This is a project I am working on which is going to made up entirely of independent short stories, scenes from longer works, or chapters from longer stories. Some of the scenes and chapters will be out-of-context, but part of the project here is for them to be so, but also able to function and stand on their own.
Short Stories, Chapters, and Scenes
1 - The Victory of Static
(The Chosen—a story I loved and cultivated for ages—is an ongoing, comic book universe style story of five high schoolers who find themselves gifted with incredible abilities from a mysterious benefactor known as The Entity. I have come to view The Chosen as a story that takes place over several years in the kids’ lives. It starts with them as juniors and seniors in high school and ends with them out of college. Whereas there are many story arcs and characters, I break the overarching story of their lives down into three main arcs: “Trust”, “Prime”, and “Change”. This chapter takes place later in their lives—they are in college here—and is the dividing line between the “Prime” and “Change” arcs. For transparency’s sake? This chapter may be very hard for some readers. It includes some brutal and extremely sensitive material.)
Cassandra’s crying was unbelievable. Becky Stern rubbed her eyes until she saw white spots dancing her front of her, and then she had to shake her head to chase those and mid-night cobwebs on her consciousness away. Aaron’s cell phone on the folding-table-slash-makeshift-nightstand next to her twin bed showed it was only slightly past two in the morning, and Becky’s head sank. Cassandra had been doing so much better with sleeping through the night in the last few months; Becky gritted her teeth at the possibility of her mid-night wailing returning.
As she rose slowly to her feet and the remaining vestiges of sleep fled her, Becky felt guilty at having such a stressed reaction. Cassandra was, after all, still a baby; she could hardly control it if the middle of the night found her to be hungry or ill or messy, so what right did Becky have to be annoyed by it. Even after several months of motherhood, Becky still found her daughter’s crying to be an enigma; was she going to be hungry? Messy? Or did she simply just suddenly want to be held? Gone were Becky’s notions that raising children was some kind of intuitive trait and that all new mothers were somehow inherently able to seamlessly care for their babies and read them like books. All Becky knew was that she couldn’t wait for Cassandra to be walking and talking because things might be easier then, even though so many of her relatives told her they would be anything but.
Aaron never roused, and the stereotype of the father—a title Aaron had earned through his love and devotion to Cassandra if not for his non-role in her conception—sleeping unmolested through his daughter’s cries while the mother was on high alert actually amused Becky, making her immediately think that she had not awoken as fully as she thought, and her brain was not working properly. She would harass him about his obliviousness in the morning, just as she had when Cassandra’s sobbing was more frequent. Still, he had a test scheduled in statistics in the morning, so it was just as well that he got his rest.
Cassandra’s cries grew more desperate as Becky stumbled into the hallway. Images of an annihilated diaper flooded her mind; she wanted to ignore the problem, but she knew that was not an option. Her daughter was pained, and Becky learned over a year ago with her own life in danger that she would do anything for that baby girl. The reminder of Vinny, Cassandra’s true father, threatening to kill her if she did not end of pregnancy caused her to reel and take a deep breath; the sound of her child’s cries pushed her to continue to the nursery.
The air was forced from Becky’s lungs as she opened the door to Cassandra’s room—the second of two bedrooms in their small off-campus apartment—and saw two figures standing in the dark next to her crib. She blinked rapidly as if trying to erase the men from her sight, but they refused to be vanished so easily. She saw one of them start to turn, and she reacted in a moment, with no hesitation… just as James had taught her. She raised her arms in a jerk to will the ground to swallow the home invaders until she could figure out how they got into the apartment and what they wanted, but the ground did not comply. Her heart froze and skipped several beats as she knew why.
“None of that. You’ll upset the monster.”
Static never turned to face Becky; he merely continued staring down into the crib just as he had been doing when Becky entered the room. He seemed a man who was contemplating over a new discovery. She thought to scream, but the other man was upon her with quickness that belied his large frame, and a hand capable of crushing stone engulfed her mouth; by the time she could muster a yell for Aaron, it was little more than muffled nothingness.
“Believe me when I say,” Static spoke, still staring down at the wailing Cassandra as if Becky were barely there at all, “that you don’t want him here.”
Becky’s concentration was splintered by the thoughts bouncing off the walls of her mind. Had Aaron heard any of this? Why were Static and Freaker here now, after all this time? Why wouldn’t Cassandra just stop screaming? Did anyone know they were here? Would help be coming? She swallowed and tried to slow her thoughts down; even with Static suppressing her powers, she had to do something, but Cassandra’s screams were all her mind could absorb. Without her powers, she should still comfort her baby, but in the grip of Freaker, even that was impossible.
