Authors: Alexandra Hope
Mar pulled Olivia off of her legs and when the little girl looked up at her, she saw red liquid raining down on her face and her mother's head ripped off. She jumped back and screamed but her mother's frail hand stretched out to her and grabbed her wrist. “You're already dead.”
Olivia jumped up, pushing the covers to the side, her body drenched in sweat. Her chest was heaving up and down and her heart fluttered against it. The sun had sat and only faint light danced on her window as she turned to it. She rubbed her hand against her face, closing her eyes as she indulged in the feeling. She was alive. She hopped off the bed and headed for the shower, grabbing a black blouse and navy green pants from the closet. After wringing her wet hair out and running a few fingers through the tangles, she put a blow dryer to her bangs as usual and let the rest of her hair dry naturally.
When she made it to the bottom step, she saw her mother walking down the hallway with a glass cup in her hand. Her hair was tied in its usual bun, neat and without a single wisp of hair out of place. Even as she stood just a foot away from her daughter, she didn't acknowledge her presence until after she took a sip from her cup. She pulled her lips in, sucking away the red color that stained it then spoke.
“Olivia, you look well rested.”
“I slept pretty well,” she lied.
“Well, would you like to join me on an errand?” asked Mar, slipping one arm into a white coat. “I have to go into town.”
Olivia nodded. “Yes, I'd like that.”
Actually, she wouldn't have liked that. There was nothing she would have liked less than to never see the outside of the colony again. Olivia deemed it a strange world, full odd scents and even odder people but to appease her mother, she couldn't allow herself to refuse.
“I have freshly procured blood in the kitchen if you must feed,” she said as she buttoned the coat. “Natalie and I will be waiting in the car.”
Her mother opened the door and exited quickly, leaving Olivia alone. Dawdling just outside the kitchen, she asked herself if she was really thirsty. A startling moan deep in her gut confirmed her thirst and she walked inside grabbing a blood bag from the refrigerator. She preferred the taste of AB negative but none of the bags had been labeled. Olivia sighed as she closed the door and ripped it open, carefully drinking the blood. As she leaned against the wall, her sneakers making small taps on the floor, she heard the faintest sound of a heartbeat underneath her. It startled her enough that she almost choked on the blood. Her eyes narrowed as she looked down, her mouth still on the opening of the blood bag. It was like her house had come alive, a heart just barely palpitating and slithers of veins coursing beneath her and for a brief moment, she thought she heard a man's whimpers. Olivia shook her head as she thought back on her dream, a pleasant memory tainted and turned into a nightmare.
It had to be that
, she thought as she threw the empty bag in the trash and met the two women at the car.
Natalie flashed a quick smile before slipping into the passenger's seat, her long black waves swinging against her back as they followed her in. Perched against the open back door, Olivia looked back and saw Noah holding tightly to Allison and his green eyes burning, telling her to once again leave this place and this time, never to come back. She held his gaze firmly as if receiving his non-verbal message and then slipped into the car. Little did he know that she was always going to come back to her mother.
The sky was a dusky rose and dark blue as Olivia observed from the back of the quiet car. Miles of trees meshed into a blur of green and brown color against a canvas, flecks of golden and crimson trickling in before her eyes. As they drove further into town, she watched with curious eyes the signs of shops come in close and fade quickly. It was a short ride to their destination as her mother announced they had arrived less than twenty minutes later. Sandwiched between two cars in a full parking lot, Olivia fought to get her door open wide enough for even her tiny body to slip out. For a brief moment her eyes drifted from the building behind her to the scenery around her. In all of her seventeen years, she hadn't seen so much of the outside world as she saw in the past two evenings. From the beach to the Port Culligan Community Recreation Center, it was all new to Olivia and it amazed her as much as it frightened her. Gazing around, she wondered how she was supposed to escape to this foreign world in her friend's half baked scheme. To her, the plan didn't feel fully thought through but Noah was just as stubborn as he was loyal, which said a lot.
