Spark: One of Us Series

by Faulks, Kim

  Leah just stood there, watching the crowd…watching him, and as I turned toward her…that ticking grew stronger, urging me to do something…

  My hands trembled, fingers dancing against my dad’s. He looked down at my hand and then me.

  Chairs squealed as the President rose, the room filled with thunder, hands clapped, heads shook as Leah scanned the room, and the same man who introduced her returned.

  He stepped out slowly, and then reached for the microphone in her hand. “Well, that was unexpected.”

  Laughter consumed the room.

  “We have some lovely refreshments heading to your tables, please eat, enjoy and don’t forget we need your contributions to help Senator Leah Williams do what she came here to do…kick butt, by the sounds of it.”

  The man beside us threw his head back and roared with laughter. But Dad wasn’t laughing, and neither was I. He was staring at me, trying his best to pick apart my mind. “Spark?”

  My lower lip trembled. I was a child walking down the road in the dark all over again.

  Waiters moved amongst the tables, carrying trays with plates of food. The ceramic hit the table in front of me, along with the metal fork and spoon.

  But I couldn’t see the food under the sheen of tears. I couldn’t see anything. All I could do was stare at the glint of metal and fight the ticking in my head.

  “Seth…it is Seth, right?”

  I flinched at the sound of the voice and then lifted my head. Dad’s hand slipped from mine, and his chair squealed against the floor as he shoved to stand. “Yes, Sir…I mean, Mr. President.”

  Dad reached for his hand, and gripped tight.

  Tick…tick…tick…

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Seth, you’ve got one hell of a wife on your hands there, and this must be your lovely daughter.”

  I lifted my gaze to the man standing in front of me. He smiled, dark eyes like chiseled stone. A gold ring glinted on his finger as he dropped Dad’s hand and reached for mine.

  Pain stabbed my head, sharp and cruel. I winced, fingers trembling as they lifted. The boom of thunder roared. Lightning cracked outside, sending sparks flying.

  “Elizabeth,” Dad called.

  He called my name. The name they gave me all those years ago. The fake name for the lies and the pretense. But it was the ring I stared at…metal on his hand. My touch hovered a heartbeat from his…fingers already curled…energy flowing through my body, sending a tiny charge along my skin.

  All I had to do was reach for it…all I had to do was sink down to the beast…to the monster…to the ugly…ugly girl…

  I’d pump it into him, all the hate…all the rage. I’d pump and pump…and pump.

  “Spark?” Dad urged.

  “It’s okay,” the man murmured and dropped his hand. “I seem to have a way with children.”

  “So my wife says,” dad murmured.

  He held the man’s gaze, unravelling him like he did me. The President shifted, cast his focus around the room.

  “We demand answers!” A woman stumbled closer, flanked on either side by the men dressed in black. “I’m not leaving, not until you tell me what happened to my daughter.

  She clutched a girl to her side, brown eyes, curly dark brown hair. She looked lost and frightened, staring up at her mother. I swallowed and dropped my gaze to her hand, and then her wrist.

  Black numbers were exposed for all to see. I clenched my fist, trapping my sleeve under my fingers.

  “Sir.” One of the men in black stepped closer.

  “It’s okay,” the President called and waved them closer.

  He turned then, turned and stared at me. “Not afraid, are you, Spark?”

  My heart lunged, slamming against the inside of my chest.

  He was going to hurt her…he was going to…

  Fragments slipped into the present…

  Things stuck against my head, flashes of the light in my eyes, blinding me like lightning.

  You’re not afraid, are you? The President’s voice warped, bleeding into the darkness, where the monster lived—where the monster waited.

  “You don’t have to,” Dad murmured in the middle of the theatre. “It’s okay Carmen.”

  She stepped closer, tears shimmering against her cheeks. She cried as she demanded answers. “I want to know. I want to know what you did to my Gabriela.”

  “I wish I had the answers you needed, Mrs…”

  “Garcia,” Dad answered. “This is Carmen Garcia, and her daughter.”

