BONDED

by S. D. Harrison

  “No. It’s not a good idea for T.K. to come around anymore. He hates it, but now that we know he can’t touch your mind, it’s too great a risk.”

  “What are you talking about?” Maybe I’m dreaming after all. A cool dread spreads down my arms all the way to my legs; I am suddenly unsettled by Darien’s presence in my room.

  “You have no idea how much he cares about you. I understand; we all do, but it’s not safe. I’m sorry.” He kneels on my bed, pressing his fingers into my temples. I want to scream, but my body falls into a fuzzy haze and I can no longer move.

  ∆∆∆

  Outside of the memories, I am aware of my body like never before. I feel like I am going to be sick. Every headache I have ever experienced returns all at once, threatening to split my head open from the inside out. I know I’m screaming, but the pain tearing apart my throat is so minor compared to the pain in my head, it is irrelevant. I want it to stop. I want to die, to shut off my mind and free myself from the agony. Nothing is worse than the pain eating away at my mind.

  ∆∆∆

  I was having a rough day. First, my meeting with Principal Lawrence, who was forcing me to play student guide, then Mitch convincing me to tutor him. My body wasn’t used to the unease and frustration; I had become so good at keeping it at bay. I went grocery shopping out of necessity, and had been filled with a horrible, unsettling feeling as I walked through the aisles. I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was following me, shadowing my every move.

  By the time I load all my bags into the trunk of my Honda, I have completely forgotten about the disturbing feeling I had in the store. I slam the trunk and climb into the car, throwing my arm over the back of the passenger’s seat so I can reverse.

  I slam my foot on the brake three seconds too late.

  She appears out of nowhere.

  Small, with wavy black hair falling to her shoulders, her big black eyes are wide with shock as my car’s bumper slams into her stomach.

  By the time I register what has happened, she has crumpled to the ground.

  She can’t be dead. That did not happen.

  My heart is beating a million miles an hour as I think over every possible outcome.

  I am not intoxicated.

  I was not distracted.

  It was an accident.

  She came out of nowhere.

  I need to call my mom.

  I jump out of the car in a hurry, part of me hoping it was my imagination, the other part hoping she is alive. The rest of me is sick and twisted and hopes no one saw what happened.

  The girl is lying in a pool of blood, her bones twisted in an impossible way.

  I killed her.

  It was an accident!

  I look around the lot for witnesses. The only two people around are a tall, lanky boy with brown, almond-shaped eyes, and a stunningly beautiful boy with blonde curls. The latter causes me to do a double-take. I know him. He is so horribly familiar, even though I know we have never met. If I wasn’t so distracted, I know I would be able to figure out why.

  There is no questioning whether the two boys saw the accident, but neither looks scared or worried. The beautiful one is staring at me, his green eyes boring into mine. It is like he knows me as well. “Are you okay?” he asks me, his voice deep, warm, and comforting.

  “I didn’t mean to hit her.” I plead with him to understand. I don’t want him to think less of me, as messed up as it is.

  I’m a horrible, horrible person.

  The other boy is checking the girl’s pulse, the only one of us acting rationally. “She’s gone, T.K. She needs a new body.”

  “Oh, God.” I place my face in my hands. “She came out of nowhere. I didn’t see her. I…” I need to call the police. I need to call my mom.

  “Hey, don’t worry about it.” T.K. reaches for my arm before thinking better of it and drops it back down by his side.

  “I killed her,” I gasp.

  I know what a panic attack feels like.

  I know my body is preparing to have one.

  My throat begins to constrict as my lungs fill with cement.

  “T.K.?” the other boy says.

  “No. No way in hell, Darien, not her. Find Marcella someone else. Take her to the next town over.”

  I can’t follow their conversation. My breathing is too erratic. I can’t follow anything at all.

  “You take her. You know this area better than I do.”

