}Scores of down feathers, held briefly aloft by a gentle breeze, float through the air like snow—she’s running through them… running away from them. “Gravity doesn’t exist,” she says. “I can fly if I want to.”
She leaps into the air, but she doesn’t fly—she lands gently, and continues running. A low, masculine chuckle rings in her ears. “That doesn’t prove anything,” she grumbles in response.
The feathers begin to stick to her as she runs. She feels the quills burrowing into her skin—it doesn’t hurt, but she screams. She collapses and stares at her hands; feathers are taking root in the flesh of her palms. She tries to rip them out, but for every one that is successfully torn away, half-a-dozen more come to take its place. Soon, her eyes remain the only uncovered part of her—blood falls into them, seeping from the torn flesh of her scalp and forehead. She is kneeling in a bloody pool; her white feather-coat is stained an ugly red.
A man approaches her, his face hidden by the low brim of a vomit-green fedora. He stops in front of her and cocks his head to the side, like a curious child. She wonders if he was the one who laughed when she had been unable to fly away.
“Please,” she whispers, her voice clear despite the feathers that should’ve muffled it. “Please, help me.”
The man lifts the fedora’s brim—she feels as if she’s seen him before; his hair falls into his empty eyes; his lips have been sewn shut and pulled into an unnatural grimace.
“Please,” she says again, much louder. She can’t feel any pain, but the blood loss is beginning to affect her. If this man won’t help her, she’ll die in a manner of minutes. “I need your help! No one will help me—please!”
The man shakes his head. He plucks two larger feathers from the air and, in a single, swift movement, stabs their quills into her eyes…
The world dissolves, and reforms—the blood is gone, the feathers are gone, and she is a child again, about six or seven years old. It’s summertime, and she is playing in the backyard, a rectangular patch of garden framed by tall, dense hedges and overgrown with flowerbeds. A chickadee lands in the granite birdbath, and warbles happily as it ruffles its feathers.
A breeze disrupts the tops of the hedges, a breeze that fails to bother her, much to her chagrin. She wants to be bothered by the wind—she wants to catch an updraft and soar over the hedges, away from the backyard, where she is trapped like a glorified prisoner. But she cannot. The hedges keep her from catching the wind; after all, she mustn’t be seen. No one must know she exists.
“Touch the bird,” a woman’s voice echoes in her ears. She glances at the chickadee—as she looks on, the edges of the birdbath grow teeth, and clamp around the hapless creature. It flutters and chirps in alarm—the bath has become a cage.
“Go on, touch the bird,” the voice says again. “Touch it. Feel it. You must do it.”
She goes to the cage and reaches her small hand through the bars. The bird pecks at her fingers, and she withdraws slightly. But she moves forward again, and touches it… she touches it and she curls her fingers around it. It chirps furiously, but she doesn’t notice. For she has felt something—something is flowing through the bird; currents; energy; life itself is flowing through the bird in rivulets moving faster than blood through veins. She feels it, and she wants it—desperately, she wants to take it for herself. The desperate, hungry need sends a shiver up her spine.
The bird is frightened—as she feels it, feels its life coursing through it, a thought forms in her mind; a thought in a foreign voice, a thought that does not belong to her.
I don’t want to die.
She hears it, and she knows that it is the bird’s thought. She wants to drop it, but something stops her; an invisible force that tightens her grip around the bird’s body even as she tries to release the poor creature. Her desire overshadows all sympathetic thought and her eyes roll back in her head as she focuses on the living currents pulsating through the bird—she focuses on them, and some predatory part of her wills them to flow from the chickadee into her own flesh.
The energy feels electric. It pulses, it stings, it moves like quicksilver into her veins, growing hotter and hotter the faster it moves. It burns her hand, the heat moving slowly up her forearm; she screams as the energy blisters her skin, as her blood boils and her bones rattle. The bird lets out a tinny screech and wilts like a dead plant.
She drops the bird’s lifeless body and screams again. Her arm is scorching with pain—but as the fire spreads, the hurt spreads too, thinning out until her whole body throbs with dull power and dull pain.
Now that the pain has faded some, she understands what has happened to her—she begins to run, faster than she’s ever run before. She leaps into the air and almost passes over the hedges. When she lands, it’s with such force that cracks the cobblestone garden path. She laughs and flaps her arms wildly, determined to finally catch the updraft out of her backyard prison.
The more she moves her arms, however, the more the heat fades from her torso and legs and congeals in her fingertips, burning furiously and searing her skin. She screams, and shakes her hands—there is a loud crack and the fire is dispelled.
