I've since revised this chapter due to the wonderful advice of RachaelElg! Adverbs have been neutralized somewhat, and the leading comments of Lulu have been extracted! Good News! I think this is the longest chapter! I think...well, in any case, once you get past this one, the story goes by a lot more quickly! So, enjoy! (And the chapters tend to get shorter...but I digress)
Chapter 3: Welcome to the Weird Side
“I can’t be dead!” I practically yelled. “Look at me! I’m alive!”
I pointed at myself and flapped my arms to show him how ludicrous he sounded. Anyone with one eye could see I wasn’t dead, who did he think he was, thinking I had? My reaction made him smile though, and I watched as he slowly shook his head side to side as if preparing to admonish a naughty child, namely me.
“I see that you are indeed ‘alive’,” he stated calmly, as opposed to my belligerence, “but nevertheless, you did die. I was going to tell you later, when you’ve had a chance to grow—ah—accustomed—“ he cleared his throat, “to your situation here, but I feel that I must tell you now.”
He stared at me as I narrowed my eyes at him distrustfully, and crossed my arms in front of my chest. Dude wasn’t making sense, and was beginning to edge on my cool. He took my silence as a sign to continue. It wasn’t.
“You died on Tuesday, June 13th, 2000. That was seven years ago.”
I opened my mouth to interrupt with the words, “That’s impossible,” but he held up a hand indicating that I should let him continue. That hand was fast starting to get on my last frazzled nerve, as was everything else attached to that hand, his gnome-head included.
“As I was saying, you died—presumably from a broken spine and ultimately by drowning—but we had been watching you for a very long time before then. We knew something like that was going to happen sometime around your sixteenth birthday, so we were ready to pick you up when it did.” Wheezing slightly, he came to a stop.
I interrupted regardless of his hand. This wasn’t making much sense, and I wasn’t scared of his tiny, death-colored hand. Besides, he said he had been watching me. As in stalking me.
“When what happened? And what does turning sixteen have to do with anything?” I asked angrily.
I didn’t like thinking about that day I turned sixteen, and his reminding me only made me dislike him more. I saw my cheeks flame in my reflection in the mirror thing across from my bed. I was getting the strangest feeling of “being watched” from behind that reflective wall.
He was really starting to tick me off, and the bad part was that I could never remember getting that angry before that day, being a Southern belle and all. We settled our disputes over sweet tea and rocking chairs. Not in a white room on a hospital bed.
Okay, so maybe I wasn’t one of those kinds of Southern girls, but it didn’t mean I was used to being angry. Quite the contrary, I hated to get mad. It made me feel out of control, and I liked to be firmly in control at all times. Whether I’m the one in charge, the one driving (with a permit), or the one making plans. But ever since I woke up, I found myself in a world where the reins were out of my hands, and the feeling of spiraling out of control was growing stronger. It had to stop.
My question kinda threw him a loop for a second, and I saw something that looked like fear flash in his eyes but it was soon masked by his cool demeanor once more.
“Your accident, of course. They always happen around the age of sixteen. We don’t know why, per say, but just that it happens. ” He stated the fact as if it were painfully obvious to even a baby what he had been referring to. Well, maybe if that baby was a mind-reader, then yeah, it would have been.
I clenched my teeth and forced a civil tone as I asked, “I got that, bud, but why were you people watching me?”
Mentally, I was counting to ten, waiting for something to make sense. So far the whole situation was as murky as the bottom of the Chickasawhay River. And that’s some muddy stuff.
The doctor guy was starting to sweat, and I thought, “I guess he’s not from the South,” because the room felt fine to me. I was used to the heat. It was the only comforting thing so far in the room. That said a lot about their hospitality.
He cleared his throat, and his mouth twitched convulsively. “I am a part of a secret Organization that works to find beings like you, and offer you a job when you’ve awoken from hibernation.” He swallowed loudly, the sound oddly out of place in the room where the distrust was almost thick enough to top a key-lime pie.
“Uh-huh,” I said smartly. “So, you want me to believe that I hibernated…like a bear…or a caterpillar…and I just woke up, like magic seven years later, and now I’m no longer dead—which would be crazy in itself,” I gave a skeptical laugh, “—but instead I’m something different than say…a ‘human’. Yeah, cuz that happens all the time.”
I have to admit, I was more than a little sarcastic, and if words were dangerous, I fully expect he might have stepped away from my bedside missing a layer of skin from the grating effect of my voice at that moment. I’ve never been too fond of the subtle arts of communication, instead, I liked to come right on out with what I wanted to say, and liked to hold other people to those standards. Although, honestly, most people weren’t exactly able to live up to my expectations in that department.