  “I don’t… Make her forget this, okay?” T.K. says, watching me cautiously. He hesitates a moment before touching my shoulders, his hands grounding me to the Earth. “You’re going to be fine, okay? Tomorrow this will be nothing. I promise.” He says it with so much certainty, I almost believe him. He has the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen.

  “Take care of her,” T.K. says. “She’s important.”

  Then he is gone, taking the girl’s body with him, as though they had never been there at all.

  I’m left alone with the other boy, Darien, who is watching me with confusion and nerves. “Don’t worry; I’m not going to hurt you. Okay? I need to clean this up.”

  I watch him from my rear-view mirror as he cleans the blood off the cement. He stalls a few times to talk with strangers passing by, occasionally ruffling their hair as though they are old friends. It is weird, considering he is helping to clean up a crime scene. No one seems to notice.

  My breathing is beginning to regulate. Something is wrong; not only with the girl and the accident, but with the boys. Why are they helping me? I killed her!

  I killed her and now she is dead and I am a killer.

  My breathing picks up again.

  “Maybe we should do this now,” Darien says, sliding into the passenger’s seat.

  “What?” I turn to face him, confused. Something is wrong.

  “I’m sorry this happened. Knowing Marcella, she did it on purpose. She saw the way T.K. looked at you in the store.” Darien doesn’t allow me the chance to process his words, not that I would be able to in my state, anyway. He reaches for my face, drawing his fingers to my temples. And...I forget.

  “Go home. Unpack your groceries. Do your homework. Go to bed.”

  Then he is gone.

  ∆∆∆

  There is too much: too much that is wrong, and unnatural, and not as I remember it. I don’t feel T.K.’s arms on me anymore, and the pain I feel in my head has subsided, which leads me to think I am finally dying. People say that right before you die, your mind finds peace.

  It is fitting the last thing I see is a scene so familiar it brings tears to my eyes.

  ∆∆∆

  I ran away from home. It was about a year after Dad died–no, it was exactly a year after Dad died. My mom ignored the date. I got high and drove to Winnipeg with Shawn and a couple of his friends. They left me there when I threw up on the floor of the car. I hadn’t planned on going home.

  I find a bar that accepts my fake ID and I drink to compliment the drugs still in my system.

  I wander.

  Somewhere along the way I find myself walking along the train tracks. It is something Dad and I used to do when I was a child. We would call them our adventures. He would tell me stories as we walked, finding special stones and fallen branches along the way.

  I can’t resist the pull of the tracks on this night. I cling to the memory of him like it is my lifeline. I can hear his voice on the wind as I follow the slats forward.

  I don’t mean to die, but the thought does occur to me. I don’t think I’ll mind if I do. Death can’t be worse than the hell that is my mind. Than the hell that is a life without my dad by my side.

  I’m standing on the train tracks, the crisp air whipping auburn strands of hair around my limbs like a cyclone. In the distance, I see the bright beam of the train billowing along the tracks toward me. I twist and pull at my body in vain. My feet vibrate beneath me as my fate approaches.

  I am stuck.

  I am going to die.


  I am going to be twisted, and mangled, and broken beyond recognition.

  I hadn’t intended to die.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen.

  He appears suddenly, his body a solid shield wrapping itself around me, encasing me in its warmth. When the train hits him, shattering his back into a million fragments, my scream finally escapes. His body absorbs the shock. The train halts. It’s as if he is made of steel, not flesh and bones.

  The man looks down at me, his face a mixture of pain and relief.

  He should be dead.

  I should be dead.

  He looks at me with deep brown eyes as his fingers twist into the hair by my temples. My body becomes a warm glow. Heat, and heat, and heat, and heat, and heat flow through me. “Go home. Forget this. Be better. Be happy.” His voice is pained, but his eyes watch me with a sincerity I have never known before this moment. I want to listen. I want to do what he asks. I want to be better.

  He is dead before I fully understand what has happened. I watch as the light fades from his eyes and as the pain detaches from his face. I don’t want to think about the sacrifice he made to save me. I don’t want to think about why he did it, or how he held on long enough to speak those words to me. He wasn’t a beautiful man, but something about him clings to me long after I leave him there, his body an empty shell broken on the tracks.

