Mad Girl's Love Song

Disclaimer: I don't own Beyond: Two Souls (the game, dialogue, characters, story arcs, or etc.). I don't own the rights to the poem Mad Girl's Love Song by Sylvia Plath. I don't own Blood Bound by Patricia Briggs (because she is my queen and I love her to death for her magnificent writing). I also don't own any other book, movie, song, poem or character I may have mentioned along the way. I just so happened to use it for non-profitable fun in my spare time.

Chapter 1 – Dropping Dead

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
I lift my lids and all is born again
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red
I think I made you up inside my head

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
I think I made you up inside my head

I fancied you'd returned the way you said
But I grow old and I forget your name
I should have loved a thunderbird instead
At least when spring comes they roar back again

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
I think I made you up inside my head"

I always knew that there was something a bit different about the way I had been made up. It wasn't that I looked any different from the normal twelve year old. It wasn't that I'd managed to do anything extraordinary or noteworthy before I'd turned twelve. Nothing interesting had even happened to tip anyone off that I was different. Besides the myriad of health issues and constant numbness that the doctors had been trying to explain for years, I was normal.

It was just… I'd always felt… off.

When I touched things, it wasn't just the texture or weight I was feeling. When I looked at people, it wasn't just their face and expressions I was seeing. When I read, it wasn't just the words I was taking in. When I felt a breeze on my skin, it wasn't just the soft push of air on me that I felt. When I slept, I didn't feel like I was falling or see myself in a gumdrop land… I didn't dream. When someone was next door, I knew it whether I heard them or not. And sometimes… sometimes I didn't feel as alone as everyone else. Even when my fingers went numb or half of my body fell out of my control… it wasn't just numbness I felt… I felt more than that.

I think that's why I liked Mad Girl's Love Song so much. I first read it in a little poetry book that I got from my school's book fair. I never understood the poem at all but I never really thought that was the point of poetry. You aren't always supposed to understand what the author meant. I think it was the fact that it made no sense, that just the individual phrases made so much sense to me, that the poem spoke to me so much. I connected to each line in my own odd way.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead…

When I was twelve, most of the numbness I'd lived with since birth had been suppressed by medicines I didn't know the names of. On the worst days the numbness was a faint tingling that settled in my fingertips like a stinging. It was something that I was used to and had been explained away by medical explanations and diet supplements. No one really figured that my whole body would suddenly go numb in the middle of a class presentation.

I remember explaining to the class why I'd chosen to study Bill Clinton… something along the lines of there being no books left on cool people to study. I remember the stinging in my fingertips turning into a cold numbness that was traveling up my arms like sticking my arms in cold water. The sensation continued up in the same way it was traveling up my legs.

And then I shut my eyes and the numbness left me cold for only a moment before everything shifted and dropped out from under me. It was like I'd been at the bottom of a swimming pool and suddenly kicked off to surge to the surface. And when I opened my eyes… I didn't open my eyes…

I lift my lids and all is born again…

It wasn't that I was opening my eyes… it was as if I'd never closed them in the first place. I was just there, no explanation needed beyond that I was there, hovering and standing at the same time. I wasn't standing like I was used to, gravity pressing down on me like a weight, but I wasn't flying because I was tethered. I was still me but I was somewhere else… something else…

Even the world had changed in the moment between when I'd closed my eyes and opened them again. Everything had faded into varying shades of grey, the light of the sun creating strange effects on the table tops. It wasn't that I was in the classroom anymore, but that I could feel the classroom around me and didn't care about the shapes. They were just something to notice but no longer had a physical effect on me.

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red…

As I looked around, my friends and classmates were all grey like the room… but yet they still had color, meaningful rather than the neon pink shirts or blue of their jeans. Not even the orange, black and blonde of their various hair colors or the tan and brown of their skin tones seemed to matter anymore. Instead, just outside of them like a light shining from behind them that they were blocking with their bodies, they were various colors. Some were bright blues, dull oranges, dark reds and even a shining purple.

And then they all started freaking out. Some of them were staring as if frozen in place and shocked into silence. Some of the boys were shouting as they got to their feet, some of the girls shrieking as they started yelling for Mrs. McGrath to do something. My friend, Lizzie O'Neil, was sitting in the front crying into her hands. Claire Schmidt came running up to me though she wasn't looking at me at all… she was looking down at my feet.

Had I vomited or something?

I think I made you up inside my head…

I looked down to see what everyone was freaking out about… and I could attest to the fact that there was nothing as horrifying as seeing yourself looking so dead. I could remember the initial confusion of seeing the crumbled heap on the ground, my eyes wide open even though I wasn't seeing out of them. There was nothing in them, just dull eyes that stared.

Oh God.

It was like it wasn't my body that was staring into nothingness, wasn't my body that was lying on the ground below me, wasn't really me that Claire was trying to wake up. It wasn't me. It was like this hadn't happened and I wasn't suspended above my own body, staring down, looking out at my friends and classmates. It wasn't. It couldn't.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead…

"Tessa?!"

"Oh my God!"

"What happened? Is she going to be okay?!"

"Is she dead?"

I lift my lids and all is born again…

"She just dropped to the ground,"

"Claire! Is she okay?!"

"Tessa! Tessa, wake up! Tessa?!"

"Step away from her, Claire. I'm calling an ambulance,"

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red…

"What's happening?!"

"Is she dead?"

I think I made you up inside my head…

Author's Note: I want a piece of the action and so I created my own gifted character to add to the game. I tried to make her as unique/not Mary Sue/real/unobtrusive as possible as I wrote her along with trying to stay true to Jodie, Aiden, and the world of Beyond: Two Souls. However, if you don't think I accomplished that, tell me in a review and I'll figure out how to fix it. BUT! If you come into this not liking the premise and you think OCs are dumb… go the hell away.

Also, I'd like to make it clear that I believe that Aiden grew up with Jodie. This meaning that a baby Aiden was floating around with a baby Jodie, and a toddler Aiden was playing with blocks with toddler Jodie when they were little kids. This also meaning that they both went through puberty (sort of).

AND! I have a Pintrest board for Tessa if you're interested. Just look up the board "Tessa Reid", "Beyond: Two Souls", and "Mad Girl's Love Song" to find the board to get a good look at her.

Hope you enjoy the story and review!