Misery Saves the Night

by Brittany Allen

  Ian swallowed the lump in his throat. “No, you didn’t and I’ll give you that, but from the first moment I looked at you, you have had the control over me making me into your puppet.”

  “Can we just stop doing this?” She let her voice go silent.

  “In this month I have been forced to travel with you, you have not even called me by my name? Is that how low you think of me?” He made another attempt to reach out to her shoulder to stop her from walking away.

  “Instead of asking these pointless questions, shouldn’t you be more concerned about your friend back there who is most likely paralyzed for life?” She felt Ian get closer.

  “Trey is Trey and I know he can take care of himself. Stop changing the subject.” They were at the edge of the cave and the late evening sun warmed the duo.

  “And you! The only time I have ever actually heard you say my name was back in Farous!” She watched as Ian’s face turned bright red. “You were right about this conversation being embarrassing!”

  “No… Now that was only because Trey had pushed me into saying it!” He met Recarie at the exit of the tunnel.

  “Then.” Recarie seemed to be taking the situation more serious now. It had hit her that this was the time to discuss their relationship. “Can you tell me why you returned my heel that night? I mean you were right there with your fiancée and we both know you knew it was me from the moment our eyes met.” Her voice came down to the level of a whisper and she kept her head down.

  Everything became still, like it was the calm before a very nasty storm. The sky was still a mess of gray and swirling red clouds and stood as Recarie’s back drop. Her head lifted slowly and she turned it to look Ian straight in the eyes.

  “Um, to be honest as possible it was because I felt something drawing me to you. You feel it don’t you?” He lowered his voice just a bit louder than hers and joined her on the tunnels end.

  They gazed into each other’s eyes as the warm evenings wind blew past their legs. It was as if they could read the others thoughts and nothing needed to be said. And nothing more could have possibly have been said.

  “You should have never got off that crutch.” Recarie went to touch Ian’s foot which looked as though it had swollen to twice its size. Her voice was warm and motherly as she fastened him a new one that was a bit more solid than the last. “How’s that? Are we all good here?”

  Ian leaned on his support and hopped out of the cave and onto the less solid ground. “No, not really but this will do for now.”

  Outside Recarie joined him just as small droplets of rain fell from the sky. She looked at their surroundings to see they had traveled up hill. By the looks of it they had made it several miles in only six hours. Not much further up from where they stood was a two story house, much like the one she had the pleasure to visit back in Farous.

  “This rain will take care of the fire. That house will provide shelter for now.” She took charge and led the way up the continuing hill.

  Behind her, Ian followed her without question, though he had a few about their chosen resting place. It was a two story tall brick home with dead plants in what used to be a garden. But as the rain began to pour down faster, Ian went with it and into the unlocked house.

  “No, no, no, no, no.” Recarie had seen this same house before. The inside was almost exactly like the house she had taken shelter in Farous. Almost alike in every way, but it only had on staircase leading to the upper floor.

  “And how about this one?” A faint older female asked.

  “What?” Recarie looked to Ian, but of course he was not the source of the voice.

  “I did not say anything.” He held his hands up to show his innocence.

  “I think I have been here before, and not just because of my misadventure back in Farous…” She eyed everything in the sitting room on the first floor before ascending the stairs. Half of her thought there would be a mirror at the end of the hall she had stepped off on, but there was none.

  On the first floor Ian stood watch for anyone that might have followed Recarie. After all the time they had spent together, he knew Recarie could take care of herself even if she did not know it herself. He lifted his head and looked at the ceiling in the exact spot she was on the second.

  Room after room, Recarie found nothing, not even furniture.

  “Damnit!” She was hoping that there would be a little more than dust and cobwebs. “It is a little too much to ask for fate to throw me a frigging bone?”

  Click! A piece of hail hit the window. Recarie crossed the room and put her hand against the cold glass. She watched as the moss and vines in the tall oaks around the home waved in the violent winds. In her mind the scene was of beauty and serenity.

