by S. M. McCoy
That scenario only worked if I regained my balance after the recovery fall into a tombé. Well, nothing good happened from standing still. So, despite the inevitable bad luck about to occur I’d take my chances and take the first step.
First problem…this wasn’t a ballet studio.
Second problem, my perception was completely off—I wasn’t standing at all.
Shifting into the first step, the shattered pieces of my cement barrier crumbled around me. Each muscle felt like pins and needles after a renewed sensation from the numbness that enveloped my body. My foot lifted from the ground for a step only to quickly search for support as my other leg fumbled under the extra weight.
Instead of smoothly transitioning into a tombé, my lifted foot found no solace from the ground. It lost its bearings in my time of need, and led me flailing toward a face plant. Knees hit the ground as my body fell forward out of the high chair on wheels, as it went rolling in the opposite direction behind me. Then my hands, folding down to my elbows, and ending with my face in the carpet beside the dance floor.
I grabbed my neck and felt a sticky liquid sink under my fingernails.
“You all right?”
A girl beside me held me upright then led me to the couch farther into the lobby. She went to the water cooler. Water surged into the cup and next thing I knew she was hovering over me and handing me a glass, or should I say a paper cone, along with a wet towel for my neck. I parted my lips to respond to her earlier question of my well-being and finally I was able to capture some words and release them.
“I am fine. Just forgot to eat some food. Might as well be running on empty about now.” I looked up at her cheerfully then stared at the water rippling in its cup from my shaking hands.
I knew something more was wrong, but I’d grown used to lying about myself, that something so simple as whether I needed help was difficult to muster. Especially if it meant preventing someone from worrying about me.
I don’t think I even knew who I was anymore. Maybe I wasn’t lying to anyone anymore, except myself.
Then I saw the red tint smeared on my two fingers that must have scratched too deep. Not that I could feel much to notice if I did…but I must have.
“Well, why don’t you go scarf some food, re-energize, and use that cold compress on your neck.” She walked to the reception desk and looked over Mary’s shoulder at the computer screen.
“She’s already moved all of her classes over. You should take her home,” Mary assured her.
“Second thought, why don’t I take you home for the night, so you can eat and have some rest? Cover both bases just in case it’s a combination causing your shakiness.” It was Aislin trotting over to my side gleefully as if this happened to me every day. She was prepared and held me up by the waist saying, “Perfect. Best idea I’ve had all day.”
Without even skipping a beat or asking me, as if I had a choice, her small frame lifted me to a stand. We exited the studio, and a prickly sensation crawled across my skin.
Birthdays bite.
CHAPTER FIVE
Time Lost
“You’ve got things to do… I’ve got things to do.” Trying to stand, my legs wobbled, and then I fell back onto the couch. I didn’t understand what was going on with me. It was as if my body was a pile of hot dough, formed but if you moved it before it was cool destined to turn into slop and mush.
I would say I was surprised about it, but to be honest, I’d been feeling overworked lately. Famished, but not hungry. Stressed, but all self-imposed. Tired. Mostly tired.
So much sleep, and waking up in a cold sweat…I knew I was dreaming, but I couldn’t remember them.
Aislin had been watching me more closely over the last week. Coming in to work specifically to see how I was doing. Making sure I went to lunch by enlisting the whole studio, one instructor at a time, to insist that I go to lunch with them consistently. Which I didn’t mind, because at the very least it kept me busy and distracted. Very conveniently always too busy, and too distracted, to talk to Victor.
“Let me hold your hand.”
A soft whisper rang through my ears. I looked up at the girl with long curly platinum hair and black bangs beside me with her arm around my waist and she was speaking to me, but her words were faint. It wasn’t her words. Couldn’t be… Her eyebrow raised and her golden brown eyes stared at me.
“You said something?” As soon as the words escaped my own mouth, the volume of her words increased to normal.
“I said, come on let’s get you home. Give me your hand.” She grabbed my other hand then slung my arm around her neck. I was guided to a stand and she waved goodbye for both of us to the receptionist.
“Thank you.” There was a shyness in my voice that tried to downplay the severity of being removed from work due to an unexplainable sickness. We walked toward her beaten silver Mazda on the side of the road then she stopped at the passenger door.
That car had seen better days, I related to the poor beast of metal. Rusted where the paint chipped, bent where a parking garage post interrupted its journey, dull from the dirt kicked up on it from day in, day out of mulling around people, mirrors, and windows filmy from the caked-on dust and grime of doing its job.
That’s all it did, its job, not once patched up with more than a wad of duct tape. The front seats had on leopard print covers that were faded from the sun and wear, but they were luckier than the back seats, which looked to be metal hinges with pillows between them where only the faint feeling of a phantom seat used to be. I didn’t even see any seat belts laying around back there either. Good thing I was sitting in front.
“That’s what family does for their adopted strays, they help.” Aislin opened the door then eased me into the seat. I grabbed hold of her hand and brought it to my face. Opening my eyes, I looked up at her then sighed. She slid her hand from my grasp and gently brushed a strand of brown hair from my face. I let her go and even her slight frame made the metal springs of the seat next to me creak.
