Chapter Two

Colt's journey is just beginning.

                                         Chapter Two

Our first birthday. That is an achievement when you consider how many bad things can happen to infants. Things that suddenly show up that weren’t there at birth. Also taking into consideration how I felt when I was being introduced to the world.

         Our father prepared a simple party. A small cake with two candles. Pink and blue. It had white icing and two roses made from creamy icing on either side. Pink and blue. I wanted to eat the roses. I think we behaved well during our first months of being on this earth. I had listened to my father and kept away from the fireplace. Isabeau was walking, well somewhat. I still couldn’t get the hang of it. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t trying really hard. After all, I was born first, by a minute. We ate our baby food which I couldn’t wait to kick to the curb. My balloon read Happy Birthday, but that wasn’t what caught my attention. It swayed back and forth tied around the chair. Each time it moved from one side to the next a face appeared in the middle of the balloon. Faint at first. It got clearer as it grew in size and finally took over the entire balloon. The face was smooth and tanned. The eyes were crystal blue. The hair was golden-brown. The face smiled wide with a row of glistening teeth. The face smiled only at me. The balloon got caught in some breath of wind that must have come from a window being open or maybe my father walking past. It spun around. With each spin the face grew darker, until it was complete darkness. Save for those eyes and glistening mouth. I reached up to grab the balloon, then my father came and took me over to the den where presents were wrapped.

       “You better hurry up, Colt, or Isabeau will take all your toys.”

The balloon spun a few more times but the smiling face was gone.

        My father loved telling us stories. He had a few children’s books that always involved trolls and faeries and we were happy to hear both.

I think Isabeau loved hearing about the trolls a little more than the faeries. She always pointed to the pictures of the trolls hiding under the bridge or hiding inside the cave and all you could see is their glowing red eyes. I think I liked the faeries a little more because they could use magic and seeing their faerie dust sprinkled behind them made me envy them. Who would envy an ugly troll?

        This night was troll night. Isabeau tried grabbing the book from Father’s hands. He laughed and patted her hand. “Yes, yes, I am going to get to it.” She smiled up at him. He opened the book and started reading. “The little girl ran as hard as she could to outrun the troll. His master, the troll king, wanted to capture all the girls and boys of the human kingdom to feast on their flesh, but she was not going to let herself be taken. She had already lost her brother.” Okay, maybe this wasn’t exactly a normal children’s book. “She saw the bridge where she battled the last troll that tried to take her. She crossed it and the troll kept coming.” Isabeau grabbed the book and shook it. “What is it, my sweet? What’s wrong?” Isabeau made her baby noises and I wondered if Father understood her. I saw my chance to get my faerie book read. I grabbed the troll book and threw it down on the floor and then cried. “Okay, maybe that’s it for tonight.” He tucked us in and then got into his bed.

         I laid there looking up at the glowing stars and waited for sleep to come. I rubbed my eyes a few times. My little body had no more energy. My eyes closed. Right away I fell into the nightmare of watching my mother die. But this time I didn’t wake up, didn’t scream or cry. I stayed inside the nightmare, determined to see it through to a happy end. There was dark figures surrounding my mother and she was reaching out for someone or something. Probably us. Because in the next second she fell from view and I woke up feeling like she was inside the room with us. The memory of my mother, my birth, haunted me every day and night. You wouldn’t think that a baby could have such an imprinted horror upon it, but I did. I knew from that moment that my sister would be the most important person in my life. She looked like our mother and I would never let her out of my sight. We were murderers before we even knew what that meant. We were in this together.

       I woke up screaming and flailing the next night.

      My father rushed over and grabbed me.

      Isabeau woke up and wailed.

      I didn’t wake up from a nightmare. I woke up with a strange feeling inside my body. It started in my stomach and was travelling to my chest. It burned. The sensation to let it out was upon me, but all that happened was I hiccuped and felt my throat burning. I cried and cried. I looked over at my sister and the tears were streaming down her face. She was getting red from the exertion. Father tried to calm her down. The tears looked strange. The way they stayed on her face, I couldn’t understand how they were doing it. 

I wasn’t aware that there was something dangerously different about me and Isabeau right away. The birth should have been the tip-off that we’d be freaks of nature, but as I ran over different hypotheses and came up with empty wonder, I figured we’d learn soon enough what we really are. Oh boy, my imagination was far off from the truth.

Father took us outside to enjoy some spring weather. It was actually a few weeks to spring but the weather was pleasant and warm. We could both walk now and running was becoming a quick learn. Father tried his best to keep up with us while talking on the phone to someone of importance. I knew it was someone important because he constantly yelled at us if we went too far too fast and he couldn’t carry on a proper conversation.

We fell asleep for our noon nap; well I was sort of in between awake and asleep. I heard the conversation, bits of it at least.

“I haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary. If he was really coming don’t you think he would have come already?”

There was a pause, some silence, then my father got really angry. “I don’t give a s**t what you think is going to happen. He isn’t getting my children. Gorman, this conversation is over. No, I am not leaving my children. No, they haven’t shown any sign of being different. Maybe what I did hasn’t compromised their existence. Goodbye, old friend.” He hung the phone up hard. I drifted for a while then fell asleep.

         It happened first when I got close to the fireplace.

