Snippet #1049192

Alex watched his friends scatter like leaves in the wind, Emery latching herself to Mako and dragging her off to class, Mikael doing his stoic writer routine and sauntering off his own way, and the rest scattering in ways Alex had no time to watch. After a few seconds he rose and started walking towards his next class. His friends were relegated to the back of his mind as he walked, he caught a glimpse of Mikael still sauntering, though he was swallowed by the crowds before Alex could do anything but nod at him and blurt out the first syllable of a hello. He wafted his way through the crowds, slipping in and out of the cracks that the groups of people made as they flowed out of and into the classrooms, mindless chatter filling the air until finally he dragged himself into class with the sound of shoes squeaking on linoleum permanently etched into his psyche. Then he muttered a low curse.

Alex wanted to be an ESP researcher, that was evident in everything he did, everyone knew that he could list just about every part of the brain so well it had practically become a reflex for him. On the other hand, in order to study the extra-normal parts of the brain you had to be well versed in the occult as well as neurology. Generally if he was asked by someone to explain the otherworldly he would readily divulge all he knew and proceed to bore them to death in most cases. One extremely common query, common enough that it made Alex grind his teeth every time he heard the words The Dark One (pronounced with capitalization) was the question "Is The Dark One real?". He believed in the dark one and in the end of the world but when it came it came and generally trying to stop prophecies tended to fulfill them. So it was with ever growing dread that Alex stared at the words on th blackboard and sighed in an exasperated manner, The Dark One had been scrawled onto the board in large letters with a question mark at the end. Today was not going to be good, not at all.