“What a pathetic ruse,” Static said. “Look at him.”
She thought of James and her sessions with him to understand her own abilities. He had always told her not to be a victim; he had convinced her that she was strong enough—inside and out—to stop anything that opposed her. And for herself, maybe that was true. But with a psychopath standing over her daughter, she couldn’t summon any internal strength. Becky mumbled a response into Freaker’s hand, the sweat and dirt in his palm violating her mouth as she tried to plead with them to leave Cassandra be. Static waved two fingers in the air, motioning for Freaker to remove his hand from her face. Free of him, she replied again, “She’s not a him, Static. Please, just look at her. She’s—“
Static slammed his fist down onto Cassandra’s crib, and the terrified wailing intensified. “You know that’s not true, whore! You know!” The sheer force of his voice caused her to recoil and bump into Freaker’s unyielding chest. Static finally turned from Cassandra to face Becky. “This thing is going to kill all of us. You’ve been told about it all! This form it’s taken of a girl. Of…,” he raised his hands in the air and signified quotation marks, “’a girl’. It’s the first deception that he’s learned in his infancy! He knows that we know about him, though; oh he knows! And he’s trying to trick us while he grows his powers. He—“ Static reached into the crib and grabbed Cassandra at the words, causing her sobs to turn to a cough.
“NO!” Becky shouted. She tried to charge Static, but was grabbed again by Freaker, and his hand clamped back over her lips. She continued screaming futiley into his massive palm and struggling in his grip, but she was completely overmatched by his strength. She shot hate and desperation at Static from her eyes; it was all she had left.
“If that childish reaction of yours wakes your boyfriend, then he can be more than happy to join us, but I’m telling you: you don’t want him here for this, Rebecca.”
They locked eyes in silence for moments that stretched on and on. When no words came it finally occurred to her that Static and Freaker were listening for reaction from Aaron, but none of them heard anything. This was no longer an amusing case of a father being oblivious to a baby; she needed him more than she ever had in the past, and he was failing her.
As the silence continued with Static’s eyes occasionally lifting to check through the doorway, Becky realized for the first time that he was so different from her previous encounters with him. Static had always considered his appearance very carefully in the past; he was often dressed indistinguishably from an office executive. He was usually very well-groomed, clean-shaved, and his eyes were narrow and calculating. The version of Static before her was quite contrary to any of that. His eyes were wide and manic, and his hair was disheveled and longer than she’d ever seen it, and he clearly had not shaved in some time as a dark beard spread from his face down to his chest. His outfit, while it was his typical style of collared shirt and suit, was wrinkled all over and torn around his legs and elbows. His normally-pressed pants were completely torn off below the knees, and he was wearing flip-flops below them. The Static she had known always clung desperately to a sense of the humanity to which he never felt he belonged; the man above her daughter’s crib seemed more animal than man at all.
“I want you to understand very much what is going on here, girl,” Static growled as he studied Becky’s useless struggle against Freaker and approached her. “All this time, you’ve been set up by The Entity as heroes, and I was your constant villain, your foil. Your test,” Static’s words shrank and his nostrils flared at those two words. “And you may think that is what’s still going on here. But you’re wrong!” His voice erupted at the final word, and his large eyes bore through Becky. “You’re wrong! This monster is the end of everything, and I’m here to destroy it. I’m the one saving the world! It was always about me. I’m the hero! I see it now. I always was.”
Becky felt her eyes water at the intensity coming from Static who was just inches from her face. He continued eyeing her, as if daring her to challenge him even as his partner prevented her from doing so. Seemingly content in her submission, he turned back to the crib and began reaching towards Cassandra again.
Freaker’s body pushed into hers violently, and he toppled on top her as they both fell to the floor. His head smacked violently into the back of hers, and she felt his long, stringy black hair tangle with her own blonde lockes. She shrieked in surprise as she tried to push him away from her, only to find his body was suddenly little more than dead weight. It was a substantial weight, yes, but there was no more resistance from him to press her down. Unencumbered by him, she crawled away towards Aaron who was now standing in the doorway. Somehow he had heard her cry earlier and had come to save their little girl. His bare chest heaved in deep, heavy breaths, and even as he reached down to help her up, he never took his eyes from Static.
“I’ll kill you.”
Static turned away from the crib and pounded plaster wall with his fist. There was a wet, crunching sound at the impact, but the intruder was unfazed by it. “No!” He yelled in retort. “This is absurd! The whore is one thing, but you, you fool? You were on Prime World! You know what this baby becomes! You know he kills both of us!”
