The Felix Chronicles: Freshmen

by R. T. Lowe

  “Angela, my dear, I will gut you like a rainbow trout if I have to. And”—a thin smile touched his face—“I’ll enjoy it. But first things first. Answer the question.”

  She stared at the knife. It was long enough to cut her in half. “Yes,” she said faintly.

  He nodded. “I knew the answer already. I’ve done my diligence on you. But I do enjoy a little dialogue now and again and I was hoping you would answer so I could tell you that being an only child can be advantageous. It might help you.”

  Angela’s brow wrinkled in confusion. She didn’t understand how that could help her. The Faceman killed teenagers. And she knew the teenagers he killed were almost always only children. So why would it be a good thing to have no siblings?

  “But please stop crying. Crying won’t help. It never does. Okay?”

  She brushed her hair back from her forehead. Then she wiped her eyes, but it didn’t do much good; they were swimming with tears.

  “Do you know why you’re here?”

  She shook her head.

  “Would you like to guess?”

  “I don’t know!” she cried out. “Please let me go! Please! I’ll give you anything, anything you want. I won’t tell anyone. I swear.”

  “I would love to let you go,” he said and he sounded sincere. “Honestly, I would. But whether you get to leave or not, is entirely up to you. It’s not my decision. You just have to do one thing.”

  “What?” she choked out, the slightest glimmer of hope stirring inside her chest.

  “You have to pass the test. Just like the boy who tore off my nose. If you pass, your life will be more amazing than you could possibly imagine. You, Angela, could be a Drestianite. And if you are, you’ll stand by his side as the revolution spreads across the world. A higher purpose could be awaiting you, my dear.”

  “Just let me go!” she pleaded. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Angela, Angela, Angela. I’ll explain everything. I will. Trust me. Just as soon as you show me you’re special. That’s what this is all about. That’s the question. Are you special?”

  Special?

  The Faceman was talking crazy now. She wondered how much longer it would be until he took out his gun (the gun she knew he had). She bent her knees for a second to test her legs. They still felt a little rubbery, but they were getting stronger. Being on her feet was helping with the circulation. She wasn’t up for running a 10K, but she felt nimble enough to make a dash for it if she got the chance.

  The Faceman was still talking about something, but she didn’t catch it. He gave her a puzzled look, then used the knife to point at a half-submerged piece of kindling on the floor. It was between them (slightly closer to the Faceman) and a bit off to her left. It looked like it had once been a chair leg. Now it was splintered and decayed with amoeba-shaped patches of varnish still visible through the rot and dark grayish mold. “See that?” he asked.

  She did.

  “What? That?” She pointed at it, just to gauge the strength in her arm. It felt good, almost back to normal. Whatever he’d done to her—drugged her or chloroformed her or whatever—had worn off. Now she needed a plan. What would the heroines in her books do? What would Katniss do? she asked herself. Katniss would find a way out. She wouldn’t let the story end here. Katniss wouldn’t let herself die at the hands of some awful boy from another district. And neither would Angela. She tried to put herself in Katniss’s place—to channel her inner Katniss—and an idea formed in her head. Angela’s advantage on the Faceman was her quickness and agility. If she could distract him for just a second, she should be able to use those skills to get around him (or even dart between his legs) and escape out through the doorway to his back.

  “Yes,” the Faceman answered. “Make it move, and you pass the test—you get to live. Fail and… well, I think you get the idea.”

  “That’s it?” Like a plank walker, she took a cautious, fumbling step forward.

  “Stop!” he shouted.

  She froze, cowering, waiting for the blade to plunge deep into her stomach. She ducked her head. Her hands went to her elbows and cupped them. The seconds ticked by. Sweat rolled down her back. Nothing. No blade. She was still on her feet. Still alive.

  “Not like that, Angela. No. No. No.” He waggled his forefinger back and forth like he was admonishing a child. “Make it move with your mind.” He placed both index fingers on his temples, and Angela thought he looked like a one-horned devil with the long blade poking up above his head. “Without touching it,” he added.

