Chapter 5
“How do you feel about what happened to Lora?”
Louie asked.
Sarra stared through the brand new panes of
glass leaning against the living room wall, waiting to be installed. Sarra
sneered and rubbed her bruised shoulder.
“I had plans today…” She muttered and turned
to the window.
Louie nodded.
“Time waits for no man.”
Sarra sat cross-legged on the floor.
“Yeah, but the man waiting has plenty of
time.”
Louie curled his lip. Sarra threw the question
back
“How do you feel about what happened to my
sister?”
Louie shrugged.
“I’m still processing it; give me some time to
mull it over…” He said. Sarra nodded, they shared their answer.
The
two sat by the new glass, taking a minute or two to stay cool on the parched
August day. The drawback of living closer to sea level in Southern California
was the intolerable heat that made itself known for two thirds of the year.
This was not a good deal for both Louis and Sarra Summers.
A comet of light flew through the open windows.
The light crashed into the new sets of glass, shattering all but one pane. A
pair of silver gauntlets formed from the comet in front of Sarra. Both father
and daughter looked at them dumbfounded as the glass tinkled to the carpet. None
had been given any time to react.
Serena marched out from the kitchen, having
heard the crash.
“What on earth is…?”
Sarra grabbed the gauntlets and held them up
for her mother to see. Like a switch being flicked, Louie went past furious and
into a deep, white-hot ethereal calm. Louie pointed at the new gauntlets, spouting
wordless syllables with a smile.
Serena looked at the shattered glass, Sarra,
and the gauntlets. She knew how angry her husband was, and she knew what the
gauntlets were. Although Serena worked to be a tough woman, relatable to both
of her daughters on each of their extremes, the events of the day topped off
with a second pair of EnWol gauntlets was too much for her to take. Serena
grimaced, turned on her heel, and galloped in another direction.
Sarra looked at her father; he was smiling
with a bit too much pleasure for his standards. Sarra could feel the fury
radiating from him. She curled her lip, stared at the gauntlets and shrugged.
“In a void, why not? There’s been too much
shit on this sundae today anyway; let’s put the cherry on top.”
Louie nudged Sarra with his foot as she undid
the first hinge. She glanced up at him and he threw his tape measurer at the
last pane of glass, making a hole in the wall as well. Louie looked at Sarra,
well past caring. She stood up, mindful of her intense father, and put the
gauntlets on. The pair emitted a bright light that spread across her body. Sarra
rose into the air and both of her forearms went numb.
Sarra felt odd, she could no longer feel her
hands, or tell if they still existed. She looked down to get a better idea, but
her intense light washed out all detail. The absolute numbness spread to the
rest of her arms and down her torso. She started to panic when the numbness hit
both her hips and nose simultaneously. She thought of the worst obscenities as
the numbness overtook her entire head.
Sarra blacked out.
Louie watched the progress, wondering if he
really, really should have stopped her.
Sarra was losing her shape, her limbs merged into her torso in an amorphous blob
and then to a perfect sphere. The light faded and Sarra became a mirrored ball
with the clothes at her feet. Louie presumed that it was still his daughter.
“Sarra?” He croaked; his anger did not
dissipate in the least, but his concern pushed it aside.
The ball rippled at the mention of its name.
Louie looked at his reflection and thought ‘like father like son.’ Sarra was
proud of her feminine side, but her own style and attitude swayed her toward male
activates. This was enough for Louie to relate with his spunky daughter, and in
turn, Sarra with her father.
Sarra regained consciousness right away. She
did not know what to do, or what she was. Her field of vision broadened in an unbroken
three hundred and sixty degree viewpoint. Sarra felt for her body after
realizing that she had become her own pupil. She didn’t know how to explain what
it was like to be a perfect sphere. If she were to explain it in simple terms,
she would say that she was physically whole.
