The Time I Got Kidnapped By Aliens

Wow Everything Can Suck At Night, And Not In A Fun Way

~~~~~~~~~~Dan~~~~~~~~~~

I tossed and turned all night, mind moving too fast for me to keep up. Arbor had yelled and screamed at me for hours, using a shocking amount of profanity including an astounding amount of words I had never even heard before. He had eventually slowed, realizing that I wouldn't respond, trying to get his cuffs loose and failing miserably. They had been enchanted by a witch in the 11th dimension, one of the only ones left allowing magic, and they could only be unlocked by the owner. I surmised that he had finally passed out of pure exhaustion, having been awake for such a long time. I almost missed his yelling and biting sarcasm when he was out, because it left me to my thoughts.

I was usually able to fall asleep quickly, usually able to keep all my thoughts at bay. But tonight, long after Arbor was asleep, something felt off. Every time I drifted close to unconsciousness, some intrusive thought would appear in my mind and snap me awake. Things from the past, green eyes turned cruel, my whole world turning upside down. Pale hips under my hands. My mother being dragged away, tears in my eyes, the boy a few feet away from me, sleeping angrily with his back to me. Thank god I had slipped him some of that sleeping potion, though he had resisted its effects longer than I thought was possible.

I had never liked the night, in truth. It had never been comfortable for me, after everything happened. I was prone to nightmares. And this human was bringing back everything I didn't want to see, everything that I only saw in my dreams, everything that I managed to push back into the darkest reaches of my consciousness, everything I knew was there, but didn't want to face.

I tried to push back against the onslaught, imagining his neck under my hands, the life slowly fading from his eyes. A few knives in his back, a gun to his head. It all felt a little unreal. His brown eyes turning to the green that haunted my nightmares, green eyes I had never been able to go up against. Green eyes that had so much control over me, green eyes that ruined my life.

It was no wonder that Bella had been eyeing me so warily since she met the kid, she saw it in him. The same fire that had powered the man that had destroyed our planet. The same man that had killed and enslaved our families, the man that had almost killed us.

Felix. His name was but a whisper in my mind, a faint taste on my lips.

She had known that my anger would fade, that everything would start to come back. She could read me like a book, ever since the days of our youth, running through the caves of Meruda. Laughing as the volcanoes spouted streams of hot water straight up into the atmosphere, coming back down as droplets just cool enough to run through, shards of light raining all around us.

She was there when the new family relocated to our little planet, when their son ran out, eyes wide in wonder, droplets of water beading in his curly hair. She was there when everything went wrong.

I squeezed my pillow, feeling the cold pit of my stomach start to widen, feeling the tingle spread up to my fingers and out to the pillow, felt the shock as it turned to ice.

I sighed, sitting up and running my fingers across the cool surface, feeling the ripples where my head had previously been resting. I gently snapped my fingers, quiet enough so Arbor wouldn't wake, and with an almost imperceptible pop, the pillow was back to its original form.

A sudden surge of exhaustion hit me, and I laid back down, pulling the blankets over my head. All I really wanted was to go home. But I knew that I never could.