The Treaty of Night - 1. Chapter 1

Adam leaned his head against the window. His eyes closed, listening to the sound of the rain pelting the glass. He was hoping that the sound would soothe him enough to grab a few more minutes of sleep before they reached the school. He felt his insomnia now taking its toll. Night after night he would lie in bed, tossing and turning, unable to let his mind lose its thoughts and slip into dreams. He didn't know if this was because he was constantly thinking and observing every one of the slightest details around him, or if it was because for four years of his life he had never really slept at night. He had lived on the streets, abandon when he was only 4 years old. He wasn't taken in by the County of Los Angeles until he was 8.

Over the years, this lack of sleep had caused him to take on a tired and restless appearance. He was 13 years old, but was considered small, even by other kids his age, as well on the scrawny side, due to his distaste for sports and the four years of malnutrition.

He shifted slightly, his head still leaning against the window. He opened his dark green eyes and began watching individual drops run down the glass, leaving small trails behind them. The bus rounded a corner, onto another congested street filled with crowds of people rushing back and forth. He watched them for a while, not really taking an interest in any particular person. It seemed that when you’re in a crowded street like this, individuality is lost and you become part of the background of the street itself, just another part of East L.A. This knowledge had helped him remain undetected for the years he had spent out here day in and day out. He would follow the crowd and just disappear in a sea of faces. It’s funny; no one ever thought it strange that a small boy was in with the suites and ties that commuted daily to work. At first he thought it was because he was so small that they merely didn't notice him, but as the years went on, he came to learn that they just didn't care. He remembered that he would begin to follow the same people every day and it got to the point that he knew their schedule as well as they did. He even began to pick up other pieces of information, such as their names and what they did for a living.

He also learned which ones were careless and would sometimes drop money while paying for a bagel or newspaper at one of the various vendors along the street. Many of his meals had come from the money of clumsy and careless people. But it didn't last forever. All it took was one time for someone to realize that they had dropped some money and one time for them to see him grabbing it and running. This had happened before. In fact, he had spent a great deal of his life running, either running from police, or from larger street thugs and one time, from someone who thought he could get a small fortune by selling him into the sex trade. But this time things were different; this wasn't the usual fat tourist or the lack luster businessman who really could care less about a couple of dollars. This man could run and he was, one way or another, going to get his money back. This chase lasted for close to a half hour before, finally, Adam gave up and allowed the man to reach him. It turns out that the man was not after the money, but Adam himself. He was a social worker for L.A. County DCFS – the Department of Children and Family Services. And he felt it was his duty to get this poor street urchin into the care of the County of Los Angeles.

So from that point on, Adam’s life was nothing but one foster home after another. Now, instead of being an invisible child of the streets, he was an unwanted ward of the state. He now sat up in his bus seat, deciding that trying to sleep at this point was a lost cause; his bus only had one more stop before it would reach its looming destination. It wasn't the school itself that he didn't care for, in fact, despite his lack of education in his previous years, he had caught up very quick and had even begun to pass the other students up. It was them whom he didn't care for. Despite his wishes, his past or his situation hadn't remained secret and everyday he was tormented, judged and bullied for it. It was these times more than any that made him miss the street. At least there he was invisible and there was no one to judge him.

As he let his mind stew over the thoughts of his past for a few minutes, his bus came to a red light. It was here that Adam noticed someone different; a man who stood in the crowd, but at the same time was not part of it. He didn't move with it, but rather stood there forcing the crowd to bend to his will and move around him. It was as if he were unaware of the thousands of people pushing around him, or rather, that he wasn't concerned with the flock of faces that surrounded him, scowling at his refusal to submit to the rest of the movement. Instead he merely stood there looking down at his feet holding a sign that in large red bold letters read, “THE END IS NIGH!”

