Only a Game (Olympus Drive Chronicles)

Chapter 23: Teddy

Azela

Refreshing my phone isn't doing anything. I know he'd text. It's not like him not to answer. He'd answer if he could. But he said he would be off his phone for a while. But it's been a while. It's been all day and night. He has to get some sort of break, doesn't he? This isn't like Teddy. What if something awful happened? What am I supposed to do? Just wait? I have to do something. But I called the people who are putting on this stupid contest. They didn't answer of course. They don't care.

But he's my baby. Mine. Ours. He couldn't have a child, my husband. That's the part of the story we don't tell Teddy. That his father is infertile. So I had to have some other man, in order to have a child. We thought it would be easy. It wouldn't matter. But Teddy's different. It's like it burns in him, that strange light I saw in his sire's eyes. That cold night on a cold beach. Waves crashing my ears.

That crashing that never stopped. It grew inside my stomach. Thick, rhythmic crashing like waves upon a beach. Twisting inside me until I was sure the child I was carrying wasn't even passably human. That whatever was quick inside my belly got thick with some other creature of the dark water. Not a real child.

But Teddy is, passably, human. He doesn't know it himself. He doesn't see the depths of his own eyes, that brown over shadowed by some haunted green. Like he doesn't know the strange way he has about him. That humans know to rightly fear. That's why he doesn't leave the house much, I think. They all know he's different. That he doesn't belong. That he has some power inside him they're all afraid of without even knowing its name.

That's why I can't shake it from my mind that they've taken him.

I did everything I could. I never told him how strange his real father was. I taught him to be like everyone else. Raised him like the human he's meant to be. We were doing well. But I was always afraid something else would see it. And come for him.

"Why is it you're calling me?"

"I'm worried, about Teddy--- something---I think something may have happened to him," I say, as I step out into the garden. My husband doesn't need to hear this.

"And? Why?" very annoyed, there's noise in the background then it ceases as though he too stepped outside.

"He went to enter this contest---some sort of gaming contest? I don't know and I haven't heard from him," and he's your son too and I had to call someone. I needed to talk to someone.

"So?" sounding like he's put me on speaker so he can scroll on his phone and ignore the conversation.

"So it's not like him to not talk to me! He's sixteen ---he's a minor, and when I called the place all they said was that he'd signed that he wouldn't have any contact," I say.

"So? What do you want me to do?"

"I don't know---check on him?"

"I'm sure he's fine. I have a life. Don't call me again."

Beep.

I stare at the phone, tears running down my face. I know he's not fine. I know it.