They all debate it.
No one seems to care what I think.
I don’t even know what I think.
Living would surely be better than dying.
Still, I don’t want to be a monster. The thought of being one of them terrifies me.
They leave and make a circle in the opposite corner of the gymnasium. Now they are speaking in whispers.
I await my fate in a horrible suspense.
The ringleader alone comes back to me, “We have decided that you will join our ranks.”
There is a knot in my stomach.
Dread fills me.
A needle appears in the ringleader’s hand. It is filled with a blue liquid, “This is Arachne blood. Once it enters your veins you will become one of us . . . A word of warning, the transformation will be excruciating.”
I am radiating so much fear now. I get a horrible feeling that some of them are feeding on it.
“Don’t,” my voice sounds so small.
Daniel steps up and asks the leader’s permission to perform this task.
The leader tosses the needle to him with no argument. It is obviously not a job that he was looking forward to doing himself.
The others stay away.
Only Daniel is up near me now.
He kneels down in front of me. His voice is as calming as he can make it, “I’m really sorry about this Katy.”
I whisper, “Are you going to do this to me?”
“I have to,” he seems so torn. “They won’t let you live. Look, take my hand. Hold it. I promise I won’t let go.”
Tears are streaming down my face as I hold my hand in his.
I will never be human again. There is a horrible finality to it.
“You okay?” His voice is soothing.
He is all that is holding me together right now.
“Yeah, you can do it now,” I answer, resigned.
He nods.
Then he looks up and comments on a beautiful bird. He wonders how it got into the gymnasium.
I look up to see it.
I realise too late that it was a distraction.
The needle enters my arm.
Pain seems to flow through my very veins. Their leader wasn’t lying when he said that it would be excruciating.
I scream in agony.
Daniel puts his free hand on my shoulder, “Sleep.”
His beautiful eyes are the last things I see.
Chapter Four
The change is happening. I can feel it taking place within my body.
Flashing in my mind is everything that I’ve ever been afraid of.
This includes everything from failing all my exams to sharks.
Losing my Mom also features. I need her.
Unpleasant things. Snakes, clowns.
The shadow walking behind me.
Someone dangerous watching me while I sleep. I don’t even know who they are.
Being attacked. Being helpless.
Being away from those I love.
I open my eyes. The real world.
Daniel is carrying me in his arms.
I am not aware enough to know where we are.
The world leaves again.
*
When I wake up properly I am in my bed.
Daniel is here, so is his sister.
I hear them arguing.
Angelica thinks that Daniel should turn off his emotions every now and again. It’s like so embarrassing to be his sister. She reminds him that his feelings have gotten him into trouble in the past.
They are what they are. She thinks it’s about time he embraced that.
He replies that he will never be an evil creature.
There is a silence between them after this.
She tells him that Arachnes are not monsters. They are simply more evolved than humans. That’s the way the world works, she reminds him. Creatures feed on the things that are lower than them in the food chain.
He doesn’t respond to this.
Pain shoots through my leg. I let out a low moan.
“She’s awake,” Daniel tells his sister.
I don’t hear what she says next. For a moment it is like there is water in my ears, blocking out the sound.
I open my eyes.
Daniel is sitting right beside me, using a chair from my desk. Angelica is on her way over.
A shot of agony rips through my head.
I let out a long groan.
I don’t even have the energy to scream.
“It will pass,” Daniel assures me.
I look at his face. It is beyond perfection.
It calms me to know that he’s here.
I wish that he was holding my hand again.
A scene flashes before my eyes. I am in the sea. I can smell and taste the salt. I can see the ripple of the waves clearly. I am swimming out deeper.
“It’s not nice to spy on people, you know,” Angelica’s voice brings me back to my room.
Her brother chastises her. Now is certainly not the time, he thinks, and she should be more supportive.
He reminds her about how difficult the change is.
Then he puts his hand on my head, and addresses his sister, “She has a fever. It will probably be an hour or two before she gets any better . . . Why don’t you go to class? I’ll mind her.”
Angelica regards him suspiciously, “So now you’re skipping class for a girl?”
He gives her a look of disbelief, “Yes, I am . . . I’m not letting her go through this alone. I had to, it wasn’t nice . . .”
Angelica looks like she is going to argue with this.
The light begins to fade again.
The world fades with it.
*
The horrible men are chasing me.
They chase me until I wake up again.
The world is clearer.
I sit up; properly awake now for the first time.
The change must be over. I feel better.
Daniel has fallen asleep.
I suppose he didn’t get a lot of rest last night.
I suddenly feel restless.
I get up and change into some nicer clothes. Looking nice shouldn’t be a priority right now, but it is. There is a gorgeous boy in my room after all.
