Tobin's Window Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Daydreamer

 

Tobin opened his eyes.

He was aboard an enormous white ship. The ominous sky above the flailing red sails bellowed an angry roar and shot a bolt of lightning through the clouds. The ocean raged below the pearly white deck, threatening to bowl the massive ship over and send it to its final resting place.

A man stood before him, smiling politely with his head cocked to one side. He was a titanic man, towering well over six feet in his neatly pressed red jacket and spotless white pants. His large black captain’s hat shadowed most of his smiling face, but when the lightning flashed, his black eyes bored into Tobin making him feel as if the man could read his every thought.

“There’s no hope for you, boy. Give up now,” the man said to Tobin in a deep, calm voice. The captain reached down and pulled a large golden sword from his belt and held it in front of him in one graceful move and waited for Tobin to make his move.

Tobin stared up at the man as a flash illuminated the sky and a crack of thunder erupted from the clouds. He felt a weight on his right side and looked down to see that attached to his own belt was a long sword. He made a quick grab for it, yanked it from its sheath with ease, and held it in front of his own face. He chanced a glance down at the sword in his hand; on the hilt was a red stone that gleamed dazzlingly every time a stream of lightning ignited the heavens. Though it sounded crazy to him, Tobin felt like this stone was somehow making him braver and giving him the strength to face the captain.

He could feel his heart pounding in his chest. Captain Red Eye was the fiercest pirate the world had ever known and Tobin was about to fight him.

He knew the reason this man was called Captain Red Eye, and did not want to witness it first-hand.

It’s been said that just before Captain Red Eye strikes his opponent through the heart, the last thing his victim sees is a window replace the captain’s left eye.

A window to the Red Lands. The place that has been foretold to be where all of Captain Red Eye’s casualties’ souls go once his blade takes their last breath.

The battle between Tobin and Captain Red Eye raged under the black-clouded sky. The sea beneath them rocked the ship so violently that Tobin lost his footing several times and was almost overtaken by the captain. Throughout the battle, they exchanged tremendous blows, each hoping to strike the other hard enough to bring him down.

There comes a point in every great battle in which a person sees that end is drawing near and that there is a decision to be made. After a time that point came for Tobin, and he realized that depending on what move he made, Tobin would either take down the undefeated pirate or find himself staring into that dreaded window.

He thought, and after a split second he decided-

“Tobin…did you hear what I said?” was always the question that Tobin heard at that exact moment. It came from a teacher, a schoolmate, or one of his parents. But it always came at that moment and he was instantly yanked back into his not so exciting or special life in which he was not a particularly exciting or special boy.

But if one were to look hard enough or long enough, they would soon come to discover that Tobin Spencer and his world were about to become much more exciting and special than anyone could have imagined.

 

…………………

 

“Tobin…did you hear what I said?” came a voice from somewhere in the distance.

 Tobin blinked and looked around. There was no ship or raging sea beneath him. There was no dark, cloudy and there was no evil captain standing in before him, beckoning him to battle.

The person in front of him was actually quite the opposite of Captain Red Eye. Mrs. Pilfrey stood at the head of the classroom, in front of the blackboard staring at him with her gray droopy eyes that were magnified ten-fold, by her large red glasses that were held in place by a long, thick gold chain.

“Um…sorry,” Tobin said, shrugging his shoulders apologetically and giving her the most innocent look he could muster, “I didn’t catch that last thing you said about…” and trailed off looking around the classroom for anyone who might give him a clue as to what was going on.

But no help came. The other kids looked back at him, smirking and giggling beneath their hands.

Though he looked like any other 12-year-old, the other kids stayed away from him. They didn’t seem to understand him, or want to. Tobin typically sat contentedly daydreaming about a world that was more exciting than this world would ever be and therefore found it hard to relate to anyone and made it even harder for anyone to relate to him.

“I said,” Mrs. Pilfrey began in her high-pitched, squeaky voice as she straightened her flamboyantly purple blouse, “what is the answer?” She then smacked the long wooden rod, which she always held in her left hand, against the board behind her and raised her eyebrows quizzically.

Tobin leaned a little to the side so that he could get a better view of what the question was. The girl that sat in front of him had hair so large that it usually kept him hidden from Mrs. Pilfrey’s view and he was free to daydream, but it also kept him from being able to see what was going on in the front of the room.

Written on the blackboard was yet another word problem. Tobin didn’t understand why they had to spend so much time on word problems. As he started to drift off into another daydream about evil word problems taking over the world, Mrs. Pilfrey cleared her throat loudly and once again smacked her wooden rod against the board, tapping her foot impatiently.

“Oh, right,” Tobin said, coming back to reality once again. He scanned the question, sighed heavily (once again the question was too simple to really be taken seriously)and replied, “Two apples, five bananas, and three oranges.”

Mrs. Pilfrey nodded curtly. “Correct,” she said. “And I’d like to see you after class,” she added, which was immediately answered with a loud and drawn out “ooooh” from the rest of the class.

After what seemed like hours, the class finally ended and Tobin stood up from his desk and looked down at some of the other students. He was quite a few inches taller than the rest of the kids in his class, which was something else that they liked to tease him about. He ran his hand through his dark hair wishing for the millionth time that he could be somewhere else, doing something exciting.

