Mysterious Man

Eyeing the wall clock every so often, racing that second hand, Nikolai rapped his keyboard violently. Tick. Tick. Tick. If he didn't finish his mythology paper by the end of class, the professor would fail him. It would be the second time. There wouldn't be a third. It was enough to drive him insane. Nikolai glanced up over the top of his computer screen.

As if he could smell the sheer misery from the other end of the room, professor Kotala's beady little eyes glinted maliciously at him through the fluorescent reflection in his glasses and off the top of his bald head. His face carried that smile that seemed to say "got you." Nikolai knew the professor was always secretly plotting against him. But not today. He had his number.

This was it. Perspiration collected on Nikolai's forehead. Three minutes remaining and not a second to spare. Nikolai's fingers darted along the keys faster than they ever had. He fought against satisfying a nagging itch along his eyebrow and struggled to tie up the final paragraph of this wretched term paper. Last line. He had this. He would make it.

"Whatcha workin' on there, Nikki?"

The sickening sound of Jindrich Novaček's voice dripped its slime from somewhere above, seconds before the bastard slammed the lid of Nikolai's laptop hard enough over his fingers to cause him to cry out. He pulled back his hands, curling his fingers under his chin, hissing through his teeth. This can't happen. Not now. Nikolai mustered up whatever courage he had bubbling at the bottom of his stomach, and looked his tormentor square in the eye.

"What the hell, asshole?" Nikolai tried his hardest to force his voice not to waver.

Jindrich flew over the side of the desk, grabbing him clear up out of his flimsy plastic seat by the collar of his shirt. "What did you call me, you queer?"

Nikolai winced into the face of the six-foot-seven-inch goliath. The blood in his knuckles now pounded to the rhythm of his fevered pulse as they continued their dull ache. He gulped thickly, for he knew he had no friends to jump to his rescue. Glancing for a split second at his trashed computer, he knew his final grade was pretty much done for. Dead and buried. He didn't dare peek at the clock.

He could only imagine how his father, an alumnus from the same Charles University literature program, would react when he got wind of this. Another failure.

Nikolai's blood pooled in his cheeks with both the anger and embarrassment. A plot formed like an angry storm cloud right at the front of his mind. He couldn't remember a time when he'd been more fed up. This was it. Enough was enough.

"Put me down." Nikolai's gaze locked with that of the greasy colossus, but in his peripheral vision, he caught sight of the professor, suddenly too immersed in the latest edition of the Prague Monitor. Probably an excuse to ignore the misconduct going on in the classroom, thereby allowing Nikolai to get pummeled. He'd never seen the professor read the news before. Nikolai would have bet a thousand korun Professor Kotala had a big smile on behind the lip of that newsprint.

A yellow, crooked grin spread across Jindrich's reddened face, his fists tightening around navy plaid material of Nikolai's shirt. "I'll be happy to put ya down, friend." Gently, Jindrich set Nikolai's feet back to the solid Earth. "How's that? You can repay me by handing over your term paper. The professor has kindly allowed me to give mine in a day late."

Nikolai suppressed the desire to roar like a lion in his bully's face. "Sure, Jindrich. I'll do that. But not before your lazy ass nails down a real paying job to fix my cracked computer screen-"

Jindrich's massive fist collided with Nikolai's face. Through the ringing in his ears, he swore he heard a chuckle from the far end of the room, the newspaper bouncing slightly. He wiped at his face, checking for blood. It had been the same since they'd been in grade school-since Nikolai and his family first moved west from Moravia-since he'd been the scrawny new kid who, at the seasoned age of ten, had already been given a crappy hand of cards in life.

But he wasn't that scrawny kid any longer.

"I warned you." Nikolai murmured when he was sure the professor was looking. Without laying his hand on a single surface, he waved his arm toward professor Kotala's desk and sent it hurtling into the center of Jindrich's chest, crushing him to the wall. The wood and plaster around the impact cracked half way up to the old ceiling, bits of debris and dust plummeting down around the gargantuan bully on the floor. Nikolai looked toward the professor, who was now standing up from his chair, the newspaper on the floor, his mouth agape.

