TWINED

by A. L. Collins

  I gasped and took several steps back. I ran into another kid and turned around as my back bumped him. I gasped again as I saw he was just like Lyle and Prajna. Immobile and motionless like a statue. Cupping my hands around my mouth, I walked away from him. I turned in a circle to see every single kid in that parking lot was stuck in space. They were trapped, posed into statuesque positions. Literally frozen… frozen in place.

  I had no clue what was going on. This was just too far. This wasn’t like anything else that happened to me today, it was ten times worse! Now these hallucinations were affecting tons of people around me. They were affecting my entire world! This had never happened to me before; I’ve never had an episode on this level. How could everyone be stuck like this? And how was I the only one still moving?

  I sank to my knees and cupped my ears like I always did whenever I had a bad attack and I needed to calm down. My bag slid off my shoulder and fell to the ground as my heart was racing. Sweat formed at my brow despite the chilly air. I took breaths in. Deep and soothing, stabilizing breaths. I thought maybe if I reassured myself of my sanity, then this would all just go away. Maybe everything would go back to normal.

  “Breathe!” I commanded myself, “Just breathe damn it! Breathe…” my shouts turned to whispers as my heart continued to beat faster, just like it did in Brigg’s class today. I couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Lyle!” I shouted to the air. “Lyle this isn’t funny! Prajna! Prajna, I’m a sheep, okay? I’m a sheep…” my sentence melded with silence.

  I had to face facts. It was true and I couldn’t deny it any longer. Gray was wrong, my father was wrong… I was wrong.

  I was crazy. I was completely insane… I always have been.

  Just like her…

  Just like mom.

  But before I lost it, before my mind broke down and I slipped into an insanity that would render me beyond saving, a deep voice of mystical properties spoke to me in a familiar fashion. And that voice brought me back to Earth.

  “You think you’re crazy?”

  A voice shocked my eyes open. I slowly took my hands from my face and looked up. I saw legs. Pants that seemed vaguely familiar filled my vision as my heart continued to pump faster and faster. All I could hear was this voice and the pumping of my chest, of my lungs. It was all so familiar. And as my gaze traveled upward… that’s when I saw him.

  It was the boy from the lunch line, the one who talked to my head… the one who spoke to me with his mind. He stood there staring at me, with his face shaped into some mysterious gaze that made me shiver. His exotic eyes glared down from his standing position, straight into my soul as I breathed out quietly. He was here again… and he seemed normal, unfrozen. He was moving normally as I could see his chest rising with breath. So he wasn’t frozen in time like everyone else here.

  In truth this mystery figure was the last thing I wanted to see. Was he even real or was I making him up in my head? I couldn’t even form a logical answer at this point, not while I was hyperventilating like this. All I knew is I was having some sort of mental breakdown… and that the people in the parking lot were as mobile as figurines in a wax museum.

  But what did that mean? Was I crazy? Was he? Were we both?

  What was happening to me?

  Clearly there was no time for answers… or questions even. Immediately he grabbed me roughly by the arm. I, still in shock, didn’t have the time or energy to resist him. He pulled me to his level and looked at me as I stared dumbly back at him. He seemed nervous, in a rush, yet so serious. He asked me something that I didn’t hear and in irritation he shook me slightly, asking me the same question again.

  “I asked if you saw anyone strange before you came out here?” he demanded an answer from me.

  See anyone? I’ve seen everyone here. The entire senior class was out here… and they were all like statues stuck in place. But at least he was talking out loud this time, as I could see his lips moving as he spoke. He wasn’t talking directly into my mind. I shook my head slightly, fighting the mental fatigue and panic. “No…” I said weakly.

  He grabbed me by the shoulders, “Are you sure? I mean anyone out of the ordinary at all?”

  I shook my head again. “No… no I… I haven’t seen anything. Just the cars… the cars are all gone…”

  He brushed that information aside. “I know about the cars. Forget about them. It’s a deception, a trick played by a Joined Pair.”

