Turning into a bear had never been on Marcus Bay's bucket list.
And when a series of (rather unusual) events leave him trapped in the body of a teddy bear, he has no option but to give his everything in order to turn back hum...
Getting away from mom's and dad's questions hadn't been easy yesterday, but a fabricated fever and headache seemed to do the trick. The time in bed gave me a lot of time to think.
I'd never told anyone, but I'd always been suspicious of dad's sudden arrival in our lives.
Sure, he said he wanted to be there for me, but there was no way I could believe him.
He'd said he loved all of us. That he loved mom and would never leave us. Divorce? That was something our perfect family would never have to worry about.
And yet, he'd left us very next day. The divorce papers had followed his departure.
Now he was back, promising us the same fairytale he'd turned into a nightmare earlier. The perfect family. But I wasn't having any of it. I wouldn't give him the pen to write our story. He didn't deserve that power.
I was determined on finding his reasons. On exposing him.
Mom seemed too taken with him to be of any help. Ellie, well, Ellie was too closed off to even talk to me now. Sometimes- just sometimes, I wished I was the bear again. Maybe she would talk to me that way?
Lily was my only hope. But when the only friend (or Ex-girlfriend) you have is all the way in a small town in east Asia, you tend to take up a solo mission.
And that was how I found myself ransacking dad's belongings for a clue that would help me figure out his true intentions.
Becoming a detective or a spy had been a dream since the seven-year-old me had accidently clicked on the premiere of a James Bond film. I owed all my stealth to the re-runs of the numerous movies that followed soon after. I would never be caught red-handed so long I had my inner Bond.
Another contributory factor to not getting caught could have been the fact that the house was empty.
I was the only one in the house.
Let me rephrase that, I was the only human at home. Mae was following me around like the lost puppy she was. I must confess, I may have taken my revenge for tearing my nose off earlier, in a harsher way than normally accepted. In my defense, having my nose torn off had been the single most frightening experience of my life.
I didn't feed her for a day. All she had was water.
But, hey! She survived, didn't she?
Coming back to the topic at hand, I was ransacking through his possessions when I found a box of tapes organized in the order of the alphabet.
The house was still empty and my mind was full, so I decided to watch the first tape.
I wish I hadn't.
The tape started off with an audio clip of my father stating the date and time. Details of which I'm unable to recollect at the moment.
The video showed the interior of a hospital. Judging from the movement and the lighting, a person seemed to be carrying the recorder inside his coat. I think it is safe to assume the man was dad. A receptionist sat at the desk, busy answering calls when dad cut into her conversation and asked for the directions to a certain ward.
She passed a slight smile to dad, put the receiver down and gave the directions. The voice quality was bad and I was unable to hear the number of the ward he was looking for.
The video then cut into a clipping showing a pale boy, dressed in the hospital gown, violently convulsing as nurses and doctors rushed around.
The boy's eyes were closed and his mouth moving in a silent prayer. Before I could focus on the distorted image of the boy, the screen had turned black.
Then dad's voice floated out of the speakers.
"Marcus," he said.
That's when realization hit me.
The boy had been me.
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