I Am Darkness

IV

    The man had no irises.  It was just black and white, and his pupils were focused on me.  When I stepped closer I realized that his irises were there, but were so pale that they blended with the whites.
    The room was wooded as well, but had entirely different vibes.  The dark-stained wood made it look and feel like it belonged in a mansion, not a summer camp.  It had a burning fireplace opposite the large wooden desk.  Above the mantle was a picture of kids lined up, tallest in the front and shortest in the back.  The ones on the edges and toward the back had their wings out and upward to save space.  Other relics and foreign objects scattered the mantle as well.
    "I'm Astaroth."  I was confused when he offered his huge hand for me to shake.  Dragons are not hand-shakers.  Dragons don't waste time with formalities.
    But I shook it, trying to ignore his pupils that burned holes into me.
    "Shy, are we?"  I hadn't been called shy since the eighth grade.  I hated the word, hated being labeled with it.
    "In case Sebastian hasn't already told you, you are a modern-day dragon.  Have you ever noticed how you have never really fit in?  You always ran hot when everyone else was cold.  There a reason there are dragons in almost every culture.  Europeans believed that dragons were bad and tried to extinguish us and our brothers.  The Chinese believes we are friendly creatures and befriended us.  Even the Aztecs believed we were gods and worshipped us.
"Long ago there were two races of dragons.   There were the big, lizard-like, fire-breathing beasts, and there were the humanoid dragons like yourselves.  Most of those beasts have been extinct for years, picked off through natural selection.  The only one I've ever met is myself.  But human dragons were able to hide from dragon slayers and hunters.
"Still, there aren't very many of you.  The reason lies in the Middle Ages, when it was sport to hunt dragons.  Most that survived that were killed by idiotic humans who claimed to be monster hunters or a much more dangerous, much more common breed of humans called dragon slayers.  They're stronger, faster, and deadlier than any human.  We can only be killed with the blood of another dragon, but there's a lot of damage they can do before you die.
"But don't worry.  After the death of my family I created a thunder here to train and protect dragons, so they can live the life they want to.  This is quite possibly the safest place you could be."
It wasn't the first time I had heard his spiel.  I didn't need an introduction to know his name.  Although I forgot my lab partner's name, I remembered every detail of my mom's killer.
"What's your name?"  He tried to look nice, but there was no way his iris-less eyes could be kind.
"Ripley MacLauren."  I said it with the same smug smile Peter had talked to me with, the same sass too.
A sudden "oh shit" moment fell over him.  Oh shit, I killed her mom. Oh shit, she looks pissed.  Oh shit, I'm a dead dragon.  Oh shit.
"Ellen's girl."
"You can skip the formalities, Astaroth.  I've heard your shit too many times."
"You were—"
"Supposed to live a normal life?  Oh but don't worry, it was only my mother's dying wish!"
"I apologize you had to come back so soon—"
"You apologize?  What about this doofus?"  I gestured to Sebastian with his arms crossed as if our conversation was a movie.
Astaroth gave me the same warning look he used to give me when I was ten.  "But if the slayers are after you, and the humans want you, you're safest here, and we could use you, Ripley."
"Like you used my mother?  What, are you going to kill me too?"
He hesitated to argue back.  When he spoke it was after a deep breath, calming his tone.  "I did not kill your mother."
I snapped back quicker than he could finish the word mother.  My tone had not changed in the slightest.  "You might as well have been the one who stabbed her with a blood-coated blade!  You knew she couldn't handle it!  You knew there were too many slayers!  You sent her on a suicide mission!"  I had no doubt that the hoard of kids flooding into the Dining Hall for breakfast could hear my screams.  The knew better than to question it.
"She did great things for our kind."
"She escaped from your kind!  You talk about training dragons to live the life they want, but none of them make it past eighteen!  She was able to escape for ten years.  She was able to have a normal life, the life she wanted.  She had a family.  But then you had to yank her back in again, force her to go on a mission to protect your kind, force her daughter to live with murderers for a year!"
"We are not murderers," he said calmly.
"Whatever," I said.  I turned the knob of the door that led outside.  It screeched as it opened and revealed the tall, white building.  "I'm going home."
