Rules
Wynnona
After hours of working I check the time on my phone. 12:00 am it reads. I stand up and grab a bottle of whiskey from the pantry over the fridge. Screwing the top off I take a large swig.
"That's illegal." Sean tells me. I raise the phone screen to him just as a reminder pops up. The message reads 'Happy Abandonment day to me!'
"Not if I turn 20 today." I tell him with a shrug.
"Why does it say 'abandonment?'" He asks.
"I never knew what day I was born, and I never knew my parents. Brett's parents found me and called today my birthday." I monotone, taking another swig from the bottle. For some strange reason I feel the need to tell him, inform him of my life up to this point because I trust him for some unknown reason.
"You never knew your real parents?" He asks, pity in his voice. I notice he's started fiddling with a ring around his neck. It has a slim gold band with a small stone on the centre.
"No. They likely took one look at me and dumped me." I shrug. "What's the ring for?" I ask, thankful for a distraction from the journal.
"It's becoming a nervous thing I do." He sighs. Dropping the ring he leaves it to dangle around his neck. "It belonged to my grandmother. She was the only motherly figure I had." He tells me, his eyes clouding over.
"Tell me about that nurse of yours." I lean back in my chair, watching his face. "He looks flexible." Sean's face lights up bright red as my words register. I let out a fit of laughter at the look on his face.
"His name is Jake." He says, a smile on his face. "He's an adorable idiot. I've known him all my life. The rings for him, I just haven't found the right time."
"There is no right time." I tell him, not looking at him while taking another swig of my drink. "You have to make your own perfect moment."
"And how would you know that?" He shoots back, unconvinced look on his face.
"I have a torturous mind." I tell him, a fake smile on my face. "It enjoys showing me the life I want, but know I'll never have." I shrug and put the lid back on the whiskey, a quarter of the bottle gone. I can feel a slight buzz from the alcohol, but not much.
"I'm sure there is someone out there who'd give you that life." He tells me. "The universe is bigger than we think it is."
"You say that as if you know it is." I point out. He smirks at me, a smirk I recognize.
"Maybe I do." He tells me, humour in his voice, but also mystery. I shrug it off turning my attention back to my notes and the journal. After about another hour I pass out from exhaustion.
I hear a crash that causes me to snap up in bed. There is a boy laying in the bed beside me. He looks to be maybe eight. Shaggy black hair that falls into his eyes and pale skin. He sleeps peacefully. I look down at myself and see myself in my normal self. The cuffs of my old leather jacket. The skinny jeans I tossed on this morning. My strange colourful socks that are always mismatched. One is pale blue with cute foxes the other pink with watermelons.
My body moves towards the sound of the crash without my say so. I get to the door and without thinking, reach for a small button beside the door. The door slides open and I walk out, turning right to head forwards.
I get to the door and peek in, looking out the large span of windows to see nothing but space. Real space. Different stars flicker in the distance, speckling the swirling nebula around the ship with different, interesting planets in the distance.
"Shit." I hear a female voice curse as she stares down at a pan on the floor, some sort of food spilled across the floor. I see a tall man stand up and walk over to her, leaving the ship on auto pilot.
"Darling," he says in a thick accent I can't place, "it doesn't need to be perfect. Stop stressing." He tells her with a smile on his face. Her back is to me. She huffs and flips her long black hair over her pale shoulder.
"It's her birthday tomorrow. Everything needs to be perfect." The woman tells him. He comes up behind her and wraps his arms around her waist. She snuggles back into him. "You only turn four once. And I want her to have a better life then I did." She says softly, sadness in her voice.
"I know, but she'll love it either way." The man tells her, kissing the top of the woman's head. "You need to stop pushing yourself so hard."
I accidentally step forward and the door swings open. Both of them turn around. The man looks strikingly similar to me. Blood red hair, just lighter than mine. His eyes are a pale purple. The woman is paler than paper, long black hair flowing down her back with different coloured eyes. One a pale blue the other a deep green.
There are footsteps behind me, and I turn to see the eyes of the boy who was sleeping beside me. They are the same pale blue.
"Sorry momma." He tells the woman who smiles warmly at the two of us. "I tried to keep her in bed." The woman sighs and the man starts to laugh, flashing a smirk at his wife. Almost identical to mine and the one I saw Sean flash earlier.