Sarra was getting restless. She figured that
she had become EnWol and she wanted her old human shape back. She saw Louie
step back as her ‘whole’ sprouted some lumps. Her field of vision was cut by
half as her eyes were put in their proper place. She closed her new eyes to
feel the reversion from sphere to Sarra.
Louie watched Sarra’s five lumps become her
head and extremities; her main glob stretched into her torso. Louie searched
for something to say as Sarra’s silver body gained some color.
“You okay?” He asked.
Sarra held her hand up. She felt exactly like
her old self but with an overwhelming sensation of… softness and fluidity. Sarra
opened her eyes and found that she was wearing an exact replica of Lora’s Pink
Lemon uniform. She curled her lip and hoped that she did not find what she was
expecting.
“Shit, my hair isn’t pink, is it?” Sarra
grabbed a lock of her hair and got her answer. It was hot pink. She looked at
her father with a screwed up face. He nodded.
“Two Pink Lemons in the family… The second is
mortified more by her hair color than the gooey change.”
Sarra moved her arm and a leg. Her body felt
like it finished a hard days exercise that was preceded by a good stretch, but
bluntly oversaturated and without the discomfort and weariness that comes with
it.
She
could live with that.
“Two Pink Lemons? I don’t want your lemons. What
am I supposed to do with those? Let’s do Crimson Cherry.” Her voice slurred a
little, making the S sound like a Z.
Sarra’s first thought was of red and purple
and she changed to reflect those colors. She looked at her purple hair and smiled.
Louie raised an eyebrow.
“Crimzon Cherry? Spelled with a Z?”
Sarra nodded.
“Yeah, sure. Why not?”
Louie shrugged.
“The world’s English teachers are going to
hate you… and your mother is going to hate me for letting this happen to you…”
Louie walked off; there was a tipsy swagger in
his walk. Sarra could tell that his anger was returning.
“Listen Sarra, I need to lie down. If there
are some Orange Apricot gauntlets for me and Violet Plum gauntlets for Serena,
than I not only don’t want to know about them, I want them destroyed.”
Sarra nodded as her father left. She floated
in midair and studied her new form. She realized with both a cold certainty and
her father’s choice of words that she would never be able to change back.
Sarra’s old body was destroyed and that was
that.
“Well, I leapt before I
looked so now I’m stuck, so far so good.” Sarra told herself. She looked at the
forgotten glass, and felt a hollow cloud cast itself over her.
Sarra could feel a
nonexistent heart shrivel up and deflate with terror inside her chest and she
was unsure why. She looked at her arm, her ‘elbow’ hanging loose like a rope. She
let it drip to the floor and detach. It didn’t hurt. She stepped on the silver
goo and her foot reabsorbed it while her arm reformed. Sarra felt her heart
knot up and shudder again. A hint of nausea floated in her stomach, even though
she knew that it was no longer there.
Sarra continued to analyze her terror based illness, but a
rational reason never came up. She knew what was coming. She had daydreamed
about being EnWol before, and she knew that it was a one-way trip. Sarra had no
idea what was bugging her about being EnWol, since she figured that she
wouldn’t mind so much.
She shook her head.
“I don’t like this…”
Chapter 6
The darkness was absolute. It swallowed
any shred of light that was unfortunate enough to enter its perpetual depth. Only
a single orange pinprick consisting of four candles shone dimly in the void. The
woman in the center sat motionless, diving deeper and deeper into her trance.
Morgan
le Fay sat in the meditation room of her New England mansion, taking great care
to shut out all distractions and forget that the walls existed. She let her slipping
precognition displace her consciousness. Morgan was sure that her foretelling
ability, like all the rest throughout the years, both mental and physical, was
disappearing; it was not as strong and clear as it used to be.
