Bright Obscurity

by Ruby Brown

  The distraction that the girl had provided gave Mal enough time to wrench herself free from the man’s grasp. She ran haphazardly to the door, knowing that if she ran in a straight line it would make her an easier target to hit. She burst from the doors of the shop and saw that the mall was already almost empty already, with the last few dozen people heading out of the open emergency exits, holding their shopping bags and the hands of their loved ones. With adrenaline coursing through her veins, Mal headed for the nearest exit.

  Her heart was pounding almost as loudly as her shoes were and she was running faster than she ever had in her entire life. She could hear the footsteps of the man behind her, following her, a predator after prey. Mal screamed as he shot at her a few times, but he couldn’t hit a moving target while he was moving himself. The bullets hit the tiled floor and ricocheted off, the sound ringing horribly in Mal’s ears. When the man ran out of ammo he roared in frustration and just ditched the gun at his target. It whipped past Mal’s head and then skittered across the floor before coming to rest next to the escalator.

  Suddenly, the doors to the exit Mal was heading for burst open and a group of about four people came running into the building. At first Mal thought they were some kind of police force and the relief flooded her, but then she realised that they weren’t wearing a uniform. They must have been the ‘friends’ the man spoke of earlier. Although they all carried guns, none of them were shooting at her. They were under specific instructions to bring her back to headquarters alive and preferably unharmed. The guns were more for show, to scare her into cooperating.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Mal cried out, her feet skidding on the floor as she brought herself to a stop. Abandoning Escape Plan A, she wheeled around to try and find another exit and found that her path was blocked by the man. He had pulled out a large knife and held it in his right hand, his face bloodied and bruised, his insane eyes glinting almost as much as his knife did in the fluorescent lights.

  Mal’s head whipped to the side as she tried to find some way of escaping. Her moments of deliberation were enough time for the group from the door to fan out and surround her, their guns pointed at her head. Mal started to hyperventilate as they closed in on her. Although their faces were grim and deadly, their eyes sparkled with a kind of childish excitement.

  “Please don’t hurt me, just go away...” Mal begged, a loud sob escaping her throat. She knew she sounded pathetic, but she couldn’t think of anything else to do. All her escape routes were blocked and she felt so small and weak.

  The man lunged forward and grabbed her. Just as his skin touched hers, a terrible pain ripped through Mal’s body. She screamed, thrashing from side to side as she tried to fight it. When the pain just got worse, she frantically remembered something she’d read talking about if you just relax and accept the pain rather than trying to fight it, the hurt dulls itself slightly. She forced herself to calm down, and to her surprise she felt a power thrumming through her veins, mixing with the adrenaline. Unconsciously, she threw her hands out, palms wide open, and focused on the powerful feeling, letting it drive her actions and thoughts. A blinding light filled her vision, and then she collapsed.

  Chapter 2

  Mal woke up drenched in a cold sweat. Her entire body was shaking and her heart was racing. All she could see was a swirling mess of bright lights and colours. She sat bolt upright, gripping the sheets of the bed she was in so tightly her knuckles turned white. Looking down, she realised that there were IV’s coming out of her arm and so she ripped them out, ignoring the jolt of pain that ran through her body. She also had an endotracheal tube connecting her to a ventilator, and in her blind panic she tried to pull the tube from her mouth but a pair of strong hands restrained her and pushed her back onto the bed.

  Terrified, Mal yelled and lashed out with her arms and legs, squirming and trying to get away from whoever was holding her down. Dimly, she heard a female voice calling for backup and soon two more people had arrived and were pinning her to the bed. When they had her arms and legs restrained, Mal whipped her head from side to side, arching her back and snapping her teeth to try and get away. Eventually, she fell back on the bed, completely exhausted and close to tears. She blinked rapidly and her vision cleared up enough for her to realise the people restraining her were dressed in the starched white uniforms of hospital staff. She was in hospital. She was safe.

  As soon as she realised this, Mal’s body relaxed and she stopped fighting. The hospital staff held her still for a few more seconds, their fingers digging uncomfortably into her skin, and then they cautiously let go and moved away. Mal let one of them pick up her arm and put the IV’s back in, and another one started to test her breathing capabilities so she could be taken off of the ventilator. All of Mal’s senses were diminished so she could barely hear anything and her vision was blurry. A few minutes after she woke up both of her parents entered the room, the same concerned expression on both of their faces. Their mouths were moving, but Mal couldn’t hear anything. Disorientated and tired, she drifted in and out of consciousness for a bit as her senses slowly returned to her.

  The next morning, Mal felt a lot better as she opened her bleary eyes to the light streaming through the hospital windows. Her parents were sitting next to her bed, talking quietly and looking over some papers. Mal groaned in discomfort as she hauled herself into a sitting position and stretched her aching arms above her head. She looked around the ward and saw rows of the same bed with crisp white sheets and pale blue curtains separating them. There were a few other patients in the ward, all of them dressed in the same spotted hospital gown as Mal, and some visitors. The low murmuring of their voices mixed in with the birdsong coming from outside the giant windows at one end of the room.

