Alone in a Busy World

Chapter Seven

The memories flood my brain so fast and yet I feel like I'm reliving my whole life in slow motion. I see my previous dream rush past and suddenly I'm staring at the next scene in this awful play.

I've locked eyes on a still sleeping me but I become conscious of the memories in my young brain. I suddenly despise the woman who's meant to be my mother. I can't even describe the feelings I have for my father. He's the one in charge of all my experiments. I was genetically changed before I was born. They gave me genes for wings and enhanced my senses. I know they tried to make me able to transform into a wolf but that was a foolish experiment that had more chances of killing me.

I have a twin brother, sensitive and funny. Albert. They experimented on him just as much. Al actually could turn into a wolf, but they controlled him, it drained his strength too much. It nearly killed him each time they made him transform.

I remember running away with Al when I could, anything to get away from them. We would fly to the top of the skyscraper that was a lab but doubled up as our home. We would watch the world go by and Al would joke around, we would read or just sit in silence with each other. I see us both running down the side of the scraper with our wings beating frantically at the last second to stop us from flattening out on the pavement. His dirty blonde hair contrasted mine but other than that we were both the same. His brown eyes shone with playfulness and it was impossible to be sad whilst he was there.

Then I'm back in the lab, Al's not there. I keep asking where he is, they just tell me they've moved him to another lab. I try to probe with my mind, but on contact my father lashes out. My lip splits and I stumble back. He thinks I'll leave it there but I launch forward and send both my fists flying into his face. I feel the crunch under my knuckles and the yelp that escapes him as he falls, his head bashes the wall and he lies on the floor. He's unconscious.

Hands grab me and I'm being dragged into the sedation room. All I can do is stare at the fallen body of my father with a silent cheer in my mind. I don't feel joyful though. They took Al. My Al. I'm trying to thrash out but I'm restrained by too many hands. I scream for Al and my throat becomes raw, I carry on calling out. I need Al. The only person in the world who ever understood me, and now he's gone. I don't know if he's in trouble but if he is I can't help him.

I'm looking down at an unconscious me, they're wiping my memory. It's been a few years since Al's disappearance and I've refused to do anything they want since. My eye is bruised and I have a scar over my lip where my father has punched me and it's repeatedly split. They're putting some sort of gas into my brain to cloud out the memories. They'll be keeping a track on the gas, for the safety of their lab if it starts failing then my father will intervene with his powerful mind.

As they take me from the operating room to place me in a black box, my mother is weeping. Then I hear her mutter a few words:

Al's gone, now him. Why?

That's when I feel a bit of sympathy for the woman. My father probably forced her into agreeing to the experiments. Those words though. They're gonna haunt me now.

I can't follow as they place me in the box, for some reason my unconscious mind is wandering. It goes out the building and I follow it to the little park nearby. It plunges into darkness as it enters the little forest. The light creeps through the branches and in the middle of the forest I see a mound of earth just under the biggest tree there. My unconscious mind has flown on; I never knew I would have flown past such a spot, so oblivious to the meaning of it.

I don't want to go and look but my mind pulls me. In the bark of the tree is carved some words. Through my already tearing eyes I just about make out the words:

ALBERT JOHNSON died aged 14 in 2004. Experiment no. 1. A failed experiment.

Not so much as a kind word about him. He wasn't an experiment, he was my brother. My lovely brother. Unlike all of them, he had a heart. I don't know how but my sleeping presence scratches some words underneath:

Not a failed experiment, a loving twin brother to Leonardo Johnson. Al's death will be revenged; I'M COMING FOR YOU MURDERERS, YOU WILL SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES. (Note from Leonardo Johnson).

I won't kill my parents; I just won't save them when they need me to. I'll watch those responsible suffer the pain they put Al and me through. I'll find out the story of my mother I'll spare her if she is innocent.

As my conscience flies back from my memories, as I fly through the dark tunnel of sleep back to the present, I cry for my lost brother. Before I'm completely gone I feel the fleeting presence of Al, like he's still alive; I'm probably imagining it. I put all my energy into crying for my lost family. I never had a good father and my mother wasn't there when I needed her. The only true family I had was Al, and they killed him, they took him away from me, they enslaved him and made me watch him slowly die and didn't let me say goodbye.