Unbelievable, Chapter Six

Chapter Six: Shocking

Maggie watched me carefully as we ate dinner together, aware that something was troubling me. I was distracted, and kept doing stupid little things, like missing my mouth with my fork because I was miles away in my mind. When I accidentally sliced my finger open on a knife, attempting to peel an orange for dessert, she couldn’t hold her concern in any longer.

‘Let me see that,’ she asked, holding out her hand across the table.

Reluctantly, I placed my paw in hers, knowing that as I did so, the cut would already be healing, disappearing.

She turned my finger to catch the light, frowning slightly.

‘Incredible,’ she whispered, her eyes widening as I snatched back my hand.

We stared at each other, eyes locked. I felt like a trapped animal, staring at a hunter.

‘And what else has healed?’ she enquired. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve been…experimenting at all?’

I sat back in my chair, flattening myself defensively against the high wooden back, trying to merge again. But there was nowhere to hide from those penetrating blue eyes. They saw everything; possibly, even, inside my mind. How else would she know to ask such a question?

‘I’ve tried a few things,’ I muttered, carefully.
‘And you’ve healed that quickly every time?’ she pressed.

I nodded my head.

‘Is it getting faster?’ she leaned forward, leaning her chin on her hands, elbows on the table.

I was taken aback. Was it getting faster? I supposed it must be…I hadn’t noticed. But then, what was there to notice? After the crash, I woke up to find myself unscathed two whole days after the accident. I hadn’t been aware of the time passing; I was genuinely shocked when my mother had gently shown me the newspapers that punctuated the intervening time, the reports of the crash, the dates at the top of the pages.

Two whole days, from injury to recovery. What injuries had I received? My mother hadn’t told me, refused to speak of my ability to heal. As if she was afraid of it; as if she feared that talking about it would make it more real. And today, two severely broken limbs that had healed in minutes. I flexed my ankle and then my wrist. They felt right, as if nothing untoward had occurred…it was getting faster. Much faster.

‘You don’t know, do you?’ Maggie raised her eyebrows and her mouth flattened into a straight, disapproving line.

‘She refused to talk about it.’

‘My daughter…dear Selena. She never could handle the untoward, the unexpected, the other. Then she sighed and grinned. ‘I think it might be time to confess a few family secrets. Are you ready?’

Was I ready for what? I must have looked at her strangely because she laughed again and started to clear the table.

‘Eat your orange; we’ll have a drink and talk.’

I wondered if I would have to do any of the talking. The orange tasted funny, as if it was as reluctant to finish being eaten as I was to finish eating it.

When I had swallowed the last, bitter mouthful, I took my plate into the kitchen, where I discovered Maggie pouring two large Gin and Tonics. The ice hissed as the gin hit it, the lemon fizzing in the tonic water merrily. She was into underage drinking, it seemed.

She turned, holding out a glass. Cut crystal; it must be a special occasion.

‘Here you go, it’ll help.’ And she took a large gulp.

I swallowed a bubbly, bittersweet mouthful. The gin seared down my throat; it must have been at least a triple measure!

‘If you’re starting to heal faster, you won’t be able to get drunk, in case you’re wondering. Have you ever tried?’

I nodded again, sipping slowly this time. ‘Last summer.’ The words almost stuck in my throat.

‘Have another beer,’ David held out a smooth, green bottle. It glistened in the sunlight, wet with condensation. He twisted the cap off and threw it in the hedge.

I raised myself onto one elbow, reaching for the beer, laughing, feeling slightly drunk. My third went down easily. By the fourth, the sun felt brighter, the grass more comfortable, the afternoon easier. We lay side by side, holding hands, kissing occasionally. He poured a little beer on my bare stomach, licking it off, laughing as I wriggled.

‘I’ll be all sticky!’ I protested.

‘No, you won’t – I’ll lick you thoroughly!’ he promised.

The afternoon wore on, and he kept his promise, not keeping strictly to my stomach with his tongue.

Later, others texted, enquiring as to our whereabouts, came round to the deserted field, built a fire, barbecued on disposable trays, toasted marshmallows. By midnight, they were all roaring drunk. The next day, they were all hungover. We sat in the café in town, the girls hiding behind sunglasses, the boys wrapped in hoodies. They sipped at coffee, picked at croissants, while I scoffed a full English and bounced around, laughing, feeling fine.

I took another sip of gin and tonic thinking, darkly, might as well down the bottle.

‘Come, let’s sit on the sofa in the lounge,’ Maggie downed the rest of her drink and quickly poured another.

‘What’s the point of drinking if we can’t get drunk?’ I demanded, as she made her way into the lounge and set about lighting candles to compliment the already glowing log-burning stove.

‘Drinking is a mental activity as much as it is a physical,’ she said softly, as if she were musing out loud. We drink for the mind, and let the body act as it will.’

