I didn’t realize just
how sore I was until I lowered myself into the scalding hot water in my bath
tub. The mirror was fogged up and the steam coming off of the surface of the
water was a welcome sight. Nothing in this world made me feel better then water
that felt like the surface of the sun, especially after an extremely difficult
hunting session. Many people would assume this was the hunting of animals, but
I was particularly interested in a whole different kind of game. The kind that
walked and talked like a human being, but once you saw the fangs and felt its
evil, you knew you made the wrong assumption. As I sat there I thought of the power I had
inside of me. The power I realized was there not even a year ago.
As I held out my hand, palm side up, I could see all of
the heat rising up from my skin and I built up the little bit of energy and
heat it took to send small trickles of flames across the underside of my lower
arm. That’s when I smiled and I listened to the slight sizzle of the water
evaporating. A slight tingle throughout my body reminded me of how good it felt
to have that small release after a lengthy and difficult day.
The delicate glow of my skin as this happened was
something some people noticed outside of this small act. I never did it in
public but this glow from the heat and energy resonating inside of my body was
hard to hide no matter how many layers of clothes I would wear. The glow gave
my skin a look of being out in the sun all day, even though I barely stepped
foot out my front door during the day, since my prey had a tendency to surface
only when the moon was shining its light down on the world.
Where
did this gift come from? I wish I knew.
All I remembered about the time I figured out I had the
gift of fire was that I was at work as a barista at the local coffee shop. I
had turned a warm caramel macchiato into a scalding, overflowing mess. But I
have learned how to control it now, which was a blessing in disguise as far as
I was concerned. After this fiasco though my father realized I wasn’t going to
be able to hold down a job without running the risk of burning the place down.
So what he did was buy my house and make it his mission to take care of all my
bills. Yeah that’s a little lazy on my
part but this gives me more time to take care of the whole saving the world
bit. And I don’t hear from him often since my mother passed away from
pancreatic cancer.
She had fought for what seemed like an eternity, but was
really a 3 month struggle before she passed. By this time she had lost so much
weight she looked like a skeletal Barbie doll, but she always managed to have
make up on and looking her best no matter how bad she felt. I admired that
about her. Still did.
Even to this day I could remember the lightly floral
scent she used to wear. The smell of jasmine would always fill a room when she
entered, but it was never an overwhelming scent. No matter how much of it she
would spread over her wrists and neck, the scent was barely there but yet
noticeable. Her dark hair was always styled in different ways daily.
I looked more like my mother than my father. I inherited
her compassion and the ability to make anything my own without much effort.
I was there when she passed. Sitting at her bedside as
she took her last breaths I was able to sense when it had happened and her soul
had departed. Even though she was no longer in a physical form, she was always
there in spirit.
A
deep dream not too long after my discovery told me who I was and what my gift
was to be used for. There was a woman in a beautiful, sleek white dress whose
sleeves had a delicate and long bell on the end of the sleeves covering her
hands. She was walking in a light mist that covered the ground and gave this
woman an air of mystery.
Her
hair was long and dark, reaching her hips, with a slight wave that gave it
dimension. Her eyes were the color of the spring leaves, and her skin was as
pale as the winter snow and just as delicate. Her voice was like silk as she
spoke to me of the upcoming battle between good and evil, but never revealed much
more than that. All she revealed was that I had a journey I had to complete and
these gifts that were bestowed upon me were a way to help me make this journey
and take my place in this battle. And that another woman with a whole other set
of gifts was going to be my partner through this journey, and a part of my army
in the clash between the light and the dark. I couldn’t help but remember how
much this woman reminded me of my mother. Even the vague scent of jasmine hung
in the air when I awoke.
That’s
when a thundering knock on the bathroom door startled me out of the deepening
pool of my thoughts.
“You okay in there, Robin?” my roommate Elizabeth, Beth
for short, inquired through the white, crisp bathroom door. The concern in her
voice had me sinking father down into the claw foot tub until the water was up
to my chin. That edge to her voice always had me running for cover and that
wasn’t going to change anytime soon.
