by P. S. Power
She tried for baffled rather than her normal confrontational style, since they hadn't called her ugly, just confused her with someone much better looking, which was a first for her. Maybe she had a lot of damage to her face? She couldn't feel anything, no bandages or sore spots... Maybe they just thought that her normal look – the right side of her face swollen and misshapen, the left side slightly concave and lumpy, jutting out at the bottom of her chin suddenly, nose having been broken several times from different attacks – indicated fresh damage?
“I'm sorry, that's not me. I know I may look funny, but it's just the way I look. I'm Gwen Farris, not, what was the name? Katherine? Though that does remind me... the freak that stabbed me? He called me that. Maybe he has some kind of serial killer obsession with her? Though people like that... don't they usually pick women that remind them of their target, the person they're fixated on?” Being careful not to let her head turn, she tried to give them a small smile, so they wouldn't freak out on her when they realized that she really looked this bad all the time.
Instead of saying anything, the nurse went to the hall and came back a few moments later, handing the doctor a silver colored hand mirror that looked to be made of real silver, slightly tarnished on the back. Real metal, not plastic.
He held it in front of her, so Gwen could see herself.
The woman in the mirror wasn't her.
She'd love to look like that, but she knew, from thirty-four years of living with it, that her face resembled a lumpy sack of potatoes someone had taken an ugly stick to and not spared effort on, not the plucky sidekick from a television show.
She moved her face and the woman in the mirror did the same things. She wanted to touch it, but her hands couldn't reach that high, it hurt too much when she tried. She'd have figured it as a dream, except for her chest ached too damn much for that. Trying to reach up to her face anyway sent a wave of pain through her that made her stop. Definitely real pain at least.
“That's not my face. I mean, I admit the face in the mirror seems to be reflecting my image right now, I'm not stupid or denying that the image is tracking, but I don't look like that. I can't look like that. The doctors told me that they'd already done all the corrective surgeries possible years ago. Besides, even if someone could afford that kind of massive work, which I can't, why make me look like someone else that's that different? Wouldn't it be easier to find someone that looks like her, Katherine, already and start from there?”
The doctor took the mirror away, handing it to the nurse without even looking at her, the woman taking it away smoothly, like a runner passing a baton in a relay event.
“I...see. Well, this could be any of a number of things. It could be that you're suffering from shock of course, in which case I'm sure you'll recover your normal self soon. Just in case this is something else, I'd like to bring in a specialist. Nurse Rogers... could you get in touch with Doctor Professor Grainger at Western University? Please ask that he come quickly and bring the full kit. He'll understand what that means, I believe.”
The nurse left and no one mentioned her odd appearance again after that, they did bring her a few tiny sandwiches and tea after a while. The white bread had a thin spread of very bland cheese inside, with spices Gwen thought, but not enough to make it taste like much. The tea was a basic green, like the Lipton she had at home in her cupboard. Unsweetened.
The nurse fed her patiently, interspersing tiny sips of the warm liquid when she asked. She decided to give the woman a rare third mental check mark by her name. That level of attention from a nurse was incredible.
She'd have liked to look in the mirror again, but couldn't move easily enough to get it from the table it had been placed on, next to the water. If the face in the mirror had somehow been put on her body, she wanted to keep it if at all possible. Even with her warped body, that face would be a godsend. Worth being stabbed in the heart to get, especially considering she'd lived through it. She'd been hurt worse with less to show for it.
Actually, most of the times she'd been hurt there'd been nothing to show for it at all, so this was a massive improvement. About time things started breaking even.
As darkness fell outside her window, the high kind that you couldn't see out of without a ladder, a man with silver hair came in, a heavy fellow, not fat, but stout or maybe beefy, who didn't smile or frown, looking at her curiously instead. He spoke softly, as if afraid she might be slightly deranged. Given what was going on it was a good guess, Gwen thought. For a few seconds she wondered about that possibility herself.
“Miss...Farris?” He said tentatively, standing well back, the nurse hovering behind him, watching what he did, it seemed to Gwen, not her reactions. “My name is Doctor Professor Grainger, your doctor, Shmitd, asked me to check out some things using my specialty of radiative effectives. The tests won't hurt and may tell us a lot about what's going on here, even if they don't make sense to you immediately. Is it alright with you if we do that?” He smiled then, trying to look encouraging she supposed, and failing slightly, at least to her eyes.
“Sure, I'm not doing anything else anyway. Where do we start?” She made herself smile, confused again for a second at how it felt, just flowing into place without stress on any of her facial muscles at all. Was this what regular people felt all the time? It was so easy to smile this way you'd think they'd do it non-stop, Gwen thought. Her opinion of average people dropping a bit suddenly. It was that simple for them and they chose to frown? What jerks.
