Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ The Goggles ❯ Chapter 1

He closed his eyes, then slipped on his goggles. He breathed deep, and then slowly, ever so slowly, he cracked an eyelid open daringly. The sight before him made him snap both eyes open, and drink in the word around him.

The red violet glass of the goggles showed a world tinted pink--- a world that seemed impaired by love. He breathed deeply, the familiar scent of chlorinated water making him grin inexplicably. The usually light blue water was a Kool-Aid violet, and a shimmer across the pool caught his attention.

The girl's gleaming blond hair was a candy-colored strawberry blond that seemed edible to him. A million thoughts ran through his head, and far off in the distance, a whistle sounded. She turned her head towards the source of the noise, and the gentle waves of her hair were silky smooth against his cheek and smelling of roses. Then a gruff, loud yell ripped through his fantasy.

“Swim! Get in the water! Now!”

His coach stood behind him, popping veins with the intensity of his angry yelling. The whole pool was looking in his direction. Snapping into form, he tensed his long lean body and dove swiftly into the water, swimming furiously, he strove to catch up to the swimmers only seconds before him. He flailed him arms and kicked furiously, driven by a soft shimmer of blond hair. He hit the wall, flipped over, and the world seemed to spin endlessly as he was suspended in the fraction of a second where direction became nonexistent. He kicked hard against the wall, and shot towards the finish line. He was six feet from the wall, four feet, one foot…

He rose breathless. His team was letting out deafening cheers.

“Yow! You won! You beat them! First time in four years!”

“Dude, you broke the tie!”

Everyone was beaming with pride, haughty and proud of their winning contestant. Eddie plastered on a smile between a few of his heavy breaths, and joined his ecstatic team in cheering on the tawny haired boy in the lane next to him. After a few steady breaths, he ripped his goggles from his face and turned to his friend.

“Better luck next time,” Carter said to him, but Eddie was already past caring about that. He saw Dustin's broad smirk as Lila walked up to him and grabbed his hands. She placed them around her waist and gave him a bold, passionate kiss on the lips. Eddie could feel an insurmountable rage pulse through his temples and tighten his body. They slid underneath the bleachers and Eddie huddled into his warm towel and watched the next race.

She was racing next. He gazed at her long, lean form as she readied her sinuous, catlike form for diving into the water. Her face was determined and emotionless. He loved to see her like this, without the slavishly happy look of shallow, insipid attraction she wore when she looked at Dustin. Lila was fierce, strong, and beautiful like this. Eddie's eyes never left her as she flung herself into the air, and with barely a splash slid into the water as if she were running away from the land.

“Eddie?” Carter asked him, but Eddie had already started to glare at Dustin. He was laughing about something with his friends. He had contemplated how such a wonderful girl could be so strange as to actually be attracted to Dustin. Of course he was physically attractive, but there were so much more things to take into consideration than physical appearances. Eddie knew that Lila was the farther from being shallow that any other girl he had ever met, including his own mother.

He watched Dustin's broad jaw clumsily work and his squinted eyes fight against the sun futilely. He watched as his spade like, crude hand shaded his eyes and looked at the pool. Eddie watched Dustin's eyes slide from side to side as he watched her swim. Then, he observed a change. Dustin's eyes grew wide, and his mouth gaped open. Eddie could see the black pupils dilate, then contract into tiny pinpoints. His tan became lighter, and developed an ashen, sickly color. Every muscle in his body tensed. Screams started to echo around the pool, and Eddie looked around in alarm.

The water of the pool closest to him was a faint rose color. However, as his eyes traveled along the lane lines towards the middle, the color started getting deeper and more potent. A halo of brilliant crimson hung around a mess of tanned limbs and a confused tangle of blond hair. People were swimming furiously towards it. The screams that several people were letting loose seemed to become swallowed up by the water. The noises were muffled, and the violent emotions that were spurting from Eddie's chest seemed to be sucked into the water as well.

Dustin had leaped into the water and swam as fast as he could, but someone had reached Lila first. The siren seemed to be a faint whisper in Eddie's ear, and the world seemed to blur as things moved. Colors were more intense, and the light hurt. The acrid reek of the chlorine seemed to bleach out every other sense he had, and it burned his nostrils.

She seemed so at peace, lying on the stretcher. The EMTs were jogging slightly, and feeling her pulse and temperature. Dustin was speechless, sitting alone in the pink water.

Eddie collapsed onto the ground, and the ambulance drove away. Both Dustin and Eddie watched it diminish with identical expressions of disbelief, anguish, and horror. Both boys were trembling.

Dustin stood, chest high in the light pink water. Ashen, and staring and the bleak road, people called out to him and attempted to coax him back to the edge of the pool. No one wanted to go into the bloody water.

Eddie slowly walked to the side of the pool, and dipped his hand in the pink liquid.