Feel Again (5 page)

Samakri left Lionel alone in the
main room of the farmhouse for a few minutes to get them some ripe
red apples that were growing on a tree by the back door leading to
a dismal mudroom. The main room in itself was in dire need of
repair. The grey-brown floorboards creaked under Lionel’s feet and
they were covered with ash and dust, which also coated the
cobweb-ridden furniture and choked the life out of the hideous
green rug. Lionel was surprised, though, when Sam came back, mainly
because she did not have any apples.

“Where the fuck is my food?”
Lionel pressed. “I’m starving, and it’s the least you could do
considering you brought me here without even telling me
anything.”

“There’s a lot you need to know,
Lionel,” Samakri said. “As you know, I’m not human. I have powers,
like the ones you saw, but I also have weaknesses, too. People of
Earth would call me an extraterrestrial; an alien, perhaps. I come
from a planet called Zebda, where the people are like me. They look
very different, and, also like me, they cannot feel human emotions.
However, when my father, the Armpha, or ruler, of Zebda, killed
your parents, it was because we needed you in order to experiment
and find the cure for the apathy that ails us.”

“You’re dad killed
my
mom and dad
!
”
Lionel bellowed. “I HATE
YOU!”

“Let me finish,” Samakri replied. “My father, Blekrin,
wants me to destroy you as well. He wants me to dismember you alive
with a special sword made of Yalmax, the single element of our
planet, then extract the cure from your flesh, blood, and bone so
that we may learn to feel as humans do. However, I have come to
know, when I looked into your eyes as a child, and when I look into
your eyes now, that we have a connection. You make me
feel
something, and I know that you know, that this is
true.”

Lionel gulped. He
did
know that he and
Samakri had a connection, and that made him even more afraid of her
than he could ever have been had he not felt that way about such an
elusive young woman. But, how could he possibly admit this to the
girl that had witnessed--even partaken in--the murder of his
parents, causing him so much misery at the hands of so many
neglectful foster families; so much torment at the hands of bullies
who did not know what it was like to suffer the pain of true
loneliness which Lionel had so often felt at their
hands.

“You are silent; does that mean
that you deny what I have said?” Samakri asked.

“That’s not what it means. It just
means that I’m too afraid to say it.”

“Then that means that I’m too
afraid to kill you as I have been instructed.”

“So, if you don’t want to kill me,
then how exactly, are you going to fulfill your duties to this
Zebda place where you say that you come from?” Lionel inquired.
However, he was not entirely sure that he wanted to know the answer
to his own question.

“There are two courses of action
that could increase the chance that you will get out of this ordeal
alive, Lionel.”

“What are they, Sam? Just tell
me.”

“We could go to war, and hope that
Earth wins, or we could call a truce; sign a treaty calling for
peace between our home planets. However, there would be an
inevitable catch to such a treaty.”

“And, this ‘catch’ would
be...”

“The two planets would have to combine and become one,
symbolically of course, and also become one race. This would likely
be the result of
our
union.”

Lionel froze, not knowing what to
say. Deep down, he was intrigued by Sam’s proposal, yet he was far
more afraid to speak that thought than he had been to admit that he
felt a connection. With that said, there was only one thing for him
left to say.

“Well, then, I guess it’s
war.”

“Very well,” Samakri responded calmly, with not a hint of
disappointment in her voice, nor an indication that she would allow
Zebda to lose for Lionel’s sake. In a way, Lionel was the one who
was disappointed, and he was also aware of the fact that Sam would
have no mercy on his kind, to say the very least. The otherworldly
vixen pulled a strange device out of her handbag; something
resembling a cell phone, only consisting of a much more advanced
technology. She pressed a button, and it seemed to zap her with a
jolt of electricity. Her entire body lit up in a strange green
light, and, suddenly, a man appeared in the musty farmhouse parlor.
He was as pale as Samakri, with the same yellow eyes, and orange
hair. A chill ran down Lionel’s spine.
It was Blekrin.

At that point, Lionel was
completely speechless; he remained stuck in his own fear; consumed
by it. Samakri turned to her father and said to him, “The earthling
has declared war on Zebda, dearest father and Armpha.”

“Is that so?” he asked. “Well, in
that case, let the fighting begin.” That was the last thing that
Lionel remembered before he fainted.

The
young man awoke in a strange place. He was in some kind of weird
building. It was made of a strange material, or, rather,
element.
Yalmax, he
thought.
He was on Planet
Zebda, and the war had begun. Just then, he noticed an army of what
he assumed were Zebdian soldiers. They were charging towards him,
their translucent Yalmax swords in hand; raised in favor of ending
Lionel’s life. Then, he realized what horror actually befell him.
The war was not waged as Zebda vs. Earth; it was waged Zebda vs.
Lionel Davidson.

“Get him; get the traitor!” a teenaged soldier screamed at
Lionel. The boy, who was at least a handful of years younger than
Lionel himself, had the same skin and eyes as other Zebdians; with
bright blue hair colored like the Atlantic Ocean. Then, Lionel
noticed that some of the other soldiers did not have the same skin
and eyes; they sported a pinkish or taupe dermis and eyes primary
in color. That could only mean one thing.
The boy was Samakri’s brother.

One of the other soldiers,
presumably middle aged, called out to the boy. Apparently, his name
was Nelvak, and he has seen only fourteen summers. For a moment,
Lionel felt a strange sympathy for the boy; for Nelvak, until the
child soldier walked up to him and jabbed him in the ribs with his
sword in a way that would not kill him, but would set him straight.
Then, Nelvak sneered cruelly at Lionel, and continued to spit in
his face. Lastly, before moving on, he kicked Lionel in the head;
leaving him on the cold ground with no one to aid his cause or his
life.

