Psych Investigation Episodes: Episode 1 (A Young Adult Scifi / Fantasy) (11 page)

“
Melissa, is this a game or a
joke?”

Jack didn’t think it was possible, but somehow
her anger seemed to multiply. She bent down and did the
unthinkable. With a single rowing-pull of her arm, she grabbed Jack
by the scruff of his neck and lifted him. Not just to his feet, but
off them, leaving him dangling in midair like a key on a
chain.

“
Does this look like a joke? You
know what the real joke is? It’s that scum like you are allowed to
live in this world.”

She released him, and he fell to his knees. The
confusion reached such a level that Jack was no longer sure he even
cared what was happening. Survival was the only thing that remotely
mattered to him.

On his knees, he looked up at the woman of his
dreams, now the woman of his nightmares. Thoughts bounced back and
forth between the corners of his mind. His brain scrambled for any
kind of explanation, likely or otherwise, and the pain from being
thrown to the ground made the confusion worse.

Melissa walked behind him and nudged him
forward. He fell on his chest with an
“oohf.”
Then,
he felt her hands
overlapping his as they were bound and tied.

“
What’s happening to me?” Jack
asked.

 
He was still in a daze. He
felt her hands tie his own with a thick cord.

“
I’ve pictured this quite a few
times, but this is definitely
not
one of ways I always
imagined you tying me up.” Jack was no longer sure what words he
was spouting. Spots danced before his eyes while dizziness overtook
him.

Melissa grunted as she sealed the knot on his
hands. “You know, I wasn’t supposed to do anything until my team
arrived, but you were trying to go running off. I couldn’t just let
you leave.”

Jack tried to crawl away on his stomach, but
Melissa sighed and took a seat on his back, holding him in
place.

“
I guess I’ll just sit here until
they arrive. I’ve got to say, you really disappointed me. I thought
you’d be tougher. But then again, only a pathetic slob would do
what you did to all those people. God, you sicken me.”

A few minutes passed, and Jack’s head cleared
while the dizziness faded. His confusion remained, but at the very
least, he felt slightly more grounded in reality and aware of his
situation.

“
Melissa, please, just tell me
what’s going on.”

She made no attempt to respond, content to
simply sit on his back and leave him on the ground. She didn’t
speak a word, until moments later, the sound of nearby feet gliding
through grass resounded from a few yards away.

“
It’s about time!” she
called.

“
My, my, my. Oh what, oh what do we
have here?” a man’s voice asked. The shadows of two dark
silhouettes could be made out from a nearby brush. Jack didn’t
recognize either voice, but he was too distracted by his current
situation to care who they were.

“
Ruin, Darling, do you have any idea
why that horse of a woman is sitting on my prey?”

“
Not even a clue, my dearest
Requiem. Perhaps this is some kind of new sex game?”

Two figures exited from the brush. One was a
tall, languid-looking man. He was handsome, with neatly trimmed
hair and a kind, sincere face, though Jack suspected it was all a
front. The other was one of the most striking women Jack had ever
seen. She almost ranked up to Melissa, but her face was what
disturbed Jack. Her smile was wicked, and her expression was one of
pure, unfiltered madness.

Jack felt a weight lift as Melissa got off
Jack’s back. “Who the hell are you two? What’s happening here is
none of your concern, and I seriously advise you to turn around and
leave.”

“
Do you hear that, Darling? This
creature is making demands of us. Shall I kill it?”

Melissa’s face darkened. “What did you just say
to me?”

The woman called Requiem ignored her. Instead,
she shifted her gaze directly towards Jack. Her face lit up with
delight, and she clapped her hands.

“
That’s him, brother, that’s him!
He’s the one I want, the one the other boy told us about. Why is he
tied up? Did the pig do this to our new brother?”

Jack wasn’t sure, but assuming no dogs were
around, he heard Melissa literally growl in response.

“
Your new brother? What does that
mean? Who are you two?”

Requiem laughed. “Hah! Oh, look at this, Ruin,
look! It’s still trying to converse with me. I’ll deal with it
later.”

Jack felt a foreign sensation on his wrists,
and then, as if by magic, his bonds were cut, freeing his hands.
With a trembling palm, he pushed himself off the ground and slowly
stood to his feet. Melissa looked over, panic now on her face as
Jack stood freed before her.

“
Okay, everyone. I’m not even gonna
try, pretend, or better yet even ask to know who you guys are.”
Jack dusted off his pants and shirt with a shaking hand. “But I
think I finally understand what’s going on here. Actually, I’m sure
of it.” Jack felt his confusion fade a little as the pieces finally
came together.

“
I have somehow activated a portal
to a parallel dimension, where Melissa is as strong as a troll, and
everyone has names that start with
R.”

Requiem put a gloved palm to her face and
laughed with delight. “Oh, look at him, Ruin, look at him! He’s a
funny boy. Our new brother is a very funny one. Oh, this is so
lovely!”

Melissa turned to Jack. Her face had gone cold,
but raw anger seeped through her expression. “What do you mean by
that, Jack?”

“
Well, Melissa, if you’d been paying
attention—see what I did there? You’re always saying I don’t pay
attention but now you’re the one who isn’t—you’d have heard that
both their names start with the letter
R
.”

“
Not about that!
” she
screamed back at him. “About you having no clue who these two
people are.”

Jack scratched his head. “Nope, not ringing a
bell. I haven’t seen these guys anywhere.”

Requiem clapped her hands yet again with
delight. “Oh, Jack, you’ll come to know us as family soon enough.
We’re your liberators, the ones who will allow you to step forward
and take your birth right and yes, even shake the very
heavens!”

