Resurrection

by Zed Amadeo

  Resurrection

  A Dark Fantasy Tale

  By

  Zed Amadeo

  Copyright © 2015 by Zed Amadeo

  www.zedamadeo.com

  Descend into a World of Dark Magic...

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  I thought I had been imagining the two floating dots in the distance, zooming across the night sky. Sitting in my car in a deserted parking lot of a local strip mall, during the twilight hours between night and day. Waiting for my sister Kayla to meet up with me there. Finding myself exhausted after attending another unremarkable party hosted by a friend of a friend. It would’ve been the scene from a typical Saturday night had it not been for those dots.

  As they came closer to me, I could see that they moved as if chasing each other. As they drew closer, I realized that they weren’t just dots. They were people. At this range, I could hear the awful names they were calling each other, goading each other on. I thought I was surely dreaming when I saw the broomsticks they were flying on. I blinked, rubbed my eyes, but when I looked back up, they were still zipping across the sky. Now they were flying right over the strip mall, close enough for me to see the youth in their faces. Which meant that they were close enough to see me. I shrank down into my seat, hoping that they wouldn’t notice and that my sister would soon arrive to take me back to my ordinary reality.

  The two men flew dangerously close to where I was parked. I ducked down even lower, hoping to get further out of sight, and pulled the key out of the ignition to turn my car off before they could hear the engine. Before I could slink down to the floor, one of them saw me and pointed me out to his companion. They both looked down at me, frozen in mid-air, as I stared back up in fear and confusion.

  “I think she can see us,” one of them said.

  “She can,” the second one said. “She can see us.” He smiled, and they began banging on the window shield. I screamed, struggled to open my door, and stumbled out onto the concrete. I tried to run away, but my party heels and dress made any motion difficult. I turned in the direction of the parking lot, yelling and screaming for help, but I could not see or hear anyone nearby, not even a car. As I stood looking for refuge, I was knocked flat on my stomach from some force from behind me. The snickering grew closer until it was right above me. Another force involuntarily rolled me over so that I was looking right up at them. The two hovered on either side of me.

  “How can she see us?” the first one asked, talking about me as if I weren’t lying helplessly beneath them.

  “I really don’t know,” the second said. “Guess that invisibility spell wasn’t so long-lasting.”

  “I’m gonna kick Greg’s ass for that next time we see him,” the first said. “What a fucking scam.” He turned toward me.

  “What’s your name?” he asked. I was far too scared to respond.

  “What’s your name?” he repeated.

  “Dina,” I mumbled. My name somehow stumbled out of my mouth through no voluntary action of my own.

  “Well then, Dina,” the first said, “We’re going to have some fun with you tonight.” Both reached for one of my arms and hoisted me up into the air between them as they began to ascend. I begged for them to let me go. But the more I screamed, the more they laughed.

  They finally released me while flying over a patch of grass. Even with the slight padding provided by the foliage, the fall still hurt. As I groaned in pain, they descended, dropping their broomsticks, and walked over to me. I felt that strange force taking control of me again, uncurling my body against my will, leaving me vulnerable before them.

  The first one laughed as he walked toward me, extending his arm as if he were going to touch me, but never did. I suddenly found myself hovering above the ground before he dropped me again. He raised me a little higher each time before letting me crash back down. Then he decided to change the rules of his little game. He waved his hand to and fro, slamming me back and forth onto the trees and the ground. Every part of my body screamed with excruciating pain. While I whimpered after his last drop, he stepped away and told the other one, “Your turn.”

  The second one stepped toward me, muttering words that I couldn’t understand. I felt as if my body had been doused in fire, then freezing, then submerged in boiling water until I thought I was about to drown. When it was all over, I found that I was still lying on that patch of grass, the first one now standing above me again. I hadn’t gone anywhere. And I was still alive.

  “This one’s tough,” the second one said. “The other ones would’ve been dead by now.”

  “You know what that means,” the first one said. “Time for the real fun to begin.” I tried to crawl away while they were talking, but with the pain that I was in and with all of the blood that I had already begun to lose I did not get very far before they caught on. The first one ran up to me and grabbed me by my hair.

  “Don’t try that again,” he said. I didn’t have the energy to even nod my head. He grabbed my arms, forcing me to sprawl out again. I did not try to fight back.

  “I think she deserves a punishment,” the first said. “What do you think, Joe?”

  “I think you’re right,” Joe, the second one, said.

  “I’ll handle this one,” the still nameless first one said.

  I couldn’t struggle against it. I could barely even scream. I was scared and bloody and hurt and I knew what was about to happen, yet I was powerless to stop it. The nameless first wore the vilest grin as he lowered his face down to mine, blocking out the little light and comfort that the moon had given me. He tore the remains of my dress from my body, taking away my final shield. I wanted to scream as his body buried mine and took away all of the light from the sky. I wanted to look back at Joe and plead with him to help me. But I couldn’t. All I could do was let the tears well up in my eyes, waiting for it all to be over. My eyes were so full that I thought I was going to cry, but none of the tears pushed past the threshold onto my cheek. My body was outstretched, defiled, broken like my mind. And they were laughing at me. I suddenly realized that I was able to move my body again. I could get away. But no part of me was eager to move anywhere.

