Chapter 12: Visits from the Past

Grams and I did not speak often about monsters and wars but when we did the conversation often lingered into the later hours of night. One evening we sat in her parlor room with a wool quilt draped over our legs as we languidly sipped tea. She was paging through a small book, the sort of book with a helpless looking dame secured in the embrace of shirtless man. The sound of the pages turning and the crackling fire echoed throughout the room. I wanted to say something but didn't know how to form it into a coherent sentence.

Grams noticed my unease. She stared at me though the silver pair spectacles dangling on the very end of her nose. "What's wrong dear? Your tea cold?"

I stared at the quivering brown liquid in my cup for a brief second before shaking my head. The fringe of my bangs fell over my eyes, creating an orange wall between my grandmother's inquisitive stare and myself.

"No the tea is fine," As an afterthought I added, "Thank you."

A light thud sounded as she closed her book and threw it onto the mahogany coffee table. The cushion groaned as she adjusted her weight so she could face me fully. Leaning against the armrest, I shrunk beneath the weight of her gaze. The teacup began to tremble in my hand.

"Tomorrow is Christine and Adam's birthday. They're going to be sixteen," I finally lamented in a small voice.

A silence followed my admittance and I began to regret saying anything at all. I wasn't particularly fond of my siblings, there were many night I prayed for God to replace them with two boston terriers. It never worked but that didn't stop me from trying. Even Nic, who generally liked everyone, thought Christine was an evil vampire princess whose sole purpose in life was to suck the fun out of everything. But maybe she was just biased because Christine was the one who told her mom we were digging up her petunias and selling them at the end of the block.

We earned twenty bucks that day and a two week sentence of house arrest.

Gram chuckled, jostling me out of my musings. "Don't you worry about them. I have a feeling we'll be stuck with those two for many years to come."

"But Adam said he hasn't been feeling well for the past few days!"

"He's just worrying himself to death," Grams sipped her tea.

My lips twisted as if I were sucking on a lemon drop. Adam didn't worry. Worrying about something meant you had to care and I was convinced he was incapable of caring about anything. He was always so reserved, so cold. I had met ice cubes warmer than Adam Macintyre.

"What if he's a vampire. You know, he's not very," My knuckles began to whiten as I clutched the delicate teacup tighter in my hand, "...nice."

"You know your father was the same way when he was a teenager," she suckled on her teeth as if trying to savor every last drop of tea. "Your Aunt Meredith swore he didn't give a damn about her but that's only because she wasn't the one who had to console him after she... left."

Aunt Meredith lived in the desolate mountains of Southern California with a tribe called the Watalia people. It wasn't an actual indian tribe as most of those had since assimilated into western culture. Rather, it was an eclectic group of hippies who chose to isolate themselves from society after the war. They bounced from place to place, making glass sculptures and wooden chimes only to auction them off to the lavishly rich residents of Silicon Valley. Grams said Aunt Meredith had a nomadic soul and couldn't stand the idea of living a domesticated life as a wife or mother. She had this epiphany when she was fifteen which was promptly followed by her infamous mental breakdown. I never met her, I had only heard stories but from those stories I always got the impression that my dad cared about his sister. More than Adam could ever care about me.

"But what if they are Others?" I peeked at her through my fringe, gauging her expression for any disgust at that word.

The mere mention of the word was enough to incite fear in some hearts but Grams never made it so simple. She talked about them like they were real people with thoughts and feelings. And maybe they did have thought and feelings but I had a hard time believing they were similar to those of humans. They just looked so mean and scary.

"What if they are?" Grams shot back at me.

I wanted to scream in frustration. That's why I asked her! Because she always seemed to know the right thing to say.

Before my first grade recital when I swore I was going to puke in front of everyone, she pulled me to the side, kissed my forehead and told me that I could only feel better if I walked out on the stage and nailed it. She was right, of course. She did the same thing before I started junior high. I told her the older, cooler kids were going to kill me and she reminded me that the day had yet to begin and I couldn't get upset over what had yet to or might never happen. She was filled with bits and pieces of senseless knowledge and I hoped she would know what to say once again to make me feel better.

