SPARKS: The Smoke & Fire Series (Prequel Book 1)

by Wesley, Michele

  A warm liquid crawled down her shoulder, reminding her that something was wrong. The slight chill and it being January in Detroit let her know she wasn’t sweating. When the rusted scent made its way to her nose and coated the back of her throat, Sori realized she was bleeding. Pain and discomfort declined to make their presence known as she sat confused. Wanting to but not able to reach the light switch, she sat staring towards it across the dark room.

  Finally connecting with its target, she searched around the contours of her head. Where is blood coming from? Maybe I am still asleep? Sleep would definitely explain why everything seemed to be moving at a snail’s pace.

  Suddenly, the room was flooded with light. Debra stood in the doorway. Instantly raising Sori’s concern, the look of pure shock was frozen on Debra’s face.

  Afraid to know what caused Debra’s look, Sori decided to ask anyway. “What is it? What’s wrong with me?”

  Eyes aimed at Sori’s head, Debra covered her mouth, apparently too stunned to do anything but stare.

  Fingering the contours of her head again, Sori found blood. It inch down the side of her head like a trail of slow moving insects. Her fingertips were drenched as the thick liquid painted her fingertips crimson.

  A few seconds later, Sori watched Rodney push Debra aside and entered her room. Just as Debra’s, Rodney’s face was instantly seized by horror.

  Sori could hardly hear Debra and Rodney as they looked at her and talked about her as if she couldn’t hear or see them. Their lips moved as the sound of their words floated over her head, leaving muffled whispers of broken sentences. Only half their words made it into her ears, although their body language indicated they were yelling. Frustrated, Sori asked, “What’s wrong? What is it?” Tilting her head slightly, she saw no change in the couple’s actions.

  As her brain digested the little it could retain, Sori watched closely as Rodney pointed Debra towards the living room and literally shoved her out the door. Walking towards her, Rodney’s perplexing stare increased the level of anxious energy that surrounded her.

  Snapping out of some sort of trance, Sori’s senses intensified. She could hear things more clearly, even fragments of conversation outside her window. Glancing at the window, she noticed flashing lights through her thin dingy drapes. Seeing lights flashing outside her window, she wondered if they had been flashing the entire time. Focusing on bits of conversation, she fought to bridge the pieces together.

  A shootout that started a few blocks away had ended in a foot chase. Both gunmen ran, shooting at each other as their bullets flew recklessly over the neighborhood. Taking a popular path between houses, the final exchange of bullets had taken place outside Sori’s window. One of the men had been killed and the other had fled the scene. Now, she was likely the unlucky recipient of a bullet from the shootout.

  She whispered to herself, “So that’s it. I’ve caught a stray bullet.” The thought of the bullet being in her head was unimaginable. Why am I not in pain?

  It wasn’t uncommon for innocent by-standers to die in random shooting in their neighborhood. Only a year prior, an eight year old had been shot in the chest and died instantly while playing in his own front yard.

  Closing her eyes tightly, Sori concentrated. She rocked her body forward, but her legs wouldn’t corporate as she pushed to stand again. Rodney quickly and firmly placed his hands on her shoulders, forcing her to stay down.

  In another trance, she watched Rodney’s lips closely as he talked. His voice pinged off her eardrums as his words reached her brain after he’d spoken, making it appear as if he was part of an old Kung Fu flick. He said, “Girl, stay your ass down until the ambi-lance come.”

  Soft and kitten-like, Sori said, “Why is an am-bu-lance coming?” She pronounced the word ambulance slowly and correctly on purpose. It pissed her foster parents off that she spoke with proper grammar. Most of the time she mocked them and they didn’t even realize it.

  She couldn’t figure out how the system had placed an honor roll student in a home with two people who weren’t equipped to help her with her homework, let alone provide good parenting skills.

  Rodney continued, “You been shot in the damn head. You need to sit your ass down and keep still until help get here. You must have a hard head cause you ain’t dead yet.”

  A bystander in her own body, Sori fought to stay calm when all she wanted to do was look in a mirror.

  ****

  Debra returned with two police officers. The cops arrived quickly, since the shooting had ended right outside her window. Sori watched the cops enter her room. Interpreting their concerned faces chipped away the calm she fought to maintain. Why did only she believe things weren’t as bad as the way people looked at her? Is half my head missing or something? It couldn’t be, there isn’t any pain.

  The cops approached her guardedly. They asked questions about how she was feeling as they checked out her head. One cop directed Rodney to gather some towels, while the other walked around checking out her room.

  While one of the cops wrapped her head in a towel, she heard the other behind her at the window. Once he pulled back the curtain, Sori caught a glimpse of the broken window pane before being told to turn her head back forward. The cop behind her seemed to be figuring out the trajectory of the bullet. Her bed was close enough to the window to make her earlier stray bullet scenario true.

  Sori thanked her lucky stars for the whine of approaching sirens. If she looked half as bad as everyone’s face suggested, she was thankful more help was on the way.