  This was her chance.

  “With my mind?” She nodded at the wood scrap, hoping he would glance at it just long enough to get his attention off of her.

  His eyes flickered over to it.

  She rushed at the doorway in a sudden, explosive burst. She made it three steps and the Faceman’s eyes were still on the wood. Her hand skimmed across the floor as she dipped her shoulder low and propelled herself forward, shooting for the space just beside his right knee. Another step. Her path now clear, the doorway flooded her vision with golden light, the world beyond the shed’s gloom drawing near. Another step. The light grew larger, beckoning to her, the promise of freedom just a few yards away.

  The light blinked out and she rammed into something hard, something as dense and immovable as a wall. She stutter-stepped backward, stunned. The wall was wearing a dark T-shirt with a red Harley Davidson insignia and faded camo pants tucked into black combat boots. With a deft lateral movement, the Faceman had planted himself between her and the exit. The little sidestep was quick and perfectly timed, as if they were dance partners moving in choreographed harmony. She shook the stars from her eyes and craned her neck to look up at his face.

  The Faceman’s eyes locked on hers and his lips peeled back from his wolf teeth in an indulgent, knowing smile. His horn had changed. It was still long and silver, but now it looked dull and flat at the tip. No, not a horn she realized, but a gun that he held next to his face, the barrel pointed at the ceiling.

  “Angela, do I strike you as an amateur?” He tilted his head at the weapon. “This is a forty-four magnum. Do you have any idea what one bullet from this will do to your face?” She knew. A kid at school had shown her a picture on the Internet of one of the Faceman’s victims. She’d slapped the kid. Then she threw up on his shoes.

  She screamed as she tried to distance herself from him but in just a few steps, she was right back where she’d started, right up against the wall.

  “In Louisiana, no one can hear you scream.” He grinned his livid grin for a moment as though he was enjoying some private joke, then it dimmed. “That’s not going to help. Didn’t we go over this?”

  As if on cue, a train’s whistle sounded in the distance and the ground began to jitter beneath her feet.

  “The test, Angela. The test! Let’s resume, shall we? Show me what you’ve got.”

  She stared at him, beaten, confused and scared. She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t move things with her mind. There was no way out. She was trapped.

  “Angela!” he bellowed, turning her name into a threat.

  “I don’t… I don’t understand.” She looked at the chair leg. “I don’t und—”

  “It’s simple. Move it with your mind. I don’t require much. Just an inch—even a centimeter—will do. Just show me that you’re a Sourceror. Then you can leave. We’ll leave together. I’ll buy you lunch. You like quesadillas? I’m in the mood for Mexican. Now do it.”

  Angela just stood there looking from the Faceman to the piece of wood and back again, trying to make sense out of the lunacy spewing from his twisted mouth.

  He brought the barrel down slowly, leveling it at her forehead. “Do it!”

  There was a heavy silence for a moment, then she screamed up at his face: “I can’t move it with my mind! You know I can’t! It’s impossible.” For the first time since Angela had discovered herself in the shed, her voice projected tenacity and streng
th. She sounded confident—believable. It was the voice she used when she’d had enough, when even her dad knew not to push her. But when she saw the Faceman’s expression her heart plummeted. She’d made a mistake and she realized it immediately. She was trying to convince him of something that if true, meant death. His frightening face had turned even darker. The intact part of his upper lip curled back over his teeth. Then he frowned deeply, and an indescribable, glacial coldness passed over his eyes.

  Angela had lived her life believing that bad things only happen to other people. She knew she would die—eventually—but not until she was 100, with kids and grandkids and great grandkids surrounding her in her warm loving bed. If she was on a plane that crashed—she would survive. If her ship sank at sea—she would survive. She would survive anything. But now, a sense of foreboding rose up from her stomach and lodged itself in her throat, and a thought, strange and surreal, gripped her mind: I’m going to die. She wasn’t Katniss. She was just a girl. A girl who lived in the suburbs. A girl who went to school and liked music and books and movies and going to the mall with her friends. She was just an ordinary girl. A girl.

