I own nothing, but my OC.

April's POV

I'm playing in the yard of the farmhouse with my mother. She's wearing a cotton dress as blue as our eyes. I know it's soft, because I've hugged her since she's put it on.

The sun is shining behind her and its light makes her hair look like cornsilk. The light breeze sends strands of it out toward me like her arms are reaching out to me. Her laugh shows off all her teeth that Daddy says look like a dentist commercial. Her laughter makes her eyes crinkle up, but I can see they're still shining at me. I feel like the sun is warming up my outsides, and Mama's smile is warming up my insides.

She runs toward me and bends down to pick me up. My arms are short as I reach back up to her, but that's okay because hers are long. She sweeps her hands under my arms to lift me up not seeming to care my clothes are damp from splashing in the creek, which always makes me smell of fish.

A squeal awakes me, taking me away from the farmhouse-yard, that summer, and my mom. Now, I'm back to reality. It's nine years later, and I'm a teenager lying across a couch I don't recognize either by smell or touch.

My eyes snap open. I can now feel and see the worn fabric of the couch I've been sleeping on. The fabric of blanket I'm under tickles my skin. I sit up. All around are walls of grey stones in rectangles of various sizes put together to make cold tunnels. There's a dirty bathroom smell everywhere. Ew.

I turn my head to see the happiest mutant-turtle jumping on a woman sitting up on the opposite couch to mine. He shouts as he collides with her. "Haha is back!"

The turtle who was captured by the Kraang but is now back sits up and smiles. He says in a tired voice "'Okaasan' Mikey, just call her 'Mom' or Okaasan."

The turtle with the red mask gets up and puts the woman in a death grip hug from behind leaning into her back while grinning. "Who cares, Leo?"

The nice turtle with a gap in his front teeth stands and smiles over the scene. "Technically, Mikey did use it correctly Leo, if Mikey was addressing our guests." Then he looks at the woman. His smile falls away as he asks, "Are you hurt Okaasan?"

She turns her own big grin on him. "Nothing too serious, Donatello."

I sit up, blink, and stare at the woman and creatures hugging her. "Haha?"

She looks over at me with a smile. "It's a Japanese word for 'mother.' You use it when talking about your mother to someone else. Okaasan is another way to say "mother' in Japanese. Mikey likes to call me "Haha," every time he thinks he can. He finds it funny, for … obvious reasons.

I frowned. "Oh." That makes sense. I guess. On the other hand, nothing makes sense right now. I'm watching turtles, teenagers, mutants, ninjas hugging a woman … ninja?

I look her over now. Last night, with her mask on, she seemed dark, dangerous, and amazing. Normal-ish looking guys had tried to kidnap me. These guys … ninja, in full ninja get-up had saved me, and then turned out to be turtles … and a rat. She was normal and yet … She was short, not any taller than me it looked like. Her face was heart shaped with her wide forehead, full cheeks, and pointy chin. Her hair was black thick and really messy, but I think it's straight. I would have thought she was a fellow student or maybe a little sister of a classmate if I saw her from behind in a school hall just because she's less curvy than I am. With her grin showing so many white straight teeth and high, loud voice right now, she seems … cute. And last night she was kidnapped by aliens, who also kidnapped my mom nine years ago.

I bow my head and look at something familiar, my hands. I curl in their fingers just to prove I'm still in control of something. They get their mom back, now. I do not.

Life made sense yesterday. I went to softball practice. After practice, I got a burger and fries with friends and the coach since she was the mother of one of those friends. I'd felt a familiar sting of jealousy at seeing them sitting close, talking and smiling together, but had plastered a smile over it because they didn't deserve me being mad at them for it. My dad picked me up from the burger joint … We went out for our nightly walk … Then it all got messed up.

Nothing about the past made sense now either, though. My mom was kidnapped by aliens that looked like brains inside robots that looked like people. They all looked like the same person, but still …

I turn and stare at my dad. He's a balding psychologist. It gets kinda boring listening to him talk about psychology sometimes. He can't actually talk about his patients, but he can talk about psychological principles and wax eloquent. He calls himself the priest of the age of enlightenment. People come to him to confess the darkest secrets of their minds and bring light into them and healing, self-understanding and self-control. He's been kinda clingy. He comes to every father-daughter event and softball game, even if he stands out in the stands among moms and tall, athletic, or beefy dads of other players. I once heard one make fun of him. I got mad and yelled at that parent. I love my dad. I love him more than I love anyone else, or at least … I used to. I feel my face scrunch into a glare and watch my fists clench.