  “A… trick?” I repeated. “I know…it’s a prank.”

  “No it’s not some harmless prank. It’s an illusion,” he said sharply. “The cars are still here and these people are still alive. We’re stuck in a Twined’s trap and unless we work together, that’s how we’re going to stay.” He looked deeper into my eyes. “Do you understand what I’m saying to you? Do you understand any of this at all?”

  I couldn’t lie to this stranger. I was lost. “No… no I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  He released me and sighed in frustration. He turned around and pulled his short black hair back, a hand resting on his hip. He looked back to me and snapped his fingers, “All right… we can’t sit here and chat, we’re running out of time. I need you to do something for me.”

  I noticed he said “we” were running out of time. I didn’t exactly know what I could do for him or even what he wanted. But the boy seemed deadly serious, so I at least wanted to hear him out. Hell in this mess, it was my only option. Even through the terror I realized that.

  “What I need from you is your Tracking. Do you understand?” He said to me, “I need you to use your Tracking. Can you do that for me? Do you know what that is?” he spoke slowly and deliberately, like he was talking to a child.

  I had to give him the same answer as before. “Tracking? No. I don’t know what that is.”

  “Really?” he said as if I was an idiot. Taking a step towards me he asked, “Your mother… she didn’t teach you any of this? Anything at all?”

  And then that struck a nerve. My head snapped to and I grabbed him by the wrist. But in response he pulled me closer and grabbed me by the shoulder again. I winced slightly but still looked him in the eyes.

  He glared back at me… almost like he was sizing me up.

  “What did you say?” I asked him with more vigor.

  He raised his eyebrow. “You’re Mrs. Abigail’s daughter? Avalin? You should have at least been taught what you really are. I didn’t think you were that much of a novice.”

  My face froze in horror. He knew her name.

  He knew my mother’s name.

  I never told that to anyone, ever. I haven’t spoken that name in over five years. And now some strange kid that I’ve seen twice in my life knew my mother’s name? No way. There was no explanation for this, none that I saw. Before I knew it I was pushing myself away from him in fear. “You,” I pointed at him with a shaking finger, “You stay the hell away from me!”

  He held his arms up, frustrated with my theatrics. “Avalin I told you we don’t have time for this.”

  “No, shut up!” I screamed as I continued to back away from him. “I said stay away from me! This isn’t real!”

  “Of course it’s real!” he yelled back angrily. “Don’t be a fool! If you want something to blame, it should be your lack of knowledge! If you had any idea how to Track your enemies then we wouldn’t be in this situation!”

  I shook my head no as he continued, “You’re real.” He pointed to himself. “I’m real. This is real. And the danger…” his voice lowered slightly, “The danger is very real.”

  Danger? What was he talking about? This was just another episode, wasn’t this going to wear off like every other attack I’ve had? “You can’t just… make this stop?”

  “Not without you,” he answered. “And it pains me to say it. I mean it really pains m
e to say it. But I can’t do this alone.”

  But I stopped backing up as he held his arms above his head, like he was being arrested. His eyes lost the mysterious fury they held once before and a calmer and more sympathetic look seeped into his expressions. His body language even changed. I held myself tight as he calmly and carefully spoke to me out loud.

  “My name… is Albert Huntington,” he said to me slowly. “I’m a friend. I promise. But I need you to trust me.”

  “Trust you?” I said skeptically, still in shock. “Just like that? Why? How do I know you’re not the one doing this?”

  He still kept his cool. “You’re in a situation you can’t comprehend right now and I understand that. I apologize, I did not think you were so new to this world.” He took a few steps closer to me. For every three he took, I took one back. He then stopped his advance, hands still raised.

  It was my turn to ask something, “You’re from here… you’re from my class today.” I wanted to ask him a pretty vague question. I don’t know what kind of answer I expected, but I still asked, “Who are you?”

