Sci Fi & Fantasy / First Chapter: Catherine

Chapter One
~Catherine~

The morning of September the first brought with it a torrential amount of rain. The sound of the pellets pounding against my window frame woke me up unusually early. My window was still black, the light in my room nonexistent.
I wallowed in my bed for a couple of more minutes, irritated because of the unceremonious interruption. I would need my rest for the day, as a way of preparation for the grueling eight-hour session that lay ahead.
I flipped over from side to side of my bed, fruitlessly searching for a comfortable position. I closed my eyes only to pop them open again to see the obscure scenery of my room that was no different from the veil of my eyelids. I gave a disgruntled sigh—both one of defeat and impatience—and ceased with fidgeting about.
I lay still on my back, which had been the last position I had tested before coinciding with defeat. I stared up at what I knew to be the ceiling; my eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the dark. I listened to the disjointed rhythm of the rain hitting and rebounding off my window, and to the conjoined snoring of Mother and Father from across the hallway. Aside from these noises, everything else was unpleasantly still—both inside and outside.
I frowned as the rain fell down harder, threatening to break through my window and flood the house. What horrible weather, I thought to myself. It was still summer wasn’t it? I couldn’t be sure of the answer to that but felt that it was more summer than it was autumn.
The past two months had been unseasonably rainy. Most summers brought droughts and scorching hot sunny days with them, but this one seemed utterly determined to be different—in an outlandish way—from the rest.
Not that the weather bothered me, of course—sunny or otherwise. Most of my days were spend inside the confines of these four walls, constantly reading, constantly writing. The only time I left my room was to take care of human nature’s consequentials, or to run some errand for Mother when Father was too busy to attend to it.
I guess the saying that Texas weather is unpredictable applied to all of the state, which unfortunately included the small, uncharted towns that no one cared for. I don’t think that it would be an exaggeration to say that the population of Coryeal was hovering somewhere around the three-triple-zero mark. The census of my high school class was only about one hundred people as it had stood last year. Everyone in town sent their kid to the same high school—Llama Vista High.
I had been born and raised in this depressingly small town, never once stepping out beyond its minute limits, a constant figure to its population. Everyone on the street knew each other—and had probably went to grade school and high school together as well—and were openly sociable. The sight of a backyard barbecue was a common sight to see on a Saturday afternoon, not that the current weather had allowed for any kind of outdoor activities.
My parents had also been brought up here, high school sweethearts since the ninth grade, their education reached as far as a community college. After going through the necessity of getting married they had explored outside the boundaries of Coryeal, but had come back groveling half a year later claiming that the city lights were not for them.
My parents’ situation was not something bizarre—though maybe to me. The majority of people from their generation had followed the same pattern, sometimes coming back within a week, too deeply routed in Coryeal to leave it.
I was sure not to make the same mistake as them.
Because I hated Coryeal, hated it with every ounce of strength capable of my seventeen-year-old body. What was so special about living forever in a small town, besides nothing? The mental image of me, ancient and crinkled, sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch of some small house with an equally withered old woman with a few gaping holes in her teeth flashed across my mind. I shivered although it was comfortably warm beneath my layered blankets.
I shook my head from side to side, trying to erase the improbable, yet possible, picture from my head. Stop being so stupid, I demanded of myself. You’re not going to end up here.
I, eventually, calmed myself down, but was left feeling like an idiot afterwards. How stupid of me to doubt my escape. I already knew the one—and only—key that was capable of getting me out of here: an education.
My grades were flawless. The last grade that I had made that wasn’t an A had been…never. I knew that perfect grades were the only way that I could get out of here, and I didn’t have to worry about that. School was too easy, not even the—I chuckled lightly before thinking the word—“Advanced Placement” classes were a challenge, far too easy if anything. I imagined that whatever college I went to would be pretty much the same, Ivy Leagues excluded, if I was ever fortunate to get into one that is.
I suddenly realized that I could make out the definite figure of the ceiling above me I couldn’t remember when my eyes had adjusted to the lack of light, too deeply lost in my reverie. The rain outside had also lightened considerably—the pounding was now only a slight tap.
I let out a sigh that slowly transformed into a drawn out yawn. I got up from my bed and went over to flick on the overhead light, careful not to trip over anything on my way there. I blinked as it turned on, its radiance almost painful. I looked around at the messy contents of my room.
The inevitable part about being brought up in a small town was that it automatically made you poor. Not dirt poor, but not luxury car, pool in the backyard rich either. We only had two cars—one for me and one for my parents, though Father was the one who primarily used it. They were beat up, rusted old things, but enough to get around. I felt a strange fondness towards my ancient truck. If it weren’t for it then I would have to walk to school (which was really the only place I went out to besides the small grocery store on some kind of errand) since Father got up too early in the morning for work to drop me off.