Tobin glanced up to the front of the room and saw Mrs. Pilfrey sitting behind her desk waiting for him. This was not the first time that Tobin was asked to meet with Mrs. Pilfrey after class, in fact they had meetings almost daily.

When he seated himself in front of her desk she began to drone, “Tobin, do you know why I asked you to stay after class?” Her squeaky voice and strangely magnified droopy eyes were enough to make Tobin want to say anything to get out of the room as quickly as possible.

“Yes,” he said quickly, “I wasn’t paying attention again, and I’m very sorry and I won’t do it again.” He spoke as fast as his mouth would let him because he could see her mouth begin to open and did not want her to speak any more than she had to. The sound of her voice made his brain feel as if were about to be ripped apart.

Her droopy eyes widened once again as if he had already said everything that she was going to try to get out of him but opened her mouth again to say something else.

 “And I know you have to send a note home,” he interrupted. “And I understand completely,” he added in a more polite tone not wanting to anger her into lecture, “Ma’am.”

Mrs. Pilfrey sighed heavily and nodded, then pulled out a piece of paper from a small drawer beside her and began writing a note that would be sent home to his parents.

Two of the most hard-working and focused people in the city were Harold and Ginger Spencer, and they were Tobin’s parents. Harold and Ginger were both accountants in one of the largest businesses in town. They spent their days making sure that everything was going according to plan and conforming to what needed to happen. All day they calculated numbers and decided the best and most logical route to take in each situation they came across.

They worked very hard to make sure that their lives were turning out exactly the way they wanted, and what they wanted was a life that was filled with no surprises and nothing extreme. They wanted a life that was completely normal.

Ginger Spencer was a woman who really took care of herself. She made sure that she ate all of the right foods, and exercised the proper amount of time each day in order to maintain a perfect body. She was a tall and had long brown hair that was always tied in a tight bun on the back of her head; she did not like to leave it down because she worried that her hair might get in the way of things she needed to do.

Success seemed to come easy for Harold because of his focused attitude and his attractive physique. His dark brown hair and eyes made him seem intriguing and mysterious, but shortly after meeting Harold it became obvious that he was just a guy striving for normalcy.

The Spencers not only put pressure on themselves when it came to working hard and making sure they were five steps ahead of the game, they also expected everyone else to work as hard as they did. To them, anything that had not been completely thought out and planned before it took place was unacceptable. To be spontaneous was to be insane. But worse than doing something that hadn’t been thought out completely was doing nothing at all. They despised people who, they did not believe, were making an effort to get something accomplished.

“I just do not understand why Jill isn’t outside watering her plants,” Ginger said in a tone that conveyed the highest annoyance to Harold one Sunday afternoon while they were in their lawn watering and pruning their own plants.

“I don’t understand either, Ginger”, said Harold, “it’s been over a week since her knee surgery, she should be outside like a normal productive person and do some work.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if she was sitting in her house right now, just watching TV and complaining that her knee hurts” Ginger added as she yanked a tiny weed out of the midst of her prized rose bush.

They were very judgmental of those around them, but more than their neighbors or co-workers, the person that got the brunt of their disapproval was Tobin.

When the Spencers found out they were going to have a child they were both thrilled. They believed that the little boy they were going to have would grow up to be just like them, hard-working and focused and would want all of the same things out of life that they did.

The child that they had turned out to look very much like his father, tall with the same dark eyes and hair and who also had the same perfectly defined nose as his mother. But to the Spencers, these features were the only ones that they had in common with Tobin. To them, his character was one that was completely different, and far less favorable than their own.

Tobin tried with all of his might to be as hard-working and attentive as he possibly could in school and in all of his other afterschool programs that his parents had put him in, but it just seemed that he couldn’t live up to their standards.

It wasn’t that Tobin wasn’t a good student, in fact he was usually one of the brightest in the class, but school could never hold his attention for very long and he would start daydreaming, which would ultimately lead to a note being sent home. Daydreaming was something that Tobin’s parents never understood, and probably never would; they thought it was something that was completely irrational and should never be done, especially during school when there is work to be done.

And unfortunately for Tobin, this day was yet another that he had to walk into his beautiful three-story home carrying a note from one of his teachers saying that he was, yet again, daydreaming in class.

“What’s wrong with you?” his mother asked after reading the note, “Why can’t you just pay attention to what is going on right in front of you? Why can’t you just stay in the world that is going on around you?”

To Tobin, this was a very easy question to answer, but he couldn’t give her that answer because he knew her response would only be anger. So he just told her that he was sorry and that he would not daydream in class again.

After the lecture from his parents, he went up to his room to think about the real answer to that question. He could not stay in the world around him because it was so boring. He was tired of having to always make sure that he was doing everything correctly according to what everyone else told him. He was tired of this world that had no magic, or adventures, or excitement. It felt to Tobin like his parents couldn’t understand how much more he wanted from life. He didn’t want to be normal; in fact he thought normal was boring.

