Monsters & Fairytales

by Rebecca Suzanne

  He yanked himself free, finally, and collided into me. Grabbing my body, he pulled me up in his velvet arms. The sound of our lips locking together made hearts stop. My heels dug into his back and his claws ripped the back of my shirt. His passion cursed the blood in my veins, destroying my strength. I felt everything but him slipping from me. No. He was giving this to me to help me. This last kiss, this is what I needed to see it through. This was my final image of him, my final feelings. He was giving me the heart he didn’t have to make sure I always had one to get through times like these. He needed to let go to survive, and I had to hold on.

  A breath of air separated us. He pulled me off him and set me on my sturdy feet. Touching my cheek, he walked back to Carlyle willingly. It was okay. It was right. This was it and I was okay. I watched him disappear into the exodus without ever looking back. It was Carlyle’s turn. Just before he stepped in, he turned and faced me. He looked like he was going to say something. I braced myself for the worst of it.

  “It will hurt, a lot, but in the end, you will be happy, Mirabelle Frances. Thank you for everything you have done.” He nodded.

  I nodded back to him. I couldn’t say anything. I was afraid I was going to break if I moved. When the portal snapped shut, a sound wave echoed out in slow motion. I thought it was the same one that took the sound away until I saw everything it touched billow out and shatter like glass getting strained beyond its capacity. Finally, it engulfed me. Wind was taken out of my lungs. Movement was an act long lost on me. I just stood there, watching the invisible shield wipe out everything I had ever known.

  Life was replaced with a darkness I had seen before. It had come back for me. This was it. This is what I had been waiting for. I could feel my body tingling. This was my time to shine. I closed my eyes and waited for it, my moment. The Zahn was here for me and no one else. My final test; I was ready now.

  A cool breeze started swirling from my left. I felt my hair standing up and wrapping around me. I wasn’t sure if I was spinning since there was no equilibrium to hold on to, but something was moving. The breeze had me feeling that I was face down when everything stopped. My eyes shot open from its force. It wanted me to watch. Whatever it was going to do, it wanted me to see the things coming for me. I wasn’t afraid, just prepared. There was nothing it could do to hurt me anymore, I wanted this.

  I had been suspended. I saw my hands float up parallel to my body. I wasn’t breathing, but I wasn’t sure I was even alive. This blue color, almost like its ooze, was all around to the farthest depths my eyes could see. It wasn’t warm or cold, it was just there. I was dead. I don’t know how, but I knew it. I could feel it. Something was telling me I had died. I wasn’t afraid. I wanted to smile. I felt my cheeks retract as if I was smiling, but I knew the muscles weren’t working anymore.

  Creeping up the sides of my vision, white was forming. It was taking over all I knew. I felt it tingle in my toes. The tingling quickly turned into warmth. Soon the sensation had flourished inside of me. It was as if I was being wrapped up like a child needing a blanket. The warmth danced across my cheeks and then crept down to my neck. I remembered Sebastian touching my cheek. I wanted to cry. There were no tears.

  The warmth started getting centralized towards my heart. Before I could stop thinking of Sebastian, there was a jolt of excruciating burning pain in my chest and then I was choking. How could I be choking if I couldn’t breathe? Had I spoken too soon? Was it not over? Death couldn’t be that painless I suppose. It wanted me to suffer. Well you can pound on my chest all you want, I have a heart made of stone. It was given to me by a man that new the price it would take to keep living. I was safe with his heart. There is nothing more you can do to us, Zahn.

  Inside my head I started gasping. It was morbid to me that no matter the state my body was in, my mind still thought I was alive. I was struggling with a war on reality. I wanted to give in, but I knew that was stupid. However, every thought that told me I still had a chance at life, the burning seemed to lessen. Should I breathe? There was movement. Was I alone?

  I tried to breathe. I wanted to breathe. Someone kept yelling at me to do it, but I couldn’t. I didn’t understand. I saw her face and I felt my insides scream out. I wanted to touch her again. Mom, help me. I don’t know what’s happening.

  The voices again. They told me to breathe. I wanted to.

  “You should breathe then.” She laughed.

  She started fading back away. Mom.

