A young man was lying back on the rooftop, enjoying watching the clouds as they slowly drifted and blocked his view of the sun. He should’ve been in class, but he was skipping once it once again. Drake didn’t like the school he was now staying at, and he hadn’t asked to be able to attend. He’d won his spot in a stupid national lottery. He wasn’t rich. He wasn’t cultured. He wasn’t the child of some world famous actor, movie star, or diplomat.

He didn’t fit in, and he knew it. COW-school wasn’t a place where he wanted to be; and he was only here at the

“Culturally Oriented World School” so some stupid politicians somewhere could claim that they were being racially, economically, socially diverse. Personally, he felt it was all a crock of bull, so he simply skipped out from classes, assignments, work, and events as much as possible. After all, if he did poorly enough, and was lazy enough, they might just kick him out and send him home.

As if!

Some stupid bureaucrat would have to sit up and admit, “We’re not prepared to handle every possible student that comes to us, and had to send one back because we failed at being sensitive enough, understanding enough, or accessible enough to reach them.” – and Drake knew that wasn’t going to ever happen.

COW-school was a politician’s wet dream, and it was constantly in the news and getting world-wide coverage. Truth was, short of trying to murder someone, there wasn’t any way that they were going to let a single person out of the “first class” get away. The higher their “graduation rate”, the more credits the politicians could take for the success of the pet political project.

And that meant Drake was stuck in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by the rich and elite snobs of the world, isolated to a life of dull boredom for the next several years. It just wasn’t fair!

So, he simply skipped out on as much of it as possible – which wasn’t really so bad on days like today. The sun was warm, the sky was clear, and the clouds were…

Rubbing his eyes, Drake slowly stood up and stared at the sky more closely. The clouds were moving out; separating away from where they blocked the sun. Ever so slowly, the single large cloud that he’d been watching began to split and stretch in all directions, as if it was a cotton ball being tugged in every direction at once. The cloud thinned, elongated into fine threads, and covered the sky in what looked like fine spidery webbing.

“What the hell?!” Drake rubbed his eyes again, knowing that what he was watching defied every law of physics and reality that he’d ever heard or learned about. Not taking his eyes off the phenomenon above, he yelled towards the single rooftop door, hoping to get someone’s – anyone’s—attention. “Hey! Guys! Teach! You guys have got to come see this!”

Astonishingly, the webbing thickened and loud crackling and popping could be heard coming from the sky. It sounded like the noise a windshield makes on hot summer day, when the heat inside a car is too much for it and it begins to slowly crack and shatter under the strain. One little pop, and then another, and then a loud sound of thunderous shattering, and a part of the sky simply vanished. Like a mirror that’s been cracked and then had a piece removed, there was now a single solid black patch of sky above, with the spider web slowly spreading and growing larger and more complex with every moment.

‘Behold, and bear witness!’ A booming male voice echoed in Drake’s head, causing him to scream out, clutch his temples, and fall half to his knees. ‘You are the first to see my work, and you shall be the one who shall remain to witness the greatness of The Eighth Day. In time, you shall testify to all about the glory of the new works, now My rest is done.’

“What the hell!” Drake was down on his knees now, and the sky was slowly crumbling and disappearing all around. “Who are you? Where are you? What are you?!” The voice that he’d heard had seemed to come from nowhere, and yet from everywhere all at once. His nose bled slightly and his heart was thumping uncontrollably in his chest.

‘I AM THAT I AM!’ The voice boomed once more, echoing inside Drakes skull, and he saw spots. Flashed of light danced across his vision and he felt as if he was going to pass out – but then he noticed that the flashing was growing more intense, with a multitude of small sparks flashing into existence in the sky above.

With eyes watering, Drake found himself compelled to watch as the sparks began to fall. Gradually, they grew larger and more defined, allowing Drake to make out the details of what was plummeting towards the earth – monsters! Little green skinned humanoids hit the rooftop and bounced and rolled before finally rising. He’d seen goblins in games, and read about them in stories before, but now they were here in reality and on the rooftop with him!

“Ahhhhh!” His surprised yell seemed to startle the creatures and they backed off and wearily watched Drake for a moment. More were falling from the sky, and the bloodlust in their eyes was growing incrementally as their numbers on the roof increased. Backing up, Drake looked around for a place to run to. A place to hide. A weapon to defend himself with. Anything!

But it was already too late.

With a resounding THUD that seemed to shake the rooftop, something massive crashed down behind Drake. Spinning around to see what had landed; Drakes knees started shaking, his jaw fell open and he screamed. A huge bull-headed man stood there, drool slobbering down its hideous face, just a few feet from him. His mind yelled at him to escape as the minotaur drew back a massive two-handed axe and swung it with enormous strength through his torso.

For the briefest of moments, Drake blinked, not comprehending why he couldn’t run away. Why his legs wouldn’t obey him. And then he toppled over, neatly bisected by the beast’s massive blow. Shock filled his thoughts for the briefest of moments, followed by, ‘I can’t die like this.’

And then, he died.

Author's Note: Just a simple 'sneak peak' of the basic style change that I'm hoping to bring to The 8th Day. A shift from First Person perspective, to third person, should allow for a lot more flexibility and ease of PoV shifting. It also tends to be more of my 'natural' style of writing, and since the majority of readers couldn't keep up with things happening outside Drake's PoV in the last incarnation of this tale, I think it'll work better overall for me.

Originally, I wanted Drake to be an idiot who simply overlooks and doesn't care about a lot of things. His ghost cried tears, they fell and bounced on the floor. Since the story was told via his perspective, it was something simply written about without emphasis or stressed importance, and 99% of the readers promptly forgot about (or never noticed) the incident, just as Drake didn't.

Lots of little things like that were intended as little "easter eggs", which I hoped would add a deeper dimension to the story. I kept thinking, "Hey, several thousand people have read this! Someone will comment on it soon and everybody will notice!" But that never happened. There were people who saw such little things, and sent me messages privately asking about them, but they always held onto each little tidbit they uncovered as if it was their own little precious treasure, and they were waiting to see when it would bear fruit. ;)

The 8th Day was intended as a rather complex little story, with multiple "layers" that readers could have fun trying to uncover and peel back. A few folks did that, and liked it a lot. Most however, simply read the most obvious "tale of an idiot" and griped over it.

Subtle foreshadowing doesn't work in web serializations. First person, unobservant characters doesn't work. A lot of the things that I was trying originally -- and the whole reason why I deliberately chose a 1st person, unobservant main character -- simply doesn't work well in a story that appears a chapter at a time, over the course of months.

Drop a piece of foreshadowing back in Chapter 20.... Expect to make use of it in Chapter 30... Even if you release an average of two chapters a week, that's over a month before the event foreshadowed occurs. Readers will call it a "plot hole" in that time, forget about it, and then when it finally bears fruit will claim, "now you're just trying to justify something and cover your ass"...

So the style I was going for in the past isn't necessary anymore. Things need to change in the reboot, and I can swap over to the more natural 3rd person narrative which I prefer anyway.

Compare this little chapter to the original first chapter. See if you don't prefer this style more, and if it doesn't seem to work and flow better. It'll be a while before I'm actually going to do any serious work on the reboot (I tend to get busy with life in general in the summer months, and Spring/Fall are my main writing times -- I hide from Winter a lot.), so it'll probably be September or so before the story gets kicked off to a complete restart.

Until then, let me know what you think of the little "sneak peak" above. ;)