Donald, The Next Day
Donald woke up with the worst migraine he had ever felt in his life. He shifted uncomfortably on his bed, its softness replaced by the feeling of hard sharp plastic. Looking around, Donald noticed that everything in his room had been dismantled and built into something new. His phone was on his chest and had dozens of wires sticking out connecting to a mass of green plastic glued to the back. His laptop was significantly thicker than it was the previous day and was surrounded by discarded tools and electronic parts. His lamps had been combined into some weird amalgamation of lightbulbs and plastic with wires connecting to what appeared to be homemade cameras and lightbulbs on each of the 4 corners of his room.
Strewn across the floor was a multitude of scrap and melted plastic stuck to the floorboards and shaggy blue carpet. Papers with strange beautifully drawn designs were pinned to the wall with everything from pins to stubby pencils.
“Why does it look like a tornado flew through my room?” Donald wondered aloud.
Suddenly the door to his room burst open as Donald's half-sister Freya stormed in. “Don have you seen my pen… What the hell?” Freya’s words died in her mouth as she looked around the disaster was Donald's room.
“Uhh, I can explain,” Donald said.
“Alrighty then, explain,” Freya demanded.
Donald opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out as he realized he couldn’t explain because he had no memory of doing any of it.
“Ok, I lied,” Donald said sheepishly. “I have absolutely no idea how this happened.”
Freya walked around the room carefully examining the drawings on the wall. She tip-toed over the melted blobs of plastic to keep her new sneakers clean as she unpinned one of the drawings. “This is your room! And your handwriting on these papers! And, wait are these my pencils pinning these things to the wall?”
“Maybe?” Donald said. “I woke up surrounded by all this stuff!”
“What did you do to your computer?” Freya said, completely ignoring Donald as she made a b-line for the laptop. “It's as thick as a briefcase!”
The computer screen light up like a Christmas tree, displaying a convoluted screen of password locks. “What is this? I’ve never seen a password screen like this before!”
“Good luck getting in, I have no idea what the password could be,” Donald said as he got out of bed.
Tapping the enter key a few times, Freya suddenly unlocked the computer without pressing a single-letter key. “Or there is no password on it at all and that screen was just to confuse people,” Freya said.
“That doesn’t sound like something I would do…” Donald said as he sat up and gingerly pushed his father's toolbox to the side with his foot to avoid tripping on it.
“Well, that's what you did,” Freya shrugged.
What did a do last night? Actually, what even happened last night? Donald thought.
“Hey Freya, do you remember anything that happened last night?” Donald asked.
“Of course, I remember it just like it was yesterday,” Freya said.
“That's because it was, Frey,” Donald said.
“Oh, right…”
Freya just stood there, twiddling her fingers as Donald waited for her to explain. The siblings stared at each other as the silence continued to stretch on and on.
“And?” Donald said.
“And what?” Freya asked.
“Are you going to tell me what happened? Or even ask why I want to know?” Donald asked.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Oh yeah… Well, you see we, um-”
“You have no idea what happened last night.”
“Not a clue.”
Donald facepalmed as he let out a long sigh, “Don't you find that weird? Or strange?”
“Well, yeah,” Freya said.
“You just didn’t want to admit that you don’t remember a single thing from last night,” Donald said.
“Yeah,” Freya admitted.
“You know what, maybe Alice and John remember!” Donald said.
“It's 6:30 in the morning, Don.”
“Why are you busting into my room at 6:30!”
“HEY!” John's father called out. “QUIET DOWN!”
“Sorry, dad!” Freya apologized.
“Sorry Frank,” Donald spat.
Frank only let out an unintelligible garble in response as the sound of his bedroom door slamming closed echoed through the house.
“So, who is awake at this hour?” Donald wondered.
Freya and Donald pondered this thought for a moment before coming to the same conclusion.
“Dex.”
Dexter.
“When I find those jerks I’m going to strangle them!” Dexter growled.
“Calm down son, I'm sure yer friends had a good reason,” said Emily O’Dunn, Dexter's mother. As an immigrant from Ireland, she had an Irish accent but after living almost 2 decades in the US it was much lighter than it used to be. She looked exactly like her son if you ignored her red hair that is.