“Earth to Olivia, come in Olivia,” Natalie snapped her fingers, chuckling at her own inner comedian, that was anything but hilarious to her son.
Olivia looked into Natalie's bright blue eyes, tiny as her smile grew wider.
“I'm sorry; I was just taking this all in...”
“Amazing, right? Wait till you see what's inside,” Natalie grabbed her shoulders and walked alongside her as they followed behind Mar.
The inside of the building was massive in size and modest in looks, the dark paint of the walls chipped and the floors riddled with scuff marks. Natalie tapped her arm and pointed to the right, Olivia's eyes following her finger tip and widening as she stared at a rock climbing wall then to a glass room beside it, a net suspended in the middle of the court. To her left was another court, the floor of the room covered in patches of colorful mats. The recreation center looked like it had been undergoing some renovations that hadn't made its way to the entrance, which looked filthy and charmless compared to the rooms. It looked like it could be put to great use for the colony and Olivia had no doubts in her mind that her mother had already thought about it and was probably putting the plan in motion at that very moment.
“We will be in the basketball court, it's just down the hall,” her mother said to her.
Olivia nodded as they walked off. She continued to scan the building, awed at the multitude of rooms, lights glowing and shining brightly against the equipment. She had found herself in a hollow room, benches lining the entrance to it and chlorine stinging her nose as she walked in further. She felt a splash underneath her feet, the puddle of water rippling as she stepped out of it and opened a second door, the scent even stronger. The water was still, its blue color reflecting serenely off the light. She had never been in a pool or near one but the scent of it was unmistakable. She took slow steps toward it until she was at the water's edge and peering into but unable to see her reflection. A familiar scent masked the smell of chlorine as she dangled on the edge:, intoxicating as it began to build up in her nose. She recalled the scent of the guy and knew instantly that he was somewhere close. She tried to reel back from the pool but her eye's caught something in the water. Red rose to the top, soiling the water a dark crimson and in the sea of blood before her she saw a hand rise to the surface. Just a hand. As the blood spread across the water, the guy's scent grew stronger. The hand hadn't moved but neither had Olivia as she continued to watch on, paralyzed by her own thoughts. A voice of unsettling calm echoed in her head,
what is a human life worth?
She repeated those words under her breath and shut her eyes. When she opened them, the pool had returned to its normal color. She dumped the images out of her mind, writing them off as a trick of sleep deprivation, but couldn't help but recall the nightmares she had earlier. Still, she thought, a human life was so insignificant that its value—it's worth—could not be measured. She had begun learning that lesson early on.
As she re-entered the halls of the recreation center, she noticed the scent of the boy's blood was practically beckoning her to find it—to drink it and be satiated by it. There was something building up in her, a thirst for blood that as a human, she never completely experienced. She toyed with the thought that she wasn't in fact human anymore, but a hand to her chest reminded her that her heart was still beating and she was still human, at least physically. However, her humanity, the reminder of her mortality and the thing that bound her to other humans and made her feel, was fleeting. She thought that maybe his blood brought something out in her, but it was probably unlikely. Putting a hand over her nose, she rushed to the other side of the building, hoping the scent would fade away. At the end of the first floor of the building, she found a door that read Supply Room—Authorized Users Only, but turned as footsteps came from behind her.
“Hey, I thought that was you. Girl from the beach, right?”
His hair was drenched with water, dark blonde strands sticking to his face, and a stench of chlorine radiating from him. A bead of liquid traced his eyebrows before dripping in his eye, stinging it before he blinked it away and scrunched water out of his hair and onto the floor. He was dressed in blue jeans, darkened where the water soaked them and held his brand new shoes in his hand.
Olivia cleared her throat as she narrowed her eyes. “Yes. Can I help you?”
“Oh, I'm sorry. I'm not stalking you or anything. My names Troy, I saw you when I was in the pool...”
“Why are you here?” a growl slipped out from within her but he didn't notice.
