WICKED REFLEX

Chapter 5: The Watcher and the Listener

  

Ben arose in the middle of the night thirstily smacking his mouth, needing water like air.  He rubbed his eyes and shuffled down the hall towards the kitchen scratching himself as he went.

He heard a low moan... and saw something flash in Samantha's room not two feet in front of him and came to an immediate halt.  He was fully awake now and terrified.  

The house was completely dark and at eleven, he was beyond the time when pitch blackness scared him, but this... This little noise and flash of light was the stuff of a child's nightmares... The sound of an apparition in his sister's room.

Now, he had to pee too.

Samantha.  My sister could be in trouble.

Somehow, he got his feet moving and pushed in her bedroom door.

Samantha lay on her back, the covers a tangle about her feet, her eyes open and seemingly aware.  As she balled up her fists or shivered, flashes of light cast about the room.  Ben stood there mesmerized as the Purple Rain poster on her wall flexed in and out with the wall...seeming to breathe.

He let out a low whine in fear and his eyes watered... 

Sam was doing this somehow...

Her pink cassette player's tape deck popped open.

Ben swallowed and managed to say her name once, with a very small voice,  "...samantha?" 

She turned her head and he could tell that she was looking through him.  She didn't really see him.

The urge to pee and his fear got to be too much and he ran down the steps to the guest bathroom and made use of it.

He flipped on the light in the kitchen and got his water afterward, and then just sat there and listened while watching the little flashes light up the stairs.  What was wrong with his sister?  He knew she had been adopted, and as little as he was... He remembered her strange dazed state when she got here.  The expression on her face while she slept(?) reminded him of that.

Ben sat there at that kitchen island, nursing an empty glass in contemplative terror until the sky outside began to lighten.  He knew his parents would be awake soon... He didn't know what to do.

Then, the light show and the creaking noises of her room's movements stopped.

He slid off the kitchen island chair and crept up the steps.  This time, when he walked by Sam's room and looked in, he observed that Sam was covered in sweat, but completely still.  Everything in her room was still.  He got to his room, threw his blankets over his head, and curled up into a fetal position, but did not get back to sleep.

Ben was unsure what to do.  Later that morning, he stood at Sam's door watching their mom give her comfort. Mom had thought something that happened at school had made her that way, exhaustion brought on by the shock of witnessing her coach's death.  Now though, he wondered if Sam could have had something to do with that. He caught his bus as usual and decided on the ride to school that he'd confront Samantha about it when he got home.

///

The strange sense of unreality followed Sam to school, but she at least felt well-rested.  And somehow lighter. Like a weight had lifted.  Given what Nick had told her of what she'd gone through, no wonder they'd done a shallower version of whatever that was last night to help themselves through it.

Still, Sam spent her classes deeply distracted by what she'd done the night before. 

Harmony met Sam at her locker after lunch.

"Kyle just asked me about you and the burn-out.  I guess word got back to him about you two being cuddled up at the swingset,"

Sam cussed.  "We weren't-" but she knew it was no use.  Gossip was like a game of telephone in this school.  She shook her head. "Doesn't matter. I need to talk to him before he gets hurt."

Speak of the devil and there Kyle was coming down the hall.  Tall, broad-shouldered, built like a line-backer with hazel eyes, dirty blonde curls, and sun-kissed skin.

"Sammie!" he called out ,when he spotted her.

"Kyle." she replied, less than enthused to speak to him.

Harmony made herself scarce.  "I'll see ya' at lunch, girl." she said.

"How you doing these days?  I mean, I know, I screwed up when we were dating.  But, you seem okay about it now.  ...Heard you got with someone new."

Sam blinked once and said nothing in reply.

"-That true?" he finished, flashing a deep and deceptively charming dimple.

"I don't see how it's any of your business if I am, but no.  I'm helping a newbie get adjusted. That's all. So, you and your fellow assholes should leave him alone." 

He laughed in fake astonishment.  "...Is that what you think of me?  That I'm some jerk who'd do that?"

"You do it all the time to those poor Freshmen.- "

"-Yeah, so?  I mean that's tradition.  Nobody's really getting hurt."