“They better,” Dexter said. “It took forever to find a phone just to call for a ride!” Dexter told his mother that his phone got stolen at the theater by an unknown pickpocket and when he chased him into the woods he tripped and that's why he was all cut up. Then spent the next several hours finding his way back. In reality, Dexter did nothing but hide in the woods coming to terms with what he had done after he killed Samuel's friend. Though it wasn’t the killing that bothered him, it was the feeling he got afterward. He felt happy. Dexter had been tormented by Samuel and his gang for years, and now one of them was finally gone.
This disturbed him on a deep emotional level. No one should enjoy violence, let alone killing. His mother and father were strong believers in the strength of words. The pen isn’t just mightier than the sword son, it shatters it. His parents would tell him. At the end of every movie when he would cheer when the hero won and the villain died, his parents would scold him. Drill it into his brain that one should never celebrate someone's death, even the death of an enemy. If a conflict ended in someone's death, then there was no winner. The killing of an enemy, no matter how evil is never justified.
Killing your enemy makes you no better than them. Samuel's friend was a monster, so what does that make him? Dark thoughts filled Dexter's mind like a fog.
What have I done? What have I done? I killed a man. I killed a man!
A cold feeling flowed through Dexter’s body emanating from his heart. Suddenly, the windshield of his mother's car shuddered. A large crack formed across the glass sending tiny shards of glass all over the dashboard. Dexter flinched and shielded his face from the glass as the passenger side window flexed sending spiderwebs of cracks all over the window.
“Bloody hell!” Emily exclaimed. She raised her right arm to shield her face causing the car to swerve into the opposite lane. Thankfully, no one else was on the road allowing her to safely recover. “Damn! I just got those windows replaced! The insurance company is going to have a field day with this.”
“Sorry mum,” Dexter apologized.
“What you apologizing for son? It's not like you broke the windows,” Emilly said.
Considering what Dexter did to Samuel's friend, he wasn’t so sure. That crystal did something to him, he could feel some sort of fluctuating warm and cold feeling in his heart. The sound of a phone ringing broke Dexter out of his conflicted state of mind. It came from his mother's phone with Donald's number displayed on the screen.
“Pick it up son,” Emily said. “They’re probably calling about you.”
Dexter sighed and picked up the phone. “Hello?”
“Dex? Oh good, just the person I wanted to speak to,” Donald said. “Look I was wondering if you noticed anything weird last night?”
“Really? That's all you’ve got to say?” Dexter said, his voice slowly growing louder.
“Um, is this a bad time?” Donald asked.
“You left me at the theater for 6 HOURS! AND ALL YOU HAVE TO SAY IS IF THIS IS A BAD TIME!” Dexter exclaimed, practically yelling.
“Son, calm down,” Emily said. “Raising your voice will only make communication more difficult.”
“Wait, we did what?” Donald asked, confused.
Dexter took a deep breath and calmed down. “We went to the movies last night, I leave to get snacks and when I come back you’re all gone. My phone was stolen so I couldn’t call you and not one single person would let me borrow theirs. I spent 6 hours attempting to get in contact with someone. So to answer you’re question, yes I noticed something weird last night and that was why I ever considered you guys my friends.”
Before Donald could respond, Dexter hung up.
“What?” Dexter asked his mother, who was currently staring daggers at him.
“When you calm down you will call back and apologize,” she said.
“What! Why?”
“What they did was wrong, but your reaction was not appropriate. You’ve got to be the bigger man and call them back to apologize when you calm down. Preferably at a more reasonable time,” she explained. “Taking out your anger in such a way only causes more problems than it fixes. So take a moment to think everything over. Then when you are ready call them back. But it has to be by the end of the day, it's not worth losing your friends by dragging this out. Everyone makes mistakes, this was an especially bad one but a mistake nonetheless.”
“How do you know it's a mistake?” Dexter asked.
“Because I know them. Not as well as you do son, but I still know them. And I know you. If they were truly bad people you would never have associated with them,” Emily said.
Dexter said nothing as he pondered his mother's words. She was right, they were always there for him he needed them. They never forgot his birthday and always seemed to know what he wanted without ever saying it. They’d known each other for years, and they were practically his family.
“Alright,” Dexter said with a sigh. “I’ll call them back tonight to apologize, though I’m still going to be mad at them for what they did.”
“As long as you don’t let your anger control your actions, that's fine,” Emily said. “Now roll down your window, I can’t see the side view mirror through those cracks.”