Vanessa Forsyte: Golden Eye
Chapter 1: The Transition
Vanessa Forsyte sat at her laptop frozen. Her body left numb after being injected by yet another shot of rejection. The neglected manuscript in front of her was nothing short of another reminder that she was a failure.
After several minutes staring into the laptop, Vanessa hopelessly dove her head into the keyboard while gently knocking into it repeatedly. Witnessing Vanessa's crazy antics, her mother, Angela stopped at her bedroom door.
"Hey kiddo! What's busting your head?" Angela said as she laughed hysterically.
"Ha, ha, ha, Mom. Good one." Vanessa replied sarcastically, with her head still mushed into the computer while gesturing a thumbs up.
"That was a good one wasn't it?"
Vanessa finally lifted her head away from her laptop. "I love how you come home from a long day at work just to stand there and laugh at my pain."
"Alright I'm sorry." Angela sat beside Vanessa, holding her arms around her. "So, tell me… What's causing my daughter to go all Hulk on a five hundred-dollar computer?"
Vanessa pulled the laptop closer to them and sighed.
Angela began reading the rejected letter from the publishing editor. Vanessa watched as her mother skimmed the document, feeling as if she was a disappointment. Thinking to herself that the only thing she was good at, was failing at life.
"Oh." It was the only thing could come out of Angela's mouth, but the expression of pity was written all over her face. "Vee, I'm—."
"Sorry that your work didn't get published, you're a talented writer they just fail to see your potential. Don't lose hope…blah…blah blah. I know your routine." Vanessa annoyingly interrupted.
"I am, you are, and please…Please don't lose hope." Angela grabbed her daughter closer, embracing Vanessa in a tight, loving grip.
Vanessa released from her mother's embrace and stood beside the laptop at her desk.
"Mom, don't you notice that we have this kind of conversation a little too much. I'm tired of it, I'm tired of being rejected from left to right, and I'm tired of failing. Maybe you were right the first time I enrolled at Hunter College. I should have never chosen creative writing as my concentration. Being that I y'know—suck at it and all." Vanessa slapped the laptop shut.
"You do NOT SUCK at writing. You're a good writer, and you're creative. And I'm not just saying that because I'm your mother. I've always been honest when it came to your work whether its been good or not. Remember the last line of the first poem you ever written?"
"Love is sweet like lemon and lime. Love is sweet all the time." Vanessa nostalgically recited.
"Yeah, who was the one that told you that lemons and limes weren't sweet?"
"Mom, really?"
"Who?"
Vanessa sighed. "You did."
"That's right. It was a cute line and all, but it was devastatingly inaccurate."
"Ouch Mom! I was only eight."
"The point is that being a mother means that you gotta be everything, including a critic. Maybe your work is missing something that I'm not aware of because I'm not a professional editor. But one thing I am sure of is that you, Vanessa Rose Forsyte, do NOT SUCK." Angela laid her hand on Vanessa's shoulder, while giving her an approving wink.
"Mom, I know you think you're helping but I really don't feel that confident in my writing anymore. Maybe getting coffee for John Jonah Jameson is my calling." Vanessa moved away from her mother.
"Baby, I don't think you should lose hop-."
"It's getting late and I need to be up early tomorrow." Vanessa interjected, followed by a phony yawn.
"Well okay, Good night Vee. We WILL talk about this another time though" Angela replied as she made her way to her room down the hall.
"Okay…Good night, Mom."
But Vanessa didn't want to talk about it again. She didn't want to be reminded of her failings, she was officially on the verge of giving up on her dream.
An hour had gone by and Vanessa was still awake. The heavy dose of rejection came with insomnia as its side effect. Vanessa checked the time on her laptop that displayed 12:45 AM.
"Wow. It's after midnight already? I need to get some sleep. Vanessa grabbed her mug from her desk.
"Maybe a nice cup of chamomile tea will do the trick." She made her way into the kitchen downstairs, grabbed the teapot from the counter, filled it with water, and placed it in on the stove above a medium fire.
