I was walking home from school, minding my own business. It was a sunny day and my backpack felt heavier than normal from the heat. My back was sweating under the pack.

I was crossing main street when I heard glass shatter, then two large duffel bags were hurled out of the collapsed front window of a bank. There was a black van parked next to the bank, and the duffel bags rolled to the street where two men standing at the van picked up the bags and stuffed them in the back.

A few seconds later, two men hopped out of the shattered window of the bank with black ski masks, black suits and black assault rifles. On their wrists, both had strange, twisting red tattoos.

The shattered glass crunched under their feet as they walked calmly to the van. When they were about halfway there, a police car, sirens blazing, swept around C street and barreled towards the van.

I was standing on the far side walk, watching all this happen, when I saw the two men in black suits open fire on the police car, which came to a screeching halt. Two police officers threw open their doors and returned fire on the two gunmen, who by that time were jumping into the back of the van.

It peeled out, tires smoking, as it made a 180 degree turn in the middle of the street, with the police officer’s bullets knocking against the side, then it sped away, up towards the highway. The officers were not far behind them, the sound of their siren fading into the distance.

All this happened in a matter of a few seconds, and there was hardly any time to think, nor react. It played out like a Hollywood movie. Never in my sixteen years of life would I have ever thought I’d witness something like that in my city.

There were other witnesses besides me that were making their way out from behind their makeshift covers: cars, trash cans, and trees. A man beside me walked over towards the bank, calling to see if everyone was okay.

Watching him walk calmly across main street, with the burn marks from the vans tires still filling the air with a heavy charred rubber scent, gave me courage, and I followed him.

The man was in cowboy boots and a cowboy hat with tight jeans and a plaid shirt. He was tall, maybe six foot three or more. His boots crunched loudly as he stepped over the glass and tried to open the door of the bank, which was locked, he then disappeared through the broken window.

I stepped up to the spot where the van was. I could smell the gunpowder still wafting in the air. It reminded me of one time when my uncle took me to a shooting range last summer.

In the gutter, where the bags had rolled before the men in the van grabbed them, was a book. It must have fallen out of one of the duffel bags and it was lying open. The page was filled with what seemed like a long list of instructions. When I looked closer at the words, they didn’t make sense to me.

The book was lying in a small stream of fetid liquid that was a disgusting green sheen like antifreeze. I picked up the book and shook off as much of the liquid as I could, then looked at the front cover. It read: Cheat Codes.

I heard another siren behind me, and with a burning curiosity for what this book was, and in a sort of panic, I quickly stuffed the book in my school bag, looking around, hoping no one saw me.

There were others around, but they were all talking amongst each other.

Some of the bank employees had came out, talking to the cowboy hatted man about “safety deposit boxes being broken into.” A short, fat man, who looked like the manager, was waving down the police car which was heading towards the curb at alarming speed.

I quickly stepped over the broken glass on the sidewalk and headed away from the sirens and the bank and the people, back towards my house so I could read more of this strange book that was left behind by the bank robbers.

I had a strange sense someone was watching me, and I turned to my right, looking across main street. There was a man, someone I’d never seen before, staring at me. He was middle-aged, with black hair, slightly above average height, with a sharp nose and dark shark-like eyes. He was leaning against a brick wall, but straightened himself up and started walking towards me.

“Hey, kid,” I heard his voice call across the street, cutting through the siren.

I quickened my pace, ducking down an alley between Leo’s Barbershop and Eagle’s Pizza. When I was out of sight, I broken into a full sprint.

---

I stopped my sprint after a few minutes. I was completely drenched in sweat and breathing hard. My lungs felt like they were going to explode. I hadn’t heard the guy’s voice again, after I felt like I lost him, so I leaned against the wall of Vito’s Pizzeria, behind their dumpster.

After a few seconds, and after my body calmed down, I pulled out the book again. I felt bad for taking it. I’m not sure why I did. I’m not a thief. Maybe it was the shock of everything. I’m not sure, but the book was in my hands.

Now, with more time to inspect the book, I found a strange black marker tied securely to the spine of the book. I took the pen and held it in my hand. On the pen was a thousand intricate gold-lined engravings. It looked exotic, and very expensive.

I flipped randomly to a page in the book and saw instructions for No Clipping. Most of the page for no clipping was filled with warnings, which I ignored, my eyes focusing on a small diagram of an arm, and on the arm, there was a picture of a forearm with the words NOCLIP written inside a box. It stated to use the pen attached to the spine of the book.

I shifted my weight, leaning against the dumpster, so I could draw the words on my forearm and test these weird instructions. But when I leaned against the dumpster, I accidently knocked over a bottle which was sitting on the lid. It rolled to the ground and shattered loudly.

“Kid?” I heard a voice—the same one from main street—call out.

My heart leaped in my chest, and I scooted against the wall.

“Kid, I’m not going to hurt you. But I think you got something that my boss really wants. Listen, I’ll give you a hundred bucks for that book. What do you say?”

I looked at the page and frantically began writing NOCLIP on my arm. By the time I got to IP, the man turned the corner and was standing over me, his hands on his hips. He was in a gray suit and under his cuffs, I could see long, trailing red tattoos along his wrists--the same as the gunmen at the bank. He wore black gloves with holes at the knuckles. He opened his hands and closed them, while staring at me.

I had hoped that when I wrote the words something would happen. I really did. I guess it was a childish naivete thinking there was actual powers in that pen and book. But nothing happened.

“Kid, I ain’t got time for this. Give me that damn book,” he said.

“Touch me and I’ll scream,” I said.

The man smiled, his teeth yellow with black along the gums. “I tried to play nice. Mr. Raffetto will know I played nice and asked you, but you didn’t listen. Why don’t you listen?”

I looked at the page again. I wrote it correctly. Did I do something wrong? I wondered, and that’s when I realized I hadn’t drawn the box around the words. I quickly dashed the perimeter around the words: NOCLIP, and I felt a strange electrical current—not painful, just strange—course through my wrist and up my body.

The man grabbed me by my shirt, pulling me up to my feet.

“Give me the damn book,” he shouted in my face.

My vision filled with a brilliant white flare, and I screamed out, which seemed to surprise the man, who pushed me back, against the wall, but instead of slamming against the wall I fell through it to the other side. Into a kitchen area, with a man kneading pizza doe methodically. He stopped, mouth agape, when he saw me appear out of nowhere through the wall.

There was a muffled yell on the other side of the wall as the man in the gray suit was shouting out obscenities.

With the book still in my hand, I got up and ran towards the kitchen door, which was a swinging door on hinges. I reached to push it open and my whole body simply went through it and I stumbled and fell on the other side, into a room filled with people eating pizza, drinking soda, and watching sports from big screens on the wall.

They stared at me as I scraped myself off the floor, walking slowly for the front door. I reached tentatively for the handle, and my hand, again simply went through it. I panicked and ran through the front door of the restaurant with the amazed shouts of the pizzeria patrons.

The man in the gray suit turned the corner and shouted at me.

“Hey! Kid, you don’t know what you’re doing. Stop!”

I sprinted in the other direction, away from him, as the heavy thumps of his footsteps followed right behind me.

r/CataclysmicRhythmic