Raven: Chapter 1

Chapter 1:
         My father never read any stories to me when I was young. But I’ve read a lot myself, and in every good story I’ve ever read, the author starts off with a hook-line; something that pulls you into their world, kicking and screaming, from the very beginning. This is my story. And it doesn’t start like that.
         November 27th, 1983 was anything but the joyful occasion that it should have been. That was the day that, unbeknownst to my parents, I arrived; an uninvited guest that wouldn’t go away. Now, I don’t mean to say that I just showed up on their doorstep one morning, though I suppose that might have been a little easier for them to deal with. No, I was born into my family just as any normal person would be. The only difference was that they didn’t know I was coming. After all, after the operation, my mother was supposed to be sterile, so no one really expected that a little weight gain would soon mean one more mouth to feed. My mother’s spirit left her on that day. The doctors said there were “complications,” but I’ve always thought that she simply died from the shock of my appearance. My father always told me that, too. And so my father and brother were left with nothing but each other and a screaming baby girl.
         I remained nameless for the first month of my life; the randomness and surprise of my arrival and my mother’s subsequent departure dragged my father into a bottle. I owed my survival entirely to my brother, Evan. He dealt with the loss of his mother by caring for the creature that took her away. He was already between boyhood and manhood at that time. It took a month before Evan managed to get our father sober enough to talk him into naming me. With his eternal resentment, he gave me the name Raven: a cruel mockery of my condition. Born without pigmentation, I was what the medical community calls an albino, but what society at large calls a freak.
         When I was five, Evan went off to college. He spent a semester away from home before transferring back to a school in Chicago so he could be near me. Once he graduated, he brought me to live with him. I was ecstatic when I found out he was taking me in. It wasn’t that my father abused me, exactly. He preferred to pretend that I didn’t exist at all. Evan was the only person who ever made an effort to understand me. Granted even he didn’t understand me, but he tried.
         My childhood was horrific. My waking hours were plagued by taunts and bullying; my sleep by nightmares. I haven’t yet decided whether my days or my nights were more tortured. Other children hated me, my father neglected me, the sunlight burned me, and my dreams haunted me. My computer became my solace and my escape. Evan always encouraged me with my computer skills. He would sit beside my desk while I wrote programs or practiced my hacking skills, asking me about how everything worked. I appreciated his attempt to be interested in what I was doing.
         I graduated high school valedictorian of my class. All my teachers said I was brilliant and that I would certainly get into whatever university I wanted. But I decided that public schools were much too public while private schools were just not to my liking. Too many people in one place. I never did like many people. I decided not to apply to any colleges, much to Evan’s dismay. I think he looked to me as the last hope for someone in our family to get out of Chicago and really make it in the world. Or something like that. Instead of higher education, I stayed at home with my brother, and tried to explain to him the intricacies of computer programming, my favorite pastime.
         Late one night, while Evan was working at his second job, I decided to have a little fun by hacking into the mainframe of Sunrise Industries, a multi-million dollar corporation based out of L.A. I had just bypassed the main security system when a warning appeared, flashing across the screen. Somehow, a virus was downloaded onto my computer. I tried everything to stop it; nothing I did had any effect. I sat there staring at my suddenly blank screen when my hard drive began to smoke. This virus, whatever it was, had somehow destroyed my entire hard drive. Not just wiped. Destroyed. I felt an anger, a primal fury rise up within me. It flowed through my veins, every muscle tense, and clouded my vision with rage. In that moment, I lost control.
         When I finally regained my composure, I couldn’t believe what had somehow transpired. My bedroom had been turned completely upside-down: my windows were shattered, my dresser was overturned, my clothing lay shredded to pieces on the floor, and my computer (or what was left of it) was imbedded in my wall. I sunk down onto the floor, clutching my knees to my chest. I tried to rationalize what had happened, but I couldn’t figure it out. I couldn’t figure out why I was naked, why I was covered in sweat… Why it felt good. As I stood, my muscles felt stiff. My joints were sore, almost as though they’d been hyper-extended. Searching for some clothes that were still intact, I tried to convince myself that, regardless of exactly what had just happened, I didn’t do it. It couldn’t have been me, I told myself. I mean, my entire room looked as if a nine-foot tall three-year-old had thrown the worst temper tantrum in history.
