Monsters….
Max, Isabel, and Michael were having lunch together in the
school courtyard. They looked up in
unison to see Maria DeLuca walking across the quad with her books and lunch. She
saw them watching her, kept looking over at them with nervous glances.
“That girl is just an accident waiting to happen.”
Max sighed. “Look, Isabel could you at least try and make
an effort?” Liz had warned him that Michael and Isabel were intimidating Maria
to the point of fear. Fear was an uncertain thing.
“No.”
“Think about it. People see movies with aliens. Aliens
killing humans. Evil aliens. Green aliens. If you keep acting this way with
Maria, she's going to think that's what we are.” Max tried to infuse a voice
of reason. Maybe if they could convince Maria they were harmless, she would calm
down enough to actually meet them halfway. She had already helped them out once
for no reason other than what was in her heart, so they needed to trust that she
was essentially a trustworthy individual.
“Exactly. I'm telling you this evil alien thing could
work for us in this situation. The way to deal with her is to make her sweat,
keep her on her toes. Make her afraid of my shadow, of your shadow, of her
shadow, of Michael's shadow. Right, Michael?”
“Or we could just kill her.” Michael answered, not
really paying that much attention to what Isabel had said, but seeing the look
Max was giving him, he quickly amended his statement. “Kidding.” Michael
held the key up in front of him and studied it.
“Put that key away.” Max said quietly out of the side
of his mouth.
“You want to know, don't you? I mean you got the bug. I
mean, we've got this key, now what does this key open? Admit that you have to
know that.”
Isabel rolled her eyes. “Could you stop with the key? The
key means nothing.”
“If it means nothing, then why did it give me a vision
the first time I touched it?”
“Because your brain is warped; just a theory.” Isabel
said nastily. It was common knowledge to them that Michael’s powers didn’t
work well at all. He had no control, and couldn’t perform at the same level of
proficiency that she and Max could. The vision was a fluke. Had to be.
Max ignored the bickering twins and leaned forward towards
Michael. “What do you think it means? I mean it's a key, where could it
possibly lead?”
Michael scratched his eyebrow. “I'm telling you, the
government cleaned out the sheriff's station, and this is the key he kept from
them. It's got to be something important. Maybe it belongs to the corpse from
1959.”
“Michael, you're grasping at straws.” Isabel said in
exasperation. He was so damn tiring.
Michael ignored her. “And I know that, but I say we
follow where it takes us. I mean who knows where we'll end up. Maybe home. I
mean, Maxwell, we can't let this go. We can't just hide.”
“I don't know.” Michael made a sound of disgust at
Max’s indecision. Typical.
Isabel looked up and watched Maria talking to people
nearby. This was a greater concern. Far greater than some moldy old key. “One
more day before she cracks. Tops.”
“Just try to find something you have in common with
her.” Max pleaded. Between Isabel and Michael, he was exhausted.
“Oh please, what am I supposed to talk to her about?”
“Try something.” Max said, trying to offer a suggestion
or two. “Order some fries. Just start a conversation.”
Isabel seemed to be thinking about it, but then she shook
her head. “No. It's impossible. She's irrational.”
Maria at that moment seemed to sense Isabel’s eyes on her
and tripped, dropping her books. Seeing the three looking at her, Maria
pretended to laugh and tried to casually pick up her books and walk away
nonchalantly. It didn’t work. There was no nonchalance there at all.
Michael studied Maria as she walked away. “She's kinda
weird.” His attention immediately went back to the key.
Isabel rolled her eyes at Michael. He was being more a
freak than usual, his irrationality was only equal to and complemented by the
DeLuca girl’s. All she needed was two loose cannons. “I’ll take care of
it.”
Max looked up sharply, concerned whatever the hell
‘taking care of it’ meant. Michael just grunted. He could care less. His
eyes never left the key. There were more important things.
~~~
Isabel closed her eyes and allowed her mind to pull her
into the dreamscape that was Maria. The Crashdown? Interesting. There was Liz
and Maria in their dorky uniforms clearing tables.