  “—do you want my ugly mug to be the last thing you ever see?” he was asking her. “Your choice. Focus. You can do it.” He lifted an eyebrow and said icily, “Or… can you?”

  “I can’t. Oh God. Oh God.” She stared at his awful face, trembling with fear.

  “Make it move, Angela!”

  “How? I don’t know… how… how can I—?”

  “I’m going to count down from ten. If you haven’t accomplished this task by the time I reach zero, I’m putting a bullet in your head. And I won’t stop with just one. Think of your parents, Angela. Do you want mommy and daddy to see their beloved little girl with her brains spread across the county? No? Then I would encourage you to try a little harder.”

  “Oh God. No. I can’t. I don’t want to die. I—”

  “Ten, nine, eight…”

  “No! No!” she wailed, holding her hands out to him plaintively. “Don’t. Please. Don’t do this to me. Please.”

  “Seven, six, five, four…”

  “Move,” she said weakly, her eyes skirting to the piece of wood. She was bawling. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. “Please move. Please. Move. Move. Move…”

  It didn’t budge.

  “Three, two, one…”

  Angela looked up at him, begging him with her hopeful teenage eyes. His eyes were cold and lifeless—the black soulless pits of a Great White Shark. It was the last thing she ever saw.

  “Zero.”

  * * *

  He squeezed the trigger. The gun went off with a deafening roar, shaking the foundation of the broken shell of a building. Angela’s head jerked back and she collapsed to the dirt floor in a crumpled heap. Blood, bone and hair leaped high into the air and spattered the wall behind her in dripping clots.

  Silence came crashing back.

  Dust and gunsmoke stirred in the patches of sunlight.

  He stepped over to her body and looked down at the mask of terror and confusion staring back at him. The public knew many things about him—but not everything. Most people thought he desecrated his victim’s faces because he either hated himself (and the faces he removed were thus a reflection of his self-loathing) or that he was simply a savage with a bloodlust craving. It was neither of those things. Most serial killers take something from their victims. A token of some kind: jewelry, a lock of hair, a finger, clothing. The Faceman took something else. He found inimitable beauty in death. The beauty of Angela’s face—her shoulder length auburn hair, light brown eyes, soft youthful skin tanned from the long hot summer—was enhanced a million times over because her entire life was etched into every single pore. It was all there—in the wondering eyes, the set of the mouth—an indelible imprint that said everything that I am, and will ever be, is gone. THAT WAS POWER.

  But the Faceman was selfish. He wasn’t going to share that beauty with anyone. It was his. He’d made her this way. He’d created it. No one else would ever see it. So he gazed down on her face for a long time (trains passed by twice), until he’d absorbed every last detail and locked it away in his mind. He closed his eyes for a moment and smiled. The deed was done. The mental picture was taken. He would carry it with him and treasure it, forever. He pointed the gun at Angela’s face and pulled the trigger five times, eradicating it in a shower of blood.

  He ducked out of the oppressive heat of the shed. Crisp afternoon sunshine and a gentle breeze greeted him as he approached a white cargo van parked next to a mountain of old tractor trailer tires. Stopping beside the van, he took a cell phone from his pocket, using the edge of his little finger to touch the screen which fit snugly within his palm. He waited patiently, watching a pair of geese making their way across a hazy blue sky.

  “Yes,” a voice on the other end answered.

  “She failed,” the Faceman said. “She was a Wisp.”

  “I’ll let him know,” the voice replied. “Tucson. A girl. Gabriela Conseco. Call when you arrive.”

  Chapter 4

  Orientation

  Felix was right. Orientation sucked—though he probably couldn’t get Allison to admit to it because she so badly wanted to like it. President Taylor turned out to be a total bore. His speech was tedious and punctuated with canned jokes he’d obviously been using forever. Just when it was becoming awkward and everyone in the enormous auditorium (maybe a third of the seats were in use) grew restless, Taylor murmured something that no one could hear and quickly exited the stage. A few kids clapped, but it sounded apologetic. Felix was slumped down in a theater-style seat next to Allison twenty or so rows back from the stage. He glanced over at her and tried to communicate ‘I told you so’ with his eyes. Allison glared, then covered up her mouth to keep from bursting out in laughter.