It flies from her fingers with a terrible crack, and she collapses …
Lucy awoke in a cold sweat. She was shivering; her heart beat like a frantic drum; she was gasping for air... sitting up, she reached out a trembling hand for the glass of water that sat on her nightstand. She drank it in calm, regulated gulps, focusing all her attention on the smoothness of the lukewarm liquid as it flooded her throat. Slowly but surely, the shivering stopped—her breathing returned to normal—and her pounding heart resumed its natural pace. Lucy gave a relieved sigh and put the empty glass back on the nightstand.
She tore off her covers and got to her feet—her skinny legs almost buckled when she put weight on them. She exhaled through her nose, frustrated with her uncooperative body, as she dragged herself to her en suite bathroom. Flicking on the light, she turned on the sink, and splashed her face with cold water. Her knuckles were white as she gripped the marble.
In her tired, light-headed state, Lucy felt utterly detached from the girl she saw in the bathroom mirror. It took her a moment to fully register who it was she was looking at—the girl in the glass was all angles; scarecrow thin; her black bangs were sopping wet; her ashen skin glistened with water. She looked just as terrified as she felt—the first half of her dream had been frightening, but the second half had felt much too real. It had felt too much like a memory; a memory that crept in the back of her mind, always on the edge of consciousness, but never quite materializing.
She shook her head—that was impossible. How could she hear the thoughts of a chickadee? How could she kill something simply by willing its life to ebb?
“Keep it together,” she commanded her reflection in a hoarse whisper.
As she left the en suite and crept back into bed, there came a knock at her door, muffled and timid. “Lucy?” her grandmother whispered, the slow creak of the hinges almost drowning her out. “Lucy, sweetheart, are you all right?”
“Yeah,” Lucy croaked. “Why?”
Ilsa stepped into the room. Lucy thought she looked a little like a ghost, with her silvery-white hair set against her porcelain skin and pale pink robe. She gave a soft smile and sat on the end of Lucy’s bed. “I heard you screaming,” she explained. “Did you have another nightmare?”
Lucy nodded. “Feathers, again,” she mumbled, deciding not to mention the second part of the dream.
Ilsa touched her granddaughter’s cheek with an almost unnaturally soft hand. “I could make you an appointment with a therapist…”
“No,” Lucy drew away. “I’m not crazy, Gramma.”
“No one’s saying you are, honey. But clearly, you’re going through some psychological turmoil.”
“A therapist isn’t going to tell you anything I haven’t told you already. It’s the Clinic. It’s those vitamins I have to take, those injections I have to get… whatever psychological turmoil I’m going through is because of that.”
“Lucy, don’t do this. I promise you, as soon as we find a treatment that works…”
“And when will that be?” Lucy demanded. “No one even knows what’s wrong with me. Sure, I have a marrow deficiency,
that’s pretty mundane… but I’m also allergic to vegetables, for God's sake!"
Ilsa sighed. “Look… I wasn’t going to tell you this, yet, because the arrangements haven’t all been finalized—but I met someone at Banser-Graham who claims to know an independent specialist who might just know how to treat you. I’ve made a few calls, and, if this specialist returns them, we’ll organize a meeting.”
Lucy raised an eyebrow. “What makes this specialist so different from all the others?”
“Well, the price, for one. It’s quite astronomical. And, when I did a few inquiries, I found that a lot of social higher-ups have been successfully treated—this man has done some incredible work in the fields of experimental medicine and genetic research. Mr. Clark Simon, I think they said his name was.”
“So why haven’t we heard of this guy before, if he’s so good?” behind her air of cynicism, Lucy was beginning to get excited.
Ilsa cleared her throat. “Well… er… Mr. Simon’s work isn’t, strictly speaking, legal.”
Lucy’s eyes widened. Now she was really excited. “Are you serious?” she couldn’t hold back a grin. Her grandmother wasn’t the most uptight, but for her to even hint at illicit goings-on was completely out of character.
“Dead serious, sweetheart. But remember—don’t tell a soul.” Ilsa put her finger to her lips, kissed it, and touched it to Lucy’s nose; a gesture from the latter’s childhood that the two of them had never outgrown.
“But—” Lucy protested, eager to hear more about this Clark Simon.
“Try to get some sleep,” Ilsa interrupted, getting up to leave. “It’s two in the morning.”
Lucy fell back onto her pillow with a sigh. She closed her eyes and heard the dull thud and metallic click of the closing door. Only moments later, she drifted back to sleep, her last thought a vague, shapeless question.
Where have I heard the name Clark Simon before?
