Survival 101 - (The Newspaper)

Survival 101 - The Newspaper
March 4th 2006
Blog Entry 3

Damien was back in Denver by one o'clock at night. The drive back had been horrible: the weather had been awful, with heavy rain and thunder, which was not the first and only thing irritating Damien. Mike's disappearance was on his mind, especially after Mike had let him and the pack know about the trouble he had put himself into during the three weeks separation. And during the ride back, he nearly had an accident, being cut rudely by another driver; he attempted to memorized the licence plate, swearing he would take care of that imbecile once the ordeal with Mike was settled, but the weather was too bad, and thus the driver set off in the night.

Either his packmates were worried and were eagerly awaiting news about Mike, or they were simply not tired: everyone was quite awake when the Rahu came home. He explained what he had found, how he had found the house, and let them browse through the items: the coat and the newspaper. Nothing interesting was found about Mike's coat. It was charged with electricity, but otherwise, there was nothing out of the ordinary about it.

Miguel took a look at the newspaper in hopes to find the daily cartoons, but was soon frustrated to find there was none. He flipped through the page a moment, finding the Obituary section. Though it may have been meant as a quick joke to read them instead of cartoons, Miguel's gaze seemed to darken as he read. As if in a blank state, he closed the newspaper and handed it back to Damien. Damien's brows turned into a frown, asking Miguel if he was alright, but Miguel simply shrugged and let them know there were no cartoons for him to read. Alice shrugged off the comment, not paying attention to Miguel's reaction, and asked to take a look at the paper in case she may find something that could have been missed.

Like Miguel, she browsed through the paper, finding the obituary just as Miguel had. Maybe there could have been some clues, considering how morbid that section was: everything came back to death, once someone thought about it for a while. As she read it however, like Miguel, her gaze turned into a blank, and as if hypnotized by an unknown force, closed the newspaper to give it back to Ryan or Damien, inquiring there was nothing for her to read. Obviously, it got Ryan and Damien's attention, alerting them something was out of place. As much as they tried to tell Miguel and Alice that they had read through the Obituaries Section, none of them could recall it. Damien had the idea to film one of them while reading to at least give them a proof that they had dozed off on them, pointing at Miguel whom he knew had a cell phone capable of doing the task... which was when Miguel became rather nervous.

He did take out his cell phone, but seemed determined to rid it of something before Damien could get his hands on it. Spotting the lies, Damien wasted no time to chase Miguel across the house to see whatever the Irraka was hiding from him. It was pure luck that made it so Damien reached Miguel just after he was able to either delete or send whatever he was hiding. He gladly offered the phone to Damien with a victory grin after. Damien stared down at the object, looking quickly for whatever Miguel could have been hiding, but he shrugged it right off when he found nothing of interest.

At the other end of the house, Ryan found a message on his own cell phone, finding a picture of Alice giving Damien a kiss on the cheek, which Miguel had just managed to send to him, signed "Send to Amy". Ryan made an amused smile, shook his head, and closed the phone, though he never deleted it. The woman did not seem to care much for what it was, not even looking over at the picture. In the end, she did not really believe it concerned her at all anyway.

When the commotion died down - it had made the tension drop momentarily, at the very least - the subject went back to the oddities of the newspaper. Miguel and Alice would not change their version: they had not read the newspaper. Shaking his head, he opened the paper again, reading aloud the section on which he and the woman had froze earlier -- and it happened once more: Miguel's gaze turned blank, folding the paper back and handing it over to whoever wanted to give it a look. By then, Alice was starting to believe something was definitely wrong and both Ryan and Damien may have been right all along. Damien seemed to find it rather funny, saying he could pay to do see Miguel do that over and over, even offering Alice to give it another go at it. But Alice refused, asking Miguel to give it one more shot to see where he stalled. Miguel rolled his eyes, having yet again no memory of having read anything at all.

But this time, Miguel never handed over the paper to either Ryan or Damien. He did not let them know there were no cartoons, nor did he stare blankly. His eyes rolled back in his head, leaving nothing but white...
... and he collapsed.

To be continued...