Feel Again

Feel Again

By Fallon Sousa

Published by Fallon Sousa at
Smashwords

Copyright 2013 Fallon
Sousa

It was a cold, bleak,
December night in New York City, Christmas Eve, in fact. Yet,
without any falter in their enthusiasm based on the weather, Maggie
and Arthur Davidson were preparing for the holidays just as they
did each year. Earlier that day, Maggie had gone to the grocery
store and bought everything they had needed. She had picked up the
turkey, the wine, and side dishes of cranberries, green beans, and
her famous honey bread, which she planned to drown in melted
butter, despite warnings from her doctor that she needed to watch
her weight.

Their four-year-old son,
Lionel, who was supposed to be asleep, appeared suddenly just as
Maggie and Arthur were dragging boxes of Christmas decorations up
from the basement.

“Why
aren’t you asleep, Sweetie Pie?” Maggie asked her son. “You know
that tomorrow is Christmas. Santa won’t bring you any presents
unless you go to bed early like a good boy.” Maggie, a pudgy blonde
woman of thirty-two, was still happy about Christmas, and happy to
see her son, but she was just a little bit annoyed that he did not
want to go to bed.

“But, I
don’t wanna,” he said, tears building up in his eyes and snot
running down his little button nose. His mother could sense a
tantrum coming on. She realized that it would not be easy to get
Lionel to go to bed, especially not when he was just so excited
that it would be Christmas the next day.

“Come on, honey, just go
to bed,” she told her son again, sensing for some strange reason
that he needed to sleep and that he would be much safer upstairs.
Just then, her husband, Arthur, entered the room.

“What’s the matter, Mags?”
he asked. “Is our little pookie bear too wound up about the
holidays to go to sleep? Did you tell him that Santa Claus only
gives presents to the good little boys and girls?”

“Yes, I
did
already tell him that,” Maggie said, her patience
slowly running out with every word that she spoke. She just had a
feeling that Lionel belonged upstairs. Then, she got an
idea.

“Well, Lionel,” she began. “What if Mr.
Santa Claus gives you an
extra
present tomorrow for going upstairs to your room
and sleeping in, oh, let’s say...the next ten minutes. How about
that?” Maggie was smirking now, beginning to believe that her idea
for getting her son to bed was working. Perhaps her parenting
skills were finally improving. It had only taken her four years to
get there.

“Okay, Mommy,” the boy said sincerely, his
tears fianlly beginning to dry up from his big blue eyes, and his
cute little pre-Christmas smile returning to his small round face.
“I’ll get to bed in
one
minute, Mommy.”

Good boy, Lionel,” she said,
smiling, just as Lionel ran up the stairs to his room, his tiny
feet pounding much harder than one would expect of a forty-pound
toddler.

Maggie
turned to her husband. “See, Arthur, I think I am
finally
getting better
at this,” she said, laughing.

Arthur laughed right back at
her. “You sure are,” he said, “You sure are.”

“Now,” Maggie began. “Why
don’t we get started on those Christmas decorations?” She asked
him, hinting that there might be a little something more to her
plan.

“That’s a
great idea,” Arthur replied, not quite catching on to his wife’s
full intentions. He got up and walked across the living room to
where a cardboard box was lying by the door to the basement, just
as he had left it earlier. They got out the Christmas tree, and,
together, they picked up each ornament from the box and began
placing them on the rough, broccoli-colored branches.

“Oh,
Arthur, look at this one,” Maggie said, holding up a porcelain
angel. It was entirely white except for the tiny little decals
around the angel’s wings, which consisted of tiny red and green
dots, placed symmetrically along the curve of each delicate little
wing.

“Oh my
God,” I’d forgotten about that one. It was my grandmother’s,
right?” he asked, a puzzled expression forming on his tan face; his
green eyes done unjustice by the furrowing of his eyebrows. Maggie
loved him so much. She hoped that he knew that.

“And, what about this one,
Mags?” he chuckled, waving an ornament shaped like a beer bottle in
front of her face. “I’ve had this since college.”

“Arthur, throw that old
thing away!” Maggie replied teasingly. When she saw her husband’s
face fall, she returned with much lighter remark. “I was just
kidding, honey,” she added. “I know you love that
thing.”

“You know I do.” Arthur
was actually pretty serious when he said this.

“Besides,” Maggie added, smirking flirtatiously, “I have my
own secret
box
of
trinkets from when I was in college.”

“You do not,” he said,
almost as if he weren’t so sure. Just to check, he looked over at
his wife to check her expression and study it for clues as to
whether or not she was hiding anything from him in regards to her
life before they had met. Her face, especially when she burst out
laughing at his stare, told him that she was not. He was right. He
smiled.

“Arthur, honey, can we
just, well, I don’t know, uh, finish this tree so we can find
something better to do?” She winked at him this time.