Here that poor car sat wrecked and humming a hoarse croak of life to drive us yet again to where we wanted to go. Only problem was I didn’t really know where I wanted to be, and I was just as damaged as it was, chugging along. Seemed to be a theme of hers, collecting broken things.
We stared ahead, watching the road lines pass by for a short while before I couldn’t contain my concern any longer. Even a minute seemed to extend itself into an hour in my mind. I needed to know, why didn’t I remember? What happened from daylight to nightdark that the time just seemed to disappear? Did I sit there vacant, passed out, and no one cared?
“Something is wrong”—pausing, I then continued—“what happened?”
She took my hand in hers with her right and squeezed it warmly. “You laughed today… It was the first time I’d heard you laugh in months. You seemed happy. But it was also the first time I’ve seen you faint, and definitely the first time you’ve look so clammy, much worse than last year’s flu.”
“How long?” I asked absently.
“Chrys, we’ve been at the studio for four hours. Or do you mean how long have I noticed you’ve been off? When we get home, I think we need to talk about something.” She fidgeted with the gear shift like it was a good luck charm, and I prayed to the universe that she wouldn’t take me to the hospital. I knew where they would take me if I went—it involved padded walls and regular medication. Then the investigation about who I was would come to light, would my fake papers hold up, or would whoever was after us in Seattle find me?
I nodded solemnly. What if they find out who I am? If child protective services didn’t get me…whoever took my mother would. I knew she was taken, and I knew they would take me too. Those words repeated in my mind, and suddenly they were gone, and I forgot why it even mattered.
A shadow passed us as we drove, and for a moment it looked like it was as fast as we were, matching our pace along the sidewalk. I blinked, and it disappeared. Four hours of my life gone in a moment.
What was worse is that at the time…I didn’t even care. I needed to stay under the radar. The shadows were following me.
CHAPTER SIX
Waning Day
Aislin had talked the whole way to the house. Then again that wasn’t hard to do considering the house was five minutes away.
We lived in a fairly large house, three bedrooms and a two-car garage. Largest house I had ever been in, it still seemed too weird to be true. My dad and I used to live in a small apartment, not even a carport for cover outside. I usually never used her car since everything was within five miles, plus she knew my real age and refused to let me drive until I was old enough. The poor metal beast could break down any moment, so my legs seemed more reliable anyway. If anything, I thought it would be me pushing it to safety instead of driving. Aislin pulled in.
If anyone ever wanted to investigate where I’d come from, they wouldn’t be able to find much. My existence didn’t start here, or the paper trail, until the day I met Aislin.
I remembered we’d transformed one of the bedrooms into a small version of a studio room. Spring hardwood floors, mirrors on two walls, a window with a ballet barre on another wall, and surround-sound music.
Everything a ballroom dancer could ask for.
If being a dancer was something you wanted to be for the rest of your life like Aislin. I, on the other hand, wasn’t decided yet on where my life would lead. I could be anything except for a lawyer, or anything that needed a lawyer. Didn’t need anyone trying to document anything…only to find that nothing was there. I did think that being a personal investigator could be an option, then I’d be the one digging up the dirt and thus be one step ahead of my own past. Plus, I wouldn’t need proof of identity to do the work.
But what I really wanted was to feel like I could go back to my old self. Maybe if I investigated my own mother, tracked her down, I might feel safe enough to go back to it. Maybe I’d only imagined the time our apartment was broken into and everything was shattered.
My dad scooped up only a few things, and we were gone. He said what they were looking for was me…and something from my mother. One day I could come back for it, but I was more important than an heirloom.
The living room was set up like an office with file cabinets, a computer, and a desk for paperwork. In one corner I had an old, blue sofa-chair with a throw blanket for reading. I used to curl up on the chair and escape into some fantasy world for comfort. Some people have their safety blankets, I had my safety chair.
It was the only thing I wanted to keep from my old life, but it was too big to take with me when my father dropped me off at the bus station. All I brought with me was a pair of heels my dad said were my mother’s favorite, an old, dirty sheet of paper in a shoebox, and a picture of my dad in that big blue sofa-chair.
It wasn’t too long after I started living here that Aislin found the chair and gave it to me. I never knew if she found where I used to live, or found a duplicate. I didn’t much care which one it was. I just knew it reminded me of him.
“I don’t know what’s wrong.” I looked at her as she pulled into the driveway, thinking of my blue sofa-chair.
“Let me help you out and you can tell me what exactly is happening, and then I can try to decipher it. You remember I got my associates in criminal justice, right? I am good with logical guesses.” She came around to assist me out of the seat. I slung my arm around her once more and we wobbled all the way to the office sofa-chair. Somehow, she knew what I wanted without asking, but there were pieces of her and of myself that I was having trouble remembering.
“Did you even pass those classes”—making more of a statement than a question, I really didn’t think she passed from what I remembered, like an instant assumption.
