I grew up in a small town in the Pineywoods of East Texas. My mother was quiet and unassuming, my father hardworking, my two older brothers bossy and overprotective. My brothers and I went to a small town school - large enough to not be consolidated, but only just - during the week while my dad worked for a local contractor and my mom took care of the house and us kids. Saturdays were for family, for rest, for play, for helping dad with his special projects around the house, and for catching up on chores and homework. Sundays were for church and 'fellowshipping' (what the grown-ups in the church called the time we all spent stuffing our faces with fried chicken and homemade biscuits on the church lawn, followed by the kids playing tag while the parents sat in the shade talking).
I was ten years old before I found out that I was adopted. On one hand, it didn't really come as much of a shock since I looked nothing like the rest of my family. They were a motley collection of blondes and redheads; my own ebony mop of curls stood out like a beacon in the midst of them. But on the other hand, I guess I was kind of surprised; ten years of hearing and reading stories where adoptive parents were either horrible monsters or came sweeping in after a lifetime of hardship to whisk the hero of the story away to riches beyond imagining doesn't exactly prepare a kid to find out that the very normal, very loving people who raised her aren't her 'real' parents. It didn't take me long to come to terms with the fact, though; after all, it didn't really change anything. My family was my family, regardless of the circumstances of my birth.
I was eighteen before I actually thought too deeply about my being adopted. It started just after I graduated high school, when things that I couldn't explain started happening. The people around me came up with explanations - a massive burst of adrenaline allowed me to race faster than should be humanly possibly to pull one of the neighbor kids out of the path of a delivery truck, for instance - but they weren't the ones experiencing the weirdness. They weren't the ones with the strange rolling itch under their skin every time one of these bizarre occurrences took place. And they weren't the ones who had everyone beginning to look at them like they were some sort of freak.
Not knowing at all what I expected to find, I decided to search for information on my birth parents. I don't think that I believed I'd actually find an explanation for my freakishness. Maybe I was just hoping to find someone who'd had to learn to live with the same weird feelings and abilities. Whatever the reason, I was determined to find out where I had come from.
My search for my biological parents took me away from Texas for the first time in my life. Almost a year after the strange itch had found its way under my skin, a woman from the big Catholic church in Dallas where I'd turned up one summer night came forward - off the record - and pointed me toward Walt Disney World, of all places. At the time, I wasn't too thrilled with the idea of going off into the unknown alone. Later, I would come to be very glad that I had. If I hadn't gone to Orlando, or if I hadn't gone alone, I probably would have been with the people I love the most when the Hunger took me for the first time.
I knew before I ever left the airport that my visit to the Happiest Place on Earth would be nothing short of a nightmare. We landed in the middle of a thunderstorm, the turbulence scaring the bejeezus out of me and the rough landing doing nothing to calm my nerves. Then there was the cab ride to my hotel, also in the pouring rain. That short trip was even more frightening than the flight had been, but I made it to the hotel in one piece. Then I got to argue with the front desk clerk for half an hour about my room reservation; apparently hotel policy stated that anyone under 21 couldn't rent a room there without a parent or guardian, but no one had told my mom that when she'd called to reserve the room. Eventually I convinced the clerk to get my mother on the phone, and Mom won the battle faster than you can say 'Jack Robinson'. She might be as calm and cool and sweet as can be most of the time, but believe me you do not want to piss that woman off. I'm pretty sure she could take on an entire army by herself if they threatened her family - and still have the energy to throw together dinner afterward.
By the time I finally got to my room, I was ready to drop into bed and not move again for at least half a day. But I was starving, too, and I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep with my stomach waging war against me. A quick glance at the room service menu nearly changed my mind -- bread and water there would cost more than the shoes I was wearing -- but then I remembered seeing a few fast food places just down the street. I didn't really want to wander out into the rain, but I didn't want to spend my lifesavings on dinner either. Eating junk out of a vending machine didn't seem like the best plan either. So, thanking my mother for insisting I pack for any eventuality, I fished a compact umbrella out of my suitcase, shoved my wallet in the front pocket of my jeans, and headed for the Golden Arches.
The rain, to my great surprise, had faded from torrential to just more than a steady drizzle. Grinning at my sudden good fortune, I opened the umbrella over my head and headed down the street.
Keep in mind that I was raised in a small rural town in East Texas. I never spent much time in the not-too-distant big cities of Dallas and Houston. I never even spent much time in the nearby smaller cities. Orlando was a new experience for me: a city with towering buildings, public transportation, a population 10 times that of my hometown, the largest theme park in the world...and crime. Violent crime. More than 10 times as much violent crime as in my hometown.
You do the math.