He shrugged his shoulders. “It's a rec center, I can be here whenever I like. And I like to swim.”
“Your swim is over,” said Olivia. “Why haven't you left yet?”
The words had been flowing out of her mouth without so much as a filter, as if they weren't her own. He looked at her, not at all hurt, but taken aback by her acrid tone.
“I'm here for the same reason you're here I guess....for the blood drive.”
Olivia eyes fluttered, astounded. When the words slipped out, they had lost all taste of bitterness. “A b-blood drive?” she stammered. Olivia had rarely ever been rendered to the point of stuttering or stammering, but she was truly stunned by what he had said.
“OK, I guess you had no idea,” said Troy, slipping his damp feet into his shoes.
She remained quiet, thinking over his words. A blood drive. It made sense, when he said it, that her mother would use the recreation center to host a blood drive and allow hundreds of unsuspecting people to give up their blood for a cause they couldn't begin to fathom. She wondered if that's how her mother had been procuring blood all along and then she felt a stinging in her chest, begging her to ask but challenging her mother was one thing Olivia knew never to do. Even a question as innocent as that could be seen as treason in her mother's eyes.
When she didn't answer he spoke up.
“I don't mean to be in your business. I just saw you and wanted to return something you left at the beach,” he pulled out the pocket knife, “Don't know why you would have something like this but I figured I'd hold onto it in case I ran into you again. So here.”
She grumbled out a ‘thank you’ and snatched it from him.
She lingered at the door, debating on whether to go in to get away from the boy. Footsteps were coming down the hallway quickly but luckily for her, Troy waved her a goodbye and walked off, meeting with the owner of the footsteps. She only heard the beginning of their conversation before she slipped away.
“Excuse me, are you here for the blood drive?” asked a girl who was nearly the same age as him, maybe a year older. Her voice was a beam of enthusiasm as she hooked her arm within his. Her skin was fair, strands of pale blond hair tucked behind her ears where several piercings adorned the cartilage in a cascade of silver metal. He could feel the frailty in her arms, her skin stretched over her bones grotesquely. Her lips quirked upward and parted, exposing whites as her blue eyes met his. He furrowed his eyebrows together as he felt a wave of discomfort washing over him. She released her arm and lowered her voice, “Oh, I'm sorry. I just get so excited when hot guys come in.”
Olivia wondered how Felicity had gotten to the recreation center but didn't dwell on the thought as she disappeared into another part of the center. Although Felicity could sense the uneasiness of the boy, she couldn't be at fault since he was in fact attractive. It was just hard for him to take those words, even from his girlfriend.
“Oh, yeah....thanks...” he said and then lightened his tone. “It's the hair.”
Her laughter broke the quiet of the hallway. “I think it's those eyes,” she said. “I feel like I've seen them before.”
No matter how many girls swooned over him, Troy could never get used to the effect he had over them. Of course, he felt more comfortable in his skin than he did two years before and as any eighteen year old guy, he indulged in the stroking of his ego but still it felt odd. At age fifteen, he towered over his father at over six feet and had started to feel the sting of being cast out by his peers, even some who had called him friend just a year before. It was then that he learned how replaceable people were in his life. They would rather join a clique where it was cool to make fun of those who they could easily put down then to have even one true friend. Troy's sudden growth spurt left him lanky and awkward, a target of mockery and a reason to be shunned by everyone and his father, unable to idly sit by and watch, enrolled him in martial arts classes. Even though he excelled and won by his sheer size, it couldn't fill the vacant hole within him.
He had been walking home from school when he saw a girl sitting at the beach. He noticed that she looked more pitiful than him but when she opened her mouth, it was apparent that she held more self awareness than he would ever know. After one chat, she convinced him to care less about what others thought and more about what he thought of himself. It took him several months of learning how to love himself before she would give up her name but by that time Troy had transformed into something much greater than he ever thought he could be. He filled out his lengthy frame, his arms lean and muscular from weight training, free running and surfing.