"Oh fuck you, Kyle.  You're such a bully.  Leave me and him the hell alone. None of it- None of my life is your concern anymore."

Sam slammed her locker door and walked away from him.

"Sam. -SAM!   Oh, come on.  -I can't believe you're still mad about that, it's been months!"

As Sam disappeared around the corner, Kyle kicked the locker next to him and walked on before other students could show up and witness this drama.

Sam spent the rest of the day distracted, -mentally occupied by the idea of her abilities, by the memories she'd just reclaimed, and by Nick.  Especially Nick.  She minimized him to both Harmony and Kyle, but she felt like he was always there, lurking somewhere in her mind.

Right before her last class, Nick smoothly stepped up behind her, took her hand and covertly steered her into the boiler room.

"You're right.  This is a decent little private space, though a little dustier in person." Nick said by way of greeting. He closed in on her, like in her dream and her her lips parted automatically,  in semi-anticipation of that same kiss they'd shared there.

He glanced down at her mouth.  

"Last night was intense, huh." 

She slowly nodded and blinked. 

"Yeah it was..." she replied.  "I saw Kyle today, my ex-. I think he's gunning for you.  Word gets out quickly here, you know.  Small town. Small school. Another girl from school saw us together in the park," she said half to warn him and half to break the tension.

"I've been avoiding him," Nick replied.  "But if he tries anything, you know I can take care of myself."

"Yeah, but.-"

"-But?" he said, stepping even closer to her.

"But don't hurt him.  We're trying to hide here. Remember?- To come up with some kind of plan for 'Brown Cadillac' and whoever else is out there spying on us.   

...Speaking of, you said that you'd teach me."

"Well, you seemed to remember quite a bit last night.  It's mostly instinct, like breathing.  You just have do something close to that while awake."

He stepped back and took off one his fingerless gloves.  "I'm gonna drop this.  Keep it from hitting the floor."

"Wait!" she said, but he'd already dropped it.  About a millimeter from the floor the thing stopped and hovered for a moment before flattening to the floor the rest of the way.  When it settled, it shimmered a little like glass, flickered once, and then looked normal.

Nick smiled. "I knew it.  That was one of your little slips. We're lucky it didn't teleport somewhere."

"Yeah." Sam said, startled by her own capabilities.  "I don't want to try that again in school."

"Fine.  Then practice alone, and only with small objects that won't be missed." he replied.

Sam frowned a bit.  "Nick.-  When Stacks... -You said, I wouldn't have done it without you... Did you push me?"

Nick was quiet for a moment.   

"...I didn't like him touching you like that.  -Sometimes, I can sense your state; if your scared or distressed. ...It's complicated. If you're asking if I pushed you to kill him.  No. That wasn't my intention.  I just-  lent a little of what I have to you, and sometimes it can get away.  That's why practice is a thing you and I both need to keep doing. " 

Sam hugged herself  as a shiver crept over her and swayed a bit.  "I don't like it. It don't like how natural, how good it felt.  It's a kind of sweet relief, letting it go.  Just like last night.  Normal people aren't supposed to be okay with that kind of thing. Or with any of this."  she said looking mildly disturbed.

"Sam." he said, as he stepped closer and lay his hands on her shoulders to still her.  "We're not normal.  We never were."

"No, we're not.  But before you came back, when I didn't remember, I was good at at least pretending.  I can't even do that anymore."

///

Two blocks from the high school and parked in an alleyway was 'Brown Cadillac'.  A nondescript middle-aged white man was eating a deep red apple as he listened to the conversation from a covert bug placed in the boiler room.  He knew they'd eventually find themselves there.   

He'd been told quite a bit more about his two assignments, than they knew about their own selves.  That would be an advantage.  Their DNA was contaminated with something else, something beyond our understanding from the Apollo return.  That's what gave them these weird abilities.
 
The general populace would destroy itself in a panic if it were aware of the secrets he knew; and there were many more than just these two. -The other numbered freaks.  The world beneath this one... What exists, above, below, and beyond our planet...beyond this plane of existence.

That these freaks weren't even completely human.

Reminding himself of this made it easier to do what he would eventually have to do.