"Come on baby." The woman comes over to me, squatting down. "Let's get you back to bed." I watch her lift a small child up, a little too tall to be instantly recognized as a four-year-old. Short blood red hair and eyes like mine. The right one purple and the left green.
I feel a chill run down my spine. Just as the woman is about to leave with the child, the ship shakes. Sirens blare and the man rushes over to the ship's control. I turn my head to see a large explosion in front of the ship. A large metal object obscures the view out the panelling of windows. In a rush the woman tells something to the other child I can't quite make out before handing the little girl to him. The boy rushes off in the opposite direction, girl in his arms. She reaches out one of her small hands to the two people I assume to be her parents as the boy carries her away. She cries out, but the screams fall on deaf ears.
I, however, hear almost every cry, each one breaking my heart a little bit more. Another blast shakes the ship and suddenly, all I can hear is an ear-splitting ringing.
My lungs gasp for air when I finally wake up. I sit up so fast I fall off my chair. Gasping for breath, Sean rushes to my side.
"Hey, it's okay." He tells me, grabbing one of my flailing hands. "Just breath." He tells me, breathing with me. I stare into his soothing blue eyes as I calm down.
When I'm fully calm, he pulls me into his chest. I somehow find comfort in the hug, in his warmth. We spend a little while like this. Sitting on the floor, his arms wrapped around me, and his chin resting on the top of my head.
At some point in the night he must have taken his suit jacket off. The soft fabric of it is wrapped around my shoulders. We pull apart when my phone starts to go off. I stand and answer it without looking at the caller ID.
"Hello?" I ask in a tired voice.
"Hello Wynnona Allen." A voice on the other end says. The voice is deep and obviously has a modifier on it. Something about it sounds strangely familiar.
"Who the hell is this?" I ask, looking at Sean. He raises an eyebrow at me in question.
"I'm an old friend of your parents," the voice says, "not that you'd remember them." I hear an evil chuckle in the background.
"What the fuck are you on about?" I ask, getting agitated.
"You have something that belongs to me, and I want her back." The voice darkens. "I'll be on earth tomorrow, bring her to me and no harm will come to any of your worthless species." The line then goes dead. I explain what just happened to Sean and I watch worry cloud his eyes as they grow cold.
"He's talking about the journal." Sean tells me, nodding his head to the journal on the kitchen island.
"But it's just a book." I argue back, confused. "And there is no way that thing has a gender." I laugh at how stupid all this is. This is all so ridiculously outlandish.
"How do you understand that which you do not know?" The melodic voice asks. I jump and look around, still not seeing an actual human.
"You can hear her, can't you?" Sean asks me. His eyes study my confused face.
"Why do you look like a woman I dreamed about?" I ask without thinking. He raises an eyebrow at me.
"What?" He asks.
"I had a weird dream about a little girl who looks a scary lot like me." I tell him. "She was maybe four." I go further on to explain my dream.
"Wow." He breaths, eyes wide. "You have quite the imagination." He tells me with a shake of his head and a fake smile. I can tell he's acting.
"You're not a very good actor." I tell him. A wave of surprise flits over his pale blue eyes. "I pretend around everyone. Everyone but you for some reason." I glare slightly at him.
"This isn't important. We need to get back on topic." He tells me sternly. "I know where you can find a ship that will get you off earth. That way you and the journal will be safe from Needledrop." His face falls the moment he says that. He makes sure to emphasise the fact that keeping the book safe should be top priority.
"What the hell is Needledrop?" I ask.
"You need to pack." He tells me, turning his back to me.
"No. No, no, no, no." I chase after him and grab his shoulder, spinning him around to look at me. "You don't get to come in here, spew a bunch of crap, then tell me I need to leave everything behind." My voice slowly starts to raise as I speak. "Who the hell do you think you are, Officer Sean Briggs?" I seethe. His eyes harden as he glares at me.
"I'm trying to protect you." He growls, his voice getting dangerously low. My rational mind finally gets back behind the steering wheel of my brain.
"What is leaving earth going to do?" I ask, calming down. "Besides, I can't leave Brett and Keya." I sigh, running my hands through my thick hair.
"Take them with you. I don't care." He tells me sternly. "But I'm getting you off this planet by tonight." He grabs his jacket and leaves the house.
His words settle in my stomach and I feel a shiver run up my spine. I can't say I'm too keen on leaving, but I haven't built much of a life for myself here. Not many people would miss me if I left.
