by Ryan Schow
It takes a monumental force of will to drag myself out of that vortex of rage and back into my own head.
“Whew!” I say, backing up on weak legs. Head spinning, I grip the receptionist’s counter for stability. “You’re a heartless, soulless fuck.”
“There’s that mouth,” he spits.
“The baggage you carry around with you, the memories,” I say. There is no way I can even finish the sentence because words and description alone evade me. He threw a baby into a fire because it was crying, for heaven’s sake. I felt that. I felt the madness of him, how he could so easily do something so inhuman, so vile. I felt that and a host of other horrors associated with Josef Mengele. Perhaps he is trying to breed the monster out of him. Or breed him back.
I really don’t know; it scares me either way.
After bearing witness to the monstrosity he tried to become, the seven foot beast Quentin and I genetically reversed, I might never know the real answer. Which makes me anxious to kill him now rather than later. God, this need to end him is persistent!
“I am no longer Mengele. No longer Gerhard. I am Holland. Enzo Holland. Just like you are no longer Savannah Van Duyn, or Abigail Swann. Which reminds me, what in God’s name is your last name? Have you figured it out yet?”
“Yes. Raven de’ Medici. That’s my new name.”
A deep look of satisfaction creeps on his handsome face. “De’ Medici,” he replies. “An excellent choice.”
“I know why it was a good choice to me, but why is it a good choice to you?” I say as a challenge to his intellect. I want to know if he knows what I know about the name Medici.
“That particular bloodline not only produced four Popes for the Catholic Church, it rose to power as an elite banking family in fourteenth century Florence where they remained in power for three centuries. They first grew their wealth, then their power as a political dynasty, and then they left their stamp on Europe as a royal family. Like I said, you stubborn shit, good choice.”
“That’s all fancy and stuff, and I appreciate the history lesson and your warmth, but for me it means ‘medical doctor,’ which is what I want to do with you: practice genetic medicine.”
He blows out a small huff and rolls his eyes.
“Yeah. Anyway, I have work to do,” I say, “and you have a check to finish writing.” I take the nameless check from my jeans pocket and hand it to him. He takes it to the reception desk’s surface, grabs a pen from a small cup of pens and fills in my name.
Raven de’ Medici.
I like it.
Raven de’ Medici, the self-made millionaire.
LOL.
4
So I’m walking through campus and it’s gorgeous outside, seventy-five degrees with a perfectly blue sky and a whiff of a breeze. The grass is green, the trees are pruned and everything smells so lush and calming I actually find myself smiling. Everyone is in school and I’m not. I’m not sure how to feel about that, either. I should be at work. Making sure Dr. Holland isn’t trying to resuscitate Hitler or something like that. That’s when I see him and, OMG, my breath catches a bit. The new kid. The he’s-so-gorgeous-my-knees-are-weak new kid. My mind plows into his mind and I drag up a name. Tavares Baldridge.
Tavares.
He sees me and I pull out of his head, unwilling to crawl him just yet. If he doesn’t like me, or if he thinks I’m a freak or hates my look or something, I don’t want to know about it. I’m still a touch self-conscious about my hair and heavier makeup. I’ve never done Goth before, but it’s the furthest I can go from the looks of my previous selves.
Not that this is real Goth anyway. I have no piercings, no tattoos, and I don’t dress like a member of the living dead. Not that I’m stereotyping…
He sees me and we lock eyes and I’m like, holy balls this guy’s smoking hot! He smiles, and I smile and then he says, “Excuse me,” and in my mind I’m panting like a dog, like a puppy, like a helpless, lust filled savage who just wants to get myself pregnant with this kid’s two point three babies.
WTH???
“Yes?” I ask. We come together and there’s this thing, this chemistry between us that is undeniable and all the sudden I’m a sackless Sally, so horribly shy it takes me off guard.
I resist the powerful urge to jump inside his head and see what he’s thinking. It’s like a sex addict struggling with abstinence. Holy cow, I want in his head!
“I’m a little lost,” he says, pulling out his slip of paper that has his schedule of classes. “I got turned around and I’m sort of, well, I need to find—this place here,” he says, handing me his sheet, pointing to his next class. “I’m already super late.”
“I’ll help you,” I say, cold for some reason, “just follow me.” It’s the dumb girl in me, the one who lets him know I like him by being extra bitchy. It’s the female equivalent of boys throwing rocks at the girls they’re crushing on.
“Are you a student here?” he asks.
“No.”
“So you work here?” he says, trying to keep up with me.
“Yes, with Dr. Holland,” I say. “I’m one of his research partners. I’m the one in charge of oversight.”
“That’s cool,” he says. “I’m Tavares.”
“I know,” I say, not offering anything up. “What year are you?”
“Sophomore,” he says.
“Jesus,” I hear my mouth say, “you’re just a kid.” I don’t know why I said this, only that maybe I wanted to knock him down a notch for making me think such vulnerable thoughts. And besides, I don’t want to be attracted to anyone.
It’s not really my thing right now. Even though it is.
“I missed school last year. While my sister was becoming a TV celebrity, I found myself traveling the world with my father. So now I’m a year behind.”
