Chaos Theory Cosmic Lovely

by Fletcher, Penelope

  The creeping sensation of being hunted snapped Blue from completely tumbling off the precipice of mindless pleasure. He closed down the psychic energy flowing between him and Kali, and the link dissipated leaving them weak and dizzy.

  Disorientated, Kali jerked her lips from his. Their fingers were entwined, legs tangled, and their hips fused together. She stared down at Blue’s lips, swollen from their kiss. Mesmerized, she lowered her head to reclaim them but froze when the look on Blue’s face penetrated her lustful haze.

  Lips parted, eyes round, he was horror-struck. The lingering sensation of being watched creeping him out. “Get off me.” Blue released Kali’s hands and pushed her off. He shot onto his feet, shaking, and his head swung side to side as he searched the heavens.

  Flat on her back, Kali peered into the sky too. She wasn’t sure for what she searched, but sensed something was hiding. She felt weak, sick, like she had crash-landed after traversing a turbulent atmosphere.

  “We’re leaving.” Blue tugged on his boots. “Hurry,” he urged when he saw she wasn’t moving. He crouched and flung food back into the bag they’d brought.

  Kali rolled onto her butt and put on her boots. Her hands shook, and when she stood she lurched with vertigo. It was hard to concentrate, to think straight. Her body was on fire from that mind-bending kiss.

  She bent to neatly fold the blanket, but Blue snatched it from beneath her hands. He scrunched it into a ball and thrust it at her to carry.

  Something crunched underfoot, and with horror, Kali saw she had stepped on his opticals. “Your–”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  He dragged her up by the elbow, slung the bag over his shoulder, and stormed towards where he had parked his FloBi.

  The date had turned from wonderful to mystifying in so short a time. Where in the universe had he learned to kiss like that? One RecRom encounter her ass. Once again captivated by Blue’s lips, Kali stubbed her toe on a piece of junk. Instead of slowing when she cried out, Blue sped up, and just like that she’d had enough.

  She pulled from his grip, and rooted her feet stubbornly. “What is your deal, Blue?”

  “Please move. Follow if you don’t want me to touch you, but move.”

  “You stay right there and explain yourself.”

  When he didn’t stop, she skipped to him and blocked his path. She pushed out her palm planning to press it into his middle, but he swerved to avoid her touch.

  “Need to get you home,” he insisted.

  Kali walked backwards beside him. His body was tightly controlled as he strolled away as if nothing untoward was happening. The contradiction of his body and his words confused her.

  “Pause for a nanosec. Can you do that? Tell me what’s wrong because I’m not on the same wavelength as you. I … things ... my impression of you is lowering a whole lot up here.” She pointed to her temple. “I admit it got a bit weird.” She giggled manically. “I’m not complaining because I have never felt so alive, but the way you’re reacting is just a whole new level of odd and I–”

  “You’ll be standard if we stop now.”

  Her jaw dropped. “What does that mean?”

  “Kali–”

  “Do not take that placating tone with me, Blue.” Her foot got stuck in a pothole and she tugged at it. “You give me answers. What happened when we kissed? I saw–” Yanking her foot free she lurched, loosing balance.

  As she fell, Blue hooked an arm around her waist and turned her into him, pressing her back into his chest.

  Kali jolted as images of deep space, exploding stars, and effervescent nebulas flashed in her mind. Meteorites slammed into planetary dust rings and left scars. She saw cosmic storms of purple and yellow, flashing across the inky vastness of space. An emerald star collapsed into a black hole. She watched a brilliant emerald supernova shine righter than the galaxies surrounding it before fading into a twinkle. Flashes of a harsh language embossed on metal scrawled across her vision. She understood it was instructions. She saw equations far beyond her capability, and solved them in seconds through Blue’s eyes. She read in this language how the Human brain, her brain, worked, and how to access all areas of it for maximum potential.

  Kali gasped, and came back to herself.

  Blue let go.

  Kali hung suspended, frozen in shock and hunched. Staggering, her legs lost the ability to stand upright and she keeled over.