  He grimaced. “Hard to explain,” he admitted to me. “Can you ask something else?” he seemed to want me to ask him another question, something that would be quicker to answer. He was trying to negate my suspicions of him by being informative. I indulged him this time.

  “What’s going on?” I asked forcefully, fueled by nervousness as I looked around to my peers all frozen around me. I didn’t know if that was any easier to explain, but it’s what I most wanted to know. It’s what I most needed to know. “Why is everyone…?” I trailed off as my view became cluttered with the sight of ghostly immobile bodies.

  He sighed and lowered his hands. “They’re not the ones stuck in an illusion.” He said to me, “We are. Life is going by at a normal pace to them. We’re the ones stuck in place.”

  I shook my head. “Stuck in place?” I couldn’t comprehend the meaning of that, “Are you telling me that… so we’re both…”

  He nodded silently to my dismay. “Paused in time. We’re stuck in a distorted reality.”

  I felt so cold at that response. I felt like the only girl in the world, stuck, alone in time. Was I going to be like this forever? Was there any way to stop it?

  As if he read my mind, which he probably did, he answered, “That’s a better question. Yes, there is a way to stop it.” He pointed to me. “And that’s why I need your trust.”

  “What do I have to do with this?”

  “Everything,” came a stern reply.

  “How do we stop it?” my questions continued.

  “By-”Albert began to speak, but suddenly he stopped short. His eyes widened like a dog’s when it sees a squirrel. His body seemed to tense up and his hands balled into fists. It was intimidating… I didn’t know what he was doing. He wasn’t speaking to me… he was just standing there.

  For a moment I thought he had frozen in place too. Fear crept into my throat, “Hey… what’s going on?” I yelled at him. Despite his forceful demeanor and the way he ordered me around, I didn’t want him to leave me! I wouldn’t know what to do if I was the only one trapped in this nightmare! And for a couple seconds it felt as if my worst fears were realized. “Wait, come back! Don’t go!”

  But suddenly the movement returned to his limbs. He blinked a few times and flexed his arms and chest. He looked around himself in a sort of confusion.

  “He’s trying to push me out,” Albert said grimly as his gaze found its way to me. “He wants you all to himself.”

  “He?” I asked, trembling. “He who?”

  “The Twined who started this,” he replied. “The Illusionist.”

  And that’s when a moving figure caught my eye. In a blanket of immobile people it was easy to see a pair of legs strutting towards me. My head turned in unison with Albert’s as we both stared at a slender womanly figure walking towards us. At first I felt relief wash over me like a cool blanket. But then that relief quickly faded in an instant when I began to realize who exactly I was staring at.

  The redheaded cheerleader from before was walking across the parking lot; the girl with two faces, Jessica.

  My mouth fell open. “Oh my God,” came a whisper.

  Albert glanced at me with worry in his eyes. “You know this woman?”

  Jessica stormed over to us with her stares like daggers, piercing through my eyes. She looked almost hungry… like she wanted a fight, like she wanted blood. I was no fan of cheerleaders, but this time Jessica looked like a murderer. There was something about her expression… I don’t know what it was but it gave me a feeling inside that scared the life out of me. And I don’t scare too easily. Well, usually.

  That same feeling seemed to manifest in my new bossy friend as well. Because a quick look to Albert showed he was extremely nervous despite the fact that he could hide it well. And as she came closer and closer towards us, I saw it again. Her face morphed into something terrifying. Her eyes slanted and grew a yellow color, pupils thinning as her mouth grew sharp fangs. Her nose curled up like a cat’s when it’s snarling. And although her hands remained the same, her fingernails grew longer and took the shape of claws.

  I gasped at this transformation. The only comfort that came from this was that I wasn’t imagining this. Jessica… she really was a monster!