"No matter how much we dread it, we cannot stop tomorrow from happening. We can only offer them our love and support."

"Even if they become Others?" I couldn't quite understand the logic behind that.

"Especially if they are Others. Being an Other and being a monster are not the same thing, dear," She spoke in of tone finality.

"But they've killed people!" I insisted, remembering the videos my history teacher, Mr. Kraus, had showed us in class.

Lilith paraded through the streets of Washington, carrying the heads of dead politicians on spikes. Her motley crew of monsters followed behind her, throwing cars into the windows of shops and setting everything they could touch on fire. D.C. had fallen to chaos by the end of the night, bloodied bodies were strewn in the middle of roads and buildings that once reached staggering heights had been reduced to craters. They created more damage in a few hours than any human war could manage in years.

"Being a monster is not always something found in your DNA, it isn't definitively controlled by your blood or even how you look. It is all in how you act," She said, sounding like a chinese fortune cookie. "Humans kill humans, Phe. Humans kill anything that isn't human either. It's a vicious cycle. Does that mean humans are monsters?"

She answered for me, "Some are but the vast majority aren't and I'd like to think that the Others are the same."

I got the message loud and clear: regardless if my brother and sister turned into blood-sucking demons, I would be forced to accept them. Grams would make sure of it. She held the notion that family belonged on a glorified pedestal as if it were something precious. Personally, I didn't see the hype.

It was a scary thought to think that in a matter of twenty-four hours my siblings could disappear from my life forever. But if I were to be completely honest with myself, I was more afraid of what they could become.

————-

Joan slammed her styrofoam tray onto the table, spraying brown mush onto Esther's uniform.

"I'm going to-" Joan covered her mouth with a hand.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Joan chanted, her nose twisted like it always did when she was angry. It made her look like a kitten but no one dared to tell her that. "You can kill me later. Right now it's my turn to vent."

I had been at Garrenbuck for nearly a month. That was long enough to know that this sort of banter was a regular occurance. Joan would do something to anger Esther, then Esther would threaten to kill Joan and then Ana would have to intervene before they both were placed in solitary confinement. And no one wanted to end up in solitary confinement.

Word traveled fast in Garrenbuck. The whispers of previous prisoners lingered in the halls and stories of pain and sorrow never fade. It's like the monstrosities seen here have been permanently ingrained into the walls. So, when people began to talk about some of the more rowdy kids being rounded up and placed into metal tubes, it spread fast. Ana told me that it was nothing new. She had seen it happen to two people during her stay at Garrenbuck, one girl and one boy. The girl apparently had seduced a guard into letting her out of her cuffs and then, when she was free, she shot him twenty-seven times in the chest.

I'll admit, I've thought about stealing the guards guns once or twice but twenty-seven bullets seemed excessive.

The boy, was an even stranger case. He changed early. The process to becoming an other took three steps which usually spanned over the course of two years. First, an Other must take the dreaded blood test which takes the shortest amount of time. A month. Second, they must complete the Aptitude Trials which can span anywhere from one to eleven months, it really just depended on when the individual arrived at the OSCF. And then lastly, the changing. Which apparently occurs around the age of eighteen. To my understanding, it's a progressive change, like puberty, in the sense that once activated, the gene forces the body to reject everything considered to be human within the individual and slowly molds them into anything other than that. Most people stick to that timeline but the boy, whoever he was, changed early.

Ana claimed he was a werewolf and that if anyone could change early its most likely to happen to the lycanthropes. Simply because of their tempers. The werewolf boy killed two inmates before the guards managed to knock him out with a series of tranquilizer darts. I was surprised when Ana told me they didn't kill him. They seem quite fond of doing that, like a twisted version of big game hunting. But when I had asked, she too couldn't comprehend why they didn't just kill the boy or the girl for that matter.

