Some Kind Of Monster (Loki Fanfiction)

Chapter 3 - Swing Bench

            My eyes were greeted with a darkness that could only be possible at three a.m.  The nightmare that had taken refuge in the sick confines on my brain replayed themselves like broken records.  The kind of darkness I lied in was almost palpable; I inhaled it, suffocating myself.  I felt asphyxiated with the silence.

            Attempting to untangle myself from the blankets, they began to smother me.  Air!  My mind screamed.  Finally the blankets let go of me and I hurled myself to my feet, the coldness suddenly immobilizing me.  Once I regained composure, I flung my body across my room to where I thought my door was.  Slamming my face into the wood, my senses ignited, my mind reeling.  Yanking my door open, I ran down the short hallway and into the livingroom.  Barely recognizing the front door, I sprinted to the handle.  Wrenching it open, the shock of the cold burned my skin.  Running outside and down the cobbled sidewalk, I ran into the snow-covered driveway.  Abruptly comprehending where I was, I breathed deeply, my breath very visible in the wee-early morning air.  The street light next to our house flickered on, illuminated the driveway, our pathway, and the miniature lawn. 

            The bottoms of my pajama pants were beginning to become damp from the snow and my feet began to ache from the intense cold.  I quickly strode over to the arbitrary swing bench that sat unused for years under the giant oak tree that had been in our yard for at least fifty years.  That’s what Mr. Chapman, our ninety-something year old neighbor said to us when we first moved in around four years ago.  Hastily brushing off any snow with the sleeve of my long sleeve shirt, I sat down, the wood creaking precariously beneath me.  It swung slightly, the old rusted metal suddenly upset from lying dormant for so many years.

            Snow came in flurries from the sky, obscuring Gardnerville in a white blanket.  I tucked my knees in to my chest, my toes hanging off the edge of the bench.  Inhaling and exhaling, my breath swirled around me like smoke from a pipe.  Images from my nightmare flashed in my mind’s eye, torturing me.  I wanted a way out, an exodus from the eternal loop of horror; disturbing dimension holes, spinning with black and white and disconcerting faces, and cartoon animals with severely out of proportioned limbs that chase me through an everlasting street.

            Suddenly realizing I was no longer in the human image I took on, my skin glowed an eerie blue, the long white hair that shouldn’t belong to me hanging over my shoulders.  The fact that the appearance I held vanished while I slept had slipped my mind.  As I sat there in the silence of my neighborhood, violent shivers shook me.  Guessing it was around twenty degrees outside, I wrapped my arms around my legs tighter.  “Ophelia.”

            My head spun around to find Loki in the threshold of the front door.  He wore the same shirt from earlier but plaid pajama pants.  Sighing, my breath creating a diminutive whirl of carbon dioxide around my face, I turned back around.  I heard his footsteps draw nearer.  He sat down on the bench next to me, his green eyes searching my face.  “What?”  I asked.

            “Why are you outside?”  He asked me quietly.

            “Because I can be.”  He didn’t seem satisfied with my answer.  He inclined his eyebrows at me slightly.  I exhaled loudly and said, “Bad dream.”

            “What was it about?” 

            I was already shaking my head.  “See, no.  I don’t want this.  You asking me questions like you know me and I’ll answer your questions like I know you.  No.”

            He seemed to contemplate this for a minute.  “Alright.  Then tell me what your bad dream was about,” he murmured.

            “Why do you care, why do you want to know?  It won’t benefit you,” I snapped.  I was becoming angry for no rhyme or reason. 

            “Do you think I only ask questions for the benefit of myself?”  That question didn’t seem to settle right in my mind.

            Hesitant about answering I said, “Well sort of.”  Loki didn’t ask another question.  He only sat back against the bench, staring out at the blackened street.

            “Why are you here?  I mean, you’re a fucking God, aren’t you?  So why the hell are you on Earth?”  I asked, letting my voice drip with ice cold bitterness that seemed even colder than the air that froze our limbs.  He looked over at me, a kind of emotion in his eyes I couldn’t quite discern.

            He exhaled through his nose, the air noticeable.  “As part of my punishment, I have been cast down to Earth,” he answered simply.

            “For how long?”  He shrugged.  “But of all planets, why this one?”

            “Makes sense to send me to one I tried to destroy.  Odin, the All-Father of Asgard, wants me to study the Midgardian ways and revise the mortals who inhibit the planet,” he explained.  I thought about this, my mind still trying to wrap around the concept of Asgard.

            With no good response, I stayed quiet.  After a couple minutes, I’d come up with a resolve.  “I’ll tell you what my dream was about if you answer this question.”

            Loki seemed at least a bit intrigued.  “Only one?”  I nodded.  “Fire away.”

            I wasn’t sure how to voice the question that had been plaguing me for at least a year now.  “Why?  Why did you…do all that?  To New York?  To Earth?  Why us, humans?  What did we do you that made you so angry?”

            “That’s not one question,” he whispered.

            “Yes it is.  I’m asking why,” I defended myself.

            “Yes, but then after that you asked what you did.”

            “Fine.  Then answer the first one,” I said.  Biting my lip to keep from chattering my teeth, I interlocked my fingers.  I watched Loki with a kind of curiosity only a five year old could muster.  He stared down at his pale white hands that were folded in his lap, his eyes unreadable.  I hated that about him; most of the time I had no clue what he was thinking or feeling.

            Yet he still did not reply.  I stared at him, as if trying to rip the response from his mind.  Maybe he was so timorous because of the way I looked?  Seeing as he had first met me when I looked human…maybe my image throws him off?  “Well?”  I said, trying to nudge him into answering.  “Why?”

            “I’m not answering that!”  Loki suddenly shouted at me and stood up.  He stalked back into the house, leaving the front door cracked.  I sighed and sat a moment, contemplating going back to bed.  But with the coldness of outside numbing my fingers and nose, I stood up and ran through the snow-packed lawn to the front door.  Hurrying inside, I shut the door and refused to glance at Loki, who stared at me through the tangible black of my living room.