The pale man merely stared at me, neither confirming nor denying my sarcastic summary of what he had told me thus far. His face then began to contort in a strange way, like when I had dared Tommy to eat ten Sour Heads at one time. That’s exactly how this guy’s face looked; only, pale dude was not anywhere near the universe of cute when it happened to him.
He stared so hard at me that I thought he was going to have an aneurysm. Just what I needed, my doctor to die while waiting on me. That’ll instill trust in the healthcare system. After a few moments, I was sure he had flipped his lid.
“Geez,” I thought, “The guy sure is getting worked up about something.”
“I’m gonna ask you a question, Mr…” I looked at him for his name. It was really odd how he hadn’t introduced himself at first bat, but maybe he was raised in social Siberia, and unlike me, didn’t know the proper manners when meeting new people. What a sad state the world has slipped to, when a teenager has more collective etiquette than an adult.
He blinked quickly, his face resuming its normal odd coloration and unattractive morphology, and said, “Smith.”
He had sour look on his face, akin to disappointment. Apparently, staring at me like a lunatic hadn’t done him any good in the end.
I smiled. “Mr. Smith. Now, will you please tell me—in layman’s terms— what you seem to think happened to me? Was I in a coma? You see, I’m starting to think that this is just a scam, or that you’ve kidnapped me.”
By this point, I had grown tired of this game. If he was playing some sort of sick joke, that’s his business, but I wasn’t going to stand for anymore nonsense. He needed to spit out the truth and quick. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do if I didn’t like what I heard, and that was a strong possibility with the way things were progressing so far, but I was certain that this wasn’t cutting it for me.
He seemed to struggle with his words, but he finally replied with the revelation that would forever define my existence. “You aren’t human. Well, not in a literal sense.”
He paused to see what I thought, but I wanted to let him finish his tall tale. This was going to be one heck of story that much I knew for sure. Had to be with a hook like “you aren’t human.”
I don’t know what bugged me more: him and his story, or my growing interest in it. ‘Cause in some fashion, I was actually interested to see where he would take his story from there. Not every day that a person gets to star in their very own soap opera; I just hoped I wasn’t the one being killed off at the end of the episode to boost ratings.
“You’re a type of Super-being.” He continued. “They are typically found in out-of-the-way places, all the better for hiding in anonymity, and on their sixteenth birthdays, they die and wake up exactly seven years later—to the second—with rather extraordinary abilities.”
He had started to get more excited as it appeared that I wasn’t taking his news badly. Too bad he couldn’t read my mind, because I was actually thinking he was one of the craziest of crazies I had ever met, and I knew a lot of kooky people in my small town. I was related to a few of them.
He continued after pushing his glasses back up his nose, which were slipping from his sweat. Fortunately for him, it appeared that the air-conditioning had kicked in, because he was starting to dry out, and goose-bumps were forming on his skin in waves.
“And you—well—you are an especially unique example of Super. That’s what we’re called,” he said quickly in answer to my questioning look. His voice had a wheezy quality to it that was annoying me, but I could put up with it—for a time.
“How exactly did this happen to me?” I asked. I was being cool, letting him tell his crazy story.
I had figured that somehow he had escaped from the loony floor of the hospital and was living out his strange fantasy. Any second now, the real doctor would walk into my room and call the male nurses to drag him back to his room to take his crazy pills and fit him for his nice white jacket. Good crazy person, step away from the nice girl in the bed.
He laughed quickly as if I had just said something ridiculous. “You mean, you don’t know?”
I frowned in response. I wasn’t the one saying all kinds of weird stuff on every level of crazy, and I didn’t like being mocked, even by crazy people. I felt little charges of static anger filling my insides, and I wanted lightning to strike him. Serve him right for making fun of me. As if he could feel that I wished him ill, he raised his hands pleadingly.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you, but all the other Supers knew at least, or had been born into a family of Supers…they knew what had happened to them. You can’t imagine how hard it is to make you believe something that sounds crazy."
Oh, he was crazy alright, he had that part in the bag.
He didn’t sound too sorry for making me lose my temper; in fact, he looked a little…anticipatory? Maybe being unconscious for so long had made me unable to interpret expressions, but it appeared like he was intentionally goading me, without actually outright attacking me. It was almost like he was trying to make me mad, or lose my control. Well, he was going to have to get his kicks somewhere else. I wasn’t going to go all psycho on him just because he wanted me to.
