Terminus Project: Mars (Dystopian Child Prodigy SciFi)

by Casey Herzog

  “You were still a child, and we only wanted to protect you. It’s something any parent does. You’ll always be my little girl. It doesn’t matter how old you get, who you marry or when you have kids of your own. I’ll always have a fresh image of the little baby fingers grasping onto me for the first time.”

  I felt like I wanted to scream, but I held back, despite the need to get rid of the pent-up frustration. If he could read my mind, I’m sure we would be having a lengthy discussion about boundaries.

  “Taking things slow is a good idea, and learning more before you decide to do anything is the prudent course of action. Damien is lucky to have you as a friend, but some fear he’s no longer amongst us. That what you see is a shell and nothing more.”

  “I don’t know if I share their belief,” I said with my father reaching over to touch my shoulder.

  “I want you to know I don’t believe it. I’ve never seen a fiercer competitor and he has an ability, which you can utilize, to find out who you really are. The only way you’re going to have his wise counsel is by breaking him out of whatever prison he is in.”

  It was an apt metaphor. He really was a prisoner of his own body and I couldn’t imagine a worse hell to be in.

  “I don’t want anybody to make the mistake of labeling me as a hero. I can’t have that kind of responsibility without feeling I’m letting somebody down.”

  Suddenly a door appeared behind my father’s chair, it was completely gold, and there was a feverish knocking echoing in my ears. It sounded like a doorknob jiggling as the frame of the door shook as if it was going to come apart. I looked at my father and Julian to confirm my suspicion: they had no idea what I was seeing.

  The savage beast beside me got up on his four legs and was growling at the door. I had a feeling opening the door would cause more harm than good. Just the thought of the door had me wanting to reach over and open it, but when I tried to lift my hand, something prevented me from doing so. The tiger had my sleeve in its jaws and wasn’t letting go.

  My father and Julian were talking about the flower with their words muffled like I was hearing them from the deep end of a tunnel. The door was shaking even louder, and now there was the sound of heavy footsteps. I was suddenly caught in a wave of energy that pushed me back from the table, two of the legs in the air. I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t scream for somebody to come to my rescue. I wanted somebody to listen, butI had no idea what I could do to get through to them.

  The darkness began to close in around me and it was like I was looking through a knothole in a fence. My vision blurred and I was left at the mercy of whatever it was.

  Chapter Six

  I heard laughter and anguished screams penetrating my skull like somebody was driving a knife into the back of my neck. The sounds of pain were coming from everywhere and I had no idea how to close myself off from it.

  “You’re not supposed to be here…you’re not supposed to be here.” The voice was like a cold slap in my face, and the laughter became even louder than before.

  “You can’t blame her. It was not her doing. Nothing is as it seems. We were lost, but now she found us.” I saw nothing, but I felt like tiny insects were running up and down my arms and legs.

  “This is not a place for her. She won’t survive long and we need her help. Send her back before the damage is too severe.” The laughter overwhelmed me and I found myself giggling for no apparent reason. “It might already be too late. Having her here helps all of us to hold onto our sanity. Our time is coming and we will need her to be at her best.” I looked around the darkness and tried to say something, but there was absolutely no sound.

  “I don’t want to let her go. She’s delicious and I have been feeding on scraps. I don’t want to let her go… I don’t want to let her go… I don’t want to let her go.” Each time the voice said the same phrase, the laughter would fill in the void in between. A mind was a terrible thing to waste and this was starting to feel a little ridiculous.

  “I don’t want to let her go either, but we have to. Survival is no longer an issue, but she does make me feel free. The two of us are the only ones she hears because of her guilt. Guilt is one key of many. One key of many will finally give us peace. Don’t you see how close we are? It’s a sacrifice, but it’s one worth making.” This voice sounded more plausible, but still very much scattered like it was having a hard time stringing two sentences together.

  “I don’t care. She needs to stay. I don’t want to let her go. She can’t see us, but she can hear us. I don’t want to let her go. You can’t make me.” These two seemed to have a different idea of what my role was supposed to be.

  “I don’t need to hear the same thing every time. I know what you’re going through. I want the same thing, but I see the bigger picture. This is no time to be selfish. Show some restraint and let her go before our glimmer of hope vanishes. She doesn’t know anything and we need to keep it that way.”

  I moved my hands in front of my face and I still couldn’t see anything. The voices were nearby, and they were obviously talking about me.

  “I won’t let her go. I won’t let go of the best thing to ever come my way in quite some time. You’re going to have to pry her out of my cold dead hands.” Once again, it began to laugh like some kind of maniac in desperate need of mental treatment.

  “You will let her go home because you know it’s the only way. We both heard her whispers, and we felt the power. Feeding is only a temporary fix. We need something more permanent. I have a plan, but it means you’re going to have to learn to listen to me.” I wanted to understand, but nothing being said had any cohesion. I did feel weak, which made sense with him talking about feeding.