  “I always love when it storms.” A young girl’s voice echoed in the room.

  Recarie whipped around faster than the lightning outside could strike. Thunder from outside shook the house, rattling the structure. Chandeliers waved and vases crashed to the ground. In an instance Ian rushed up the stairs, but there was no Recarie. The hallway stretched hundreds of feet in either direction.

  Where there once was a door, Recarie now stared at a mirror. This was a mirror she was all too familiar with. Its glass rippled and she knew what was to happen. Recarie stepped as close as she could get to the mirrors frame without actually touching it herself.

  BOOM! The thunder cracked and made Ian jump off the floor. With the help of the lightning, he noticed its light only lit up the middle portion of the hall. It was this middle section that was the true portion of the house. Everything else was illusions and cheap parlor tricks put there by the homes former owners.

  Upstairs Recarie was getting ready to touch the mirror. After her previous experience she was more than a little cautious about it. As she watched the liquid ripple and wave, her mind cleared and everything seemed light as air. Recarie ran her fingers over the surface and let it wrap around her hand. It slowly made its way up her shoulder and started to cover her head.

  “Crud!” Ian blurted out after having crashed through the wooden door. He watched the mirror skip her head and wrap around her waist. “No!” Running, but not fast enough, Ian made it to the center of the room where the mirror had moved.

  “He, he, he.” Recarie giggled from somewhere behind the mirror that stood unaided in the room.

  “No.” Now on his knees, Ian ran his hands along the mirrors frame. “No…” His voice trailed off as all he could see in the mirror was his own reflection.

  Feeling something tingle in his legs, Trey made an attempt to stand up. He toppled over before he could straighten out his left leg.

  “Could I be of some help?” A boy behind his reached out his hand and smiled.

  “What the hell are you doing here?!” Trey allowed Tory to help him stand before he fell over again.

  “Came back to help you. After running several miles, throwing myself off of a mountain to take that evil bitch off Recarie’s trail, sending her to the rocks, landing on her corpse to save my own skin, and running all the back here to check on you I’d thought you’d be a little bit more grateful.” Tory stood at the Hunters side.

  “Well I am not going anywhere for a long time kid, so piss off and go back after Recarie.” He shoved the boys hand away when a spark caught his eye. “On the other hand, come closer. I may have a use for you here.” Tory could not refuse one of his masters and obeyed.

  “Wait, wait! What do you think you’re doing?” Trey had grabbed Tory’s hand and ran his stone finger running up the boys arm.

  “You see these? They are not just flashy tattoos that make a good impression on the ladies, but they also hold my powers as well. Oh la, la. He, he, he.” He grabbed hold of Tory’s arm as he flinched back.

  “And so you plan on reviving the rest of your body with your powers that you will take from me how?” Tory wasn’t afraid, but his heart beat a little faster than it was.

  “Oh, you need not worry. It won’t take but a few hours and
it will be a lot more excruciating than it was to infuse them to you.” His skin crumbled to ash as it rubbed against Tory’s.

  “What about Recarie?” Now he was just trying to get out of the transfusion.

  “I can still sense her and know that she is moments away from never needing anyone to watch after her and fight her battles for her ever again.” He looked Tory straight in the eye. “How about we begin?” His wry grin did not make Tory feel any better about the transfusion process.

  Inside the mirror, Recarie found herself in a place unlike where it took her before. She was surrounded by mirrors of every size and shape. Each one reflecting her image back to her. After crossing behind and through several mirrors, she became lost. There was no way to tell which direction she was going in or had come from as the mirrors where constantly moving.

  “Lost miss?” A young girl with blond hair stepped out in front of Recarie.

  “Oh hell!” Recarie screamed. The little girl, no more than six or seven, seemed to have popped out of nowhere. “You scared me.” She took her hand off her chest as if it had helped heart stop racing.