“Some people are just pigs.” Liz said in her Liz Parker
voice. Geez, even in the dream.
“Tell me about it.” Maria said as she walked over to
customers in a booth ready to give them the Crashdown spiel. “Welcome to the
Crash-- AHHHH!”
Isabel’s eyebrow went up at Maria’s scream. She and
Max. They were in that booth, but not as themselves, rather as Maria DeLuca’s
warped perception. Really. That green hair and strange features did nothing for
her complexion
“What's the matter, Maria?” God, could Liz’s voice be
anymore inane?
“Look at them!” Hysterical much?
“What, Maria?” God, she does clueless so extremely
well. This can’t be an act. Inner lurking of your innermost feelings towards
Liz, Maria? Hmm.
“They're repulsive, I mean …” Isabel rolled her eyes.
Repulsive? That is a bit harsh. Slightly malformed and a bad color, but
repulsive?
“They look perfectly normal to me.” Oh, that is
actually more of an insult! Isabel shook her head as Maria walked away crying.
Time to end this farce.
“What are you doing here?” Maria jumped as Isabel
appeared behind her.
“I just thought we should talk, and since we can't seem
to do it when we're awake, I thought I'd visit you in your dreams.”
“What do you mean visit me?” Okay, so she wasn’t that
bright either. English. It was clear.
“I'm not really a part of your dream. I can't change it
or anything. I just wanted to see what you were thinking.” Isabel looked
around and noticed Michael sitting at a table in a tuxedo. Her eyebrow went up
even more and she gave Maria a penetrating look. “Interesting.” Very, very
interesting. He almost looks good. Almost. At the very least, he was bathed.
Maria looks at him wringing her hands. “When he's dressed
like that, it makes me feel much less afraid.”
“Afraid of what?” He actually looked normal. Well, not
really. Not normal for Michael, but normal by human standards. Isabel watched as
Michael turned into a monster. His tentacles reached out and wrapped around
Maria’s neck, choking her. Tentacles?
“Help! Sheriff, I have to tell you!” God, now she was
hysterical.
“Tell him what?” Isabel’s eyes narrowed.
“You guys are horrible, disgusting creatures from outer
space!” Maria’s fear was a tangible thing.
“Is that what you would really do?”
Maria freaked. “Sheriff! Sheriff Valenti! Sheriff!” She
flopped in a mass of panic around Sheriff Valenti who was sitting at a table not
even noticing her anxiety or screams.
Maria woke as her body hit the floor in a violent thud.
Sitting up, confused and still panicked, her hand went to her heart as it her
chest heaved in fear. Scrambling back on her bed, she reached into her bedside
table and breathed comfortingly from a small vial of aromatic cedar oil. Rocking
slightly, she tried to convince herself that it was alright. Just a dream.
~~~
Michael jerked out of his zoned out reverie and gazed out
across the quad as Isabel read her magazine. Max was late again. Out of the
corner of his eye he noticed that Maria girl. She saw him looking at her and ran
into some nameless guy and dropped her bag. Her head banged into the other
guy’s head as they both tried to pick up her stuff.
“I thought you said you were going to take care of
her.”
Isabel looked up and shrugged, flipping through her
magazine. “I did.”
“What? When?”
Isabel put down her reading material. “I dreamwalked her.
Let’s just say that her dreams are about as dramatic and overblown as she
is.” She looked at Michael and smiled slightly. Wonder if he’d like to
know…she shrugged. “You were in her dream.”
“Me?” Michael frowned. He definitely didn’t want to
know. Feigning indifference, he couldn’t hold out. “So what did she
dream?”
Isabel laughed. “Let’s just say that we can control her
with fear. She has a lot of that.”
“Epic.” Michael got up to leave.
“Where’re you going?”
“To keep an eye on the weakest link and teach her to
fear.”