"That is a suicide mission," Sebastian spoke up.  He had uncrossed his arms and stopped leaning against the wall by the time I turned around.
"Why?"
"Your face will be plastered all over with the words 'teenage delinquent escaped' under it.  Not to mention that your performance at DreamLand told every dragon slayer in the country, not just that you're a dragon, but that you're alive as well.  So go out there and hitchhike a ride home or stay and train and learn to fight off everyone that wants to kill you right now."
I slowly closed the door and stepped back into the office.  "That's what I thought."  I wanted to smack the smirk right off his face, but he was right.  Alone out there, I was dead.
"What kind of dragon are you?" Astaroth asked.
"I didn't know back then.  I don't know now."
"You still can't shift into dragon form?"
"Yes!" I shouted.  "I know, I'm a terrible disappointment.  To be fair, I was only concerned with being normal up until yesterday."
"Okay, calm down."
"I'm calm!" I argued.
"Sebastian, is the fire cabin still the most vacant?"
He dutifully nodded, adding a "Yes, sir".  Although he had gone off about staying here at me, he was kissing Astaroth's butt more than Ashley and Michael kissed per day.
"Then you will sleep in the fire cabin."  He looked to Sebastian and assessed him as if he hadn't seen him before in his life.  "And you will train her."
His eyes raged with protest, but he calmly nodded.  That, however, didn't stop me from protesting.  "What!  This dipshit?  You're going to make me learn from this dipshit?"
"I appreciate if you didn't use profanity in my thunder.  As for why I chose Sebastian, he's the best dragon in my thunder."
His posture straightened in the annoying, pretentious way that nerds do after getting a 100 on a test.  I rolled my eyes, and I pretended to particularly interested in a crystal ball reflecting the room from a shelf.
"Fine.  Can I go now?"  I tapped my foot, echoing through the office louder than I would've thought.  The thuds could be heard by everyone in the room even while someone was talking.  I kept tapping anyway, because people that calm had to have a fuse somewhere.
"Kara will show you around," Astaroth said.  His face was clearly showing his annoyance over my tapping, but didn't want to snap and tell me to stop.
"I'm good, thanks."
"You'll like Kara," Sebastian says, as if I'd care whether or not I'd like her.  I want to go home, back to my iPhone and high school and normal life.  I was not a dragon mentally.  I had a human brain and human body the just so happened to sprout wings when I was in danger.  Everyone has their quirks.
"Fine," I agreed.  "I'll do what you want.  I'll be your puppet.  But my family has to stay safe, okay?  They are human and they need your protection more than I do."
"Ripley—"
"It's Rip," I corrected.
"Rip."  Astaroth sighed.  "I will not waste any of my dragons to protect your family."
"I am at the top of the dragon slayer most wanted list.  Protecting my family is not a waste."
"Why should we protect a group of humans?"  Sebastian was still leaning against the wall, while Astaroth was standing at the desk.  Still, they seemed to be the same person talking with two different mouths.
"They are not just humans."
"We're not stationing any dragons in Annapolis.  That is final."  I didn't like how Astaroth spoke like he he was above us, like he owned us.  Just because he was a full dragon that was probably much, much older than us, didn't mean he was better.
I sighed.  "Fine.  You're right.  They're just humans."  I stormed out of the small office, slamming the door behind me.  "Just humans," I muttered.
Despite the commotion of the morning a few steps away, the woods was silent besides the ambience.  The leaves rustled back and forth, light trickling through them and dripping onto me.  There were no dragons or humans.  I had no body to tether me to it.
It's funny, how no one really pays attention to the beauty of it.  We see it in stock photos and plaster it on the background of our computer screens, but we never come out here.  We never breathe in atmosphere.
I sucked in a deep breath of it, and pierced the air with a blood curdling scream.  I could practically feel the birds' judgmental looks.  Everyone seemed to have one these days.  What's wrong with you?  You're disturbing our peace!  Get the hell out of here you stupid human!
Well, at least they didn't call me a dragon.