  Blue grabbed her again and stopped her hitting the floor. There was pressure on her body, his hands held her still. Through the daze, Kali realised he hadn’t actually moved. Blue’s hands were at his side.

  So … what was holding her then?

  A squeal managed to erupt past the blockade in her throat.

  She floated.

  Kali was pushed upright, and lowered until her feet were gently set on the ground. The pressure dissolved. She sank to the prickly grass in a perplexed puddle. Kali wasn’t afraid, but awfully aware what happened was hypothesized by intellectuals, and never irrefutably proven to be possible. The laws of physics could allow for such a phenomenon, but not with humankind’s current evolutionary path.

  Kali’s mind ping-ponged as it tried to reason what had happened, such was the nature of the rational mind.

  Concerned her lips moved, but she had yet to speak, Blue crouched, stroking the side of her face. He let her think, and after silence, Kali finally noticed him. He stared into her eyes, his face a whisper from hers with an intense look of concentration. He made no aggressive move towards her, and Kali concluded she was safe.

  “You saw?” he asked quietly.

  “You’re not normal.” They eyed each other. “You aren’t denying it, Blue.”

  “That would be pointless.”

  She roused from her introspection to face reality. “You’re telekinetic,” she said slowly. “You use psi-gamma brainwaves to send commands to the molecules in other objects and therefore move things with your mind. Oh my stars. You’re the most significant evolutionary find since Homo Habilis and the autonomization of the trapeziometacarpal joint.”

  His lips twitched. “Since the opposable thumb?”

  “You’re incredible.” Kali patted her throat. Despite best efforts to remain calm, her mind wheeled through everything she had experienced, and her excitement rose. Her heart thumped and adrenaline raced through her veins making her shaky. “I don’t think I’m breathing.” Running out of air, she choked the last words and turned a funny colour.

  Blue rubbed her back in circles as she worked on not hyperventilating. He slowly set her upright and smoothed her top over her stomach. Hesitating, his hand moved to rest on her hip then he leaned to press his forehead to hers.

  There was no hysterical screaming. She hadn’t kicked him and run. Kali looped her arms around his neck and gazed at him, a hint of desire still present.

  “You’re still here,” he murmured.

  “Am I expected somewhere?” Kali’s fingers played with the whorls of hair on the nape of his neck.

  They stood like that for a long time, lost to thought. Kali was thinking up questions, and Blue was thinking up ways to avoid answering her questions.

  He wondered why he should avoid her inquisitiveness if she was willing to learn about him. Maybe the idea that he could walk around in her mind wouldn’t scare her if he explained he had firm principles on how he used that ability. That he had never looked inside hers, and never would unless she gave permission. She already knew about how he could watch something then learn it, and that had been before she’d gotten to know him more.

  “Need to get you home,” Blue said. “Something isn’t right.”

  Kali released him instantly suspicious. “What would that be exactly?”

  “Don’t know. It is a knowing deep inside that someone is coming for me. They saw us.” He became increasingly agitated. “Feels like there is a spotlight on me, on us, and that cannot be good.”

  “Spotlight? It’s dark out here.”

  “Now
who is being literal?” Blue thumbed his forehead. “I sense when people turn their attention to me. Their aura changes, and I become sensitive to their thoughts because they are directed at me.”

  “Aura?”

  “Psi-gamma brainwaves people naturally release. I see a luminous glow, a natural radiation. I read it. You called me telekinetic before, which isn’t accurate. Better descriptor is psychokinetic.”

  Kali’s scrunched face smoothed. “You’re talking parapsychology. Stars, you’re cute. I understand. My third eye is no good though, I’ve never seen a glow around anybody.”

  “Practice on your perceptions, reading auras can be learned.”

  “You won’t help me?”

  He hesitated to answer. Again, he looked up, concerned. “Feels like I’m going away.”

  “It feels like you’re going away,” Kali repeated, voice dubious. At his serious expression, she swallowed her pithy reply about his lame attempt to avoid giving her a straight answer. “Why do I get the feeling you’re talking about leaving the continent?” He inclined his head, and his brow furrowed. “The planet?” she corrected, wondering if he had to visit one of the Off-World settlements. He winced. Her voice rose tremulously. “The galaxy?”