Nikolai had always dreamed of doing it-always fantasized about using his powers in public. Finally standing up for himself. Smirking, he turned back toward Jindrich, his eternal schoolyard bully who was still reeling from the impact. "If you tell anyone what you saw here today, I will hunt. You. Down." Nikolai punctuated each word with a bold jab of his finger. He turned back to the professor. "I'm out of here."

He hocked a wad of spit at the broken Jindrich before collecting his bag and laptop and storming out of the room. The door slammed behind him.

That was exactly what happened when you've been bullied too much, he thought. Those morons, they had it coming. He sucked in a deep breath of air as realization slowly set in on what he'd just done. "Holy crap." He hurried down the corridor, his heart pounding in his ears, stirring and speech echoing from the room-probably the professor trying to help the slimy behemoth out of his entrapment. Their low voices weren't distinct enough for him to catch what they were saying, but a little voice in the back of Nikolai's mind urged him to leave the university faster. He was sure, at any moment, police were going to be called. Stupid move, he scolded to himself. Stupid freaking move.

Nikolai quickened his pace, racing down the stark and lifeless hallways and out the wooden doors into the mid-day sunlight, his entire life flashing before his eyes. That was the first time he'd ever used his abilities in front of anyone. What had he done? His own parents didn't even know he possessed this strangeness. He could feel his pulse build in his throat, almost choking him, as he replayed over and over again in his mind the thing he had just done. That was the real reason he would never fit in anywhere. The reason why he would always be the outcast.

Quickly, he bulleted out of the university commons and into the crowded city streets. Stopping in between the shadows of a clothing store and a bustling bakery, he bent to yank his tattered North Face sweatshirt out of his bag and pulled it over his head and down around his waist. Slinging his bag onto his shoulder, he pulled the hood up over his damaged face and continued on to his dank studio apartment on the other side of town.

Tears stung in the corners of his eyes. He wished he could just be dead before the day was over. Looking down at his fingertips, he imagined he could actually see the impossible energy that buzzed just underneath his skin. He remembered the first time he'd ever revealed his secrets to anyone. It was the day when he and his family were moving to Kojakovice, leaving all of his friends and relatives to live four hours away, and that was only if you took the train. His father commissioned him to help load the car. A skinny, ten-year-old, Nikolai started to tantrum with the protest of not wanting to leave. His very best friend had come over that day to say good-bye. When his father demanded that he begin loading his wooden toy chest into the car, and disappeared back inside the house, Nikolai slammed his fists onto the lid of the chest and watched zillions of wooden splinters fly up around him, as though his meager hit held the same weight as an exploding bomb. The wood hung like raindrops in the air for the brief seconds that Nikolai's wondrous gaze held them there.

"What have you done, Nikolai?" His friend whispered in utter fear of him-as if Nikolai were some sort of devil.

When Nikolai's focus shifted to his friend's shocked face, the wooden shards plummeted to the ground, the final evidence that the toy chest ever existed.

Nikolai grabbed hold of his friend's shoulders and begged, "Please! You've got to help me cover this up! My parents can't know what just happened. They'd never understand!"

"Nikolai, they are going to find out anyway! How long have you kept this secret?"

"No!" Nikolai blanched. "You have to promise you won't tell! My dad-he already thinks I'm a freak." Tears welled in his eyes.

His friend only stared at him with the shimmering promise of his own tears in his wide, frightened eyes. "Okay. I swear it."

With that, the two quickly spat simultaneously on the palms of their hands and shook on their oath as they scurried to move the splintered remains of the chest around in the tall grass before Nikolai's fathered returned.

"Son. Did you already put your things in the car?" His father asked in shock upon the notion that Nikolai had actually listened and followed orders promptly.

"No," he wavered. "I gave them to Mika. Something to remember me by." Mika nodded in agreement.

With a look of skepticism, Nikolai's dad hesitated before patting his son on the head. "You're getting too old for toys anyway." He grumbled and walked back over to the car to pack some pieces of furniture with Nikolai's mother.

That had been the closest he'd ever come to outing himself-until now.