Isabel shook her head. So much effort. Hmm. She picked up
the magazine. Is that pure angora?
~~~
“Here, Liz, breathe this.”
“Maria, if this is another alien test…”
“No! Of course not!” Maria patiently waited as Liz
reluctantly complied. Taking the breath analyzer, she tried to read it. What the
hell did these colors mean? Range. Range? What was a normal range?
“Where did you get that?”
Maria smiled. “I have my ways.” Okay, maybe she
wasn’t carrying a spawn of an alien…yet. Maria smiled pleasantly until he
walked in the door. Jumping, her hand went to her queasy stomach. Calm. Calm.
Breathe. Just breathe. “God, Liz, take him!”
Liz looked over at Michael who sat down at the booth.
“Maria, it’s your station. You need to get over this unreasonable fear. They
haven’t done a thing.” She grabbed her friend. “You’re going to blow it
when Valenti talks to you. At this rate, you’re going to blurt it out. They
are normal, as far as I can tell.”
“That’s how it starts. So innocent. Then when you least
expect it…”
“Maria!”
“Going! I’m going.” Maria went over to Michael’s
booth. “Something?”
“Aren’t you supposed to say that lame thing about
crashing down or something else idiotic?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be baying at the moon? Nothing.
Fine.” Maria went to leave.
“Pie!” Turning back, Maria took out her order pad and
raised a delicate eyebrow. “The cherry.”
“Cherry is good, but over a day old. You still want
it?”
“Yeah.”
Maria nodded. “I’ll throw in a scoop of vanilla ice
cream no charge, since it’s not fresh.”
Michael watched her walk away, swallowing an
uncharacteristic thank you. She wasn’t so bad when she wasn’t talking. That
thought fled as quickly as it came.
~~~~
Michael paced around Liz Parker as Max looked on. They were
in the high school lobby, and Maria was missing. Valenti. He had called her to
his office for questioning, and despite all the coaching and practice, Liz was
still unsure how Maria would pull off being grilled like that. Over the past few
days, instead of becoming more comfortable around the aliens, she was becoming
more and more skittish and paranoid.
“So what do you mean she was nervous?” Michael asked,
his forehead furled and concerned.
“I don't know. She was just, she was like nervous.”
Max licked his lips. “Nervous, like, just overexcited
nervous?”
Michael practically pushed Max aside. “Or nervous, she's
gonna crack, nervous?”
Damn. They were making her nervous. The Alien Gang Bang.
“I'm not sure what she's going to say. I'm really not sure of anything
anymore.” Liz looked at Max helplessly. This was going to be her fault.
Absolutely her fault.
“You're not sure. That's great. That's good.” Michael
walked away flopping his arms in disgust.
“Max, I'm so sorry. I should never have even told Maria
in the first place.” Michael rolled his eyes at the whining plead in the
girl’s voice.
“Well you did it 'cause you trusted her, and you needed
someone to talk to. It was only natural.” Michael stared at Max in amazement.
What the fuck was that?
“So why did you tell me?” Michael shook his head and
went to sit down against the wall, away from the two of them talking and
comforting each other to the rightness of their decisions. Right. The cheese was
starting to smell.
“It was only natural.”
“What did you mean the other day about that thing, about
the tree?” Liz asked interested in anything and everything Max.
“Just somebody's advice. Not to get stuck behind them.”
Max snuck a look at Michael behind Liz’s back and noticed an obscene gesture
Michael was making in response to his discussion with her.
“Oh. Well, did you take it? That advice?”
Max concentrated on Liz. It was best to ignore Michael all
together. “I think I just did.” The snort from the floor was loud and
insulting, but Max smiled into Liz’s eyes and they were oblivious.
~~~
Jim noted the tension in the young girl. Maria was
practically sitting on her hands and licking her lips. It was the eyes. Her eyes
were an open book to her apprehension.
“What are you afraid of, Miss DeLuca?”
“A lot of things.”
Cool. Calm. Answer directly and as truthfully as possible within reason.
