Violet Eyes: Chapter 1

Chapter: 1

Relna Linwood was sick.

She collapsed against the car door, breathing carefully. Her mind ventured: was work at the deli too rough? Did she not get enough sleep? Or…was it the malfromea again?

Relna scratched against the upholstery and glared through the window. Her Aunt Kristen upped the volume on the radio to a scratchy voice singing country. 

Relna seethed, holding her baking head. She watched the white-washed buildings of Little Pennington swish by. People walked the pavement with overcoats and slacked faces. A pair of humvees bounced on the opposite side of the road, ignoring the sign that read SPEED LIMIT 45 adjacent to the walkway. Inside, armed soldiers sat stiff as if steeling themselves for a skirmish. Kristen—all smiles—waved to them when they passed.

It seemed like a normal day, but Relna felt nothing the like. Sweat coasted down her cheeks despite it being the twentieth of October. She grabbed the lever and rolled down the window with effort. A breeze rushed by as Kristen’s red sports car crossed an intersection. She felt worse by the second and fancied a cool evening shower when she returned home.

“You alright over there?” Kristen asked, shooting her eyes from Relna, to the road, and back again. “If there’s something wrong, let me know. Don’t be sitting over there, staying quiet when you’re sick.”

Kristen’s face wavered when the word “sick” escaped her lips. Relna frowned, knowing she was thinking of the malfromea—the disease that plagued Relna from birth. Because of it, she was born without a right arm and bore extreme cases of the flu and other illnesses to go with it. Her hair would twirl to the floor when she’d wash it too long. Her skin was forever pale and she’d find herself out of breath many times at work. It seemed to worsen as the years ran by and there was yet to be a genuine cure.

People believed that the disease had come from the shade. Her teachers would say they’d pollute the air with their sickly breath and pores. If it wasn’t for them, people would most likely live to age 45 and possibly more.

“I’m fine,” Relna lied, tapping two fingers on her left knee. “Work tired me out. I’ll take a rinse and nap when we get back. I won’t eat dinner though. Going to see a movie with Milly tonight,” Relna gripped her knee, deciding not to reopen old wounds.

Kristen’s husband had died from the same disease eleven years ago. He was thirty six when the malfromea took him. His hair had fallen out, his skin blanched, and he was already riding a wheelchair before his death. Relna imagined herself in the same state twenty years from now and shivered in unease. It was a miracle that her uncle had lived that long.

Relna wondered if miracles happened twice.

She slouched, thinking about her promise to see a movie that night with her sister, Milly. Lost Feathers was the name of it, she retained. Milly had nagged her about it for the last week of how beautiful the flick was to be—an angel losing his wings for falling in love with some human.

Relna wasn’t exactly overjoyed, but a promise was a promise.

She was already knee-deep in-debt to her sister as it was: she had forgotten Milly’s twenty-third birthday, she had let Milly take the blame for shattering their aunt’s records (Relna had heard enough Bobo Kemp: Country albums for one day and struck when their aunt had driven off to work), and she had asked Milly to purchase a red dress for her junior prom with money she had saved up.

Relna exhaled.

She’d just have to endure the sporadic thumps in her right temple, hoping a simple aspirin would do the trick.

The car suddenly bounced and Relna jolted, having dozed off half-way through the trip. The same song replayed itself on the radio. Relna’s head hammered and her stomach fought to jettison the pepperoni pizza she’d had for lunch.

She couldn’t deny it anymore. It was definitely the malfromea in her chest.

Determined not to stress her aunt, Relna pulled her attention outside again. She observed the homes and people of the community—freshly built cottages at the edge of town, mostly single story. Boys from her High School tossed a football around in the middle of the street. Someone yelled “Car!” and the group scattered like frightened mice. They waved as the car crept by. The curly haired jock, Kevin, eyed Relna with a smile.

Relna sank in her seat, not in the mood.       

Kristen rode up the drive-through and lowered her foot on the breaks. She turned and pulled the keys from the ignition with a wrinkled hand and the car stilled.

Relna, weak and dazed, lay with her head nested on the interior door.

“You sure you’re alright?” Kristen asked, already outside, jangling for the house key. “Need help getting out?”

Relna, not hearing her aunt’s question, threw up pinkish vomit in her lap. A spasm came afterward and she barfed again. Her eyes watered and she mumbled a curse.

She hated being sick. She hated being weak. She closed her eyes, knowing that there wasn’t a single thing she could do about it.

The trip to the movie theater was off.

…

She awoke hours later in bed, hearing Jordan’s barks and shuffles from the kennel in the living room. A closer, unfamiliar blare added to the cacophony.

Relna trembled, feeling a damp cloth on her forehead. The pain was unbearable. She tugged at sheets as her stomach churned. She wondered how long the aches would linger and if she’d be able to survive it.