"I just want this stupid year to be over. I can't take another visit," Joan stabbed the mush with her spoon. We weren't allowed to have forks or even sporks, so we had to get very creative.

Joan flared her nostrils like an enraged bull. I could have asked her what was wrong but at Garrenbuck, the list of things that were 'wrong' could stretch on for miles. Esther took a sip of water, rolling her eyes behind the styrofoam rim.

"I've got a revolutionary idea," She cleared her throat, her cuffed hands folded neatly on top of the table, "You could not go."

"And get shot by my father?" Joan's face drained of color, turning ghastly pale in a matter of seconds. "No thanks."

It was unlikely that she would get shot by her father, a guard- maybe- but they didn't allow anyone into the center with weapons on them. The doctors recorded everything on a touch screen tablet, reducing the need for pencils and pens and the nurses, weren't allowed to wear anything sharp. Even bobby pins, were too much of a risk in the OSCF.

"You're exaggerating," Wrinkles marred Esther's creamy skin as she raised her brows.

"Am not! I'm going to get into that room and my mom is going to be sobbing and my father is going to be screaming about how I was the reason he lost his chance at reelection."

Joan's father was the Chief of Police for the city of Seattle, a title he was quite proud of. We didn't speak much of our past lives but when we did it usually ended with Joan ranting about her father. They had an estranged relationship of sorts with her being an Other and him being a protector of the law. But Joan claimed their problems predated the blood test. He had plans for her to join the ranks of her brothers and work for the police department. Not as an Officer, as women couldn't serve but perhaps as a secretary of sorts. Joan detested the very idea. She wasn't exactly thrilled by the prospects of following her father's every command for the rest of her life.

"Hate this day," Ana slammed her tray onto the table, sending another glob of mush onto Esther's uniform.

"Oh come on!" She tried wiping it off with her hand as napkins were a luxury the government could not afford for us.

The crowded canteen was unusually quiet as everyone raced to their seats. There was a feeling of apprehension in the air. I had become relatively good at picking up on other people's emotions, Esther said it was a witch's trait but I didn't think it had anything to do with that. The mood at Garrenbuck was rather monotonous and any change was worth noting.

"They're trying to feed everyone before the parents come," Ana swallowed the word parents as if it were a curse.

She had just finished her testing, I deduced. A fresh set of quaze were wrapped tightly around her knuckles, and a smattering of pink marks lined her arms. The collar of her uniform looked to be burnt as if they had tried to set her on fire. Her band remained a pure white color, like the snow that now settled atop of Garrenbuck's courtyard.

"It's family day," Esther finally clued me into what the other two were groaning about. "Once a month, family or friends can come and visit for thirty minutes. Well, normally it's thirty minutes but because we're getting close to the send off date, they're giving us an hour."

"I guess that's nice." Nice if you actually wanted to see your family.

In the past three weeks, I had been bruised, beaten and thoroughly abused. A deep gash split my bottom lip and my right eye was swollen shut. Both occurred in separate tests. Even if my family did visit, I'd hate to let them see me in this state. I could already hear of Christine's wicked taunts: Nice to see you again Quasimodo. Much like our mother she had a unique way with words and that wasn't something I planned on missing in the Otherworld.

"Yeah it's nice if your Mom isn't going through menopause," Ana glared at the mush, "It'll be a full hour of her screaming at Paxton and I."

"Paxton?"

Ana hesitated, her jade eyes narrowed into slits as she continued to stare at her untouched tray. Joan and Esther shared a quick glance but they also looked reluctant to diffuse my confusion. I didn't want to pry, it was an unspoken rule at the table that anything not expressed was not necessary information but I was curious nonetheless. Ana never spoke about her family, she always deflected those questions and yet here she was, discussing her mother's menopause and name dropping random boys.