  The President turned his head, lifted his hand and waved a man forward. “I want you to meet someone, this is Cameron Smith, my Vice President. I assure you that every order, old and new that has ever touched my hand, he knows about. There is no child kidnapping, Mrs. Garcia, no torture, no horrendous acts of any kind. I wish I had the words that would bring you comfort and peace, but unfortunately, all I can tell you is the truth.”

  He took a step away as the older man came closer. White hair shone under the overhead lights.

  “Cameron, this is Mrs. Garcia and her daughter, Gabriela.” The President motioned the older man forward.

  “Ma’am.” Cameron stepped closer and held out his hand. “I’m so sorry to hear about your troubles.”

  She clutched her daughter closer. “All due respect, Sir. We don’t have troubles, we have lies.” She cut her gaze to the President. “And they all started with him.”

  Cameron smiled and shook his head. “I can assure you, Ma’am, we know nothing of what’s happened to either you or your daughter”

  “Like I said Mrs. Garcia, Cameron is my eyes and ears to everything,” The President slapped Cameron on the shoulder. “The man’s a highly decorated Marine, and one of the finest I know. There’s not a man or woman out there, including Senator Williams up there who doesn’t feel the same.”

  The Vice President smiled at Mrs. Garcia and then took a step, slipping out from under the President’s hand to touch her daughter’s head. “I want to help you, tell me what I can do?”

  And as his fingers touched the top of her head Gabriella’s eyes widened, she flinched. She reached up, closing her hand around his and gave a whimper.

  “What is it?” The President stared.

  It didn’t feel right, didn’t feel safe…something felt triggered, and the echo of that sound bloomed inside my head, growing louder and louder.

  Tick…tick…tick…

  “You okay, honey?” Dad took a step closer.

  “Ticking,” Gabriella whispered…and turned to me. “I can hear ticking in my head.”

  The President stilled, brows narrowing. He jerked his head toward my father for a second and then looked away.

  “He put it in there, Momma. The man put ticking in my head.”

  “What does that mean?” Mrs. Garcia lunged forward and snatched her daughter away. “What did you do to her?”

  “Nothing,” the vice President murmured, dropped his hand and stumbled backwards. “I didn’t do a damn thing.”

  Finley

  Ridley Juvenile Detention Center for Boys, 2008

  “Stop hogging the damn TV, Finley.”

  Tommy’s whiney voice cut from the doorway. I gripped the remote and kept watching, kept flicking through the channels…flick…flick…flick…

  “You deaf?” A deeper snarl came from my right. I tore my gaze from the screen to the lanky piece of shit.

  “Fuck you, Everly,” I murmured and watched the pimpled skin on his cheek turn from pasty white to red. “And your Momma, oh that’s right, I already have.”

  “Ohhh!” Tommy grinned, wrenching his gaze from Everly to me. “Burn, Everly!”

  “Shut it,” the pain in the ass snarled at the kid half his damn size.

  Everly was a punk, processed in the last two months. He wanted to make a name for himself, wanted to see how fucking tough he could be. I’d seen him watching me, just waiting for an opportunity to take a swing.

  If I kept staring at
the TV, maybe they’d go away…maybe this entire fucking place would go away, blur out…just like my face when I became someone new.

  Flick…flick…flick…I stopped, finger hovering over the channel button on the remote as a face filled the screen. President Johnathan Harper. Dark eyes, dark hair…

  I know him, the words surfaced inside my head. I know him from somewhere…

  “Give me the goddamn remote.” Everly took a step closer and held out his hand.

  My lips parted. A savage comeback hovering on the tip of my tongue as I stared at the man on the screen, and then he was gone, leaving a woman reporter stumbling in the camera view…

  And you can see here, Sally, that Senator Leah Williams is calling for a greater transparency within our own Government. She claims that certain factions of top-level classified divisions sworn to protect us have tortured hundreds of children for many years. Children born here on US soil. She claims that President Johnathan Harper has not only sanctioned this abuse, but claims he was present when the team of scientists performed these horrendous acts.

