Feel Again

by Fallon Sousa

  One of the other soldiers, presumably middle aged, called out to the boy. Apparently, his name was Nelvak, and he has seen only fourteen summers. For a moment, Lionel felt a strange sympathy for the boy; for Nelvak, until the child soldier walked up to him and jabbed him in the ribs with his sword in a way that would not kill him, but would set him straight. Then, Nelvak sneered cruelly at Lionel, and continued to spit in his face. Lastly, before moving on, he kicked Lionel in the head; leaving him on the cold ground with no one to aid his cause or his life.

  Lionel than saw Samakri for the first time since he had awoken on Zebda. She was not in her steampunk earth gear, but was clad in a revealing two-piece armor, made of the sheerest Yalmax that was tinted the same shade of purple as her hair, with embellishments along the seams that matched her golden eyes. She glared at him with an animal-esque ferocity in her gaze; she held his stare for what seemed like eternity, and then she walked away.

  There was nothing in the world, or, in this case, the universe, that Lionel Davidson wanted more than to be back home on Earth. He had known from the very beginning that he could not trust the girl, Samakri. But, yet he had been foolish enough to believe, even for just a few seconds, that he might have feelings for her. And, even more foolishly, for just as long, he had thought that she might feel the same way about him. Now, for certain, Lionel was aware that Samakri was even more evil than he ever could have imagined. If he had thought at any point that there was good left in her, he was dead wrong. Or, perhaps he was not.

  “Are you comfortable her, on Zebda?” Sam asked, approaching him slowly, her pale and shapely legs swaying just the right way as she moved in his direction.

  “Well, not exactly, Sam,” he retorted. “I mean, I thought I could trust you to help me and now I find out that you were involved in my parents’ murder and that you couldn’t even care less about what happens to me as long as Zebda overrules Earth and you get the cure. Is that what you were after all along, Samakri? Is that why you even killed Loretta J, who, I agree, was annoying, but who was innocent, and a lot more so than you or your brother could ever be?”

  “I was testing you, Lionel. I did not kill the annoying singer girl. I marphed her here to Zebda, where she has become a slave in the art of exotic entertainment. She will be singing for the Zebdian army during their training to relax them and make them more efficient fighters.”

  “You said that you removed her from existence, Sam. How do I know that you’re not lying now rather than back then?”

  “I did remove her from existence, Lionel. Planes of existence are only pertinent to Earth. There is no such thing as existence on Zebda.”

  “Are you really going to wage a war; pit our home planets against each other, just so that you won’t have to admit a loss for one time in your life, Sam?” Lionel questioned, looking down idly at the exquisite Yalmax floor tiles, which had been injected with strange phosphorescent dyes to make the colors appear to change as light struck the tiles.

  “There is more to this war than you are currently able to imagine, Lionel. We have nothing against your kind. We need you for the cure. However, we do not have to kill you to get it. While I was attending Earth school, I learned of a process called cloning. According to the books that you have there, it has not been used on humans to date; only sheep. I have also acquired skills in the art of Earthen technology and have thus accessed your transcripts from the school you were attending. Through this acquisition, I have come to know that you excelled in science and mathematics. You also did a research project on cloning as part of your application to some impressive universities, all of which you declined to attend in the last minute because you had decided to run away.”

  “Sam, you’re crazy. I’m not a scientist. I don’t know how the hell to clone someone, especially not myself. It was just a stupid project. And, even if I was as special as people used to think I might be one day, and, if I did actually know how to do what you’re asking me to do, I wouldn’t tell you how, anyway. It’s just not a good idea at all.”

  “Would you rather go to war with Zebda and die so we may acquire the cure for apathy, then?” Sam looked eerily content with the idea of killing a person who she had so recently proclaimed a connection to. It made Lionel wonder if it she really was lying about Loretta.

  “No, of course I wouldn’t rather go to war. But, what you don’t seem to realize, Sam, is that there haven’t been any human clones yet because the science is flawed. It has been predicted that humans who were cloned would be sickly; they would die before reaching maturity. And, yes, they do have to reach maturity. It isn’t possible in any way for you to clone me and end up with another me. You would be killing little me; the me not too far off from the me that you met all those years ago.”

  Samakri froze when Lionel said that. She had not studied cloning enough to pick up on that bit of detail. Despite everything that she had previously said, Samakri was not going to be able to kill little Lionel. Yes, she could easily--perhaps--kill the Lionel that stood before her now; the one that had caused her so much anxiety and reluctance, but she could never lay a hand on the small, helpless, perfect boy whose eyes she had looked into for the first time fifteen years earlier on the day that she had helped Blekrin commit the most unspeakable crime against Maggie and Arthur Davidson, Lionel’s mother and father. She was officially in a deadlock.

  Lionel did not know what to say either. He was now sensing Samakri’s weakness. Perhaps he had been wrong more than once; the first time when he underestimated her dangerousness, the second time when he underestimated her uncanny kindness. Lionel was not sure if he should defy his emotions and use this weakness against Sam, or take advantage of the opportunity to help her, and possibly win her heart. Either way, he was stumped.