Aaron was unflinching. Becky wrapped her arms around him to steady herself—the clash of Freaker’s head against her own left her feeling dazed as she found her way to her feet—and she felt his hard breaths in his body. Even Aaron’s lungs were prepared to rip Static apart.
“If you touch her, I will kill you.”
Static’s grimace matched Aaron’s own for just a moment before it twisted upwards into a smile that warped even further into a laugh. Shortly, Static was simply cackling as he stood next to the crib, his hand dangling over it. Becky couldn’t help but pull Aaron’s arm over her ear to cut the sound off. As Static continued howling, Becky realized Freaker was pushing himself up from the ground and had gotten to all-fours. Aaron’s lip curled in frustration, and he nudged Becky away from him gently before launching his foot into Freaker’s ribs. A pained grunt emerged from the usually-mute villain as he crumpled back to the floor in a pile. Becky glanced at Static expecting a reaction, but there was none; he simply continued his manic fit for several seconds before slowly lowering his hand into the crib. The laughing started to fade as his hand descended until both finally stopped.
He grinned. “Touch!”
Aaron charged forward at Static’s taunt, but it took only a handful of steps before he was on the ground in a heap next to Freaker. Becky could not control a gasp as her lover let out a sharp groan and covered his stomach with his hands.
“Yes, that was very effective. Did you forget what it is I do, cretin?” Static taunted him. His ability to interfere with the powers of others meant that Becky could not access her reality-warping talents, but for someone like Aaron, who was simply strong all the time and did not have to think to be so, he could do far more. Aaron was unable to stand because Static could invert Aaron’s strength and make his muscles too weak to support him. Static looked up at her, and she forced herself to meet his gaze. She refused to be weak at that moment. “I told you that you didn’t want him here. I just came here for the monster! You brought the rest of this on yourself. Once I kill Prime, that’s all I wanted here!”
Becky could not have said whether it was the image of her boyfriend writhing on the ground in agony as his muscles tore under the strain of trying to move, or the words Static spoke, but it instantly became more real to her: he was going to kill Cassandra. Whether he was mad or deluded or evil did not matter because her little girl was in danger. Her panic gave way to rage.
She screamed. There were no words or rational thoughts behind it at all; she simply screamed in frustration and hate, and she rushed to Static. As long as she did not try to use her powers, he couldn’t stop her as easily as he had Aaron. Static did not even have a chance to pull his hand out of Cassandra’s crib before she was on him. She balled her hand and whacked his cheek with her fist; then she caught his shoulder with her other fist. After that, she cracked Static’s forehead with the first one again. In her anger, she tried to remember what James had taught her in the past about fighting; she tried to remember his pointing out weak spots to her and warning her not to just slap and flail in a mad fashion. She straightened her right palm out and struck Static’s neck with it and then dug for his eyes with her left thumb. She started to raise a knee to bring him down with a shot to the groin, but was recoiled when Static’s fist pounded her ribs.
“Whore!” He tried to yell, but the words emerged in a choked rasp due to her blow to his throat. She righted herself, shut out the ache in her lung, and pressed forward. Her right arm lunged for Static’s chest, but his hand wrapped around her throat before it could strike him. She reached back to try to free herself, but he threw her off-balance by pulling her in towards him. Static’s forehead bulled into her eyebrow, and the force sent her toppling backwards onto her rear. She choked a sob as she reached for her eye.
“Did you get that out of your system?” He punctuated his words by kicking her in the collarbone, and suddenly she was no longer even sitting up. She tried to glare upwards at him, but a warm wetness was dripping into her left eye. She propped her arms on the ground and tried to lift herself, but Static’s foot found her chin and the room started spinning. From somewhere near her, she heard Aaron make a pained cry of defiance, but she couldn’t see him for all the red darkness creeping into her vision. She wanted to let him know that she was okay, but her jaw felt as though a nail had been pounded into it. “Monster. Monster. Monster,” from above her, Static repeated the word in a mantra, “you’re taking all this abuse for a monster! He kills me! He kills Aaron! He is the end of everything! You should be thanking me for this! I’m saving everything!”
His words gained distance, and she immediately knew without being able to see that he was turning back towards the crib. Becky reached to push herself off of the floor, but her right shoulder screamed in pain from Static’s kick. Folding her arm under her, she fought at the dizziness that gripped her and continued trying to lift herself.