He’s my age. Great.
We enter the main building and he says, “I’ve got it from here,” while smiling that smile and devastating me on a purely sexual, purely emotional level.
I turn and go because I hate being controlled by his looks. I should have just told him to get bent and find the building himself.
“What’s your name?” he asks after me. By now I’m far enough away that I can pretend I didn’t hear him—as loud as he is—even if I could hear him perfectly if I was fifteen feet further. “Hey!”
I stop, wait there for a second, take a deep breath, then turn back around and stalk back to him until we’re face to face. He has that look like he doesn’t know what I’m going to do, but he didn’t expect this.
“You don’t want to know me, Tavares. I’m not a good person, and I’m certainly not the kind of girl you usually hang out with.”
“How do you know who I hang out with anyway?”
“Let me rephrase,” I say, half astounded that I’m being this way. “I’m not blonde enough to be your friend or girlfriend, or whatever, so just leave me alone.” And with that I snap into his brain and tear away all his thoughts of me. I don’t care that he’s attracted to me. I do, I suppose, but I don’t either. I just want out of his head, out of his life.
Best he forget we ever met.
When I’m done, he’s staring at me and I’m just staring at him and there’s this incredible emptiness between us that makes me sad. Why did I do that?
“Who are you?” he asks.
“Just a girl.”
He smiles, then looks around like he’s not sure where he’s at, and then his big blue eyes find me again and I’m dying to know what he’s about to say next. His lips part, and he has that nervous look guys get around hot girls. He is three inches taller than me and he looks nervous?
“I think you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,” he says, like he’s half lodged in a dream.
Slowly, I slide my hand around his neck, pull him down to my level. Our mouths meet and I kiss him, right on the lips. He melts into me, as I do him, and then I slither back into his mind, scramble it again so he doesn’t know me
or remember the kiss. His eyes are empty again, and the space between us is a vacuum of what was but could never be. He starts to speak, but I turn and go, my head now hurting as I finally decide it’s time to go to work.
I can’t keep doing this, I’m thinking. I can’t take what I want from boys like Damien and Tavares. And I can’t just slip in and scramble their brains, or tell people who I am. What I need to do is be more responsible. Or leave Astor for good.
With my check from Holland, I can go anywhere, be anyone. So why am I haunting this place? These are the dead people in my life, people I’ll one day leave behind because there will be nothing left between us. Everything meaningful will be fake Abby’s. She’ll have everything.
For a second, I think of reclaiming my life, but then I wash my mind clean of the thought. I can’t be like this. Not anymore.
It’s not healthy.
Kidney Bean Bastard Child
1
Georgia thought about burning things all the time now. Not out of compulsion; it was more from curiosity. Could she do it? Ever since school started, she dreamt of trying again. The need was an itch she had to scratch, yet she was terrified to tap into that power that once rolled throughout the darker chambers of her psyche. Would it still be there? She both feared and hoped it would be. But if she felt the power source within her, if it was still accessible after her latest remaking, she wasn’t sure if she’d cry or smile.
Sitting in class, palms turned up, she studied her flesh, but drew no power. The seashell spikes of death—the first time she saw them appear in her hand—they startled her, horrified her, seduced her. If she needed them, would they be there? The first time they lanced foreign skin, the heat inside her boiled over like lava, the fire roiling through her, consuming her. The crush of her abilities seared her, spewed molten colors across her world, rocked her with the storm of euphoria only raw power can elicit. She was being drenched with supremacy. Subjugated, yet liberated. Her sci-fi body literally dumped masses of fire and screaming death deep into another person.
The agonizing force she expelled, it wasn’t about dominion, or simple gratification. No, it was about the fiery eradication of a thing. It was hateful energy, and vibrant. Something that drained her body’s reserves until she was left gasping and breathless, yet wholly satiated.
“Georgia?” a distinctly male voice said.
She clamped her hands shut and glanced up. The teacher was looking at her with that hi-welcome-to-planet-earth look; through her peripheral vision, she saw the whole class staring as well. Everyone knew who she was, that something about her was off. All week long people had been asking where she was last semester. She was tired of lying, and making up lies.
“Are you alright?” her teacher asked.
“I am, Mr. Shelton,” she said. A rush of warmth flooded her face, made her blush. Her mind/body connection had her thinking only of her hands. She tried not to obsess, but she had been fixated on them, not texting, or nodding off in class, just…obsessing. Putting her hands away, she thought, can I get into trouble for that sort of thing? She smiled, but it was a nervous smile, the kind that said, okay, seriously, don’t everyone look at me all at once.
Mr. Shelton returned to teaching, and the other students returned to learning, and Georgia went back to the day she set her mother’s plant on fire. The thrill! Forget the idea of not dying, like her brother and almost like her mother (which was why she was even at Astor Academy in the first place) and forget becoming beautiful and having friends, this was about being able to do something, to be something almost no one else on earth could do or be.
Omnipotent. A firestarter. The ender of lives.