  I end up at a bus station in Winnipeg, waiting for a transfer to take me home. I am in a cloudy haze, no better than being stoned. It is his voice pushing me forward; it is his voice giving me purpose.

  Once I am home, I forget the whole night.

  ∆∆∆

  I woke up safe and sound in my own bed the next morning, completely unaware of how I came to be there, which wasn’t different from most mornings. But that morning was different. That was the morning I decided to turn my life around. I stopped speaking to Shawn and I let Lindsay back in. I did not touch another drop of alcohol or another pill or a single joint. I raised my grades. I did exactly what T.K. told me to do.

  But none of it was because I was strong.

  Everything I have achieved, every hurdle crossed, has nothing to do with me, with my strength. It is not because I love my father and want to make him proud. It is because he made me.

  Before I even met him, T.K. gave himself the right to change my life forever.

  For that, I will never, ever forgive him.

  That is the last thought that drifts through my mind before finally, my body sinks into nothing.

  CHAPTER 28

  I am dead.

  The memories that flooded back to me in the moments before my death were raw and painful, tearing apart my head and my heart in one large swoop. T.K. spent our whole relationship lying to me. I hit Marcella with a car. I killed her.

  The last part, at least, is comforting.

  My brain has been pulled at and twisted and manipulated to such an extent, it is a wonder I made it as long as I did.

  It is cold, being dead.

  I am shaking, the icy fingers of Death grabbing at my arms and pressing against my face, trying to choke me by stealing my air. Is it possible to suffocate after death?

  Maybe I am in hell, an eternity of suffocation as you are forced to reflect upon the most horrific moments of your life.

  When I move my eyelids, all I see is T.K.’s golden curls.

  “Raye?” His voice is stiff with emotion. “What were you thinking?” he yells, directing his attention elsewhere.

  “Calm down. Jesus, I’ll fix it. I wanted to have some fun first. Maybe you’ll learn not to test me.” Marcella. That is Marcella’s voice. It seems fitting she make an appearance in hell.

  “You sick, twisted–”

  “T.K., I think something’s wrong with her,” Chane says, kneeling so she is in my field of vision. With her silver hair, she looks more like an angel than a demon. I feel her cool fingers touch my face; I jolt back so quickly, it is as if I am not dead at all. “Raye, please be careful.” She follows me across the room with her eyes.

  “Are you okay?” T.K. steps toward me, his hand outstretched.

  “Stay the hell away from me!” My voice is raw and unfamiliar to my ears.

  Maybe this isn’t death. But it is certainly hell.

  My pulse speeds up, tapping away under my skin like a snare drum.

  “Marcella!” T.K. yells, turning his fury toward her. She has taken to the couch, her feet propped up as though she doesn’t have a care in the world. Knowing her, it is not an act.

  The front door slams in, a gust of wind forcing it open farther than the newcomer intends. “Mitch?” My voice still sounds horrid and foreign and the shock does not help. Of all people, why does Mitch have to walk in? When I’m so tattered and vulnerable? “What kind of sick joke are you playing?” I take a step toward him, fumbling over my own feet.

  My body is flung backward with such force I am suddenly out of air, gasping against the wall. T.K. steps in front of me, shielding me with his body and halting whatever force assaulted me. “I swear, Marcella, if you go near her again I’ll rip you from that body.”

  “Try me!” she shouts back, both angry and amused. Only she could pull off such a contradictory attitude. She rises from the couch and motions toward us, baiting her prey.

  Mitch steps between T.K. and Marcella, his presence like a reinforced brick wall. “Enough.” He raises his palms and sends them both backward a few feet. T.K.’s back crushes into my body, pinning me to the wall.

  That is not Mitch.

  “Who are you?” I shove T.K. aside so I can face the imposter. “Where’s Mitch?”

