This is the first and probably only chapter I've written that was published the day after the last one. Thank you all for joining me this far and hopefully this chapter is fun to look at.
"Not you...that parasitic being dormant inside of you. Even in the world of microscopic parasitic creatures...it is inimitable. And is that reason you shall be put in here. Rules: I give you one book a day, you don't get to leave for any reason...if you need to relieve yourself I can open the floor for it. And food is whatever your body needs. You seem a little thin so I am going to make plenty of meaty dishes."
"You have no understanding of what makes living beings life so precious. Perhaps I can talk to you about it."
"You could, but only for ten minutes a day. I have others to attend to."
With that the potato shaped alien flew away from him. Kelsey was left to sit down with his hands pressed against his cheeks.
A long, drawn out sigh escaped his lips as he closed his eyes in deep thought.
A zoo full of alien creatures and furniture so artistic and bright even a dilettante like Kelsey could enjoy looking at them. Right before he fell to sleep he saw how one leg of the thought to be deadbolted bed was out of the hole.
The answer became simple: use his bizarre powers to lift the bed up and hurl it with both hands through the seemingly impenetrable glass wall. And so he tried and he failed to do anything. His powers didn't respond to his need for them.
Kelsey sighed out of exasperation, closing his eyes as it seemed hope was lost. He was in a dreamlike state seeing nothing but the abyss; it looked like cyberspace with everything outlined and blue. And in it he saw a dog...or a fox. It's body looked like a dogs but its face was more astute.
"Excuse me, but...who are you?" was all Kelsey could ask.
The person looked at him like a wistfully stupid person while their face started to look more normal. This was when he could see the person he was staring at was a younger version of himself.
"Oh, you don't know I am? I'm you. Except, I'm from years ago." the other Kelsey replied.
Kelsey didn't need to guess how many years ago this version of him was; they were brought before the school he only spent a year in before moving.
"You're a lot younger than me, aren't you? I bet you're still in school, right?" he asked him.
"Indeed. We are one week before someone put a metallic wrapper in a microwave and destroyed the teachers' lounge...the same day you had a life changing experience."
This completely bewildered Kelsey, almost to the point that he could reminiscence on such an event.
He was looking around the playground like a clock moving its hand to reach the next dial. There was lots of stuff going on he wouldn't be a part in. He remembered yesterday he was walking around with a cape, a teacher grabbed his arm trying to get him to change, and Kelsey judo flipped him.
"How dare you try to disrespect your teacher!" he yelled at him. Kelsey just glared at him, with nothing to say.
Kelsey remembered the teacher getting in trouble for putting his hands on a kid's shoulder, even his parents at the time defended him for what the teacher thought he could do.
He then heard another voice call out, "Mr. Steinman, what are you doing with your student?!"
It was the principal, the former Math teacher who showed Kelsey the inside of a building and-knowing what he knew now as an adult-left without being touched.
The teacher turned and saw the principal, sporting a rather surprised expression on his face. "Principal Hawkins, I can explain!" he managed to exclaim, waving his hands from side to side.
"Just let go of him and go roam around the school. I'll talk to Kelsey's parents about your approach to grab a student instead of talking to them, until then there are other students who need supervision."
Steinman was erratic getting a stern message to take to light. He turned around and ran around the school looking left and right to look even more busy. When he was gone, Kelsey turned to his principal.
"Your not really going to call my parents about this, are you?"
His stern face dissolved into a natural smile. "Of course not; I save that for when the students get into trouble. Anyways, I see your still wearing the cape from the Halloween haunted house tour. Did you enjoy it? I'm sorry it's only a one time gig for you."
Kelsey couldn't help but chuckle at his words, a smile also forming on his face.
The principal walked with Kelsey into the uni-directional school. Kelsey thought he would take him to his old office where they had all their fun in the heretofore, but it was now occupied by a gaunt, tall teacher with cropped brown hair and dark brown eyes.
"Excuse me, but..." Kelsey asked the teacher, "Aren't you Mr. Bradley?"
"I guess you haven't been in my class yet," he said. "That's okay, some kids are a lot slower than others and my class is for the astute. What can I do for you?"
It was comments like that was why Kelsey really didn't like that teacher and was glad his new principal had the oiled tone to get rid of him.
"Well..." Kelsey began, and Bradley was more than happy to hear him out.
"It was nice meeting you, but I should go with Principal Dalton to his office."
"Oh, okay, see you in class...when they think your ready for it."
He sauntered down the hall fiddling with something in his pocket. Kelsey and Dalton watched him walk down the hall until the principal erupted with a laugh.
"That guy has more ego than Albert Einstein! I remember when he lost his bearings all from now knowing how to teach children!"
"Wasn't there someplace you wanted to take me?" Kelsey asked, trying to change the subject of their conversation.
"Huh?" Dalton blinked, before turning his head to Kelsey. He cleared his throat, before replying, "Ah, yes, there was somewhere I wanted to bring you to."