"What in the hell is this?" Vanessa heard a man ask from outside.
"I don't know dude. I ain't never see anything like it before." Another guy replied.
"Well I'm not tryna figure out. I'm outta here."
Vanessa could hear both guy's footprints running away frantically. She chuckled.
"What a bunch of punks. It's probably just a rat or something." The men's skepticism didn't faze Vanessa, strange, weird activities was the normalcy of New York City.
Vanessa peeked through the perfectly-clear glass window to see what the hype was about, and that's when she saw it. The fog. It wasn't the normal, high precipitation, gray skies fog. It was more of a thick mist. Whatever it was it intrigued her. Unlike the guys who ran from it, for some strange reason, the mist drew Vanessa closer.
Without understanding why, Vanessa placed her palm on the window glass and watched as the mist returned her gesture through the other side. But to her surprise, the fog forced its way through the window. As it got into the kitchen, the mist surrounded Vanessa. She wanted to escape, but her body was craving its essence.
The mist began to build up and Vanessa couldn't move, she was paralyzed by its enchantment and watched the fog create a whirlwind around her. Every other second it would spin faster, and faster; and Vanessa would get dizzier and dizzier. Now overwhelmed by the mist, Vanessa's throat started closing in, she couldn't breathe. Her heart pounding so profusely that she couldn't hear her own thoughts. She attempted to call out to her mother, but she couldn't form any words.
Suddenly the teapot whistled so loud that it caused Vanessa to jump out of her paralysis. As she was catching her breath, she looked around to find that the fog was gone. She went to turn the stove off but felt too weak to fix a cup a tea, too baffled to even care about drinking it.
"What the hell is going on with me?" Vanessa sat at the kitchen table holding her chest, feeling too weak to walk to her bedroom. Feeling overwhelmingly fatigue, Vanessa spontaneously drifted away in the pinewood chair.
Vanessa could hear her alarm going off, but she couldn't open her eyes, they were burning with soreness and as gooey as gorilla snot. Even with suffering with twenty-two years of allergies, she'd never experienced this kind of pain in her eyes before. Vanessa was rubbing her eyes with her knuckles, but it didn't make them feel any better.
"I can't…find…my phone…need…to…ugh...open…my…eyes." The sensation of pain was so overbearing that Vanessa was tripping over her words.
"What….is…happening….to…me…ugh." The alarm continued to ring, and Vanessa was getting frustrated. The noise only aggravated the pain, creating a misfortune of blended calamities.
"MAKE….IT…. STOP!" Vanessa screamed in agony, while holding her eyes in her hands, rocking back in forth.
Suddenly, the alarm went silent and the burning sensation of her eyes had gone away.
"Wait, huh? What just happened?"
As she was finally able to open her eyes, Vanessa realized that she wasn't in her bed, she wasn't any place she had ever seen before. Where ever she was, she was trapped.
"What the hell? Where am I? Mom are you there?" Angela didn't answer.
"I have to be home. I heard the alarm. Was that sleeping gas that some psychopath spread around the city last night? Did I sleep walk into the supply closet?"
Vanessa attempted to knock at what she thought was the closet door, when her fist went straight through what seemed to be some sort of shell. She then started punching her way through it faster and harder, as she was desperate to escape. When she finally made her way out, Vanessa stepped into her kitchen and examined the object she had just broke out of.
"Is that—was I? In a cocoon?" Vanessa pulled her arms over her head in confusion.
"No. No this can't be. I'm…I'm…I'm losing it. I need to think." She starts pacing back in forth from the kitchen and the dining room.
"I need a shower. Yeah, showers help me think. Steam is always good for the soul."
When Vanessa got to the bathroom, the first thing she thought of doing before getting in the shower was to wipe the goo from her eyes. She took a small wash cloth, soaked it with warm water and gently wiped it across her eyes. Already, she could feel her sanity regaining itself.
