Ophelia

pre prologue: part three

0:0:3
Abnormal

I toss and turn through the whole night at the thought of the weird things happening to me. First the sunset and now this?

One more thing, I promise myself, one more odd occurrence and then you tell Riley, see if he knows anything about the situation. Oh god what if someone is stalking me?

"Calm down," I whisper to myself, "maybe you're just hallucinating."

With that comforting thought, I full asleep.

-

I wake to the feeling of myself falling. Groaning, I open my eyes and look at my surroundings.

What the hell happened here?

My room looks like a pig sty, paper with sketches, paintings upon paintings (none that I've ever done before), paint lying around everywhere, my easel has somehow erected and I seemed to of fallen off of the small paining stool in front of it, landing on the floor.

Panic arises in my throat.

Oh my god oh my god what the fuck?!

The paint slathered all over my hands tell me that all these paintings and sketches are mine. But from where?

"RILEY!" I scream, "RILEY!"

My bedroom door bursts open, revealing a frantic brother at the doorway.

"Lenna? What happened?!" He stares at me, lying on the floor, curled up in a ball covered in paint, tears streaming down my face.

"I don't know I don't know, I-I woke up and-" I start sobbing, terrified out of my wits. Mum comes up the stairs, confused with all the racket as Riley tries to comfort me. "I'm so scared. Riley I'm so scared."

"Lenna? Riley? What's going on?"
Her eyes wide as she sees my room.

"What the hell happened here?"

I sob into my brothers chest.

"I w-woke up a-and," I breathe in a juddering breath, "I w-was on the floor a-nd t-there was sk-sketches and p-paintings everywh-where."

"Dave!" My mum yells, "come up stairs!"

My dad comes bounding up the stairs moments later, eyes wide.

"Did someone break in?"

I shrug.

"Honey," my mum speaks softly at me, "honey has anything abnormal happened the past dew days?"

I nod my head and I feel Riley tense under me.

"Like what?" My dad asks, picking up a canvas with a blood red sunset that explodes violently onto the white. He cringes a little at it.

"Y-yesterday the sunset changed before my very eyes, and then w-with Inferno, t-the f-fire hydrant wasn't there and neither was the hose. It just magically a-appeared."

My brother sucks in a breath.

"Lenna, nothing like that has happened before. Are you sure you knew what you saw?"

I nod.

"There isn't a Super in the city I know that can change the weather or create things from thin air." He says to our whole family.

"Maybe it's a damn new villain?"

My mum shakes her head, something in her eyes as she looks at me. I don't know what it is.

"Maybe it's not that. Maybe, just maybe, our Lenna is developing superpowers."

-

After laughing at the total absurdity of the possibility, my family shoot each other looks before piling me into the car which leads us to my mother's research lab, with me and Riley bickering over the radio station as mum drives and Riley sits on the backseat.

"Mum, is it possible?"

"I don't know, I don't know if it's either the extra exposure to Supers that has done something but that would mean that me and your dad and Riley's friends would be Supers too."

"Maybe it's because we're twins?" Riley suggests, my mum shrugs.

"But then surely, with Lilly being first born, her powers would develop earlier of course. Unless it's due to the fact that you two are fraternal twins and not..." She keeps mumbling to herself whilst Riley rolls his eyes at me on the review mirror. I force myself not to laugh.

"Maybe it's a new SuperHero? Or Villain?"

"But then me and dad would know, because I'm a Super and dad's head of security."

I sigh and slump in my seat. Dad's gone to work, calling the school to say that I'm off and might come into school if my "doctors appointment ends on time."

"We're here!" My mum cheers, arriving at her work. She ushers us inside, telling coworkers to not horde me as she hands us a lab jacket and a mask to cover our mouths. Then she leads us through the white corridors to her lab where me and Riley wait around awkwardly whilst mum types away on her computer.

Different sorts of instruments lie the pure white walls, me and Riley arms and watch in awe as she tinkers away.

"Sit on that chair Lenna, I'll just do a few scans and then we'll find out."

I sit on the chair warily, watching my mum bring out odd instruments and she them out.

After the test, she types on her computer then suddenly stops and looks up.

"What? What is it?" I ask, Riley tenses next to me.

"It's true, you're a Super."

The Earth seems to stop spinning as she say the words.

"I'm," I swallow and bury my hands into my pockets, "I'm a- a Super? Are you sure? Maybe there's some kind of glitch?"

She shakes her head.

"No, all tests say that you are a Super, just that your signs of showing your powers are completely different from what is considered normal, like Riley."

My shoulders sag forward. So I'm a Super? Destined for the rest of my life to fight crime and bring peace to the world? Do I even want to be a SuperHero?

And if I do, am I ready to become one? I would be so far behind the others.

Riley nudges my shoulder. When I look at him, he winks.

"Welcome to the gang."