Where they began seemed odd to her, everything the man wanted seemed strange in fact. He had her hold two copper spheres connected by wires that ran to a small device he watched intently, while asking her questions. She held them resting by her sides. The man had reached over her to place the sphere in her left hand and the nurse took several steps closer for some reason, as if worried.
To protect her from attack? The big man, Grainger, actually seemed nice enough to Gwen. He certainly didn't act ready to harm her at all. No, that was different. Nice to have backup though, since she doubted that she could do much for herself at the moment.
He asked her name, then if she remembered ever being known as Katherine Vernor. When Gwen said she didn't he wrote something down and moved on, asking her favorite color. Green. If she liked reading books; yes, mainly mysteries and fantasy. Her parents' names, the names of her brothers and sisters, and where she lived.
She answered as simply and honestly as she could, in case this thing acted like some kind of a lie detector. After about a half hour of questions, he started asking everything again, with different phrasing. Kind of like on a police drama where they asked the same questions over and over, trying to catch people in a lie. She knew that they did that in real life too, having been examined that way after reporting attacks several times. This guy probably meant to do the same with her now. Well, all she could do was tell the truth, she didn't have anything else to give the man that made more sense, or she might have been tempted.
Then, digging through the large dark brown leather bag he'd brought, Grainger took out a complicated looking device made of wood, with a pendulum in the middle that looked to be made out of layers of copper disks with glass between each layer. Every couple of layers the glass, if it was glass at all, looked red instead of clear like the others. This made a clump that hung by a shiny white cord of some kind. Nylon maybe? Or silk, but most people didn't tie things up with silk thread as far as she knew.
After setting up on the table near her, moving it closer so she could reach it, he asked if she could possibly put her hand under the pendulum, palm facing up and open. It hurt, a lot, but she managed after a minute.
Obviously, this wasn't Kansas anymore. Or even Nebraska where she'd been when she'd fallen asleep. If this man could help her figure things out, then she'd help him do it, even if it did send shooting pains across her chest. Pain wasn't exactly new to her after all. The rest of this was.
Then the man asked her the same, or at least very simi
lar, questions again. As she spoke, the pendulum moved, swinging one way then the other. Slow movements that had the feeling of one magnet being repelled by another, not just the back and forth movement she expected. At one point, when she tried to tell him what programs she liked to watch on television, it suddenly jumped straight up about an inch and hovered there for a second. Like something floating in liquid.
The big man stroked his mustache and nodded, asking her then to describe her daily life as completely as possible, not leaving anything out if she could help it.
“Well, OK. I work at home, Web-design mainly.” The copper and glass assembly jumped again. “Anyway, I get up in the morning, work for a few hours, then eat breakfast, I normally just nuke a bagel for a few seconds with some cream cheese...” It bobbed again.
Each time she mentioned an electronic device, and a few other things like cars, the pendulum reacted in a funny way, jumping up and bobbing around.
Grainger saw it too and took extensive notes asking for particulars on some strange things.
Finally he called the other doctor in and explained his findings. That he had findings from what they'd done left Gwen feeling a little in awe of the man. Given everything she'd have just assumed that the crazy person was lying to her. This place obviously and sincerely wasn't home. The idea should have shaken her, but home, while being what she knew, wasn't that great. She'd deal.
“Miss Farris, and I do believe that's truly her name, seems to have been placed in this body somehow, probably some magical event from our world as her world seems to be largely without our kind of magic. They use “electricity” instead, a powerful force indeed – that being the stuff of lighting if I understood correctly – but how they make it do all she claimed... Still, she told no lies at all and the responses to those questions indicate a truly otherworldly origin. I have to say that this woman is indeed who she claims to be and is definitely not from our world, even if her body clearly is.”
A woman wearing what seemed to be a suit jacket, blouse, and mid-calf tweed skirt, all in a light brown, entered the room then, taking it all in carefully.
“Interesting,” she said to no one in particular, voice flat and devoid of life, “I wonder what happened to Katherine Vernon then?”
The following is from the first book in the Keeley Thomson series.
(It's young adult, but appropriate for all ages.)
Keeley Thomson: Demon Girl
Chapter one
Keeley didn't really care today.
Normally she did well enough on that score, being sympathetic to the plight of others, trying to get good grades and all that stuff. The things that a normal girl should be concerned about. At the moment though, she just couldn't.
Not about school. Not about some stupid dance that she wouldn't be going to anyway, and certainly not about some moronic football game that had no impact on either her life or the world at large.
Nope.
About those things she didn't give a single thought, other than to dismiss them.
It was probably hard to tell from the outside, given what she was doing at the moment, which could easily be taken as a sign of peppy interest or possibly a lame attempt at social climbing. Like she'd bother with that? Moving up the popularity ladder of a high school didn't make a lot of sense, she'd be leaving in a few years anyway. It was actually kind of funny, but Keeley Thomson held her face straight and didn't think about it.
It was work time.
Fun – possibly psychotic – work.