Above her, Cassandra’s screams quickened and her voice lifted upwards. Static growled “Goodbye Prime” as Becky’s daughter’s screams turned to choked and muffled wails.
“Stop it!” Becky shouted through the eruption of pain in her jaw. She tried to wipe the blood from her eye so she could see what was going on, but it would not stop flowing. “God damn it, leave her alone!” She rolled over in an attempt to get up to her knees and take the pressure off of her right arm. She was finally on both knees and her left hand when a realization shook her: Cassandra wasn’t crying.
A thick thud came from the ground next to her. From the eye not clouded in blood, Becky saw the motionless foot of her daughter. Her eyes followed it up to the rest of her body. She wasn’t moving.
“It’s done.”
Becky couldn’t move and couldn’t blink. Her eyes were locked on the body of Cassandra Ann Stern as it lay crumpled on the hardwood floor. Becky felt every breath coming in and leaving her own body as she studied her baby and hoping she would show any sign of movement or life. She mouthed “Please”, but no words came with it. Cassandra ignored her plea, regardless; she continued to lay motionless next to her mother. Behind Becky, Aaron let out the scream of a wild animal in a trap, but Becky could still manage no words.
“There will come a time, yes, when you realize what’s happened here today. You can childishly cry and whimper on the ground for now, but some day you’ll see what’s really happened.” Static’s voice went up. “And you’ll thank me for saving us all.”
All Becky knew at that moment was that nothing hurt. Her head, her jaw, her shoulder… they all felt fine, as if nothing had ever happened to them. She placed a hand against the ground next to her daughter, but she could not even feel the cold hardwood on her palm as she pushed herself up. There was no sensation from her muscles at all as she gained balance on her feet. She lifted her eyes to meet Static’s, and that was when she experienced the first feeling in her life: it was the movement of her lips as she smiled at him.
Static’s fingernails had been digging into his own cheeks when she saw him. Upon realizing she was up, he tried to press down the crinkled edges of his worn blazer. “Do you see? Now that it’s gone, do you know the true of what I’ve done here? Are you coming to thank me, child?”
Static extended a hand, palm up, to welcome Becky to him; she tilted her head and studied him, still feeling the smile on her mouth. She continued staring at his hand, even as it erupted in flames. Static screamed like a frightened child and recoiled from the sudden shock. He flapped his hand in the air comically, trying to desperately to extinguish the flames. He threw out his other hand at Becky as if to order her to stop. “No!” he cried. But Becky felt nothing from him. She glanced at the wall behind Static, and her reaction caused him to look back, as well. The cracking sound of the plaster splitting and crumbling made him flinch, and Becky experienced her second feeling as air rushed from her lungs and through her smiling lips in a laugh.
“Why aren’t you stopping?” Static’s voice sounded a whine to her. “You can’t be doing this to me!”
Becky looked down and saw that she was moving upon Static even though her feet were no longer on the ground. She was moving effortlessly through the air, and Static seemed helpless against it. He had backed himself against the devastated wall and was continuing to press back as if he were willing himself through it. Nothing stopped her from being right over him. She reached down for him.
Her senses exploded in an instant, and she felt her head flush with warm heat. As she toppled from the air backwards, she caught only a small glimpse of the cracked indentation her skull had just made in the wall. When her body collided with the floor, all of the world’s pains flew back to her. Her neck and arm shrieked in agony, and the vision in her eye was again obscured. She barely noticed it when Freaker stepped over her to gather up his friend, but she knew, before she passed out, that he must have sneaked up on her when she was approaching Static.
“Becky! Becky wake up! Are you all right? Wake up, come on!”
It seemed as if she’d barely closed her eyes for a second, but the sunlight hitting her face through the break in the wall of Cassandra’s room told another story. Her body revenged itself upon her for daring to rouse it. Her eye was still too swollen to open, and her entire right side ached from the pain emanating from her collar. Trying to sit up was a vicious mistake; the pressure building in her head sent her dizzily back down to the ground. Aaron was talking very quickly, but the attempt at becoming upright caused her vision and hearing to dull. She lifted her left hand to slow him down.
“Are you okay?” The words sounded slurred as they left her, but she seemed to recall Aaron getting hurt, too, and she had to know he was recovered.
“I’m fine, god. I’m fine. It’s you… can you… I don’t know. Can you move? Breathe? Are you… I mean, no, you aren’t, obviously, but…”
Becky shook her head. “Don’t worry about me,” she forced out. Her chin and jaw hated talking, but she had to know, “is Cassandra okay?”
