TWINED

by A. L. Collins

  “Kill me or eat me, what’s the difference?” I asked.

  “The difference is I’m not doing either, sweetie,” she replied. “And that’s all you need to know.”

  She took a few steps forward and Albert and I took a few steps back. Jessica still grinned at us as her eyes focused in on me with a creep stare. “I must say I can’t believe that you found such a prime specimen to work with.” She then looked to Albert and her eyes roved up and down, “So damn attractive. I wish that I had Joined with a human who had such a… defined chest.”

  “Stay away from him,” I ordered fiercely.

  Albert grinned. “Take another step,” he lurched forward and dared her.

  “Albert, don’t,” I said. “Rushing her will get you killed.”

  “It won’t make for a lack of trying,” he said with malice in his voice.

  “I’m not going to let you Join with him, Avalin,” Jessica hissed. “But it seems that you’re not even capable in the first place! That’s absolutely pathetic. I love it.”

  I looked to Albert. “Isn’t there anything you can do? I mean I’ll do whatever it takes! I’ll Join with you!” I said, panic rising.

  “It’s not that, I don’t know what’s wrong. I don’t know why it won’t work.”

  “Oh Avalin,” Jessica grinned. “All this time you thought that Connie was the one who was your enemy. But in reality, you couldn’t see that it was I who had become your biggest threat.”

  I clenched my fists as she came closer and closer. Albert kept his arm in front of me.

  “But you were ignorant, oblivious. You always have been.” Jessica’s hand morphed into claws. “It will make it that much easier to carve through your friend’s throat.”

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked. If I am going to die… I at least need to know why.

  And her answer was every bit as sadistic as I thought it would be. “Because it’s fun.”

  Nothing was going to keep her from killing us. This was it. Death, I’m thinking. Murder, I’m thinking. I looked to Albert and I could feel it in him. No fear, but disappointment… disappointment in his own actions. As if he had failed in protecting me from Jessica. But I wanted to tell him we hadn’t failed, that we hadn’t lost yet. But I couldn’t. Deep down inside I really did know what was going to happen.

  But just when I thought everything was doomed and all my hope had fled me, something else happened. Something other than what I had predicted.

  Out of nowhere and in the blink of an eye, something whizzed past my face and sliced through Jessica’s shoulder.

  It took a second for me to see it. But it almost looked like a white little arrow had zoomed through the air and cut into Jessica’s furry body like a scythe. Jessica flinched and her eyes widened. She looked to her shoulder and put her hand to where the arrow had hit. She rubbed her fingers together and it was clear she felt blood.

  Suddenly, out of the grass, thousands of those little white arrows fluttered into the sky. Orange light gleamed off of them as Jessica backed up in horror at the sight of such strange creatures. Albert and I backed up as well, wondering what the hell it was we were seeing. They were circling around us in the sky like an ivory tornado.

  “What the hell did you do, Marsh?” Jessica roared at me.

  “Albert, is this you?” I asked.

  He shook his head, “I… I don’t know what this is.”

  The tiny white objects spiraled beautifully in the sky. And then those thousand fliers all turned towards Jessica. She took several steps back as the arrows then soared down at her like Kamikaze fighters. Jessica sensed the danger; even she wasn’t brave enough to face the arrows down. She morphed back into her Lynx form and dashed away from us, running down the field as the arrows chased after her.

  Albert and I were stunned as not one of the white things had attempted to attack us. We looked to each other without words to express the relief we felt as Jessica dashed to the forest.

  “Avalin!” a voice called out to me.

  Albert and I turned to see two people standing at the top of the hill we had rolled down. A young boy and girl, around my age, stood there peering down at us. I didn’t notice who they were, but they knew my name. Apparently everyone in the world knew who I was.

  The boy called out in a deep voice, “Follow us. Hurry, before she comes back!”

  I looked to Albert, “Who are they?”