I nodded affirmatively, and tapped my fingers along my arms. I was getting a tad impatient with his make-believe story.
“Your parents were Supers, girl. Your real parents.”
Dead silence greeted that proclamation. Gears whirled in my now stunned brained, clicking together until…
“What?!” I sputtered. I was momentarily at a loss for more colorful, poignant words, but they came back quickly. They always did.
Mr. Smith looked at me like I was a mine about to explode, and he was a soldier trying to tiptoe around me with his next words.
“You were adopted…I suppose your parents never told you...” He was looking furtively at the door, as if expecting someone to enter at any moment. Perhaps he had reinforcements on the way, people trained in restraining teenage girls about to attack him because he was being annoyingly vague and insane.
I glared at him. “Tell me everything, and if I don’t find your explanation satisfactory, I might actually lose control of my temper, and”—I paused for dramatic effect, eyeing his now frozen-in-fear form—“I really don’t think you want that.”
I don’t know why I believed him now, of all times, but I felt as if something had clicked. Like an important puzzle piece had been inserted in my mind and I was finally able to accept his story, despite the insane picture the pieces were forming. And just because I thought he was telling me the truth (and might not be as crazed as I had originally surmised) didn’t mean I felt any different toward him personally.
I had always wondered how I had come to have green eyes and coppery red hair, when my parents were both dark complexioned with brown hair and eyes like their Native American ancestors. I figured that I had just taken after the Scottish side of the family. Now I understood.
He hesitated. “First, though, you have to promise me that you won’t react badly. That you won’t let your emotions get the worst of you?” He phrased it like a question, like he was scared of what might happen if that did happen.
I shrugged, and said, “Why not. Okay. I promise.” I mentally crossed my fingers; I can’t promise in good faith that I won’t lose my temper at any given time. What teenager can? I’d like to see the person who claims they have never lost their temper, just so I can point and laugh at the two-faced spectacle.
So, to encourage him to tell me what I wanted to hear, I crossed my heart and tried to smile receptively. I must have done an okay job, because he seemed to relax a little more (although he was still noticeably stony), and he glanced briefly at the window before telling me what I wanted to hear.
“About twenty-three years ago, you were born to Super parents, who after your birth, for reasons we are still unsure, gave you up for adoption and subsequently disappeared. No one has seen them since. We tracked you down fairly easily, due to your looks, and the fact that there weren’t many girls put up for adoption that matched your description. We’ve been monitoring you ever since, and until seven years ago, we weren’t sure if you were going to take after your parents.”
At my questioning look, he nodded knowingly.
“It happens sometimes that the child is ‘normal’, so to speak, and does not go through the transformation process. Then, we leave them to live life un-interrupted. But it turned out that you did inherit the Super gene.”
I couldn’t hold my questions in much longer. “Super gene? And transformation?” It still was weird to think I’d been asleep for seven years, and that I missed so much progress. Talk about Sleeping Beauty! Except, well, Mr. Smith was not my idea of Prince Charming, and I definitely would have stayed asleep if he had tried to wake me with a kiss. Eugh.
“I will explain those later, right now, I think you asked about your past?”
I flushed angrily. Of course, one thing at a time. Duh. Wish I’d thought of that Mr. Not-So-Nice-Doctor. I really didn’t like him.
“As I was saying, we didn’t know too much about your birth parents, other than the fact that they were gifted Supers and were not members of our Organization, but we had to find out why they left you. We figured that you were special, or deformed in some way.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but closed it at a look from Mr. Smith. No interrupting. Stupid bald guy.
“As you aged and grew closer to the period of transformation, we observed you very closely, and could find nothing out of the ordinary about you. You appeared to be perfectly healthy and capable to function with others. We noticed that you tended to be a loner, except when it came to your friend Tommy. Yes, we know about him. Everything seemed completely normal. So, we continued to be mystified about the nature of your abandonment. ‘Why?’ became the big problem nagging our investigators.”
“Perhaps they didn’t like me…” I said quietly. The idea wasn’t palatable.
“No,” he stated, “in the adoption report, the social worker specifically recorded that your parents seemed distraught at having to give you away, but that they did it anyway, like they were being forced.”
His dark eyes betrayed zero emotion as he said this, and if I had been paying attention to them like I ought, I would have seen the look of spite flit across them as he watched me take in what he had said, before disappearing as quickly as it came.
He paused to let me wrap my thoughts around all the new information flooding my mind. It was almost too much to process, but luckily I’ve always been a very logical person, so I managed to keep my promise and reign in my emotional responses. Mostly.
