Mystic Bonds

by C C Solomon

  I moved to the edge of the bench again. Was he crazy? Was I crazy? Nothing he was saying was registering. “Right, but how—”

  “Did I know any of that? Because we’ve met before. You always forget until the very end. Which I can understand. I used to forget too. I don’t know why I started remembering.” He grabbed my hand in his and looked into my eyes; seemingly searching them. “Listen to me, Amina. I need you to remember me from now on. This is important. I’m Phillip Leal. It’s important that we stay connected. I couldn’t figure out how to get you to remember before, but I think I know now. I’m Phillip Leal. Remember my name.”

  The ground shook and another roar bellowed with it. The shake was not strong and only lasted a second but it was enough to disturb me. “Was that an earthquake? And what is making that noise? We shouldn’t be out here,” I shouted, wanting to get up and run to safety. Home. Wherever that was. Why couldn’t I remember where home was?

  Phillip leaned close to me and whispered words in my ear that I didn’t understand. It wasn’t Spanish.

  “What did you say?” I asked as he leaned back.

  “It’s a spell that I hope works. You’ll remember me next time. You’ll remember everything we talk about when I see you again,” he replied.

  I didn’t respond. I didn’t know exactly what to say. I was sitting in a vacant park, at night, with a handsome but incredibly odd stranger, weird things kept happening, and I seemed to be the only one concerned about them.

  “I’m so confused.” I replied.

  A soft smile crossed his lips. “I know and I’m sorry. I know you so well now and you still look at me like a stranger.”

  “I wish I could remember you. You seem like someone I’d really like to get to know.” I leaned towards him. “Maybe inside, where it’s safe? Then you can tell me what the hell is going on.”

  He sighed and looked around into the darkness of the park. “It’s not safe anywhere. They want the gifts you have…”

  I frowned. “Who’s ‘they?’ What gifts?”

  He looked up at the sky again and I followed suit. There were no stars out but the moon was full, giving some light to accompany the street lamps. “I thought I’d get through it but it’s not happening.”

  “Phillip, I have no idea what you are talking about.” I touched his shoulder. “You gotta help me here.”

  He looked down at me. “You’ll die if you stay where you are. You have to find a way to get out. And when you do, don’t go alone. Never be alone. When you see the others, bring them with you.”

  Before I could ask him further questions, the streetlights flickered and I heard an unsettling flapping of large wings from above. For me to hear the wings flapping I knew it was something larger than a bird but what? I looked up at the sky, searching, and saw nothing but the moon. A loud bird’s screech thundered in my ears. I jumped up and turned around, looking into the darkness.

  Phillip remained still.

  “What the hell was that?” I yelled at him as if he had the answers.

  Phillip stood up and sighed. “They’re coming. I gave you some help. When you can, run.”

  I stopped searching around for the invisible bird thing and looked back at him. “What help? Run where?”

  “To me.” His brown eyes softened as he said that and I was touched with an emotion I couldn’t place.

  I grabbed his hands. “We need to get inside; something’s out here. There’s a bar across the street where we can talk.”

  “I have to go, Amina.” He brought my right hand up to his lips and kissed it softly. “And you have to wake up.”

  “Wake up? Huh? Where are you going?”

  The roar came again, along with the bird screech.

  This was too much. “The hell!” I shouted in frustration. “We gotta get out of here!” I yanked at his hand but he didn’t budge. “Come on, Phillip. I don’t want to stick around to find out whatever is making those noises.”

  “I’m near D.C. in—”

  My eyes opened to a dark room. I heard footsteps circling around me.

  “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty,” said a female voice. Curtains were pulled and sunlight spread through the room.

  I squinted, closing one eye against the bright rays.

  My eyes still had a thin glaze of sleep over them and I blinked it away to see my surroundings clearer.

  “Did you sleep well?” The mystery voice asked.