One minute I was walking happily down the side of the street near my hotel, the next I was curled on my side in the mud of an alley as some tall, skinny guy ran off with my wallet. I was scared and shaken, and I hurt. He hadn't pulled a knife or a gun, but he hadn't needed to; I'm kind of tall for a girl, but I'm also rail thin (no matter how much I eat -- my high school girlfriends hated me for that), so the guy could have crushed me with a stray thought. Instead he had jerked me into the alley, slammed me against a brick wall, and then thrown me to the ground. I'd fought him on instinct (definitely not because I thought I could beat him or because I was feeling especially brave), and he'd fought back. After he found my wallet, he'd kicked me a few times to make sure I stayed down, and then he'd run like hell.
I stayed down. I wasn't sure I could get up even if I tried. Broken and bleeding, I curled in on myself, aware more than ever of the itching, writhing sensation that had led me so far away from home to begin with.
Some time later, I felt gentle hands on me and heard a calm, reassuring voice asking if I was all right. What happened next was the last thing I would ever have expected. The itchy feeling changed and grew until it felt like my whole body was on fire. I looked up into the handsome, concerned face of the man who crouched beside me and something inside of me...blossomed. Not like a lotus. Not even like fire. More like a deadly, radiation-laden mushroom cloud.
Feelings that were foreign to me overwhelmed my senses - not only sight and taste and physical sensation, but my mind and spirit as well. Seemingly of its own volition, my hand rose to touch the man's cheek. I caressed his lightly-stubbled jaw and then slid my hand around to cradle the back of his head and pull him forward as I pushed myself up from the ground. We met somewhere in the middle, our lips touched, and then the kiss deepened.
I wish I could say that what happened next was a blur. That I couldn't remember. But some things you just don't forget, no matter how much you might want to. And I remember ever last detail as if it had happened only this morning, as if no time had passed at all.
I know that some people will be disappointed if I don't tell all the sordid details, but disappointed they'll have to be. Just because I can't forget that night doesn't mean I have to dredge it up and relive if for peoples' base amusement. Suffice it to say that the stranger in the alley took my virginity. And I took his life.
There's nothing quite as disconcerting as coming back to yourself after your first actual sex-with-another-person induced earthshaking orgasm to find a corpse lying beside you. Just looking at him, he appeared to be in perfect health - except for the fact that he was dead. Had I waited around for a police investigation, I would likely have found that his death was attributed to an aneurysm or some other vague and easily accepted cause. But I didn't wait around. I dragged my clothes back on and ran like hell.
Later, after I had scrubbed my skin raw in the shower, after I had cried for what felt like hours, and after I had finally, finally stopped shaking, it occurred to me that I should probably have shaken the corpse down, taken the guy's wallet. He wouldn't need cash anymore, after all, and I no longer had any way to buy food. Strangely enough, it was only after I mentally kicked myself for not robbing the dead guy blind that I had presence of mind enough to wish I'd listened to my Mom's warnings and not carried all my cash in one place.
Still freaking out, but also still starving, I dug loose change out of the pockets of my backpack and went in search of the vending machines. As I ate, I told myself that the guy's death hadn't had anything to do with me, and I carefully avoided wondering why my reaction to being beaten half to death had been to have sex with the first guy who came along.
A bag of chips and an overpriced Coke later, I was beginning to feel normal again. Too normal.
Looking down at my arms, I noticed that the bruises and scrapes from earlier were gone. Not faded. Gone. As if they had never happened at all. The ones on my legs were gone, too. I carefully prodded at my back, where the mugger had kicked me as I lay on the ground. No pain. My heart started racing as I peeled off my t-shirt, grabbed a compact from my suitcase, and went to stand in front of the mirror in the bathroom. My back to the big mirror, I angled the compact's mirror where I could see my back reflected in the larger mirror. No bruise. No nothing. Just pale, unmarked skin. I whirled to face the mirror, catching sight of my own fearfully-wide eyes. I looked like I had seen a ghost. Hell, I looked like a ghost myself, my skin even whiter than its usual pallor. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to force myself to calm down. When I opened my eyes again, still breathing deeply, I studied myself in the mirror, trying to see if I looked like someone guilty of seducing and murdering a stranger in a muddy alleyway. What I saw was just an unusually pretty teenaged girl with a black pixie cut framing her pale, heart-shaped face, her eyes just a little too wide (which could, I supposed, be mistaken for innocence). But as normal as the face in the mirror might be, the reflection staring back at me looked...not like a stranger exactly, but not like what I was used to seeing when I brushed my teeth at night. What I was seeing now was me, only better. I had never been that pretty. And I had never had skin that clear.
What the hell?
At that point, I did what any normal, sane person would do. I rationalized.
My perceptions were just skewed because of the shock I'd received. Or maybe I was still in the alley after being mugged, and everything that happened after was just a pain-induced hallucination. Maybe I was dreaming. But probably it was just shock. I should go to bed. Things would look better in the morning.
Yeah, right.