Pictures should hopefully be up this weekend.
Chapter 5
Haze
“Hi! I didn’t know you were in this class!” Grace smiled at me as I sat down next to her.
“Do you know why there are so many people here today?”
“We have a midterm,” she smiled. “I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
It all made sense now. How could I have forgotten? But it didn’t matter. I was ready. This was a different class than yesterday's, and I studied every day. Yesterday was the only exception. The period was fifty minutes long. I was done within twenty-five. Grace was done in fifteen. She left before I did, but when I walked out of class, she was waiting there.
“How’d you do?” she asked.
“Well.”
“Confident, aren’t you?”
“And you?”
“We’ll see,” she smiled. “Where are you off to now?”
I had an hour break before my next class. I would spend it where I usually spend it.
“The library.”
“Why don’t you get coffee with me instead? I want to talk about where we go from here.”
“Forward, aren’t you?”
“I think you have the wrong idea,” she laughed. “I want to talk to you about Aspects.”
“You mentioned that yesterday.”
“We’ll talk about it over coffee.”
“Why over coffee? Why not right here?”
She smiled. “I haven’t eaten breakfast yet.”
I found myself in the Honky Tonk, our campus café. I hadn't ordered anything. She sat across from me with a cream cheese bagel, a fruit and yogurt parfait, two chocolate hotcakes, a cup of coffee, and a cup of orange juice.
“You won’t eat anything?” she asked as she took a bite of her hotcakes.
“I ate already.”
“I love food.”
“I can tell.”
“What’s your favorite dish?”
“Are we going to discuss what Aspects are?”
She took a sip of her coffee.
“Haven’t you ever thought about smelling the roses?”
“I’m allergic.”
“To listen to someone?”
I bit down on my lip. “Only when it’s important.”
“But how do you know what’s important? Maybe Aspects revolve around your favorite food?”
“Do they?
“No.”
I stared at her. She took a bite of her bagel.
“Answer the question, and I’ll tell you.”
“You tell me to come with you to coffee to discuss what happened yesterday, and now, you’re bargaining to me the point of this discussion for information about myself?”
“That sums it up.” She drank from her orange juice.
“Gummi bears.” I muttered.
“Really?” she laughed. “I never would have guessed!”
“What’s an Aspect?”
She was still laughing, covering her mouth with one hand and gesturing for me to wait with her other hand. I bit down harder on my lip.
“Aspects are a power that only some people have. They can tap into an element and manifest it in a form. It’s kind of like magic.”
“And you can call upon this anytime?”
“You have to have your Icon with you.”
“An Icon?”
“It’s an item used to call upon the Aspect.”
I thought about the items she had on her. I glanced at the ribbon in her hair.
“No,” she smiled as she took a bite of yogurt.
I looked at her and saw her grey blue light beneath her eyeliner. My eyes scanned over her concave nose and down toward her puckered black lips.
She covered her mouth. “Bingo,” she said as she chewed some food. “My lipstick is my Icon.”
“And your Aspect is a shadow sword?”
She half nodded and half shook her head. “Shadow Mimicry.”
“What’s that?”
“You’ll see.”
Cryptic. Just what I need.
“So, what do I have then?”
“I don’t know. Describe to me how you knew something was on the train?”
“My phone rang. You answered it, and I knew something was on the train.”
She took a bite of her chocolate hotcakes and thought for a moment. “I’d say your phone is your icon.”
“And my Aspect?”
“I don’t know. How did you know something was on the train?”
I thought about exactly how these events transpired. “Whenever someone answers these strange phone calls, I hear things that lead me to these creatures. Sometimes I can even see echoes forming a picture in my mind.”
“I’d say that you’re tuned to hearing Affects.”
“Affects?”
“Those creatures.”
“What are they?”
“I don’t really know. I just know that they’ve always been there and most likely always will be.”
“Well, this was enlightening,” I stated as I rose from the table.
“Where are you going?”
“To forget that any of this happened.”
She stood up and grabbed me. People began to stare at us.
“But you can help people with your ability!”
“So?”
“I can’t find where these creatures will strike, but you can!”
“I don’t even know how to use this.” I held out my cell-phone to her. “And I don’t want to. I don’t want anything to do with this.”
“But you’re here already!”
“I never asked to be.”
“What do you want then?”
“I just want to go through life, undisturbed by the noise of others.”
I pushed her hand off of my arm and turned to leave. My phone began to ring. I looked at it. Blank. I looked at her. She was already shoveling food into her mouth. I couldn’t see her eyes – they were covered by shadow. I looked at my still-ringing phone and exited the Honky Tonk.
I walked to the park. The phone was still ringing. People nearby stared at me as if I were crazy to let my phone ring. I moved into a well secluded area surrounded by trees. I sat on a bench and stared toward the sky.
Strange. I don’t remember seeing clouds earlier.
The phone stopped ringing.
From behind me, I could hear something racing across the ground. The intervals of the sound were two by two within a second. It was a gait of some sort. A fast gait. And it was coming right at me.
I leapt from the bench as something crashed through it. I lay on the floor and turned to see an Affect in the shape of a horse. Its eyes were blood red. It had a mane of black flame. It turned and faced me. It pinned its ears back and began to stamp a foot. It charged toward me.
I couldn’t utter a sound.
A cloud of smoke swept in and surrounded the creature. Its body began to blister and boil. The smoke was corroding it. It neighed in howling-agony – another sound like the lizard Affect's that no animal would never make. It tried to escape but the cloud hovered with it. Within moments, the Affect was bubbling ooze, and then, it was gone.
Grace suddenly ran through the trees.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “I heard an Affect.”
“Did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“The smoke.”
“No, that wasn’t me.”
“No,” a voice stated. “That was me.”
A man in a white half-trench walked out from the trees. He was puffing away at a cigarette in his mouth.
Text and Images © Jonathan Lee
