Week 2: Secret Society
So this week my prompt was a little more vague. I ran with it, and decided I'm going to use this as an opening chapter in Book Two of The Outliers. I also didn't quite fulfill the entirety of the prompt, but will post a part II later this week. Enjoy.
Your main character discovers a secret society - or maybe they've been apart of it all along.
The fringe. The outliers. The people who through no fault of their own, possess differentiating characteristics from their peers. I started my life discovering I was one of them, and I've spent the rest trying to find others like me.
I didn't look different. White skin, blonde hair translucent in the summer sun. I looked like every other white-bread Minnesotan. Growing up blue collar exposed me to a different type of poverty. Gunshots were from shotguns into the pelts of overpopulated deer, alcoholism came in the form of light beer and bonfires. Domestic abuse was as natural as breathing.
The women here weren't strong. Weathered by winter and circumstance, the bend like birch trees to a spring thunderstorm, laying their soft while hollow bodies into the mud below them, unbothered by the disaster left in the wake.
Men were hard - and reasonably so - for the idea of men providing wholly was still a concept. Stress lined their faces as they struggled to find jobs where jobs didn't exist. So instead they drank, like their women, they blamed circumstance, the president, anyone but themselves.
Apart from my outward appearance, I was as different as they came. My mother once told me while she was in a bout of depression that she knew I was different the moment I was born.
"I pushed you out," she said, slurring her words as the booze did its job, "And you cried. But it wasn't like your brother. Giant tears rolled down your face and you looked like you were so angry at me." She paused to take another gulp of her gin and tonic. "Like I had cursed you by birthing you. And I felt guilty. What kind of shit is that? Guilt for birthing your own child?"
At the time I nodded and excused myself. I went back to my room and sobbed, because I did remember I remember the sticky latex feel of the doctor's gloves as I struggled to breath, finally pushed out into the coldest world I could ever imagine. I remember the rough washcloth as they wiped me clean, and the starch of the blanket they wrapped me in.
I was cursed.
I can never forget a single thing. Even if I tried, the memory is branded in my brain, forever. I remember when I first learned to walk. My feet hurt so badly, putting that much weight on those tiny little feet. But really it was the balancing that was the hard part, like I was trying to surf on ocean waves.
"Great, now we'll have to put up a baby gate," my father grumbled.
The amount of things I heard as a child is astounding. When I learned to talk it was easy, since I had been hearing and learning vocabulary since infancy. I was quickly put in special classes, honors and accelerated courses. They ran out of classes, and the teachers urged my parents to move, so I could get access to better education.
I was approached when I was competing in an Ad Lib competition. Ad Lib acting was the only thing I enjoyed for fun. There was nothing to memorize, no pressure. Just one prop given, possibly a theme, and a time limit.
"You do ad lib contests a lot?" a voice from behind me asked.
I turned around and immediately had to look up. He was easily the tallest person I had ever met, with cropped black hair and smokey eyes. I grew uneasy.
"Ah, not much," I lied. I participated all the time, but I wasn't about to tell him that.
I stepped back. "Are you competing too?" I asked politely.
He shook his head and glanced around the room like he was in the shoe department of Macy's.
"I'm looking for talent."
The way he said that made my skin crawl.
"Oh, cool. Listen, I have to get back to my group." My voice trailed off as he looked down at me. It as like looking into a thundercloud, holding your breath, waiting for the first crack of lightening.
TO BE CONTINUED.