Never before had the malfromea persisted in such a way. Her skin had paled like her uncle’s before his death. Her cheeks were hot and moist with sweat. She stared at a dusty light-bulb, mumbling gibberish and teetering to the thumps of her heartbeat.

Relna rolled and lolled her head.

She was in her room—one shared with Milly. Two mattresses occupied each side of the room, both with sprawled sheets and comforters on top. Her Aunt Kristen sat at Milly’s make-up covered desk, stirring water with a teaspoon. The window was cracked open to let air in and a light-bulb shined on Milly and their brother, Reuben. 

The pair in question hunched over a tremulous shade cat on the floor. They moved quickly with wide eyes. Relna stretched and gazed at the black beast. It resembled a wolf more than a cat. Its skin flashed purple in intervals, an impulse that was known to manifest its hunger. Pricks and needles scintillated along its hide and legs.

Relna assumed her brother and sister had found the shade cat near Murton’s Forest, just south of Little Pennington. The creatures liked to linger there, hoping to feed on curious animals and children. On certain days they would venture out into town. Attacks and murders from the shade cats had evoked the Governor, David Petrovich, to plant soldiers throughout Pennington to prevent further disasters.     

Relna narrowed her eyes at the shade cat. Its 12 inch tail wagged as Milly kept a boot on its chest; another heel pinned it to the ground. The beast squeaked its last breath when Reuben poked a dagger through its heart. Violet tinted blood soaked into the floor boards and the cries resided.

The two adults relaxed.

Kristen, inflating her nose, held a glass of liquid over Relna. Water and stirred baking soda sizzled in the container. Kristen got on her haunches and dropped a curving straw into the concoction. Relna plopped on a pillow and swung her face, taking slow, hoarse breaths. She gazed at the glass with unsure eyes. Her lips caught the straw and pulled the liquid into her mouth.

Relna shuddered at the taste.

Kristen grabbed the glass and clonked it on a nightstand. She held a stony face and pursed lips. She reclined into an oaken chair, draped one leg over the other, and folded her stick-like arms, her eyes focusing on the elder siblings in the room.

Relna breathed and watched as Reuben moved his muscles in a saw-cutting motion. Milly stretched out the creature’s arm as Reuben raked the edge through its joints, gritting his white teeth in the process. Purple and guts hugged the blade as Reuben pushed down. In a matter of minutes, the leathery arm came loose.

Milly smiled at Relna, wiping her brow with a black sleeve. Relna, not knowing what was going on, was too weak and dazed to return the gesture. She lowered her eyes and latched onto positive hopes in lieu.

Reuben wiped his knife off with a brown cloth and stuck it in a sheath. He sat, crossing his legs as he fixed his ponytail. He kept a grim face and appeared bothered like Kristen.

Kristen switched legs, scowled, and leaned back in her chair. “This is ridiculous!” She said, bobbing her boot up and down. “Messing with the shade and all—it’s against the law! When the Guard finds out we’ll all be hanging from the gallows. There’ll be four dead instead of one. Ridiculous!” Kristen paused, eyes shaking over the corpse on the floor. “Will this even work? I’ve never heard of this! Splicing with the shade to heal malfromea? This sounds more occult if anything. If the Guard doesn’t punish us, the Angels will!”

Milly stood, cradling the detached arm. More body fluid poured from the limb. It was a little over three feet in length of leathery black skin. Tiny spikes and deformities encircled it. It flashed purple after each second like a blinking traffic light. Milly carried it over to Relna, staring at the knot of skin where an arm should have been; the pilfered appendage would serve as Relna’s first.

She was born with malfromea and grew to the age fifteen, minus a right arm.   

“Don’t worry. It’s been done before,” Milly said, eyeing the limb she carried. “I’ve heard about it in nursing school. There’ve been cases where the afflicted cut off their own fingers and toes to do it. I’ve heard there might be a liquid agent you can create and transfer using their blood. The shade are immune to it, so this should do the trick. I’m sure of it.”

Relna wavered at the arm’s glow. She spotted an aperture on the palm; the same hole was assuredly used to drain the flow from the creature’s prey before devouring its flesh. She knew and had witnessed such an occurrence. Her mother had become victim to a family of the beasts in the city proper of Little Pennington five years ago; this was a week before Petrovich sprinkled soldiers throughout the country. Prior to the order, shade-lings and shade cats had stormed the streets, slashing anyone who was out shopping or loitering that day.

Relna and Milly had watched in horror. They had run, looking over their shoulders to find black monstrosities crawling over their fallen mother. The creatures drained and devoured her corpse and continued the chase. Milly earned a nasty scar across her forehead that served as a relic of the calamity. The Soldiers and Guard appeared with guns before the situation could worsen. If only they had come ten minutes sooner, the people and the sibling’s mother might have survived.