  “Not gonna tell you again, Finley. I’m tired of your bullshit.”

  My heart stammered, lunging before my ribs caught the muscle.

  I leaned forward, watching the reporter battle winds outside a building. Red, white and blue streamers whipped behind her in the air.

  There was something about this program…about this moment, something about me.

  An icy breath blew against the back of my head. I flinched…still, I couldn’t turn away. The reporter turned her head left and right, dodging the long strands of dark hair that whipped her face, and in the distance, in the darkness of the night, lightning ripped from the clouds.

  The boom of thunder followed, swallowing the sound of her voice.

  My breath stilled. Heart nothing more than a boom…boom…boom…in my head.

  Doors opened to the building behind her and a man and a girl stepped out.

  The long sleeves of the girl’s blue dress whipped in the wind as a crack of thunder pounded through the speakers of the TV.

  But the girl never flinched from the sound, and she never ran, even when the man beside her did.

  Instead, she lifted her head, blue eyes flashed in the camera for a second before they rose to the heavens…the darkness…and the storm.

  For a second…for the space of a boom inside my head—I thought she smiled.

  The screen flickered for a second. A grunt came from my right.

  “Fuck you!” Everly gripped the cord embedded in the wall and yanked until his thin arms strained. “Think you’re hot shit? See how you go with no TV motherfucker!”

  Rage erupted, spewing out like a river. I shoved up from the chair and lunged, boots slamming into the floor, just a blur of brown in the TV Room windows.

  My shoulder hit him in the middle. He let out an oof and flew backwards, head hitting the window with a crack.

  “Fight…fight…fight!” Tommy hollered from the doorway.

  “Hey!” Dark uniform, the guard’s eyes flashing wild as he entered the room. “Get back, both of you!”

  His hand went to the pepper spray at his side, but there was no stopping this…no stopping the panic inside as I wrenched my fist back and unleashed. “Touch my goddamn TV! I was watching something!”

  I hit his chest, but it wasn’t his face, or his nose…I wanted him bleeding. I wanted him crying. Goddamn pussy, just like your whore of a mother!

  I yanked my fist back and hit again, pummeling his shoulders and his neck.

  “I’ll fucking kill you!” Everly screamed, his face burning red. “I’ll fucking kill you, motherfucker!”

  “No one is killing anyone.” The guard grabbed me around the waist and hauled me free. “Not tonight.”

  Fist and feet were flying as I kicked and punched the air. Another guard raced through the doorway, stepping in to grab Everly by the front of his brown overalls and drag him toward the door. “You wanna fight? How about a few days in solitary?” He jerked his gaze toward me. “For both of you.”

  I swallowed hard and shook my head. “He ripped the cord from the wall. I was watching something.”

  “You’re always watching something,” Everly spat.

  I glanced to the blank screen. She was gone now. The girl and the lightning…she was gone. I needed to see her, needed to know her name.

  The guard dragged me toward the doorway too, and this time I didn’t struggle, this time I followed as he took me back to my cell.

  Brown uniforms filled my view as the others turned their heads and sniggered. Fucking assholes. Like they were any better. The guard fisted my shirt and then shoved, sending me stumbling through the open cell door.

  Were they better? No…but different…yes.

  They were all different, every single one of them.

  Different in ways they couldn’t imagine.

  The door closed behind me with a clunk. Locks engaged, confining me once more. My heart thundered, fists still burned. I glanced at my knuckles, flushed from the blows.

  The girl from the TV filled my head. Blue eyes flashing before she looked to the sky. She wasn’t afraid, even when the man holding her hand ducked for cover.

  She loved the lightning, welcomed it just like I welcomed the change.

  Power hummed inside me. I turned from the door to the stainless steel toilet in the middle of the room. I could be anyone I wanted, anyone but me.

  My face could change, height and age too. The guards could open the door and stare at their own face. I could walk right out of here.

  And then what?

  Don’t fucking leave without my money.

