Super•Villainous

XVI

The whole time I ran, I couldn't help but think about my older brother —  dead brother, Charles, and our last few moments together. A day of irritation, followed by flashes of fear, and then years of grief and regret. I thought about how he'd left me behind to navigate an alien world where he no longer existed, how I would be doing eerily similar harm upon my step-sister if I died there. She was even close to the age I had been when the incident that changed everything occurred, and I was now older than Charlie had been, or ever would be. It stung whenever I forced myself to think of it in those terms, reminding myself that my "older" brother would always be fifteen, and I would continue to experience things forever barred to him.

I missed my mother, too, in a way, but never as much as Charlie. There had once been a time where I yearned for her, usually on Mother's Day, when the other kids cheerfully prattled on about their moms, when the teachers would have us make paper cards and flowers as gifts to show the mother's a token of appreciation. Not wanting to draw attention to myself, I went along with it, folding flowers and drawing little daisies over the hand-made card, but, on that inside fold, the cards were always left empty of Happy Mother's Day wishes. A blank page. If I were a poet, I might reflect on some symbolism about how that card represented who I was at the time, a pleasant show of contentment for the wandering eyes of others, only to find an empty space inside upon further inspection.

I remembered my conflicting emotions, knowing I was being forced to make something for someone who simply wasn't there anymore. It didn't seem right for them to force me to reawaken myself to her absence year after year just so they could keep me busy for an hour along with the rest of the class.

It took awhile to get over myself enough to stop caring. Why be upset, when I still had the best parent I could ever ask for?

My dad was the reason I refused to allow myself to be killed, the reason why, no matter how hard things got, I kept moving, crawling across the forest floor with my leadened limbs, because I couldn't bare to leave him the way my brother and mother had left us both. He'd been through so much heartache, I didn't want to be the thing that finally broke the strongest person I knew.

Did he think I was already dead?

No, it had only been around an hour or so since my initial abduction. Surely he'd have more hope than to label me deceased after such a short period of time.

But had it been that brief a period of time? I truly couldn't tell. Each minute had seemed to last five, especially when I was choking for air, calloused hands holding me in place and blocking out intoxicating oxygen. My internal clock had stopped ticking at the exact moment I first spotted Shade amongst the shadows back in my school's sports field, my sense of liquid time skewed into a meaningless mess ever since, like a broken hour glass that had sand streaming out small cracks in the crystal. It might have been one hour, or half a dozen. I wasn't sure.

What I did know was that I continued pushing on until morning, and then more and more and more, until I was confident without a shadow of a doubt that Shade had to be miles behind me. If he hadn't found me by the time the sun painted the horizon with tendrils of gold, he wouldn't find me at all.

The problem? Neither would anyone else.

I'd been lucky, for once, that last night was relatively warm. I still shivered throughout the moonlit hours, but had it been winter, I might have developed hypothermia, or simply frozen beneath a blanket of snow.

Where parts of my dress ripped and frayed, I tore of a thin strip of fabric to pull my hair out of my face, dispelling the discomfort of sweat pasting strands to my damp skin. On the list of my many problems, sweaty hair ranked towards the bottom, but at least it was fixable.