SamwiseTheAwesome

Did something with that dream

The periodic table on the wall was mocking me. The symbols for Silver and Iron were all that mattered and so I stared at the scarred wood of my with my fingers tracing the strap of the heavy satchel resting against my left hip and  waited for the bell to release me from this fluorescent purgatory.

When the nerve shattering sound erupted from somewhere and the others in the class, nameless and anonymous, vanished into nowhere, I lingered, moving with a deliberate slowness.

The halls were strangely cavernous, empty and silent but for the sound of my boots against overly waxed concrete, but despite that deafening silence that said only I traveled them there was another whose approach surprised me completely.

The Principal loomed out of the shadows of the trophy case and the look on his face was as cold as the concrete walls.

“You’re late for second period—where have you been? Drug test—end of the hall.”

He didn't wait for an explanation and did not care for anything but my blind obedience.  I chose not to argue and so I turned toward the clinic at the end of the seemingly endless  corridor,with only the sound of footfalls and iron against canvas as companions.

The distance vanished beneath my boots and I soon arrived at a wooden door made of the cheap plywood common to somewhat underfunded schools.  It squeaked open on barely maintained hinges and I entered into a plain, but pristine room. A man in an equally pristine lab coat sat behind a cheap, purely functional desk

“I’ve seen all kinds of strange attachments and obsessions- but a pan? That’s a new one.”

One does not simply carry heavy cookware without cause and the skillet was indeed heavy—eight pounds of cast iron and etched wards.

"It's for the Fae.”  I answered with a certainty whose origin was entirely unclear to me.

The doctor leaned back in a chair that was much too luxurious for the surroundings. “Fae- Fairies, Like Tinkerbell?" The condescension in his voice was obvious, and unearned. 

My voice went as hard and as cold as the iron I relied on for protection. "Not the little ones with wings—tall, can look you in the eyes and stare into your soul. The ones with cat’s eyes—vertical pupils, cold and inhuman.”

I refused to meet the eyes of a man whose ignorance I felt was beneath me and saw there were others—pale, thin with troubled eyes and certainly troubled minds—who had seen too much and now saw nothing beyond their own traumas, real or imagined. The pale girl obsessively counting her own fingers, the boy nearly smashing his head into the wall every time he rocked himself backward. 

I felt a common cause with those outcasts and I remembered nothing else.

What I suddenly knew to be an illusion vanished in a white-hot flash as dry leaves and fallen branches crunched beneath steel-toed boots. I covered the ground quickly, sprinting as a shadow cast by some unnatural light, consumed all natural light around it, plunging the night into true darkness.

Something was behind me, it did not run, but almost flowed across the ground, seeming not to touch it.

I saw it in the distance, the ivy covered stone structure that faintly resembled a Cathedral constructed only from a vague description. “Frankenstein’s Tomb” A Neo-Gothic monstrosity constructed by a man forgotten by all but his family, and possessed of more wealth than artistic or financial sensibility. Not its true name—but the only one anyone cared to remember.

I did not know at this moment why I saw it as my only refuge from whatever unknown foe was only a few steps behind me—something instinctive.

 The same instinct allowed me to find an unusual shape I did not know I was looking for, an indentation that conformed perfectly to my right hand and beside it on either side, two others for hands not my own.

I need to save Mother and Sister—the thought came to me unprompted save by the realization that the others were meant for THEIR hands.

Mother? Sister? I had no memory of either and I hesitated as a terrible revelation crashed down on me. I had NO memories whatsoever—none before that morning and a class I realized only now made little sense.

My heritage reasserted itself in a moment of blinding clarity. “I am Magda Frankenstein. I am not an eighteen year old student—I am one hundred and ten years old. This is my home—none may enter.”

I pressed my palm into the stone and I entered into a world growing increasingly familiar with each passing breath.

The caves were artificial, dug by the man who’d built the structure that sat atop them—intended to be a final refuge for him, his family and the Doomsday cult that had died with him before its completion—but now it served new mistresses and we’d done quite well in turning into the home we had shared these last… 

Perhaps the name we wore had come from the structure—or perhaps it had come from us? Mother, if she was part of the bloodline at all, I could not recall at the moment, believed herself the product of a single drunken night—a young university student and a comely young maid who was only two of those when the night ended.

He never knew of us in any case—Mother never met him and that was for the best, that ignorance protected us from a creature who in some bizarre sense was almost a relation—or so “Adam” would see himself.

I could do nothing else but close the heavy steel door to the night outside.

Michael/Karolina

their kiss is here:

look for " That next unplanned but somehow not entirely unexpected moment when their lips, dry, cracked and bleeding, met surprised both of them, this made weeks of rivalry, competition and mutual verbal abuse irrelevant."

You might be interested in this video.( https://www.youtube.com/shorts/i5B5Q86_K3w ), ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpcBsnifTRE )?

@SamwiseTheAwesome, any idea when you can look at the story next?