Chapter 1

Ordinary, that was the best way I could describe myself! Ordinary life with ordinary friends, ordinary middle-class parents, and an ordinary social life. I had recently reached voting age, but I didn’t have a girlfriend yet. Forget girlfriend, I didn’t even have a girl who I could call a friend! My life was just a conglomeration of games and movies, which is pretty standard when you are still living with your parents and have to do everything under their supervision.

My life was a pretty menial existence which basically involved labouring through each day without any excitement to balance things out. I was pretty tired of my mundane existence up to that point in my life and couldn’t help but envy those heroes in fiction who suddenly found out that their life wasn’t really what it was supposed to be, their existence turned on its very head in a matter of minutes!

Think kids in magical castles learning spells or a world populated by fantastical wizards, mighty elves and sturdy dwarves having to be saved by creatures living in holes in the ground! I couldn’t help but fantasise and put myself in the role of these heroes, with the adventure being their lives and every day being a bevy of new experiences! Little did I know how much I would come to simultaneously be wistful and regretful regarding those thoughts in the future!

“Man, not again!!!” Those were the first words out of my mouth as I woke up on an ordinary Friday morning, drenched in sweat. You see, today was a special day in my rather hectic life. Or as special a day can be in my humble opinion. Today was the last day of my end of semester exams. Even the most studious students in class look forward to this event because it signifies an important milestone in everyone’s life. The long semester breaks.

For me, the breaks weren’t filled with anything major to look forward to. My days filled with video games, movies, and long showers at inappropriate times of the day where my left hand did most of the work. My mother randomly appearing to make sure I was well-fed and hadn’t randomly decided to transcend the mortal plane.

Sad, I know but you can bet your bottom dollar I was looking forward to it.

Monotony was my thing. I thrived in monotony. But lately, my monotonous life had hit a snag. A minor snag that was proving to be very inconvenient. You see I was having trouble sleeping. Some sort of weird insomnia, my doctor told me. Random spells of sleeplessness which made following a routine impossible. And when I did sleep, I woke up feeling more exhausted than I had been before I went to sleep. It was as if I had run a marathon while I was supposed to be sleeping.

Every day it was the same. Sporadic spells of sleeping followed by body ache the likes of which I had had only experienced once before when I had tried going to a gym. The pain that had afflicted on my body the next morning had made me quit the gym immediately but I will never forget that. Now I was getting the same amounts of pain after doing the most relaxing job a man can do.

The amount of tension built up in my body due to the general lack of rest meant I was always at my boiling point. I was always irritated and this affected my already redundant social life. Friends didn’t interact with me and my family barely tolerated me. This made the upcoming break even more crucial as I could use it to set my life in order and do something about my sleep deprivation. With my conservative family there was a definite stigma regarding sleep medication (“It’s a crutch”, my father’s snide voice reminded me in my head). So, I really needed to research alternative methods to that would allow me to get some sleep.

With all the problems affecting the monotonous humdrum that was my life, it was with a heavy heart and a sore body that I got up from the bed. The final exam was beckoning and I really didn’t want my mental and physical health affecting me adversely. I was out of my house in record time, doing the bare minimum to get ready.

The hallways were filled with the buzz associated with the end of the exams. The academically-inclined students were discussing the paper, hell-bent on finding out their scores before they exited the premises while the others were already making plans for the break, intent on planning out their whole breaks right then and there.

Me? I was busy feeling terrible. Halfway through the examination, my eyes got really droopy and I felt like I could fall asleep at any moment. While this would be welcome at literally any other time, the middle of the final exam was not one of them. It was an effort to just stay awake through the exams, let alone complete it to my satisfaction.

Now, with the exam over, I was feeling like someone had run me over with a truck then thrown me off a cliff for good measure. If that wasn’t enough, I was feeling nauseous and figured I could hurl at any moment. I could say without a shred of doubt that this was the worst I had ever felt. I just wanted to curl into a corner and sleep, cry and then sleep some more. The break hadn’t even started and things were already looking dreadful. It was in this haze of uncertainty and hopelessness that made my way home, ignoring all calls coming my way, not feeling up to any interaction.

I was walking to my home, unaware of where I was and letting my subconscious carry me along when someone called out, “Dave!” That stopped me in my tracks.

Dave, short for David. David V. Goliath. That is my name. No, really, that is my name. My grandfather chose this surname when he immigrated to this country. My first name might just have been the result of the fact that my father hated me the moment I was born. Or his bad sense of humour. I have no idea what V stands for. I really think he wanted to name me David Versus Goliath but had to settle for V since someone must have straightened him out. My name is the one thing that is not ordinary about me and has made my life a tragedy, rather than enriching it. A socially inept boy with such a name ensures a lack of popularity and some introspection time in lockers and duffel bags. But I digress.

Looking around I saw that I had ended up near the park overlooking the apartment I lived in. And the person calling me was my kind-of-best-friend/friend-I-had-known-for-the-longest, Frank. Frank Specter. Son of millionaire parents, straight-A student, ultra-popular and the most athletic person I knew. The kid was a freak. Why he chose to waste his time by hanging around with a loner like me, I don’t know.

Frank, for the lack of a better word, was colourful. His hair was dyed blue, he wore the most colourful branded clothes and to top of it all off, he had tattoos covering his entire torso, from neck down to the waist. If anyone else had such a gaudy outfit, he would be laughed off the park. On Frank, the same outfit looked as if he had just walked through a rainbow and nature had given him the gift of looking spectacular. The man had a swagger that no one else could pull off. His 6’2” lean frame was ripped with muscles. Chiselled like marble. Modern-day Adonis. That’s the word one girl used to describe him at a party I had the misfortune of attending alongside Frank. On a normal day, my chances of hooking up with a girl were 0. With Frank, that number dove into the negative.