  Mal turned her head to look at her parents, and realised with a jolt how tired they looked. They were both looking at her with a mixture of concern and hope on their sunken faces, their clothes and hair unkempt and matching purple bags under their eyes. All three of them were quiet for a few moments, just staring at each other, unwilling to move. Finally, Mal smiled slightly and said “hey”. Her greeting was repeated by her parents and her mum leaned forward to take hold of one of Mal’s hands.

  With her free hand, Mal rubbed her eyes and said “what happened?”

  “When the police stormed the building, they found you passed out and surrounded by the bodies of five armed attackers. They were all dead, but somehow you weren’t. The police called an ambulance and took you to hospital. You’ve been here for about three days now,” Abigail said quietly, her thumb stroking the back of her daughter’s hand.

  “Three days...” Mal mumbled. It felt like barely an hour had passed since she was attacked. “Where’s Claire? Is she in hospital too?” Mal asked fearfully, tightening her grip on her mum’s hand.

  “No, Claire’s fine. She was one of the first people to get out. She’s at school right now, but I called her parents to let them know you were waking up and she should be here after school,” said Peter.

  “Thanks Dad. Hey, can I get a glass of water?”

  Mal’s mum let go of her hand and walked away. She came back a minute later with a Styrofoam cup of water, which Mal drank greedily. After she’d finished, she asked “so, why how did the attackers die?”

  “No one knows,” Mal’s dad said mysteriously, polishing his glasses. “The autopsy report didn’t show any signs of an unnatural death. It’s like they just collapsed on the spot.”

  “Do you remember anything that might have happened?” Abigail asked.

  “No, not really,” Mal answered. Her parents demanded more details, so Mal told them the full story. She said the same thing to the doctors, the reporters and the police when they came by later that day, and once more to Claire when she arrived with a box of doughnuts.

  “I figured you needed a break from hospital food,” she said, smiling as she opened the box of doughnuts on Mal’s bed.

  “I love you,” Mal said wholehearte
dly, and Claire laughed.

  As they ate the doughnuts, getting too many crumbs on the blankets to be socially acceptable, Mal asked Claire what had happened to her.

  “I was just outside the doors, talking to mum on the phone. Then a crowd of people started running out of the tea store, yelling something about guns and pushing me towards the exit. I assumed you were in the crowd and so I ran with them and left the building. It wasn’t until we got outside that I realised you weren’t with us,” Claire said with her mouth full. “But it’s so weird how they all just collapsed like that, yet you were fine.”

  Mal was thinking the same thing. What could have happened back there that killed five people, but left her alive? Why was she alive specifically? What was that terrible pain that ripped through her body when the man grabbed her shoulder? None of it made any sense, and pondering on it for too long made Mal’s throbbing headache worse. She smiled and laughed with Claire as her mind ticked over, searching for a solution to an unsolvable puzzle.

  Mal was in the hospital for a few more days while she recovered, and she hated it. She’d never liked hospitals. There were too many things hiding underneath the veil of fetid chemicals, whitewashed walls and crappy coffee. Besides, she wanted to get out and try and find the answers to the questions consuming her every waking thought, taunting her. Everyone else seemed convinced that some kind of fire had started just at the right moment, and although Mal had been knocked unconscious by the fumes she was lucky enough to escape alive.

  In theory, it could have been a fire. It explained the singed clothes and the burnt skin of the attackers and the black scorches that left their ugly marks across the walls and floors of the malls. It might also explain the searing pain that had ripped itself across Mal’s body, maybe it was the flames consuming her body. But what about the bright light that Mal had seen before she collapsed? Or the compelling force that had shaken Mal to her very core?

  What shocked Mal the most is that for that moment, she had felt whole. She had always felt like there was a gaping hole ripped right through her chest, a gaping void that couldn’t be filled no matter how hard she tried. She had always put it down to the fact that she had never really known her true family. She had a few memories, sure, but they were garbled and faded, featuring people and places she couldn’t remember. Since she was adopted by Peter and Abigail, she learnt to put the gap to one side and found activities to distract herself from it, clinging to the brief moments of normality these things provided her with and using them to keep her sane and prevent the gap from ripping her apart. And just for those few seconds, as she threw her hands out and screamed as a blinding light filled her vision, that gap wasn’t there. She no longer felt like a puzzle with a piece missing, and now that she knew what that felt like she craved to feel it again. Unable to do anything else, she whinged like a toddler at the doctors and nurses until they finally let her go out of sheer annoyance.

  Mal felt slightly dizzy as she stumbled out of the hospital. Her parents were walking either side of her, anxiously watching as she staggered through the street. It was good to walk around outside again and feel the sun on her skin, so Mal was highly resentful when she had to sit down in her dad’s small, stuffy car. The air freshener that hung from the rear view mirror gave off a sickly sweet vanilla smell that made Mal feel sick as her dad drove, so she opened a window and let the cold wind rushing past tangle her hair and keep her awake.

  As soon as Mal got home she went to her room and collapsed on her bed, curling up in the blankets and inhaling the familiar smell. She took some time to process what had happened, and then decided what her next move would be. She seized her laptop, opened up a webpage and started frantically typing, her eyes scanning the search results for anything that might be of interest to her. As she searched, she kicked off her shoes but kept her socks on and curled her legs underneath her.