  I looked around the pale green room, filled with generic light wooden furniture. I was on a full-sized hospital bed under white sheets. Across from the foot of the bed was a small, flat-screened TV mounted to the wall. Off to the left of the TV was a door cracked open, revealing a bit of tiled floor. It was probably a bathroom. I turned my head to the window on my right. It was a bright sunny day. I could see tops of vivid green trees, so I knew I was a couple of floors up in a building.

  “How do you feel?” said the voice, coming now from my left.

  I turned my head and found a woman standing in front of me; she was white and in her early 50s with graying red hair and bright green eyes, with laugh lines at the corners giving away her regular pleasant disposition. I knew her all too well.

  Joanie.

  She was checking what I assumed were my vitals on a machine next to me. She then looked at the IV bag hanging off a hook; my right arm was stuck with the attached needle.

  I opened my mouth to speak, lips dry and cracked. My throat felt like it was on fire and my head felt like someone kept flicking me with their fingers in the middle of my forehead. “Like crap,” I croaked.

  “Let me get you some water, honey,” she said, and poured me a glass of water from a pitcher on the side table. “If I had some sliced lemon that’d be even better.”

  I sat up slowly, still feeling weak, and took the glass. “That’d give this place a real spa-like feel,” I replied, through sips of water.

  Joanie scoffed. “Hardly.” She sighed and put her hands on her slender hips. “Hopefully they leave you alone today. You need to get your strength back.”

  I rolled my eyes. “For what, them to come back again the next day? I’d be better with them just finishing me off.”

  Joanie sucked her teeth. “Don’t you talk like that, honey. There’s always a better day coming. And you’ve got your brother here. You aren’t alone.”

  They want the gifts you have.

  Why had that popped in my head just now?

  Suddenly, images of a handsome black man with kind eyes popped into my mind.

  Phillip.

  It was all a dream. One that I finally remembered.

  “Feel up to going to breakfast? I can get a wheelchair if you need help. I think it would do you some good to get out of this room. See folk. See Charles.”

  I gave a deep sigh and tossed the sheets aside. I swung my sock-covered feet to the side of the bed, scooted to the edge and stood up. My legs buckled but I leaned onto my IV pole and waited until I had my balance again.

  “You need the wheelchair, darlin’?” Joanie asked, holding me up by the right arm.

  I quickly shook my head.

  When you can, run.

  I needed my legs. “Just need to fully wake up.”

  Joanie nodded. “Take a shower, get dressed. Then we can walk over to the cafeteria. I’ll be waiting outside.”

  “Thanks.”

  When you can, run.

  I needed my energy. I was breaking out of here.

  Chapter 2

  The world had changed a great deal in the past nine years. One day I was a regular first year law student, and the next the supernatural just popped up. Our strange, new world brought with it nightmarish beings and changed a good portion of the human population into something different. We’d learned several theories about the supernatural and why many humans, like myself, were changed. Some unlucky souls transformed into monsters; leading many to believe that creatures such as vampires and werewolves had never been fiction but long-forgotten or hidden tal
es of history.

  The most popular theory was that we had a special latent gene that was turned on when the supernatural came to life. Some people believed that we always possessed our powers but they were suppressed by a spell that was then broken. Others thought we were exposed to something that made us change. Still more believed we were tested on unknowingly or given a bad vaccine at some point in our lives. It all just seemed like ideas one might read in the origin story of a comic book superhero. I, however, was less concerned with the how and more concerned with the why and the what.

  Why now? What set it all off?

  The supernatural popping up, in what I would soon learn to be a global event, was just the start of the horrors.

  Electricity and technology went on the fritz and would only work again through magic.

  Then there was the Sickness, as we called it. This disease came upon us at the same time as the supernatural and, although not airborne, did not take long to infect and kill the human host. It disguised itself as flu-like symptoms but very quickly progressed to something worse, resulting in bleeding from the eyes, nose, mouth and ears; organ failure; blindness; dementia; and hearing loss. The Sickness came fast and hard and there was no doubt that it was related to the supernatural event and possibly supernatural itself.

