House of Slide Hybrid

by Juliann Whicker

  I shook my head and fought down the panic, the same close feeling I’d felt in the theater and on the sidewalk under the light.

  I opened the door. Osmond slammed on the brakes and I managed to get my seatbelt off.

  “I’m going to walk home. I need the exercise. I’ll see you tomorrow at school. Good night, Osmond.” Osmond opened his mouth to protest but something in my face must have stopped him, because he nodded and let me shut the door and turn away from the truck before the first tear trickled down my cheek.

  I walked purposefully and tried not to slouch down like I wanted to collapse. That wasn’t brave and strong and Wild. I should be ripping up tile and reupholstering furniture, or saving the world with brilliant medical marvels. I should not be burning down movie theaters, if that had really been me. Was it possible? I sniffed and wiped my nose on my sleeve wishing I had a tissue. In my screwed up world anything was possible. Everything bad was possible.

  I walked down the sidewalk past the cheerfully lit houses feeling lost and trapped, desperate for something, anything to stop the panic. I turned a corner and headed down a street on the edges of town not so well lit, somewhere I wouldn’t accidentally blow up a streetlight, if that had been me. After I was halfway down the block I knew with a smack of awareness that someone was watching me.

  “Good evening,” a voice said out of the darkness.

  I froze as I searched the shadows, wishing I’d chosen a better lit street to wander down instead of avoiding the light.

  “Evening,” I said politely to the general air and forced myself to continue walking. My heart pounded in my throat as I walked and heard the sound of ice cracking. I shivered in my coat and wished I had my knife on my leg. I hated feeling defenseless, being defenseless. Of course I could always bite him. The idea of someone’s blood in my mouth made my stomach roil. Maybe not. Maybe it would be better for me to be defenseless and die so that other people wouldn’t have to.

  “Giving up without a fight? I didn’t think Helen’s daughter would be so pathetic.”

  I spun around. “I’m sick of disembodied voices, and I’m sick of fighting! You don’t know me and you don’t know what’s inside of me. If you did you’d stay far away because people who get too close to me don’t end well. Friends as well as enemies, and disembodied voices have never gone over too great with me. So leave me alone!” This last was so loud it echoed strangely on the dark snow covered streets. I startled myself with my intensity, my rapid breathing and clenched fists reflecting the anger that burned inside of me. It didn’t burn like a fury, but more icy and cold, scary and dark.

  “Disembodied voices in the darkness represent your inner demons. If I showed you a face, any face at all, you’d be unable to realize that what you see is only a reflection of who you are.”

  “Is that supposed to be funny? Typical that the reflection of my inner turmoil would be a crackpot philosopher. At least I won’t have trouble falling asleep at night.” I kept walking towards the corner where a street light burned hoping that once I got there I’d find relative safety.

  He grabbed me by the back of my coat. I spun around to knock his hands off me, but slipped on the ice and went down instead. I banged my knee but rolled to my feet as quickly as I could. Unfortunately I still couldn’t see him and the footing was very bad. I took a breath to scream, to yell something, and it was like all the air was sucked out of me. He gripped my face with icy fingers that dug into my skin until it felt like they sank into the bone, into my brain with pain that seared through everything I’d ever known until I forgot myself, forget everything besides one name I whispered before the explosion of agony collapsed into darkness.

  “Lewis.”

  Chapter 2

  The sound of voices faded in and out before I realized that I wasn’t unconscious but still couldn’t open my eyes. There was my mother’s voice, husky, murmuring to someone, Satan’s rough growl in response, Grim’s voice, smooth and elegant while my dad’s voice, soothing and at the same time icy cold, made all the other voices less noticeable in comparison.

  I was safe.