I let my feet pick where to go.  I lingered around the trees for a while, hating life 'cause I had nothing better to do.  But I couldn't keep avoiding my fate.
The Dining Hall air was thick and crowded with the breaths of 50 kids between the ages of eight and eighteen.  I've always loved the small town atmosphere.  Everyone knows everyone, even if they don't want to.  The Thunder was like that.
Idiots had their wings out, simply for the purpose of taking up more space.  Three out of four of the tables were a little less than half full.  The last— the one coated in red paint, no surprise— was empty except for one person: Sebastian.  He didn't mind, though.  Actually the only thing he really did mind was people, particularly myself.
I sat as far away from him as I could, picking at the paint on the red corner of the table.  I didn't eat breakfast.  It's supposed to be the most important meal of the day, but no one really cares.  Shove a donut or your fifth cup of coffee down your throat and you're good.
An older girl with enormous, white wings approached me after the crowd had flooded out.  She had ash blonde hair that brushed her shoulders slightly every time she turned her head with grey eyes to match.  I looked like she had spent some time in Antarctica where she lost her sanity and began to smile, all the time.
"Hey," was her opening line.  She was older than me by only a few years, but I could tell she was 200% more pure.  No mental illnesses, straight and cisgendered.  All the guys probably liked her too.  She probably went to Africa a few times with her youth group.
"Let me guess.  You're Kara."  She smiled when I said her name.  No normal person can smile that much.  How could Sebastian think that I could ever like her?
"Bash told me you needed a tour."
"Who the hell is Bash?"
"The insensitive meathead."  Her face was straight and serious, understandably bitter.
"Oh."  I was starting to like her, maybe.
"Anyway . . ."  She turned on her right heel.  "He'd never beat me up for calling him that, but won't hesitate with you.  Be careful."
"Yeah, who does Suicide Squad even think he is?"
Her walking slowed, and her hand hung on the doorknob for a moment before opening it.  "He's not . . . suicidal."
"Well, yeah, I know that."
"You should've seen him back before he changed.  He was hilarious, rebelled against Astaroth all the time.  When we were twelve he went on his first assignment or whatever.  He wasn't the same after that."
There was no reason for her to tell me any of that.  But she was the kind of person that people might find themselves spilling everything they've ever known to.  As soon as you knew her she trusted you, made you a better person.
We were outside now, stepping back to get the full expanse of the Dining Hall in our view.  I didn't know if kids here had assigned schedules or what.  People were going at all different speeds around me.  Some walked.  Others ran or sprinted.  I even saw some human bodies with dragon wings stretching out their backs in the sky.  But others, including us, just stayed to take everything in.
"This is the Dining Hall.  But I'm pretty sure you already knew that."
"What's with the colors?"  I felt bad for sounding more annoyed than I already was.
"What colors?"
"Everything is painted one of four colors here.  I mean, is there some sort of boycott towards—"
"No."  She laughed.  "Each building has some significance to the color it's painted.  The Dining Hall, for example, is painted green because the earth dragons built it, way back in the day.  Earth dragons seem to be all over the place, always running between the woods and the Dining Hall and their cabin and wherever else they go."
Her tangents seemed to go on forever.  She loved talking, and just caught up in it and couldn't stop once she started.
"The other buildings are different stories.  Of course, water dragons built up the waterfront: the boathouse, the docks, the boats.  We have our flight gym."
"And you are?"
"An air dragon."  She was proud of her wings.  She hadn't retracted them since I met her.  Other dragons, like myself, were ashamed of their dragon lineage.  But she loved it.
"What's wrong with the fire dragons?  There's like no one here."
"We'll have a few more in the summer, but there's always been a shortage."  A shortage, as if they're supplies that haven't gotten restocked, or a rare Pokemon that's impossible to capture.  "In art and history you always see the fire breathing dragons and all.  I mean, I've seen water a couple of times too, but it's mostly fire.  Dragon slayers love fires.  They love the rare ones more, but fires are the second best thing."
"Sebastian is one of them?"
"The only one that stays the entire year, yes."
"And the rare ones?"