  “Huh! And you swore. Swearing is bad.” She waggled her tan hand at Recarie.

  “Oh. Oops, sorry. Been, well, forever since I have been around children.” She bent down to meet the child on eye level.

  “And just who are you calling a child. I am thirteen years old.” Despite making childlike remarks and looking like one, she was almost the age most people have mistaken Recarie for.

  “Ha, I know exactly what you mean. Now, if you do not mind could you tell me where we are?” She was natural with the child.

  “You, well you are wherever you want to be.” She grabbed a hold of Recarie’s wrist and pulled off into one direction. “This way now.”

  The space around the mirrors was pitch black. “How do you know where you are going? The only thing around us are mirrors and they are always moving.”

  “I have been here quite some time. You kind of get used to it.” Her voice was softer and filled with a greater sorrow than how she was speaking earlier. “Yes, the mirrors are always moving, but they always move back.”

  “Oh…” It took Recarie a moment or two before she realized what the girl had meant. As the mirrors moved in one direction, they moved back to the place they had come from. “Nifty?”

  “Yeah, but this place gets better.” The little girl led Recarie further down a direct path. Soon the mirrors reflected something other than their reflections.

  “And who are those people in the mirrors? Is that you?” Some mirrors showed several different people. One was a tall man and a couple holding each other’s hand, then there were various different women, but the little girl stayed in each mirror.

  “Memories. You see these mirrors are like eyes and some say that the eyes are the window to your soul. Every mirror captures a small part of us forever in that moment.” She pulled Recarie faster.

  “But I still don’t know why I would be here in your memories.” Her hand dropped the little girls.

  “Don’t you?” The girl turned to Recarie even though she kept her face down.

  A gush of wind soared from the sides of the invisible path. The mirrors flew with it sending them the stark black sky around them. Single bits of white sparkles reflected on the mirrors and the reflected lights danced on the wall as though they were coming off of a disco ball. As the wind settled, Recarie was able to drop her arms that where shielding her face.

  “Hey!” She was left alone. “Little girl! Where are you?! Huh, huh, humph!” Her abandonment issues were getting the better of her as she sank to her knees and took in lungs full of air.

  Tip, tip, tip, tip, tip. Tiny little footsteps got closer and louder behind her. Recarie turned just in time to see the little girl reach out her arms to push her into the mirror behind her. Recarie reached out, but there was nothing to hold on to. Even the little girl was gone. A similar metallic liquid to the one the mirrors glass was made of flowed freely around her.

  “Can we stop now?!” Tory roared over the sounds of the power transfer. “We have been at this for over two hours!”

  Trey ignored him as the writing that made up Tory’s tattoo’s flowed from the boy’s body and into his soul. It came in continuous waves of blue light that sank into his rock skin and into his very life essence. A stone was beginning to form only an inch above his heart. This was the stone that gave him his ability to hunt others through their D.N.A.

  “Puff!” He tossed the boy away from him and towards a nearby tree. “This will do for now as you won’t stop complaining.”

  “Can you find Recarie now?” Tory rubbed the tattoos on his arms that were once a light crystal blue. Now there was a deep mix of twisting rose pink and light lilac. “What the heck? Dude, why am I inked like a girl?”

  “Ha, ha, ha, ha.” Trey could not pretend to care. The boy was striped up like a berry flavored candy can. “That is just the power signature of another one of us who marked you. The blue one is our orders color and now we have broken that down to a lesser form, hence it taking the colors of the second most influential member. He’d be tinkled pink to see you.”

  “Ugh!” He grabbed at his dry and frizzled hair, but he did not need the dramatics to let Trey know her was frustrated.

  “Is it worth it?” Trey turned serious sitting atop a hill with the purple and black night’s sky around him.

  “I know what you mean and I have been asking myself that for quite a while now.” He turned away from the Hunter and looked at the silver twinkling lights in the night sky. “And I will never be any more ready to give you the answer.”

