Elysium's Love Triangle (6 page)

I scream in agony.

Daniel puts his free hand on my shoulder, “Sleep.”

His beautiful eyes are the last things I see.

The change is happening.  I can feel it taking place within my body.

Flashing in my mind is everything that I’ve ever been afraid of.

This includes everything from failing all my exams to sharks.

Losing my Mom also features.  I need her.

Unpleasant things.  Snakes, clowns.

The shadow walking behind me.

Someone dangerous watching me
while I
sleep.
  I don’t even know who they are
.

Being attacked.  Being helpless.

Being away from those I love.

I open my eyes.  The real world.

Daniel is carrying me in his arms.

I am not aware enough to know where we are.

The world leaves again.

*

When I wake up properly I am in my bed.

Daniel is here, so is his sister.

I hear them arguing.

Angelica thinks that Daniel should turn off his emotions every now and again.  It’s like so embarrassing to be his sister.  She reminds him that his feelings have gotten him into trouble in the past.

They are what they are.  She thinks i
t’s about time
he embraced that.

He replies that he will never be an evil
creature
.

There is a silence between them after this.

She tells him that Arachne
s are not monsters.  They are simply more
evolved
than humans.  That’s the way the world works, she reminds him.  Creatures feed on the things that are
lower
than them in the food chain.

He doesn’t respond to this.

Pain shoots through my leg.  I let out a low moan.

“She’s awake,” Daniel tells his sister.

I don’t hear what she says next.  For a moment it is like there is water in my ears, blocking out the sound.

I open my eyes.

Daniel is sitting right beside me, using a chair from my desk.  Angelica is on her way over.

A shot of agony rips through my head.

I let out a long groan.

I don’t even have the energy to scream.

“It will pass,” Daniel assures me.

I look at his face.  It is beyond perfection.

It calms me
to know
that he’s here.

I wish that he was holding my hand again.

A scene flashes before my eyes.  I am in the sea.  I can smell and taste the salt.  I can see the ripple of the waves clearly.  I am swimming out deeper.

“It’s not nice to spy on people, you know,” Angelica’s voice brings me back to my room.

Her brother chastises her.  Now is certainly not the time
,
he thinks, and she should be more supportive.

He reminds her about how
difficult the change is.

Then he
puts his hand on my
head, and addresses his sister
, “She has
a fever.  It will probably be
an hour or two before she gets any better . . . Why don’t you go
to
class?  I’ll mind her.”

Angelica regards him suspiciously, “So now you’re skipping class for a girl?”

He gives her a look of disbelief, “Yes, I am . . . I’m not letting her go through this alone.  I had to, it wasn’t nice . . .”

Angelica looks like she is going to argue with this.

The light begins to fade again.

The world fades with it.

*

The horrible men are chasing me.

They chase me until I wake up again.

The world is clearer.

I sit up; properly awake now for the first time.

The change must be over.  I feel better.

Daniel has fallen asleep. 

I suppose he didn’t get a lot of rest last night.

I suddenly feel restless.

I get up and change
into some nicer clothes.  Looking nice shouldn’t be a priority right no
w,
but it is.  There is a gorgeous boy in my room after all.

I check to see my reflection in the mirror.

I do a double take.  I almost scream.

The girl in the mirror can’t be me.

She has shiny blonde hair. 

Her skin is so perfect that it’s practically porcelain.

Her eyes are a glowing sky blue.

“It’s quite a moment, isn’t it?  The first time you see yourself changed,” Daniel’s voice startles me.

I turn to him.  He is grinning now.

“My hair is blonde!  It was never blonde . . . My eyes!”
  I blurt.

He stands up and turns me back towards the mirror.

Now we are both reflected in it, together.

There is something nice about the picture.

“You’ll get used to it,” he assures me.  “It took me a while too.”

There is something so otherworldly about me now.  I don’t see how anyone could fail to notice how completely I’ve changed.

They will surely be suspicious.

“You should probably sit down,” Daniel advises suddenly.

“Why?”  I ask.

“Your change isn’t over,” he seems worried. “In a few moments you’ll probably get weak and collapse again.”

I am stubborn and don’t heed his advice.  Instead I stay chatting to him while standing.

In the next few minutes I faint.

He has to catch me and put me onto my bed, yet aga
in. 

My stomach feels like it’s seizing up.

My head is a furnace.

I tell him this.

He says that these symptoms are a
good
sign.  They mean that
the end of the change is near.

I ask him to tell me a story, just to distract me.

I want to know how he, himself, got changed.
 

He tells me, with some reluctance.