Adam read the sign and began to wonder what would bring someone to want to try to deliver a message about an impending doom. One that so few believed in and even fewer truly cared about, but none the less, he was determined to deliver his message to the oblivious crowd, even if no one looked and it fell on deaf ears.

The man stood there for a few seconds mumbling something only he could hear. His thinning greasy grey hair matted down against his scalp from the pouring rain outside. Much to the disdain of the flowing crowd, he began to pace back and forth perpendicular to the flow of movement, causing several people to crash into him as he continued paying no attention to the increasing anger of the bystanders. He bumped into a small man, knocking him down and causing the contents of his briefcase to spill out sending papers flying everywhere, as the now furious man scrambled to reclaim them.

Just as suddenly as he began, the man stopped his pacing as if he had been struck by some great realization. For the first time he looked up from the ground, at the bus, directly into Adam’s window. It was as if he knew he was being watched. Adam got a good look at his face for the first time. He looked worn and weary, as if the years hadn't been very pleasant at all. This man had seen hard times and it was evident by his face, it was marred by numerous scars and scrapes, as though he had been attack by an animal and recently. But the most distinguishing feature was his right cheek, or lack thereof. It looked as though it had been torn off, exposing parts of his gums and jawbone. The sight made Adam’s stomach turn as the man attempted to give a sinister smile with the half of his mouth he still had left.

Adam watched as the falling rain began to pool up in the side of his gash and soon began to spill out the side of his face and fall to the ground. The wound looked like it had only stopped bleeding a few hours ago... maybe even less.

He couldn't understand why none of the people passing him stopped to help him, when he was obviously in need of serious help. The man then shifted his gaze towards the bus, giving him a better view of the gaping wound on his face. Adam felt as though the sight would make him sick to his stomach, he never was one to handle blood or gore very well.

Adam quickly sank back into his seat, his heart still pounding, hoping that he had not been seen by the nightmarish face. He slowly peeked out of his window once again, only to have his heart sent into spasms. The man had now abandoned his sign and began walking closer to the bus. Adam’s heart froze as the man approached the bus. He stopped a foot from his window, in the middle of the street, staring directly at him, almost studying him. His eyes were solid black, as if all life had been drained from them leaving only a hollow soul.

The man took one final step forward. Adam kept telling himself to run, but it felt as though he had lost the function of his legs. He remained cemented there. Finally, the man reached the window and stared directly at Adam, eye to eye, before letting out and blood curdling scream. Adam saw a fresh spout of blood erupt from the wound and run down the man’s face.

Adam was finally able to take a few steps back from the window, still hearing the screeching man in his ears. He looked among the faces on the bus, but it seemed as if none of them even noticed the screaming, mauled man outside his window. He began to run up to the bus driver, hoping he would be able to do something. But he seemed not to notice anything either.

“HELLO... DO SOMETHING! HE’S HURT!” Adam began screaming, but to no avail. The driver continued to stare forward at the road, as if nothing were happening. He was about to shake the man, hoping to get any form of a response out of him, but as he reached out for him, he heard the sound of glass breaking in the back of the bus. He turned to see the window at his seat missing and the bloody man now pulling himself through the window with fresh cuts on his hand, still screaming directly at him. His pitch was getting louder and louder until he no longer sounded like a screaming man, but a siren going off. The noise brought Adam to his knees as his ears began to ring. He clasped his hands to his head to block it out, but it was useless at this point. The sound no longer seemed to be coming from the man, but from within his own head. Unable to take it any longer, he fell to the floor of the bus and lost consciousness.

Adam heard himself let out a scream as he shot upright in his seat, regaining himself. He looked around to see a few of the other students staring at him, as if he were some kind of loon. He wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and attempted to play off his outburst as if it were no big deal. The last thing he needed was to give them more ammunition to use against him. He was still at the red light at the intersection. He realized that he must have dosed off for a few seconds, but in those few seconds he had the most terrifying and realistic nightmare of his life.