  Nodding approvingly of his apprentice, Trey said nothing and gave him his full attention.

  “You ever been around someone for so long and you start to get this… This vibe from them?” Tory slouched his body and lay on the grass. “It was not like the pull she has over other people, but I can feel her. Recarie is meant for something more than working for minimum wage in an ocean side café. She will be the one to end the wars, bring peace to our nations, and just overall save the world.”

  “Ha!” Trey snorted testing out his new power. “And you think one person, one little and fragile girl like her can do all that?”

  Tory released the grass he had torn apart in his hand and let it dance on the cold nights wind. “You know what? When I am near her I believe it with the full extent of my heart that she can.”

  Trey liked what he heard. “So, now that you answered one of my questions…” He gritted his teeth. Saying the next part was difficult for him to get out. “Do you have any for me?” It was like an invisible force was making him say the last sentence.

  “As a matter of fact I do. Just who the heck are you and why do you care what happens to one café waitress from Disten?” Now he was staring directly at Trey. He had not just asked that question as if it was one random thought floating around in his head. No, Tory had been thinking about it since his new life started that past month when he took his oath.

  “Ah. A very valid question you got there kid, but I have to be going now. Got to see how a man is doing. She is probably pretty pissed at me.” He wobbled while trying to stand. “Bye!” In a flash he ran off down the hill and out of Tory’s sight.

  “Dang, he moves like the wind.” Tory sighed and lay back down. He spent the rest of the night resting under the stars. Maybe the fates would be kind and send him a sweet dream.

  Ian waited outside the mirror Recarie had fallen into. “Where did she go? Is she gone forever? Is she safe? Hungry? Lonely? Scared?” He was going out of his mind with questions about his master and so preoccupied with many other daunting thoughts that he overlooked the greatest detail of the scene. “Oh…” It had finally hit him. “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. No way!”

  Ian lifted his arms and ran them around his legs. They weren’t there anymore. The sense of his heart pulling him towards Recarie or the willingness to fly into battle without thinking it through first.
Her spell over him had broken and now he was free, free to be himself. But where could he go? He was in Farous. There was no job for him there, no home to return to at the end of the day, and no one waiting for him at home to ask and listen about how his day was. Nothing.

  “But there’s…” He looked into the mirror. “No one…” Ian stayed in the same spot all night and into the early hours of the morning. Recarie was still in the mirror and he was starting to believe she would stay there. “Is this the way it’s meant to be.” There was an empty place in his heart. “Bye.” He gave himself one last look at the mirror before he closed the door to the room and left the house.

  He knew he could not wait forever for her. Tory watched Ian leave the house and all he wanted to do was rattle him back to his senses. “That man is the one she chose to be her guardian and now he was just leaving her?!” Thinking against going over to Ian’s older body and pummeling it into the dust it was becoming, Tory snuck into the house through its back door and searched for her energy.

  A faint life signature led him to the second floor where he found a hall with no doors. Every minute he wasted looking for an entrance into the space of wall where he sensed Recarie was another layer of her energy that disappeared.

  “Mm.” He crouched in front of the wall where a door once had been. “Everything seems to be connected to… Energy. Mm…” Tory stroked his chin with his right hands index finger and thumb. “Well maybe…” His hand ran over the cherry wood paneling. “Energy!” Lilac and pink tattoos glowed on his arms.

  These tattoos slowly released a wave of power that connected to the paneling and passed through it.

  “Yes!” Tory grabbed hold of the rope of energy and tied it to the stairs banister. “Here goes!” He took off with a dash and just before he collided with the wall he grabbed hold of the rope and spun into the wall. Seconds later of frightening uncertainty, Tory found himself inches away from smashing into a levitating mirror in the center of the room.

  The liquid inside of the mirror rippled and slowly crawled out its frame. It sniffed Tory’s arms and legs. After giving him a look up and down, the liquid crawled back into its frame.