‘How do you know my name?’ I gasped. ‘And what are you doing here?’
‘I need to talk to you,’ he said. ‘It’s about that.’
He gestured at my bracelet. To my surprise, I saw he had a bracelet exactly like it on his own wrist, which meant I’d been wrong about it being the only one in the entire world. It should have looked odd to see such a girly bracelet on such a blokey arm, but for some reason it didn’t.
‘Where did you get that?’ I asked.
‘It found me,’ he said, ‘just like yours did. Weird things have been happening to you lately, right?’
And this was definitely the weirdest yet. ‘How do you know about that?’ I asked warily.
‘I’m your guide.’
‘My guide to what?’
Ben paused, scratching his arm thoughtfully. ‘This is going to sound bizarre,’ he said, ‘but bear with me. There are two forces that work on the world: the forces of order, and the forces of destruction. They’ve existed since the beginning of time and they’ve been at war ever since. The forces of order are trying to bring order, stability and calm to the world. The forces of destruction try to bring chaos, upheaval and destruction. In order to do what they do, the forces have to be channelled and focused – they have to take human form.’
‘So what does this have to do with me?’ I asked.
‘Welcome to the forces of destruction,’ Ben said, and gave me a crooked smile.
There should have been dramatic music, a bolt of lightning, demonic laughter, that sort of thing. But the birds kept tweeting and the cars on the road kept swooshing by and from next door I could hear a gardening show on the radio. They were talking about compost.
‘Ri-ight,’ I said.
‘You don’t believe me?’
‘No.’
He shrugged. ‘Watch this.’
He pointed one finger casually at the swimming pool. The flat blue turquoise water seemed to shiver, and I felt a chill wind gusting off it. Goosebumps sprang up on my arms. Then the pool ponies floating on the surface started to move, slowly at first, then faster, as if they were being pulled by a powerful current. A whirlpool was forming in my swimming pool. As the water spun faster and faster the pool ponies were sucked down into the centre of the vortex one by one. For one startling moment the water spiralled up into a bright blue waterspout which loomed high over the trees with two pool ponies bouncing on the crest, and then the spout collapsed with a gigantic splash. One pool pony landed in the vegie garden and the other one went over the fence.
‘How did you do that?’ I gasped.
‘The forces of destruction.’
‘Is this for real?’
‘As real as it gets.’
A part of me didn’t want to believe it. A part of me wanted to call the cops and tell them there was a mad guy in my backyard talking nonsense about the forces of destruction. A part of me wanted to think he was on drugs.
But when I looked at Ben I knew that he was not mad, and he was not messing around, either. There was something about his straightforward, no-nonsense manner that told me I could trust him. If he said he was from the forces of destruction, he was from the forces of destruction. However unlikely that seemed.
And then I remembered that strange dream I’d had, the night that I stayed over at Soph’s and the snake crawled on me – the dream that I was going to take on the world in some unexplained and dizzying manner. I’d thought it meant I was going to be the first female prime minister or something.
Apparently not.
‘So,’ I said slowly, ‘I’ve been chosen to – destroy things?’
‘Yep.’
‘Can’t I join the forces of order instead?’
‘You were chosen by destruction,’ Ben said. ‘You got your powers when you put that bracelet on your wrist.’
I was horrified. ‘The powers were in the bracelet?’
‘The bracelet’s just a key.’
My mind was racing now. All the weird things that had happened to me – the dream, the snake, my sudden improvement at cricket, Amanda Dean being struck by lightning – they’d all happened since I put the bracelet on. I went a little cold when I remembered Amanda Dean. Even at the time, I’d had a feeling about that lightning bolt. Deep down, although I wasn’t quite ready to believe it, I’d known I’d been responsible somehow.
And then I remembered how mad I’d been at Mr Boris, and that strange feeling I’d had as I was walking into maths, as if I was taking flight, and then the shock wave that had come out of me, and I knew that Mr Boris’s house burning down had not been a weird coincidence either. I had made it happen.