I slumped on the chair and fell over to hug a pillow to my chest, and the soft chair unfurled, revealing its leg stand, and reclined back. She always seemed more like a big sister than my guardian, since she wasn’t that much older than me. Plus, it was sometimes hard to take her seriously, since she was the size of a five-foot peanut.
“Nonsense, a certificate is a certificate. Now tell me what exactly is going on.” She sat next to me on the arm of the chair then slid over behind me; lying down, she pulled me close and proceeded to pet my hair.
If I were to say I had a best friend, it would be her. I remembered more of her now, while she stroked my head, Aislin. My mind kept getting all the facts fuzzy, but I knew her more than anyone else. What was most important was that I remembered she kept a secret for me. A secret that even I didn’t want to know.
Dreamwalker repeated in my head and I didn’t understand what it meant.
“I feel like a dying robot.” I closed my eyes and felt her fingers threading through my hair.
“What code isn’t working? Can you explain it?” It was always nice to know she only made fun of my analogies occasionally and not all the time.
If humans continued to insist on being more like robots and less like humans, then humans would lose the race for superiority. Since robots would always be better at being robots. You could say my fascination with relating myself to mechanics sprung up after thinking about that. How much were we humans these days anyway?
Humanity hadn’t come up with a very good repair system for the human body quite yet. I was still waiting on the whole artificial parts factory to replace all the broken bits from my initial production run in utero.
“Not even a reboot could fix me. Or maybe my hard drive is fried,” I tried to explain. “Food no longer tastes the same, drinks are no longer refreshing, and memories of people are as if I never knew them.” I sighed then continued, “Last week my vision was gone. My hearing gone. Except there was a voice—I think I was having auditory hallucinations. Something is wrong. I am all wrong lately,” I huffed and turned around to face her. I didn’t want to truly tell her how weak I really felt…but I feared that moments my body shivered or shook she might notice anyway.
She was smiling at me and kissed my eyebrow.
“You’re either not taking care of yourself properly or an evil spirit has possessed you!” She giggled and continued playing with my hair. “You’re being drained.” This she said with a heaviness that I’d never heard from her before. She twirled my hair in her fingers and I could feel her breath hitch in her throat like she wanted to say something more but debated on it instead.
“I am drained. There is no more draining to be had. This well has run dry.” I turned over again and pulled the pillow to my chest.
“No silly, someone is draining your life. Like an energy serpent, someone is taking the spunk out of your spunkiness. Is there someone upsetting you?” She gulped and pressed her lips together again, mulling through what to say to me.
“I think you’re the one being ridiculous. Energy serpent—”
I thought she’d honestly lost it now.
The “it” being her brain, but I knew she hadn’t. She was making more sense now than ever, I didn’t want to admit it. The word serpent triggered something in me, and after my brain splitting in two I heard those same words from my dad. They took my mother…serpents, I remembered. They took my mother.
“Don’t you ever wonder why after talking to some people you feel sad, or tired, or even angry, when nothing in the conversation should lead you to any of those feelings?”
“Yah, because all my feelings are rooted back to someone I bumped into at the supermarket that didn’t like the way I inspected the apples.” Sarcasm leaked from my lips, and I felt them quiver thinking about sharp teeth, and monsters.
“Some people make us feel energized after being around them, while others make us feel like it’s time for a nap. It’s all a transfer of energy, happening every day between lots of people after contact with energy serpents.”
As if some person in my life could purposefully suck the life energy from me to the point of making me physically ill. I guess the mind was a powerful thing, but that would entail that my subconscious believe
d someone could do that. If I didn’t believe someone had that type of power over me then it couldn’t manifest itself into physical problems.
Logically thinking out that scenario didn’t cut it. Then again, since I was analyzing the possibility of its validity then maybe it could happen. Maybe I’d already let it happen because my mind went through the process of figuring out the success of such a theory instead of rejecting it on the first thought.
An energy serpent. Part of me thought this was all a setup, waiting for me to say, “Yes, someone believes me about the monsters lurking in the shadows that took my mom. Maybe they were energy serpents? All so that they could prepare me for the true moment that she came out and handed me a certificate. Authenticating her insanity.
“It’s not ridiculous. There are people out there that have a lot of influence on people’s energy and if they influence it too much it can cause illness. There are people out there that thrive on negative energy so they aim to cause it and influence it in others, just as there are others who thrive on positive energy, so they work toward influencing good things in others. There is no such thing as luck, just positive and negative energy serpents. Here, I want you to take this.” She dangled a necklace in front of my face.
A light green quartz crystal, the color of my eyes. I didn’t know they had that color. “What’s this?”
Aislin placed it in my hand. “It’s a necklace.” She hopped up from the chair then went around the corner into what sounded like the kitchen. I had known it was a necklace, what I should have added was the word “for.”
“I gather that much, what’s it for?” I yelled to her from the den. I rubbed the crystal with my fingers as I waited. She soon came back from the kitchen carrying a cup of water and a towel.
“Protection.” She held out her hand for the crystal and I placed it back in her firm grasp. She took it and placed it in the water.