  The words echoed from my past. I stared at the shine from the toilet and unshackled the chains in my mind. If not home, then where?

  Somewhere quiet…somewhere they can’t find me ever again.

  Keys rattled, locks grated. I turned as the guard yanked open the door and stepped inside. “Director wants to see you.”

  I stilled, trying to think…to plan as the guard stepped closer and lifted a massive paw. “Move.”

  My footsteps stumbled as I pushed past the guard. He was right behind me, one step away as I walked past the painted cell doors, and then the bricks—always the goddamn bricks.

  I’d never seen so many before Ridley. Never seen razor wire. Never had structure like this…knew when I was eating, knew when I’d sleep, everything was timed and checked to precision.

  “Stop here, hands up,” the guard barked.

  I glanced at the locked door and turned to face the wall, hands braced over my head, feet shoulder width apart. Hands skimmed my pockets, my clothes, my hair, before a yank on my shoulder made me turn. I was already opening my mouth, the drill ingrained, until with a buzz the door behind me opened.

  I left the hollers and the calls behind.

  He started it, the words were already on my tongue as we walked along the corridor and then stopped outside an office door.

  George Keeley, Director Ridley DJJ.

  The guard knocked twice and then waited. That was one thing I had to learn about this place, everyone waited—everything was timed—everything was scheduled.

  “Come in,” the voice called from inside the room.

  The guard twisted the handle and motioned me inside. I’d never been to the Director’s office before, never had cause to.

  He lifted his head from the mess of folder on his desk and waved me forward. “Come in, Finley. Take a seat.”

  I shoved my hands into my pockets, scanned the office and then stepped inside to where a chair waited. “Weren’t my fault. Everly ripped the cord from the wall. I was just minding my own business.”

  He leaned back in his seat, his shirt crumpled, sweat stains under his pits. An open file sat on his desk…my image from processing on the inside.

  I sat, gripped the arm rests as he scanned my face, my body, and lingered on my hand.

  “I wanted to talk to you about the mark on
your wrist. You’ve mentioned to the counsellors several times you don’t know how you got it. This, and other things have led me to believe you’re not taking advantage of the rehabilitation programs we’ve encouraged you to participate in.”

  I flinched with the words, my mind racing. “Don’t understand what you mean.”

  “As you’re well aware, the first step in owning who you are as a person is honesty. Honesty that seems a little lacking on your part. Now, I understand you’re on your own here.” He leaned forward and scanned the open file. “Not one visitor since they brought you in back in two-thousand and five.”

  Boom…boom…boom…heat raced to my cheeks, nails pressed against the armrest.

  “But I think it’s time you opened up, son. Time you really gave some honest answers, even if those answers are to yourself.”

  “I-I don’t understand what you mean. I was just watching TV.”

  “Answers, honesty,” the Director repeated. “I’m cutting back on some of your activities, and in addition you’ll spend more time in some of the one-on-one programs with the youth worker. As part of that process we’re putting you forward for a new technique called hypnosis. Have you ever heard of that?”

  I shook my head. It wasn’t my fault. I was just watching TV…

  “It’s where you’re put to sleep in a very calm and relaxed environment and the doctor takes you back to your childhood so you can work through the barriers to your past.”

  My heart thundered, sweat dripped.

  Flashes of light surfaced…images that made me whimper.

  I lifted my hand, damn fingers trembled as I pressed against my temple.

  The Director watched me, eyes focused, like a vulture. “We’re not talking about anything heavy,” he murmured. “I think once you break down those walls you’ve built inside, the past will just open up. You can work through your emotions, Finley. You can move forward.”

  Flashes grew brighter…remnants of the nightmare that haunted me. Boom…boom…boom…the deafening sounds…a woman screaming…blood…so much blood…

  “You’ll get used to the idea, or you won’t.” He shoved up from his chair and turned to a door on the other side of his room.

  Still the blinding white light came with the screams. No, please, no more…NO MORE! I want my mom…I want my mom…the crack of thunder followed…the boom so loud it made me whimper and cry.