Finally catching on to her
sentiment, Arthur responded to Maggie’s subtle proposal. “Sounds
great,” he said. “And I mean that when I say it.” She laughed, and
they went back to decorating the Christmas tree. It was going to be
a great holiday. Or so they thought. As Maggie, her brown eyes
glistening in the light of the shiny holiday decorations, placed
the last of her favorite blue snowflake ornaments on their
sweet-smelling pine, her husband, whom their son had taken after
when it came to his stubbornness, reached for the golden star
topper. He was determined to put it on the tree by himself, despite
the fact that he was only five foot six, and the tree was nine feet
tall at the very least.

He climbed a worn-out blue
ladder that had been sitting against the living room wall for this
very purpose.

“Watch out,” Maggie said.
“You could fall and break your leg or something.”

“I’ll be fine,” He
replied. “Don’t you worry about me.” He truly believed that he
could do anything. Well, just about anything, that was. He began to
climb the ladder slowly, just in case, though he would never even
dream of admitting so, his wife was right about the dangers of a
combination of the ladder and himself. Just then, they heard a
subtle knock at the door.

“I wonder
who that is,” Maggie stated curiously, her eyebrows raising ever so
slightly in response to the knock. The Davidsons were not expecting
to receive any visitors until the following day, which, of course,
happened to be Christmas. Maggie, her curiosity beginning to get
the best of her, even if she was normally suspicious of any such
occurence, particularly so late at night, began walking towards the
heavy wooden door, which was painted the same shade of red as the
holly berries on the wreath that hung from it.

“Ah,
darling, don’t bother,” Arthur replied, not feeling very up to
having visitors of any kind, especially after the frank suggestions
his wife had previously made about what the two of them might do
when they were finished decorating their Christmas tree.

“
We’re
done with visitors today,” he contined. “They’re probably just
carolers, and haven’t we heard enough music for today?” he
questioned earnestly.

“We sure have heard
plenty
of music today,” Maggie
added. And, to be quite honest, it was true. That very morning,
before the clock had even struck seven, the couple had enjoyed an
array of holiday tunes that had streamed from their beat-up old
radio as they had cleaned their home and lit cinnamon-scented
candles.

There was another knock at
the door. “Should I get that after all?” Maggie asked, sounding
disappointed at the thought of her night being interrupted by
guests, even if it was often customary for guests to appear at
various homes unannounced at that particular time of the
year.

“Of
course not,” said Arhtur, laughing as he put his arms around
Maggie’s broad waist, and pulled her closer to him, silencing her
with a kiss.

Little did they know it was
to be their last, for just at that moment, the door barged
completely open, and, with what they then saw, their embrace ended.
Maggie, who was not at all the type of person to expect the worst
from any situation, let out a scream as she was stabbed through the
chest with a strange device that more or less resembled a fencing
sword, only made of a surprisingly sharp, clear rubber material
unlike anything known to earth. The last thing she saw, as deep red
blood poured from her wound and onto the recently polished floor,
was something that she would never have dreamed of seeing in her
worst nightmares; a robber.

At the
sound of her scream, Arthur suddenly dropped the gold star on the
ground, shattering it to pieces. He did not even have time to react
to the loss of his beloved wife and soulmate; his Maggie. Nothing
could have ever prepared him for the sight that now presented
itself before his very eyes. He had never imagined in his entire
life that anyone would ever want to rob him. After all, he was not
a rich man, but a simple carpenter; the husband of a
school-teacher.

Pieces of the broken star
were now sticking straight into the leg of the eerie and strange
man who was standing next to Arthur, holding the same weapon an
arm’s length from his head. The man then penetrated deep into
Arthur’s left eyeball with the sword, its unusual chemistry more
powerful than anything known to Earth and to mankind. His life
force drained from the socket, as the strange sword had penetrated
his brain. Blood spilled over the floor and spattered the walls at
high velocity. Both Arthur and Maggie were dead on contact with the
wounds which this foreigner bestowed upon them.

Once they had assuredly
reached their demise, the strange man, who was, in fact, quite
pleased with himself in that he had just killed his targets without
any sort of mercy for their fates as he granted them, took on his
true form, which was even more frightening than the one which he
had presented to the Davidsons as he murdered them in cold blood.
In his flexible, clear armor, his electric white skin could have
blended with the falling snow outside. His orange hair contrasted
with that of his five-year-old daughter, whose wavy mane was a deep
shade of royal purple. However, they, as all others who shared
their genetic material, shared the same bright yellow eyes. Others
from their home bore irises of other hues, many of which were
equivocally eccentric and generally bizarre.

He was from an
extraterrestrial planet called Zebda, where the primate beings were
unable to feel emotions in such a way that the humans of Earth did.
For centuries, the Zebdians had been desperate to acquire the
Earthlings’ ability to perceive emotions, particulaly the human
emotion of love, which they knew to be the most powerful emotion of
all that had ever existed.

“My young daughter,” he
said, turning to the child, “Come with me, and test the antidote
for coldness on this young foreigner.” He and his people had
devised a plan to later extract this antidote; this cure, from the
boy someday, when the time was right.