Shatter Point

Malory had always been drawn to the space between worlds, it was no surprise that she would find love in a boy from one of them. Ace x OC


There are certain places in the world where reality seemed to bend. Where time and space line up in a way that the air touches something that is not what is there and the world turns, ever so slightly. Playgrounds after dark, school buildings during summer break, rooftops at dawn and dusk. The long stretches of empty road where there's nothing but state signs and rest stops and the whole world seems to stretch out forever on the asphalt. Standing on a third story balcony after it rains and watching the mists rise to swallow the cars bellow in a bittersweet shimmer.

These were the kind of places that drew Malory in.

The places where 'Here' and 'There' were almost close enough to touch but everything was just an inch too far to the left or a jump too far up.

Malory liked going places like that. They weren't creepy and there was no sense of rightness of wrongness, but the place that hovered between them. She had never felt, in the one these places, like she did when she was walking alone to her car late at night. Not like she wasn't alone, not like someone else was there.

Sometimes, she thought she saw cracks. Lines in trees, splinters in snow, flickers in the open air. Sometimes she thought she saw past them. Where Here and There almost touched and she caught a glimpse of the There part. A flash of water in the middle of the woods, a flicker of movement where the wind was still. Sometimes she thought she heard people talking. Snatches of conversation.

Thought I saw Cherry and Mike down on third, but it was Cherry and Earl.

-didn't even have to kill the smoothie guy this time.

-a sale at Bask and Barnes! Thirty percent off!

Weigh Anchor! We're due in Alabasta soon!

She heard a lot of things. She never put much stock into them, most were easy to play off as kids nearby or echoes bouncing from a car she couldn't see.

Until the night where that no longer was the case. Until the night where she couldn't exactly deny that she heard it.

It started with the ground shaking. It rumbled, a low, painful groan that trembled under her feet. Malory, who had been carrying her dinner to the living room, promptly fell face first and destroyed her casserole with her boobs. The piano rattled and clattered out a pitiful tune that reminded her of Crocodile Rock.

It didn't stop there. The ground rumbled again some hours later, waking her up at exactly 3:33 AM. Malory didn't appreciate it. She got up, peered out at the frost layered field behind her house and squinted. Something glinted, red and yellow and orange, off in the distance. Wind blew across the tall grass, ripping up the sparkling frost into a cloud of ice that didn't settle for another half and hour.

Softly, so soft she wondered if she was still dreaming, someone whispered in the air.

Even though I've been good for nothing my whole life, even though I have the blood of a demon within me... You guys still loved me! Thank you so much!

Malory had hoped that that was the end of it.

She should have known better. At 5:41 AM, ten minutes after she got up to get ready for work, she looked back out the window, into the darkness, and paused. There was a soft glow that hovered in the air, far off into the field. It was midway, between the back of her house and the garden she kept and the winding County Road 7 that curved behind her.

She wondered if the neighbors, Jake and Sam Madison, could see it down the road. Afraid to look away and have it vanish before she could find out what it was Malory forwent any and all common sense and walked out the back door, eyes never leaving the glow. It stayed there for nearly half a minute before it started to dim, then dropped towards the ground suddenly. Another heart beat and it swayed and disappeared into the tall grass.

Malory didn't think so much as acted, moth to the flame, and ran into the back. The screen door slapped behind her, cold air clawed at her bare arms and the ice pricked her feet painfully, crunching between her toes.

Malory ran.

Grass reached for her ankles, wrapped around her feet and pulled at her long pants. She should have grabbed a jacket.

She was going so fast, so focused on the air in front of her that she actually smashed right into what she was looking for and went tumbling to the ground. She yelped, scrapping her hand on a rock. She whined and looked at the peeled skin, and the blood starting to pool underneath. A glance at the sky showed her pink starting to burn away at the blackness of the new moon night.

She sat up, cradling her hand to her chest and very nearly had a heart attack when she looked over and saw that she had tripped over a body. A body that wasn't moving at all.

A body that was smoking.

"Son of a bitch."

Malory scrambled towards the person, ripping her shirt off and throwing it on top to try and put out the fire. She patted over the person, heart beating hard. She touched his neck, trying to remember how to check for a pulse. Was it by the jaw? Or the shoulder?

"Shit, shit, shit," she hissed. Something beat under her finger tips. She breathed a sigh of relief. Thank god.

Malory pulled her shirt off of him, now literally freezing her tits off, to check the damage. To her surprise he wasn't smoking, nor did he look burnt. There was a massive, circular scar on the middle of the back, erasing whatever had been beneath it. She could see purple lines going to his head and over each side of his ribs.

He was thin, she could see his elbows and his ribs. Carefully, Malory rolled him over onto his back. There was another scar across his front. He had black hair, and a freckles. Cute, but his cheeks were too sharp to be healthy. He wasn't wearing anything except a pair of black shorts.

He looked familiar.

He also didn't look like he was bleeding, or glowing, but he felt wrong. He felt like liminal space itself.

The earth shook again and Malory saw a flicker of something in the air. An ocean, white walls, ice and a meteorite. It was gone before she could blink.

Malory sighed, slid her arm around his middle, and managed to drag the guy up. She got one of his arms around her shoulders and managed to walk them both back to the house, well aware that this was probably the stupidest thing she had ever done.

With her back turned, the air cracked and rippled. Something shiny and gold fell through, unseen.