Flashes of the bald assassin who shot and killed Abby snuck into her head. She tried not to squirm, or let her discomfort show on her face. Her eyes flared wide though and settled. The memories left her feeling so unpleasant, she needed to be alone. She couldn’t just scramble out of class though, could she? A subtle glance around told her everyone was focused on Professor Shelton and not her. Well, everyone but one student: the new girl. Sabrina something or other. Baldridge. Sabrina Baldridge. The TV star from some show she never watched.
Sabrina Baldridge was watching her, curios, eyes narrowed. It was almost like she was smelling the air. Like a dog sniffing something suspicious.
Georgia looked away. Tried to still herself. Tried to soften the harder edges building up around her. But that bitch was watching her!
She looked again; Sabrina cocked her head, held her eye.
Her brain was like, Stop it Georgia! but her body fought her mind and now she felt the heat inside her stirring. The low churning intensified, her belly distending with pressure, with molten heat and need. The spikes on her hand broke through the skin, a needle point spiral of impending destruction. She curled her hands, hid them away. Breathed.
Tried to breathe.
It wasn’t working, though. Her eyeballs flicked over to their resident celebrity and the girl’s eyes were locked on hers. Georgia wondered, what’s her problem? Then she felt all the classroom’s color draining away in favor of a hot, charcoal tint.
No…
The TV star blinked fast, startled. Georgia’s eyes must’ve turned black. Subconsciously she threw a little heat the girl’s way, stuck it like tacky, hot tar on her hands. The TV star yelped a little and shook her hands like they were on fire.
“Ms. Baldridge?” the teacher said. Now everyone was looking at Sabrina and no one was looking at her.
Georgia shot out of her chair, grabbed her backpack and hurried into the hallway. For so long she tried to draw this out of her; now she couldn’t stop it. She didn’t like the vulnerability she felt. This was the same as those dreams where you’re naked in class and you’re just praying no one sees you because the second they do, it’s over. You’re over. She felt exposed, unable to hide this burning instinct from anyone anymore.
The power welling inside her became too intense to contain. The spikes just might have minds of their own. They might crave stifling, ashy death. Her eyes struck their darkest shade, drowning the world in shadows and pockets of light, with a bright orange halo she felt sizzling along the edges.
She dug through her backpack for her sunglasses. Almost put them on. Almost.
Looking down the empty hallway to her right stood a hundred yards of hallway. To her left, forty. Turning back to the long end, she found the furthest garbage can from her—a plastic grey can with a black bag liner at the hallway’s end.
Her hand shot out like a weapon, spikes pointed like the barrels of a thousand guns. The force of her energy exploded, sending mighty shockwaves down the hall, rattling doors, windows and lockers in the process. A hundred yards down the hallway, the plastic garbage can burst into a bluish/orange flame. The flash of brilliant, blinding light encouraged her. In seconds, the thing melted into a boiling puddle, the contents of the garbage bag fusing into a black ball of liquefied refuse and heat shrunken plastic.
Classroom doors opened and heads popped out to see what happened and that’s when the fire alarms shrieked. The sprinklers went off, the rain water cooling her. Before she got caught, she turned and bolted for the closest exit, anxious, afraid, exhausted but now with the answer of whether or not she still had the flame.
She did.
2
Just as Julie sat down with her friends for lunch, her phone rang. She dug it out of her purse, looked at it, and picked it up. She put her finger to her ear because the noise not only in the cafeteria but at her table was making it difficult to hear.
“Be right back,” she said to her friends as she grabbed her tray of food and went to an empty table two tables down.
“What,” she snapped into the phone. It wasn’t a question, it was disgust.
“C’mon, Julie,” Emery said, “don’t be like that.”
“What do you expect me to do?” she hissed into the phone, “I’ve got your baby in me. Again.”
“That’s supposed to be a sex
y thing,” he said. “It’s a new life you and I made. A baby. Besides, it’s been a week already.”
“God, you’re stupid,” she said, trying to calm herself. She looked up and her friends were looking at her. Cameron and Blake, anyway. Theresa was busy talking to Sabrina and looking at the TV star’s hands for some reason.
Cameron gave her the WTF? look and Julie held up a finger as if to say, I just need a minute or two.
“You can’t keep getting rid of our children,” Emery said.
“Do you really want our parents to find out I’m not just a slut but an incestuous slut at that? Because if I have your baby, again, I’m not telling my father I porked some random. We had that kid thrown out of school, if you haven’t forgotten.”
“I haven’t.”
“He’s a freaking sex offender now.”
“We’re all sex offenders,” Emery said, his voice long and lusty. “We just haven’t been caught yet.”
“That’s not funny,” she said, eating a piece of buttered bread. “You’re not funny.”
“We didn’t hook up to tell each other jokes, sweetheart.”
After a minute of silence, she whispered, “We need to stop this. Us hooking up, I mean.” She watched people flood into the cafeteria, specifically Brayden and his squadron of hotties. It wasn’t just that he was with Cicely and Tempest, he was with Damien and Abby and Caden, too. Somehow he managed to go from being butt ugly to being this ruggedly good looking guy who by some miracle managed to snag her attention. There was something about him…what was it?
“You like our hook ups, Julie. They’re amazing. Every single time with you is amazing. Is it so strange to want you to have our child? Jesus, we’re in love with each other.”