Deep Down

11

Song: He Is- Ghost B.C.

--

I'm peering down at Myana, who's fast asleep in my bed. I don't bother to wake her as I tiptoe around her to lay a kiss on her tiny cheek. I leave the room with the door shut behind me.

I know not to make noise as my parents and Amon all sleep just mere metres away from me in their separate rooms. I don't doubt my mother will be mad at me me for staying out late tonight. If only she knew the punishment I already got for doing so.

My hands rub at the spot from my hip bones to my collar bone, where the claws were so greedily embedded an hour earlier. There is nothing there but soft skin underneath Garners black shirt. In the bathroom I wash my face, trying to do something with any semblance to normalcy. The crease lines between my eyebrows are still there, and I now look perpetually mad. I scowl at my reflection and then lift the shirt to examine my front. As I suspected there isn't even a scar. When my eyes travel up to examine the entirety of my collarbone, I notice it. In the spot that Slade bit me, lays not a bite mark but instead an intricate design of looping, curved shapes, all facing outward in a sort of star figure. It looks like it could have been tattooed onto my neck had the colour not been the same as a birthmark. I gasp as my eyes run over its surface, not understanding how in hell a thing like this could have come from his teeth. It makes me sick to my stomach to think of the magic that Slade possesses, the magic he dangerously used on me in order to heal my wounds.

After one last glance at the sickly mark on my flesh, I pull a facecloth out of the drawer and run it under the water. I press it to the mark on my neck and start scrubbing. I rub at my skin until I'm sure it's bleeding, and finally when the pain feels unbearable do I remove it. My skin is raw and red, but I can still make out the mark's etching in my skin even now. I close my eyes against the dizziness that fights me.

When I finally leave the bathroom and tiptoe my way downstairs, I fall onto the couch in the basement, dreary and blank minded. The thick blanket I wrap around myself is scratchy and smells like shit. I don't mind though, for I've already started to drift off. Stories of wolves and mutants and one Alpha; the first born son, are repeating themselves over and over in my head. If I wrote everything down right now I'm sure I could make a bestseller out of the history that Garner and his parents told me.

The eyes of the beast haunt me as I try to sleep, the eyes as old as a millenium who stared me down in the kitchen an hour ago. I think of its gaping jaw and giant claws, of how it can stand up on two legs and still be almost as tall as the ceiling.

Needless to say, I don't sleep well that night.

--

The next Monday I don't go to school. I don't even come out of my room, only bidding Myana a small farewell as she hurried off to school before crashing into my tiny bed.

Three days later, and I'm still faking sick. I tell my mom that my ankle, despite being healed for weeks now, has started acting up. And that I've got a fever to top it all off. She's too stressed about her new job at Val's diner to notice that I'm faking it. Amon and Gran are always home with me, but I manage to avoid them by literally being asleep all the time. I couldn't tell you how, because even though my body feels stronger and more able than ever, my mind is tired and I can't bear it to stay awake and try to sort through my thoughts. I'm not sure if it's just the history of mutants plaguing me or the actual magic that Slade used.

When I come down for food, my Gran gives me these looks. Like she knows that I'm lying and exactly what I am lying about. I get the sense that she knows of more than she's letting on, considering she's lived in this town all her senior life. I'm not sure my mother knows, not sure if she cared enough to figure it out considering she up and left her home at the age of seventeen for an early admission to Yale. I don't dare ask Gran though, for fear that she doesn't know and I would reveal their whole secret to her.