  We always thought it would be the supernatural creatures that would end the world with nightmarish monsters and dark spells. However, the Sickness is what killed, in what reports would say years later, almost fifty percent of our world population. It only affected humans without supernatural gifts and nine years later, non-gifted humans made up only a little over thirty percent of our overall, decimated population.

  I had been lucky in this new world, for the most part, regarding my safety. Having magic helped. Charles, who was gifted with magic over technology, became a treasure. He got electricity to work and the internet to start. I was a friend of social media and my smart phone, long before the world changed and now it was the only source of learning about what was happening to our world and how to adapt. I found websites about witchcraft and practiced my own magic. Some years into the new world, I even met a woman who practiced witchcraft long before the world accepted such magic. She became my teacher until her death from a naturally occurring heart attack.

  While I hadn’t thought I was invincible—my teacher’s death reminded me of that—I’d thought I was safe. Until about six or seven months ago, when my brother and I had been driving down a road from a trade. We’d made the fateful decision to stop and help a group of regular humans from becoming a meal for what I can only describe as a giant dog. My senses went off, but I was still learning about my gifts and what they’d meant. Although we saved the day, we’d been far from rewarded. Next thing we knew, we were being jumped by tons of other people in what we first assumed were abandoned cars. We were drugged and locked up in this place full of magical misfits.

  I had been trapped in this hospital for over six months, I think. Time was hard to track here. Our days became monotonous. The building was more of a prison than a place of healing. Our daily routine made us weaker, not better. Wake up, eat, labor, give blood, rest. Rinse and repeat. Honestly, I was surprised to still be alive.

  I stood at the perimeter of the hospital cafeteria dining space, holding a tray of unappetizing looking oatmeal and a cup of tea, searching for Charles.

  “Mina! Over here!” Charles yelled from my left, waving a hand in the air. He had a smile on his face.

  Why did he look so damn happy? How could he have so much joy?

  I walked over to the circular table and sat down next to my brother. Two other prisoners that Charles and I befriended were seated at the table; a man named Jared Hightower and a woman named Chelsea King.

  “I’m telling you, Jared,” Charles began, “When I get out of here I’m going to make an interactive magic teaching computer game. I can probably even make it holographic and have A.I. That’s the next wave. We’re about nine years in, it’s time for people to have fun again.”

  “If we get out of here, I’ll help you with marketing,” Jared snorted.

  Charles frowned. “You think this is a pipe dream, don’t you?”

  “Any plans that don’t involve killing the fuckers that run this place seem like pipe dreams to me,” Jared replied, waving his spoon in the air.

  I shook my head. “You have to have hope, or else what’s the point?” I stated.

  Charles pointed at me. “See, she gets it. How you feeling, sis?” Charles asked, his smile turning to a look of worry.

  “Alive,” I muttered before putting a spoonful of oatmeal in my mouth. My throat still felt raw, mouth dry, and the food went down hard; trapped in my throat. I sipped on my tea to help it down. The liquid felt soothing and somehow calmed me. Tea had become a special treat nowadays. It gave a sense of normalcy.

  “Well, I feel half dead,” Jared stated. He gave a loud yawn, squinting his dark-brown eyes. He was white with tanned skin, long blond hair and a toned physique that supported his prior job as a Raven’s football player in the Pre-world, what we called the time before magic. He looked twenty-something but he said he was 35 years old. It made sense. Those who gained paranormal abilities aged differently. Once we hit our mid- twenties, our aging slowed dramatically.

  “Yesterday, they nearly killed me,” Jared continued. “I had to get a healer. We have to figure out a way to kill them.”

  Jared always talked about killing them. We tried to hush him up with that talk but he wasn’t scared and he was still alive so we just let him go on.