         When my brother finally came home, I made up some bullshit story about a burglar. He called the police and gave his statement and everything. I’m still not sure if Evan actually believed me. After all, burglars aren’t generally in the habit of tearing an entire wardrobe of clothing to pieces and then not taking anything.
         I tried to pretend that it, whatever it was, never happened. When that didn’t work, I tried believing that it was a freak accident that would never happen again, but somehow I felt that this was something deep inside me. Something that was just beginning. As the weeks and months went by, I could feel it building. My temper shortened to near-non-existence, and there was no way of doing what might spur me to anger on any given day. I began snapping at anyone who got on my bad side, even my brother. After a while, I began getting violent urges. Compounded with the nightmares which were getting worse by the night, I was terrified of what might be wrong with me. Not wanting to put my brother in any danger, I left home and hitchhiked westward.
         After months of moving from place to place, I finally made it to L.A. Somehow, I thought that being 2,000 miles away from my home in Chicago might make some difference, might calm my angst. After all, nobody knew me out there. But my nightmares grew steadily worse. The dreams were horrendous, violent, and something else that I couldn’t quite place… Feral? Sleep itself became a dream, a precious commodity that was all too often unattainable. I needed something to keep myself occupied at night, so I took a job as the graveyard-shift janitor at Sunrise Industries’ home offices. I still don’t know what drew me there, to the building that had somehow caused the destruction of my best friend nearly a year before.
         One night as I was mopping one of the endless hallways of the office building, I heard a commotion coming from the lobby. Unfortunately, my curiosity got the better of me, so I decided to go see what was causing such a fuss at two-something in the morning. I entered the lobby, my mop handle held at the ready. What I saw then is something I will never forget for the rest of my life:
         Five creatures that could only be described as monsters stood in the middle of the lobby. They were all about nine to ten feet tall with slobbering maws of canine-like fangs. Their bodies were covered in fur through which rippling muscles could be seen. One of them, the tallest, was uttering a deep growl. Blood dripped from its jaws. Then I saw the night-watchman. He was lying on the floor, a puddle of dark wetness forming from beneath his crumpled form. It was a terrifying sight, but for some reason, I wasn’t afraid. I flipped up the dark lenses of my glasses to get a better look. The monsters were staring at me. The one who stood front and center took a step toward me.
         “Who are you?” it growled in its guttural voice.
         “I’m the janitor!” I shouted at them, standing up as straight as I could. “Who the hell are you?”
         “Get out of here!” it sneered, but I wasn’t about to let a nine-foot-tall dog boss me around.
         “Screw you!”
         One of the monsters who had been standing in the back pushed forward in a fury. “Get OUT!” it barked, bearing all of its teeth. Fear suddenly lodged itself in my throat. What I felt then in some way resembled what I felt that night more than a year earlier. But this was the opposite end of the “fight or flight” reaction I had experienced before. The terror overwhelmed me and I started to run.
         The next thing that I can remember, I found myself lifted off the ground by the back of my neck. Coming to my senses, I saw a pair of eyes staring at me from behind dark glasses. Actually, I couldn’t see his eyes beyond the mirrored lenses. I could only see my reflection. He dropped me on the floor and tossed a trench coat at me.
         “Cover yourself up, pup,” he said, turning to glance out of a curtained window. “You’ve got a lot to learn.”
         “What happened?” I asked, throwing the coat around my naked shoulders. “Who are you?”
         He chuckled quietly, not turning from the window, not answering either of my questions. We were in a hotel room; something like a Motel 6 by the look of it. A worn desk sat up against one wall upon which a number of blueprints and plans were laid out. Various knapsacks were strewn about on the desk chair and the two twin beds.
         “Here they are,” the tall man by the window said, closing the curtain. He moved back toward me and stood me up as the door opened. Three men entered the room. All of them seemed to be in their early twenties. They stopped short when the saw the tall man with the sunglasses standing nonchalantly in their room. He pushed me from behind so that I stumbled in front of them.
