Author: Lisa

Excerpt

She could feel her mother’s mind-presence throbbing quietly, brushing the edges of Kari’s consciousness, yet she did not respond. On the other side of the bodies, the man helped the woman to her feet. She smiled at him and brushed herself off. The other two humans who were not yet dead were offering weak cheers at their success. The one with the wounded leg had fallen to the ground, and his weaponless companion was tying white wads of something around the bleeding wound.

Shift, Kari.

Kari’s attention snapped back to her mother. Her breathing was shallow, evidenced by the very weak rise and fall of her chest, as she commanded again: Shift. Now.

Kari didn’t understand. She turned back to her father, forcing herself to look beyond the reddened snow surrounding him. He would get up soon. It was one hit. He’d taken worse swipes from a bear.
KARI.

Her mother’s voice screamed in her mind, before it cut off suddenly, a syllable half-formed. Kari let out a whimpering sob and retreated into the shadows of the cave. She shifted into her humanoid form and came out on all fours as a tiny, cowering, and very naked girl. The cold air chilled her skin, but her demon blood kept her comfortable. Her wolfish tail was small, barely more than a stub that flicked uneasily; her miniscule ears, too tiny still to see and only a couple of shades darker than her blonde hair, bent backward.

I did it, Mother! Mother?

Kari’s mind was full of buzzing silence, devoid of any thoughts except her own.

From the ground, she lifted her head. Her mother’s eyes remained yellow in death, though blank and lifeless. Kari’s hands shook and her throat burned as something wet invaded her eyes. Tears.

“Dear, are you okay?”

The woman was at Kari’s side, her voice soft. Flinching, Kari pulled away and glared, baring her teeth. The woman looked taken aback, but kept her voice soft.

“Poor thing,” she continued to speak. Her eyes trailed down Kari from head to toe, eyes widening at the sight of her bare body. “You must be freezing! What are you doing out here all alone? What’s your name?”

As she pulled off her overcoat, the men approached. The one with the bitten arm supported the limping one.

 “What is it, Anne?” the man with the hammer spoke, stopping beside the woman. He froze when he saw Kari, who was flinching away from the woman’s coat. She raised her gaze to his face.

He was an older man, his face lined with wrinkles, and his short, russet hair laced with gray. He looked weak, Kari thought blankly. How could he have beaten her father? She glared at the hammer in his hand.

It is because of their cowardly use of weapons, either to outrange or out-brute demons. They have no real strength of their own.

Distracted, she allowed the woman—Anne—to place her coat over her thin shoulders. Warmth enveloped her, and so did a repulsive human smell.

“It’s true, there really was a girl out here?” the man with the hammer muttered to himself. To the woman, he said, “She’s in shock. Come on. We can take her home and see if she recovers from whatever’s happened to her out here.”

“We’d best hurry. We have to drag Billy’s body down with us, too,” the limping man said.

“Yar, I’d hate to leave him up here,” the one supporting him muttered.

You killed them. You killed them. YOU KILLED THEM.

Kari’s angry thoughts were tangible, choking her, but she swallowed them back. She wouldn’t have a chance of surviving a fight with all of them. Her mother had wanted her to change forms—why? Her fingers twitched and she tried to keep her eyes and thoughts away from her parents. Their blood would paint the snow. Kari clenched her trembling fingers into fists.

“Will you come with us?” the woman asked, reaching out for Kari’s hand. Her eyes were soft bark, her face framed by waves of similar colored hair.

How could you do this? Kari wanted to scream. How could you kill my mother?

They thought she was human, one of them—that was the only reason Kari was still alive. Her wolfish ears were so tiny, hidden away in her locks of golden hair, so these idiotic humans did not yet suspect that she was anything other than one of them. Even her tail was too small yet to draw attention.

That was why; her mother had wanted Kari to blend in with them. Her mind screamed, wild and scrambled with panic; how safe could she be with the humans that had killed her parents?
Kari’s anger was quickly fading into a deadened feeling, her stomach empty and fluttering with unease.