She had noticed my ‘we’, and I caught hers.

‘Yes, Neona, I heard your pronoun. It’s in the blood you see.’

‘You said something about blood, in relation to Mum,’ I suddenly remembered. ‘Something about blood being thicker than water…’

She chuckled. ‘Blood is thicker than water, and for some, impossible to swallow!’

‘Yeah, that was it.’

‘Your mother always shied away from her inheritance. When she was a child, she was obsessed with being normal, or what she perceived as normal. As you can imagine, back then things were a little different. A single mother in the sixties was seen as different, unusual, other. Some members of society considered us of a lower order, not ‘normal’, you see. We weren’t part of a nice, safe family. We didn’t have a man around. Of course, my chosen profession didn’t help. My potions and lotions were viewed with suspicion.’

‘But where was my grandfather?’ It suddenly struck me that he had never really been mentioned by either my mother or Maggie.

Maggie had frozen. She looked like I had, when I had first arrived. Locked down. Slowly, she started to speak again.

‘Have you ever kissed a boy, Neo? Properly kissed him, more than on the lips?’

I started. What a question, from a grandmother!

‘Yes,’ I ventured, slowly.

She nodded. ‘David?’

The word hung there in the air. The noun that haunted. It screamed at me, but I swallowed a huge gulp of gin and that silenced it. Mental drinking.

‘What happened?’ she leaned forward again, curiosity emblazoned across her face.

‘Not much.’ I kept the answer short. What did she mean? Of course it had turned me on, made me want him, but you couldn’t mention sexual impulses to your relatives, could you?

‘Nothing unusual?’

I thought hard. I suppose I had been a bit rough, sometimes. I had teased him, called him names, affectionately. Then kissed a bit softer the next time, an inner grin enthusing my lips.

‘He thought I was rough, when I didn’t think I was even kissing hard. And…’…something else had come back to me… ‘He used to feel really tired the day after we’d…err…kissed a lot.’

I could feel my face flooding with colour, my heart beating faster.

Maggie giggled. ‘I’ll stop embarrassing you now,’ she promised. And then she proceeded to embarrass me more deeply.

‘Your ability is growing. You’ve always had it, but the older you get, the more it will develop. At full maturity, which you’ll reach at eighteen, you’ll be at your strongest.

‘I will warn you now, that once you reach maturity, you will never be able to have a normal sexual relationship with a human man.’

I nearly swallowed two ice cubes as I spluttered.

‘What?!’ I exclaimed.

‘It’s just not possible,’ she shook her head. ‘We aren’t quite human, you know. We’ve been called witches in the past; we’ve been called freaks. I believe a distant relative makes a fortune in the circuses of Europe. The government has to date detained several of our family for scientific testing. There are many top secret files locked away in some high security facilities…

‘There are those of us who get caught. There are those of us that expose ourselves. There are those of us who hide from what we are and live in denial. And finally, there are those of us that live carefully, fearing the outside world and its prying eyes. I am one of the last kind. Your mother was…’

‘Hiding from what she was, living in denial, bringing up her daughter to think she was some kind of freak to be locked away from the outside world, refusing to discuss the weirdness of what was happening to her?’ I spat bitterly, shoving myself off the sofa and hitting the gin bottle in the kitchen. I was getting the hang of this mental drinking idea.

‘You can’t blame her,’ Maggie cautioned. ‘She was trying to protect you.’

‘From the government?’ I was incredulous. ‘Are you serious? Like some sort of foreign spy?’

‘I know you’re angry, but we each choose our own paths, and we cannot live others’ lives for them,’ she counselled.

‘That’s why she buggered off, isn’t it? That’s why she ran away to Nottingham, the only place she’d heard of where she could disappear in a crowd of other freaks, the Robin Hood wannabes and the drug-dimmed half-life?’ I gulped at the gin. It did its job; my brain felt calmed with every swallow.

‘You’re surprisingly astute,’ Maggie looked a trifle admiring again.

‘What happened to Granddad?’ I demanded. ‘No, wait, don’t tell me; he died, didn’t he? Come to think of it, I bet my father did too. Because we can’t have sex with human men once we reach ‘full maturity’ at eighteen without killing them. Am I right?’

‘Yes and no,’ Maggie giggled. ‘Where’s the gin, why didn’t you bring the bottle back with you?’

I glowered at her.

‘Alright, yes, men cannot survive!’ she sounded quite proud of the fact, as if she herself had taken pleasure in…

Don’t go there: she’s your grandmother! I warned myself.

‘But that’s not what happened to your father or your grandfather,’ she cut across my hastily-formed convictions, bringing me crashing back to the ground.

‘The thing is, Neona,’ she started, gripping her glass with whitened knuckles. ‘They weren’t quite human either.’