As an afterthought, Nikolai broke into a run. The soles of his Converse sneakers hit the cobblestone hard as he sprinted through Wenceslas Square to his apartment a block away. The heavy rumble of the diesel-eating Škodas whirred past him on the street. Reaching the street corner, he stopped for a bit, his lungs blazing in his chest. He closed his eyes, letting the frosted air cool the heat beating in his face. He shoved his bruised fingers into the tight pockets of his skinny jeans and inhaled slowly, focusing in on one of his most useful abilities. His thoughts rewound, the vision in his mind zipping a dizzying journey back through the streets from where he had just come, onto the university grounds, and into the literature department classroom. The visual he had on it was clear, though the edges were blurring like a dream. The police were there, questioning Jindrich about events that had only just occurred. Jindrich was stammering as if fighting with the decision to tell them the truth or not.

"Go on, you ass, tell them. They'll never believe you," Nikolai muttered under his breath.

"Umm...." a little voice questioned from beside him, immediately yanking him back to the here and now.

Nikolai opened his eyes to see a girl, about his age, standing just beside him. His breath hitched in his throat. Blonde. Thin. Gorgeous. And with her finely plucked eyebrow lifted at him. She must have overheard his crazy. Nikolai smiled breathlessly. "Hi."

"Freak." She sneered, and continued walking, her shopping bags over her shoulder, without so much as a glance behind herself. Of course. How could he lead himself into such delusions? For a moment, he'd forgotten who he was.

He continued on, finally reaching his crappy brick building. He dug around in his bag for the keys that had sifted to the very bottom. He fumbled with them before getting the rusty door open, and made his way up the creaky stairs.

Once in his apartment, he flopped onto his unmade bed, the old springs whining under his weight. He looked toward the fridge, knowing full well there was nothing inside it. His stomach also sounded its protest as he sighed and rolled over onto his back. He couldn't wait until he was in the countryside with his parents and younger sister in Kojakovice. He hadn't seen them since the summer. Plus, he'd finally be able to eat three square meals a day and then some. He tapped the ends of his fingers along his hollow ribs as he blinked up at the moldy stains in the ceiling. Closing his eyes, he fought to get the vision to return-to see what that poor excuse of a human being was telling the police. It was harder to concentrate now, with his stomach growling and all of his paranoid thoughts fluttering around his mind, but he strained himself to focus more clearly anyway.

Once again, the images in his mind flashed through the city in its current state. It was getting dark. The streetlights were flickering on along the corners of the intersections as his consciousness sped past them in his projection. The lights were still on inside the university. Mentally, he pushed through the door of the lecture hall he'd been working in. It looked empty now, though with the serious damage still left in the wall, papers scattered along the floor.

Nikolai squeezed his eyelids tighter as he concentrated further on the papers, scanning them to see what was there. To cater more to his utter misery, the cover of last semester's final paper littered the lab floor, Nikolai's full name and information spilled out across the cover page. The rat had opened his mouth. He just knew it. He just had that feeling, and most of the time, his feelings hit the nail dead on.

Aptly, Nikolai's eyelids flashed open with the distant sound of blaring sirens rounding the corner at Wenceslas. Crap! He leapt off the bed. Damn it! It was as if fate herself had it out for him since birth. She was a deviant bitch. That was for sure. And she'd never liked him.

Quickly, he grabbed his bag, tossing his broken laptop to his mattress, and started stuffing the satchel with crumpled clothes from his open drawers, even pulling several articles from the hamper, ignoring the smell. It didn't matter. The sirens were getting closer now. He could almost hear the sticky rubber of the tires rolling to a stop on the wet pavement in front of his building. It was clear there was nothing left for him here or at the university, anyway. He never needed to return. His time was up. He would go to his parents' house for the night, until he could figure out where to disappear to next.

Hearing the metallic slam of the car doors just outside, he slung his bag over his shoulder and walked to the center of the room. He closed his eyes, feeling the wind in the enclosed space begin to bend, ruffling the ends of his hair. Focusing on the platform of the nearest metro station, he decided that was where he was going to take himself.

