Sam I Am

by Heather Killough-Walden

  Deflect, she thought frantically.

  She was good at that. She had had so much practice….

  “Stuff it, Randy. I’m tired and my period is killing me and right now I’m going to go to that home I apparently hate so much and I’m going to bed.” She brushed past him, allowing her words to sink in, and waited to see if he would say or try anything else.

  When she made it all the way to the back door, trash in hand, without him stopping her, she knew it had worked. The bastard would think she was on the rag. Untouchable. Irritable. How had he put it last week? “A sensitive little bitch with a wild imagination and a body she didn’t deserve.”

  Asshole.

  Behind her, she finally heard the keys rattle in the back door and knew that Randy was locking up the shop. He was the assistant manager. The manager and owner of the pastry store was a woman in her early seventies who simply loved to cook and had absolutely no idea that the people she hired could be anything other than what they appeared to be.

  She loved Randy like a son. It might have had something to do with the fact that her own son had died fifty years ago of leukemia. It might also have been that Randy was very charismatic when he wanted to be. But whatever it was, Mrs. Witherspoon trusted Randy Hodges with her store, her money, and her other employees. Even the volunteer ones.

  Like Logan.

  “See you tomorrow, sweetheart,” Randy called out, pausing for a moment beneath the fluorescent lamp that hung above the awning of the back door. “Try to be in a friendlier mood, eh?”

  He winked at her and Logan’s teeth began to grind. She tossed the bag into the dumpster and watched him, warily, as he made his way down the alley between the pastry shop and the bank next door.

  And then Logan took a deep breath.

  It was the first one she’d been able to take all day. She finally felt alone. She loved being alone. This, right now, was her favorite time of the day.

  Night.

  It was at this time, when she no longer had work to do and no longer had to talk to anyone and she didn’t yet have to be home, that gave her the strength to live.

  She didn’t have to go home right away. No. Not for hours if she didn’t want to. She could always tell her parents that she had to drop off leftover food at the shelter. She could tell them that there was a huge mess to clean up or a kid’s party to bake for – or hell, even a kitchen fire. They would believe anything. It didn’t matter.

  All that mattered was the time. And being alone.

  And the notebook in the car that held all of her stories – her dreams. Her deepest, most urgent wishes and desires.

  She felt like adding to them tonight. With a smile the likes of which the outside world never, ever caught on her lovely face, Logan turned back toward her parents’ car and dug the key out of the front pocket of her jeans.

  * * * *

  They were her words, he thought, as he watched the young woman move toward the car that held the notebook he had read. They were her words that gave me form.

  Function. Purpose.

  She was a bard, a story teller. Her kind were druids in their own right, and had been held sacred by his people for thousands upon thousands of years.

  It was from the characters she had created, in the words scripted by her hand, that he had drawn his own physical form. The men she wrote of were an amalgamation of wondrous beings, so unlike the humans that he had known for an eternity, so unlike the animals that flocked to his door by the thousands.

  Now…. Now, he was not only alive, which was an extraordinary tale of irony in and of itself, he was more than alive. He was not human – but superhuman. And all because of this one woman’s phenomenal imagination and her ability to put what she imagined into all-powerful words.

  As only a bard could.

  He did not even know her, and yet he knew that he owed her everything. Her – and that silly little witch who had so callously fouled her spell at the cemetery. How long he had waited for one such as that foolish young girl to come tripping to his door and swing it open wide. How he had yearned to step through that portal, just as his subjects were allowed to do every year on that holiday that was named for him. And how fortuitous that when his means of escape should finally come along – the bard and her life-giving words would be so close, so reachable, on the other side.

  It was more than luck. It had to be fate. Now? In this, most sacred of months? To find one such as her – it could only mean one thing. She was meant to be his. They were meant to be together.

  She is beautiful. He couldn’t understand, exactly, what he was seeing. He was not used to looking upon living beings. Those that entered his world, even when lovely, were still dead. Devoid of all that once animated their spirits, bodies and minds.

  He couldn’t even understand, fully, what he was thinking. He had never had a physical brain before. His thoughts had always simply formed, vaporous and fleeting. This was all new to him. So very, very new.

  But, regardless of his newness, he knew that she was radiant. He simply knew it. There was something in her core that shone as if there was a light turned on within her body. He understood that, though he had never witnessed it before this night, all living beings possessed a similar light. However, the bard’s light glowed more brightly than the others – all of those millions of others….

  She was more lovely than anything he had ever known.

  And he had known everything. Everything that had ever passed, he had witnessed. He was the final act of every man’s play.

  Mine, he thought, then, as he looked upon the creature’s loveliness. Her hair shone like polished gold beneath the lamplight. Her eyes, when she glanced up and into the shadows, looked like fire-lit amber. Her skin was smooth and unblemished and a strange need began to grow within his new body.

  His eyes cut to the man now leaving the light of the awning over the back door of the shop. Hunger surged through him. It was not something he had felt before. Not ever. But he knew it as instinctively and naturally as he would have recognized the newly dead. He wanted to feed. And he wanted to feed on that man, in particular. Because he wants her, he thought. And he can’t have her.

  She’s mine.