As
if it were desperately trying to keep from falling from a cliff into the void,
her vision of the future gave what felt like its last breath. Morgan was both
saddened and relieved to see it go. A bleak cloud hovered in a stark blue sky
with a person ascending into the dark center. Morgan was unable to make out any
details. She noted thin plumbs of rubble flying around the person, some much
larger than others. They swirled up into the darkest point of the cloud, coming
close to hitting the figure in the center. Morgan looked over to her right and
saw a person standing next to her in a yellow outfit. His face was
unrecognizable, but unquestionable at the same time.
“Clive Ogden…”
Morgan returned to reality faster than she
would have liked. She opened her eyes, listened to her now hard breathing, and
stared though the dark blue rose at her feet.
The
power was gone and she knew that those remaining would follow suit. She just
wished that her late clairvoyance had told her which ones were next.
Morgan
sat motionless and reflected on her vision, feeling that the best would have
been saved for last.
“Clive Ogden… What is he…?”
The phone rang. Morgan jumped and gazed at it,
wishing it would burst into flames. She abstained, knowing that her pyrokinesis
was still intact. She let the machine get it. On the fifth ring, Morgan
relented. She crossed the room, swept her hand upward to trigger the lights
motion sensors, and answered the phone.
“What?”
A nasal voice replied; his congestion enhanced
to sickening levels by the low quality of the phone.
“Morgan, its Bill Garner at Hero Corps., psy
division. I have discovered that a young resident of ours has an advanced form
of telekinesis and I need your help.”
Morgan turned around and stared at the four
candles.
“Don’t several of your residents exhibit
telekinetic traits?”
“Of those, over fifty thousand metas in the
U.S. have telekinetic abilities beyond simple flight. This one though, a young
Anne Redford, she seems to have power that goes off the chart. Morgan I need
you to come up here for an expert’s opinion on Anne’s biology.”
Morgan looked through her wall toward the
library, where, although she could not see it, she knew that her Ph. D for the
study of Psychokinetic power was present.
After all that time in school, I still do not
know how my mind… foresaw the future…
Garner
cleared his throat and Morgan got back to him.
“What sort of power does this Anne Redford
display that makes her worth my attention, Garner?” She asked.
He sighed and Morgan heard some papers
rustling on the other line. His voice became flat as he read to her.
“Anne Redford displays various unseen, yet
theorized traits of meta human psychic power. Of all the meta humans, the fifty
thousand that do show signs, they can only lift themselves with their mind and
fly as well as cause a few trinkets at a close proximity to hover. All among a
slight rise in their five senses as well.
Five year old Anne Redford can not only propel
herself and fly, but she is able to do so more than effortlessly; taking to
flying as if she were a feather in a light breeze.”
Morgan scowled. She was losing her patience.
“And?”
Garner lost his place for a moment, shocked
with Moran’s outburst. His voice faltered.
“Oh, ehh, Anne also displays psychic acts that
are unfamiliar to our records. Anne can, well, project incorporeal forms of her
desire and she is able to tunnel whenever she holds her breath.”
Morgan’s interest spiked. This was something
that not even she could do when her powers were in their prime. She turned on
her heel and paced.
“Pass through solid matter? How?”
“I don’t know. I can tell you that she can
change the vibratory rates of her atoms and simply slide through whatever she
wants, but I can’t tell you how she
does that.”
Morgan bit her thumbnail.
“Alright, fine. San Francisco?”
“Yes, you know where we are.”
“Of course. I’m going to need a bodyguard. If
this Anne Redford can do what you say, than I believe that I’m going to need protection.”
Garner snorted.
“We are located in meta hero central, Morgan.
I don’t think that---”
Morgan
interrupted him.
“That is not
what I meant by bodyguard, William. I shall see you later.”
Morgan pressed the button in the cradle to
hang up and released to dial a new number. The phone rang four times and a male
voice answered.
“Hello Clive, its Morgan. I need your help
with a potential problem and I would love it if my Electric Beaulieu the…. normal meta human could assist me.”
If you would like the whole book, a souvenir of the experience, check it out at Smashwords here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/87111
If you would like the whole book, a souvenir of the experience, check it out at Smashwords here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/87111
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