The Unwanted Winter - Volume One of the Saga of the Twelves (40 page)

No, he had to act, he had
to do something.

He had to
leave!

Uncertain, uncaring, of
where the thought had come or why it had even popped into his
brain, he lunged for the wire mesh of his cage. His teeth fit
easily around the thin wire, and before he knew what he was doing,
he bit down.

Nothing…

Then, the pain hit him
again. It wracked his body, tearing through his skin, shattering
his bones. His vision blurred for the first time in his life,
forcing him to bite down again. It was more out of instinct more
than anything else. Bite down, bear down on the pain.
Fight it. Fight it!
Was
all that kept flashing across his mind.

To his amazement, he felt
the wire bend beneath the onslaught of his jaws, as tiny tears
welled and dropped from his eyes, dancing along the waterproof
hairs of his coat before they fell onto the metal tray
below.

Once more, he strained
under the incredible yoke of the agony in his body, realizing, at
the same time, his cage suddenly looked different, as if he were
looking at it from a slightly altered perspective. All the while,
he was gazing about from the periphery of his vision. His teeth
were still locked upon the wire.

He understood!

He was holding the wire
from an alternate angle than before, slightly downward, whereas
before he’d been biting onto it with an upward tilt of his
head.

Had he grown?

Again, the pain, another
white light popped inside his skull, blinding him. Heat spread from
his very center to the very edges of his limbs. Within his jaws,
the wire mesh of his cage finally gave way and he yanked as hard as
he could, ripping off a square and a half of the stuff from the
rest of it.

He had to get
out!

He bit onto another
section of the wire cage just to the side of the first place he’d
chewed through. This time, his jaws sliced through it like butter,
his stubby snout bulging with muscles he hadn’t possessed moments
before. He pulled again and even more of the wire parted from the
cage. He quickly tossed his head to one side a let the mangled
wires fall from his mouth. He immediately bit onto another spot,
then another, repeating the process until the hole was big enough
to fit his head through. This was amazing, since he was certain it
had already grown to twice the size it had been throughout his
adult years.

Yet, the anguish never
stopped. His muscles, his tendons, his cartilage, and his bones
burned like molten lead, and at times, it appeared to him as though
he was melting right before his own eyes. Seeing himself turned to
mush, frightened him more than anything. Only he would reform a
while later, solidify, and strengthen. He would be different,
bigger, stronger… smarter.

Only, the pain wasn’t
finished, moments later, it would begin again.

He had to get
out!

He pushed his head through
the hole in the wire of the cage, the sharp edges where his teeth
had sliced through the metal poking into his skin, puncturing him,
adding to the pain he already experienced. Normally, he would have
backed away from it, shied, huddled, but for some reason his mind
was set. He was determined. He pushed even harder, feeling the wire
bend under the pressure he was exerting. His hind legs and feet dug
into the metal he was standing on, his nails gouging through its’
painted surfaces. It broke when he applied even more force, as more
torment befell him. He couldn’t ignore it. He was unable to force
it aside. He had to run from it, at all costs.

He had to get
out!

He was vaguely aware there
was new mass somehow injected into his body. Under the unbearable
agony, he felt himself gain weight and double in might. The wire
holding him back began to bow, then bend outward, evermore. It
stretched, lengthened, the small welds keeping its’ structure
together were failing.

More pain, more melting,
more growth, and then…

He was out, somehow able
to run – upright!

Instead of hopping, as he
should have been doing, he was running, clumsily, upon huge,
elongated feet, gripping the wet ground with incredible power,
catapulting him forward at a blinding pace. Ahead of him, stood the
wall marking the edge of the property of the
others
, something should’ve loomed
over him even from afar. It had always seemed intimidating,
daunting, in the past. This night, though, it wasn’t. For reasons
unknown to him, it no longer appeared as tall as it once
had.

All about fell the rain, a
steady downpour would’ve soaked through to his skin, if his hair
hadn’t been waterproof. It sloughed off, making a ringlet of
pebbles around his giant feet.

He strode toward the wall,
closer and closer, with more and more alacrity, as he came toward
it, his great paws possessed greater agility with each passing
step.

Before the thought had
time to develop, he did the impossible - he leapt over it. Within a
fraction of second, he was gone, away from the only environment he
had ever known, trying to outrun the pain, trying to understand why
this was happening, trying to comprehend how he was able to
comprehend!

He was out!

He ran down the adjoining
properties and leapt over the short rod iron fence at the front of
the yard. Then, he was in the street, running downhill as fast as
he legs could carry him – faster than a dog, faster than a cat,
twice as silent as either of their kind.

