Feel Again (3 page)

"I have been waiting many
years for you to come here, Lionel," she said suddenly.

"Who are you?" He asked,
frightened. "How do you know my name? What is yours?"

"My name is Sama-ntha," She
struggled with the end of her name as if it brought piercing flames
to her tongue. "We have met long ago, but you do not
remember."

Lionel did not know what to
say. "Are you high?" He finally supplicated.

"I am not authorized to tell
you how far up my location is, Lionel. "

"Whatever. Just get me out
of here,” Lionel replied, not knowing this strange girl at all, yet
feeling comfortable enough in her presence to go anywhere with her
that she might want to go, even though he knew that could be a very
dangerous thing to do.

The girl simply walked out
of the subway station, beckoning for him to follow. He was
hesitant, but he went anyway, tredging his feet along the cement
lining the streets of New York City . They walked along for what
seemed like forever. As they walked, they remained completely
silent, and Lionel just took in the sights, sounds, and smells
around him.

He could smell the tomato
sauce drifting from his favorite Italian restaurant, and his mouth
began to water so much that he could nearly taste his favorite
pasta dish. He just had to have it that very second, or else he
feared he would starve.

“Hey, Samantha,” he began,
once again hesitant about what to do that would not upset or anger
this strange girl. “Can we go in there? I’m kind of hungry. I
haven’t really eaten all day, actually.”

“Fine,”
the girl replied matter-of-factly. “But, we must not take more than
a specific time which I have previously calculated and alloted for
this purpose.” Man, she was one weird chick.

“And,”
Lionel began. “How long might that be, pray tell?” He was just
curious as to whether or not the girl would be at least somewhat
reasonable in the amount of time that she had supposedly “alloted”
for him to eat based on her “previous calculaltions.”

“I
believe it is the equivalent of ten minutes here,” she said.

“You’ve
got to be fucking kidding me!” He said to her. “How am I supposed
to eat in ten minutes? Huh?”

“Eight
point seventy-three minutes,” she answered him with exact
precision.

“Okay,
then,” he replied coolly, “Let’s get to that.” Lionel was not going
to add any more commentary, lest it destroy his chances of eating
at the restaurant.

They sat at the checkered
table of the restaurant, with Lionel hoping that the waitress would
bring them their food very soon. After a minute or two, his wishes
were granted.

“Here you
go,” the pretty and charming young woman who had red hair and soft
blue eyes, said to Lionel, smiling with a mouth of pearly white
teeth as she placed a platter of spaghetti and meatballs in front
of his seat at the cramped table. He dug in greedily and ate the
majority of his food with much haste. Then, just before he was able
to finish, the girl said, “Let us go now. Immediately,
please.”

Damn,
Lionel thought. She’s one tough cookie if I’ve ever seen
one.
He was not so sure that he understood
this girl’s logic. To top it all off, or, to put the icing on the
cake, as some people would say, the girl dragged him into the
eeriest house that he had ever seen in his life. It had to have
been abandoned for years, but it seemed strangely familiar. The
girl did not speak, only made automated hand gestures. As Lionel
walked through the peeling red door, he tripped and fell over a
knocked-down Christmas tree, which seemed odd for the time of
year.

"Get up," the girl demanded
coldly. "Why are you just lying around like that? Have you gone
insane?" Her voice seemed almost robotic with its blunt, monotonous
sound. Lionel, beginning to fear the girl, obeyed.

"We need to eat now. It is
the proper time."

"Alrighty, then," Lionel
mumbled. He did not even bother to remind her that they had just
eaten roughly an hour prior to entering this strange house. The
girl went into a kitchen, apparently the only functional room in
the house, as the others were so dusty and ridden with rodents that
they were completely unmanageable. Not that the occasional rat did
not scurry along the kitchen floor as well, because it
did.

She got a
cheap frying pan out of the dusty oak cabinet and poured instant
pancake mix from a yellow jug into it, then proceeded to turn on a
hot plate. At least it looked like a hot plate anyway. This thing
worked so fast that she only had to flip the single large pancake
once before it was entirely cooked.

Lionel reluctantly took his
place at the old table, sitting in a chair so rickety that he felt
as though his legs were swinging. Silently, the girl used a knife
to cut the pancake into two half-circles, placing each on a paper
plate. To his surprise--and delight--she filled two styrofoam cups
with chocolate milk. They ate silently, and also rather quickly, as
there was not exactly very much to eat in the first
place.

"Now we must sleep. You must
sleep there," she said, pointing to the floor. She did not even
care that Lionel might be uncomfortable sleeping in such a
place.

"Gee,
thanks," he muttered under his breath. This chick really
was
crazy, that is, if
he had ever seen a crazy chick before. She was even more nuts than
Marcy Hellman and, that said a lot.

"Pardon?"

"Nothing," replied Lionel,
wondering if Samantha had a cat's hearing.

He dramatically threw
himself down onto the floor and pretended to fall asleep instantly,
although he knew it was not likely that he would sleep at all. Yet,
strangely enough, he did. He beagn to dream of many people who were
just as strange as the girl, and they hovered over his bloody body,
holding weapons onminously above him as he screamed in pain. Even
in his slumber, he could feel himself sweating.However, sometime
mid-night, he heard the girl stirring in her own sleep, even from
some distance away, in a small and partially caved-in bedroom,
though it was not too far from the main entrance of the
home

He snuck in and stood over
the bed where she slept, watching her toss and turn aimlessly. She
muttered in a strange language that was unintelligible to him, her
mop of purple hair and its adjoining head thrusting against the
faded blue pillow. With the light of a bedlamp shining on her face,
he could see that she had washed off her makeup. Her skin was so
white that it was somewhat electric, like the color of freshly
fallen snow. All of a sudden, her eyes opened. She was awake. He
gasped, seeing that they were bright yellow and staring right back
at him.