I check to see my reflection in the mirror.
I do a double take. I almost scream.
The girl in the mirror can’t be me.
She has shiny blonde hair.
Her skin is so perfect that it’s practically porcelain.
Her eyes are a glowing sky blue.
“It’s quite a moment, isn’t it? The first time you see yourself changed,” Daniel’s voice startles me.
I turn to him. He is grinning now.
“My hair is blonde! It was never blonde . . . My eyes!” I blurt.
He stands up and turns me back towards the mirror.
Now we are both reflected in it, together.
There is something nice about the picture.
“You’ll get used to it,” he assures me. “It took me a while too.”
There is something so otherworldly about me now. I don’t see how anyone could fail to notice how completely I’ve changed.
They will surely be suspicious.
“You should probably sit down,” Daniel advises suddenly.
“Why?” I ask.
“Your change isn’t over,” he seems worried. “In a few moments you’ll probably get weak and collapse again.”
I am stubborn and don’t heed his advice. Instead I stay chatting to him while standing.
In the next few minutes I faint.
He has to catch me and put me onto my bed, yet again.
My stomach feels like it’s seizing up.
My head is a furnace.
I tell him this.
He says that these symptoms are a good sign. They mean that the end of the change is near.
I ask him to tell me a story, just to distract me.
I want to know h
ow he, himself, got changed.
He tells me, with some reluctance.
He was only thirteen when it happened. His Dad came home from work, one day, with two bottles of what he called ‘soda’. Then he told Daniel and Angelica that it was the best soda they’d ever taste.
They drank it.
It wasn’t soda. It was Arachne blood.
Their Dad wasn’t really their Dad either. The man who gave them the Arachne blood was actually an Arachne, named Rejon, in disguise.
Rejon is pure evil and was trying, at the time, to change as many humans as possible. This way he could build an army to defeat the Mayrons.
The Mayrons being the ancient enemies of the Arachne species of course.
When Daniel’s parents came home they found their children scaling the walls, literally.
He doesn’t really want to tell the rest of the story after that.
Suffice to say that their parents were not happy with suddenly having ‘freaks’ as children. He and Angelica were abandoned and left to fend for themselves.
They were eventually found and taken in by Nate Warsoin. He’s the group’s ringleader who still guides them to this day.
He and Angelica were relieved, to say the least. They’d finally found people who were like themselves, having been completely lost for years.
“Wow,” I comment when he’s finished. “That’s quite the story.”
He hasn’t had an easy life.
“Yeah,” he leans back, suddenly looking quite amazed. “I’ve never told it to anyone before.”
I push for more, “What about Rejon?”
Daniel sighs, looking at me regretfully. “My sister and I managed to evade being inducted into his army. This is thanks to Nate. He showed us places where we could hide. He never disclosed our location, not even when Rejon tortured him. I guess Rejon eventually replaced us with someone else . . . My sister is hung-up on getting revenge against him. It is all she wants in life. She wants to kill him for what he’s done to her. She’s so bitter . . .”
There is so much sadness in his eyes.
“What about you?” I ask, “Do you want revenge?”
He shakes his head, “No, I just want my sister to be happy again . . . like she used to be.”
I understand this. All I want is for my Mom to be happy, like she used to be.
I don’t bring this up.
I take Daniel’s hand, “Thanks for saving me last night.”
He studies me for a moment, “You’re an interesting kind of girl, aren’t you?”
“How’s that?” I ask, quite taken by the way he’s look at me.
He checks my temperature again with his free hand, “I haven’t even known you for three days and you’ve already gotten me to both risk my whole species for you and open up about things I’ve never even discussed with my sister.”
There is a light in his eyes as he looks at me now. I hope it never goes away.
I laugh, “I didn’t do it on purpose. If it makes you feel better I’ll tell you a story that I’ve never told anyone ever before. You know . . . to even up the score a bit.”
This seems to please him, he nods.
A vicious pain runs down through my veins.
I squeeze his hand tighter until it leaves.
I introduce my story and tell him it’s about why I’m afraid of sharks.
This seems to intrigue him. He is definitely interested in getting to know more about me.
Still, there is a reason why I haven’t told this story before.
It hurts.
I begin telling it, in a not so straight forward style.
Once there was this boy, of just thirteen years of age. He hurt his leg, skate boarding, and got a day off school.
That day he was completely bored. He never liked being left at home alone. Amusement came, finally, when the new neighbours moved in.
They had a daughter about his age. He thought that she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. They began dating only a week later.
When they were fifteen the girl found out that she was pregnant. This was rather terrifying to her. The boy wasn’t exactly mature enough to be a father, she thought. He was often completely reckless and an overgrown kid in many ways.