         I had woke up from a nap after dinner. Father was reading and he looked very tired, so I thought I should leave him alone. Isabeau was asleep on his lap. She was getting big and soon she’d have to stop using his lap as a daybed. I was playing with a plush robot doll and it wasn’t long before I heard someone call my name. Very soft at first, then as I ignored it, it grew louder. I finally looked at the area it came from. The fireplace. The flames rose and fell as I stared into them. I looked at my father and remembered his abrasive words towards me getting near the fire. But I was being called. I made my way to it in the best sneaky way possible. I reached into the fire and it immediately swirled around my fingers. Then it crawled up my arm and wrapped itself around my body. It didn’t feel hot at all. It felt like it was tickling me. I couldn’t contain my laughter. That was when my father flew at me and smacked my hand. The fire snarled at my father as it went back into the fireplace.

       “You stay away from him!” He yelled at the fireplace.

       Isabeau started crying because her nap was interrupted.

       I felt a burning sensation on my hand and I cried like hell.

      My father was on the phone right away. He was talking to that person he talked to before. Isabeau and I stayed close together and when she touched my hand where Father had smacked me, I felt a rush of coolness spread over my hand. Father quickly looked at us, more at me, and shook his head.

         We sat inside our play pen while Father cooked dinner. I heard the voice from the fireplace. It begged me to come to it. I waited until Father’s back was turned to me, then I climbed out and ran to the fireplace. Instead of me being pulled away from it, Father just stared at me. I didn’t touch the fire this time. I sat there and watched it.

That strange burning sensation never went away. It had only been suppressed. But as it started back up I had an urge to burn, burn, burn… burn it all. I liked sitting in front of the fireplace and watching the flames dance. I didn’t need to physically be in touch with them. We had a spiritual connection. They were glad to put on their ballet for me. The longer I stared at them, the bigger they got. I could feel the pressure of flames rising up inside me and in turn the flames in the fireplace grew taller, stronger. Father was staring at me and I knew he was very displeased. It scared him. He feared me.

          My poor sister had no idea what was going on. She looked up at Father and wondered why he was so angry. She thought she did something wrong. She started crying. He quickly picked her up. “It’s going to be all right. I’ll fix this.” He hugged her. He rubbed her back a few times and she calmed down.

         I scared my father on more than one occasion. He was giving me a bath. Nothing unusual, until the burning sensation rose within my chest like a dragon ready to burst out its fireball. What started out as me playing with a blue plastic ball and some plastic boats, came to be the shower curtain catching fire, the toys being burnt to a crisp, and my father nearly lost his nerves. He grabbed me and flew out of the bathroom. When he went back in to extinguish the flames�"they were already gone.

        We spent the next few days outside. My father thought I could do less harm there. Wrong. As he pushed us in our strollers, my hand brushed against a bush. It caught fire instantly. He shielded us the best way he could. Isabeau smiled. She wiggled out of his grasp and plopped to the ground. He went into hysterics. She placed her hands firmly on the ground near the fire and water rose from her, or the ground (I wasn’t sure), and travelled to complete its job. She clapped and laughed. My father wasn’t laughing. That was when Isabeau showed that she was different. I felt less than a freak with her being special too.

          My nightmares were getting worse. My mother died in brutal ways over and over, never the same way twice. There were always these angelic creatures beating her, torturing her. Their youthful glows outshining the sun. Their spiky smiles were like daggers for hire. I would often see my mother kneeling before this dark figure. I never saw its face or body. It’d often seduce her or innocently caress her. Father had stopped coming to me. He moved the spare bed out of the room and was sleeping in his own bedroom. I was alone. Well, not exactly. I had Isabeau. But I was alone with these dreams. She slept perfectly fine. I was sure, at that moment, we lost him. We would have to grow up depending on each other.

          I heard him on the phone again. Talking about how dangerous I am. I wish he would have talked to me.

         

          My father had resumed our visits to the lake, despite my outburst of involuntary combustion, every morning to show us the fish jumping out of the water and the ducks swimming along. A failed attempt to make us appreciate Nature, but the lesson was mine to be learned, not Isabeau’s. He often painted the landscape. An attempt to capture beauty in motion, ever-changing. Isabeau often wiggled free from my father’s grip or crawled too close to the lake’s edge. Always my father would say, “Dangerous.” The one time she was able to get close enough to fall in to the lake, my father panicked like any father would, but for him it meant something else more terrifying. She went down deep. She had been only three years old. He dove into the lake and searched for her. I watched him, from the lake’s edge, as he flailed around in the water desperate to grab hold of her, but she was nowhere in sight. I looked around and imagined how nice of a blaze I could start in the forest. Watch the flames climb up the trunks of the trees, into their twisted branches and they snap from the pressure of the fire. With one more attempt he went down. A minute later he brought her up and she was perfectly fine.

          He gave Isabeau a bath that night and that’s when I swear his hair turned white.

She splashed and played. She spotted me and smiled. My father turned towards me. “Ah, Colt, what are you doing out of bed?” I smiled. He looked back at Isabeau and she was laughing while playing with the bubbles. “Isn’t she the most beautiful babe in the world?” he said. I simply nodded. Before he could even anticipate her next move, she was under the water smiling. He grabbed her by her hair and pulled her out of the water. She started crying.

         I knew right then… she really could breathe underwater. Like a damn fish.

Author's Note

Honest reviews welcomed.