  He winced, breathing heavily. “No… don’t trust them, Avalin. I don’t…” he trailed off as he rested his head against my shoulder. He slumped to the ground and I attempted to hold him up, trying to keep his head elevated.

  “Albert? Albert!” I yelled.

  “What’s wrong?” the boy called down, “What’s going on? Are you hurt?”

  I didn’t want to answer back. But it was clear that Albert had passed out from the shock of those huge cuts in his side. I felt panic rising. If I didn’t get him to a hospital, he’d bleed out right here in the field.

  Albert said not to trust these people at the top of the hill. But I added things up. The rising panic plus my lack of knowledge divided by the fact that Albert was at risk of dying equaled three good reasons why I needed to get our asses up that hill. I just wished I had a reason to trust these two strangers.

  And for once, by the magic of the universe, my wishes were granted.

  “Avalin!” a second voice called out, “Avalin, its Ms. Gray!”

  My head spun. I looked to the top of the hill and sure enough in the orange light of the sun, Ms. Gray stood there next to the two other figures, waving me down.

  “Ms. Gray?” I yelled, “What are you doing here? How are you not trapped in the illusion?”

  She ignored my questions. I heard her say, “Kisuke, Mayuki, get down there and help Avalin. I think Albert is injured.”

  Both of the kids started their descent down the hill. My head pounded with a million different scenarios on how this would play out. Ms. Gray was seemingly acquainted with these two mysterious people who had just appeared out of nowhere. My school nurse was now saving not only my life, but the life of the strange man I had just met a short while ago. As these two equally mysterious figures, Kisuke and Mayuki, walked closer and closer to me, I began to question their true motives.

  Because I think they’re the ones who just saved our lives.

  CHAPTER 6: SLEEP AND HEAL, PAST REVEAL

  I shifted uncomfortably in the chair I sat on. I felt the crunch of plastic under me and in the silence of the moment it felt like I was making the loudest noise in the world. The only other noise in the entire house seemed to be the random clocks that clicked and hummed all around me. It was strange in design and decoration equally; however Ms. Gray’s house seemed exactly like I had imagined it would.

  If you imagine the classic look of a grandmother’s home then you could probably guess what kind of place Ms. Gray had. There was plastic on all the furniture except for the couch that Albert rested on. Everything was clean and pristine… it all almost looked unused. Not as many knickknacks as I’d expected, but a fair amount of pictures and paintings of the ocean. The weirdest thing is that every part of the house seemed to look different from multiple angles.

  In fact the only modern looking part of the house was the kitchen. And at the moment the door to that area of the home was closed, with Ms. Gray and her two associates talking out of my range of hearing.

  I didn’t know what they were discussing. I fiddled with the white bandages around the cuts on my shoulder, remembering with a shudder the look that Jessica had given me before she fled. I tried to push those memories back as far as I could. I was safe… for the moment. So I at least wanted to feel like it.

  I looked over to the guy on Gray’s couch. Albert rested on a strange pink colored sofa. He had bandages around his abdomen and a blank
et was draped lightly over him from the waist down. I couldn’t help but stare at him. Not because of what happened earlier with the kiss or because he was, as much as I hate to admit it, genuinely good looking. But it was because I’ve felt this strange urge ever since I met him that I’ve known him before. Somewhere, sometime ago, I feel like I’ve known him. And the damn feeling just wouldn’t go away.

  But all details aside, he saved my life. I was grateful. And I think he felt grateful that I didn’t leave him to save my own ass. I had felt, and was mildly offended, that he half thought I was going to leave him in that field to face Jessica alone. While he was content with that estimation, I wasn’t. I didn’t run. I couldn’t.

  I looked at his short black hair, spiked out in all directions at the front. Not like one of those Japanese cartoons, but enough to have a sort of rugged bed head appeal to it. His jaw was structured well; his nose seemed to be the perfect divider between the two symmetrical parts of his face. I saw sweat drip down his forehead and his brow furrowed. I think he was having a bad dream. I didn’t blame him at all. I was awake and I think I was still having nightmares about what happened earlier today.