‘But I don’t want to be a destroyer!’ I said. ‘Can’t I just give the bracelet to someone else and let them do it?’
Ben gave me another one of those crooked smiles that made his eyes crinkle up in the corners, and for the first time I noticed that his eyes were very blue. ‘No,’ he said.
‘But this is so unfair! My dad just picked that stupid bracelet up in a market. It could have been anyone!’
Ben shook his head. ‘You were chosen.’
‘But why?’ I asked again, beginning to feel the first little hint of panic. It just made no sense to me. Me? A destroyer? I’m not into destruction. So either this was all a mistake, or –
Or someone, somewhere, knew something about me. Something horrible. Something I hadn’t even glimpsed yet.
‘I don’t know,’ Ben said. ‘I don’t know why I was chosen either. All I know is, we were.’
‘So – you’re a destroyer too?’ I said.
‘Yep.’
‘Are you the boss of the destroyers or something?’
‘There isn’t a boss. I’m just here to tell you what you need to know.’
I wasn’t sure what to make of most of this, but there was one thing I was quite clear on. ‘I don’t need to know anything, because I’m not doing it,’ I said firmly.
‘You don’t have a choice about that,’ Ben said.
‘There’s always a choice,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to destroy anything. So thanks for the advice – and the demonstration – but I won’t be needing this anymore.’
Although I knew it wouldn’t come off, I took my bracelet in a firm grip and tried to yank it off.
‘It won’t come off,’ Ben said. ‘And even if it did, it wouldn’t make any difference. Your powers are a part of you now, like your heart or your liver. You can’t choose not to use them, any more than you can choose not to breathe.’
‘I can,’ I said, ‘and I will.’
Ben looked at me steadily. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You need some time to get used to the idea. But before I go, there are a couple of things you need to know.’
He fished something out of the pocket of his jeans and handed it to me. It was a lapel pin, decorated with a white circle on a dark blue background. ‘If you see anyone wearing one of these, run like hell.’
‘Why? What is it?’
‘It’s the insignia of the white circle – the forces of order. If they catch you, they’ll try and neutralise you.’
‘What do you mean, neutralise?’
‘It feels like you’re falling asleep, but it’s a sleep you’ll never wake up from.’
‘You mean – they’ll kill me?’
‘No, you don’t die. But you fall into a sort of coma, and once you’re in it there’s no way out.’
This thought was so horrible and at the same time so unlikely I couldn’t quite take it in.
‘But – can’t I just strike them down with a bolt of lightning or something?’
‘You can try. But I wouldn’t recommend it.’
‘Why not?’
‘You’re new at this. You don’t even know how to use your powers yet. If you take on someone stronger than you, that’s it, you’re done.’
I stared at him, appalled. Seeing he’d frightened me, he softened a little. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m just warning you because you need to know. But there’s n
o reason to think you’ll run into one any time soon. You might go years without ever seeing one.’
‘Have you seen one?’
His face clouded. ‘Yes.’
This was kind of encouraging. ‘And you lived to tell the tale?’
‘Yes, but –’
The front door slammed, and Ben tensed. ‘That’s my brother,’ I said.
‘I’d better go,’ Ben said.
Before I could stop him he’d vaulted over the neighbour’s fence.
‘But – wait a minute –’
A pool pony flew over the fence and bellyflopped lightly into the pool. I jumped up and ran over to look into the neighbour’s yard, my head still filled with questions. But Ben had vanished.
Queen of Evil
This was by far the weirdest thing that had ever happened to me.
I slumped down onto the banana lounge and tried to make sense of it all. Was I going crazy? Had I just imagined the whole thing? But no – the whole deck was soaked where Ben’s waterspout had splattered everywhere. He’d been here all right. But who was he? What was he? And more to the point, what was I?
