, as you said earlier, it means we can react to things so quickly it almost seems like we know what’s going to happen. There are some other things too: we can feel rifts in time and space, we can interrupt or block certain wavelengths, and we have immense strength and prowess.” He explained.
“But if we’ve never trained or anything, how are we good fighters?”
“I have trained. As for you, it must just come naturally.”
“I think so, ’cause whenever I try anything I’m pretty bad at it.” She laughed.
Larson sighed.
“Is there anything else you found out?” Cassie’s voice was much higher now, she was even talking faster and with less reservation.
“No, all of my information came from this study that was being done on beings like us.” He held up the book. “Whoever that guy was either didn’t publish anything past this first book or died trying to write it.”
“Why not just find this guy’s kids then?”
“And do what, raid their ancestor’s homes?”
“You stole all this stuff, so I wouldn’t put it past you.”
Larson rolled his eyes. “You’re a bigger idiot than I thought if you really think these people care about their pasts. Especially, when it’s a phenomenon like us.”
Cassie took the book and looked at the ‘about author’ section. “Still, I think we should try and find whoever this… barf guy is.”
“Barmen. That wasn’t even close,” Larson said. He took the book back and returned it to the shelf.
“Then what are we going to do?” She huffed. “Stay here forever?”
“Obviously not. I just have to keep looking for places where we can go and see if anyone knows anything.”
“So you’re hoping to find out more with others like us?”
Larson gave a soft nod. “Pretty much. There’s nothing else I could find out on my own, so this research is the only thing I can rely on.”
Cassie smiled. “Then I’ll be here to help you!”
Larson looked at Cassie seeing the big smile on her face. His own expression turned sour at the sight.
“There’s a huge part of me that wants to turn you down.”
“Why?” Cassie whined. “I love doing research like this and two is better than one.”
“Yeah, if there were two of me. One of you is already too much to handle.”
She scoffed. “Look, whatever you’ve been doing this far is probably as much as you could do on your own. So now with two heads, we should be able to get much more done!”
“Way to state the obvious. It’s pretty much the only reason dealing with you is worth it.”
“Aside from that being rude as hell, why were you planning on destroying the planet then? Why not try and find someone to work with?”
“Because I hate living here. It’s horrible because of the weather that’s fucked to all hell or because of the people who are an insult to infectious swine. I figured killing a few people as a stress reliever wouldn’t be a problem.”
Cassie put her hands on her hips. “I hope you took my warning seriously. I really won’t let you hurt anyone who doesn’t have to be harmed.”
His eyes narrowed. “What’s with you? Got some kind of savior complex?”
“No, it’s just logical not to do that.”
“Oh, it is now?”
“Yeah, like, if you need someone to shut up about something they saw or did, what would you do?” She asked.
“Kill them.”
“Wrong! That just brings more problems.”
“I really don’t see how.”
“Because whoever you kill has family and friends who care about them. All of them will be upset that this happened and they’ll wind up going after you; and even though you’re likely strong enough to take them, what if someone like me agrees with them and decides to kill you?” He scoffed, but said nothing to her explanation. “See? So it’s easier just to comply with them. Ask them to not tell anyone about a particular thing and maybe oblige to something they ask.”
“What if they’re self serving justice bringers and don’t think to side with you?”
“Then you kill them!” Cassie declared.
“I’m getting a headache just trying to listen to you.” He left out of the study and made his way down the stairs into the living room. “We both have one goal in mind—to learn more about what we are. So since it would be easier to have you on my side, I don’t mind you sticking by me.”
Cassie hurriedly ran down the stairs and nearly tripped as she joined Larson at the kitchen table.
“You mean… you wanna be my friend!”
“We’re working together to obtain a shared goal.” He corrected.
“Friends!” She exclaimed as she sat down across from him. “Of course we can… I’d really like that.”
Larson touched his forehead. “Then, I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing and we can work out what we’ll do from there.”
“That’s fine, but let’s wait until tomorrow.”
“What? Why?”
“Because the name on that book looked familiar.”
“You mean barf?” Larson snickered.
“Yeah… no! I mean his actual name. Anyway, I think I’ve seen that name before, so I was planning on doing some research.”
“As long as you’re doing something productive, I couldn’t care less.”
Cassie’s attention then went to her phone. “It’s six already! I have to go before my parents kill me!”
“They literally can’t.”
“I know, but I think they can, so we’ll have to talk more tomorrow. I’ll see you later!”
With a large gust behind her, Cassie took off at a superhuman speed and was out of his house in less than a second.
Larson sighed and went to shut his door. Right as he was going to, Cassie suddenly appeared back at the door.
“What?” Larson asked with a deep frown present on his features.
“Sorry,” she said with a small giggle, “I’ll be at our Chemistry class tomorrow, we’ll meet there, okay?”
“Okay, whatever.”
“Alright, bye for real this time!” Once again, Cassie took off.
Larson, with a growing headache, just moved on. Though it seemed he was destined to be annoyed tonight as he heard a dog barking. The same dog that was always barking at him and his house.
He went out and stood in front of the dog as it began to growl defensively at him, he crouched down and picked it up. The dog’s unmanaged nails scratched into him. His aggravated growling turned into biting, all while Larson moved him back over to the location where it typically came from.
“Damn dog… won’t stop barking at this place.”
With the dog returned and Laraon’s night finally calming, he went back in his home thinking the worst was yet to come.
