Why'd Riley wake up? Waking up implied he had slept. Sleeping was something Riley was trying to avoid, for christ's sake. He sat up and threw the blanket off of himself. He was all tucked in, even. His subconscious probably directed him to his bed, betrayed his conscious's purpose and went to sleep. He vaguely remembered the figments of his dream. Danny was there, and so was Danny's girlfriend. They were talking, and then, the girl from his story she ran in and hid underneath the table. She said she was looking for her biological parents. Riley gave her some vague directions that they were living just down street, past the train tracks while his vision disheveled from his body and panned down from the heavens -- like in the scene of a movie that introduces the hero's hometown -- and looked over the location he was talking about. People were moving over the tracks when the lights weren't flashing, and they moved when the lights were flashing, somehow managing to avoid the oncoming trains. He remembered everything was in fast forward too. The people were nothing but quick blurs that zoomed past. The clouds moved twice as fast as they should, like there was a hurricane going on in the sky, yet there was no destruction that would evidence to break-neck wind speeds.
He then remembered...not much, really. Riley wasn't one to believe dreams had any symbolic meaning anyway, not one that wasn't created by himself at least, but they were fun to experience sometimes. He found dreams to be fittingly chaotic, always some strange new arrangement of events that happen. Sometimes, they wound up into a series of adventures. He would explore these magnificent fantasy lands, tread these ancient ruins and try to outsmart his enemies with wit and guile. Usually, he was this Robin Hood-esque character. He zoofed past, stole the riches from the riches for the poor. He was sure there were a couple of scenes that happened like that in this night's dream. They rarely dragged on into a coherent plotline that his dreams held onto. They were too inherently chaotic for that, much like real life was.
"Morning auntie and uncle Landow!" Riley hit a façaduous cheerful note when he left his room. He was still morose on the inside. School was somehow supposed to continue with a little less than half of its students dead or gone missing. Why'd they think it was a good idea was beyond the feather-brained kangaroo. The living room answered back with a void silence. His aunt was still asleep and his uncle was probably already off to work. "Oh, yeah."
Riley made his breakfast, changed to his school uniform and left the apartment with his school bag loaded with today's books. He doubted they were going to be necessary. The entire school was in shock, and he'd figure that the teachers would probably spend 90% of their periods to reflect on the happenings and to stand still in solemn rememberance of the lost students. Wasn't it even the slightest bit crazy to continue school a weekend after the incident? He decided to take the staircase this time. He sat on the railings and slid himself down the flight of stairs, jumped on the floor on the flat parts that cornered around to the next flight down and did the same thing there. He went into the lobby. For the first time there appeared to be some life around the apartment complex. One of the residents who lived in one of the apartments of the ground floor stuck the key into one of the mailboxes in the grid of similarly sized grey metallic rectangles with keyholes in them. He was balding, had a beard that ringed around his lips, and had a couple of grey strands saturating what appeared to have once been auburn hair growth. The kangaroo and the man somewhat stared at each other, both apparently unused to seeing other intelligent lifeforms living here. He pulled his bills out of the mailbox and closed it. Afterwards, he turned around and sorta limped away to his apartment.
He left through the mechanical doors. They zoomed open once he stuck his key into the lock and gave it a twist. He was back outside again. He had to return to his routine, which he hoped wouldn't persist in school itself. Why would it? Down the allée, through the rich street, and...the gingerbread house was gone? Well, not gone. Actually, plenty other houses had them now, but just the one he had vandalised was replaced with a new sort of ornamental mailbox, kinda looking like a Chinese pagoda with the surname of the residents on the signage, written with a stylised font that resembled the strokes of a Chinese calligraph's ink brush. His head turned to the house opposite of it and witnessed one of the residents just looking at the thing, his face was turning a venemous shade of green. Was Riley walking through a warzone everytime he went through this street? He paced up to get to the end of the street as soon as possible. Fuck these people. Everyone who lived her was out of their fucking minds! Were they spending their whole lives on this treadmill, just desparately trying to keep up, demanding more of them as the belt below their feet kept on going faster and faster, yet they determinedly kept up with the mechanics, demanding they exert such effort to stay at the top of this stupid status chain, just to stay ahead of the crowd on the same treadmill? When would they lose that herd mentality and just jump off. When would they realise it's no use keeping up? Riley zipped away from the street, taking a swift turn around the corner to get the entire street out of his sight and out of his mind. He'd take a different way next time. It just wasn't good for his sanity to go through it again.
He stood in front of the gates of Drakesing high again. It didn't look like he was that late. He must have been a little early actually. Good, good. He wanted some time to process it. Just looking at the school gave his mind more of the illusion of time to prepare itself to enter it. The school was right there after all, trying to give its most intimidating stare against the unflinching kangaroo. The image of its reality there and now made Riley more confident. Sorta like when there's a spider in your room, if you're an arachnophobe. If it just pops into your vision without warning, right in front of you, all of the scare spikes into a single dreadful moment, usually enough to elicit a scream. But this time, you enter the room and see the arachnid on the wall of your room, a little distant, so not enough to make the initial shock as unbearable as a close frontal assault of such an eight legged freak. The fear subsides when you get more comfortable with the spider's presence, and you can slowly take a step forward into the room, taking it inch by inch, watching the spider get bigger and bigger, but still not any scarier. The fear never goes away, but you just get more used to it, and ignore its presence after a while. Riley folded his arms. "I will enter your bloody mouth, and I'll tapdance on your tongue if I have to," he taunted the school building, which frowned its glass window panes at the defiant marsupial.
spare me from your almighty wrath? But I'll backtrack the timeline a bit too make up for it.))