A destroyer, that’s what he’d called me. How could I be a destroyer? I’m nice.
But then I remembered that moment on the cricket pitch when the lightning bolt came streaking down out of the sky and blasted Amanda Dean and how very satisfying it was.
Maybe I wasn’t such a nice person after all.
But at that something in me rebelled. I wasn’t going to just let myself be used by the forces of evil! Bracelet won’t come off, huh? We’ll see about that.
I marched down to the shed where Dad kept the tools. I ducked past the daddy-long-legs that crawled around the doorframe, and stepped into the dim machine-oil-smelling darkness. There between the old camping gear and the half-completed DIY wine rack stood Dad’s tool box.
First I tried bolt-cutters. They didn’t put so much as a dimple in the metal of the bracelet.
Then I tried pliers. The bracelet wouldn’t bend or flex.
A file didn’t even scratch those elegantly hand-tooled scales.
And when I tried clamping the bracelet in the vice, the only thing that broke was the vice. (I didn’t know how I was going to explain that one to Dad. I hoped he wouldn’t notice.)
Nothing worked. The bracelet was unbreakable.
I ran back to the house to stare at myself in the mirror. Was it possible? Did I really have destructive powers fused into my DNA? I searched for signs that I had switched to evil, but there was no demonic gleam in my eyes, no subtle transformation from freckly and ordinary to cruel and despotic. No, the face looking back at me was the same face I was used to looking at. I was just a regular fourteen-year-old with frizzy hair and slightly wonky teeth.
The whole thing was just too deranged to be true. But how else could I explain the waterspout? And Ben and everything he knew about me? And Amanda Dean and Mr Boris?
I decided to call Soph.
‘Something totally weird has just happened,’ I said. ‘There was this guy here and he just appeared in my backyard and –’
‘Ohmigod, are you all right?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘He didn’t try to rape you or kidnap you or something, did he?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you! You know my bracelet?’
‘Yeah?’ Soph sounded nonplussed.
‘This guy had one just like it.’
‘That’s it? That’s the weird thing?’
‘No! He said it’s like a key and when I put it on I got all these destructive powers! You remember what I told you, about Amanda Dean and the lightning bolt and how it felt like I made it happen?’
‘Uh-huh?’
‘Well I did.’
‘How?’
‘The forces of destruction.’
‘The forces of destruction?’
‘This guy, Ben, he’s got them too and he turned our pool into a waterspout.’
There was a silence. ‘Are you trying to be funny? Because, you know, you’re just being weird.’
‘I promise you, Soph, I’m not making this up.’
I could practically hear the scepticism pouring down the phone, but finally Soph said, ‘I’m coming over.’
Half an hour later, we were ensconced in my room together.
‘Meliss,’ Soph said, ‘I won’t lie to you. There’s a chance you’re going crazy.’ She studied me carefully. ‘Although you don’t look crazy.’
This was some relief, anyway.
‘So tell me about these evil powers,’ Soph said.
I told her as much as I could remember about the forces of order and the forces of destruction, and that I was responsible for burning Mr Boris’s house down and zapping Amanda Dean with a lightning bolt. I decided not to mention that the forces of order might be trying to neutralise me.
Soph listened to all this with her head on one side and didn’t interrupt me. When I’d finished she said, ‘I know what this is about.’
‘You do?’
‘You’re suffering from post-traumatic shock.’
‘I am?’
‘Yep. You’re having a stress reaction because of what happened with Felix’s stupid snake last weekend, and now you’re paranoid and you think you’re causing all of these bad things to happen. Which is obviously impossible.’
‘Obviously,’ I agreed.
‘It’s all about the snake,’ Soph said. ‘You were traumatised by the real snake because you thought it was going to strangle you and now you’re having delusions about the snake bracelet because it won’t come off and that’s why you’re seeing weird guys wearing snake bracelets telling you you’re a destroyer.’
I was impressed by this theory, which sounded very plausible, except for one thing. ‘But I wasn’t traumatised.’