"Nikolai!"

He gasped, his eyelids flying open. The air, reacting to his dropped focus, abruptly stilled to normalcy as he scanned the room for the source of his name being called. It wasn't the coming platoon of cops. This sounded like it came from somewhere already inside the room. The muscles in his throat tensed in fear. His thoughts instantly flickered to a logical explanation. Who could be in here with him? Had he perhaps crossed some line he shouldn't have by using his powers in public-broken some magical law, unbeknownst to him?

"H-hello?" He stammered and instantly felt stupid for doing so. There was no one in the room with him. Perhaps he really was crazy. He could hear the heavy footsteps of the squadron storming up the stairwell. With his focus fixed on the door knob, and with a fast flick of his wrist, he heard the click of the lock.

"Focus, Nikolai. Pay attention." The voice spoke again.

Nikolai jumped, spinning on his heels to meet nothing but the empty room again.

"Who are you? Who's there?"

"The more important question is...who are you?" The voice was deep and eerily resonating. Masculine. There was also a sort of hollow, musical quality to it, as if the sound itself were made of marble. "I'm not sure you even know."

Nikolai's breathing came harder in his lungs, his hands balling into fists in the front of his sweatshirt. His heart hammered violently, the room spinning. He wanted to fall to his knees. What was happening? For his entire life, he'd gone unnoticed, undetected, while he toyed with his confusing abilities in the evening hours when he was all alone, forever keeping himself a secret, never being true to who, or what, he really was. And now, because of some dumb and hasty action, had someone now come to claim him?

"Show yourself! Who's there?" Nikolai demanded, his voice gravelly with the promise of frightened tears and desperation. He choked on his words, the sound of his own quivering making his bowels turn. Where was the hero he was supposed to be, with the possession of those strange powers? Where was his bravery? His stomach caved, folding, like he was about to be sick.

There was a sudden harsh knocking on the front door. "Nikolai Slavik, this is the police! We hear you in there! We'd like to ask you a few questions!"

He couldn't control his breathing-couldn't focus to disappear fast enough. "Please, leave me alone," he whimpered to a man he wasn't sure was even there.

"Nikolai, the child of darkness." The voice spoke again with a low, rumbling chuckle.

Nikolai spun to finally see the tall silhouette of a man leaning against his grimy apartment window. His arms were crossed casually over his chest, but that was about the only detail Nikolai could make of him over the haze of the musty apartment and his panic.

"Do not fear me. There is a plan for you," he said. "We've been privy to your abilities for a long time. We've been watching you." He pushed away from the window frame, standing straight.

"Mr. Slavik, open this door, or we will use force!"

"Please, who are you?" Nikolai asked breathlessly over the demands of the squadron.

"You will find out soon. I am under strict orders. They told me to find you. To tell you not to worry."

The man started walking forward, toward him.

Nikolai dropped his hands to his sides. Should he act on his instinct? Run? His knees quivered at the thought.

The man held something out to him. "Take this." In the silver glint of the moonlight, Nikolai could see a folded piece of paper, but not a normal one. It looked old, like parchment or something, with torn edges. Hesitantly, he took it.

"Keep that hidden. Do not reveal it to anyone. There is someone you must find. A girl. A mortal among the monsters. An angel among the demons. It is imperative that you find her before he does."

"What are you talking about?" Nikolai frowned, looking down at the document in his hand before unfolding it. The top was adorned with a dark, almost indigo, official-looking wax symbol of a lion's face. The scroll letters spelled out The Parliament. "The Parliament? What is that?" Nikolai glanced back up to find that the figure that stood before him had disappeared in silence.

"Focus, Nikolai. Pay attention." The familiar voice infiltrated his mind again. Without warning, the platoon of officers beat away at Nikolai's apartment door.

As promised, they were breaking in. He needed to act, and needed to do it now. Crumpling up the paper and stuffing it into his bag, he refocused himself on that same train station platform that would take him to Kojakovice. Once again, the air bent around him. And just as he heard the wooden apartment door splinter, the familiar tugging sensation ensued as his body evaporated into the musty air.