Obscuria

Remembering

(Emilio)

Dinner with my family today is a much busier occasion than on most other days. Dad and Beatrix keep constantly asking me questions about all the things I've learnt about Misty and what she is and whatever she does. I've had to do extra studies over the past few days, just to make sure that everything is adding up and I'm not being fooled like Dad once was. The studies have drained me of all remaining energy, but at least they've kept my mind in check.

Yet still, I block out most of the conversation they're having. Only because it hurts to listen.

The meal that lies on the table in front of me is a jacket potato with beans. I haven't eaten much of it. I don't know why: I like the taste enough, but there's just something about it that unsettles me. Makes me shiver. I think I had it the day I threw my toys at the old mirror for reasons unknown.

"So, Emilio," Dad says to me randomly. "What are some common misconceptions about werewolves?"

I should have seen that coming. Every few days, these people give me a pop quiz about magick. Thanks to my studies, I've only ever got one question wrong, but it wasn't that I didn't know the correct answer - I was just being a delinquent.

"Well, first of all, it's believed that when werewolves transform, they walk on two legs," I drone, quoting the black magick textbook almost verbatim. "In fact, they walk on all fours. Another misconception is that they're indistinguishable from real wolves. Werewolves' eyes are often unnatural colours, allowing us to tell the difference between a werewolf and a true wolf."

"Well done," Beatrix says kindly. "We've been teaching you well."

"Anything to protect you from werewolves, son," chuckles Dad. "After all, we almost lost you a few years back, didn't we?"

I giggle disingenuously and look down at my meal.

When Dad mentioned almost losing me a few years back, he doesn't mean that I almost died. I know that instantly. It would have been much worse than that. He's talking about the time when I was ten, when I was attacked by a werewolf on the same night that my friends passed. I was bitten with full force, but I fought, and I managed to escape. I tried to hide the bite for so many days, hoping that the Halloween ceremony would cleanse me of anything evil the werewolf had given me. After all, becoming a witherer is the only fate worse than death. But the Halloween ceremony was months away: it was only February at the time. So I had to confess to being bitten. Beatrix refused to fix me up, instead locking me in my room for two weeks until the full moon had passed. Words couldn't describe my gratitude when, on the night of the full moon, I didn't transform. I hadn't been turned. But that didn't make any sense, because surely any and all werewolf bites were enough to induce transformations, right?

Beatrix cleared that up a couple of days later, when people had started to ask questions about me. She informed us that whether or not a bite victim turned depended on the strength of the bite. It just made sense. I wasn't bitten with full force after all.

I take my first actual mouthful of jacket potato. It still has a hint of warmth to it, although it's mostly cooled down. I don't like it too warm anyway. However, as I chew, it starts to make me feel sick. I try to convince myself that I don't know why, but there's no denying that I do. The taste is bringing back memories that I've long forgotten.

Sometimes I worry that Beatrix uses certain tastes and smells to send a message. After all, any time I have to do something important, or there's a lot of pressure on me, she always brings in something - often a scented candle or a meal - that brings back exactly the right memories, and it's almost creepy how she gets it spot on every time. Other times I worry that I'm just being paranoid and reading too much into her perfect behaviour.

I excuse myself early.

"Going already?" Dad asks dismally.

"Yeah," I say blankly.

"Emilio, you barely touched your jacket potato," comments Beatrix. "Are you feeling alright?" Her smile and tone of voice are so sweet and grandmotherly that it sends a wave of remorse through my whole body. I'm just unable to say no to her.

"I'm okay," I tell her, unsure of whether or not I'm lying and cursing myself if I am.

She looks at me for a second before saying: "Well, you really ought to eat the rest of your food, young man. You won't be able to do your work if you barely eat."

I'm frozen in my place, unsure of what to do, what to say. I need to tell her I'm feeling sick, but it feels dangerous for some reason, like I'm exploring uncharted territory.

"Yes, Beatrix," I say eventually.

I spend the next ten minutes trying to force-feed myself the rest of my food, before Beatrix pats me on the head and tells me what a good boy I am. She lets me go back upstairs to my room - but I head straight for the bathroom, where I puke up all the nausea that the meal induced. This sounds insane, but I think I feel worse after throwing up than before. Beatrix made me that meal out of the kindness of her heart and here I am, being sick. I'm a horrible grandson.

*

Tonight, I sleep in my cold, cavernous bedroom, which was stripped bare of all the metal band posters after they were deemed Satanic by the coven. I sent a text to Raine beforehand that I would be doing my studies all day tomorrow, not that I want to at all, but at this point it's just what's expected of me. I know we have an image to keep up among the supernatural community: to present ourselves as an innocent little coven who only care about saving others from the cult that lies within magick. Too many people fall into that cult nowadays. But I don't know how to feel anymore. I haven't been told.

My new mirror stands up next to my bed, its frame green; genuine. And in the slightly-less-cold protection of my bed, I stare into it, hoping that the boy staring back at me was born into a better dimension; a better life. How long I've yearned for real friends. I know I've been pushing it down for so many years, but these days, it's getting so hard to ignore.

The new mirror even helps me recall what happened to the old one: shattered into a million shiny shards by my own destructive hands - and this memory has long been buried at the back of my psyche, but now the vision is starting to surface after seven years: the reason I was so destructive that day. I remember what happened now. I remember what made me question everything.

Not knowing what to do, I fall asleep humming the lullaby for the fourth night in a row. No one can know the horrific thing that happened, not even me. I don't know how much time I have left. I'm slipping, slipping down the slope. And my family are the only ones who can save me.