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Chapter Two

Arguments

As Cyrus gazed through his back porch’s window, all seemed tranquil and quiet. Nothing moved. The only sound he heard from inside was the ticking of a clock next to the back door.

Usually, the boy would have simply strolled inside after not seeing anyone. Due to what had happened five minutes ago, however, Cy was more tense than usual. That was saying something. His heart was thumping like a bass drum. His hands felt like they just spent ten years in an oven, and were now in a freezer for ten more.

No one’s here, he assured himself in his mind. You’re just overreacting. Open the door slowly, sneak to your room, and no one will know. It’s simple...Heheheh…It’s harder than it looks…

This was going to be a long night.

Reluctantly, he opened the glass sliding door that led to the dark, vacant living room. As soon as Cyrus closed that door, he instantly wanted to go back outside.

Two muffled voice were coming from his parents’ room. They didn’t sound happy. The boy swallowed, trying to stay quiet. Oh, no. They’ve started fighting again. This is bad. It’s all my fault! I shouldn’t have even gone out into town today. What do I do?! If I just go to my room, they’ll kill me tomorrow! If I talk to them now…Wait! If I talk to them now, they might go easy on me for being honest! Yeah!

He started to creep towards the room when he started to hear the conversation. The door was closed, but that didn’t stop the voices from filling the closer half of the hallway. Against his better judgment, he leaned closer to listen to mollify his curiosity.

Cyrus’s father, Wood, was talking. “Tara, you know that boy can handle it now. I know you can notice those small bursts coming from him. He’s getting more outgoing by the minute. He’s not your little boy anymore.”

Tara, Cy’s mother, began her statements. “I know he’s growing up, but—“

“Then, why are you talking to me about this?!” Wood’s gruff, grumpy voice rose. “You know I’m not lying about this!” It wasn’t the first time he had done this, he had too much of a short temper. Cyrus was thankful he hadn’t inherited that. He still worried about it coming up in his personality out of the blue. That would be his worst nightmare, along with the classic world ending dream.

“It’s just…why do you have to be so harsh?!” The small, fragile tone of Tara had multiplied by hundreds. Her son’s eyes widened from behind the door. Whoa, this must be serious. She doesn’t usually do that, he thought, gawking. Tara was a soft, gentle character. Getting angry was like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands to Tara.

Wood spoke again. “It’s called faith!”

Cyrus scratched his brown head. Faith? What the…What is this all about? All of this arguing and confusion was making his head hurt. He was in a heap of trouble, his parents were duking it out like bulls, and to top it all off, the Alpha 23 probably remembered his face and was searching for him all over the city. This was just great.

“Faith? Faith?! What happened to ‘I don’t have faith in anyone, because faith is for wimps’? You said that only yesterday!” Tara’s voice was at maximum obstreperousness.

Cy took a few steps back from the room, and quickly ran up the carpeted stairs to his room. It looks like I’m in trouble…Oh, man…What am I going to do? It seemed like the moon that had jeered at him when he was outside was cackling hysterically now. Cyrus slowly opened his wooden door, and slipped inside his personal sanctuary.

He had always loved his room. A wide bookcase containing numerous tomes to thick lexicons was at the right side of the square-shaped chamber. An old twentieth-century piano glared the books down from the left side. Cyrus’s bed was between them. It seemed to almost pacify the other two large items in the boy’s room.

Cyrus yawned; he was too tired to worry about what was to come. Crawling into his blankets, he slowly closed his eyes.

A few seconds later, however, changed his life forever. The scent of blood entered his nose as someone talked straight in his face.

“Hey, I didn’t get a thank you."