  I let myself fall back into the chaos of my mind—there were memories, the voice of the stranger in the darkness, the image of Snowy pulling out her gun, Devlin’s face, his dark blue eyes rimmed with shadows as he smiled at me after another sleepless night when I walked into his room to find him hunched over his desk, a rock from his seemingly endless collection being tucked into his pocket. I focused on those eyes, the apology that seemed to hover just past his lips, curved in a half smile. It was the same almost smile he’d given me for years and years—ever since he’d taken my soul.

  I felt a wrench when I thought that, an internal tug that brought me to another memory, the same eyes, the same half smile, but the face was younger, untouched by age but somehow, even though my brother hadn’t been more than eight years old, there was ageless sorrow in those eyes, in that smile, even while he told me to hold still, bribed me with ice cream our mother never allowed us to have while he showed me the cool new thing he’d learned while he’d been gone.

  I heard in my mind a voice, a child’s voice, a girl who however young she was, knew what she wanted. She—me—asked him where he’d been, why it was such a secret and how long this thing would take, because I wanted to build a castle for my blue pony before dinner.

  He told me that it wouldn’t take long even as he placed a rock, dark red, the color of half dried blood on the floor between us. He never lied, not even when it got him in trouble. I stared at him while his eyes, so big in his pale face, bore into me until I nodded, settling down on the blue carpet of his room.

  I listened, entranced as he chanted, waving his hands until green sparks lit his fingertips, trailing down to the floor, searing into the carpet while the smell of burnt wool and something else, something a little bit like fireworks but more like power, if power had a scent, filled the room.

  I didn’t move even when the smell made me wrinkle my nose and I wanted to open the window, to clear the room and let in the sun and wind. I wanted ice cream, but more, I wanted to know what else there was to see, what other tricks Devlin had.

  The room filled with bristling power as Devlin continued waving his hands in elaborate patterns, filling the design around me with sparks that burned deeper and deeper into the rug. There was a pause, a lull as Devlin took a deep breath and I heard thumping footsteps in the hall before the door swung open right as Devlin said the final word.

  The blue of the door faded even as it opened, leaving it gray, gray that matched my mother’s suit, a suit that had been red. I didn’t have time to be confused, I didn’t have time to ask my mother why she was screaming, or to tell Devlin that we would never get ice cream now, not when we’d obviously done something our mother would kill us for. My mother’s screams came from far away, farther and farther as I stared at Devlin, the last thing in the world with color until even the blue of his eyes faded to black.

  Chapter 3

  I woke up with sunshine streaming through my window over the coverlet on my bed, intricate swirls of maroon, gold, and blue that reminded me of my father, that reminded me that I no longer had a Hotblood soul. I looked up at the painting, my Axel and stared at the swirling colors that reminded me of Lewis, of how it had been to have a soul that burned through life, that lived with more intensity than most people knew existed.

  I stared at the painting, at the colors that seemed to shift under my gaze. Where was he? What had he thought when I’d told him that I didn’t want to see him again? He wouldn’t have stayed anyway, not someone like him, immortal practically, at least by the standard of Hotbloods who lived fast, died young, unless they were lucky or unlucky enough to be a bloodworker who could drain life from someone else, stealing their gifts.

  I touched my mouth absently, the ghost of the last kiss heavy on my lips. Devlin had taken my soul with runework I’d never seen before, but I’d gotten it back again with the simple magic of true love’s kiss. Ma
ybe I’d ended up with a half bound soul, tied to a rebel Hybrid, like me, but it beat the years of lifelessness, the abyss of emptiness where I’d died without dying.

  I’d stolen his soul when I’d been little more than a walking corpse, lifeless, aimless, craving nothing besides oblivion. What could someone who painted something like my Axel painting, so alive, see in someone like me, the way I was then? I didn’t know, but…I couldn’t help the smile as I remembered the heat of him—he’d seen something.

  I sat up, suddenly awake and ready to face the day, to enjoy the sun as long as it lasted. I hummed a nameless tune as I picked through my drawers, looking for something light and happy to wear, something that matched the girl with the blue pony. I was that girl, I was alive, and whether I blew up movie theaters, or was attacked by weird strangers, I would be as much myself as I could.