Mother and Father are… she couldn’t complete the thought. Her body trembled, and every breath took energy she didn’t have. She wanted to slump into the snow and freeze to death.

“Perhaps we’d better leave her, Anne,” the man with the hammer mumbled, gently caressing the woman’s shoulder. “She’s mad. And I’m surprised she’s not bitten by the frost. No matter how long she’s been out here, she should be dead.”

The woman clicked her tongue angrily. “How dare you! Abandon a child out here to this horrid weather? No! Why else would we have come all the way up here, and Billy have given up his life?”

The man with the hurt arm grinned. “At least we got some good furs for it.”

Kari stiffened beside the woman.

No. No, no, no…

“Ah, don’t say that,” the man with the hammer murmured. “Billy was a good man.”

Anne shot them a glare before turning back to Kari. She reached forward and gently laid her fingers on the back of Kari’s hand. Her skin crawled from the touch and her focus slowly returned.

“Your nails are so long,” the woman murmured.

Yes. Long and strong enough to rend flesh, at least. Kari could slice her throat with them.

Yet her mother ordered her to shift so that they would not kill her. Kari must remain alive, if only for the sake of her mother’s last command. She jerked her hand away from the woman.

“My name…Kari,” she croaked.

The man with the limp made a noise of dissent. Anne ignored him. “Kari is your name? You poor thing. Are you alone?”

Kari gritted her teeth.

“Come on, Anne. It’s getting late.”

“Come, Kari. My name’s Anne. We’ll get you home and fed and warmed up. How does that sound?”

Kari allowed the woman to tighten the coat around her body but bared her teeth again when the woman bent to pick her up. Looking concerned yet determined, the woman instead gestured for her to follow.

Kari’s humanoid feet crunched in the snow, the sludgy frost seeping between her toes. The woman looked back at her intermittently, her face soft with compassion. Kari’s jaw tightened so much it ached.

I will kill them, Mother, she whispered in her mind, though the soundless void was enough to make her breath hitch. I will kill them for you and Father.

Excerpt

There is a vivid boundary that distinguishes the normal from abnormal, and the typical from atypical. If the setup is altered and the circumstances become unusual; often then, the behaviors cease to belong to the category of normal. Fascinatingly, the world of abnormal is less exposed, but once it lays bare in front of the human brain, there is no possible escape to the normal world.

It is mostly believed, that things that are avoided for a longer time soon suffer the fate of becoming rotten and useless. Similarly, the human brain is that vital organ of the body that stays in the normal world only if it is given constant social interaction. It gets upset if not given the optimum condition to thrive in. Once it is obstructed in creating such connections, it goes into a deep recess. Then, after searching to interact with the normal world for a long time, a moment comes when the brain accepts the defeat and then starts cooking up strategies to wrestle with the world that shirked it. The human brain, after a long time’s effort, learns to live on its own and, then, even if the normal world wants to embrace it again, it resists the urge. Rather, it starts living in a different dimension; a dimension that is a miraculous creation of one’s brain; a dimension that cannot be viewed by a normal eye. A dimension that takes refuge in alternatives.

Nevertheless, a human brain is naturally hardwired to interact and develop connections and links with the world in which it lives; these connections are vital for the brain and the heart to develop and maintain feelings for other human beings. To understand such atypical working of the brain, it is imperative to develop a sight that can discover and unveil the unusual. It is because the brain is practically implemented by the eyes. The congruency of the brain and the eyes is key to normal human functioning; the eyes see what the brain wants to see. Likewise, it is very much possible that what the brain instructs the eyes to see is not what a normal brain would normally instruct. Therefore, the perception of the world depends upon the way the brain perceives things.

With the change in perception, the world becomes a different place to live in. Widely, the perception cuts into two halves; the one being the normal perception and the other – the abnormal perception. The owners of each can only see the world that comes along with their insight; understanding the other world is merely a task impossible for each of the clashing views.