She loved his fearlessness really, but it was a problem now.
Sure enough, he didn’t change much when the baby came. The girl thought that her partner was far too easy going about the whole parenting thing. His philosophy was always ‘let’s do this and see what happens’. She wanted to have things planned.
This was the only thing they ever argued about. The future.
She wanted him to go to university and get a proper job. Their child needed to be provided for properly, she argued.
The boy didn’t think that things were as black and white as this. He just wanted to write songs and become a rock star. If this plan failed he would become a professional surfer.
The girl thought these unlikely dreams, as they are.
It took the boy three years to figure out that his dreams probably weren’t going to come true.
He began to worry about his little girl’s future.
When the child was four he brought her, and her mother, to the beach.
He surprised the mother with the news that he was starting at university in the fall.
She was overjoyed, finally seeing a future for them.
Now the boy had a brother named Riley. He was there the same day, at the beach.
They decided, as a last homage to the old times, to go for a surf.
The boy turned to his little girl and told her that everything would be great from now on.
Then he ran across the sand, down to the water, alongside his brother.
The mother began talking to her daughter.
They’d move out of the flat and into a big house, she promised. Her Daddy and Mommy would finally be married, she said.
The daughter had never seen her so happy.
Then came the screams from the water.
Sharks often attack surfers.
The boy’s leg was taken clean off.
He died before the ambulance could get there.
The future was gone.
The little girl would remember three things from that day.
The blood.
The light leaving her Dad’s eyes.
The mother’s anguished screams for him to come back.
Tears are in my eyes as I finish recounting it.
There is a pain in my heart.
I don’t let myself cry.
“Was Katy the little girl’s name?” Daniel asks, rubbing his hand comfortingly through my hair.
I say it quietly, “Yes.”
The tears come rapidly now. I can’t help it.
My Dad’s name was Jamie. I still can’t say it out loud.
“You know what I think about that little girl?” Daniel says.
“What?” I am still blinded by tears.
He answers, “I think she’s stronger than she thinks . . . I think she may get a happy ending yet, despite what has happened to her.”
His words touch my heart.
In that moment I know that I am falling in love with him.
I wipe my tears, with my free hand, and try to compose myself.
My voice is sincere, “I think the same goes for the boy you told a story about.”
He gives me a meaningful look.
He re-adjusts his grip on my hand.
I hope he never lets go.
*
I put the finishing touches to my make-up.
Angelica just hung up a dartboard. She has written the name ‘Rejon’ on a piece of paper and pinned it to the middle of said board.
Every time she throws a dart she aims for the name.
Her anger is obvious.
I sit down on my desk chair as I put on my new shoes, bought a few days ago for this occasion.
She just keeps on throwing darts.
Eventually I ask
, “Who is Rejon?”
The only thing I know about him is that he changed her and Daniel. Besides that I know nothing. I want to be able to recognise him if he comes knocking on my door someday.
She turns to me; her voice stays steady when she tells me.
Rejon is an Arachne with astounding magical abilities.
He could transform himself and take any shape. Disguise was kind of his thing. No one could kill him because he could only die if killed in his true form. This is why he never showed his true form to anyone.
He wants to kill Angelica. This is because she foiled him a few months ago when she managed to take the power of ‘transformation’ and disguise from him.
She looks satisfied.
“You took his powers from him?” I am surprised, it doesn’t sound like an easy task.
She confirms this, turning to look at me, “It wasn’t easy. I nearly got myself killed. I didn’t care. He can’t transform anymore.”
She begins curling her hair, for the first time ever she seems girly to me.
“So, what did he really look like?” I am extremely curious now.
She takes a deep breath.
He got away before she could see his true form.
She will never stop trying to find him.
Until she finds him she can trust no one.
She doesn’t trust Nate. She doesn’t even trust Daniel anymore.
One of them could be him.
He could be anyone. She has to be so vigilant.
Suddenly she looks at me with an awful suspicion in her eyes, “How did you wake up from Nate’s spell anyway?”
How I answer this question is extremely important. I can tell from her eyes.
All I can say is, “I have no idea”.
The way she looks at me now almost scares me.
I begin blabbing. It isn’t me. I didn’t even know that Rejon existed until today.
It isn’t her brother either, I say, he was changed the same as her.
“Maybe that’s just what he wants me to think,” she says, her voice is low. “Rejon is a master of trickery after all. I don’t think you quite understand, Katy. I can’t trust anyone.”
There is a deep sorrow in her eyes now.
She looks away now, obviously hoping that I won’t notice her sudden outbreak of emotion.
It must be hard to feel that alone, like you always have to look over your shoulder.
She must never be able to relax.
I realise now why she can be a bit distant.
Elysium's Love Triangle Page 4