  Chapter Eight

  Despite the fact that, for a while, Lionel had assumed that Samakri's confusing behavior would benefit him in some way, that was not exactly how it turned out. Shortly after showing some sympathy for him, she sent her brother, Nelvak, to cart him off to the prison chambers. The boy was stronger and more skilled in the art of torture than any human his age. It became clear to Lionel, as his battered body was swept across the coarse Yalmax flooring that it would not be easy to rebel against the Zebdians and still survive. One thing that he took comfort in as he and Nelvak approached the prison chamber was that it was the same one where they kept Loretta J. Lionel could only imagine how scared the pop star was. And yet, she sang.

  Once upon a time,

  You were complete; my all;

  And with every rhyme,

  In love with you I’d fall

  I asked for a star,

  You gave me the moon;

  I asked for your heart,

  And you gave me the truth

  And it wasn’t your fault,

  You gave me your all;

  And I never forgot,

  How wrong I was

  Once upon a time,

  You were a charming prince;

  I told you I was fine,

  You sealed it with a kiss

  I asked for a star,

  You gave me the moon;

  I asked for your heart,

  You gave me the truth

  And you couldn’t have thought,

  That I wasn’t true;

  And you couldn’t have fought

  For me more than I for you

  Once upon a time,

  We flipped a sliver dime;

  I said I’d call you mine,

  As long as we lived

  It wasn’t a crime,

  I won’t pay a fine;

  We’re frozen in time,

  And there’ nothing to hide

  I asked for a star,

  You gave me the moon;

  I felt so alive;

  And it’s because of you

  I asked for a star, heart, time, and the moon,

  You gave me your heart and wonder and truth

  Once upon a time

  Nelvak, for a tee
nager, was not impressed and he shoved her against a wall, knocking her unconscious. So much for entertainment, Lionel thought. As angry as he was at Sam, she was the only one he wanted right now. He would rather endure worse torture at the hands of the otherworldly goddess rather than at the hands of Nelvak or an other Zebdian soldier. Yet, this made him even more angry at Samakri, because she was apparently such a coward that she would not actually harm Lionel herself.

  He could hear her voice, even from far away.

  "Have no mercy on the Earth boy," she said. But she was lying. He could hear her thoughts now, as she once did his back in New York.

  Please spare the young man, she thought. I love him with all of my being and all of my loyalty to Zebda has been in vain; nothing in comparison to what I now feel.

  Was Samakri playing with him? He had thought that their minds were no longer intertwined, yet he could hear Sam's thoughts as easily as she had heard his what seemed like so long ago but had only been a few short days. He wondered so deeply whether she truly loved Lionel or whether she had more control over him than he could have possibly imagined.

  What you hear by me is the truth, Lionel. Wait and see.

  With all that he had, Lionel wished that he could be with Samakri. No matter what her innermost thoughts suggested, he could not assume that she loved him back. All he could know for sure is that, most likely, he would never see his home again. As Lionel began to feel woozy and the Yalmax prison bars began to separate his heart from his mind, an aging guard with eyes a different shade of yellow and green hair that was turning the very color of Yalmax rather than graying, came up to the bars and let Lionel out of prison.

  "Let's go, foreigner. You're going to show me how to make another one of you."

  "What if I can't?" Lionel gulped, bile rising in the back of his throat.

  “Then, you die,” he replied simply.

  The guard then grabbed Lionel by the arm and threw him down to the ground in such a way that Lionel could feel the blood draining slowly from a gash on his leg. The Yalmax of the prison floor was even sharper and stiffer than any other form of the element on Zebda. Lionel was even more scared for his very life than he had ever been in the past. Just when he thought that the guard could not harm him any more than he already had, the man, who covertly appeared much more frail than he really was, took a large and completely transparent needle from the pocket of his Yalmax sheath, which had been dyed a deep black, likely a direct reflection of his dark personality, and jabbed Lionel’s arm without mercy.

  A clear, icy liquid began flowing through Lionel Davidson’s veins, and it was much more potent than any of the other drugs that the Zebdians had used on him previously. While the first times that Lionel had been drugged, he had passed out completely and lost all awareness of his surroundings, this bad medicine simply left him completely frozen in a state of panic and terror. Wow, he thought. For creepy aliens who don’t know how to feel any emotion themselves, they certailnly do know how to inflict the worst of human emotions in me.

  Once again, all that Lionel could think about was Samakri, the beautiful and likeable, yet venomous and volatile Zebdian girl. Now that he came to think of it, Lionel had known Samakri throughout his whole life, even when she was not on this planet, Earth. Sure, the first time, she was really there, on that fateful day just before Lionel’s fifth Christmas, when she had at least partially played a role in the death of Lionel’s parents, Maggie and Arthur.

  Of course, Samakri had been there after that. She was there every time Scotch and his girlfriend, Marcy, had bullied him. She was there when Carla and all of his other foster parents had ignored him his whole life. Samakri had been there when Lionel was alone, in his room, listening to music, with no one to care what happened to him.

