Damsel[ed]: Some Rescue Required (#2 of the Damsel[ed] series)

Chapter Thirteen: Mirror, Mirror

Angelos.

What are you supposed to do when you're becoming a monster? I don't know. I don't know and I think I'll scream.

My eye goes into tunnel vision, my skin burning up like I have a fever. My heart pounds so fast I think it'll tear out of my chest and flop, still beating to the drum rhythms of whatever it is Heaven listens to these days.

I can't help wondering if that's ever happened before, if someone's heart burst out of their chest because they were scared or angry or caffeinated. Some supers have hearts that beat over a thousand times per minute, which is physically impossible, but what's "possible" is more of a guideline these days.

After all, what scientists once called "impossible" is now "Well, we can't explain it. Maybe everything we've ever learned about Earth and human life and the universe is wrong. We don't know. Now shut up and let us cry over this complete anarchy with a tub of mint chocolate chip Blue Bunny."

For half a second I contemplate tearing out my heart just to see if I can do it. Then I realize I'm freaking insane.

I see Jaylin backing away, groping for the door, and I want to rip her apart and wipe her existence off the earth's face in a puddle of blood and bone-meal. My fists curl, my knuckles popping out against my skin from the force of my grip. "Angelos," Heaven rasps, "calm down." I barely hear her. I barely hear anything above my thoughts.

The white hot's flowing through my veins. All at once I feel the "me" in me drain away,  like my body's an empty dumping-ground and a whole other entity decided to throw down his bags and take stock here for a little while.

It's creepy to think that entity is just me. Like a really, really screwed up version of me that wants to shred people and claw my heart out.

My eyes skim desperately over the room. A little right of my headboard, I see a window. And you know what I do? I hurl myself right through it. I don't even think about it. I just know I'll kill Jay if I don't get away fast enough. The blinds rip apart and the glass bursts. It's almost pretty; it would make an awfully cool shot in a movie, at least. The pieces fly right by me like throwing darts.

So, I sail into the early morning light and let my wings unfurl. I shoot up like a rocket, and when I look down, my whole body swells with air, with muscle, with power. 

I'm a super, and a pinnacle of them. Everything below me, I could destroy it. All the frail paper people in their frail paper houses. They couldn't stop me. They could be obliterated if I wanted it so.

My "dark side" is going bonkers. The stupid voice that sometimes pops into my head is screaming at me now, and I know that's weird even for an off-beat teenager like myself.

Doesn't it feel good? You can be anyone and do anything. This is what you're meant to be. This is who you're meant to be. Don't fight it. You can't hold it off anyway.

"Oh, shut up already!" My head swims, like I've just downed a cup of that awful beer from Hallowfest. The city sags when I land. All around me, the little sidewalk trees brown and their leaves turn crispy and die. My aura is stronger now. It tugs at me and consumes me, the way fire eats through a rickety old shack.

Get a grip, get a grip, get a grip, something inside me cries.

And I tell that thing to shut it.

***

To tell the truth, I don't exactly know what I did. My memory is hazy. All I know is that I jumped out my bedroom window, my aura went crazy, and now I'm lying on a pile of plastic crates that smell of rotting fish.