Aaron curled his upper lip under his teeth; he looked into her eyes, but he said nothing. He lay down next to her without any words. Becky could feel his sobbing against her arm.
Short Stories, Chapters, and Scenes
1 - The Victory of Static
(The Chosen—a story I loved and cultivated for ages—is an ongoing, comic book universe style story of five high schoolers who find themselves gifted with incredible abilities from a mysterious benefactor known as The Entity. I have come to view The Chosen as a story that takes place over several years in the kids’ lives. It starts with them as juniors and seniors in high school and ends with them out of college. Whereas there are many story arcs and characters, I break the overarching story of their lives down into three main arcs: “Trust”, “Prime”, and “Change”. This chapter takes place later in their lives—they are in college here—and is the dividing line between the “Prime” and “Change” arcs. For transparency’s sake? This chapter may be very hard for some readers. It includes some brutal and extremely sensitive material.)
Cassandra’s crying was unbelievable. Becky Stern rubbed her eyes until she saw white spots dancing her front of her, and then she had to shake her head to chase those and mid-night cobwebs on her consciousness away. Aaron’s cell phone on the folding-table-slash-makeshift-nightstand next to her twin bed showed it was only slightly past two in the morning, and Becky’s head sank. Cassandra had been doing so much better with sleeping through the night in the last few months; Becky gritted her teeth at the possibility of her mid-night wailing returning.
As she rose slowly to her feet and the remaining vestiges of sleep fled her, Becky felt guilty at having such a stressed reaction. Cassandra was, after all, still a baby; she could hardly control it if the middle of the night found her to be hungry or ill or messy, so what right did Becky have to be annoyed by it. Even after several months of motherhood, Becky still found her daughter’s crying to be an enigma; was she going to be hungry? Messy? Or did she simply just suddenly want to be held? Gone were Becky’s notions that raising children was some kind of intuitive trait and that all new mothers were somehow inherently able to seamlessly care for their babies and read them like books. All Becky knew was that she couldn’t wait for Cassandra to be walking and talking because things might be easier then, even though so many of her relatives told her they would be anything but.
Aaron never roused, and the stereotype of the father—a title Aaron had earned through his love and devotion to Cassandra if not for his non-role in her conception—sleeping unmolested through his daughter’s cries while the mother was on high alert actually amused Becky, making her immediately think that she had not awoken as fully as she thought, and her brain was not working properly. She would harass him about his obliviousness in the morning, just as she had when Cassandra’s sobbing was more frequent. Still, he had a test scheduled in statistics in the morning, so it was just as well that he got his rest.
Cassandra’s cries grew more desperate as Becky stumbled into the hallway. Images of an annihilated diaper flooded her mind; she wanted to ignore the problem, but she knew that was not an option. Her daughter was pained, and Becky learned over a year ago with her own life in danger that she would do anything for that baby girl. The reminder of Vinny, Cassandra’s true father, threatening to kill her if she did not end of pregnancy caused her to reel and take a deep breath; the sound of her child’s cries pushed her to continue to the nursery.
The air was forced from Becky’s lungs as she opened the door to Cassandra’s room—the second of two bedrooms in their small off-campus apartment—and saw two figures standing in the dark next to her crib. She blinked rapidly as if trying to erase the men from her sight, but they refused to be vanished so easily. She saw one of them start to turn, and she reacted in a moment, with no hesitation… just as James had taught her. She raised her arms in a jerk to will the ground to swallow the home invaders until she could figure out how they got into the apartment and what they wanted, but the ground did not comply. Her heart froze and skipped several beats as she knew why.
“None of that. You’ll upset the monster.”
Static never turned to face Becky; he merely continued staring down into the crib just as he had been doing when Becky entered the room. He seemed a man who was contemplating over a new discovery. She thought to scream, but the other man was upon her with quickness that belied his large frame, and a hand capable of crushing stone engulfed her mouth; by the time she could muster a yell for Aaron, it was little more than muffled nothingness.
“Believe me when I say,” Static spoke, still staring down at the wailing Cassandra as if Becky were barely there at all, “that you don’t want him here.”
Becky’s concentration was splintered by the thoughts bouncing off the walls of her mind. Had Aaron heard any of this? Why were Static and Freaker here now, after all this time? Why wouldn’t Cassandra just stop screaming? Did anyone know they were here? Would help be coming? She swallowed and tried to slow her thoughts down; even with Static suppressing her powers, she had to do something, but Cassandra’s screams were all her mind could absorb. Without her powers, she should still comfort her baby, but in the grip of Freaker, even that was impossible.
