Twisted Reunion

Earth: Chapter 2

That night I dreamed.

I was in class with all my regular classmates, and then one by one they began disappearing. I sat still, and closed my eyes shut, as if waiting to be next. Then I heard her voice. The melody of it carried like a light breeze on a summer morning. I opened my eyes slowly as she called my name.

“Zillina, dear it’s okay. I will not hurt you.”

She stood before my desk and her bright brown eyes stared down at me. Her curly hair hung just passed her shoulders and she was dressed in a long pure white dress. She smiled down at me as I opened my eyes wider to look at her.

“Who are you?” I asked. I knew that face. She was so young but I knew her.

“You know who I am, silly.” She smiled as she walked to the front of the classroom and propped herself on the teacher’s table.

“If I did I would not have asked.”

“Lina, you aren’t asking the important questions. Like, what’s happening to you?”

My back went up, “You know what’s happening to me?”

“Of course I do. It is my business to know what is happening to you.” She smiled again, a pleasant heart warming smile.

“Well, tell me.” I urged.

She giggled, “You’re worried, aren’t you? Worried that you are different. It’s okay, normal never looked good on you anyway.” She swung her legs back and forth then cocked her head to the side. “You should probably tell Taj what has been going on. She could help you deal with it.”

“You know my Aunt Taj?”

She smiled, “Taj is a hard woman sometimes but everything she does is out of love. It may not always come off that way though.” She stopped for a moment as if to think about something.

“Why am I changing? I don’t understand any of this.” I urged her on, demanding her attention. I tried to ignore the fear rising within me.

“You may not understand it but you know what it is. Think Zillina, try and remember. This is your destiny Zillina. Do not be afraid of it.”

“What is your name?” I shouted as she began to fade.

“My name is not important. Start asking the right questions if you really want answers.”

As she faded so did the classroom and everything else, until I was sucked into the darkness of my bedroom.

I woke up in a position that seemed to have become a favourite of mine – floating above the bed. Only this time I stayed hung in mid-air for more than my usual three seconds. Panic stirred within me but that only made things worse. The buzz I felt within my veins became more pronounced, more like a shock and I screamed out in pain. I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth, trying to block out as much of the pain as I could, trying to control it.

I heard when Aunt Taj threw open my room door, gasp and screamed my name, but she sounded so distant.

I opened my eyes to see the lights in my room flickering as Aunt Taj stood in horror.

“Help me.” I said, barely above a whisper.

I watched as Taj ran back out the door. She must have tripped the breaker, because in an instant the lights clicked off and I fell back to my bed.

I laid there for a second, catching my breath and trying to take in all that had happened.

“Zillina?” I turned to see Aunt Taj at the foot of my bed, her eyes filled with shock.

“Aunt Taj, I’m scared.”

She said nothing as she rushed to my bedside and held me. She held me and ran her hand down my back, comforting me while I cried on her shoulder.

“How long ago did this start happening?” She asked, still holding me.

“A few weeks before I turned sixteen. Aunt Taj I don’t know what’s happening and I am scared.”

“It’s okay Lina, it is going to be okay.” Taj pushed away from me and wiped the tears away from my cheeks. “Zillina, there’s something I need to tell you.”

Taj pushed off the bed and out the room. When she came back a few minutes later she was holding a book. She handed it to me and I saw that it was her digital journal.

“Jeez, how old is this?” I asked brushing off the dust that was gathered on it.

“About a year older than you are.”

“No kidding?” I frowned down at the tattered book I my hand. “Taj, this is cool but how does this help my problem?”

“This may help you understand. I unlocked the code so you could read it.” She placed her hand on mine before I opened the journal. “Zillina, you have to know that everything I ever did was to protect you.”

She closed the door behind her as she left my room again. I stared at the journal another moment before opening it. Gauging Taj’s reaction I was not sure I wanted to read it. I was not even sure what this had to do with what was happening, but at that moment I was willing to do anything.

I opened the book and spent the rest of the morning reading about a planet called Zefron and their customs and ways. For a while I felt as if I was reading a fictional story book, but the more I read the more I realised I was reading about my Aunt’s life in a different world – literally.

I read about her relationship with her one true love Steven and how much it hurt her to leave him. A few photographs were pinned to the centre of the journal and I went through them one by one.

I felt my confusion turn to anger, my anger turn to disgust, disgust turn to betrayal and hurt, and then turn back to anger. I could not believe what I was reading, what I was seeing.

I shut the book right after I read about the way my parents really died. I stormed into Taj’s room, a million questions bombarding my head at once.

She sat in her bed with her back to the wall, watching the television. 

“Everything you have ever told me, everything you have ever made me believe was all a lie.” Tears blurred my eyes as I spoke.

I watched her as she turned off the TV, and then swung her feet over the side of her queen sized bed to sit in front of me. “I did not lie to you to hurt you.”

“Well you sure as hell did a good job at it! All this time I have been worried I was going out of my mind, or I had caught some weird virus, only to come to understand that I am not even human to begin with!”

“Zillina, you have read the journal. Tell me how was I supposed to tell you that you were not human? Tell me at what age would that have been an appropriate conversation to have, when I was raising you as a human?”

“You waited sixteen years!” I threw the journal at her feet and she barely glanced at it. “Sixteen full years Taj, and you never thought once that maybe you should even mention it?”

Taj stood with her arms folded. “I get that you are angry and you are not thinking straight, but at no time would it have been appropriate to say over dinner “Hey, guess what? We’re really from a planet no one has ever heard of and we have all these supernatural powers. By the way your parents were not really killed in a car accident, they were murdered.” 

“I don’t care what kind of excuses you want to come up with. You lied to me, all my life you have been lying to me and nothing excuses that.”

I stormed back to my room, slamming the door shut and turning out all the lights. I pulled the binds and the curtains, climbed into bed and cried myself back to sleep.