"He's my cousin on paper" She finally said, "but he always seemed like a brother to me. We were the only children in our family and when his parents died in a car accident, he came to live with my parents and I."

I thought about the boy I had seen during my first week at Garrenbuck, the Jade Prince. I remembered how Ana had stared at him, begging him with her eyes to turn and look back at her. There was a deep love and devotion in that stare as if he held her entire world in the palm of his hand.

A silence blanketed our table as we gingerly picked at the mush on our plates. The conversation had officially closed and there would be no more talk of Paxton Cortez. We chewed slowly. In a few hours we would face a fate much scarier than the Otherworld, we would be forced to endure an hour in the company of our families.

What was that one phrase, "Sticks and Stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me?"

Bullshit.

——————-

The sterile halls of Garrenbuck seemed to stretch on forever, one row of pale tiles after the other. It was a slow procession to the holding rooms as it looked as if every prisoner in the entire complex had been stuffed into the the already narrow halls. Ana and her two guards stood in front of me. She looked like a robot, her body stiff and unmoving, face perfectly apathetic as if it were made from a silicon wax. I, on the other hand, couldn't stop fidgeting. The G.S soldier to my left kept a bruising grip on my arm, his fingers twitching as I shifted my weight for the hundredth time.

"45673," A nurse raffled off a number and a frail, sickly looking boy stepped forward. The door at the end of the hall opened, revealing a small chamber and two silhouettes.

The line continued to move at that painstakingly slow pace. The nurse continued to shout random numbers and the children stepped forward, it was like we were playing bingo with our lives. A part of me wanted my number to be lost in the mix.

I continued to nervously chew on my bottom lip as the line shrunk. When it was Ana's turn, she looked back at me, her green eyes dull with dread. The door opened and I could see there were two people standing by the far corner, closest to the exit. The first being a man, he was short and stocky with a bulging gut. He wore a button up flannel and a pair of worn pants. A women clung to his arm, in a floral dress that flared out from her rounded figure. Her dark hair weaved into a thick braid. There was someone else already seated in the room, attempting to hide their tall figure behind two guards- Paxton.

I wanted to show her some sign of encouragement a smile, or maybe a thumbs up but I could feel the weight of my guards' stares on me. So I just looked at her, hoping my eyes could find the way to convey a message that words failed. Her cheek twitched and while that was not a smile it would have to suffice. The door slammed shut behind her and I was left to play the waiting game alone.

A few minutes later, the tablet in the Nurse's hands vibrated and I nearly screamed.

"81417," She looked past me, at the crowd of prisoners who were waiting idly, as if there wasn't a shaking teenage girl standing in front of her.

"Uh, right here." I waved my fingers in front of her face, hoping to garner her attention.

Wrong move.

In seconds, my arms were pinned behind my back and I was forced to stare at the barrel of a gun. The Nurse looked to be having a heart attack of sorts, her chest heaving as beads of sweat dripped from her forehead like a melting candle. One of the guards began to shout a series of commands at the prisoners behind me, something about backing away slowly. I wasn't paying attention rather, I was waiting for the situation to diffuse as it always did.

"Just put it in the room," The Nurse snarled, gaining her composure. Securing their hands beneath my armpits, the guards dragged me to the only room left with an open door.

"Phe!" I stopped trying to shake my limbs free of the Guardians hold when I heard the voice of my former best friend- Nic.

The guards shoved me into a chair and locked my handcuffs to to the metal table. That table was the only thing separating me from Nicole who stood on the other side of the room. She did not take a seat, rather opting to stand as far away from me as possible. She looked exactly the same, the past month had not been as cruel to her as it had been to me.

"God. Phe," She placed her hand over her stomach as if the sight of me were making her physically ill. "You look..."

She couldn't seem to find the proper words out so I interjected, "Gorgeous, Beautiful, stunningly attractive?" My tongue  dripped with venom as I glared at her. "Does it really matter if I look like shit? Why did you come here, Nicole."