“What a pathetic ruse,” Static said. “Look at him.”
She thought of James and her sessions with him to understand her own abilities. He had always told her not to be a victim; he had convinced her that she was strong enough—inside and out—to stop anything that opposed her. And for herself, maybe that was true. But with a psychopath standing over her daughter, she couldn’t summon any internal strength. Becky mumbled a response into Freaker’s hand, the sweat and dirt in his palm violating her mouth as she tried to plead with them to leave Cassandra be. Static waved two fingers in the air, motioning for Freaker to remove his hand from her face. Free of him, she replied again, “She’s not a him, Static. Please, just look at her. She’s—“
Static slammed his fist down onto Cassandra’s crib, and the terrified wailing intensified. “You know that’s not true, whore! You know!” The sheer force of his voice caused her to recoil and bump into Freaker’s unyielding chest. Static finally turned from Cassandra to face Becky. “This thing is going to kill all of us. You’ve been told about it all! This form it’s taken of a girl. Of…,” he raised his hands in the air and signified quotation marks, “’a girl’. It’s the first deception that he’s learned in his infancy! He knows that we know about him, though; oh he knows! And he’s trying to trick us while he grows his powers. He—“ Static reached into the crib and grabbed Cassandra at the words, causing her sobs to turn to a cough.
“NO!” Becky shouted. She tried to charge Static, but was grabbed again by Freaker, and his hand clamped back over her lips. She continued screaming futiley into his massive palm and struggling in his grip, but she was completely overmatched by his strength. She shot hate and desperation at Static from her eyes; it was all she had left.
“If that childish reaction of yours wakes your boyfriend, then he can be more than happy to join us, but I’m telling you: you don’t want him here for this, Rebecca.”
They locked eyes in silence for moments that stretched on and on. When no words came it finally occurred to her that Static and Freaker were listening for reaction from Aaron, but none of them heard anything. This was no longer an amusing case of a father being oblivious to a baby; she needed him more than she ever had in the past, and he was failing her.
As the silence continued with Static’s eyes occasionally lifting to check through the doorway, Becky realized for the first time that he was so different from her previous encounters with him. Static had always considered his appearance very carefully in the past; he was often dressed indistinguishably from an office executive. He was usually very well-groomed, clean-shaved, and his eyes were narrow and calculating. The version of Static before her was quite contrary to any of that. His eyes were wide and manic, and his hair was disheveled and longer than she’d ever seen it, and he clearly had not shaved in some time as a dark beard spread from his face down to his chest. His outfit, while it was his typical style of collared shirt and suit, was wrinkled all over and torn around his legs and elbows. His normally-pressed pants were completely torn off below the knees, and he was wearing flip-flops below them. The Static she had known always clung desperately to a sense of the humanity to which he never felt he belonged; the man above her daughter’s crib seemed more animal than man at all.
“I want you to understand very much what is going on here, girl,” Static growled as he studied Becky’s useless struggle against Freaker and approached her. “All this time, you’ve been set up by The Entity as heroes, and I was your constant villain, your foil. Your test,” Static’s words shrank and his nostrils flared at those two words. “And you may think that is what’s still going on here. But you’re wrong!” His voice erupted at the final word, and his large eyes bore through Becky. “You’re wrong! This monster is the end of everything, and I’m here to destroy it. I’m the one saving the world! It was always about me. I’m the hero! I see it now. I always was.”
Becky felt her eyes water at the intensity coming from Static who was just inches from her face. He continued eyeing her, as if daring her to challenge him even as his partner prevented her from doing so. Seemingly content in her submission, he turned back to the crib and began reaching towards Cassandra again.
Freaker’s body pushed into hers violently, and he toppled on top her as they both fell to the floor. His head smacked violently into the back of hers, and she felt his long, stringy black hair tangle with her own blonde lockes. She shrieked in surprise as she tried to push him away from her, only to find his body was suddenly little more than dead weight. It was a substantial weight, yes, but there was no more resistance from him to press her down. Unencumbered by him, she crawled away towards Aaron who was now standing in the doorway. Somehow he had heard her cry earlier and had come to save their little girl. His bare chest heaved in deep, heavy breaths, and even as he reached down to help her up, he never took his eyes from Static.
“I’ll kill you.”
Static turned away from the crib and pounded plaster wall with his fist. There was a wet, crunching sound at the impact, but the intruder was unfazed by it. “No!” He yelled in retort. “This is absurd! The whore is one thing, but you, you fool? You were on Prime World! You know what this baby becomes! You know he kills both of us!”