  “I don’t like this. You can’t possibly believe you can tell me what to do. You make it sound like I’m crazy, but aren’t we all? I want control of her; I feel the fire burning within my fingertips. She was the one calling out to us. It was just her bad luck we were the ones to answer. Answer this…answer me…answers for everybody.” Once again the laughter became louder still.

  “You have some lucid moments and I want you to hold onto those. This is no time to lose your head.” There was a slight snicker underneath his breath, like there was an underlying meaning behind his words, but it was an inside joke.

  “I’ll let her go, but you better bring her back. I don’t want to think about cannibalizing you, but I have almost reached the end of my patience. I will need to feed and I will not be responsible for my actions.” They were closer than they appeared, and the rush of electricity dancing along my flesh was intoxicating.

  “There is a time and place for everything. We can still feed, but only in increments. I want you to know the sacrifice you make by letting her go will return to you tenfold. I feel our salvation is at hand. You don’t need to understand, but follow my lead and everything will become clear.”

  I felt something brushing my shoulder and the freezing chill was hard to ignore. I didn’t know what was going on, but I felt like I had stepped into something with no reasonable explanation.

  “You don’t know what you’re asking of me. You don’t know what it does to me to let her go.” I felt this momentary sense of panic gripping me by the throat, and then, I dropped to my knees when my legs buckled. Some unknown force depleted the energy of my body.

  “I said that’s more than enough. Need I remind you how long we have been here? You of all people should be ready to try something different than the same old, same old. What we have done already hasn’t worked. Starving is the only other answer we haven’t considered. Leave this one alone and I’m sure you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the results.” They had no names, but they definitely had differences of opinion.

  “I’m not going to apologize. It is, after all, in my nature to act this way. I have to do what I have to do. I’m done for the time being anyway; I don’t think I could eat another bite. I left enough, but you have no idea how hard it was to leave anything behind on the plate.”r />
  I wasn’t sure it was a privilege to hear their thoughts. They had not addressed me. Did they know I was there? Did they care?

  “It shows some real growth not to take more than you should. I see there is no room in your heart to share, but it doesn’t matter. The risk of letting her go is something we need to take.”

  I was on my hands and knees, breathing heavily and barely able to draw enough oxygen into my lungs. The laughter was the worst part of it all. It kept going with no end, like it was on a continuous loop. I tried to drown it out with my own thoughts, but it was virtually stripping away any defense I had come up with to fight back.

  “Get her out of my sight before I do something I’m going to regret. Get her out of my sight…out of my sight…out of my sight.”

  “You’re doing the right thing no matter how wrong it might feel. You’ve been greedy, and we both know you can barely control yourself anymore. By your own admission, you are doing everything because it’s in your nature. I’ve tried to rein you in with little success, but I’m glad I was able to make you see there is a better way.”

  The same hand brushing over my shoulder was now touching my cheek and leaving me chilled to the bone.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing. It’s not every day I pass up a buffet like this one.” The voices argued, but there seemed to be some kind of consensus. I had a feeling this was not good for me, but I had no idea what they meant.

  “You need to trust that we both want the same thing, but we’ve been going about it in vastly different ways. I’m holding onto her by a thread, but I know in my heart severing the connection is the best thing in the long run.”

  I screamed with what felt like a hot poker hitting my body multiple times at once. I came awake in the darkness, still screaming and watching as every piece of glass in my room including the window shattered.

  Chapter Seven

  I was shaking like a leaf, and somehow William was given a reprieve from the monastery to come and be with me. I could see both my father and the professor talking in hushed whispers in the corner. William was holding me, and I hadn’t said anything from the moment they came through the door. They had seen the carnage left behind after my banshee cry and didn’t say anything. They all had stopped short when they saw the minefield of broken glass.

  “I’m here with you, but I can’t stay for long. They busted me out of the place, but they interrupted when I was at a crucial point. I thought what I was going through was nonsense, but I’ve come to learn of my spiritual and magical connection to everything. I see you have been going through some stuff of your own. I only wish I could stay and help you through this.”

  It was nice to have him there, holding my hand and letting me draw strength from him.

  “You have no idea how much I have missed you. My heart knows you have been with me, even if you aren’t there in person. I don’t even know where to begin. It all seems like jumbled, disjointed images in my head.”

  I could see them instantly trying to shake me to bring me back, but I had been through something out of my realm of understanding. My father looked concerned, but he hadn’t said anything to give me any idea of what this could be about.

  “It’s good to hear your voice. When they told me you were exactly like Damien, I insisted on a furlough away from the monastery. The monks were not exactly appreciative, but they understood. They want me back within the hour, but I won’t go if you really need me to stay.” How could I ask him to go against tradition when any kind of interruption would throw back our wedding date by several months?

  “I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that I don’t want you to stay. I know you can’t, and I think I’m strong enough to stand on my own. I can’t depend on a man to protect me when that duty should fall on my shoulders.”

  I kept looking at the broken glass and was quite startled to realize I was the cause of it.