The dance in question was being advertised on a rather nice poster that looked very professional, if she did say so herself. The white was glossy and the letters in the center were made up out of very tiny, slightly irregularly shaped boxes that were blue and orange, as was the football helmet in the center of the piece, surrounded by very sharp looking black print describing how incredible the event would be. The school's colors, as well as a high contrast image that played tricks with the eye, the pattern making the whole thing seem to shift and shimmer a little if you looked for more than a second. That was what she cared about.
The way it looked, not the advertisement itself. More to the point, the way that people would be drawn to it, stopping to read the new message. Staring, trying to force their mind to understand what they were seeing.
At least if she'd done it right.
The game was before the dance, Homecoming, which for some reason was held a full month and a half after the start of the school year at Raintree high. The name of the event always made her wonder who was supposed to be coming home? Obviously someone that wasn't planning to graduate, not coming in that late.
Keeley brushed her long brown hair out of her face, straight and bland, mainly held back with a plain brown scrunchy that her mom had gotten her a fifty pack of the Christmas before. A few wisps carelessly flying around this late in the day, knocked out of place by her glasses earlier when she'd taken them off to clean them. She wore one daily and generally got a week's worth of use out of each before something happened. She'd lose them, or use one to hold something together, mark a book page or as part of an explosives package.
It didn't matter. No one noticed overly, because no one really saw her most of the time. In fact, she knew, if she didn't move her little size six jeans back to the far wall in about five seconds she was going to end up in the mess.
That being what she was there for today.
The mess that was about to start in the school's main hallway in three... two... one...
The bell rang, loud and strong, followed by the clatter of hundreds of chairs in classrooms and then even more pairs of feet padding rapidly on the highly polished yellow and blue tile that was supposed to somehow engender “school spirit” in the masses forced to walk the hallways each day, rather than headaches from eye strain. The yellow was supposed to be orange, but no one made bright orange tile in the right color for some reason.
Probably because it was an ugly color. Just a hideous choice.
As depressing as the place was, she'd never noticed any ghosts to speak of, so that plan didn't seem to be working very well. Maybe that's who was coming back? The school spirit? That would work, just in time for Halloween even. She smiled at her own private little joke, wondering if anyone else would have even gotten it if she'd said it out loud. People in general were kind of dumb really.
As the flood of students moved towards her, looking alternately happy and relieved that the school day was done, and the weekend had finally arrived, Keeley pushed her back against the far wall solidly and got ready. If this went as planned she'd need the protection. If it didn't, she'd still need the protection, just for different reasons.
The boy that stopped to look at the poster first was tall, one of the basketball team she thought, which was perfect. Big and in shape. He couldn't make out exactly what he was seeing. So, naturally, the visual illusion catching his attention, he stopped dead in his tracks and stared at the effect. Right in the middle of the stream of moving bodies. That caused a log jam of teenagers. Not a huge one, it was only a poster after all, for a dance that everyone knew was coming anyway, and advertising a football game that their school only had a twelve percent chance of winning. If that.
But the group in the hall was big enough so that when Quince and his jock buddies came around the corner at a full run, trying to get to football practice before the coach could scream at them for being late, they couldn't stop before the collision took place. Not right there just around the corner, where the poster had been conveniently placed.
Perfectly arranged really.
It had happened before of course, hence the little “trick” Keeley set up for the day.
Only, when the jerks had hit her and tiny Maria Gonzales they'd managed to send them both flying into the floor and Maria into the dentist's office with two missing front teeth. They got put back in, sure, at a decent expense to Maria's parents, but none of the guys had even stopped to see if they were alright, they'd just kept
running, laughing while they did.
That pissed her off. The laughing. What kind of monsters knocked a tiny girl's teeth out and just ran away cackling like that?
Keeley had carried the girl to the school office and ridden with her in the ambulance to the emergency room. She'd cried the whole way. It had been pitiful.
This time it was going to be a little different. That was the plan at least.
That tangle of bodies that hit the floor included six members of the football team and nearly ten random students that had been minding their own business, momentarily entranced by the slightly dancing picture on the wall. No one seemed hurt yet, but that was coming. Keeley would make sure of it. Without that part of things her plan was just an annoyance. Time to finish the project and get out before anyone noticed her. Keeley pitched her voice carefully trying to make it sound horrified. A little indignant as well. It was over the top, but most people responded to things like that. Probably because they watched too much TV, and didn't really think anyone would ever be doing something like this. After all, it would be a little convoluted for a school prank, wouldn't it?
“Oh my god,” she called out loudly enough for the whole hallway to hear. “Those guys from the football team actually attacked a bunch of people like they said they were going to at lunch? Well, I guess we'll see if they can really just get away with doing anything here, like they said they could...”
Oh, it sounded phony as anything she'd ever said, but in the pile of bodies it was clear that a few people had heard her and weren't exactly pleased about being “attacked”.