Lionel than saw Samakri for the
first time since he had awoken on Zebda. She was not in her
steampunk earth gear, but was clad in a revealing two-piece armor,
made of the sheerest Yalmax that was tinted the same shade of
purple as her hair, with embellishments along the seams that
matched her golden eyes. She glared at him with an animal-esque
ferocity in her gaze; she held his stare for what seemed like
eternity, and then she walked away.

There was nothing in the world, or,
in this case, the universe, that Lionel Davidson wanted more than
to be back home on Earth. He had known from the very beginning that
he could not trust the girl, Samakri. But, yet he had been foolish
enough to believe, even for just a few seconds, that he might have
feelings for her. And, even more foolishly, for just as long, he
had thought that she might feel the same way about him. Now, for
certain, Lionel was aware that Samakri was even more evil than he
ever could have imagined. If he had thought at any point that there
was good left in her, he was dead wrong. Or, perhaps he was
not.

“Are you comfortable her, on
Zebda?” Sam asked, approaching him slowly, her pale and shapely
legs swaying just the right way as she moved in his
direction.

“Well, not exactly, Sam,” he retorted. “I mean, I thought I
could trust you to help me and now I find out that you were
involved in my parents’ murder and that you couldn’t even care less
about what happens to me as long as Zebda overrules Earth and you
get the cure. Is that what you were after all along, Samakri? Is
that why you even killed Loretta J, who, I agree, was annoying, but
who was
innocent
, and a lot
more so than you or your brother could ever be?”

“I was testing you, Lionel. I did
not kill the annoying singer girl. I marphed her here to Zebda,
where she has become a slave in the art of exotic entertainment.
She will be singing for the Zebdian army during their training to
relax them and make them more efficient fighters.”

“You said that you removed her
from existence, Sam. How do I know that you’re not lying now rather
than back then?”

“I did remove her from existence,
Lionel. Planes of existence are only pertinent to Earth. There is
no such thing as existence on Zebda.”

“Are you really going to wage a
war; pit our home planets against each other, just so that you
won’t have to admit a loss for one time in your life, Sam?” Lionel
questioned, looking down idly at the exquisite Yalmax floor tiles,
which had been injected with strange phosphorescent dyes to make
the colors appear to change as light struck the tiles.

“There is more to this war than
you are currently able to imagine, Lionel. We have nothing against
your kind. We need you for the cure. However, we do not have to
kill you to get it. While I was attending Earth school, I learned
of a process called cloning. According to the books that you have
there, it has not been used on humans to date; only sheep. I have
also acquired skills in the art of Earthen technology and have thus
accessed your transcripts from the school you were attending.
Through this acquisition, I have come to know that you excelled in
science and mathematics. You also did a research project on cloning
as part of your application to some impressive universities, all of
which you declined to attend in the last minute because you had
decided to run away.”

“Sam, you’re crazy. I’m not a
scientist. I don’t know how the hell to clone someone, especially
not myself. It was just a stupid project. And, even if I was as
special as people used to think I might be one day, and, if I did
actually know how to do what you’re asking me to do, I wouldn’t
tell you how, anyway. It’s just not a good idea at all.”

“Would you rather go to war with
Zebda and die so we may acquire the cure for apathy, then?” Sam
looked eerily content with the idea of killing a person who she had
so recently proclaimed a connection to. It made Lionel wonder if it
she really was lying about Loretta.

“No, of course I wouldn’t rather
go to war. But, what you don’t seem to realize, Sam, is that there
haven’t been any human clones yet because the science is flawed. It
has been predicted that humans who were cloned would be sickly;
they would die before reaching maturity. And, yes, they do have to
reach maturity. It isn’t possible in any way for you to clone me
and end up with another me. You would be killing little me; the me
not too far off from the me that you met all those years
ago.”

Samakri froze when Lionel said
that. She had not studied cloning enough to pick up on that bit of
detail. Despite everything that she had previously said, Samakri
was not going to be able to kill little Lionel. Yes, she could
easily--perhaps--kill the Lionel that stood before her now; the one
that had caused her so much anxiety and reluctance, but she could
never lay a hand on the small, helpless, perfect boy whose eyes she
had looked into for the first time fifteen years earlier on the day
that she had helped Blekrin commit the most unspeakable crime
against Maggie and Arthur Davidson, Lionel’s mother and father. She
was officially in a deadlock.

Lionel did not know what to say
either. He was now sensing Samakri’s weakness. Perhaps he had been
wrong more than once; the first time when he underestimated her
dangerousness, the second time when he underestimated her uncanny
kindness. Lionel was not sure if he should defy his emotions and
use this weakness against Sam, or take advantage of the opportunity
to help her, and possibly win her heart. Either way, he was
stumped.

Despite the fact that, for a while,
Lionel had assumed that Samakri's confusing behavior would benefit
him in some way, that was not exactly how it turned out. Shortly
after showing some sympathy for him, she sent her brother, Nelvak,
to cart him off to the prison chambers. The boy was stronger and
more skilled in the art of torture than any human his age. It
became clear to Lionel, as his battered body was swept across the
coarse Yalmax flooring that it would not be easy to rebel against
the Zebdians and still survive. One thing that he took comfort in
as he and Nelvak approached the prison chamber was that it was the
same one where they kept Loretta J. Lionel could only imagine how
scared the pop star was. And yet, she sang.

Once upon a time,

You were complete; my
all;

And with every rhyme,

In love with you I’d
fall