  He could hear Sam now; her delicate white feet approaching his nearly lifeless body (wherever it was) and pushing the guard away. Good, Lionel thought. She can hear my thoughts. She will awaken me.

  I will indeed, Samakri thought to Lionel. Within moments, Lionel could move his limbs again. He got up. His wounds were very terrifying to look at. He had bruises the color of Samakri’s lovely hair, though frankly not quite so lovely as that, peppered over his entire body. Deep, bloody, gashes uniformly lined his arms and legs. His head was pounding worse than it had with any migraine he’d gotten on Earth. Lionel’s vision was blurry; he could hardly see Sam’s beautiful face looking down upon him from where she was standing. That was the first time Lionel had realized just how tall Samakri was for a girl her age.

  “How badly did Ranvoy injure you?” she asked, referring to the older guard with the temper and strength of a youthful firebrand.

  “Pretty bad,” Lionel admitted. “I thought that guy was going to kill me. And, I thought you would never come back. Where’s Loretta?”

  “I was attending to my duties, but I came here, to you, as soon as I realized the extent of what Ranvoy had done. The musical girl has been marphed back to your home planet, Earth, where she has forgotten her stay here. She will stand what is there called trial to see if she may be pardoned of what she has done to her sociopathic fan. Perhaps she will be permitted to sing for the humans once again.”

  “Well, that’s good, I guess,” Lionel replied. He was sincerely glad that the pop star, Loretta J, had been sent back home to New York, where she would hopefully be able to go back to her career, that is, if she did not face charges for killing her would be assassin.

  “I hope that you do not feel too bad. And, I also hope that you may find the means to forgive me for what I have allowed to be done to you, perhaps at least in some time that will pass. Just a heads up, by the way, time passes in a sequence slightly different here on Zebda than it does on Earth, at least as far as I know. When I first witnessed the murder, and also when I traveled to Earth of late to retrieve you, I progressed one year in age chronologically. It is my experience that when one travels to Earth from Zebda, this happens. It does not occur when relocating from Earth to Zebda.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “What I’m saying,” Sam continued, “Is that you have not aged a year yet, and, while you remain here, you will age normally, but, once you return to Earth, you will be nineteen instead of eighteen. I turned five when I first went to New York all those years ago, so I was one year older than you. When I marphed the second time, I turned twenty. However, I have marphed two more times since then in order to communicate with my father, which makes me now twenty two years of age, at least according to Earth years and laws of aging.”

  “Oh, I see. That’s no big deal, Sam. I’m miserable anyway. It’s not like I care if I lose a couple of years. I’ll still have a full life once I’m away from this place.”

  Samakri seemed rather amused by this remark that Lionel made. A friendlier-than-usual grin formed on her perfect, smooth lips, and she flipped her purple mane in a seductive, yet conspicuous manner. It made Lionel want her even more than ever. Then, just as quickly as Sam’s extraterrestial-style attempt at flirting had passed, so did her friendly nature.

  “Samakri!” boomed the voice of her father, Armpha Blekrin. “Daughter! I demand you to report to me at once! Please end your frivolous and revolting conversation with the Earth boy at once or you will lose your marphing privileges!”

  “Sorry, Lionel,” the gorgeous alien said. “I really, really, really need my ability to transport myself between planets in every galaxy across space. It’s kind of my job. So, maybe, talk to you another time? Hopefully soon?”

  “Sure,” Lionel replied, all too eager to see Samakri and speak with her again some time in the near future, despite the fact that a part of her--the part of her that was loyal to Zebda and to Blekrin--clearly wanted Lionel to meet his untimely demise. He was becoming even more of a tool than Scotch.

  Chapter Nine

  Lionel spent what seemed like many dreadful and wasted days on Zebda, in and out of sleep, tossing and turning; no one to comfort him or pay any attention to him or hi
s needs whatsoever. After what would have been nearly a week, at least in Earth years, Lionel awoke fully; the effects of the highly potent drug completely worn off.

  It was peculiar; strange, really; the way that things worked on planet Zebda. He found himself that day in the Zebdian version of what most earthlings would call a hospital, only, of course, everything there was made out of Yalmax. Lionel was beginning to truly despise the element; he thought of it as “the element of torture” and “the element of death.”

  Later that day, after Lionel was released from the hospital, he was sent back to prison, but, this time, to a much safer and more sanitary part of the prison. He had a bed to lay on, made of a soft liquified Yalmax. Maybe he did not hate it so much after all. Especially not after what happened next.

  Lionel was almost asleep by that time. He was just dozing off when he realized that Sam had come to see him. She had snuck in against her father’s wishes, presumably. He looked up and could not believe what he saw. Samakri looked even more beautiful than she ever had before. She was dresssed quite scantily in an exotic-looking Yalmax chemise, which pressed tightly against her skin, showing the lines and curves of her form.

  He looked directly into her eyes, staring into them like doors to her soul, for what seemed like eternity. Her eyes turned blue. He walked closer to her and took her face into his hands; kissing her. She did not fight him. He let go of her face, moving his hands down the rest of her perfect white body.