Greetings from the deep end!
I thought that it would be ever so much fun to start writing a short story today. Enjoy.
Andromeda Finn had a stupid name. Or at least he thought so. Andromeda's parents were a little weird, by everyone's standards, not just his. They had a crazy obsession with stars and planets and galaxies, thus his stupid name. It was because of that name that Andromeda was known as the child of the local "star nuts". His parents were always studying the stars and went to space conventions and made dumb space jokes. Both of them were teachers in the little town where their family had lived for generations. Andromeda's father was a science teacher and mother was a math teacher. Their classrooms were always full of posters and dioramas of the solar system. They were always talking about the stars and having their students do projects about them. The students in the school generally just thought Andromeda's parents were weird. As a seventh grader in a small town junior high of about eight hundred students, where his parents taught, he wasn't able to escape the negative influence of his families insane obsession for even a minute. In big cities kids could hide under the radar, they could fade into the crowd and hide in a mass of people. Andromeda did not get to enjoy that lifestyle. Everyone knew everyone else and he was often picked because his family was different, because his parents were "weird".
In many ways Andromeda was a normal kid. He enjoyed television, video games, movies and music. He was looking forward to learning to drive in a couple years and couldn't wait to get into high school where he might get a little relief from the grief he endured on a daily basis by going to school in the same place where his parents taught. The only real problem in Andromeda's life was the shame he felt from being related to people who he didn't understand, who he didn't feel that he belonged with. Andromeda was uncomfortable in his skin, uncomfortable in his surroundings, uncomfortable as a part of the family he was born into. Even that was common among other thirteen year olds, but Andromeda didn't know that. He only knew that he was unhappy and wanted to be a part of a "normal" family like everyone else.
When at school Andromeda often did everything he could to avoid other people. One day after school, Andromeda was walking down an out-of-the-way hall on his way to his father's classroom to wait for his ride home when he noticed an open door. Andromeda had never noticed a door down that hall before. He quickly decided that he simply hadn't been paying attention in the past and that the door had always been there. Andromeda made to walk by the door and continue on his way when curiosity got the better of him, and Andromeda chose to peek inside. He was astonished at the size of the room. It was easily as large as a gym, perhaps even bigger. The room contained piles and piles of odds and ends, wrestling mats, books, desks, boxes of pictures and trophies. There was an old score board leaned up against a wall next to a pile of old speakers and audio equipment. There was also a pile of old reel to reel video equipment and tapes on shelving in the middle of the room. This stuff looked old. Andromeda knew that the school had been a high school building years before but he had never thought that there may still be things stored from back then.
Taking a few steps into the room, Andromeda called a shy "hello" to see if anyone was in there. No response came so he entered further. As he walked around taking mental notes of all he saw there, Andromeda's mind began to wander, wondering what history left all of these things here. Who had used this stuff, why wasn't it thrown away? He wandered around until he made his way to the shelving with all of the video tapes on it. Andromeda began to read the titles to himself. Most of them were old school plays and football games, but as he came to the last reel his blood ran cold and the small hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. The title of the last video was, "Andromeda Finn".
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