  Nobody left the galaxy. It was uncharted space and filled with the Virgin knew what…. Kali’s mouth popped open. “Oh my stars.”

  Blue paced. “I’ve considered what you’re thinking too and it’s not possible. I was born on Earth. I have a mother and a father. I watched the HoloVid of my birth.”

  “I looked at your profile.” Not so much ‘looked’ but ‘studied obsessively’ but Blue didn’t need to know that. “You left home as soon as your adulthood license was issued. Why?”

  “My father left when I was a baby. Mother blamed me and wanted me gone.”

  “You don’t talk to your mother but I get the feeling you want to.”

  “She’s afraid of me.”

  “Why?” He did not answer. Kali softened. “It’s okay Blue, you can tell me.”

  He stopped moving. “She claims she was walking home when a red light took her. That she was strapped down and needles inserted into her skin by white humanoids. She woke on the street with a fractured memory and lost time.” He rubbed his face. “Eight months later she gave birth to me.”

  “Blue, your enhancements….”

  He shot her a droll look and scrubbed a hand through his flaxen hair. “Who would do this to themselves Kali?” Shaking his head, he walked again, muttering under his breath.

  She skipped after him and grabbed his hand. “Let me stay with you.”

  Jerking to a stop, he stared at her incredulously. Bright spots of colour rode high on Kali’s cheeks and her eyes sparkled. She was not afraid. Blue shook off his amazement to focus on the unpleasant feeling demanding he get her home safely.

  “Not tonight. I have a bad feeling staying with me would not be … good for you.” He lengthened his stride. “I’ll come for you tomorrow. Promise.”

  Mollified she’d see him the next day, Kali fell into step beside him. “For someone who likes logic you have a lot of ominous feelings.”

  “Extrasensory perception, beautiful. Not superstition.”

  Kali started at the endearment then beamed when he helped her straddle the FloBi. He went to put the helmet on her head but she took it from him and placed it on her lap.

  She crooked a finger. “Come here.”

  He eyed her lips. “Why?”

  “Please?”

  Blue leaned closer, not curious as to what she wanted because he was beginning to recognise the mischievous heat in her eyes. Denying her wasn’t something he felt strong enough to do on a regular basis, and he’d already refused her once that evening.

  Kali impaired his logic. She was trouble.

  That thought was the last Blue had after he lowered his head to hers and kissed her.

  Kali wound her arms around his neck and clung on, loving his embrace, and the possessive way he held her. His lips were unyielding as they slanted over hers, but his hands achingly gentle as they stroked her.

  The feeling of being watched came back stronger than before. Blue broke away. Kali was heavy-eyed but his senses were on alert. He peered around, opening himself further to discover if someone was actually watching them to cause the wrong feeling crawling over his scalp.

  “We need to take off?” Kali murmured, noting his uneasiness.

  He grunted.

  No sooner had Blue climbed onto the FloBi – Kali’s arms winding around his waist – everything went eerily still and silent. His head whipped up and his eyes were wide with horror.

  He manhandled Kali off the bike, even as he yelled, “Get away–”

  Pebbles bounced as the ground shook and a shadow covered the stars.

  A blast of energy dropped from above and surrounded them in dark red light, hot against the skin.

  Shrill tinkling made Kali wince, and the erratic rhythm vibrated her bones. The light shone brighter. She squinted and shielded her face with her hands as she looked up, unable to see past the reddish-purple radiance to the oddity that caused it.

  The stones caught in the light wobbled on the ground, and smaller fragments lifted and floated past their heads.

  Deepening in colour the beam began to burn.

  Scared, Kali lurched to get away, and a dart of pain exploded in the arch of her foot. A discarded piece of broken glass sliced through her boot into her flesh. She cried out, but didn’t fall, couldn’t fall. The light exerted a steady pressure that increased. Slowly, as if being stretched, her hands came out to the side. Her heels left the ground, then the balls of her feet, and finally her toes.