  I paused in the middle of my dressing, still in pajamas that my mother must have dressed me in as I remembered the runes my brother had burnt into his floor. I left my room, racing down the hall to the familiar door, no longer blue but a cold stark white that matched the carpet, the walls of the empty room, the barren stretch of black duvet over a nondescript bed the only punctuation in the otherwise blank canvas. There were no traces of him, not his desk where he’d done homework, not the huge glass jar on the floor with his collection of rocks, not the dressers with trophies and photos on top, nothing to remind me of my brother, except when I stepped into the room, I thought I could still feel the runes, burned deeply into the floor, through the carpet and into the wood beneath, the bones of the house still carrying the scar of my brother’s betrayal.

  I backed out of the room slowly, frowning as I tried to fit the pieces together, of the brother I’d known taking my soul when he’d never done anything else to hurt me or anyone else I knew. It didn’t fit any more than Lewis, the boy who was so alive, kissing the zombie.

  I stood in the hall, staring at the white blankness then moved instinctively towards the door at the end of the hall, the door that led up to the attic. The stairs didn’t creak and there were no cobwebs—this was my mother’s house after all, but there was something empty about the room in spite of the piles of things, a bright red chair I remembered being in the living room at some point in my youth, a hodgepodge of books and pictures piled in stacks that looked dusted, but deserted. My mother hadn’t taken the time to box and label her memories, she’d taken them and shoved them out of sight, leaving her in the mausoleum of her pristine house as the rest of her world died.

  I poked around the piles of things until with a cry I opened a box labeled, ‘Dariana’. I sat on the floor before I pulled back the tape, ripping the cardboard until I opened the box and saw the pink, purple, and light blue of my childhood. There was a stack of clothes, my favorite dress, two shirts with pink characters on them, and a collection of toys, my favorite toys separated from the anonymous mass of my childhood. I picked out the blue pony, clutching it in my fingers as I remembered the corral I was going to build for it, of the world I’d wanted to create.

  I would do it, in spite of the lost years and my age. I returned the pony to the box, picking it all up to take to my room. I spun around to take it to the stairs, but in my rush I knocked over a box that fell to the floor with an ominous crash as whatever glass thing inside it shattered.

  I sighed as I lowered my box and carefully pulled the fallen box back into an upright position. It wasn’t labeled, but it had been heavy. I could have left it, tempted to not tell my mother about whatever breakable thing I’d ruined, but after a long hesitation I opened the box. I stared at the pictures, My brother with Snowy ready for prom, me standing in the background in a black nondescript dress, Osmond by my side but somehow more in the picture than I was. I gasped as I cut my finger as I’d run it over the now with cracked glass, pushing the picture to the side to see chunks of sparkling shards spread through piles of rocks. I saw more rocks than I’d remembered him having.

  I stared at the strange collection for someone like Devlin to have, someone who could control anyone he met. Maybe he liked hanging out with things he couldn’t control and manipulate. I frowned as I reached out to touch a particularly pretty one, pink with sparkles.

  The world in the attic fell away and I was swept to another time, another place as soon as my fingers wrapped around the stone.

  I breathed heavily in the darkness, trying to smother a choking cough. My whole body ached, but the top of my leg throbbed in agony. A torch flared up above me, stinging my eyes. I pushed back my wild hair and messy braids streaked with silver, staring blindly at the torchbearer until with a gasp I said, “Osmond.”

  I watched as Osmond, only not the Osmond I knew with his hair spiked up and his missing shirt, drove the handle of the torch into the ground before he knelt in front of me, me all in black leather while blood oozed from a nasty gash across my thigh.

  “Dariana, drink this,” he said, uncapping a bottle before he pressed it to my mouth, forcing whatever nasty concoction it was down my throat. He stared at me with so much intensity. I wondered where the nice, decent guy I’d known all my life had gone. Of course, I wondered who I was and what I was doing wearing all that leather.