A very obvious human psychological notion believes that if a person is impeded on his path to the destination, he resolves to find an alternative path; a path that can make a person feel like he is smoothly going down his way to that destination. Likewise, the human brain, when unable to grow in normal conditions, starts looking for alternate ways and those alternate ways often lead to a different world.

The curtains were drawn tight and not a single ray of light was able to fight its way inside the room. The room was encompassed by darkness with a small fluorescent tube as the only source of light that diffused throughout the whole room. Yet, the sharp light flowing out of the tube was falling directly into the baby’s eyes, making her weep in annoyance. Her small, dark hands and feet were flailing frantically, and her face had gone pulpy red, crying. Some painful minutes slipped past when a lady clad in an all-white suit and black ribbons appeared at the door, looking horrified as ever.

The wailing was now a harsh echo, and the baby was about to lose her breath. Hurrying along into the room, she gently stroked her small curls and inserted a nipple in her mouth. Seeing her flooding eyes, the maid quickly turned off the switch

It was her fourth birthday and her parents had bought her a piano; she was not happy to see it.

The previous year she was gifted a set of children’s books, and she had clearly told her parents to buy her a bicycle the next year. Riding a bicycle was her favorite sport; at least her brain told her so. However, the parents had decided not to heed her request whatsoever. They always told her that she would get sick if she journeyed outside to ride. She was astonished to see other children playing outside, all immune to sickness.

She had cried a lot that day, but her tears never affected her parents and all she could do was take her piano and go back to her room. Entering, she looked at the closed window. She was in thought for a few minutes, dumping the piano in the box that lay under her bed. The box had many such toys; all of which she hated. It was filled with toys that she never played with.

The sun was beaming beautifully that day. The light, fluffy clouds hung low as if they were about to squeeze through the closed window. She was watching the view with her slender fingers curling around the cold windowsill. It was about mid- noon and the kids were all coming out in groups to play. Every day, she used to see them come out and play for hours upon hours until sweat would melt their sprightly vigor. All the children bore the happiest of smiles and at times, they would look up at her, beckoning her to play with them. All she would do was blink away in utmost surprise and then draw the curtains tight. After going straight to her bed, she would take long breaths as her heart would start somersaulting with a wild desire to go outside and play. Thinking for a minute, she would jump out of the bed to seek permission from her parents. But then something in her heart would stop her from going, and she would come back to her room, crying in little hitched breaths.

She was a young girl now, average as the rest; a broad nose perching on her dark face and eyes that had a river of indifference in them. She would always keep her mouth from smiling; she thought she had no reason to smile. Today, she strolled past the closed window and watched boys and girls laughing as they walked outside. A woman jogging past the busy road watched her smiling, and, as usual, after receiving no smile in response, she moved on. Getting such smiles from the people outside was not anything new to her; at first, she would get apprehensive, but now she felt nothing. She would often give people a heart attack by staring blankly at them. Looking outside the window now failed to bolster any kind of desire to move outside. Probably because she had learned to adjust to her routine.

There was a tall mirror that ran down from the top of the gray wall to the full length. Her mother had bought her this mirror when she turned thirteen. It was her favorite thing in the room. At times, she would stand in front of it and stare for hours, until her sight turned dizzy.

In her home, she had just her mom and dad. Most of the time, Mom would be busy in the kitchen and Dad would always be out for work. This meant there was no one else but her mirror which had promised her utmost companionship. Once, her mirror had suffered from a small crack, and she had cried quite a bit. Her father took it to a shop and fortunately, as the crack was in the golden frame bordering the mirror, it was fixed up. She had never been so happy in her life.

The day her mirror came back to her, she made up her mind to protect it with her life. And she had. She had also taken out the presents she once dumped into the box; there was a piano, a set of books, some flowers, plastic figures, and things like that. Her mind had learned to seek the happiness which she had previously thought could only be achieved by going outside, in the things that were in her room. Now, she did not bother to draw away the curtains and look out the closed window.