I remember mom. I knew for years she was … gone … missing … I didn't remember how or why … I questioned it a lot, but I never actually thought my dad lied …

I remember waking up in a car and seeing my dad up in the driver's seat. He was staring through the front window with unfocused, unblinking eyes. His mouth was a little open. He didn't move while I studied him. It was like he hadn't noticed me yet. I leaned forward. Then I touched him. He jumped. Then tears glistened his eyes. He pulled me into his lap, held me, and cried. I tried to think of why he'd be doing this.

My last memory before waking up in the car was falling asleep in my bed with my mom singing to me. I'd been rubbing my cheek against the cotton pillow cover. The water from my wet hair soaked through it. The bubblegum scent of my shampoo had tingled the inside of my nose.

As my dad hugged and cried over me in the car, my hair was dry and smelled of dry forest leaves all crinkly, caught in it making tangles it would hurt to comb out. All I could smell besides the leaves were the stale scents of fast food emanating from the car cushions and carpet. I was still in the jammies I wore to bed, though. Mommy was nowhere in sight. I asked dad what happened. Where was mom?

He gave a shuddering sigh I could feel through his chest reverberating through my side. His exhale ruffled my hair. Then he began to explain he had thought everything was fine. Mom was making so much progress, but last night the "monsters" she'd first come to him for help understanding they weren't real had scared her again. She'd run out of the house and away from them. We'd been following. He lost her. He didn't know where she was. He'd been looking for her in the car for a little while. He couldn't find her. Maybe she'd come back, when she was ready …

I'd cried and sobbed into his shirt front then. I hadn't really believed it. I knew Mommy woke up screaming with nightmares sometimes, but then a little while later she was smiling and saying she was fine. She'd run away and left us she'd been so scared.

I made Daddy drive us around. We rolled over the streets of small towns and country roads me staring out the window looking for mom till my stomach rumbled and hurt. Then we went through a drive thru in a town I didn't recognize. I don't even remember what we ate, we ate it so fast while I kept thinking about my mom and where she could be. Then we drove around some more searching for mom and stopped at a hotel even farther away from the farmhouse. The next day Dad said we should go home. I only agreed when he said maybe Mom might be back there waiting for us. So, we did drove back there, but she wasn't. We've just kept waiting there all these years.

Looking back, I realize how carefully Dad worded everything there in the car that morning. Her old "demons" really had come. Mom really had been scared. She really had run away from them. We really had lost her. But Mom didn't outrun us. Dad outran her with me. We left her behind. Her monsters had been real, and they took her from us nine years ago. They've had her for nine years. Dad abandoned her to her monsters nine years ago!

Strangers had saved us both just last night. They'd taken us in. They are things others might see and call monsters. I know better now. And he, my father, whom I remember loving her so much, who still cries on Mom's birthday and sighs over their wedding pictures on their anniversary left her to those … "things" that tried to grab us last night! She's been with them for nearly a decade! What have they done to her?!

I stand up. I have to walk. I'm so angry. Then I freeze.

I look around. Nothing is … familiar. I mean … it looks … more normal than I'd hoped. There's a fridge, stove, and a counter with a toaster on it in a semicircle around a kitchen island over there. There's a TV to my right. But there are no windows. We're underground. It stinks and there's no getting fresh air. And I've never been here before ...

I didn't think a place like this existed yesterday with turnstiles and couches and mutants living in it who can fight like ninja. I don't even really know where I am. On our way here the rat made Dad and I walk blindfolded for what seemed like hours. I only know 'why' I'm here. I'm hiding from aliens. Where did my mostly normal life go? Can I make the lies my dad told me real?

A soft, low voice speaks behind me. "April …" I turn. The tall turtle … mutant … ninja with a gap in his teeth is staring at me. He's frowning and looks down. I see he's tapping the tips of his forefingers together. Then he stops and looks up at me again. "Are you okay?"

I open my mouth, but I can't make anything come out. What can I say? I just stand there, open-mouthed … Everything is too mean, or too unbelievable to pass my lips. What is there to say?

A voice, with "way" more assuredness than I feel, speaks behind the turtle staring at me with brown sad puppy-dog eyes. "Maybe we should examine her in your lab to see if she has any injuries we missed last night."

My gut twists. I trust these people kinda. But I don't really know them. I don't want their eyes … examining me. I cross my arms to rub them and say, "I'm fine."

My dad speaks next. "Maybe you should, Honey …"

I turn and let loose. "Don't tell me what to do!" Then I turn and march toward what I assume is the "lab." It smells like both the metal shop and chemistry labs at my school. I'm not trying to obey my dad. I just have to get away from him.

What do you think?

God bless

ScribeofHeroes