Cleopatra.
As
I shrugged into my white coat, I rounded the corner to room 57-G, and
she was sitting there, naturally. "Whatcha been up to doctor Will?"
she tease, as she shrugged up the sleeves of her gown, revealing deep
purple bruises and angry pink scars. "No need to stare!" she
teased. "Mary, I don't know why you are here. We house mental
patients and you are completely coherent.."
"Well, I had
always know that I was special. From the time I was six, I could
interpret my visions, but my parents just laughed it off, well hushed
it up was probably more my mother's style".
"Well how did
you know that you had visions?"
"I never thought anything of
it until I was six, like I said, when my mother was pregnant. They
had picked a boy's name and a girl's name, but didn't tell me,
and before she was born, I told my mother that I was going to have a
baby sister named Cynthia". She was a bit taken aback when I
guessed the name, but only when she was born, did she really panic. I
began doing it more often, asking things like 'When is Aunt Gloria
coming?', before she had called to ask. She quickly tried to hush
up my visions, but I tried to stop something happening in the market,
and when I told people that the wall was going to fall down, and then
it did, killing a man that she decided that she couldn't stand the
publicised spectacle, but that she could when it was still private,
so she shipped me off here".
"Don't be offended, but do you
ever wish that you were normal?"
"Yes and no. Mostly No. I
love that I am unique, but I feel that no-one understands me yet if
we were all made the same, we would all be terribly boring" she
smiled "But I feel that everything happens for a reason, even if we
don't know why at the time. I have to have faith in that..."
"I
understand" I didn't want to disappoint her, but I didn't
agree. But she seemed to see right through the fascade.
"No,
you don't, I can tell that you don't believe me"
"All
right, I don't have a lot of faith in that theory, I have lost all
of my family and ended up living alone. Why would I lose my
family?"
"Maybe, I don't know but you will find a new family
and be even happier, or one of the decisions you make would end up
changing the life of another?" This one made me a little hot under
the collar. But she was a psychic. She knew.
"Mary, can you
control your visions?" I asked, caught between keeping up the
facade, and brutal curiosity to protect myself.
"I wish,
otherwise I would have seen my parents putting me in this place..."
she trailed off wistfully.
"How do you know that it didn't
happen for a reason Mary, that maybe there is something in your
future that will make this all worthwhile".
"I hope so, I
really do..."
All my faith in life rested on a knife's edge.
If there wasn't something better out there for her than being
tortured in this place, devoid of all her humanity.
Her eyes then
glassed over. She was having a vision.
"You are going to have a
new employee soon" she said, obviously unimpressed. "You know
what?" she said contemptuously.
"Oh entertain me" I teased.
"I wish that I could tune out all of the boring visions and
hone in on the ones that could change people's lives!"
I
laughed. "Well how do you know that these visions are not life
changing? Maybe this employee has come from nothing and this job
changes their life and revolutionizes the care of people in asylums
everywhere" She rolled her eyes at me "So okay maybe not that
much, but tell me about this new employee"
"He is pale, pretty
average looking with very dark eyes and longish brown hair...." she
trailed off, noticing that she did not hold my attention.
"And
what does he do?"
"Um, well he was wearing a white coat I
think, but ordinary clothes underneath, not a suit. What does that
mean?"
"That my new employee is underdressed." I laughed,
trying to confuse her and to think on my feet.
"When does he
start?"
"Umm... I don't know, I saw him walking through the
door at night time, and it's daytime now, so sometime after
dark?"
"Fabulous. Wonder what he'll he like?"
"Oh,
he's a charmer, well the lady at the front desk rather liked him,
even fluttered her eyelashes..."
"Well, little miss gossip,
what's his name then?"
"James Addison, he told the lady at
the front counter".
"She'll remember that name forever!" I
laughed.
"I'm sorry M-, Well I have to go, my shift has ended
but I will be back before long, Don't get up to too much trouble in
my absence."
"Don't worry, I will" and she poked her
dainty tongue at me.
"See you."
As I walked out of her
door, I let myself go a little. James was here, or rather he was
going to be. Why would he come here? To kill me? If he had wanted to,
he would have done it in the clearing. I had to find some answers. It
was time for a little trip to the clearing, after all he would have
planning to do.
It only took me a few minutes to reach the
clearing, and the other vampires weren't there. It would be too
simple if they were. My unparalleled senses told me that they had
left through the north end. I turned and ran, following the scent
(and I was afraid to say it) of Victoria. Her trail took me far, into
the wilderness. They were camped out in a rough circle, outside the
border. Unfortunately she heard me before the others did.
"Willllll..." she looked excited. Surely not after all, the last
time I had seen her I had broken her heart, had I not? Oh no, the
second last time....
"What brings you back Will? Changed your
mind?" This was worse than her being nice, pretending to be nice,
in a snide, horrible way. I was guessing that James had changed her
in a bad way.
"Why is James following me Victoria?" there was
no reason to mollycoddle her. She wasn't interested. Well not
anymore.
"He isn't following you. Now that's a bit obvious.
He's not here now is he!" she growled at the end, having
difficulty controlling herself.
"Than what the hell is he
doing?" and now I was growling, my muscles twitching, waiting to be
exercised.
"He smelt your little friend alright, the human one.
He smelt her on your clothes and he hasn't smelt anything like her
in his 500 years! He will not stop until he drains her of every drop
of blood. He sees it as evening the score- you tried it on with me,
and now he's trying it on with your little friend, well so to
speak. She won't be your friend anymore once he gets to her."
"How
do I stop him?! I growled.
"You don't Will. In my time with
him, and I met him just after, well you, and he's a tracker, and I
have never seen him fail once, not even close...."
"Well I
have to do something, I can't just let him kill her!"
"You
will die if you stand in between James and a target"
"She is
not a target Victoria!"
"I'm sorry Will, is that you?
"I cannot believe you Victoria! You're not the person that I
thought you were"
"No, I'm not the person that you once
knew. I thought that I was that person, but then I met James, and
well," she shrugged, smiling sadisticly.
She had changed. My
rejection had made her bitter and twisted, and blood thirsty for
revenge, and right now, she had the upper hand.
"Well, I wish
you and James all the best Victoria, you really
deserve each other." I smiled wryly thinking to myself. She was
starting to look an awful lot like Cleopatra and her affair with
Julius Caesar, One good girl turned evil but one hell of an evil man.
Cleopatra was never right after that... but then again, she had
married her brother to start with.