It
seemed like forever that they were staring into each others eyes.
Lionel wondered if the girl was dangerous; if she would kill him.
Those eyes--they were not even remotely human.
She
was not human. He then began to
wonder: Was he? Why did he even think that. Of course Lionel was
human. But one thing was certain. The girl was not, and she could
be dangerous. In that moment, he was afraid for his life. What was
going to happen? And, then, the girl's eyes were shut and she was
asleep once more.

Lionel
crept back to his corner of the living room floor, sleepily
dragging his feet along the faded green carpet. Within seconds, it
seemed, he had fallen back into a deep slumber. Before he knew it,
morning had arrived. He awoke to the smell of another pancake. It
was only the second time and he was already growing tired of them.
Of course, he would not ever say that to the girl. He walked into
the kitchen, but the girl did not notice him. Then, something
caught his eye. On the upper part of her left arm, was a tattoo of
the word
Samakri
.
It then occured to him that that was probably her real name; the
reason why she had stuttered over the one she had given
him.

Seeing that Lionel was
staring at her tattoo, Samakri quickly covered it up with her hand,
pretending as if she were scratching an itch.

"Why do you wear sunglasses
all the time?" Lionel inquired, wondering why she would do such a
thing. It did not make sense to him at all.

"I am
from a place where we are not so accustomed to sunlight."
Gee, that makes even more sense to me, Lionel
thought.

"Where
are
you from, Samakri?" Lionel asked rather inquisitively,
fiddling with a fake diamond stud that he wore on his right
ear.

"Do
not
ever
call me
that!" She said, throwing him a dangerous glare.

"I need to know who you
are,” he replied, beginning to sense that something was terribly
wrong with the girl, who he now knew as Samakri.

"You are much less prepared
for the truth than what you might imagine, Lionel. Trust me now,
and you will thank me later." If anything that Samakri had said or
done before had freaked Lionel out, this was definitely the
topper.

There was quite a long pause
following the conversation. Samakri seemed to be staring out into
the sky through the grimy window of the old kitchen. Lionel looked
down at the red and white checkerboard tablecloth until the squares
began to move and melt into one blob of fuzzy pink nothingness. An
ant was crawling towards his clenched fists. He wished he could
just crawl along like the ant, without a care. Then, he became
angry. The ant did not deserve to be happier than he was; it was
only a stupid little bug. And, so, he crushed it with his fist,
much in the same way that society had crushed his will to live and
succeed.

"Never hurt a creature of
simple mind, for they hold truths which many of us only hope to
understand," she said, breaking the silence at last.

"Please," Lionel begged.
"Tell me about yourself. You seem to know so much about
me."

"I can not tell you anything
about myself or my past experiences," she replied, and walked away.
"Besides, I have somewhere to go." Lionel wondered where Samakri
could possibly be going that could be of any importance at such an
inconvenient time.

Samakri went into the room
where she was staying and locked the door. She had to report to her
father now that she had Lionel with her. She marphed to her home
planet, Zebda in an instant. The earthlings, she supposed, would
call it teleportation, but that, like many things known to humans,
was an inaccuracy. Within a billionth of a second, she was standing
in the center of the haklar, facing the throne of chief armpha,
Blekrin. Her father. The haklar was made completely of the element
Yalmax, a transparent and highly flexible material with metallic
properties. It may look like clear jam and feel like silicone, but
when launched at high velocity, it could puncture any organ in the
body, going straight through skin, muscle, and bone.

"Is our mission secure,
daughter?" Blekrin asked.

"Yes, father. The young man,
Lionel, is in my possession. When I have gained his trust, I will
experiment on him so that I may analyze the effects of the drug
Umblof on his ability to express emotion. Then I will calculate
probable outcomes of use on our species based on the differences in
our genetic composure. After that, I will destroy him so that our
secrets will not be exposed to the earthlings."

"Excellent, Samakri. But,
whatever you do, you must not fall prey to the vices of humans,
least of all those of corporeal significance."

"You may cease any distress
in relation to that matter. My sole loyalty is to Zebda and the
success of our experiment. I must return to New York. Good
Day."

Within a mere matter of
seconds, Samakri had marphed back to her room in the abandoned
house, wondering if Lionel had any knowledge of her dark secrets.
After all, she did not use the art of Jumvod to disguise herself as
a human the way her father had instructed. Instead, she had gotten
all caught up in using makeup and the body art of earthlings to
make herself blend in. It seemed much more practical, as Jumvod
would have required her to kill whomever she wished to impersonate
and sacrifice their soul to the Zebdian experimentors. Samakri was
lost in such thoughts when she heard Lionel knock on the
door.

“Are you, okay, Sam?” he
asked. “Is it okay for me to call you that?”

“I’m fine, and, yes, I
suppose that ‘Sam’ is an acceptable term of address for
me.”

“Good. What do you like to
do for fun, Sam?”

“What is fun?”

“It’s sorta when someone
does something that has nothing to do with their job or anything
and they like it a lot, but sometimes, later, they wish they hadn’t
gone through with it.”

“That sounds completely
and utterly pointless,” she replied, looking rather confused as to
why anyone would want to do anything of the sort. “Why on Earth,
pardon the pun as your kind would say, would I wish to do such a
thing?”