The Apathetic Mage Loves Cats

Chapter 8: 12 years later

"Open up, you little shit!" I groaned my head pounding from the night before in time to the beats against my front door. I blinked and found myself in front of my apartment door, removing the lock but keeping the chain on as I struggled to comprehend the situation. As I opened the door up a crack, a hand rapidly stuck through, freshly done nails lightly scratching against the door as the newest iPhone was flashed in my face. "Look at what I caught," the voice taunted, as the screen came to life with a fingerprint. The right hand gripped the phone firmly as the left came to swipe right multiple times, revealing my work as a sex worker, the only job a teen like me without a place to live could work and find housing.

At the pictures, I felt my heart rate pick up, my headache being forgotten as I reached for the phone. However, it was rapidly taken back, behind the half-opened door. In a panic, I quickly shut the door to undo the chain lock and flung it open once more to reveal my mother. Though, in reality, she didn't look anything like this. She stood over 8-feet tall and with neon green eyes replacing her hazel ones. She had a large unnatural sinister smile that reached from ear to ear replacing her somewhat delicate features. This person in front of me wasn't my mother, but a monster that came to claim and conquer my life once more.

"If you don't want this to go to the police or that precious high-school of yours," the monster boomed, her voice vibrating the walls and sending shivers throughout my body, "then I want you to give me $500 every week until you die." I could feel myself trembling, as I quickly went inside, begging my tormentor to not rat me out, that this was the only place I could afford to work and live despite my age. I was going to hand over the $100, hoping that this would be enough to placate the beast.

However, as I opened my wallet, her lips started to drool, long fat drops of spit danced on the bills in front of me as I struggled to grip the money. Once I managed to, and my trembling hand waited patiently for her to take it, I looked up into her eyes, just as soon as her mouth opened up to reveal rows and rows of sharp teeth, littered with pieces of clothing and extremities of her previous victims. I dropped the bills as her eyes glowed and her mouth came around me, encompassing me in darkness.

"Alan! Are you alright?" I heard from above me. I tensed, suddenly being woken up from the dream of my mother in my past life. My head was on the table, my arms supporting it as I took a nap. My hands were fisted in my sheets of paper as I slowly sat up, taking in the sight around me. I was in the classroom designated for magic learning. It was a small room, containing six tables, three in each row. I sat at the table in the farthest back on the left, near the window where I would often daydream.

It has been close to 12 years since I was brought to this island and forced to live with Romand. Since then. I had been placed in the classroom with other students who were learning to become mages. There were only five of us, but out of the five, I was the most skilled. I had already mastered much of the material that the others had been learning, but I was still forced to be in this classroom and practice with the other students due to the concept of working together. However, I never knew how to do that, so I mostly did work in the back and waited until it was time to leave.

Although, today, I seemed to have dozed off. Due to these dreams about my past that I had been having, it was getting increasingly more and more difficult for me to fall asleep and stay asleep at night. I never figured I would be able to fall asleep in a place such as this. It brought back memories of my first month here, but that wasn't something I wanted to dwell on.

"Alan?" I looked up at the figures who hovered above me, Gwyn, who had grey hair and a freckled face, and Daena, who had light brown hair and grey eyes, were both students here too, and they were also the ones who constantly tried to get to me hang out with them and the rest of the students. However, I never gave in to their antics. In fact, despite the fact that they were concerned about me, I knew it was only because they wanted me to respond, so I gave them a nod and moved to straighten out my items.