A few minutes later and Kelsey was staring at paper taped to the wall with a few pictures in the pages with very good handwriting.
"What are you working on?" Kelsey asked.
"Just researching some myths I've read about." He replied. "I don't want you to think I'm boring though. Want some chocolate milk?"
"It would destroy my teeth."
"I see...perhaps something healthier that won't hurt them?" Dalton asked.
Kelsey didn't need to open his mouth for him to get exactly that.
He got a plum. To an adult it was a small fruit but to a kid it was like water he could bite through instead of swallowing.
"Now, have I ever told you how far our universe expands to?"
"I do remember talking about that some time ago, so of course." Dalton replied.
"The scientists sent a drone into the sky before they sent man into space for it and for six months it travelled over 100 trillion light years before breaking down...so it could be bigger. That being said, it is utterly pointless, what is out in space will come to us one day."
This surprised Dalton, though he would soon become rather perplexed.
Kelsey remembered going back and forth about what he would do if an alien invasion happened and it all ended with two words: Get out.
Kelsey chided himself for wasting his time sitting her sleeping...
"Wait." He said to himself. "Was I sleeping? What was..."
His right eye started to twitch in a way that irked him.
"Is there something wrong?" Dalton asked.
Kelsey shivered. There he was, his former middle school teacher sitting right across from him in this glass prison. Kelsey had to close his eyes, count to two one hundred times, then open his eyes expecting to no longer see his former teacher...there he still was across from him.
"But-But you were found dead, five years ago when I was in college." Kelsey stammered.
"Excuse me?" was all he could ask.
"You died of pancreatic cancer five years ago! You were my favorite teacher; I visited your funeral even when I had to write a five page thesis."
This time he smirked. "Do I look like someone whose died of cancer?"
Kelsey's jaw dropped, and while he was shocked, this wasn't the first time he ever showed that emotion before.
"Please—Please if your really here or just a figment of my imagination, get me out of here."
He shook his head. "I can't help you get out of here, Kelsey, only you can do that. You can do more than morph your body into a monstrous blood coagulation. You can use ethereal powers...just... feel for it."
His words had prompted Kelsey to close his eyes and take a deep breath, realizing what the man had told him.
'So be it,' he thought to himself.
At first everything felt the same, as usual as a person trapped in a glass cell could be, but after keeping his eyes closed inhaling, exhaling he started to feel a change in his mind.
He could see through the eyes of another being in a different cage, an alien being that resembled a panther but with blue fur, one bad eye, and hook-esque whiskers.
He felt a headache stirring inside his head. When he moved his left arm to ease his head, he noticed that his hand didn't look like a human hand. It had four tiny fingers, no imposable thumbs and it was blue.
' Who am I? Why am I here?' Kelsey thought to himself while examining the surroundings.
He could see the who from the reflection of the glass mirror. He saw he was the very same beast that was entrapped in the dome; he was an alien cheetah.
As a psychologist, as someone who lived in a world with metahuman's and weird creatures, he tried to stay calm...before he just charged headfirst into the dome.
He was greeted by a mix of cheers and boos the moment he showed up; this prompted him to wonder if he was a contestant of some sorts, or just some experiment in some random show and tell.
Where were those sounds even coming from? He was trapped in an atrium of aliens stuck in glass houses; everything he was doing felt wrong...wrong...
"This is wrong!"
Kelsey was back to his old self, his face perspirations with sweat, a tear beading down from the inside of his eye, and he felt so dazed he believed what happened was just a dream...only there the alien was headbutting the glass.
His breaths were now shaky as he had tried to pull himself together while closing his eyes.
Suddenly, as he looked at the wall to his prison, sulfur blazing yellow eyes stared at him while a green head phased through the concrete. It was Martian Manhunter.
His teeth began to grit as his eyes were locked on him, fury beginning to show.
"Kelsey, I need you to grab my hand." he said.
Kelsey didn't hesitate to grab the kind aliens' hand. He was tugged very hard from the strong arm of the alien and phased through the wall with him.
Through the wall he was in a different room, a den of some kind of alien life. What that being could be eluded him until he heard the ferocious sparring efforts of someone. Gazing in the same direction as Martian Manhunter, he saw Black Canary sparring off with a four legged, dragon looking alien.
Aside from it being taller than her, he had silver scales all across his body, had no hair on his head, and blue eyes with equally blue whites.
And when Black Canary unleashed her ear splitting metahuman scream it didn't even daze the creature. It spun around before whiplashing into her with its tail.
"Shit!" she muttered under her breath as she rubbed the back of her neck, doing her best to get back up.
The creature jabbed its prong talons at her midriff almost impaling into her belly, but the hero who worked her métier in martial arts easily used her elbows to push herself up and soared over its arm.
Canary then put it into an armbar of sorts, prompting it to growl out of pain.
After wrestling with the alien for nearly a minute, Martian Manhunter attempted to telepathically parley with it.
What do you want?
Freedom. I want to be free...to reunite with my adopted parents