  I felt the pounding on my chest again. My eyes shot open. I started choking. I was rolled onto my side where I then began throwing up water. I was shivering cold even though the water burned as it exited my body. Water? What was happening? I couldn’t recall anything.

  “We got a heartbeat.” Someone said.

  I tried to ask, ‘what’ but it came out more like, ‘sjkaflja’.

  “Ma’am? Ma’am can you hear me?” A man’s voice said; it was echoing in my head.

  “Yes.” I nodded my head and spoke to make sure my words came through properly.

  “Ma’am. You had an accident. You’re gon’na’ be okay.” The same voice said.

  “Accident?”

  I tried blinking open my eyes but nothing would come into focus. It was just bright. I could hear a fountain, though. The park? Was I at the park?

  “We’ll explain everything in a moment. Let us make sure you’re okay, first.”

  I was okay. I was fine. I was breathing.

  Epilogue

  The handle was turning but the door wasn’t moving at all. I felt like an idiot, rattling and pushing against the door the way that I was, in my cold, wet clothes. You’d think the hospital would have warmed them for me. I guess I wasn’t so nice to them when they had told me they wanted me to stay the night after saying nothing was wrong with me. All I had was a bump on my head. I had drowned, and was pronounced dead, but there was just a bump. No big deal.

  Spike whimpered next to me. What was I forgetting? I looked down to him and saw the keys sticking out of my pocket. Duh, Mirabelle, those would help, you know? Irony was when I realized I couldn’t remember which key. I was on the third one when Spike started barking.

  “Need some help?” Someone asked from the right of me.

  I looked to see this handsome man with short brown hair in a messy, curly style, and a Frisbee in his hand. A Frisbee?

  “Can you turn that into a lock pick?” I joked.

  I was uncomfortable. He was nice. It made me say stupid things. I always ruined these type of moments, not that I had lots of them, but still. See, he’s trying to talk to me and I’m listening to my own thoughts. Focus. What’s he talking about?

  He wasn’t talking anymore. He was digging into his pockets. I leaned against the door to step back and give him space. Was I about to get murdered here? Hadn’t this neighborhood seen enough of me surviving and dying today? Did I know him?

  He smiled when he saw I was staring at him. I stood up from the door and quickly collected my jaw to smile back. He pulled out his keys and shook them in triumph. At that same moment the door flung open. I was completely frozen. My keys dropped and echoed in my head when they hit the floor. I was choked up. I had just been leaning against that door. If I hadn’t moved, then I would have fallen straight through. My heart was racing. This was definitely too much for one day

  The guy that had opened the door was just standing there, staring at us. He looked at my keys then carefully stepped over them. What the flying heck was he doing? He seriously wasn’t going to pick them up and apologize? Did he even realize that if it weren’t for this handsome stranger I could have fallen and seriously injured myself? No, he was in far too much of a hurry. What a jerk.

  “Excuse me.” I yelled after him.

  “Excuse you, indeed!”

  He turned around and held up his hands as if this whole thing had been my fault. I seriously did not need this right now, not after my day. Hell, I didn’t even need this after my month!

  “
Hey! I would have fallen on my face because you were in so much of a hurry, you jack rabbit!”

  “Then you shouldn’t be standing in front of a door just waiting for disaster to hit, possum toad.” He said, turning around again.

  “Then you should learn to look! There’s glass there for a reason, you deer mongrel!” I screamed. I was fuming.

  He pulled his curly blonde hair back into a ponytail and started his motorcycle up.

  “Jack rabbit?” The guy next to me said over my shoulder.

  I jumped. He’d startled me. I forgot he was there.

  “It’s a thing.” I said quickly looking back to the guy on the motorcycle.

  I was too concerned about this moron about to endanger his own life and everyone’s he would come into contact with by not putting on anything protective.

  “Where’s your gear? You don’t care about yourself, either?” I called out over his engine.

  He looked at me this time. We stared at each other for a few seconds, and then he turned off the bike. What was he doing? Was he going to come over and approach me? Oh, I hope my savior was prepared to fight for me. Because like it or not, he was going to be my shield.