  “We can’t win against them,” Chelsea said, looking down at her food. She was a petite woman appearing to be in her twenties with long, thick, strawberry-blond hair and hazel eyes. “I haven’t had a clear thought in almost a year. My powers feel like they’ve just up and gone. I was in college in the Pre-world and I can barely remember a thing I learned.”

  Our captors were humans, we were now…other. What we were, the normal humans wanted to be and they had found a way to use us to enhance themselves, while keeping our powers turned off.

  I’d seen people die, being experimented on and broken here.

  “We’re getting out,” I said matter-of-factly, staring down at my cardboard-tasting oatmeal.

  “Dream up an escape plan?” Charles asked, an amused look on his face.

  I shook my head. “At the right time, we’re just going to walk out of here.”

  “Well, if it were that easy we’d be free by now,” Jared began. “Our kind helped these assholes keep us in. Made up the damn drugs to mute our powers. And for what? To get better food, clothes? Who gives a fuck!”

  Chelsea winced.

  I shrugged. I felt a sense of calm I couldn’t explain. I really had no plan but I knew that we were getting out of here. Because of a dream? I couldn’t help but wonder if I was losing my mind. If my being here all this time had finally broken me.

  “Look at Sam,” Jared said, shaking his head.

  We looked over a few tables and saw a man who, in the Pre-world, was probably in his early 50s but in this new world looked like he was twenty years older. His hair, long and disheveled, had gone gray before our eyes. He was thin, with lifeless green eyes, and a full beard. His skin was ashen and pale. He looked like a sick Santa Clause. Sam sat, slowly eating oatmeal; lifting the spoon as if it were a heavy dumbbell.

  “He’s not going to make it much longer,” Charles surmised.

  “Right,” Jared stated. “So, what’s the point of playing it safe? We die now or we die later.”

  “Some of us aren’t running to death that easily,” Chelsea said with a bit of anger in her voice. Anger was something I rarely saw from her. “Some of us have hope that things will get better. That we will be rescued. We just have to keep living.”

  I smiled and patted her hand. “And that’s what I plan for us to do.” When I figured out a plan.

  After breakfast, I wandered over to the garden area. The grounds were full o
f flowers and vegetables that we, the prisoners, put there and kept up. Our main job was to keep the facility going. Farming, tending to the cattle, cleaning, cooking, keeping the power functioning with our magic.

  I’d never had a green thumb before, but in this new world my job was growing vegetables, fruits, and herbs. I got on my knees and checked on several spices of oregano, rosemary, and thyme.

  I felt him coming towards me before he showed up. I always did. My skin tingled and I had a queasiness in the pit of my stomach.

  “Amina, you look well,” he said. His voice was deep and when he spoke it felt as if my bones rattled in my body from the vibration.

  I cringed and looked up at him. He had become my nightmare realized. His name was David Everett. He ran the hospital/prison. I wasn’t sure if he had any unseen bosses but visually he was it to all of us prisoners.

  David was in his mid to late 30s, fit and tall, maybe 6’4, with short, dirty-blond hair, and blue eyes so pale they looked almost clear around the black pupils. He had a strong jaw with thin lips and a narrow nose. In another life, one might have found him attractive. However, he wasn’t my type. In the Pre-world I imagined he was a yuppie prick who worked on Wall Street and had an easy life. It seemed a bit unfair that in this new world he would still be winning.

  I didn’t speak and continued to tend to the garden.

  He knelt beside me and my stomach clinched.

  “Glad to see you’ve recovered.”

  I scooted away. “I don’t want to have a conversation with you. We aren’t friends. You aren’t my boss. We don’t need small talk.”

  “Amina, I’m sad you feel that way.”

  I faced him, frowning. “Cut the bullshit. I’ve been trapped here for six months. At no point was I ever confused that I was here on some extended vacation. You kidnapped me and my brother and all these people—”

  “You’re not people,” David said, his voice tight with anger, eyes growing colder.

  I balled my fist, holding in my own anger. “You hate us but you want to be us.”