“So, what you’re saying is the following: One, I have some kind of ‘special’ powers. Two, my parents loved me but left me anyway. Three, you have no idea about either one or two. And four, and I repeat, you think I have ‘special’ powers. Is that what you’re saying?”
I must admit, I didn’t mean for my questions to sound mean, and I might have used a bit more lung power than I’d intended, because the next thing I knew Mr. Smith was turning a rather unsightly shade of even more pale, I think with a mixture of rage and frustration, and the door opened to admit yet another visitor.
Only, this time, even I was silenced. Talk about shock of a lifetime.
In walked the strangest looking person I had ever laid eyes on in my entire life, and that included the little bit of television I had watched. I’m talking weird.
Grade A, Area 51, weird. I’m almost positive that my eyes must have been bugging out of my head, that guy was so strange looking.
He—that much I knew for certain—was really tall. Like NBA tall. I might have just written him off as normal yet freakishly tall, IF I had been born color-blind. Which, evidently I wasn’t.
The dude had green skin. The first mental classification that came to my mind, once I regained the ability to think, was that the Jolly Green Giant had just waltzed into my hospital room. I looked at the green guy—who was looking curiously at me too with his black eyes, I might add—and then I looked at Mr. Smith.
Green guy, Mr. Smith, green guy, Mr. Smith, and so on for what felt like ages, but was most likely only a minute. I have a slight flair for the dramatic, if I haven’t mentioned that yet. I ended up stopping my motion on Mr. Smith fully expecting him to introduce me to the green giant in the room. I wasn’t disappointed.
“Are you seeing a green person?” I asked Mr. Smith.
He just ignored my question. I guess he was seeing him too, or else he wouldn’t have nodded at the green guy when he entered the room, or looked slightly relieved at not having to be alone in the room with me any longer. A relief I felt as well, despite the newest occupant being green-tinted.
Any doubts that were lingering in my mind about the strangest parts of the story, including the notion of having Super Powers, flew out of the nonexistent window. Even I had to accept that I might have ‘powers’ if I was indeed seeing a tall green man. Green people aren’t very common, in case you haven’t heard.
“Ahem,” Mr. Smith began, “this is…Verdant.”
“No kidding,” I said sarcastically. I wasn’t stupid. I knew what verdant meant. Being a reader has its benefits, word acquisition and comprehension being one of them.
He looked at me sternly. “Well, Verdant will be your teacher, so to speak, when you are able to move around.”
“Ohhh,” I thought, “His name is—” I looked at the green guy—“Verdant”—I corrected myself.
I saw him smile slightly, and I didn’t know quite what to make of that, or him for that matter. It was still freaky to meet a green fella.
“Teach me what?” I asked. If I was going to have to go to school, why couldn’t it be someplace normal, like with normal looking people?
Mr. Smith took my verbal question as a sign of interest and agreement, and answered, “Verdant will help you discover your Super powers, and then teach you how to control them. It’s a process that all new Supers must undergo before we can allow them to become full members of our team. Besides, it is as much to benefit you as anyone; don’t you want to know what you are capable of?”
My forehead wrinkled in thought, I didn’t know what to believe right now. First, I find out I died, then they want me to be some kind of Super hero? It doesn’t make much sense. I decided to find out as much as they would tell me.
“What kind of team are we talking about here?” I asked cautiously. I could almost sense my own hesitancy as it crept about my words waiting to see what reaction they would unfold.
This time, I was surprised by the answer coming from Verdant’s direction. “It is a team of Supers, assembled to save the world. We work in tandem with the government to try to resolve issues that normal people cannot fix alone.”
Very illuminating.
Verdant’s voice was soft, like kitten’s fur, and I was surprised to hear it coming from someone so intimidating. My face must have shown my confusion, because Verdant chuckled and glanced at Mr. Smith.
“Smith, you were right in your studies when you said she would be a difficult trainee.”
I frowned. I’m not difficult, and I was about to assert how un-difficult I actually was when Mr. Smith interrupted.
“Yes, it’s true, but I think that she will make a great asset to the Organization.” He paused to look at me calculatingly and continued, “What do you say, will you join us?”
“Well…what harm could come of it?” I said, “I mean, I’m already dead, so nothing worse can happen, right?”
“Good girl,” Mr. Smith replied. A satisfied smirk appearing on his too pale face.
His little ‘good girl’ addition and smirk made me want to change my mind, but I pushed that tendency down. We’ll see Mr. Smith, we’ll see. I looked at my face reflected in the glass pane, my eyes alight with interest, and I smiled. This might be fun. And I would be helping people according to them.