  Instead, that guy opened up a compartment on the back of his bike. He pulled out a helmet, which he clipped on his head, and then a jacket, that he zipped up to his pretty neck, and then he faced me. He stuck his arms out for approval, but he didn’t honestly wait for it. He got back on his bike and started it up the way men do in movies to look cool; the jump start. Then, like other men did in the movies, he sped off, cutting a corner way too close.

  “Well, at least he learned his lesson.” I huffed.

  “Yeah, I guess there is hope for some people, after all.” The other guy said.

  “I hope so.” I sighed.

  “If not, you could always slash his tires.”

  He laughed a weird laugh. It echoed in my heart. I felt a bit dizzy. Maybe it was from hitting my head earlier on that fountain.

  “Nah, I’m all talk and no game.”

  “What a great balance, I love games.” He joked. “Oh, here you go.”

  He scooped up my keys and tossed in them in the air with the Frisbee. He caught them right in front of my face and held them there for me. Curiously looking at him, I held my hand open for them. They fell into my hand perfectly and he smiled. It gave me goose bumps. I was blushing. Did I honestly know him?

  “Thank you.” I said.

  He was very well poised. I liked that. I liked his fashion sense, too. His plain gray tee shirt in a V-neck style seemed like it’d be a fad, but not on him. It suited him. Right down to his dress shorts and slip on shoes, his style really did compliment mine. That was a rare thing for me to find. Heck, it was rare for me to find a guy just interested in me. And here he was, just staring at me.

  “Anytime.” He nodded.

  “Huh?”

  Had I said something? What was happening? This guy gave me a funny feeling in my tummy.

  “You said, ‘Thank you’?” He laughed.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, right.”

  I shook my head.

  “Shall we?” He asked, opening the door.

  “Yes. Thanks.”

  I walked through the door first. He had a smile from ear to ear, it was adorable. I heard him sniff me when I passed him. I smelt like chlorine. Oh, no, my shirt; he could see my bra. I crossed my arms over my chest. He followed in after me.

  “Not to be rude or anything, but I promise I wasn’t stalking you.”

  “Huh?”

  “I had a feeling you wouldn’t remember me since you, you know…” He made a charade of falling and hitting his head. “But I pulled you out of that fountain. And when the ambulance showed up, and you told them you didn’t know me, they wouldn’t let me come along. So, call me crazy, but I listened to you tell them where you lived and sat on that bench waiting for you to show up.

  “And now you’re giving me that look that you have no idea who I am and I really am just seeming like I’m stalking you! Oh, God. Okay. So, I do live here too, so we’ll just pretend we bumped into each other okay?”

  He shifted his hair around and walked over to the bottom of the stairs. I was just looking at him, trying not to smile so badly. He took a breath, paced a bit, and then walked back over. Next thing I knew he bumped into me.

  “Oh, excuse me.” He said with the most sincerity I had ever heard.

  He gently touched where he hit me, trying not to smile.

  “Quite alright.” I said with laughter behind my words.

  “No, no, that was really rude of me. I’m just, are you knew here?”

  He was faking it so beautifully, I loved it.

  “Yes, actually I am. I’m Mirabelle, I live 3B.”

  I held my hand out. He took it and smiled. My head went fuzzy as an image flashed in front of my eyes. It was a glimpse of him standing in the park. He was holding that same Frisbee. Had I run into him before the accident?

  “Get out, I live in 2A! That makes us neighbors!” He leaned back with his words to express his enthusiasm.

  In my head, the fuzz turned into static. I heard something. Someone said something. Was I remembering more?

  “Marc, with a ‘c’?” I blurted out, interrupting his next sentence he was about to start.

  “Yes! You remember!”

  He threw his arms up in the air with such an unannounced force that I lost my balance in all the excitement. I fell backwards, doing my best to try and grab onto something to catch my fall with. A loud grunt escaped my lungs as I somehow managed to land in his arms. He was leaning over me with a very concerned look on his face. He had caught me, he had actually caught me. Now I was just staring at him all up close and personal. There was nothing familiar about him, though. How did I remember him? How did I know his name? The static was gone. It felt artificial, as if someone had planted the information.

  However the way I knew it, I had a feeling he was more than willing enough to help me figure out why. Course, we just had to make it up the stairs safely first.

  - II –