  Chapter Three

  Logan awoke to the sound of a toilet flushing. She blinked against the darkness in her room as a whispered argument erupted downstairs.

  Fighting over the bathroom… she thought, distractedly.

  But, the late hour was on their side and it was over quickly. Her brother and sister went back to bed, swearing each other to hell as their heads hit the pillow.

  Where was I? Logan thought. A secret, small smile curled the corners of her mouth as she once more slipped easily into the warm embrace of sleep….

  There was a black rose on her pillow. Logan knew she was dreaming; she was a lucid dreamer. So, instead of being royally freaked out by the obvious invasion that would have had to occur for a rose to wind up on her pillow, she slowly lifted the rose to her nose and inhaled.

  It smelled like night. Only in a dream, could night have a scent, she thought, lazily. A little something like star dust and space and chimney smoke.

  Who left it? she wondered.

  “I did.”

  It was part of the dream, she knew. She was expected to be surprised. Maybe she should have whirled around, all gasp-y and wide-eyed, her raised hands shaking in fear.

  But it was her dream. And dreams were sacred to her. They were an escape and, at times, they were her salvation. While Logan often let her dreams play out however they saw fit, so long as they didn’t turn toward nightmares, tonight, she was in a different mood. She felt like taking charge.

  Tonight, it would play it out the way she wanted it to. Morpheus could go screw himself.

  Logan smiled and slowly turned to face the newcomer. She had expected him to look like David. The vampire she’d created two months ago and written a short story about.

  Or perhaps Michael, her drop-dead gorgeous werewolf, with
his lust-filled gaze and that determined set to his strong jaw.

  Even a devil or a demon would have fit the bill.

  What she hadn’t expected was the stranger. He was incredibly attractive; uncomfortably so. He was tall, with thick, somewhat shaggy dark-brown hair and very, very light blue eyes. He looked a little like Jason Behr. And Draco Malfoy. And Angus Sutherland – all wrapped into one. His build was broad, but not steroid large. He had an immediate intenseness about him.

  He looked the way she would describe any of the characters in her stories, be they vampire or werewolf or angel from Hell. But she had never seen him before.

  She blinked. This wasn’t what she had planned. Why hadn’t her dream responded to her subconscious wishes? She’d always been able to control them before; who was this new guy – that she could see so clearly and who was gazing at her so steadily?

  She swallowed hard.

  He stood a few feet away, framed by the light coming through her bedroom doorway. His gaze was so concentrated – so real – Logan was taken aback.

  She frowned. “Who are you?” she asked, before she knew what she was doing.

  “I am Sam,” he said, softly. He looked to be in his late teens to early twenties, and though his voice was soft, his tone gentle, the way he spoke to her and the way he was now looking at her made him seem… older, somehow.

  “I don’t know you,” she said, dumbly. What? She asked herself. What the hell was that? What is wrong with me? This dream had her off-kilter. It was unexpected.

  She tore her gaze away from his, finding it more difficult than she would have liked. She looked down at the rose in her hand. Without thinking, she turned it slightly between her fingers. It shimmered, as if embedded with diamond dust.

  Stars, she thought. For the night.

  “I’m sorry if I’ve startled you,” he said, then, and Logan’s head snapped back up. He smiled, flashing white teeth straight and bright, with the slightest hint of elongated canine. Some people’s teeth were like that….

  Logan’s chest constricted. It was a killer smile. Her belly felt warm and her throat felt tight. Strange, she thought. I feel my body. I never feel my body in my dreams.

  “But you do know me, Logan.”

  Logan blinked. I do? Then she shook her head. “No,” she told him, firmly. “No I don’t.” Her heart was beating faster now. Some odd comprehension was banging on the door of her consciousness, begging to be let in.

  “I have to go,” she said, her tone nervous but firm. She was stunned with her own uncharacteristic lack of dream finesse; with her utter inability to play along or take this dream any further in order to discover what it was all about. But it was making her too uncomfortable.

  Something was wrong. She had no control here.

  “Go where?” Sam asked, taking a step toward her. Logan noticed his clothing - black. All black, all the way down to his black motorcycle boots.

  “Umm…” she stammered. She backed up a step and found herself against the bed. She turned, glanced at the bed, and then spun to face him once more. Now she was the wide-eyed scaredy cat. How ironic. She didn’t even have to fake it.

  Sam had stopped in his tracks, his expression suddenly a touch concerned. His gaze skirted the planes of her face, and then caught her eyes once more.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, then. “Forgive me. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable in any way.”

  This is too real, Logan thought. He’s too real. I can see him too clearly and he’s truly beautiful and he’s saying things that I didn’t put into his head.

  He isn’t mine….

  Is this really a dream?

  “I’ll go,” Sam said softly, lowering his head in a slight bow.

  The windows across the room burst open, her white gauze curtains whirling madly in the wind that suddenly gushed in. That gust hit him like a wall and Sam’s tall body disintegrated, breaking into a trillion star-light pieces that floated for a moment – and then followed on the wind that blew back out the window.

  When every last star sparkle was gone, the windows slammed shut once more.

  Logan, now alone, looked down at the rose in her hands. She turned it between her fingers again, her brow furrowed.