Inching forward, she placed a hand on the chair in front of mine but still refused to sit, "I was with your family when the message came about the chance visit before they were sent you... away."

She didn't answer the question asked but unknowingly offered greater insight to this peculiar scenario. Where was my family? They heard of the visit and yet, they weren't with me. It really shouldn't have stung as much as it did. I mean- long ago I had come to terms with my identity as the black sheep of the family.

Things would have been different, I thought, if Grams were still here.

She would have forced them to go whether they wanted to or not and she wouldn't have hid in a corner, shielding herself from me like Nic. No, she would have sat in front of me and warmed my cold hands within her much larger ones. We would have spent the full hour talking and laughing. Laughing so much that my cheeks would have ached. And then, at the end, she would have kissed my forehead like she always did when she wanted me to be strong.

I wanted to be strong for her. Really, I did. I just didn't know how.

"They didn't want to come," That was not a question but a statement, "Not even my Dad or Adam."

"Adam joined the military."

"What?" I was astounded. My brother had been going to college to be an engineer. Unlike the meathead jocks he surrounded himself with, he actually had a brain and ambitions. But I guess things changed in a month.

"Yeah, it was a shock to everyone back home too," Nicole squared her shoulders, gaining confidence as we moved into her territory. Gossip. "It happened shortly after your birthday. He spent the next day in his room and refused to speak to anyone, even Christine. After a few days, he eventually came out and told your mom he was joining the military, to fight for the cause."

I swallowed the lump in my throat. The military's cause on paper was to protect and serve the nation. However, there was an unwritten clause that everyone knew. The military is used to protect against monsters, anyone who could harm our precious civilians, like terrorists, or communists or the Others. I highly doubted he joined the army because he wanted to stand indefinitely on the border of North Korea with a gun pointed to the trees. No, he wanted the chance to be like the two idiots who currently stood behind me, waiting for my response.

"How devastating for Christine," I managed.

"Oh she was absolutely beside herself and blamed it all on you. She said he would have never lost his mind if you didn't turn into- okay, well maybe it's best not to repeat that," Nicole pulled out the chair and sat across from me.

She looked like a fairy. Just like the ones airbrushed in black and white on the pages of our Biology textbook. Her face was small and pale, and her body was petite as if she had not yet gone through her growth spurt. But, she was not a fairy. She, unlike me, was perfectly human. There was an unsettling twinkle in her eye as she delved into the stories of home, almost as if this was amusing to her.

"And my mom?" I asked, knowing it was best to just rip it off like a bandaid.

"She's claiming you were never actually her daughter but some random baby found on her doorstep." I didn't expect my mother to handle it any other way. Afterall, she had her image to look after and it would be selfish of me to ruin that for her.

"Of course and people believe her?"

Nicole shrugged, "I mean those in her prayer circle do. You know how they are, they hang onto her every word as if she's the next messiah. And then there's the rest of us, who know its just a load of crap."

Leaning back in my chair, I looked down at my chained, calloused hands and let out a short chuckle. This whole thing was so ridiculous, I couldn't even generate the energy to be mad. Did I finally feel numb? Yes. After a month in the OSCF, I was numb to the outside world. So, my brother had decided to run off and join the military. So what? So, my mother had decided to further smear my name and disown me. So what? Neither of those things changed the fact that I was stuck in this hellhole and they were free in the outside world.

"So why did you come Nicole?" I asked, keeping my eyes trained on my lap.

"I wanted to see you. We were best friends Phe."

Were. As in the past. What a wonderful way to phrase it. I wondered briefly if that was how people talked about me now, the same way they talked about Asher after he was taken. As if I had died and Nicole wasn't really talking to me now but rather an apparition of sorts.

"There's so much you've missed! Even if it was just a month," Nic leaned forward, her voice lowering an octave as it always did when she was about to unleash the newest, juiciest piece of gossip. "Diana West's mom moved to one of those hippie colonies out in California, so she could fulfill some rather... ahem... unholy and unmentionable desires."