  The two turned around as if they were about to walk away. I was on the verge of crying tears of relief that this nightmare had finally come to an end. But then they came back toward me, holding handfuls of stones.

  “You must know,” Nameless said, “That in our world, there is only one punishment for trespassing: death. Consider this as a lesson to your kind.” I tried to scream, as one stone after another crashed into my naked body, launched by some other force besides their hands, shattering what little part of me remained. I grew numb to the pain.

  Nameless had one final trick up his sleeve. Joe handed him a knife he had pulled from some hidden pocket in his cloak. Nameless pierced the already broken flesh of my stomach with its sharp edge as both he and Joe whispered words in a language that I did not understand. I wanted to lose consciousness, to finally be away from this horrific scene.

  My head slumped to the side as the two of them flew away.

  “It was nice knowing you sweetheart,” Nameless said. Then they disappeared from my view.

  When they were gone, the unbearable pain returned to my body. I stared at the ground, stained with puddles of my own blood, until my eyes filmed over and even the grass seemed to disappear.

  ***

  My world went from comfortably dark to painfully bright. My formerly private patch of grass was flooded by sunlight. I was surrounded by a crowd. Someone was disturbing my sleep, telling me to wake up. Someone else was throwing up in the distance. One person was calling the police. Another was as
king for my name. A stranger laid their coat over my indecency. I appreciated the thought behind the kind deed, but the mere touch of soft fabric on any part of my broken body was enough to send me into another fit of pain that I kept inside. I wanted to return to my land of darkness, where no pain existed. This world had too many sensations.

  After drifting in and out of my world of darkness, I awakened to find myself in a hospital bed. Days later, when they finally released me, I was on so many painkillers that I barely qualified as conscious. My family became another small crowd for me to deal with upon my arrival home until Kayla politely shooed them away.

  My bed was covered with “Get Well!” cards and flowers and candy, none of which I could appreciate in my current mental state. Kayla cleared it off for me and helped me lie down.

  “They found me in the grass,” I told her, the words falling out of my mouth. “They beat me.” Kayla turned toward me, a look of concern growing on her face.

  “I know, Dina,” she said.

  “They were flying,” I said. “On brooms. They moved me with their minds.” Kayla remained silent.

  “They’re never going to find them,” I said. “They’ve escaped forever.” I told her everything then, even the details I had neglected to tell the investigators who had paid me a visit in the hospital. As expected, she tried to hide her disbelief, although it was still obvious to me. I allowed myself the luxury of tears for the first time since the incident. She brought me a smoothie with a straw and left me alone to rest, which was what I really needed. Some time to deal with myself before I handled anything or anyone else.

  My first night back home was one of the worst in terms of my recovery. The body length mirror on the wall across from my bed gave me my first good look at the entirety of my damaged body. My face was swollen and bruised almost beyond recognition. Below the bandages, invisible to the mirror but clear in my mind, was the strange symbol of a triangle within a circle etched in my stomach. One of the many marks that night had left on me. I wanted it to scab over and heal so that I could forget it had ever been there in the first place.

  That night, as the incident that had left me bedridden played within my mind, the tears came in gushes and waves, then small trickles and streams. Even when I had no more tears left to cry, my face never left that painful expression. Sleep reluctantly came to claim me and take me back to that world of darkness, but only after I had fully exhausted my supply of tears.

  ***

  For the first time, my family was talking about me. Up until that night, I had spent the entirety of my life as a secondary character in the lives of everyone around me. Trying much too hard to be what I could not, living a life somewhere between happy and unhappy, always in the shadow of Kayla, star of the show. Kayla, who was destined for greatness and glory. I had wanted some event to bring my days of anonymity to an end. But this was not how I had imagined earning my own story.

  Kayla told our parents the confidential information I had given her, and they managed to gossip it into the family’s collective knowledge. They didn’t think that I would hear them doubting my story and my sanity, thinking that I was too doped up or traumatized to be functional, but I heard every word. I saw a new look of pity and sorrow on their faces during their increasingly rare visitations. Now on top of everything else, my own family thought I was crazy. My mother bluntly suggested that I talk to a professional. Maybe she was right, but after having been betrayed by my sister after telling her the truth, I wasn’t ready to talk to anyone. I retreated into myself, allowing my bed-ridden hours to blur into each other. I was more alone now than ever before.

  My life didn’t become distinguishable again until the night when I thought I saw a bug flit into my room through a crack in the window. I wasn’t able to get a good look until it settled onto my desk, which was when I realized that whatever had just come into my room was not a bug. The tiny blue faceless humanoid that had flown into my bedroom had two tiny wings as dark as the rest of its body. While I stared, it jerked its head toward me.

