Page 3 of Monster’s Magic

And there’s more than the two I originally thought to be involved. There are at least five cars on scene that I can see from where I’m standing. Something not too far off catches my attention and I furrow my brows.

“Teagan, you don’t need to go over there,” Diana calls to me. “Someone please, stop her,” she calls out.

The panic hypes up again and this time, it sends a direct order to my feet to hit the pavement forward as fast as I can. I run four, maybe five steps before a set of arms wraps around my upper torso and holds me in place, however, it’s too late. I’m able to see everything. And I see my father.

“Daddy,” I whisper and fall limp in the arms of the person holding me. “Daddy, no, no, no.” My sobs come crashing down on me in a wave I’m not expecting. It’s heavy, like a weighted blanket shrouded over me, forcing me to the ground.

The person who holds me whispers, “I’m so sorry, Teagan. I’m setting you down now, but again, I’m so sorry.”

The moment his arms loosen, I fall forward onto my palms. “Daddy,” I whisper through my tears. I become heavier with each wave of grief while I stare at his lifeless body. I close my eyes and I want to focus on his smile, his laughter, but all I can see is the lifeless look on his face.

When I open my eyes once more, I hear the door being cut open and I see my mother’s body being removed.

“Mommy,” I whisper.

The pain, the misery, the anguish, it’s becoming too much. I dig my fingers into the ground as if I’m holding on for my life to not fall directly into the sky.

Before I realize what’s happening, a scream fills the air.

My ears begin to ring, my lungs burn, and I realize it’s me who is shrieking into the world. Then a strange sensation begins to vibrate through me, starting in my back. The feeling trembles up my spine and down the length of my arms until it settles into my hands.

My fingers begin to twitch while I continue to bury them in the dirt. I sit back on my heels and pull my hands from the ground and when I do, energy blasts from my palms and almost knocks me backward.

And then a miracle happens.

I gasp when I see my father move! He’s sitting up on his side and my mother, she shifts on the gurney she’s strapped to, and the paramedics leap back with trepidation.

“They’re alive,” I announce between a sob and a smile. “My parents live!”

“That’s not possible,” says the EMT who is next to my father. “His neck is broken and he’s been impaled!”

Broken?

Impaled?

I swallow the lump that forms in my throat and I want to shout they’re mistaken. They’re obviously talking about someone else.

“Your parents are not… they can’t be,” Firefighter Eric starts, trying to form a sentence. “How?”

“I don’t know,” the sound of my voice comes out as a scream. Just as the tremble of my fingers begins, once the energy expands, it ends just as quickly.

And so does my parents second chance at life.

“What,” I whisper, and crawl to where my father’s body continues to lie. His once outstretched arm now nothing more than a limb on the ground, unmoving. “No, you’re alive! I saw you move! Weallsaw you!”

As the chaos around me grows from eerily quiet from the shock of my parent’s movement, to a sudden uproar, my hearing begins to ring to a tone that could only be described as deafness.

Everything becomes background noise, almost as if someone put me in a room with padded walls. Maybe that’s where I belong. With enough cement and stuffing in the barrier between us, I couldn’t hurt others behind something like that.

Someone picks up and drops my father’s arm, two, no, three times. Another attempts to poke at my mother’s stilled body.

I dig my fingers into the dirt again, hoping beyond hope that whatever power or possession was bestowed upon me earlier happens at least once more. I grunt, growl, groan, but nothing. All I can do is cry.

Falling forward onto my stomach, my cheek rests against the earth. I might as well die with my parents because without them, I’m nothing more than an orphan in this world.

I never even got to say goodbye.

I didn’t realize it happened, but at some point, the sounds stop, the movement ceases, everything around me has just paused as if suspended in time.

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