That wasn't surprising. The whole town was convinced Mrs. West was lesbian. That's not because she wore birkenstocks or had affinity for humus but because of the annual church picnic of 2078 where she had been caught ogling the backside of Ms. Clementine- my elementary school teacher. In true Darwin nature the town spent the next two weeks scrutinizing the West family and even the Pastor had the gall to ask Mr. West if he felt his needs were being met. I'm not surprised Mrs. West would want to leave after such treatment, being different in this world just wasn't safe anymore. Maybe, now that I thought about it, being different never was safe but rather the country had deluded itself into thinking it was for at least a little while.

"And then Thomas Wizeman was caught doing weed behind the abandoned barn, you know the one on 31st street. Oh and I can't believe I almost forgot to tell you, Barry asked me out!"

If Nicole had noticed the glare on my face, she didn't acknowledge it. She continued to speak at the speed of light, recounting the flirtatious conversations that led to such a request. She paused for a breathless second and I hoped she would finally notice my mounting anger but she didn't. In fact, she only twisted in her chair so she could fish her phone out from the back pocket of her jeans.

"Look how cute we are!" She turned the phone around, revealing a picture of herself and Barry, with their arms wrapped around each other, two wide smiles on their faces.

"Is that why you came here Nicole?" She looked up from her phone, startled by my icy tone.

"To gossip. To tell me you got a boyfriend?" Behind me, I could hear the shifting of the guards as they placed their hands on their weapons.

"W-well, I thought you would have been happy for me," Nicole's expression deflated. She sat back in the chair, no longer resting her elbows on the table.

Something within me snapped at that moment. The cheap, fluorescent lights hanging above our heads flickered, submerging the room in total darkness before coming back to life in the blink of an eye. My body began to shake, my hands were balled into fists and my teeth were twisted into a snarl.

How dare she?

How dare she expect me to be happy while I sat before her chained, like a dog. My body was still littered with the evidence of the abuse I had suffered through and yet she wanted me to be happy for her. Happiness was a distant memory. It was a luxury I could not afford.

"You have no right to ask me that. Do you realize where we are right now?" I managed to say through gritted teeth, "We're at Garrenbuck, an OSCF.

We're not back home. I'm going to the Otherworld in a month, Nic! Because I'm not human and this stuff doesn't effect me. I'm an Other!"

Nic was shaking too. Tears began to well in her eyes as she bit her quivering bottom lip, it was a trick she always used when she was trying not to cry. Nic hated to cry, she hated how it would smear mascara and make her face all red and blotchy. She claimed it brought up unfortunate memories from puberty, when she struggled with acne rosacea and everyone called her Tomato Face. Before all of this happened, I would have tried everything in my power to stop her from crying but now I just couldn't bring myself to care.

"I'm done here," I said to the two Guardians watching me warily.

The two burly men, unfastened my hands and pulled me to my feet before offering my former best friend a curt nod in farewell. I didn't say another word, knowing that if I were to open my mouth again, I would be facing serious consequences. They led me into the nearly empty hallway, the line had dwindled down to the final ten victims.

As I look back on it now, that was the last time I saw Nicole. I'd like to think she got married to Barry, had two and a half kids and bought a nice house with a white picket fence, but I knew first hand that life never really works out the way we want it to.

**This is the longest chapter I have ever posted on Wattpad and I am hoping it'll make up for some of the shorter chapters. This chapter is jam packed with a lot information. I really like this chapter from an emotional stand point. Phe was ripped away from her previous life in Montana and because of the high-stakes sort of situation she has found herself in, she hasn't had a lot of time to reflect on that. I wouldn't really say this chapter is about Phe getting closure but it is more so about her closing the door on that chapter of her life- for now.

I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter and thank you for all your lovely comments on the last chapter! I had so much fun reading them.

XOXO,

Ro.**