Raymond

By G. Wulfing

Raymond is weird. Intelligent, self-possessed, and curiously sophisticated for a teenaged schoolboy, but weird. That is Toby Wilson’s considered opinion of his enigmatic classmate Raymond. Wilson has no real problem with weirdness: Raymond seems decent enough, and he’s helped Wilson a lot on more than one occasion, including saving his life; but is Raymond just an unusual teenager with strangely-coloured eyes and a slight foreign accent or is he ... much older than he looks? What sort of teenager in the first decade of the twenty-first century carries a silver pocket-watch, has perfect posture, and speaks with the grace and elegance of a prince?
And does he really keep staring at other people’s blood, or is Wilson just imagining it?
A short story – the first in the ‘Raymond’ series – about an English schoolboy who starts to suspect that one of the boys in his class might be a vampire.

• Language: English
• Publisher: G. Wulfing
• Release date: Dec 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370548941

G. Wulfing

G. Wulfing, author of kidult fantasy and other bits of magic, is a freak. They have been obsessed with reading since they learned how to do it, and obsessed with writing since they discovered the fantasy genre a few years later. G. Wulfing has no gender, and is of varying age. G. Wulfing lives amidst the beautiful scenery of New Zealand, prefers animals to people, and requires solitude, books, music, chocolate, and masala chai lattes in order to remain functional.

Book preview

Raymond

Published by G. Wulfing at Smashwords

Copyright 2017 G. Wulfing

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To those who need their imaginations in order to survive,

I humbly and tenderly offer this story.

May you find your Wilson.

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The book cover is by the brilliant DrRiptide:

drriptide.deviantart.com

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Table of contents:

Raymond

About G. Wulfing

Raymond

It was the first day of Spring term.

I joined the other teenagers bustling to get to their classrooms. There was lots of shouting and jostling as we went from one classroom door to the next, trying to work out which class and which room we were supposed to be in first. Two friends of mine – George and Callum – called out to me, and I stopped to compare notes with them. We were disappointed to find that I shared only two of their classes.

The bell rang, and we agreed to find each other at lunchtime, then hastily split up to try to find our classrooms.

Oof!

I collided with someone in the corridor, dropping my armful of books. Sorry, I blurted, embarrassed, and crouched to pick up my books.

The other person crouched too. I looked up to see who it was, and my gaze met a strange pair of eyes. They were amber. Not light brown: a real golden amber colour. They were deep-set in a pale face that could only be described as aristocratic; not chinless, just very elegant and refined-looking.

I blinked, surprised by the unusualness of the face, but the amber eyes did not. They stared into mine without the slightest flicker.

I was taken aback by the intensity of the stare, but for some reason I did not look away. After what seemed like a long moment of staring at each other, the amber eyes looked down and the pale boy continued to help pick up my books. We both stood, and the other boy handed my books to me.

Thanks, I said.

It is my pleasure, replied the amber-eyed teenager. His voice matched his face: refined and measured; cultured, even, but without a trace of that nasally ‘hwa hwa hwa’ that upper-class types often have. His hair was pale blond, and quite fine-looking. He was half a head taller than me, and slim. And he still hadn’t blinked.

Sorry about bumping into you, I said again, and took off for class. But for some reason, as I neared the end of the corridor, I slowed and looked back. The pale boy was still standing there, and he was gazing at me, as though his eyes had not left me at all.

Weird, thought I; and pushed into the classroom.

An hour later, at the end of the first class, as everyone bundled out the door, I noticed the pale teenager again. In the chaos of thirty teenagers finding their desks, I had not noticed that he was in the same class as I was. He was hanging back, waiting for the pushing and shoving to stop before he followed.

At our school, the first day of term is a mufti day, and he was wearing a creamy white shirt, with an open-fronted black jacket that looked as though it had been tailored specially for him. It looked expensive, and very formal, but somehow it suited him and didn’t seem overdone – even for school.

I followed the other teenagers out, and worked out where I had to go next. Science with Mrs Mitcham, in Room 8, which was just down the hall and on the left. I pushed open the door and went in.

Brilliant: I was the first to arrive, so I had first pick of the desks. I surveyed the ranks of blue, powder-coated steel.

Where will you sit? asked a voice in my ear. I jumped.

The pale boy had followed me without my hearing him.

I do apologise if I startled you, he said graciously. He had a slight foreign accent that I couldn’t place.

Um – no, it’s okay. I went to a desk by one of the windows, about halfway to the back of the class, without making eye contact. I didn’t particularly want this weird guy sitting near me. At that point half a dozen other students rushed in, and then twenty more, and when I looked up again I saw that the pale boy had taken a seat right at the back of the classroom, a couple of rows away from me. I breathed a quiet sigh of relief, and hoped that he would continue to use that desk.

The next couple of weeks passed pretty normally. We soon got into