"We barely see them anymore.  There are the primary dragons, the classic four elements.  But I've heard legends.  I mean I've never actually met one, but I've heard about so many ones that we don't have the cabins for here.  Energy and mind and metal and aether and hellfire, darkness and light.  I'm starting to wonder if any of them really exist."
"They do," I said.  "My mom told me about them."
"Oh, who's your mom?"
"Ellen MacLauren."
Her eyes bulged and her head shifted forward.  "What?"
At home no one knew my mother.  We moved to Annapolis after she died to get a fresh start.  In the real world she was not exactly the celebrity she was in the dragon world, especially this thunder.
But people used to expect so much of me, her daughter, in the year I spent here five years ago.  "You're Ellen's daughter.  You should know how to fight"  "You should know everything about dragons."  But as much as I wanted to be, I wasn't her.  She had a normal name.  She was praised and worshipped.  She was a goddess in this society.  But I was the blue-eyed, uncommonly-named freak who couldn't fit in.
"Yup," was all I said.
"Sorry for your loss."
When it happened, it tore me apart piece by piece.  It set off a chain reaction for the shitshow of my life.  But the pitying words of those who barely knew her, those that helped to kill her, didn't help.  But now, five years later, although I felt the pain and the darkness everyday, "sorry" was meaningless.
"Can we move on with the tour?"  She nodded and pasted her smile back on.  She bounced on to the next thing, her hair going up and down along with her.
"Obviously, this is the flight gym."  She pointed to the tall white building that towered over everything in the camp, surpassed only by treetops.  "You don't really fly inside of it, but you climb up to the top and just jump off.  It's pretty cool."
I gave her a half-hearted smile, mostly because the corners of my mouth couldn't spread as far as hers could.  She must've trained for years to be able to put a smile that large on her face and keep it there.
"And the training gym and weaponry shed."  The two blood red buildings were less desolate than the fire cabin.  People came and went more frequently.  "Training and guarding used to be only a fire dragon thing, but since there are so little it's been opened up to other types.  Bash is the best, of course.  Astaroth had him in it since he was seven.  At first the only reason he did it was because he wanted to impress me, and Astaroth made him.  But it became his life, as you can tell."
"Yeah, um, he's supposedly going to train me, or something."
The highest pitch scream I had ever heard emitted from her once-smiling lips.  She literally started hopping in place with excitement.  "That's so amazing!  This is his first time teaching anyone.  Maybe he'll make more friends than myself.  I'm so excited for him!"
"Yeah, well he didn't seem too excited."
"Oh, that's just his personality.  Once you get to know him, he'll love you."  Once I get to know him he'll hate my guts.  It's kind of the effect I have on people.
"And then there's the cabins.  It's pretty self-explanatory.  Each type of dragon has a cabin.  People who don't know who they are go to fire because it's always empty beside Bash.
"Oh, and you're not allowed in any other cabin but your own.  You're also not allowed to sit at other tables, but no one really follows that rule.  I'll sit with you for the first few weeks, if you want."
"No, you're good.  I think I'm just going to take a nap or something.  I was awake all night and . . ."
"Oh, yeah.  I totally get it.  I'm sorry.  I'll, like, get out of your hair."  I nodded politely as she scurried away.
The air was thick and hot, but when I took a deep breath I was surprised when it trickled, cold through my lungs.  When west-coasters come to the east they often complain about the humidity.  Whenever I visited Florida, for example, the air was so thick that it was hard to breathe.  But the air around me was fresh, and a cool breeze ran through it occasionally.
Sebastian's shoulder slammed into me as he walked passed.  "Hey!" I shouted after him.  He kept walking, feet kicking up innocent grass and dirt in his path.  I rolled my eyes and began to march to the fire cabin.
The wooden porch creaked as I stepped on it, painted boards rubbing together.  The inside walls were lined with metal plating, probably to keep the entire cabin from catching on fire in someone's sleep.  There were 10 metal bunks, making a total of 20 beds.  Two bunks were on the back wall, three were on each side wall, and two ran down the middle.  The inside looked bigger than the outside entailed, probably because every cot was empty beside the one on the right, near the door to the bathroom.  Even that one had minimal decor, with sheets colored a pale off-white and a black duffle bag tucked under it.  Sebastian.