That reminded me that he should be gone by now, but I hadn’t heard any sound coming from the hallway to announce his departure. Maybe I’d fallen asleep without realizing it.
Curious now, I slowly opened my door a crack and peeked outside it, hoping that I wouldn’t get caught spying. There was no light visible through the space beneath their door, but I could hear the muffled jumble of somebody—or something—speaking. The sound of applause and appreciative laughter made me guess that Mother was probably in there alone watching some early-hour sit-com, Father never watched T.V with her.
I closed my door shut, not bothering to be sneaky about it this time. If there was one thing I was positive about it was that Mother understood my nature so much better than Father did, and would leave me alone this morning, whereas he would have barged into my room and attempted to engage me in some kind of light, neutral topic. I hated interruptions, preferring the quiescence silence of my own thoughts to the unwanted company of others.
My eyes looked up to the round clock tacked above my window. The short hand lay in between the seven and eight, the long hand stood irresolutely on the six. I mentally tabulated the time I had left until school started. It only took me five minutes to get there anyways; the large cinnamon brown building was visible from my backyard. The rough mean I had settled on left me with more than enough time to prepare and get there.
I looked wistfully around my room, searching for something to kill the time. Unlike my parents’ room, mine was devoid of a T.V. Not that that fact bothered me much, I had other things besides mindless sit-coms and cartoons to distract me with. My gaze settled on the most prized possession my room contained: a small, three shelved bookshelf that stood nonchalantly in the corner of my room across from my bed.
I rushed over to it, stubbing my toe on an encyclopedia that had been left on the floor from the night before. My eyes greedily examined my small collection; each book was worth momentous value to me, worth more than any human life was at least. I lifted my hand and let my finger travel down the worn spine of one of the books. I glimpsed at the title: Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. When was the last time I had read it? I couldn’t remember. I tentatively grabbed the book from its lodged position between Wuthering Heights and Oliver Twist— being extremely careful not to break its spine—and walked back over to my bed with it nestled close to my chest.
I one-handedly fixed my pillows into a comfortable reading position—my other hand clung to Jane Eyre with a tenacious grasp. I appraised my work and then flopped onto the bed, feeling one of the springs of the mattress stab into me as I did.
I opened the ancient book and flipped through its discolored pages until I reached the final chapters where Jane reunites with Mr. Rochester, my favorite segment of the whole novel.
I instantly forgot where I was at the moment I read the first line. My eyes swiftly breezed over the familiar, beautiful articulation of the final scene. But while I was reading, a completely different mental image jumped into my mind that was very much different from the one that the words were supposed to convey.
I imagined myself in Mr. Rochester’s shoes—physically and emotionally handicapped. I saw myself waiting on the porch of the same small white house, old but not B.C decrepit. Maybe somewhere in my mid-forties, with streaks of white hair meshing with the black.
I stood staring out onto the empty, barren street, expecting something that would never come. I laughed darkly to myself, knowing that my actual response to Jane’s lack of fealty would have been the exact polar opposite of Mr. Rochester’s.
I would not have waited—desperately hopeful—for the return of my lost love. I would have moved on with the remaining pieces of my life, found somebody to take care of me in my handicapped state, and lived life to its absolute fullest until my death day.
Of course I wouldn’t have kept my deranged wife locked up in the attic either. I nodded in ascension to that.
But what if love had altered my heart so much that there was turning back, no return to the life without love in it. Would it be possible to move on, or would I cling to the remembrance of my belated love?
Whatever love was, I surely wasn’t going to find it anywhere in Coryeal. It had been seventeen years and I pretty much knew everyone around my age, and not one of them had been worth a second glance.
Love, what a superficial, irrational thing. Or maybe it was simply beyond my range of comprehension, though the first option sounded more likely.
I shook my head back and forth; momentarily surprised by the amount of depth I was putting into the actions of fictitious characters. Something must be wrong with me, probably the after-affect of reading too many romance novels.
I made to snap Jane Eyre shut but found that it was already closed. I couldn’t remember if I had consciously made an effort to close it or if the book had closed on its own accord, which didn’t seem like a very likely thing looking at how far down the spine was drooping.
I rose up out of my bed and walked back over to place Jane Eyre back into its lodged position— my fingers weren’t quite as delicate this time. I had a feeling that Oliver Twist would have made for a better morning read.
I turned around to look at the time on the clock. It was still too early to go to school, but I really wasn’t doing anything productive by staying here, either. I paced absentmindedly around my room for a while without an actual goal in mind of what I was planning to do next. Finally, I stopped mid-stride and accepted defeat, bringing an end to my pathetic form of procrastination.
I sighed and made a U-turn to my small closet to choose the clothes that I would be wearing to school for the day. I settled on my favorite: A long sleeved button-up black shirt with an accompanying pair of black pants that looked like they belonged with a tuxedo. I flung the items on my shoulder and headed to the bathroom to change, forgetting to turn of my overhead light as I left the room.