         “Did you lose this?”
         The man who entered first looked at the tall man, then to me. “Shit,” he said, turning to the dark-haired man at his left. “Ethan, get the girls.” He had scarcely finished speaking before Ethan turned and ran out the door. “Shades,” the apparent leader of the three men said, addressing the tall man behind me. “We were just about to call you.”
         “I’m sure,” Shades responded coolly. The door opened again and Ethan returned, followed by two women of roughly the same age. “Good,” Shades continued, “now that we’re all here.” He gave me another shove forward. “Did you know about this?”
         I couldn’t figure out what was going on. I was too confused to speak, or cry out, or anything. All I could do was stand there in silence, listening to them refer to me as “it” and “this.”
         “We had no idea,” the leader answered. One of the women had stepped forward to his side. She was tall, six feet at least, and stood there stoically with her arms crossed in front of her. She was covered with tattoos and had piercings all over her face.
         “It’s not our fault,” the red-haired woman said in a heavy Scottish accent from where she had sat down on the desk.
         “No,” Shades said, turning his attention to her. “But it is your problem.” He moved toward the door, the others clearing a path.
         “But,” the leader of the group was trying desperately to stop Shades from abandoning me to their charge. “But she doesn’t know anything!”
         Shades turned back and smirked. “So teach her, Whit. She’s in your pack now.” With that, he left, closing the door behind him. And so I was left there, standing in the midst of these strangers in nothing but a trench coat that was two sizes too big. I was still in shock. The leader, Whit they said his name was, eyed me suspiciously.
         “So, you got a name, pup?”
         I nodded.
         “Well, out with it then,” the Scottish girl prompted. “We’re not going to hurt you, now.”
         Finally, I found my voice. “Raven,” I stammered.
         The man who had yet to say anything sneered at me. “Raven?” Whit turned and gave him a sharp look.
         “Jinn! She’s one of us now. She’s part of the pack, so start treating her as such.” He extended a hand to me. “I’m Whit.”
         “I gathered that,” I said, taking a step away from him. The pierced girl sighed and leaned back against the door, an unlit cigarette protruding from between her lips.
         Whit snapped his fingers once and everyone’s attention darted back to him. “You’ll room with the girls tonight,” he said to me. “In the morning we’ll take you to your apartment to get your stuff.”
         “But I don’t want to go with you,” I said. It seemed my fear was beginning to subside. “I don’t even know you. I want to go home.”
         “Why?” Ethan asked me, sitting down on the bed. “What’s there for you?” I didn’t have an answer. “Don’t worry, kid,” he continued, smiling warmly. “We’re just like you.”
         “Get some sleep,” Whit said. “We’ll do our best to explain it all to you tomorrow.”
         The two women left the room and the men gestured for me to follow. Their room was the next one over and was identical to the first except no plans or blueprints were laid out on the desk.
         “Raven, huh?” the pierced girl scoffed in a heavy Eastern European accent. She exited the room to go smoke her cigarette.
         “Don’t mind her,” the Scottish girl said, chucking. “That’s Tyra. She can be… grumpy.” She flopped down onto the bed. “My name’s Lara, by the way. Take a load off, get comfortable.”
         I sat at the desk.
         “I would say that you look confused,” she began again. “But I’m pretty sure that would be an understatement.”
         I just sat there, staring at her.
         “You don’t have to be afraid of us. We’re just like you, and you’re just like us. You follow me?”
         I didn’t answer.
         “Okay, look,” she continued as she propped herself up on her elbows. “Haven’t you always felt alone and out of place? Like you don’t belong among normal people? You have nightmares, too, right? With blood, and violence, and pain? We’ve all had them. But soon you’ll realize that you belong here, with us, in this pack, and the nightmares will stop. Get some sleep, love.” She lay back down on the bed just as Tyra came back. “We have a lot to do tomorrow.” Lara tossed me a blanket. I curled up in the corner, yet even though her words seemed to comfort me, sleep did not find me that night.

Continued