Calm.
“You know what I think? I think someone is controlling
you, controlling you through fear. Am I right? I'm here to help you. You know
that, don't you? Then tell me what's frightening you so badly. What you saw the
night of the crash festival? You were in that parking lot to meet whom?”
“Nothing, just headlights.” Good answer. Click one off
the list.
“Was there someone waiting for you?”
“I don't know, I was unconscious.” Great! Stick with
that. You can’t know anything when you’re unconscious.
Jim frowned and sat up straighter, more authoritive.
“Maria. We both know why we're here, right? So what do you say we stop lying
to each other? Okay?”
Maria’s voice wavered. “Okay.”
Jim smiled slightly. He had her. “Now who is Isabel
Evans?”
“Um, she's a girl at school.” State the obvious. That
was not a lie.
“Why does she make you so nervous?”
Maria made a face that she hoped was credible as she sat on
her sweating palms. “I'm not nervous.” Liar. Liar. God, she was going to
hell.
“Isabel and her brother Max. How well do you know
them?”
“Not well, not well at all.”
Jim frowned at her unwillingness to confide in him.
Changing gears and tactics, he lowered his voice into a comforting even tone to
promote trust. “You know, I think you and I have something in common. I never
really got to know my father very well either. He was the sheriff around here
about forty years ago. Did you know that?”
“No.” His attitude was worse than the one before. It
was…disturbing.
“Strong man. Strong hands. And he had this theory, you
know? About aliens? That they were real. Sounds awfully silly, doesn't it?”
“Yeah.” Maria swallowed. Her nervousness was settling
in her stomach, and suspicion was eating at her. He was an adult. They had ways.
Adult ways to ferret out the truth. She was going to blow this big. Real big.
“That's what everybody thought. But my father, he was a
very stubborn man, and he wouldn't let it go. He believed, and he lost his job
over it. And, uh, he lost his family over it. Now I would hate to see that
happen to any other family in this town, wouldn't you? Now there's one more
thing that you and I have in common, isn't it?”
Damn. Maria started to cry. This wasn’t her fault. None
of this was.
“We've both seen things recently. Things that have made
us start to wonder, made us question ourselves, our beliefs, and I think that if
we share those things with each other, we're both going to feel a little bit
safer. Now Isabel Evans, she's just a girl?”
Maria offered softly. “She's a special girl.”
Jim moved in for the kill. “What makes her special?”
“Where she comes from.”
Jim swallowed his smile of triumph. “Where is she from?
Maria? Where are they from? Where did they come from?”
A family. Strong. Created in
~~~
Maria was driving down the road, a world of weight taken
from her thin unremarkable human shoulders. It felt good to be her. Maybe for
the first time since she became part of the most life-altering event of her
life. Seeing the jeep on the side of the road, Maria snorted. Isabel. Typical.
That jeep needed some major overhaul. Maria checked her hair and pulled up next
to Isabel.
“You alone?”
Maria made a face, relishing having the other girl at a
disadvantage for once. “Do you see the army
behind me?”
“You lied.” Isabel bit back the admiration in her
voice, but it was too incredible to hold back the awe.
“Like a rug.” Maria said with a hint of nonchalance.
Sure, now it was no big deal. Piece of cake.
“Were you scared?” Isabel asked softly. She had seen
Maria’s dreams, the inner working of her mind, and the girl was riddled in
fears too numerous to even catalogue.
“Understatement, but that's when I realized what it's
like being you.”
Isabel was at a loss. What to say to that one simple act of
courage beyond fear. “You look awful.” Maria shrugged. She had better days,
and better nights. “Thanks for saving our butts, Maria.”
Maria smiled despite herself. “Oh, no problem, Isabel.”
She looked pointedly at the jeep and the long empty road. Pausing she gestured
to the empty seat next to her. “So, need a ride?” Isabel smiled and got in.
It was nice to have someone for once. Someone who knew and didn’t judge, just
accepted.