“Yes. I’m great, actually.” Of course I was being
sarcastic. I wasn’t okay. Never was. At least my secret wasn’t one I had to
keep from my best friend, but that was only because she had a gift as well. The
gift of foresight. Wasn’t that a pain in the ass? So, because of that, she
always knew how I’d feel on certain days before I even knew what made me feel
that way. “We really need to get headed out. Don’t want that dreamy vision of
mine to get away.”
As I groaned I could feel her frustration coming at me in
waves through the bathroom door. Damn, I hadn’t even gotten to wash my hair yet,
I thought. It was still gross from my nightly excursion. I submerged my head
under the warm water and quickly returned to the surface. Scrubbing shampoo
through my hair and into my scalp I yelled, “Give me a second.” I let the
impatience at her insistence to hurry along penetrate every nook and cranny of
my voice.
I could hear the heels of her pumps as she walked away
from the door and down the hall, agitation echoing with every step she took. That
sound took me back to when we first met. Not even a month after the coffee shop
incident.
I was walking in downtown Los Angeles. I noticed a
muffled sound in the dark, damp alley to my right. All I remembered was that I
should keep going and mind my own business. It was probably a creepy man down
there with a lady of the evening and he was doing something to her she didn’t
enjoy as much as he might have been, but I couldn’t help myself. I stopped dead
in my tracks and turned my head, dreading what I’d see in the shadows. As soon as I saw the sight of a man with very
long canine teeth about to sink them into the neck of a girl around my age
something took over.
It felt like a monster was inside of me. Beating on my
skull, my ribcage, trying to get out and right this wrong being done. As I let
it consume me with a fear so strong I’d never felt before, I sensed a heat
rippling through me. I knew my eyes had to be radiant at this point because a
fire was blazing inside me, begging for release. I didn’t fight the instinct to
put my hand out and yell out to get the creatures’ attention, the power in me
distorting my voice to a demonic gravely blast of sound. As the creature
turned, dropping its victim and hissing a promise of death, my hand began
developing a luminosity that could blind a whole city block without effort.
The creature hissed again and started to back away,
holding its hand just in front of his eyes to block the intense light. It
wasn’t doing him any good considering the light was causing his skin to smolder
slightly. That’s when it happened. As the light grew to a glow that rivaled the
sun, flames burst from my palm, incinerating the creature in a matter of
seconds. He fell into a pile of ash and the fire ceased to flow from my hand.
When all remnants of the intense power I had no idea I
had were gone, I felt so weak I almost couldn’t stand. I fell against the wet
brick of the alley as the woman ran up to me with hands out to keep me from
falling to the ground instead. The rush of heat that had run through my entire
body produced a cold sweat that made me shiver and my teeth chatter.
Through a haze of fatigue I could hear the woman thank me
for saving her life, saying what her name was. She was also asking me if I was
okay. What was her name? I could only hear muffled sounds and see her lips move
like she was speaking but all I could hear could best be described as the sound
from Charlie Brown. Elizabeth? Yeah that
was it. Elizabeth. She later became known as Beth. To me, she was my salvation
and my companion in the fight that would soon tear the world apart.
I let out another sigh and sunk deeper into the tub as
that resonating heat licked up through my belly, causing the water to bubble a
little and then cease. It was like they had never existed. Quickly rinsing the
shampoo out of my hair, I rose from the tub, the cool air around me causing my
skin to develop goose bumps.
I hastily dried myself off and blew my hair dry. Beth was
going to be pissed it even took me this long to get my ass out of the tub and
into some clothes for a night out that wasn’t really going to be a night out.
It was scouting. She had a vision of some dreamy guy who she apparently thought
was put in her path just for her. Too bad it never seemed like I could find one
just for me who I could tell my secret to who wouldn’t go running for the hills
thinking I was schizophrenic or something. Now wasn’t that just too bad?