His heart slowly regained its normal rhythm as the bus began to move onward. He looked back at the street corner, half expecting to see the man from his nightmare, but the corner was empty. There was no half faced man and no sign that he had been there. The swarm of nicely dressed office workers continued traipsing over the spot he had stood on in his dream. The man had never been there; he had never existed. Adam breathed a sigh of relief as the corner disappeared behind him.

The bus traveled a few more blocks to another stop to allow the last group of kids on before making its way towards the school. Adam had no real interest in any of the kids he went to school with. Most of them either A. bullied him, B. avoided him or C. had about as much interest in him as he had in them. He was by all means not a social person, always shy and keeping to himself and his thoughts, but at this stop was the one exception to the rule of isolation that he had set for himself. And the exception’s name was Sully. Sully had been his one and only friend since he had been taken off the streets, the only person he had truly opened up to about everything, even his attraction to other boys, which was one of his most guarded secrets, and Sully was the only one he had ever trusted it to.

“You look like you've had one hell of a morning,” a friendly voice said.

Adam turned to see the face of his only true friend standing beside him in the isle, waiting for him to move over so he could sit. Adam obliged and sat up straight to make room for his perky as ever friend. Sully sat down beside him, smiling from ear to ear as if they were not headed for another day in the hellhole of bulling and ridicule that had come to be known as middle school. Adam had always wondered what Sully's secret to his never ending supply of overzealous joy was. He seemed to exude it everywhere he went. When they had first met, Adam had gone so far as to suspect drugs might have had something to do with it, it wasn't as if they were hard to obtain in certain parts of the city. But as time went on, he came to realize that Sully, more than anything, was high on life itself.

“I didn't sleep much last night,” Adam said, returning his gaze out the window at the passing scenery, “and I had a nightmare on the bus and made an idiot of myself, so yeah I've had a pretty shitty morning so far.”

Sully looked at him for a second, concern for his friend spread across his face. “Another one!? Man, you really need to see someone about your sleeping habits. I mean you don't sleep at night and when you do sleep, you dream some pretty off the wall shit.”

Adam shrugged his statement off. He was use to it by now; it had been part of who he was for as long as he could remember. And he didn't desire to go to a doctor and get doped up on sleeping pills. One of his foster parents had ended up being a pill popper who would take a cocktail of whatever she could get a hold of and he had witnessed firsthand what that can do to someone. So he just ignored it and bore with it, hoping it would go away someday.

The bus finally rounded its last corner and arrived at the school. It was a tall old brick building, one of the oldest schools in this part of the city and Adam half believed that some of the teachers were as old as it was. He got up behind Sully to leave the bus and begin his daily routine when he felt a foot stick out and catch his right leg, sending him crashing into the crowd in front of him and knocking half the lineup over. He turned to see an abnormally large kid, maybe a year or two older than himself, standing over him with a large smirk on his face.

“Why don't you watch where the fuck you’re going, spaz?” the apish boy said, stepping over him as he made his way off the bus.

Adam stood up as Sully helped him gather his things off the slick floor of the bus and clean himself off. He noticed that some pages from a report he had due had been trampled and would need to be recopied before he could turn them in. The idea of this only worsened the bad mood he had been in. He weighed the idea of getting off the bus and just ditching school today all together and roaming the streets for a few hours. It certainly wouldn’t have been the first time.

“Just ignore the asshole, he’s not worth getting pissed at,” Sully said as he got off the bus.

‘Easy for him to say,’ Adam thought to himself, ‘I don't ever see anyone tripping him or trying to make his life a living hell.’

Adam followed behind him and felt the rain hit him as he took one last step off the bus. It ran through his dark, almost black hair, matting it to the side of his head. He looked around and once again considered ditching. He stood there going over it until he heard Sully’s voice call out.

“C'mon! What the hell you standing there for?” he yelled from the doorway of the building.

Deciding not to see how long his friend would wait, Adam made his way to the entrance of the school