The bathroom had an aisle running through bathroom stalls and showers.  Bathrooms were on the left, showers on the right.  At the front were clean and barren sinks, pushed up against mirrors with rusted edges.
I didn't recognize the person who stared back at me from the other side of the mirror.  I never had, not since whatever it was that changed inside me did.  I couldn't seem to realize that the scrawny-armed, weathered, sunken-eyed mass of flesh was myself.  That my vivid thoughts and painful self doubts all happened behind those two blue eyes.
My hair had frizzed and curled up from the humidity.  My straightener never seemed to work past one or two hours.  The humidity or my own sweat always got the best of it.  I raked it back with my fingers, long nails digging into my scalp.
I took my shirt off, brought it into the bowl of the sink, and squeezed tap water and hand soap into it.  After doing the same with the rest of my clothes, I hung them out in the sun with a towel tied tightly under my arms.
I think I used every drop of hot water in the camp's pipes in that shower.  Time seemed to stop as the warm drops fell down my face.  I didn't have any product but hand soap, so it wasn't a very successful shower.  But as the water thundered—for lack of better word—against my skull, I had almost forgotten everything.  But my fears and pain returned as soon a I stepped out.
I put on my clothes—jean shorts, a black muscle tee, and a pair of God-awful black high tops that I had had for a year—and looked myself in the mirror once more.  I paced back and forth between the bunks, trying to come up with a plan.  The police took my phone, so I'll have to get that first.  Dad'll probably kill me once I get home, but I can't stand another minute here.
My foot kicked the black duffle as I paced.  But it didn't emit a muffled thud, what I would've expected from a bag filled with clothes.  Instead the contents clanged against each other loudly.
After a puzzled look to no one but myself, I kneeled down and opened the bag.  The bottom was covered with clothes, but the top had every weapon that could fit.  Silver-plated guns, knives caught between the definitions of daggers and swords lay, covered only by scabbards.
I could feel my eyes light up at the sight of them.  I unsheathed a knife, watching the light reflect off the metal.  I tucked and tied as many weapons as I could to my belt loops.  Then I swung the door open without another thought
"Sebastian!  Fancy seeing you here."  I tried to sound enthusiastic when I said it, but it didn't take a trained dragon to seen through it.
He shoved past me to get inside.  He didn't speak a word to me.  He just swiftly went to his bag and unzipped it.  I held my breath, hoping he wouldn't notice what I took.
"I know what you're going to do," he said without a look back to me.  "I thought you were smarter than that," he dramatically zipped the bag back up, "but I guess I didn't fully convince you."
"I am not staying in this hellhole any longer," I told him.  "I don't care how many speeches you give me."
He held out a hand for me to give the weapons back.  After and eye roll and a step back towards the door, I reluctantly began to hand them over.  "You know you're going to die out there?"
"Does it look like I care?"
"Why leave?"
"Why do you care?  If I leave you get to return to your pompous asshole life."
"If you leave we lose another one of our already short supply of dragons.  Now I'll ask you again.  Why leave?"
"This is not my life.  My life is back there with my family and my friends."
"Dragons don't fit in with humans."
"Well it's a good thing I'm not a dragon.  And you can't just say that someone can't fit in even though they're a dragon.  No one really feels like they fit in.  You just have an excuse."
"I fit in here."
"No, you don't.  The whole camp stays out of your personal space bubble with a mile radius for a reason.  No one really likes you except Kara, who just wishes you went back to what you were like before you changed."
"That doesn't matter.  Stay.  One month and you can leave.  The dragon slayers will have cleared up by then.  Then you can go back to your human life."
"What's stopping me from leaving now?"
"Nothing."
And he was right.  If I left no one would stand in my way.  He might have even stood down.  But somehow that didn't make me want to leave.  I wanted a fight.  I wanted people to beg me to stay.  I wanted people to want me to stay.  And he had figured that out.
"Fine."  He looked as if he was daring me to walk out that door and never come back.  "I'll stay for the month.  I'll do your training.  I'll do my time in this prison.  But that's it.  One month."