‘Yes you were,’ Soph said. ‘You just don’t realise it.’
‘I wasn’t, Soph.’
‘But you must have been. Otherwise why would you be going nuts now?’
This stumped us both for a moment.
‘The thing is,’ I said, ‘I do sort of feel like I made those things happen.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Both times, right before they happened, I remember getting really angry, and then this strange feeling came over me, like I was so mad I was going to lose it. And then – boom, something terrible happened to the person I was mad at and the feeling went away.’
Soph’s eyes narrowed. ‘What did it feel like, exactly?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know that I can describe it exactly,’ I said. ‘But it was like all this energy built up inside me and then it – discharged.’
Soph pondered. ‘Is it like the Incredible Hulk?’ she asked. ‘When the scientist guy gets angry he turns into a big green hyper-strong monster and starts destroying things. Is it sort of like that?’
‘Well, maybe. Apart from the bit where I turn into a big green hyper-strong monster.’ I looked at Soph uneasily. ‘And apart from the fact that it’s not possible.’
‘Well, who’s to say that it’s not possible?’
I looked at Soph in amazement.
‘There are plenty of forces at work in the universe that we don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Don’t the scientists say they haven’t even been able to find seventy per cent of the matter in the universe?’
‘Haven’t they?’
‘Something like that. Anyway, the point is there are plenty of mysterious things going on all the time. Who’s to say there aren’t forces of destruction?’
‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘Well, I’m just entertaining the possibility. What if it’s real? What if you are the Queen of Evil?’
‘Destruction.’
‘Whatever.’ Soph’s eyes were bright. ‘Wouldn’t that be kind of cool?’
‘No, it wouldn’t!’
‘Come on. It’d be cool. Hey, you know what we should do?’
‘What?’
; ‘We should draw up a hit list. If you’re the Queen of Evil, you may as well make the most of it. I can think of tons of people who need smiting apart from Mr Boris.’
‘Like who?’ I said, starting to laugh.
‘Felix. His horrible snake. Vicky Lind.’
Vicky Lind was one of the girls in our year. For the first year we were at high school I thought she was actually quite nice. But then one day I was in the library with Soph and I overheard Vicky and her two best friends, Lacey and Misha, having a ‘hot, swot and not’ conversation about the people in our year. Soph and I were standing on the other side of the bookshelves so they didn’t know we were there, but we could hear them quite clearly. After a while, my name came up.
‘Who?’ Vicky said.
‘You know. Melissa. She’s in our English class.’
‘With the brown hair?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I thought her name was Melanie.’
‘Hot, swot or not?’
‘Swot,’ said Lacey.
‘She’s not that smart,’ said Vicky, and giggled.
‘Hot?’ suggested Misha.
‘You’ve got to be kidding!’ Vicky said.
More giggles.
‘Not!’ shrieked Lacey.
‘She’s not even not,’ Vicky said. ‘She’s just – nothing.’
Soph was outraged on my behalf. ‘We should go round there and let them know who’s hot and who’s not,’ she hissed. But I made her hide with me among the history books until we were sure Vicky and her posse had left. It was bad enough that they’d said what they said; I desperately didn’t want them to know that I knew what they’d said. It would have been just too humiliating.
‘It’s not true anyway,’ Soph said loyally, later. ‘You’re totally hot, and they’re a pack of heinous trolls.’
But I couldn’t forget what Vicky had said about me, and as you’ve probably gathered, I’m not exactly the forgiving type. Soph had her own reasons for hating Vicky, which will soon become clear.
‘Oh yes,’ I said, starting to laugh. ‘Vicky’s a definite.’
We came up with a lot more names after that: girls who’d said mean things to us in Grade Six, a ballet teacher who’d told Soph she had a big arse, the canteen lady who dobbed us in for nicking a packet of chips once.
Melissa, Queen of Evil Page 3