  A few minutes later, paramedics swarmed her room like angry bees in an attempt to treat her wound. Treating her with a sense of urgency, they acted as if she were knocking at death’s door. Once they discarded the towel that was now drenched in blood, one asked, “How do you feel?” Unsure of how to response, Sori answered, “I’m okay, nothing hurts.” Touching her head, the medic continued, “Does this hurt? Can you tell us your name? Birthday?” Sori answered all the questions, yet the concern on their faces never disappeared.

  Cleaning the side of her face and neck, they wrapped bandages around her head while speaking kind words the entire time. Sadly, this was the most human-to-human contact Sori had experienced without being abused or beaten in the process.

  As she was being wheeled out of her room, Sori got a look at the scene she’d been in. Her pillow was drenched in blood. Her bed didn’t have a headboard so the wall just above her head displayed small splatters of blood and tiny chunks of what could have only been pieces of brain or skull or both. It was a scene straight out of a horror movie that led Sori to understand everyone’s reaction to her. Despite the horror she saw, she still felt no pain.

  Sori was taken to Crush Memorial Hospital, about five miles away from her block, one of the most dangerous in Detroit. The crime in their area was so bad, she often thought of their neighborhood as an outdoor cell block.

  Before the ambulance came to a complete stop at the hospital’s emergency entrance; medical personnel were opening the doors and pulling her out as fast as the gurney’s shaky wheels could turn. She stared as people scrambled about, screaming and shouting for different meds and equipment.

  The scene was total chaos. Sori’s attempt at making someone aware that she wasn’t in pain was ignored. A mask was placed over her face and her world faded to black.

  ****

  Struggling against a crippling force holding her down, Sori’s body sparked back to life. Her eyes moved rapidly but she couldn’t open them. Her awakening took too much effort. She relaxed, taking deep steading breaths to ease her tension. First, she managed to move her hands, then lift them, and finally her eyes opened.

  She took in the antiseptic scent and searched her surroundings. A thin white curtain gave her privacy, but Sori could vaguely see and hear machines assisting someone on the other side. She was in the hospital.

  The sting of a needle in the back of her hand made her more aware. Without reaching up, she felt the press of b
andages wrapped tightly around her head.

  Sori jumped, when her curtain went flying open. An older white man entered. The long pocketed white coat and stethoscope around his neck told her this was the doctor. The nurse stood next to him.

  The doctor’s voice boomed loudly as he introduced himself, making Sori cringe. He noticed, “I am sorry, Miss Knight, for speaking so loudly. I am Doctor Stevenson.” The doctor went through a series of questions mechanically. When his face flashed concern, Sori gave him her complete attention. She had been unconscious for a week after the doctor had induced a temporary coma. He stressed that she’d been lucky. Her foster parents stopped by the hospital only once, which Sori attributed to them checking to ensure their public assistance investment was still alive.

  After the doctor and nurse completed several series of tests, Sori thought about her situation. Something inside hervhad shifted or re-aligned, but she couldn’t figure out what exactly had changed.

  Sori spent a second week in the hospital under the watchful eyes of Doctor Stevenson and the nurses. The doctor seemed amazed that she survived the gunshot. He explained that she had been shot at close proximity with a .357 magnum soft point bullet. Sori didn’t exactly know what that meant, but the doctor’s concern and uncertainty piqued her interest.

  Seeing confusion on the doctor’s face as he attempted to explain her gunshot let her know that he didn’t have all of the answers. From what the doctor could explain the bullet entered her skull, shattered, and a few pieces exited, expelling small pieces of her scalp and skull. Pieces of her brain had been blown away as well. The doctor marveled at the fact that she was still fully functional and not brain damaged. She watched the doctor study her like a newly discovered medical mystery. Sori didn’t mind it; being in the hospital was like being on vacation. Two weeks without her horrible foster parents was a gift she gladly accepted.

  ****

  After her release from the hospital, it wasn’t business as usual for Sori. Struggling, she had trouble reacquainting herself with her surroundings. She found herself becoming easily angered by things that didn’t bother her before. It was as if the bullet had taken away her ability to be patient.

  Although years of neglect and abuse made Sori tough, she was known for being soft spoken and quiet. She usually internalized how she truly felt about situations and back-talked when no one could hear her. Now, there was no telling what was going to tumble out of her mouth. She was left wondering if the bullet was delivering a message of peace or if it were announcing the beginning of more pain. Either way, it was a message she was determined to decode.

  There were days when she’d sit and stare at her bedroom wall for hours, wondering if she had lost pieces of herself. The memory of seeing tiny specks of her brain and skull expelled over the wall was a vivid reminder that pieces were literally missing.

  Sori’s most amazing discovery was that she could switch off her emotions. Letting go and going blank was like letting herself blow freely in the wind. To exist and function and not deal with the harshness of her environment was a blessing. When the pain and anguish of her life came searching to torture her, Sori could turn off her emotions and not acknowledge a thing.

  Sori believed the bullet not killing her was connected to why she had been able to hit and break her attacker’s leg. She believed she possessed a special ability that made her stronger than normal.