Jack, still trembling from Melissa’s
roughhousing, limped forward past Melissa to stare directly at the
two weirdoes.

“
I,” he began, “have absolutely no
idea what any of what you just said means!”

Now, even Ruin joined in the
laughter.

“
Oh, Ruin,” Requiem said, “I love
this one already. I can’t wait to have him.” Her face changed, the
madness growing but now a perverse lust seeped through her haunting
eyes. “I’ll wait no longer.”

Melissa took two steps forward to stand beside
Jack. It was apparent from her expression that she was trying to
piece together the situation. The park wasn’t very large compared
to others, but it did have the basics. They were in the front, near
the swings and jungle gym, and a few feet behind them sat a large
fountain, and just beyond that a grassy playing field.

“
I don’t know what’s going on here
any better than Jack here seems to, but may I please ask you two a
question? For some reason, I have a feeling you’re crazy enough to
actually answer it. First of all, are you two the ones who have
been killing the children around this town? Specifically, Jonathan
Herbert, age sixteen, Pepe Alguerra, age fourteen, and Don O’Rielly
age … ten.”

Jack looked at Melissa and noticed the way she
twitched as she spoke, as if it were taking all of her willpower
just to contain her fury. She seemed to be bubbling with rage on
the inside, yet despite such tremendous hate she kept her voice to
a conversational level.

“
Secondly, did you recruit Jack
Harris to commit the murder of the entire Davins family, including
all but the father?”

What is she on about now?

Ruin stepped forward. “Now why would we refuse
such a question? We would never be ashamed of our work. Yes, we
committed those works of art as you have described. Why wouldn’t
we? It’s our right to choose who lives or dies. And as for your
second question, I might as well say yes, for while the names may
be different, eventually our Jack Harris here shall do the same.
But to answer your question more specifically, we did
not
order the murder of the Davins family. We ordered three murders, if
you can really call them murders, as a murder by definition is an
unjust killing, which, ours were most certainly
not
.”

“
But I digress, we only asked for
three. Our Brother chose to add a few more, filling us with such
pride, I might add. We hope that after we retrieve Mr. Harris we
can feel the same pride over
his
accomplishments.”

Melissa’s shoulder tensed, and her hands turned
to fists. “Thank you. That was all I needed to know.” She turned
her head to face Requiem. “And as for you, Mrs. Crazy-eyed skank. I
am not an ‘it’, I am not a ‘horse’, and I most certainly am not a
‘pig.’ But I’m going to enjoy making you say
oink
.”

In a blinding display of speed so incredible
that Jack barely managed to see it, Melissa dashed towards the two.
With a swift motion, she brought her fist down on top of them.
Nimbly, the two leapt out of the way, and with a thundering
boom,
her fist smashed into the cement, cracking through
it and spraying debris as if struck by a grenade. Jack blinked and
wondered if he was watching a movie. He had never seen anything
even close to what he had just witnessed. It was as if Melissa was
some kind of superhero.

“
Well now, she’s like us, is she?”
Ruin said. “No matter, it looks like all she can do is break
things,” He pointed his index finger at her, and Jack watched as an
invisible force swept her off her feet and sent her crashing into
the blue fixture of a nearby jungle gym.

Jack was stunned. His eyes darted from the
pothole she had somehow made in the ground then back to Melissa.
She was panting and rising to her feet.

“
I didn’t expect you to be this
strong.” She charged at the two yet again, and this time, she only
made it a few steps before her body took a nose dive into the
ground, as if an invisible truck had fallen on her.

Jack was speechless. He didn’t know what was
going on—he didn’t know how to react.

“
Hey, Harris-boy, want to see
something cool?” Ruin asked. He carried himself with an air of
confidence, yet his smile and relaxed posture only added to the
overall menace.

“
We’re going to literally rip her
heart out. She was bullying you just before, no? I think you’re
going to enjoy this.”

Rip her heart out?

Were they serious? Jack was never a deep
thinker. Throughout his life, he had never been one to examine
things closely, accepting most stuff on face value. He had just
seen the love of his life pound a hole into the ground, get thrown
through the air and back again. Jack guessed that most people would
stop and think, “
Can this be happening? Is this real?”
Not
Jack, however.

For almost every living person on the planet,
when faced with the revelation that human beings possessed these
kinds of abilities, it alone would be enough to send them into
mental turmoil for weeks. They would contemplate, they would
question. But to Jack, what was, simply was. It was another part of
life that had to be accepted.

In a single moment, Jack came to accept
something that would take others weeks, months, or even years. He
realized in a fraction of a second what might even leave some
insane. That this was how life was, and how it would be from now
on. This was the way the world worked.

“
Are you really going to do that to
her?” Jack looked at Melissa. She was pinned down by something, yet
her eyes showed defiance. Whatever invisible force had bound her,
she kicked her legs and struggled against it.

Requiem smiled. “Of course we are, and I do
hope you enjoy it. I promise I’ll make it slow so you can
watch.”

Melissa struggled but to no avail. “Don’t
expect me to beg or plead. I won’t even scream.”

A wave of urgency shimmered down Jack’s
spine.

They’re going to kill her!

For the first time, in many, many years, Jack
felt the cold touch of anger. It was a foreign emotion, something
that revolted him and instilled him with nausea. But he felt it
nonetheless.

They’re going to kill my Melissa. They’re
going to rip her heart out and make me watch!

Melissa, as if lifted by a rising noose, tilted
her head upward and floated above the ground. Despite her
convictions, she screamed. She must have known what was
coming.

“
Say ‘Ah’ for the doctor, love,”
Requiem teased. “This one is going to be a pleasure to … Hey, do
you feel that, Ruin?”

“
Feel what? You know I’m not good
with sensing things, sister.”