  The dean of students, Dr. Borakslovic, stepped up to the microphone next. Thin and reedy to the point of looking brittle, she spoke with such condescending assertiveness it was almost as if she was trying to challenge the freshman class to a fight. Felix didn’t like her. Not at all. Twenty minutes later, Dr. Borakslovic seemed satisfied that she’d sufficiently bored everyone in attendance with the fundamental importance of complying with the school’s code of conduct (which she actually compared at one point to the Constitution) and PC’s zero-tolerance public intoxication policy. She paused for a moment and looked out at her audience with a contented glint in her eyes. Then she cleared her throat primly and broke into a big smile as she introduced the president of the Student Union—Grayson Bentley. Felix was more concerned with picking off a scab on the back of his hand without making it bleed than whatever Borakslovic was talking about, but he did hear her say something about Grayson being the first freshman ever elected president.

  Grayson had already taken the stage and was waving at the crowd and engaging in a little back-and-forth with the kids in the front rows with the polished grace of a seasoned politician. He was tall and blond and dressed like he wanted people to think he worked on Wall Street. Allison elbowed Felix in the arm. “Yum,” she purred.

  “Who?” Felix said, rolling his eyes at her. “Borakslovic? Yeah, she’s hot.”

  Allison smiled at Felix’s dumb joke, but her eyes stayed fixed on the stage.

  As Grayson approached the podium, Dr. Borakslovic’s smile grew even wider, and she shouted excitedly into the microphone: “Grayson Bentley, everybody!” She started clapping (way too enthusiastically; Felix thought she might snap a wrist), then she gave the crowd an exasperated eye-bulging stare when she realized no one was joining in. Just about everyone stared back at her in blank-faced confusion, but a few overly-eager kids eventually returned the applause.

  “Weird,” Felix said to Allison and snickered. “You think they’re dating? Like boyfriend and girlfriend?”

  “You know who he is, don’t you?” Allison’s tone suggested that he should.

  “Grayson Bentley.”

  “Smar
tass,” she replied quietly. “Bentley. His dad’s Dell Bentley. You know—the Governor of California.”

  “No shit!” Felix said, louder than he’d intended.

  The kid sitting in the seat in front of him turned around and scowled darkly at him.

  A sudden rage flashed over Felix. He leaned forward until his face was just inches from the kid’s, who drew back, wide-eyed. “What?” Felix rasped softly. “This look like a church to you? You gotta problem?” The kid’s head snapped back around in a hurry and he slouched down in his chair like he was trying to hide.

  Shit, Felix thought regretfully, instantly feeling terrible.

  Allison stared at him, her worried eyes traveling over his face. “You all right?”

  He nodded, embarrassed. It wasn’t like him to do something like that.

  “Anyway,” she said in a low voice, “that’s why Grayson’s the first freshman to be president. The administration kisses his ass and lets him run the school. He’s only a sophomore now, so he’s gonna be here for a while, so whatever you do, don’t make enemies with him.”

  Felix shrugged. He wasn’t planning to make enemies with anyone. Then again, the kid he’d growled at probably wouldn’t want to hang out with him.

  Grayson placed his hands on the podium and began speaking into the microphone without even a hint of nervousness. He oozed confidence, and clearly relished the opportunity to speak to such a large and captive audience. He made a few jokes (the quality of the cafeteria food got the brunt), and spoke about community involvement, philanthropy, and the importance of appreciating PC’s academic traditions. Felix caught some of it. But mostly he was beating himself up for snapping at the poor kid in front of him who hadn’t moved a muscle in ten minutes; maybe he figured Felix couldn’t see him if he kept perfectly still.