Relna felt a knot in her chest when Milly inched the shade cat’s arm to her body. She pondered at how many people the limb had killed—this murderous appendage that would soon become one with her. She didn’t know if she even wanted it.
Would death be better?

She didn’t have time to muse, for black skin and tendons stretched toward Relna’s empty socket. She felt something enter her. It was sharp and prickly. She looked as blood drenched the sheets underneath her. The animate tendons and skin punched a hole through the pink oval where an arm should have been. She cried as more tissue stretched inside the wound, sticking to her shoulder blade like hot glue.

A few more seconds passed and Relna screamed her lungs out. Reuben stomped over and held a hand over her mouth to muffle the sound.

It would have been troublesome if the neighbors got curious.

When the arm was fully attached, Relna continued to wail into her brother’s heavy palm. She felt a cold liquid seep into her. Her insides felt different, like the arm itself was rewiring her interior make-up.

Then something dire arose.

“My eye!” she said with a muted voice and tears in her eyes. “I can’t see! My eye!” She scratched at Reuben’s hairy arm. She looked up with her left eye and saw that he was crying too.

Reuben bumbled back when Relna coughed.

“Water!” Kristen bellowed. “Bring more water!” The floorboards creaked when Milly dashed to the kitchen.

Relna’s skin tickled, her new arm pulsed. She was tired and her muscles ached.

“God,” Reuben said, cupping his mouth and letting the tears drop. “Her eyes…their-”

Relna drifted off to sleep before she could hear more.

…

Relna awoke to yells and barks.

An argument thundered in the kitchen between Kristen and Milly.

Jordan, the eight year old Labrador, worked his lungs as if desiring to join the chaos.

“Leave then! You and Relna out!” she heard Kristen scream. “I will not house or take care of a freakin’ monster. Nor will I hang at a gallows for one either.”

The sound of shattered plates resounded. Relna’s chest hopped.

“Please calm down, auntie!” Milly cried. “We’ll keep her in the cellar. No one will see her there. We won’t be punished if no one finds her. Please!”

A pair of booms caused the walls to shake. Relna heard shuffles and assumed someone was at the front door; probably someone who had heard the dispute.
Relna felt fine but remained in bed, listening intently. A voice deeper than Reuben’s made itself known, but Relna couldn’t make out the words.

Relna stood up from her berth, noticing the changes of having only one eye to see with. She peered at the door-sized mirror, shrinking upon finding her eyes purple like the blood that poured from the shade cat.

Relna looked at her right arm—first through the mirror, and then rotating it in front of her face. She swung it around, amazed at how strong it was. She stepped forward and raked a claw against the wall. The wood peeled without much resistance. She felt a brief moment of excitement before remembering the situation that was looming outside her door. 

Footfalls approached the room.
Relna braced herself before Reuben appeared at the threshold. His eyes dilated and he took a step back, looking from Relna’s eyes to her spiny black arm.

Relna didn’t like this.

“What’s going on?” She asked, deciding to ignore his reaction to her look.

Reuben took a few more steps back until his 195 lb frame pressed against the wall. He snatched his coonskin hat and rubbed his hands on it. “Milly and Auntie were fighting,” he said the obvious. “They talking to some cops now. Think the Peterson’s next door called them over. Auntie and Milly have been at it for awhile. I was trying to be the man in the middle, you know. Didn’t work out so well.”

His eyes wandered over the curled plywood on the wall. “Y-you do that?”

Relna nodded.

Reuben cringed and wrenched his hat.

"Everything will be settled then?” Relna asked, narrowing her eyes as she walked back to her bed.

“Looks like it,” Reuben mopped sweat with his hat. “The cops got them quiet it looks like. I don’t know what they saying though. They out there on the porch. Good thing too. Can’t have them finding you with those eyes and arm. We be in big trouble.

“A-and I’m glad to see you alright. Need anything?”

Relna reached for the glass of warm water on her nightstand. “A bath,” she said, drinking the liquid. “And food. I’m hungry.”

Reuben placed his hat on his head, straightening it out. “Alright, I got you. Will start the water in a second. I’ll cook something up once everything clears up with Mil and Auntie. Tomato soup and grilled cheese good for you? Or spaghetti and meatballs? Either one is fine with me, Rel.”

Relna swallowed. “Spaghetti please…Thanks.”

Reuben smiled nervously, pounding his way to the bathroom a second afterward.

…

Six days passed in the cellar.

Relna sat on a faded futon, writing in the palm-sized diary her sister had given her. She didn’t have much else to do, rather than read, eat, and stare at her new arm. It was an unbearable torture.