  Resembling the Vitruvian Man, Kali lifted from the ground, suspended a foot in the air. Her body felt compressed, seized in an unremitting clutch. Her hair drifted as if she were underwater. The strands floated and writhed in the ray of light like snakes.

  Blue’s body mirrored hers. His hand inched forward, reaching for her. Whatever it was, he fought it.

  The pressure bit into their flesh and pulled.

  Kali screamed but the sinister tinkling drowned the sound.

  Blue’s face contorted in agony and disintegrated, his skin tearing away until she saw skull. His flesh separated, infinitesimal molecules swirling upward in a lazy coil. His thorax peeled, muscle, ligaments, skeleton exposed until she watched his heart nested between his lungs beat wetly in his open chest.

  She knew terror as she felt her skin divide. Experienced unbearable pain as her body ripped apart.

  Then she was nothing.

  Kali existed again and the junkyard was gone. Senses suppressed, she couldn’t smell, feel, or hear as the blue light pieced her together. A void. Nanoseconds later, she stood whole next to Blue. The solid beam became a pinkish psychedelic strobe that made their skin tingle. The light cut and was replaced by darkness.

  In a blinding, deafening overload, Kali’s senses rushed back. Her legs buckled. She fell face first onto the cold tiles. Retching, she vomited the contents of her stomach. Her body felt odd. Like it had been split apart then reassembled, and with a whimper, she remembered that is exactly what happened. Her nostrils flared and her body roiled at the reek of her sick mixed with that of their new location. It smelt like an underground cave, damp minerals, and stagnant water.

  Instinctively, Kali knew she was high above the earth, not below it.

  Blue’s hands found her. He tugged her into him, protectively hunching his body over hers. “Kali?” He checked her over, touching her face, her neck, her back, making sure she’d been put back together right.

  A circle of white light haloed them and they locked eyes.

  “I’m okay,” she rasped. “I’m alright.”

  Unsteady, Blue cupped her face. His hold tightened and his eyes flashed. “Knew you’d be trouble.”

  Lucid enough to catch that bitter tone, Kali narrowed her eyes and glared at him. “This coming from the alien.”

>   Something cold seized her ankles, and her lower body was yanked from under him.

  Kali shrieked as she was dragged backwards across the floor on her stomach.

  Blue dived and caught her outstretched arms. “Hold onto me.” Yelling the order at her, he clamped his hands down on her wrists.

  She grappled to hold onto him. “Don’t let go.”

  Blue heaved, muscles straining. His body jerked forward when the thing holding onto her pulled harder, trying to separate them, pulling her legs and hips out of the light. Switching tactics, Blue’s eyes narrowed. He bared his teeth in a grimace, focusing on whatever was trying to pull his Kali into the shadows.

  He encountered a vast swelling of consciousness unlike anything he’d ever touched.

  Blue centred himself and channelled the power of his mind into physical action. A faint nimbus gathered, snaked around his form in swirls of translucent radiance. At his command, the psychic energy pulsed, leaping out to punch whatever held onto Kali.

  An effortlessly stronger burst of energy shimmered through the air in retaliation and slammed into his head.

  The blow jarred, cutting through Blue’s mental barriers like a blade of ice. His forehead thumped the floor – knocked out cold.

  Kali held onto Blue’s limp body as long as she could. Tears streamed down her face, and she keened frantically, begging him to wake up. “Don’t let it take me. Blue, please.”

  Her nails dug into his hands, scratching furrows into the flesh and drawing blood.

  What held her breathed heavily, great rasps of breath that blew strands of her hair into her face. She could smell it, dank, like wet rock. Its hold on her was icy, and the fingers wrapped around her ankles boneless and slick.

  Kali thought of tentacles and squealed.

  It tugged impatiently, and Blue’s body slid along the floor with her this time.

  Voices whispered in her mind.

  Kali fought those voices like nothing she had before. She squeezed her eyes shut and refused to listen to their seductive crooning, knowing they meant only to trick her.

  The voices became one voice, and took on a stern, paternal tone.