  And that’s all Albert needed to see. “That’s the Twined!” He grabbed me by the sleeve and shouted at me to move. I didn’t need to be told twice as I followed after him with Jessica picking up speed behind us. I pumped my legs as fast as I could while Albert led me across the street that ran in front of my school. We raced past a frozen car and dashed for the opposite end of the road. All there was on the other side was a huge open field full of grass and an eventual forest ahead. Nothing could offer us any protection from this thing chasing us. There was nowhere we could hide and the forest was leagues away. For at least a mile, the field was all we had.

  So we made a break for it. He was running so much faster than I was that I had trouble keeping up. But he did his best not to leave me in the dust. I just couldn’t comprehend what was happening to me. This girl was chasing me as I ran for my life! What did she want? I looked over my shoulder and saw Jessica catching up quickly. I couldn’t outrun her no matter how hard I tried!

  My calves ached and my chest was burning like it was on fire. I could only run for so long before my adrenaline began wearing off. As my pace grew sluggish and my head buckled with my arms flailing wildly, Albert looked back at me, seeing me slow down considerably. He quickly spun around and I ended up running past him. I didn’t expect him to take a sudden turn and just stop his sprint like that. I thought he was crazy. He was out of his mind. Why would he turn and face the very thing we were desperately fleeing from?

  My legs stopped as well. I turned around to him as my breathing burned my throat. I tried my best to yell at him. “Why are you stopping?” I screamed to him. But he just calmly responded to me like nothing was wrong.

  “I’m not running. She wants us to be her prey but I refuse,” he replied back to me as I saw his head shake. “She’s part of a Joined Pair. I’m an unbound Twined. I can’t kill her without destroying her Marker.”

  Kill her? Holy lord above he was serious. He was going to kill her. And that was small time compared to what she was going to do to us! How did this happen? How were we suddenly killing each other?

  I pleaded at him to run, “Please let’s just go! Let’s just run!”

  Jessica’s face morphed again as her fangs became oh so visible. She charged at us even faster now, legs whipping through the grass as it parted like a grass sea before her. But Albert wouldn’t move. My mind panicked with a million different scenarios. Should I just throw myself at her? No, she’d rip me apart. Should I call for help? No, I left my bag back in the parking lot. But eventually my brain decided that
if he wasn’t going, then neither would I.

  I was never a coward. That truth wasn’t going to diminish today.

  And that’s when it happened. Jessica’s clothes tore off and her body instantly morphed into the shape of a dark red jaguar. The cat leaped into the field and picked up speed at a rapid pace as I screamed out loud. That thing was charging right for Albert. It was going to do it. It was going to rip him apart. I saw her eyes, its eyes, whatever it was. I saw them. I saw those damn eyes. They had death in them. The message was strong.

  “What the shit?!” I screamed.

  Albert was going to die.

  At least that’s what I thought.

  But even as terror stayed my feet, Albert’s stance was held up with fortitude and confidence. When the jaguar leaped forward with its mouth gaping open and razor claws at the ready to murder, Albert took his hand and I saw the air around his fist distort. All of a sudden I heard a sort of muffled explosion-like sound ring from the jaguar as the she-cat was propelled at least a football field away from him. It went by so fast that I couldn’t comprehend what had happened. It almost looked like he had punched Jessica halfway across the field. But his fist never actually made contact with her. It came close, but never made contact.

  Albert sighed and returned to his upright position. He cracked his neck as the jaguar got to its feet seemingly unharmed. He acted like he just threw a softball rather than a huge jungle cat. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I asked him a sincere question… a question that I didn’t know the answer to anymore.

  “What…” I whispered as he turned his head slightly towards me, “What are you?”

  His gaze stayed straightforward, eyeing Jessica down, “I thought I told you already. A friend.”

  Maybe he thought this was all normal. But I sure didn’t. My wide eyes and hanging mouth conveyed that quite adequately. But his words gave me a strange, if temporary, comfort. At the very least I knew he wasn’t going to come after me. At least he was on my side. And right now he seemed more like Superman than a high school student. I thought things could get no more unpredictable.