  Before I could have another thought about Albert, thank God, the door to the kitchen opened. The guy and girl from earlier, who Ms. Gray called Kisuke and Mayuki respectively, walked out and stood over by the far wall near the sunroom. Ms. Gray followed after, dressed in her school uniform still. I guess she didn’t have any time to change with all the commotion. However that sweet smile she always fed me never faded in the least.

  Mayuki, who I noticed to be slender and a little taller than Prajna, walked over and handed a green cup of tea to me. I eyed it only for a second before taking it. I didn’t want to be rude. And at the sight of this girl brushing back her horizontal, evenly cut bangs and smiling, I think being rude was something I had avoided.

  “How are you feeling, dear?” Ms. Gray asked with a hand on my lap.

  I shrugged. “Headache the size of Minnesota. But otherwise?” I sighed, looking at her. “Thankful. And relieved and… confused,” I said as I summed up all my emotions at once.

  “I can see why, on all counts.” Gray sat down next to me on a small stool that didn’t have plastic on the seat. “From the looks of it you and your friend had quite the day.”

  “How is he doing?” I asked Gray. “Albert, I mean.”

  She looked to the young man on the couch. “Oh, this is Albert?” Gray said in what seemed like pleasant surprise.

  I narrowed my eyes, “Why do I feel like you already know who he is?”

  Gray looked at me with a slight surprise. I don’t think she knew what to say to that, “Well… I…”

  I just stared at her. I put down my tea cup on the table next to me. “Ms. Gray, what is going on? I started this day out thinking I wasn’t even sane, and now suddenly I’m the last person in the world who is.”

  Knowing she was keeping things from me, she sighed, “Oh dear. I don’t know how exactly to ease into this.”

  “You could start with why Jessica was trying to kill me. That’s a good ice breaker.”

  “See my dear, even that is complicated. I honestly have no idea what her intentions were or are.”

  I had a plethora of questions for her to answer, if she could. And I felt like she possessed the knowledge to. Who is Albert? What is Jessica? Why try to kill me? But I think the one question that stuck out at me the most was-

  “What is a Twined?”

  Ms. Gray’s expression was one of both shock, and strangely a little bit of pride. I saw the corner of her mouth curve only just slightly into a smile.

  “Just as I thought,” she said, looking over to the couch. “Did Albert tell you he was a Twined, sweetie?”

  “That’s what he said. I still have no idea what that is.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Gray said. “The world of the Twined has been kept secret from humans since the beginning of time.”

  And then my heart lurched into my throat. “Wait, what does that mean? Kept secret from humans, what…” I shook my head, quickly putting two and two together, “Albert’s not human?”

  “Relax, dear,” Gray eased me. “Albert belongs to a species that parallels humans in many ways. But no, technically he is not human.”

  With that power he demonstrated earlier, I didn’t have a hard time believing there was something strange about him. “What is he?” I asked, “What does that make him?”

  Gray scooted a little closer to me. “Twined are beings that seem human in appearance, but genetically are dissimilar. Most of them are nearly superhuman in certain aspects, like Jessica’s ability to transform into that otherworldly creature.”

  What she said had me floored. “You’re telling me that Albert’s the same kind of monster as Jessica?!” I yelled.

  Gray motioned for me to speak quieter. “They’re not monsters, Avalin. They have feelings, intentions and faults, just like humans. And just like humans, not all of them are benevolent.” She looked behind me and said, “Mayuki here is a Twined.”

  I turned to the girl who had given me the cup of tea. She shrugged awkwardly at me, and the boy Kisuke actually looked a little pissed; for good reason considering my outburst directed towards Mayuki’s species.

  I shrunk a bit. “Well I feel like a dick.”

  But Mayuki laughed, “It is fine. I understand that your first interaction with a Twined might have soured your opinion on us.”