  There were several news reports talking about the attack and they all said the same thing. A team of officers had entered the shopping centre to find it completely deserted, except for Mal lying unconscious with the smouldering dead bodies of the attackers surrounding her. The floor had been singed black, the attacker’s clothes still smouldering with a noxious smoke. In theory, the fire thing made logical sense, but Mal still didn’t understand how it could have affected the people around her so badly, and yet barely touched her. No one else did either. People kept looking at her with confusion, as if she was a puzzle they couldn’t understand. She rolled her eyes and shut her laptop before falling back on her bed, sinking into the comforting softness of her pillows.

  Chapter 3

  When Mal woke up a few hours later, the room was dark. The only light in the room was that coming from the full moon rising directly outside the skylight, casting ghostly shadows across the room. Sleepily, Mal smiled as she looked at the shining stars. She had always loved the night sky. Her laptop was lying on her legs, pleasantly heavy. Disorientated, Mal blinked a few times, realising that she must have fallen asleep at some point. She was still dressed in the same clothes she had left the hospital in. Her eyelids fluttered closed again as she took a deep breath, then she forced herself into a sitting position. She rubbed her eyes a few times, and then realised that she had been drooling in her sleep.

  “Gross,” Mal muttered groggily, unenthusiastically using her sleeve to wipe the spit from her mouth, and then scrubbed the wet patch on her pillow. She reached for her phone and clicked it on. It was just past midnight and she considered just falling back asleep, but then she remembered she’d barely eaten anything all day. She clicked on her lamp and winced as the bright light flooded the room, momentarily blinding her.

  Groaning, she slowly opened her eyes, giving herself time to adjust, and then looked around the room once her eyes were fully open. She blinked in confusion when she saw her bedroom door. It was wide open. She always slept with the door closed, and even if her parents had come into her room at some point they knew to close it once they were leaving. A sense of uneasiness crept over her and the hairs on the back of her neck prickled like she was being watched. Slowly, she turned her head, her senses enhanced by the fear in the pit of her stomach. Her eyes scoured the room and found nothing out of the ordinary, but then she glanced up.

  A boy was hanging from the ceiling, one hand grasping a grappling gun with its claws piercing the ceiling. He was dressed entirely in black, and his large brown eyes reflected the shock of Mal’s. Light freckles dotted themselves across his nose, but most of his face was obscured by a blonde fringe swept to the left side of his head. As soon as he realised Mal was looking at him, something in his expression hardened and he released the catch on the grappling gun. He started falling, heading straight for Mal, his arms and legs held out in an almost catlike fashion.

  Mal screamed and dove to the right, throwing herself rather painfully out of bed and smacking her head on the bookshelf in the process. The boy landed awkwardly on the bed and it took him a moment to right himself in the tangled mess of blankets and pillows. He holstered his grappling gun and then pounced forward again, using the bedsprings to give himself some extra leverage. He slammed into her, knocking her into the wall behind them and clapping a hand over her mouth. Mal tried to bite him, but he was a lot stronger than his skinny arms suggested. He used his legs to pin her to the ground, and then with his free hand reached into one of the pockets of the lightweight backpack he was wearing.

  The weight of his hand over her nose and mouth was starting to impact Mal’s breathing abilities. She weakly attempted to hit him with her hands, but her vision was starting to darken at the edges and the best she could do was tap him with loose fists, watching in dismay as they slid down the soft fabric of his jumper. From the pocket of his backpack, the boy pulled out a hypodermic needle filled with some kind of strange liquid. A fresh wave of fear coursed through Mal’s body, and she kicked upwards with her legs. Through sheer luck the shock of her attack was enough to throw the boy off of her. He tumbled to one side as Mal hau
led herself up, staggering towards the door and taking deep, gasping breaths, trying to draw enough oxygen into her lungs to scream for help.

  Lying on the floor, the needle still grasped in one hand, the boy growled and his free hand shot forwards, fastening itself around Mal’s ankle. She came crashing down, her yell of pain smothered by the carpet as she fell to the floor. The boy used her foot to drag her to him and raised the needle again, aiming for her neck. Mal rolled to one side and yanked her foot from his grip before standing up and hurriedly backing away. He stood up too, and that’s when Mal realised he was shorter than she expected. But for a midget, he was bloody terrifying.

  He started walking towards her. Mal looked around frantically for something she could use to defend herself, and in her desperation seized her hardback copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. “If you come any closer, I’ll hit you with this. I swear.”

  An amused smirk twisted the corners of the boy’s mouth and Mal flushed. She knew it sounded weak, but that just strengthened her resolve to follow through on her promise. She tightened her grip on the book and the boy stopped moving.

  “Stop fighting, will you? You’re making this a lot harder than it needs to be,” he said, sounding genuinely pissed off.

  “I’m not just going to let you kidnap me,” Mal responded.

  “I’m taking you someplace safe.”

  “If everyone there is as crazy as you, I want nothing to do with it!”

  “We’re not crazy!” the boy protested, then paused in thought. He grinned and said “well...maybe some of us.”