Page 16 of Blood of Hercules
The pipes groaned as well water sputtered out of the tap.Splashing freezing water on my face, I looked up into the small mirror above the sink.
My mouth opened in anoof horror.
Curls stuck out around my head in every direction, and my golden skin was covered in welts, bruises, and cuts.
That wasn’t the problem.
Slowly, I closed my right eye.
The world went fuzzy and dark even though my left eye was still open. I opened my right eye, and vision returned.
Pink water dripped slowly down my face.
Mismatched irises stared back at me in the mirror. It wasn’t an illusion—I no longer had two dark eyes.
The left iris was white.
The right iris was black.
The best part—that wasn’t all.
Feeling like I was underwater, I lifted my shaking hand up to my right ear and spoke aloud. The sound was warped and staticky. I dropped my hand and repeated the action. This time, I could hear my voice.
I was blind and deaf on my left side.
With a deep breath, I splashed more freezing water, patted down my hair, and pushed my shoulders back.
The girl in the mirror looked calm. Covered in cuts, with eerie mismatched eyes, she was intimidating. Powerful. To her right, the emergency phone hung untouched on the wall.
“Who is she? I must know her name,” Carl Gauss would say if he saw her walking down the street in Brunswick, Germany. “That girl will be my prodigy!”
I smiled.
My abusers were gone.
I was free.
In those early hours, I befriended the second monster I’d ever met—myself.
At least, I thought I did.
Later I’d come to understand that I was both very right and very, very,verywrong about that assessment. Monsters were tricky like that; by the time you saw them for what they truly were, it was already too late.
Later that day, there was a loud knock on the trailer door.
A middle-aged man with deep mouth wrinkles stood outside in the snow.
“The federation—” In a display of pure class, he spat out a thick wad of mucus. “—has identified this trailer as a crime scene and thus uninhabitable.”
He pointed to a large white truck with a fancy silver rig on the back.
“I’ve been ordered to take it away.” His voice was warped, and the high-pitched ringing in my left ear worsened.
Snow flurried, and his eyelashes frosted over.
“Where are w-we supposed to live?” I asked on numb lips.
“Not my problem. All inhabitants need to evacuate—now,” he said, expression blank. “I’m authorized to use force.” His hand rested on a riot stick, which was strapped to his belt.
