Pestilence Plagues | ONC 2021

07 | Family Drama

"Everybody doing alright?" Ellen interrupted the uncomfortable silence once we were some distance away from the motel. The rest of the trip to the car and out of town was less eventful than the supposed five minutes walk from the motel room to the car. Ellen squinted into the rear mirror in an attempt to gauge the expressions of the boys in the backseat.

"Yeah," we chorused half-heartedly. It's been a very long and frightening night. I could feel the soreness in my muscles as the adrenaline began wearing off. My hands trembled slightly as the echoes of guns clicking and images of the gun barrels aimed at me replayed itself.

"What happened?" Lukas asked with a slight touch of aggression, his eyes glaring into mine from the rear view mirror. He was seated directly behind the driver's seat, behind Ellen. I straightened up and explained my perspective of the events leading up till this point in a calm, cool and objective manner.

"Actually, where did you go?" Ellen raised an eyebrow at Jelani, who was seated in the centre of the back row, a curious yet accusatory look on her face, as she leant forwards slightly in her driver's seat.

"And how did you know they were coming?" Lukas added onto Ellen's question, his eyes held a look of disbelief. Jelani looked a little pale, with beads of sweat forming along his forehead as he slouched forward. He glanced around furtively. His mouth opened and closed yet no words came out.

"Jelani, we just want to understand what happened. We aren't accusing you of anything." I shot the two older teens a scolding look. They were unnecessarily stressing the poor kid out. When I noticed that there weren't any changes in their aggressive posture, I met their gazes individually with a very stern face.

With a sigh, Ellen leaned back comfortably into her driving seat, an apologetic smile on her lips, as she turned her attention back to the road. Lukas reluctantly grunted in agreement and turned to stare out of the window and into the night. That was more like it.

"I couldn't sleep. You see, my abilities allow me to read the minds of others and—"

"You can what?!" Lukas whipped his head around rapidly, an alarmed look on his face, mirroring the panicked expressions of everyone else's. My heart raced at the thought of my deepest secrets being unravelled.

"Uh but I can't read yours!" Jelani hurriedly corrected. Relieved sighs came from all of us. "Mutants have this sort of uh mental barrier that doesn't allow me to pass. Humans don't have that."

"There were a lot of hateful and uh violent thoughts coming from them throughout the night and I couldn't shut them out. So, I uh took a walk. That's when I heard a lot of them think about some Mutant Extinction Movement and their excitement over being able to finally kill a mutant and then I came back..." Jelani trailed off. He glanced at me with a look of uncertainty as the rest of us processed the newfound information.

"But how did they know we were mutants, we were careful in—" Ellen was interrupted by a raise of Jelani's hand. His index finger trembled slightly as he lifted it to point towards something. My breath hitched once my line of sight coincided with the direction of Jelani's finger.

"You!" In a split second, Lukas had leapt up from his seat, over Jelani and onto Thomas. His nostrils flared, his skin flushed and his knuckles white from clenching the collar of Thomas' pullover—the navy blue one with a huge school logo plastered on the front of it, and its name in the largest font possible on the back. Lovely.

Ellen craned her neck, shifting about her seat as if looking for something. "Hayley, I can't drive if I can't see the rear of the car," Ellen stated steadily. I glanced into the rear view mirror, and sure enough Lukas was blocking the whole back window.