"You're good Vee, there's nothing wrong with you. You were just—"
As Vanessa looked into the mirror she had saw that her eyes had changed colors. They were no longer almond brown, they were gold.
"No…no…what is happening to me?" Vanessa tried roughly rubbing her eyes, shutting and opening them repeatedly but nothing changed. Her eyes were completely gold.
Vanessa ran back to her room and picked up her phone. She dialed her mother's number, but Angela didn't pick up. Vanessa decided to leave a voicemail.
"Mom you need to come home. Like, now. Something is wrong with me. It's not about the book stuff or anything like that. It's a real emergen—"
An alarming feeling came across Vanessa, and then a knock was at the apartment door.
"I'm sorry Jehovah's witness, but this really isn't a good time."
"Vanessa Forsyte open up. It's urgent." A man's voice said coming from the front door. But to Vanessa it felt closer.
"Who is that? How does he know my name?" As Vanessa was asking the question to herself, her vision had zoomed in all the way to the front door, through the peep hole. She could see the man who was at her door. A bald, handsome, Caucasian man in a fancy gray suit.
"My name is Phil Coulson. I know your name because your mother gave it to me. I'm here to take you to safety."
"Wait you can hear me?"
Vanessa's vision zoomed back down.
"Uh, yes. Yes, I can hear you." Coulson replied. "Now may I come in?"
Vanessa ran up to the front door, and slightly opened it, leaving it only ajar. She peeped her head through the small opening.
"How do you know my mother?" Vanessa asked skeptically.
"We work together."
Vanessa sizes Coulson up, examining his attire.
"You don't look like a social worker."
Coulson chuckled. "That's because I'm not."
"And my mother isn't one either is she?"
"No, she's not. We're agents of S.H.I.E.L.D."
"So, what do you guys do? Protect and serve Steve Roger's beloved weapon?"
"No. SHIELD stands for Strategic, Intervention, Enforcement, Homeland, and Logistic, Division." Coulson explained to a disinterested Vanessa.
"And…you already knew what it was. You were just being sarcastic."
"Yeah, you're the agency that neutralizes supers after they get out of hand, right?"
"Well that's only half—" Vanessa interrupts. She attempts to force her way through the door until Coulson stops it with his hand.
"Hey." Vanessa yelled.
"Did you really think you could get past me? You're not Jessica Jones you know."
"I've met her once, and I must say that I'm honored that I'm not her."
"Where do you think you're going?"
"I have some questions for the women I call mother."
"Whatever you need to ask her, you can ask me." Coulson reassures her.
"Alright. How did my mother know of my newfound abilities?"
"She woke up to make breakfast and saw the cocoon in the kitchen. She doesn't know how to handle inhuman transitioning, so she sent me."
"To neutralize me?"
"No, to bring you to safety. To protect you. That mist you saw last night was from a terrigen bomb that caused you to go through a process known as Terrigenesis. This formation activated your inhuman abilities, which means that you've had inhuman ancestors somewhere down the line."
"Maybe that's why my real parents didn't want me. They probably knew I was going to grow up to be a freaky failure."
"Hey, you're not a freak. I promise that when you come to SHIELD, they'll welcome you with open arms and you'll meet some other Inhumans who uses their powers for good. Something I'm positive that you are going do with your abilities." Coulson puts out his hand to Vanessa's for a handshake.
"Yeah, speaking of abilities. I'm not entirely sure what I can do—"
As Vanessa touches Coulson's hand to return his handshake, suddenly an image of some sort of boat or ship being attacked is right before her eyes as if it was happening there in front of her. She could hear someone calling out for her help from under some rubble. It was him, it was Coulson. She puts her hand out to pull him out, and then she is back at her apartment building.
Once she got back to the current moment, she gasped for air.
"Are you okay Vanessa? What just happened?" Coulson asks worriedly.
"You—" She takes a break to catch her breath. "You better hope I'm not psychic."