Keya's parents are never home. She's been raised by a nanny. But her nanny died last year of cancer. I have no idea what happened to Keya's older brother. From the lack of answers when he's mentioned Keya has no idea what happened to him either.
Brett has no family left. He was adopted by a lovely set of men, but they died as well. Their deaths were years ago. They were the ones who found and raised me alongside Brett. Brett moved out of our grandmother's house two years ago.
And me? I have no family. My only family is Keya, Brett, and Stardust. Yeah, there's no way I'm leaving Stardust here.
I reach for my phone and text the two of them in our group chat. I request a meet up at the park to which both of them agree. I get changed and grab my keys. My hands snatch the journal off the counter before I can think about it, telling Stardust to stay here. With keys in hand, I walk over to my bike and put the book in the hatch.
"Watch your back, the stars await, but maybe something more, is out there waiting for you." That sweet voice says. I raise a brow at it.
"What do you mean?" I ask, giving up on fighting the voice or figuring out where it was really coming from. But the voice went silent and didn't answer me. I sigh and start up my bike, riding off to the park.
It's noon when I get there. Keya and Brett are standing hand in hand by the entrance as I instructed. Getting off my bike, I grab the journal and walk over to the two of them.
"What's this about?" Brett starts drilling me with questions. "Are you okay?"
"You sound like papa." I tell him in a joking manner. I almost instantly regret it. His blue eyes grow dark with sadness. "Brett, I'm sorry."
"Did you just call me Brett?" He asks, stunned. I haven't called him by his first name for years. Not since our parents died.
When I say Brett is like a brother to me, I mean it. When I first had parents, it was Brett's parents. Two lovely men that took the two of us in and raised us as their own. The wound of their deaths still runs deep in both Brett and I.
"Moving on." I start to say, my walls going up again. Brett sighs and wraps his arms around me, hugging me tightly. "Why?" I wine, dragging out the word. He pulls away and places a kiss to my cheek.
"So, what's this about?" Keya asks, a smirk on her face. I fire her a glare and explain everything that happened to them. Keya looks fascinated and Brett looks worried.
"So, what is this voice?" Brett asks.
"From what I've learned, I assume it is the soul trapped in the book." I tell them with a sigh. We talk further and the sun soon begins its slow descent to night.
"Sean told me I have to leave." I tell them. My voice is heavy.
"We are coming with you." Keya tells me, standing up from the patch of grass we found to sit on.
"No. You guys have lives." I argue.
"You wouldn't last a day without us." Brett jokes, grabbing his girlfriend's waist and pulling her into his lap. She squeaks in surprise and hits him. He laughs at her and places a kiss to her cheek. I look away, giving the two a moment of privacy.
I spot a shadowy figure standing close to my bike, but in the middle of the never busy street. He stares directly at the three of us. He catches me watching him, starting to walk away.
"Hey!" I shout to get his attention. Standing to my feet, making my way towards him. His muscles tense and he starts to run away. "Watch the book!" I shout at the two, sprinting after the guy.
After what happened this morning, I don't trust anything as much as I used to. This guy was watching us, and I want to know why.
I know this part of the city like the back of my hand, better than anyone else. Chasing him I hear Keya and Brett shouting at me. I catch him after many winding alleys and tackle him to the ground.
"Who the hell are you?" I ask, flipping him over and pulling his hood off. Underneath is something I've never seen before.
Its eyes are purple and white, the white part in normal eyes are purple and the pupil white with a black iris. Its skin is a pale blue, paler than ice. It has normal facial features, but no mouth. Instead, tentacles reach down to his chest and are the same pale blue.
The tentacles wrap around my arms as the things eyes narrow and glare at me. I hear Keya scream and pull my free hand away from the things face and grab the knife I keep hidden in my boot at all times. I cut the tentacles holding my wrist clean off and watched black blood squirt all over my hand.
I cringe at the feel and the scent as the thing kicks me off, getting away without a chase.
"Wyatt!" I look up hearing my nickname shouted. Brett and Keya watch the thing run off, disappearing in the shadows of the sun's fading light.
In that moment, watching a creature of never seen before running off into the fading light, I know there is more to this whole thing I don't know, that Sean was right about not knowing everything at this point. Things I needed to figure out before they killed me.