  “You all are acting like children,” not-Mitch says, ignoring my question. “Chane?” he demands, addressing her for the first time.

  “I’m so sorry, Darien. I did exactly what T.K. asked, but she ended up here anyway. Marcella…” Chane’s voice drops off. Either she is ashamed or nervous; I can’t tell which. She takes a step back, wrapping her arms around her torso.

  “Darien?” I echo. Darien left. He went away months ago to–

  Except why would he leave his family when there are so few of his kind to begin with? Darien never left. He has been inside Mitch.

  My Mitch.

  Memories of Mitchel Wright flash through my mind. How gentle and kind he has become: getting me a job the clinic, not faulting me for attacking him, caring about Lindsay’s well-being. I noticed Mitch changed. That he was a different person, even. But it never occurred to me that… “No,” I moan, sliding down to the floor. I hold my knees to my chest.

  Mitch is dead.

  Mitch, who I spent years hating and avoiding, and so many before that loving. Mitch, who used to make me mud pies and tell me my hair looked pretty when it was tied up in a knot. My first kiss, my first love, my first nearly everything.

  Mitch is dead, and I didn’t even noticed.

  No one noticed.

  “Raye, it’s okay. Please,” T.K. begs, kneeling beside me on the floor.

  “How is this okay? Mitch is gone! Marcella is in the body of god knows who and you… Oh, god.” I can’t breathe. I begin hyperventilating.

  Air.

  I need air.

  “Grab her a bag or something!” T.K. yells, holding onto my arms. Within seconds, Chane is beside me, holding a paper bag to my mouth as I inhale my own carbon dioxide.

  The rhythm calms me, allowing me the headspace to shove away from them both. My body fills with rage and disgust. I stand facing Mitch’s killer. “Why him? Why did it have to be him?” My fists ball at my sides, still clutching the bag.

  Darien shrugs Mitch’s shoulders. “I didn’t have many options. My body was sick, and he was the only healthy person from school who frequented the hospital. I needed to be around to watch over the others. When my body finally gave out, this one was my best choice. I know how much he meant to you, Raye, and for that I am sorry.”

  What disturbs me the most is Darien does sound sorry. He sounds sympathetic and wise, a
s though he has done this many, many times before.

  “I’m roughly ninety-seven, according to human years.” Dairen says, somehow pulling the unspoken question from my mind. “It is my first time in such a young host, but with T.K. starting school for the first time, I didn’t want to rely solely on Chane and Marcella to watch over him. We didn’t know what to expect.”

  Marcella told me how both she and T.K. had taken on many different appearances. Her words take on an entirely different meaning. “How many?” I ask, turning to face him. “How many people...”

  “Raye…”

  “How many people?” I shout, getting worked up again. I kissed him. I let him touch me. I loved him. And he is a monster. A killer. I let the bag I’m holding fall to the floor, refusing to allow myself to break again. Not here. Not with them.

  “Nine,” he says. “This is my ninth.”

  The disgust washes over my face. “And you?” I turn to Marcella. She is still smirking, as though the night has turned out far better than she ever could have anticipated.

  “Twelve. But this one is by far my favourite. I guess I have you to thank for that,” she smiles, knowing it will rile me.

  “I have nothing to do with the choices you’ve made! You should have died when I hit you! That’s the human thing to do!” I see both T.K. and Chane flinch from the corner of my vision, but Marcella holds strong.

  “So what?” she sneers. “It’s alright for T.K. to discard a body to save your pathetic life, but it’s not okay for me?”

  Marcella knows exactly what those words will mean to me. The moment T.K. stepped in front of that train, relying on both his strength and his invulnerability to save himself, he traded my life for another. The body he wears now didn’t save me. It belonged to someone else. It was taken from them, along with their life. Like the bodies featured in my dreams.

  If the train dream is real, the others must be as well: tall with red hair, black with bulging arms, middle-aged with a protruding stomach. All dead, all killed by a man I once thought I loved.

  To think I thought they were meaningless. How could I miss such an obvious warning?