  “True,” Gray said, “Jessica did try to kill you.”

  “But then you saved me, right?” I asked Mayuki.

  “With my gift, yes,” she said.

  “Gift?”

  Mayuki smiled at me again. She took out of her pocket a small piece of white paper. Before I knew it, the paper was floating in her hands. With a wide eyed expression I watched as it bent and twisted on its own, folding itself into what, on closer inspection, looked like a paper bird.

  I suddenly realized, “Those arrows… you…”

  “Origami,” she said, “My gift.”

  “I told you the Twined are almost supernatural,” Gray said to me. “They possess unique gifts that humans cannot begin to comprehend.”

  That made more sense to me now. “Albert can do this… thing. Where he’s almost superhuman strong,” I said. “And that’s because he’s a Twined?”

  “Exactly,” Gray confirmed.

  I pulled my hair back and sighed. “Well if he’s so strong… why did he say that he couldn’t kill Jessica?”

  “There are rules,” Gray said. “Rules of their genetic makeup that they need to abide by. See, Avalin, in order to survive past their teen years Twined need to perform what we call a Joining. They require a bond with a human in order to survive, or else their bodies just wither and die before they even reach their twenties.”

  My eyes widened, “They die if they don’t bond?” I guess that sort of explains what Albert was trying to do earlier when he… attacked my lips.

  “Yes dear. Without us, the Twined population would have died out centuries ago. They require a symbiotic bonding. Their bond with us unlocks their true potential and helps them to survive, whereas we obtain protectors and in some cases good friends or lovers.”

  “It is a win-win situation,” Mayuki said.

  I turned to her. “Pardon me for prying, but what… so you’re the Twined…” I then pointed to Kisuke, “And you’re human?”

  “Yes,” Mayuki said. “I met Kisuke in school a few years back. We got to know each other and when I began to fall into the danger years, which are the years where an unbound Twined’s health begins to dwindle, he agreed to Join with me. Essentially he saved me from an early death.”

  “I see. So…” my head turned back to the couch, “then… who is Albert Joined with?”

  “It appears no one
,” Gray said. “He is an unbound Twined. I assume that in the heat of the confrontation with the Shadow Lynx, he was attempting to Join with you.”

  I blushed, which was a rare phenomenon. “He was attempting to Join me in the heat of something.”

  “Don’t think too much into it, Avalin. Joinings are not always romantic,” Gray said. “When a Twined is unbound, when they have no partner, their powers are watered down. Like a cat with no claws, it would’ve been impossible for Albert to kill Jessica without bonding with you. In truth, it is amazing that he was able to show any signs of power at all as an unbound Twined.”

  “Albert was trying to Join with me because that’s what he needed to fight back? To protect us from Jessica?” I didn’t ask that so much as a question; rather I was finally putting some of the pieces to this twisted puzzle together.

  Mayuki chimed in, “Joining unlocks our power. Think of letting a chained dog off its leash. The bond with a human is what makes a Twined truly powerful… and dangerous.”

  “Again, this is where the intentions and morals come into play. Humans unlock Twined powers, but what the Twined do with them is purely what they decide,” Gray said.

  I leaned back on the tiny chair and my eyes fell onto Albert. I twiddled my necklace in my hand.

  “You’re lucky we found you when we did,” Kisuke said. “Otherwise that Shadow Lynx would have ripped you both to pieces.” He crossed his arms in a disapproving manner. “You should have used your Tracking, girl. You never would have gotten trapped in that illusion to begin with.”

  “Kisuke,” Mayuki urged him to be silent.

  But I couldn’t disagree with him, “No, he’s right. That’s what Albert told me when this all started. Then again I have no idea what the hell Tracking is, so feel free to take that into consideration.”

  Kisuke was not amused, but Ms. Gray held back a laugh and said, “I know this is all very new to you Avalin. But you’re safe for now. Why don’t we get you home? You can rest and think about some things on your own time without any pressure.”