Aaron was unflinching. Becky wrapped her arms around him to steady herself—the clash of Freaker’s head against her own left her feeling dazed as she found her way to her feet—and she felt his hard breaths in his body. Even Aaron’s lungs were prepared to rip Static apart.
“If you touch her, I will kill you.”
Static’s grimace matched Aaron’s own for just a moment before it twisted upwards into a smile that warped even further into a laugh. Shortly, Static was simply cackling as he stood next to the crib, his hand dangling over it. Becky couldn’t help but pull Aaron’s arm over her ear to cut the sound off. As Static continued howling, Becky realized Freaker was pushing himself up from the ground and had gotten to all-fours. Aaron’s lip curled in frustration, and he nudged Becky away from him gently before launching his foot into Freaker’s ribs. A pained grunt emerged from the usually-mute villain as he crumpled back to the floor in a pile. Becky glanced at Static expecting a reaction, but there was none; he simply continued his manic fit for several seconds before slowly lowering his hand into the crib. The laughing started to fade as his hand descended until both finally stopped.
He grinned. “Touch!”
Aaron charged forward at Static’s taunt, but it took only a handful of steps before he was on the ground in a heap next to Freaker. Becky could not control a gasp as her lover let out a sharp groan and covered his stomach with his hands.
“Yes, that was very effective. Did you forget what it is I do, cretin?” Static taunted him. His ability to interfere with the powers of others meant that Becky could not access her reality-warping talents, but for someone like Aaron, who was simply strong all the time and did not have to think to be so, he could do far more. Aaron was unable to stand because Static could invert Aaron’s strength and make his muscles too weak to support him. Static looked up at her, and she forced herself to meet his gaze. She refused to be weak at that moment. “I told you that you didn’t want him here. I just came here for the monster! You brought the rest of this on yourself. Once I kill Prime, that’s all I wanted here!”
Becky could not have said whether it was the image of her boyfriend writhing on the ground in agony as his muscles tore under the strain of trying to move, or the words Static spoke, but it instantly became more real to her: he was going to kill Cassandra. Whether he was mad or deluded or evil did not matter because her little girl was in danger. Her panic gave way to rage.
She screamed. There were no words or rational thoughts behind it at all; she simply screamed in frustration and hate, and she rushed to Static. As long as she did not try to use her powers, he couldn’t stop her as easily as he had Aaron. Static did not even have a chance to pull his hand out of Cassandra’s crib before she was on him. She balled her hand and whacked his cheek with her fist; then she caught his shoulder with her other fist. After that, she cracked Static’s forehead with the first one again. In her anger, she tried to remember what James had taught her in the past about fighting; she tried to remember his pointing out weak spots to her and warning her not to just slap and flail in a mad fashion. She straightened her right palm out and struck Static’s neck with it and then dug for his eyes with her left thumb. She started to raise a knee to bring him down with a shot to the groin, but was recoiled when Static’s fist pounded her ribs.
“Whore!” He tried to yell, but the words emerged in a choked rasp due to her blow to his throat. She righted herself, shut out the ache in her lung, and pressed forward. Her right arm lunged for Static’s chest, but his hand wrapped around her throat before it could strike him. She reached back to try to free herself, but he threw her off-balance by pulling her in towards him. Static’s forehead bulled into her eyebrow, and the force sent her toppling backwards onto her rear. She choked a sob as she reached for her eye.
“Did you get that out of your system?” He punctuated his words by kicking her in the collarbone, and suddenly she was no longer even sitting up. She tried to glare upwards at him, but a warm wetness was dripping into her left eye. She propped her arms on the ground and tried to lift herself, but Static’s foot found her chin and the room started spinning. From somewhere near her, she heard Aaron make a pained cry of defiance, but she couldn’t see him for all the red darkness creeping into her vision. She wanted to let him know that she was okay, but her jaw felt as though a nail had been pounded into it. “Monster. Monster. Monster,” from above her, Static repeated the word in a mantra, “you’re taking all this abuse for a monster! He kills me! He kills Aaron! He is the end of everything! You should be thanking me for this! I’m saving everything!”
His words gained distance, and she immediately knew without being able to see that he was turning back towards the crib. Becky reached to push herself off of the floor, but her right shoulder screamed in pain from Static’s kick. Folding her arm under her, she fought at the dizziness that gripped her and continued trying to lift herself.
Above her, Cassandra’s screams quickened and her voice lifted upwards. Static growled “Goodbye Prime” as Becky’s daughter’s screams turned to choked and muffled wails.