He was
only
thirteen when it happened. 
  His Dad came home from work, one day,
with two bottl
es of what he called ‘soda’.  Then he told Daniel and Angelica
that it was the best soda they’d ever taste.

They drank it.

It wasn’t soda.  It was Arachne blood.

Their Dad was
n’t really their Dad either.  The man who gave them the Arachne blood
was actually an Arachne
, named
Rejon, in disguise.

Rejon is pure evil and was trying, at the time, to change as many humans as possible.  This way he could build an army to defeat the Mayrons.

The Mayrons being the ancient enemies of the Arachne species of course.

When Daniel’s parents came home they found their children scaling the walls, literally.

He doesn’t really want to tell the rest of the story after that.

Suffice to say
that
their parents were not happy with suddenly having ‘freaks’ as children. 
He and Angelica were abandoned and left to fend for themselves.

They
were eventually fou
nd and taken in by Nate Warsoin. He’s the group’s ringleader who still guides them to this day
. 

He and Angelica were relieved, to say the least. 
They’d finally found people who were like themselves, having been completely lost for years.

“Wow,” I comment when he’s finished.  “That’s quite the story.”

He hasn’t had an easy life.

“Yeah,” he leans back, suddenly look
ing
quite amazed.  “I’ve never told it to anyone before.”

I push for more, “What about Rejon?”

Daniel sighs, look
ing
at me regretfully.  “My sister and I managed to evade being inducted into his army.  This is thanks t
o Nate.  He showed us places where
we could hide.  He never disclosed our location, not even when Rejon tortured him.  I guess Rejon eventually replaced us with someone else . . . My sister is hung-up on getting revenge against him.  It is all she wants in life.  She wants to kill him for what he’s done to her.  She’s so bitter . . .”

There is so much
sadness in his eyes.

“What about you?” I ask, “Do you want revenge?”

He shakes his head, “No, I just want my sister to be happy again . . . like she used to be.”

I understand this.  All I want is for my Mom to be happy, like she used to be.

I don’t bring this up.

I take Daniel’s hand, “Thanks for saving me last night.”

He s
tudies me for a moment, “You’re
an interesting kind of girl, aren’t you?”

“How’s that?”  I ask, quite taken by the way he’s look at me.

He checks my temperature again with his free hand, “I haven’t even known you for
three days
and you’ve already gotten me to both risk my whole species for you
and
open up about things I’ve never even discussed with my sister.” 

There is a light in his eyes as he looks at me now.  I hope it never goes away.

I laugh, “I didn’t do it on purpose.  If it makes you feel better I’ll tell you a story
that
I
’ve
never told anyone ever before.  You know
. . .
to even up the score a bit.”

This seems to please him, he nods.

A vicious pain runs down through my veins.

I squeeze his hand tighter until it leaves.

I introduce my story and tell him it’s about
why
I’m afraid of sharks.

This seems to intrigue him.  He is definitely interested in getting to know more
about me
.

Still, there is a reason why I haven’t told this story before.

It hurts.

I begin telling it, in a not so straight forward style.

Once there was this boy, of just thirteen years of age
.  He hurt his leg, skate boarding
, and got a day off school
.

That day he was completely bored.   He never liked being left at home alone.  Amusement came, finally, when the new neighbours moved in.

They had a daug
hter about his age.  He thought that
she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.  They began dating only a week later.

When they were fifteen the girl found out that she was pregnant.  This was rather terrifying to her.  The boy wasn’t exactly mature enough to be a father, she thought.  He was often completely reckless and an overgrown kid in many ways.

She loved his fearless
ness really
,
but it was a problem now.

Sure enough
,
he didn’t change much when the baby came.  The girl thought
that
her partner was far too easy going about the whole parenting thing.  His philosophy was always ‘let’s do this and see what happens’.  She wanted to have things planned.

This was the only thing they
ever
argued about.  The future.

She wanted him to go to university and get a proper job.  Their child needed to be provided for properly, she argued.

The boy didn’t think
that
things were as black and white as this.  He just wanted to write songs and become a rock star.  If this
plan
failed he would be
come
a professional surfer.

The girl
thought these unlikely dreams, as they are. 

I
t
took the boy thr
ee years to figure out that his dreams
probably weren’t going to come true.

He began to worry about his little girl’s future.

When the child was four he
brought her,
and her mother
,
to the beach.

He surprised the mother with the news that he was starting at university in the fall.

She was overjoyed, finally seeing a future for them.

Now the boy had a brother named Riley.  He was there the same day
,
at the beach.

They decided, as a last homage to the old times, to go for a surf.