  Eventually, Sori stopped caring about dying. As a matter of fact, her overall attitude became more nonchalant. She gravitated towards danger more, when she had not so long ago avoided it. Swallowing a bottle of pain killers and being shot in the head hadn’t killed her so she took it as a sign that she was being spared for a reason she had yet to discover.

  The new way Sori reacted to people eventually started to give her pause. Having the ability to flip her emotions off was dangerous. She realized she was becoming a person without a conscious, some of her feelings becoming choices. She was most afraid of committing evil acts and using her ability to ignore what she’d done. One of the things she most feared was becoming one of the monsters who’d had a hand in raising her.

  She explored her abilities, sneaking into abandoned buildings and houses to practice kicks, punches, and all sorts of fighting techniques. One of the only things that gave Sori solace was her profound and insatiable need to save those like her; people who were overlooked, unwanted, and forgotten. Often, she invited herself into fights, helping those being bullied.

  The bullies Sori most wanted to tackle were her foster parents. It only took Rodney and Debra four months to kick Sori out of the house after her release from the hospital. They claimed she was too disobedient. Her foster sister Sherri had run away twice, which sent her back into state custody and away from Rodney and Debra.

  Sori stalked her foster parents after she found out they were given two new foster daughters, an eight and ten year old. Keeping a close eye on the couple, Sori along with cops arrived just as the couple called, “Action.”

  After the cops located dozens of the couple’s previously made child porn movies, Rodney and Debra were arrested and sentenced to prison.

  ****

  Since Debra was in prison for a child sex crime, she was a target. Due to the prison being overpopulated, Debra didn’t get the privilege of going into segregation. She suffered daily beatings, was often starved, and always picked on. Since some of the female guards were just as criminal as the prisoners, they rarely stopped attacks against Debra.

  In an effort to find herself prison protection, Debra became the property of the prison bully, Big Letta. Debra realized her mistake too late. Big Letta pimped Debra out to other prisoners and to male prison guards for drugs, cigarettes, food, and merchandise. Debra had essentially become a slave with no one to turn to for help.

  The one time Debra refused Big Letta’s advances for sex, she found herself at the wrong end of a shank. Her death wasn’t quick or painless. Debra was stabbed seventeen times by Big Letta. Her body had been placed inside one of the industrial sized dryers in the prison laundry area. Debra clung to life for nearly two days before prison guards found her body a week after her stabbing.

  From his first day in prison, Rodney was passed around as prison-meat. His attempt to take the easy way out didn’t work. His botched suicide by hanging sank him deeper into his own personal hell. As a suicide risk, he remained shackled to his bed in the prison infirmary. Guarded twenty-four hours a day, the guards tasked with watching him were worse than the inmates. Rodney was repeatedly raped by the guards who also allowed other inmates into his room. Suffering months of sexual abuse, Rodney eventually found a way out of his restraints and put the finishing touches on his suicide. Using a discarded pen, he had been desperate enough to dig a hole in his wrist, down to the bone.

  After Rodney and Debra’s apprehension, Sori found it fulfilling to capture criminals. She couldn’t wait to turn eighteen so she could join the military. Her willingness to fight for the underdog and embrace danger caught the attention of a world she didn’t yet know existed. A world she would fit into perfectly, one she would abide.

  It wasn’t until she reached adulthood that Sori realized the abnormalities she considered an ability made her as lethal as the harsh environments that raised her. Discovering she could literally act without a conscious and hit faster and harder than most people, concerned her. To appease her mind, she promised herself that she would only unleash her anger on the monsters of the world.

  Eventually, Sori will be introduced to Top. A high-level secret spy organization, Top would encourage Sori to embrace her abilities and use them to rid the world of evildoers. Sori didn’t know it yet, but her rough upbringing and abuse where all inadvertent training that would later serve her well in her new world. Top was her new beginning and her life was about to spark explosives.

  Part 2

  Mycale Thomas Phillips - Fire

  Waking up in an unfamiliar environment, sparked panic. The hardness of the mattress, the s
tale musty air, and the suffocating stillness were all indications that he may no longer be in his own room.

  Shaking off the clouds of sleepiness, ten-year-old Mycale squinted against the harshness of blinding light. He called out, “Mum. Dad.” He even called out to his twelve-year-old big brother Mateo, but no one answered. Sure he was stuck in a dream, Mycale struggled to remain calm.

  Lying flat on his back, Mycale could make out a dirty white ceiling. The ceiling tiles bore holes as if rats had been eating at them. The walls showcased white paint and nothing more. His football and race car posters weren’t there. His shelf lined with his football trophies weren’t there either. Mycale focused, looking for anything familiar. A light sat like a beacon just over Mycale’s bed. There were no windows from his vantage point and more beds were coming into focus.

  Unable to move his hands, he couldn’t shield his eyes. Blinking rapidly, the brightness made him fight to keep his tortured eyes open. Mycale scanned the area as best he could. As his focus became clearer, he saw other kids. Beds of children atop dirty and torn mattresses was all that filled the large space. The sight of other kids should have relaxed him a little, but he didn’t know them and had no idea where he was.