“Stop it!” Becky shouted through the eruption of pain in her jaw. She tried to wipe the blood from her eye so she could see what was going on, but it would not stop flowing. “God damn it, leave her alone!” She rolled over in an attempt to get up to her knees and take the pressure off of her right arm. She was finally on both knees and her left hand when a realization shook her: Cassandra wasn’t crying.
A thick thud came from the ground next to her. From the eye not clouded in blood, Becky saw the motionless foot of her daughter. Her eyes followed it up to the rest of her body. She wasn’t moving.
“It’s done.”
Becky couldn’t move and couldn’t blink. Her eyes were locked on the body of Cassandra Ann Stern as it lay crumpled on the hardwood floor. Becky felt every breath coming in and leaving her own body as she studied her baby and hoping she would show any sign of movement or life. She mouthed “Please”, but no words came with it. Cassandra ignored her plea, regardless; she continued to lay motionless next to her mother. Behind Becky, Aaron let out the scream of a wild animal in a trap, but Becky could still manage no words.
“There will come a time, yes, when you realize what’s happened here today. You can childishly cry and whimper on the ground for now, but some day you’ll see what’s really happened.” Static’s voice went up. “And you’ll thank me for saving us all.”
All Becky knew at that moment was that nothing hurt. Her head, her jaw, her shoulder… they all felt fine, as if nothing had ever happened to them. She placed a hand against the ground next to her daughter, but she could not even feel the cold hardwood on her palm as she pushed herself up. There was no sensation from her muscles at all as she gained balance on her feet. She lifted her eyes to meet Static’s, and that was when she experienced the first feeling in her life: it was the movement of her lips as she smiled at him.
Static’s fingernails had been digging into his own cheeks when she saw him. Upon realizing she was up, he tried to press down the crinkled edges of his worn blazer. “Do you see? Now that it’s gone, do you know the true of what I’ve done here? Are you coming to thank me, child?”
Static extended a hand, palm up, to welcome Becky to him; she tilted her head and studied him, still feeling the smile on her mouth. She continued staring at his hand, even as it erupted in flames. Static screamed like a frightened child and recoiled from the sudden shock. He flapped his hand in the air comically, trying to desperately to extinguish the flames. He threw out his other hand at Becky as if to order her to stop. “No!” he cried. But Becky felt nothing from him. She glanced at the wall behind Static, and her reaction caused him to look back, as well. The cracking sound of the plaster splitting and crumbling made him flinch, and Becky experienced her second feeling as air rushed from her lungs and through her smiling lips in a laugh.
“Why aren’t you stopping?” Static’s voice sounded a whine to her. “You can’t be doing this to me!”
Becky looked down and saw that she was moving upon Static even though her feet were no longer on the ground. She was moving effortlessly through the air, and Static seemed helpless against it. He had backed himself against the devastated wall and was continuing to press back as if he were willing himself through it. Nothing stopped her from being right over him. She reached down for him.
Her senses exploded in an instant, and she felt her head flush with warm heat. As she toppled from the air backwards, she caught only a small glimpse of the cracked indentation her skull had just made in the wall. When her body collided with the floor, all of the world’s pains flew back to her. Her neck and arm shrieked in agony, and the vision in her eye was again obscured. She barely noticed it when Freaker stepped over her to gather up his friend, but she knew, before she passed out, that he must have sneaked up on her when she was approaching Static.
“Becky! Becky wake up! Are you all right? Wake up, come on!”
It seemed as if she’d barely closed her eyes for a second, but the sunlight hitting her face through the break in the wall of Cassandra’s room told another story. Her body revenged itself upon her for daring to rouse it. Her eye was still too swollen to open, and her entire right side ached from the pain emanating from her collar. Trying to sit up was a vicious mistake; the pressure building in her head sent her dizzily back down to the ground. Aaron was talking very quickly, but the attempt at becoming upright caused her vision and hearing to dull. She lifted her left hand to slow him down.
“Are you okay?” The words sounded slurred as they left her, but she seemed to recall Aaron getting hurt, too, and she had to know he was recovered.
“I’m fine, god. I’m fine. It’s you… can you… I don’t know. Can you move? Breathe? Are you… I mean, no, you aren’t, obviously, but…”
Becky shook her head. “Don’t worry about me,” she forced out. Her chin and jaw hated talking, but she had to know, “is Cassandra okay?”
Aaron curled his upper lip under his teeth; he looked into her eyes, but he said nothing. He lay down next to her without any words. Becky could feel his sobbing against her arm.
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