She drew a picture of her tall aunt Kristen, dragging a hard look on her normally cheerful face. Relna hadn’t seen her or Reuben since being stowed away in the cellar.

Relna tapped a pen against her cheek.

Maybe she had heard their voices once or twice when they were lounging or working outside, but other than that, nothing.

Milly would come in every night at 6:15, however, having already worked her shift at the hospital in Little Pennington. Relna chuckled, remembering the stories her sister would tell.

Milly would always make fun of a certain doctor she worked with. Doctor Murdoch was his name. Relna had seen him purchasing vegetables in Danver’s Wayworks a few times. He was a gaunt, bony-cheeked man who could barely tie his own shoes, but was an expert at running his mouth and drilling his patients with more information and advice they could ask for. This would usually lead to the patient getting angry or manifesting their desire to leave the tidy office with nods and steps toward the doorway.

Other than that, Relna and Milly would play cards, mainly Old-Maid or Go-Fish.

Relna flipped a page and started a sketch on Reuben. She gave him his usual moccasins and woolen vest, not forgetting his coon-skin hat. She missed him. He would always talk earnestly of joining the military like their father and making some noise against the Shadian Continents. He’d always go to the shooting range, cultivating his skills until he had finished his senior year at high school. Then he would enlist and fight the shade alongside their father.

Relna puckered her lips, giving Reuben a frightened appearance in her diary. The same look he motioned after she had merged with the shade cat’s arm.

She shut the book and sighed.

A knock vibrated the cellar door. “Come in!” Relna said, warming at the thought of Milly appearing atop the stairway.

The door groaned and light lanced into the cellar. Milly stormed down the steps, nearly tripping over her skirt on the way down. She breathed and leaned a hand on the cracked wall.

Relna rotated her body so she could see her clearly in her left eye. “What is it?” she asked, her right arm pulsed as she gripped the edges of her bed.

Milly took time to catch her breath. Her face was red and her eyes wavered. She doubled over and tears fled.

“Milly?” Relna asked, slipping her feet into black boots. She fastened the laces and stepped to her sister. She placed her left hand on Milly’s shoulder, waiting for an explanation.

Milly wiped her face with a sleeve and stared at the floor as if contemplating something. She jerked and met Relna’s gaze. “I’m sorry…We have to leave,” she said, her mouth quivered as she spoke. “Auntie and Reuben called the Guard. They…” she wiped her nose and choked down tears, “-they don't want you down here anymore! Auntie and Reuben… they’re afraid. They think you’d do something terrible with your arm.

“Relna, I’m sorry," she gulped down more gried. "I tried everything. I told them that you haven’t changed, that you’re the same as before but they wouldn’t listen! They didn’t want to get arrested if you were found. They…they’re blaming us for the splicing so they won't hang with us!”

Relna’s heart thumped. She held Milly tighter, mulling over the situation. She knew Reuben was afraid, but struggled to believe that he would turn her in to the gallows because of it. He had a great sense of justice; he probably thought it better to do what was right in society’s eyes, rather than taking the risk of protecting his sister and dying in the process.

A tear rolled from her blind eye.

Relna lowered her head. Her aunt Kristen was more notably against keeping her hidden. She probably despised the shade enough after the death of her sister, Relna and her sibling’s mother. The shade went against Kristen’s beliefs, and a piece of one was living and eating in her basement.

More tears dropped.

“Let’s go,” Relna said. “They called the Guard, right? We better leave before they get here.”

Milly nodded. She opened her mouth but closed it, keeping her thoughts to herself.
She turned and stomped up the stairs. Relna grabbed an overcoat draped over a trunk and hustled after her.

They sucked in the morning air. The Third Star crawled over the horizon.

Relna dug her shade arm into a coat pocket and followed her sister around the house.

Relna wasn’t tired, but she breathed laboriously after they had left the house and moved down the sidewalk. She struggled to believe that her brother and aunt, people she trusted dearly, would turn on her. They were people she loved—people who took care of her. Now they were enemies, willing to send her and Milly to their deaths.

Engines roared behind them.

The girls turned and found a pair of hum-vees and black vans bumping down the road. They screeched in front of their old home. Soldiers, donned with mottled grey, black, and white fatigues, jumped out with M-16s and pistols. They surrounded the bungalow while several went to the door, probably to ask for Relna.

Relna felt a tug at her shirt and treaded faster with Milly down the walkway. Relna glanced at the peach home once more before turning away.

They would have to escape the country and find a new home in the Shadian Continents.

They were enemies of the resistance with no one to trust but each other.

Violet Eyes: Chapter 2  [18+] #1555269 Relna falls in love with Lords she had vowed to kill. by LeVari-X