Wild…

…
Free…

…
Though the pain was still
eating his very soul. Now that it seemed he finally had
one.

~~~~~~~~<<<<<<{ ☼
}>>>>>>~~~~~~~~

A Gift

Wednesday, November
24
^th
–
The Day Before Thanksgiving - 7:27 am…

Elena had been up for a
while now, washing up, getting dressed, the normal rituals of the
day. She began gathering her things for school – her lunch (knowing
her school cafeteria would serve nasty, dried up turkey and gravy
the last day of the Thanksgiving week – unfortunately today. She
knew it was to commemorate the holiday, but the fare typically
tasted like dooky to her). She made sure had her pens and pencil,
and lastly, her homework, which she placed in the correct folder in
her backpack. It was really more of an extra credit assignment. It
hadn’t been mandatory she complete it, but she and Mikalah had both
done it anyway. They had both needed a distraction of some kind to
get their minds off everything else going on.

She was deathly worried
for Mr. Patas. He was out in the cold, all by himself, so tiny and
defenseless. He was up against the weather, stray dogs and cars,
whizzing by on the roads. No one paid attention to something as
small and insignificant as a rabbit. He could get lost or worse –
eaten or crushed. Just the thought alone nearly brought her to
tears.

With their minds going a
mile-a-minute, her and her sister had decided to do the extra
credit project. It had helped them get through the remainder of the
evening until their digital clock had displayed their bedtime. Half
an hour later, they both had drifted off into a restless and
troubled slumber.

A few minutes ago, she had
emptied her backpack of nearly half of the books she normally
would’ve carried, because today was going to be an easy one in
academic terms. Her class was going to watch a movie after
nutrition and then have a party after lunch, so only the first two
hours of day were going to be devoted to any type of schoolwork.
She knew it was destined to be an easy day. She was looking forward
it, especially after the difficult week she’d endured. A nice
simple day of fun and play with her friends was what she
needed.

She gave her room a quick
once over, double-checking to see if she’d missed anything. She was
about to leave when she remembered she hadn’t retrieved her “big”
winter coat from her closet.

Last night, her mother had
told them all the forecast for today called for cold,
real cold
. It would most
likely be one of the coldest days of the past decade. She had said
they would need their heaviest coats to ward a chill like that and
still manage to keep the sniffles at bay.

Elena chanced a glance
outside and was amazed to see what was falling from the sky. She
couldn’t help it. She’d gazed upon it a hundred times since she’d
crawled out of bed.

It had stopped raining
sometime overnight. Nevertheless, that didn’t mean the
precipitation had stopped altogether. It had merely changed form.
With the dim dawn it had become gooey, wet snow, angling down from
the clouds, blanketing the city ever since. She could hardly
believe her eyes.
Snow in Los
Angeles!
It wasn’t even winter
yet!

Grinning like a fool, she
made her way back to her closet, opened a sticker-laden door, and
peered within. Of course, it was jammed with toys, tons and tons of
books as well as her stash of Barbie dolls and all of their
accompanying clothing and jewelry and whatever else she had crammed
in with them over the years. Since she shared the closet with
Mikalah, they each had exactly half of the space to use as their
own. Elena being Elena, had organized her clothes accordingly from
right to left. Directly in front of her were her school clothes
that needed hanging versus the ones folded in her dresser. They
were followed by her fancier blouses and shirts, which were, in
turn, followed by her dresses, each one covered in plastic. Finally
her jackets and coats from thinnest to thickest came last. That
said, her heaviest coat, the one she needed for today, was at the
very end of the closet, completely buried.

She stepped up on her
tiptoes, and after a bit of tugging and pulling, she spotted the
collar of the coat, but couldn’t reach it. From the way things were
jammed into the space before her, she figured she had to go from
the bottom and worm her way toward it from underneath. Then, she
would have to yank at it from below until it literally fell off the
hangar. From there, she hoped she could pull it the rest of the way
out.

She ducked down below the
lower edges of her clothes and wiggled her way into the closet, and
was plunged into almost complete darkness. She couldn’t even
discern the color of her clothes in the blackness before
her.

She was about to back her
way out of the closet when she heard the noise of someone in the
hallway, right outside the room she shared with Mikalah.

“
Hey!” she called. “Can
you bring me some light?”

She waited for a second or
two, her butt still sticking out of the closet, her head buried
under the whole lot of clothes. From behind, she heard a faint
rustling as a dim, yellowish-white light came on and then dimmed,
struggled and came back on. It flickered like a flashlight whose
battery-charge was too low to keep a steady beam.

“
Thanks, whoever that is,”
she offered gratefully. “Even though you got the old flashlight, I
think it is just enough, so I can see which one is the jacket I
need.” She pushed herself deeper into the closet. “Yeah! There it
is! I can just about reach it. Could you just move the light a bit
lower?”

The unsteady beam changed
position.

“
Perfect, thanks!” she said. She was finally able to grab a
hold of the furry trim of the bottom of her coat, and gave four
quick yanks before hearing a brittle
crack!
As the hangar holding up the
jacket broke and she pulled the garment free.

“
Yes!” she cheered and
came out of the closet on her knees. She was pulling the jacket
behind her and turned to gaze upon her savior.

Instead, she came
face-to-face with a lemon colored sphere of light that blinked and
bobbed right before her eyes – an impossible ball of light, a small
illuminant sphere that shouldn’t have existed, but did
somehow.

She squealed in surprise,
sucking in her words of thanks. There wasn’t anyone there to
thank.

Before her, the sphere of
light popped like a soap bubble without sound and was no
more.