Normal was so boring to Tobin, that it would always seem that he would delve into one of his fanciful daydreams at a time when the world around him got too normal and routine. At these points in his life it became too unbearable for him to remain present to the world around him and he would have to escape through the window in his mind and find something that would better suite his desires and expectations of what life should be like.

 

………..

 

“…well I think that she is just not trying hard enough and that’s why she hasn’t gotten promoted yet,” Harold informed his wife at the dinner table that night, “she is never early to work like I am, and she barely does what is expected of her.” He sat back in his chair and looked at his wife as if he had said something very impressive.

“I completely agree,” Ginger responded after she swallowed a bit of mashed potatoes, “we both go far above what is expected of us and that is why we have arrived at the positions we have today. Speaking of going far and beyond what is expected of us, the other day Mr. Roberts told me he wanted two reports on each one of my clients, but I gave him three. That just goes to show how focused and on track I really am…” She smiled a little to herself before taking another bite.

Sitting at the dinner table was a time that Tobin often decided to escape into one of his exciting adventures. He hated listening to his parent’s recollection of the day at work. It was always the same, they would sit down and start talking about their co-workers and how they weren’t performing to their full potential and then they would move on to discuss how great and focused they were.

He would sit and stare at his broccoli or mashed potatoes and think to himself that if he could be anywhere else, he would be a lot happier. When he first started to realize how boring his parents’ conversations were he would really try to make an effort to remain attentive and learn from them and their daily lives. But the only thing that he would pick up from their lengthy and tiresome discussions was that other people were not as hard-working as his parents, and hearing that every night over and over again was too much for him to handle. He also found that because his parents were so repetitive in their conversations, he could escape into one of his fantasies easily and if asked a question he could respond with what his parents thought was an acceptable remark easily.

“…that is exactly what I have been trying to tell her for months, Harold. What do you think Tobin?” his mother would often ask.

“Yeah, I guess she just isn’t working hard enough. She should really try to be more like the two of you, I’m sure she would get promoted if she did,” Tobin would reply.

He would then receive a brief look of approval from both of his parents before they would start up yet another conversation about another person who was not living up to their standards.

But there were times when Tobin would sit back and watch his parents talk to each other at the dinner table and feel like more of an outcast than he did in school. It seemed to him like he was a complete outsider in his own home. He wished that he could just get his parents to understand how he felt, but he knew that they never would. They were too wrapped up in their own beliefs about the way life should be that they would never take the time to hear another point of view. So he would look back down at his plate and imagine a place where he was surrounded by people who listened to and understood him.

After dinner, he would go up to his room to try and find something that could hold his attention. He was not the type of boy who liked watching TV or playing video games. To Tobin these things also seemed repetitive and boring.

Television was always filled with the same stories about people trying to get through their daily lives in a normal way, and video games were all the same too. He was the type of boy who liked to use his imagination because he often felt that the things that lived in his imagination were far more interesting than what was shown to him on a TV screen.

Reading was one of Tobin’s favorite things to do besides escaping into his own made up stories. He liked reading things about magic and adventure because they were things that never happened in his own life.

His parents, of course, did not approve of him reading these types of stories. They wanted him to read stories that were about real life scenarios. They once bought him a book called Accounting: Fun for the Whole Family, he read two pages of it before he decided to make up a story of his own, a story about a princess that needed to be rescued from an evil accountant who was holding her captive in an office filled with calculators and sharpened pencils. If Tobin didn’t act fast and rescue her she would soon die of boredom, which in this story was the most horrible and excruciating death that a person could go through.

The first thing that would happen is all of your exciting and happy thoughts would be sucked from your brain. After that you would sit and stare aimlessly at nothing in particular, and slowly but surely everything else would be sucked from you until nothing was left but an empty shell. After that there was no hope for rescue, it would be too late, nothing would be left to save. When a person became an empty shell they would be forced to spend the rest of their now short lives calculating numbers, until they finally dropped dead from exhaustion.

After his exciting escapades in the land of his imagination he would return to reality. His return was always a sad disappointment. He was so frustrated with the life that he was living. Was this really all there was in life? Just day after day of numbers and business? He wanted so much to go somewhere that he could enjoy living. He wanted to be somewhere that he had friends and wasn’t always looked at like he was different.

He refused to accept that all life had in store was what his parents had laid out for him. He wanted to believe there was more for him, and that his life would some day become as exciting as the stories he would make up, and he would be a person that was not ordinary and his accomplishments would be much greater than being able to properly calculate numbers and making sure he is early to work every day.

There were times though, when Tobin would think that there would be nothing special or exciting in his future, and maybe life was all about making sure that you’re the best at your job and working hard.

He didn’t want to believe it, but he would think sometimes that it might be time to close his escape window to his daydreams and accept that the world he lived in was the only world there was. His parents would encourage these thoughts by constantly telling him that he needed to remain in the present world, and to grow up and think about his future and adult things and would tell him he was too old to have wild fantasies about pirates and magic.

He would try with all of his might to stay focused on what was going on around him, but no matter what he did, there would be times that he would be hit with the salty smell of the sea and could hear Captain Red Eye calling him, challenging him to come and fight. When these moments came, there was no denying what would happen, he would go and fight the captain. He would fight until he won.