  “Sam…” she said, turning the name over in her mind.

  A thorn on the rose pierced her index finger and she jumped slightly at the pain. Utterly bewildered, she lifted her finger before her face and gazed at the welling scarlet. She’d never been hurt before in a dream. And she’d certainly never bled.

  With that, Logan felt the world slipping away. Her body became heavier and horizontal.

  The air felt and sounded hollow. Real. She opened her eyes and let her vision adjust to the darkness. She heard someone using a faucet downstairs. Someone else muttered in their sleep.

  Logan’s upper body was uncovered, and a swell of goose bumps raised on her exposed flesh. She tried to hug herself, but her legs were wrapped in a messy mass of blankets, keeping her off balance. She kicked them off of her now and let them drop to the floor.

  She sat up slowly, and then winced when she put weight on her right hand. She looked down to find a small circle of blood spreading into the mattress beneath her right index finger.

  “Logan!”

  Logan turned away from the interior of her locker and glanced up the hall. It was five minutes until the tardy bell at the beginning of the day, and the halls were teeming with students.

  Katelyn, Logan’s closest friend, was running toward her, as much as anyone could run through the over-crowded halls of the high school. Logan closed the locker slightly and turned to face her. When Kate finally managed to make it there, out of breath, Logan smiled.

  Kate stopped, held up her hand to signal that she needed a minute, and then closed her eyes, bent at the waist, and caught her breath. A few seconds later, she was straightening again. “Okay!” Kate started, “first of all, have you seen the new guy? And second of all, can I borrow your notes from fourth period yesterday?”

  Logan laughed and shook her head, turning back to her locker to pull out first period’s text books. “Yes, sweet heart, you can borrow my notes. And no, my dear. I haven’t seen the new guy.” Katelyn was forever chasing after anyone and anything that didn’t know about her checkered past. “Exchange student?”

  “I have no idea,” Katelyn shrugged.

  Logan frowned and turned a slightly disbelieving look on her friend. “Seriously? You don’t know everything about the new boy?”

  Kate swatted her on the shoulder. “Shut up. I’m, not a complete floozy.”

  “Yes you are,” Logan shot back gently. She could feel her own eyes twinkling.

  Kate pursed her lips, trying not to smile. But she failed in the battle and finally shrugged. “Fine. But I just do it because you don’t. You’re a cock-tease.”

  “Whatever helps you sleep at night,” Logan replied.

  Kate harrumphed and rolled her eyes, coming to rest her back against the shut lockers beside Logan’s. Logan slid her back pack off of her shoulder and began to empty last night’s work out of its main pocket. “Have you seen Meagan today?” Logan asked. “She didn’t return my calls last night and I was sent straight to voice mail.”

  “Nope. And she didn’t come over last night, either; something about family game night. That’s probably why she didn’t answer her phone, actually. You both abandoned me.” Kate sulked a moment and then straightened, seeming to forget about her disappointment. “Why?”

  Logan shrugged, hanging the now empty backpack on the hook at the back of her locker. “Just not like her to at least return the call; that’s all. She’s virtually attached to her cell phone by her brain stem.” She closed her locker door and was randomizing her combination when she asked, “So what’s this new guy like? What’s his name?” She would never admit it, but the thought of some new male blood in the school did have its enticements. After all, of the twelve hundred students roaming its crowded halls, Logan could
think of only one young man she had any kind of attraction to.

  Those weren’t great odds.

  When she turned back to face Katelyn, it was to find her hazel eyes bright with pent-up excitement.

  Logan straightened and sighed. “Okay, let it out.”

  “Well, for one thing, he’s gorgeous! Like, drop-dead gorgeous! Logan, Silver High has never, in its history as an inner-child-squashing institution, seen a stud muffin the likes of Sam Hain. That’s his name, by the way. Sam Hain. And because I know you’re going to ask, I have no idea where the hell he came from. He just signed up as a senior today and – guess what else?”

  Logan felt her blood draining from her face. It was from far away that she heard herself ask, “What else?”

  “He’s in fifth period with us!”

  The world dropped out from under Logan. And she didn’t even know why.

  “By the way, what happened to your finger?” Katelyn asked. “It’s bleeding under your Band-Aid.”

  He watched her from the end of the hallway. She didn’t know he was there. He made sure of that. Sam wasn’t sure why it was, but the form he had taken, the form her words had given him, came with certain powers. He found the sensation of each execution of these new abilities to be startling and vivid. They made him feel as he hadn’t felt for ages. Eons, even.

  They made him feel alive.

  And so, it was with a quiet resolution – and the newfound thrill of voyeurism – that Sam stood there at the end of the hall, using his powers to carefully watch the woman he desired, even as he made certain that none of the other students came anywhere near him. They simply walked around him without noticing.

  It was exhilarating to know he had this much influence. This much control. It made him impatient. He wanted to use these abilities on her.

  He could smell her blood. His gaze easily found the splash of red on her hand. She’d pricked her finger on his rose. In his world, such a thing would have carried meaning. Ages ago, it was believed that when a woman pierced her flesh on the thorn of a rose given to her by a suitor, she was destined to marry him.