At home, my family and I were eating lunch together, the food cooked by our mom never failing to satisfy and surprise us with her first-class cooking (although my brother always says she's trying too hard).
Anyway, we were all busy tucking ourselves into her famous home-made beef casserole and meatball spaghetti in the dining room, my brother boasting about how he beat up different bullies in school (including mine) and how he, through his glorious efforts, got a girl to fall in love with him after saving her from one of them. My god, does he ever stop talking? He has been doing this every time we eat lunch after our school hours, and I only can wonder how my stepmom and stepdad can tolerate him. Helen and I, on the other hand, ate quietly beside each other, only talking during the merciful intervals he stops boasting to either catch his breath or eat.
"Hey, Michael, have you made new friends yet?" Helen asked me, grinning. I stopped slurping on the spaghetti for a while, before chewing and swallowing my food nervously. "I…um…" I stammered as I looked at her.
Now, just to tell you, I am NOT a sociable person unlike my sister and brother. I am always seen as a weirdo due to my quiet nature, making me a really favourite target by bullies all around school. In fact, I was nicknamed "Up for grabs" by the bullies due to the fact it was so easy to pick on me, causing me to be in a mixture of fights and quarrels because of their provocations. Actually, it is not only the bullies that ostracize me, everyone in the school does, including the teachers. And because I am not in the same school as my brother and sister though all of our schools are in the same town, I absolutely feel like I am going to a prison every time I go to school.
"Well…" I coughed nervously and forced a smile onto my face. "No such luck." I then sighed despondently.
"Well, Michael, let me tell you this: even without friends, you are still special! God loves you and always cares for you even though no one else does," my dad said, gesturing to me with his fork.
"That's right, son, you are loved by Jesus always! You can't always depend on human love for emotional support," my mom said in response.
"But that's not the point….." I sobbed.
Everyone looked at me with concern.
"My brother and sister have friends while I have absolutely none! You both can say that because you have a lot of friends in your lives! Me, I have none! Yea, sure, I have my brother and sister but then why does God do this to me if he loves me?! If he did, then he would have given me more friends that understand and stand by me!" Tears rolled as rivers down my face as I spoke.
"Mike, you don't understand…." my sister began.
"NO YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND ME!" I then got up and ran from the dining room to my bedroom upstairs.
"Michael, wait!" My parents shouted.
"Leave him be, Mom and Dad," my sister said. "He needs time alone. He's right, we don't truly understand his situation."
As I lay in my room sobbing uncontrollably, I looked up at the wooden crucifix on one of the walls of my room and upon getting up, I screamed, "Why the hell am I in this mess, you stupid God?!" before grabbing it and slamming it onto my desk table repeatedly, causing it to break in half. I looked at the palm of my hand that slammed the crucifix and saw that it was bruised and bleeding, tiny splinters embedded into it. I sighed and said, wiping away my tears, "Well, I gotta get this patched up-"
I was soon interrupted mid-sentence when I suddenly felt a cooling sensation on my hand. It wasn't icy, but it felt cold. Curious, I looked at my palm and saw something weird happening to it.
It was healing, with the bruises and cuts fading away and being replaced with normal skin and the splinters starting to fall off my palm. But what was weirder was that a white dust was produced as my palm was healing, causing a glow to emanate from my hand. I stood with shock, rooted to the ground as I witnessed it happening.
It took me a while to get my bearings back even after my palm had finished healing, and when I looked around, Helen and Xavier stood in the doorway of my bedroom, looking at my palm as well. Instinctively, I knew they saw what had happened to my palm as well. My sister gasped and went to my side, looking at my palm and then at the broken crucifix on my desk table. "Oh my goodness, are you okay?" she exclaimed as she examined my palm while holding it with her hand.
"I'm fine, don't worry, sis!" I smiled sheepishly and petted her head gently. But when I looked at Xavier, he was still in the doorway looking at me, and it wasn't that of concern.
It looked as if he wanted to kill me, as if he hated me. His eyes seemed to pierce my very soul as he looked at me.
Before silently slipping away, he mouthed these words to me that sent a shiver down my spine.
"I'm going to kill you….alien."
Later...
At night, as I lay in my bed, I couldn't help but only think about two events: the healing of my injured hand and Xavier's sudden hatred of me.
Maybe my parents weren't lying to me when they said they found me in a space pod that landed in their backyard, I thought to myself. The thing is, though, are my brother and sister aware of this?
I remember my parents actually telling me the story of how I was adopted and urging me not to tell my brother and sister at anyy point whatsoever about the story, who,mind you,were still toddlers at the time when I arrived. But why though? Why keep it a secret that I wasn't human? Then again, the government could have come for me and deported me to some experiment facility that experimented with aliens or whatever..so...
I also speculated about something: if truly I am not from Earth, then where did I come from then? And why do I look like a human if I am an alien? These, and a flurry of other questions bombarded my mind, preventing me from sleeping.
Suddenly, my thoughts were cut short by a piercing scream from below. I immediately jumped out of my bed and shook with fear, cold sweat breaking out on my face. I then ran out of my bedroom and was met with a horrific sight.
My parents lay dead in a pool of their own blood, their nightgowns stained red as blood spread across the floor of the living room with the living room lights on.
And Xavier was holding a knife dripping with blood with a blood-stained hand against Helen's neck, her face contorted with fear and tears dripping down her face, looking at me pleadingly. He had wrapped his arm around Helen's waist and his face started to grin menacingly.
"Hello, brother...or should I say, alien?" he said as he licked his lips in delight.
I knew the end of my world had come.