  They had apparently watched as I fell forward into my food at the supper table. They had taken me up to my room, where it was familiar, so I wouldn’t feel out of place when I woke up. It was a nice gesture, but it did very little to stop the ungodly scream coming from my lips. I remembered voices, but what they were saying made it appear I was part of the puzzle. I couldn’t grasp onto everything said, but the fragments told me more than I wanted to know.

  “You are my dream come alive in front of my eyes. You saved me from a life of loneliness. I don’t think that I have fully conveyed to you how much you mean to me. My heart beats for you like a love song thumping inside my chest. There’s no way you could possibly know what you do to me. I’ve been set free by the magical way you look at me every day, and I can only hope to give you half of what you give me.”

  My breathing was becoming normal. I had apparently hyperventilated and passed out, but that was not the extent of what I had gone through. I could still remember the door pulling me toward it, and I tried to ignore it. I didn’t get a chance and my spirit guide had prevented me from making a grave error in judgment. The feeling was intensified with the voices in my consciousness. There was insanity in every word spoken.

  “William, you make me feel the same way. I didn’t think I needed a man, and I never thought anybody was capable of handling my attitude. I know I’m not easy to live with, but I have tried to tame my eccentric moments. I never want to give you a reason to leave me. I don’t know what losing you would do to me, and I don’t want to find out.”

  Losing him would be like feeling my heart exploding and never being able to put it back together again.

  “Gillian, I’ve never wanted to make you change. I hope you didn’t feel it was necessary for me. We all have flaws, and it is what makes us unique in the eyes of the ones we love. I am madly in love with you and nothing you do will ever change that. This is brand new for the both of us, but we can do this blindly together.”

  I could testify that our story was only beginning, with many chapters left unwritten. I may have felt like I was going crazy, but at least I had somebody in my corner.

  I felt something move against my chest and I looked down to see the crystal fading in and out with a blue blinking light. It was kind of soothing and had the added benefit of making me see things straight. My mind was no longer a whirlwind of emotions. There was a semblance of reason; I was able to find a sense of calm in the din.

  “I don’t know why this keeps happening to me, but it appears Damien’s continued survival is on me. You may not agree with this, but I feel I owe him a debt. He was a hard shell to crack, but we made things work between us.”

  I was not ready to give up on Damien, not until every avenue of treatment was investigated. This was a daring move on my part and I was definitely going outside my comfort zone by even contemplating taking the trek into the mountains.

  “I see there’s no way I’m going to talk you out of this. The only thing I can ask is for you to remember you have somebody to come home to. Be careful, and don’t do anything too drastic without thinking about the consequences. We’ve been through a lot together, and you helped me when nobody else could. I’m sure on some small level you think I’m with you because of some savior complex, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.”

  He had confessed being complicit with the Elders, and I had thrown him back in without realizing the danger to him and others.

  The only good thing coming from the joining of the magic eyes and the darker arts was my ability to get rid of the disease keeping him prisoner to the Elders. It wasn’t without a price, but I would pay it all over again for the chance to see him live a normal life. His family was elated and they treated me like I was the second coming.

  “I would know if you were with me because of some stupid idea of honor. The look in your eyes tells me everything I need to know and more. I would never hold you here with me against your will. We are destined for a journey of our own, and I’m sure there are many arguments in our future. We just need to remind each other not to go to bed angry and to a
lways see each other’s point of view.”

  I could feel my strength returning and I was no longer feeling like the life had been drained out of me. The magic eyes were there and no worse for wear, but it had been effected like somebody had chipped away some of the power. I was refreshed and charged enough to face what was going to be another momentous time in my life.

  I kissed William, feeling like I was in the presence of paradise, and forgetting my father was witnessing this public display of affection. The kiss was better with his hands holding me close and playing my spine like a musical instrument.

  It was the sweetest and most tender moment of my life and I was reluctant to let him go. I finally gave him a breather, seeing his eyes glaze over and knowing I was responsible for the reaction. I could see something more than the wild eyes dancing in his head.

  “Please don’t look at me like that, William or I will never be able to let you go.”

  It was a wonder we were able to keep our hands off of each other, but we were following a longstanding tradition. It wasn’t easy, and there were times I thought we were going to burst into flames. The creature known as ‘the flame’ came into my mind. I had this fire in my soul ready to be unleashed, and I was going to have to find some other outlet.

  “I’m sorry, but you only have yourself to blame for the way I look at you. How can any man look at a beautiful vision like you and not feel like he is swept away on the wings of love? I don’t feel worthy, and you could certainly do better than me. Don’t worry; I’m not planning to pull that thread any tighter. I would never give you up for anything; I would rather die knowing I had your heart.” He knew just what words to say to sway my own opinion. I had no doubts about the future.

  “You had a lot to make up for, William, but you have done some amazing work to get people to believe what you did was a matter of necessity. There are still going to be some looking at you differently and wondering when you’re going to show your true colors. They don’t realize you would never have gone into an arrangement with the Elders without a damn good reason. I have forgiven you and I’m not the only one. You need to forgive yourself. Maybe the monastery and the monks will help you to find forgiveness.” We held onto each other until the final gong and the last tick of the hour.