“Damn you, Mother. For years
you told me what a disappointment I was because I wasn’t more like
you. Well, now I know why.”
Tia stood in the middle of her mother’s
back yard and punched a fist into the sun-drenched sky.
Twenty-five years of lies
and repression, of trying to be the type of daughter she thought her
mother wanted. And for what? The bitch wasn’t even her mother.
Her gut cramped as a burst
of anger flashed through her. It fought for expression, regardless
of the years of violent training at her mother’s hands.
An avalanche of feelings
swamped her in sensation. Pain, hurt, love, guilt—the emotions tore
through her, chipping away at her rigid self-control. “I loved you,
Momma, despite everything. Why couldn’t you love me?”
Harsh sobs erupted. Tears
ran down her face in a scalding trail. Dear God, she hadn’t cried
since she was a small child. She struggled to catch her breath. “I
l-loved y-you, Momma.”
“Tia, come inside this
instant.”
She stared at the priest
as he strode across the garden, cassock flapping about his skinny
ankles. Father John. The man who’d resided over her mother’s burial
this morning. Damn him, he was part of the deception, too.
“You knew and you said
nothing.” The strident tone of her voice rubbed her nerves raw. For
a moment, she thought to apologize. Then she looked at the crumpled
adoption notice in her hand and the photo she’d found among her
mother’s papers.
A photo of her mother
carrying a baby Tia, beside a man with the same white-blond hair and
ice-blue eyes as her own.
Her father? Maybe, but
now she’d never know.
Her forehead throbbed, as
if probed by a red-hot needle. She pushed the hair back and rubbed
at the ugly, port-wine birthmark for a second. The habits of a
lifetime ingrained, she dipped her head, letting the hair fall
forward, hiding the unsightly blemish.
Fury at the unfairness of
it all ripped through her. The controlled façade she’d learned to
project to the world shattered like shards of crystal. She gasped
for breath as anger burned its way through her, a scorching tide of
bitterness bubbling up from where she’d hidden it.
“Please, Tia, there’s a
storm coming.”
The priest’s voice came at
her as if down a dark tunnel. A roaring filled her head, like the
frenetic buzz of bees. She gazed upward, blinking to clear the tears
from her vision.
The bright summer day had
disappeared. The scent of Jasmine overwhelmed her senses and a
buffeting dash of air ripped the leaves from the fig tree behind
her. The sky roiled as dark clouds rolled in, obscuring the sun.
How had a storm of this
magnitude built up without her noticing?
Exhilaration at her
inclusion in such a cosmic event overwhelmed her normal caution. Her
heart beat so hard she thought it would crash through the wall of
her chest. For the first time in her life, she wallowed in
sensation. She didn’t try to analyze it. She simply let it sweep
through her.
The wind ripped away the
pins securing her hair, pure white strands whipping about her,
stinging like a lash on the exposed skin of her face. The light
cotton of her dress molded to her body, the tempest blasting her
full on. She tilted her head back and laughed, the sound tinged with
hysteria.
Overhead, thunder cracked,
drowning out all other sound. Jagged bolts of lightning arced down.
The smell of burnt ozone singed the air. The color, purple tinged
with red, imprinted itself on her retinas, normal vision impossible.
The world narrowed, until all that remained was the power of the
storm.
Vaguely, in the distance,
she heard Father John scream at her, but she couldn’t move. She
waited... She didn’t know what she waited for. Maybe the rain, to
wash away some of the anger and pain of childhood, but there was no
hint of it. Just the continual crack of lightning as it moved
closer.
Tia reveled in it,
drinking in the supremacy of the elements. Taking it into her body
until she trembled with the force of it.
Accompanied by a deafening
roll of thunder, the lightning slashed the darkened sky, slamming
into the earth around her. Then a purple beam of energy sliced
through her. The hair stood out from her head like an unholy nimbus.
Static electricity crackled and snapped.
Pain
Fierce. Unrelenting.
An agonized scream tore
from her. She hit the parched earth of the back yard. Eyes opened
wide, she watched another serrated pulse of lightning arrow down
toward her prone body. When the bolt hit, she didn’t even have the
strength to cry out.
Legs and arms twitched.
Her back arched. The smell of burnt flesh assaulted her senses.
Nausea took over, the taste of bile filling her mouth and burning
the back of her throat. She tried to blink, but she couldn’t feel
her eyelids. Nor could she close them when another burst of
lightning lanced the blackened sky.
Now, instead of pain, a
feeling of numbness took over. It began in her legs and spread to
encompass her entire being. She knew she should fight the creeping
cold, but it was so difficult.
One thought flitted
through the morass of her mind.
Was there even anything to
fight for?
She’d never fit in this world. Maybe in the next she’d find her
place.
Moments before the
darkness took over, a vision surfaced in Tia’s mind. A world of
white ice, tinged with green. Rays of emerald energy radiated out.
The ice shattered, surrounding her in a crystalline tomb, before the
picture reformed.
A man with the same white
hair as her own bent over her. Not the man in her mother’s photo. A
younger man, the one she’d dreamed of all her life. Enclosed in a
pulsing white aura, he smiled down at her, reaching out to offer
comfort. As he did, the shimmering field about him flared with a
burst of blue-green spikes. Within a heartbeat, shock obliterated
his smile and he backed away, an emerald mist obscuring him from
view.
The vision faded. Tia
sighed and ceased to struggle, allowing the elements to take her.
Copyright ©2006 Alexis Fleming