  “I’m fine,” I gasped, pushing him away. That was when I saw the silver tattoos circling my wrists, sparkling in the firelight the same way Satan’s and my mother’s did.

  “Come on,” Osmond said, casting a quick glance around the dark woods before scooping the alternate reality me up in his arms. He took the time to brush a strand of hair out of my eyes then proceeded to kiss me, pulling me close to that very naked chest in a way that made me forget to breathe. I wrapped my arms around him like I already knew him and kissed him until everything went black.

  I blinked as the room around me came back into focus, the attic as it had been the last time I’d seen it, still in my pajamas, barefoot on the hardwood floor. I took a deep breath as I looked around, noticing that the pink stone had fallen onto the floor during my episode. It occurred to me that I should probably alert someone to my strange delusion, but that would require telling people that I’d seen myself make out with Osmond. I couldn’t imagine anyone I wanted to tell that to, not even Snowy.

  I bent slowly to retrieve the stone, almost nervous, as though a rock could transport me to another existence. I held it lightly as I straightened, relaxing when nothing happened until I shifted my hold to get it more solidly in my grasp.

  The attic disappeared again, but it wasn’t dark wherever I was, instead the air was hazy with smoke.

  I ran up a hill, leaping over boulders as I raced agilely towards the top. I wasn’t alone; I ran among people who fought, some of them not entirely human. I forced myself on in spite of exhaustion. I couldn’t have kept running, but I did, step after step, dodging a fireball as easily and with as much alarm as if it were a slaughter ball. I ignored the blast of flame and heat although I could smell the charred grass and burnt stones.

  As I ran, climbing higher and higher, the people around grew sparser until there was no one between me and a figure perched on the summit, still as he watched me get closer and closer. At first the features were blurry, but then he flicked his lighter open, then shut and I knew who it was before another fireball went arcing through the air towards me. I rolled to the side and lost my forward momentum. Pain streaked through me but I continued, limping for a moment before I regained my stride, racing towards Lewis with a fierce intensity.

  I got out my knife, gesturing with my hands until blue sparks flickered around me before I launched myself at him. I moved so gracefully, strong, powerful as I wrapped my legs around him, grabbed a handful of hair and pulled his head back, revealing his long white throat for my knife.

  I moved to draw the blade across his throat but something hit the knife and me away before it did more than nick him. I hung on to him even as another fireball exploded against my back. This time the fire wrapped around my leather jacket, burning me as I screamed, half in pain,
half in fury.

  I never loosened my grip on him. I gazed deeply into his eyes with my teeth gritted as I struggled to kill him. I leaned him even as the air crackled around me and I poured destructive energy, the kind that could melt movie theaters, into Lewis’ body. I could feel the force as I pushed inside of his skull, my will demanding that he release everything he was, pushing to erase his mind so that he would cease existing in every way. The further I pushed, the less there was to push against until with a cry that was as furious as it was desperate, I crumpled, lost in the abyss of him, unable to find myself.

  I opened my eyes again and found myself once more in the attic, this time staring at the ceiling from my back on the floor. I closed my eyes tightly before I opened them again and found myself still in the attic, still lying on my back, hanging onto the stone for dear life. I dropped the stone, with effort before rolling to my feet, dizzy and slightly nauseous for a moment while I regained my balance.

  I kicked the rock over to the box while I rubbed the back of my head where it must have hit the floor. My hair felt soft under my fingers, not all weird and hardcore. I wasn’t sure what I’d seen, but one thing was sure—I now knew why Devlin collected rocks, and it wasn’t because Geology was so fascinating, although Geology was rather fascinating. I shook my head as I shut Devlin’s box and grabbed my much lighter, and much less dangerous package then headed down the stairs.

  I dropped the box in my bedroom before I went down to the kitchen. The sun seemed to be in the same position as it had been before I’d gone up to the attic, like I’d spent no time at all having delusions.