Kilian's babble: Hello guys! You probably don't know me but if you are reading this then I already love you. Don't forget to let me a review at the end it makes me write faster. Even if it's to tell me that I am nuts to write this when there is already so many good stories in fictionpress. But to my own defence may I say that this one was really bothering my poor, little, aching head and that I would really become nuts if I don't write it? Thanks.

I also am in search of a beta to help me fix my poor English and make sure the story means anything. If you are interested then send me a mail at the address you'll find in my profile.

Here is the story. Enjoy and review -.

Chapter 1: Bryan

My name is Bryan Hollow. I know, it may sound strange, but trust me the surname is real. Real and so accurate. You don't know me? Are you sure of it? The person whom you passed yesterday in the street and forgot only five second later. The quiet boy in your class that nobody seemed to know and who was always alone when the teacher asked to make groups. The John-or-what's-his-name-guy that work in the office next to yours that you only know because you sometimes see him arrive or go back to the emptiness he come from. In short the habitually neither tall nor small brown haired and eyed guy, that everybody forget when he thinks about the people around him. This is me. That is, if I ever had a normal life. But I never had this luck. For me Destiny (feel the big D it starts with) had other plans. I won't say I didn't like them, I will only shout it very loudly.

To be entirely able to understand what will follow, you have to know what was my life back in those old days where everything is supposed to be so simple. I was an only child born in a very normal family. My dad worked in an office for some big but still unknown company, doing who knows what, which included numbers and things that looked like statistics. My mother stayed at home doing the cleaning and the cooking and watching silly shows on TV. And while they both were very busy living their insignificant little life, I spent time at school listening to uninteresting and, should I add, uninterested teachers, learning how to speak, read, write and think. Even if the last part was never well mentioned. But hey! Don't take me for a fool. Could you dare tell me that what they do in school isn't a very subtle kind of brainwashing? Of course not, especially when the only word they have in mind is: money. Want an example?

Here is the silly-quiz SHOW!

Question number one, why are you going to school for?

A) To make friends and have fun.

B) To be able to have a good and well-paid job that will allow yourself to be a clockwork of the economic world, by acting as though buying was your reason to be alive.

And here is a cookie for all the people that choose A). You all are a freaking bunch of idiots. I'm sure you think that it's Santa Claus who brings presents at Christmas too, aren't you? Well here is some piece of news; it's your loving and caring parents who put awful socks and pullovers under the tree enrobed in even-more-awful ribbons. And you know why they are doing this? Mm? Well, I would say it's only to annoy me but I think they call that "parental love".

Anyway, back to the story, I so was growing between my gentle and almost-silly mother and my absent and not-here-even-when-in-the-same-room-as-me father. I was the dream of every mother: still and quiet with hardly any personality. Plus, as explained before, I wasn't the type you point out for his appearance when entering a room full of people.

Well, I never had to shout in front of a person for her to notice me, but I had no friends and I could walk down the street in which was our house at a rush hour without anyone to smile or even look at me. Not surprising that I ended being so gloomy. When my parents asked my teachers how little Bryan was doing in classes, the so-called teacher would shoot them a blanc look just before remembering that there was a child in their class that could be this Bryan kid. At last it could have been like this if my parents had bothered to come to the parents and teachers meetings.

I went to college but barely made the exams and so after this I started doing part-time jobs that were as interesting as the rest of my life had been. In the process my parents found a way to kill themselves in a stupid car accident leaving me alone with no living relative, a house that I sold for nearly nothing as she was almost a ruin, a little amount of money and a feeling of discomfort, whenever I thought of the emptiness that was already here even before they left me to go in a better world. Trust me, finding that your parents were nearly strangers, isn't that encouraging.

So at the age of twenty I found myself alone with nowhere to go and nobody to speak to. I went in search of a real job and found a place as a gardener at some research lab. Little did I know what I was getting myself into.

Now come the interesting part. For the last five years I was almost killed thirteen times. Two from falling of a ladder, one by drowning although there wasn't any water, one else when a big, unidentified flying object tried to cut my head of, five near-death experienced by fire, three nosebleed that wouldn't stop until I lost consciousness in the infirmary and I even escaped being exploded one time. And by that I mean exactly what you can find in a dictionary: To become suddenly expanded into a great volume of gas or vapour, to burst violently into flame. The greatest fear in all my life. By the way one of the ladder fall was occasioned by the break of the tree I had put the ladder on, and so I ended with a broken leg that never completely healed and I now suffer from a limp that prevents me from running away from this place. If they would have wanted it, it wouldn't have happened differently.

Want to know how all this could happen? Pretty simple you'll see. The lab I was working hat was doing some research in psychic abilities. So they had some residents that were not what you can call normal. Like some fire starter and even a werecat that was in conflict with the werewolf. Find it funny? Let me warn you it's not.

This story starts by a bright and really warm day, I was cutting bushes when happened ma fourteenth near-death experience.

"WATCH OUT" was all my brain had the time to register before the bush in front of me burst into flame. I tried to retreat but in my hurry tripped on my own feet and ended having a better view of the grass that I would have hopped for. As quickly as the fire had started, it stopped, leaving my poor bush in a very bad state. I doubted it would ever become green again. If I were the kind to explode with anger, then I would have done so. But as I was the very boring, emotionless and almost invisible not-much-more-than-a-ghost kind, I stayed calm and just popped myself on my feet again before moving to the next bush, thinking that I would have to find a new one to replace the other. I spared some other thoughts to my aching leg and forgot the incident right away. And before you ask, no. It never occurred to me that I should find a new job or go to see a shrink. But it did once look appealing to my boss to send me the first time I was almost roasted and didn't even bothered to tell him. I think this was the only time I said "no" to someone. But something tell me that if I had explained that it was because I had no time since I had to repair the things that had burnt with me, he would have sent me no matter what.

But that day, my boss wasn't concerned with what could happen to me any more. As were the residents of the centre. So it frightened me a lot more to hear someone ask suddenly "what happened here?" behind me than it had to see a fireball burning my nearly finished work. I turned round to face the intruder and saw that it was a young man. He was tall like me but thinner than I was. His clothes looked old-fashioned and used. Faded jeans with holes on the knees and a sweat that had been green in another life. Even his hair and eyes seemed to have lost their colour. He had ashes-blond hair and very pale grey-green eyes. His skin was pale as well, as if he had been ill for a long time and the dark circles under his eyes seemed to prove this theory.

I had scrutinized him probably longer than I should have, because he asked what had happened a second time. Only at that moment did I remember that it's rude to stare at people. So in my embarrassment I did something I usually don't. I answered and was even polite.

"Just some kid doing bad jokes, may I help you?" When I say polite, it was, in fact, the best I could do since I hadn't talked to anybody in five years, except for the nurse of the centre or my boss when he had some extra work for me to do. But, there, all I had to answer was "yes Sir" or "It'll be done" and if I were in a good mood I could even add, "Have a nice day". So I was quite proud of myself with this tiny bit of a sentence. Pathetic isn't it?

And there came the third biggest surprise of the day. He answered "yes". Well actually he said, "Yes, please". But that's not the point.

"I'm looking for the…" takes a paper from his pocket and read it carefully "Centre of paranormal research. I was told it's around here."

"Too young to be a scientist… He must be a new resident, how great! A new member of the let's-kill-the-gardener-by-accident team. How lucky of me." I thought before I mechanically answered, "It's here". The boy looked way more pleased than I was.

"Then could you tell me where I can find Spencer Newton?"

I was trapped, so I just said "Sure" and started to lead the way to the boss's office.

To be continued