  I knew I should have been scared or at least confused, but I was more curious than anything. Too many terrible things, both fantastic and mundane, had happened for me to be afraid of this relatively small mystery. I reached toward it with my relatively healed right arm. To my surprise, it flew toward me, settling into my palm. When I lowered my arm to rest beside me, the creature did not move an inch.

  “I’m Dina,” I told it. “Who are you?” Though it didn’t, maybe couldn’t, respond it still seemed eager to listen, so I continued on.

  “Do you know how much it hurts being here?” I asked it. “I want to get away from all of this.” A silent pause fell between us.

  “I don’t know why I’m even talking to you,” I said. “I don’t know what you are, or if you’re real.” It tilted its head as if curious.

  “You’re the first to really listen to me in a long time,” I said. It remained silent.

  “Thank you for listening,” I told it. The creature bowed its head before flitting away through that same crack in the window. I didn’t understand what had just happened, nor did I really try to figure it out. But I did fall into the best sleep that I’d had since the attack.

  Night after night, the creature continued to visit, collecting more pieces of my story. The second night, when I asked it if there was anything it wanted, it pointed to one of the gift boxes of chocolates from a family member on my dresser. I nodded, and the creature flitted over, humorously prying the cover off and heaving a candy into its mouth as if the action were a chore before picking up another one. It drowsily hovered back to my hand. As it opened its mouth to take a bite of chocolate, it revealed a mouth full of tiny, razor-sharp teeth. It always sat down to listen more of the story until I drifted off to sleep.

  I told it of a time when I had simply been Dina Durst, aspiring actress and an average blond. Living a life permanently playing second fiddle to Kayla, smart, beautiful, successful Kayla, who had already managed to land herself multiple acting roles. I had been dumb enough to think that by living with her, I would somehow mooch off her success and make my own acting career and finally be noticed. I had been smart enough to know that something was missing from my life, yet too shallow to figure out what it was and go after it. I was tired of being second-best, second-loved, the accident child that my parents produced when they had already planned and created the bundle of perfection that was Kayla. All I had wanted was something that would finally set me apart.

  Who would have known that it would be this?

  Even after I was no longer bedridden, I still remained trapped in that night. The thought of taking a step beyond my door was too overwhelming. I could feel everyone’s growing frustration with me as they gave me endless suggestions to go outside, talk to someone, get some fresh air. These were the same people who had previously discounted my story. I didn’t want to hear anything else from them.

  When the creature came back to me some time after our first night, I give it a piece of chocolate and told it about my recent irritations. It sat and listened for a while as usual, but then it did something new. As I had been venting, it stopped listening and grabbed my right index finger. I didn’t understand its intentions, but it kept pointing my finger and jerking its head toward the mirror that cast my reflection. Looking at myself full on like that reminded me of everything that I wanted to forget. I could see the attack happening all over again. When the faces of the two men flashed before my eyes, my anger bubbled to a new high. My mind was released from this cruel circle of thought when I heard a crack.

  The mirror had broken.

  ***

  “I need to figure it out,” I told the creature one night. “I need to know why all of this is happening to me.” I could no longer let my fear hold me back. It nodded its head as it took a large bite out of the chocolate in its hands.

  “Can you help me?” I asked. It nodded.

  The creature hovered in the air and made
motions for me to follow it into the hallway and up to the front door. While I stood frozen in the doorway, it continued to make motions for me to follow, though I was not sure if I was able. It grabbed another one of my fingers, pulling me forward. I took one last deep breath before crossing that threshold into the outside world for the first time since the attack, putting all of my trust and safety into the hands of this mysterious creature.

  I shuffled behind the creature as quickly as I could. I didn’t know where it was taking me, but I had to believe that it was to somewhere better. As we approached our destination and I began to form an idea of where it might be taking me, my confidence in the creature began to wane. I almost would have rather returned to my bed.

  When we got back to that small patch of grass, I dropped to my knees. I could not control the flow of memories that played out in third person before me. I could see myself being beaten and violated, cut all over again and my nearly lifeless body losing any spirit that remained. I had become frozen in time again. I cried for my lost self that these two men had taken from me. I spread my limbs out onto the grass around me, wishing that I could find some escape from the place that had taken me as its prisoner. I felt a faint tugging at one of my shoulders, so I opened my eyes and looked around. I was still in the same patch of grass. Only everything had changed.

  I had stumbled into a world that oversaturated my senses. The scene around me resembled a carnival, full of bright tents, loud chatter, and the pervasive smell of unknown food. Many of the people around me looked normal enough at first glance, but a second one tipped me off to the alien nature of this place. Out of everything, their clothes were what hit me the most. Many wore cloaks similar to what Joe and Nameless had worn that night. I didn’t know where I was, but I knew that I didn’t belong. I could be in danger right now, all because I had decided to make the stupid decision of following this unknown creature through the dark. It began pulling at my shoulder again, but I did not respond to it this time. Against my better senses, my mind had become too engrossed in the new world around me. I would have ignored the second tug had it not been accompanied by a voice.