Human Spines

Teaching Telliyon-II

Dumaine

Present day

        "You can't stop there. What happened?"

        "Amistifer possessed me. From what he told me afterward, Telliyon wasn't actually sucking my brain out, he was sucking information out. Amistifer did his best to patch up the missing pieces but... Well as you can tell, I'm not completely normal. Amistifer hung around after the car accident. Kept trying to change me. He took the opportunity of my broken brain and rewired me. Not all of me, but enough. So he could teach me to be more... like him.

        "He 'fixed' me for several months after that. Made me break rules. Tortured the neighbor family to make me argue with Mom and Dad. Threatened to beach a whale to make me steal a cookie from the kitchen. Little rude things. But I obeyed, so no one got hurt. Until the end of that year, when he tried to make me break a rule every human follows." She swallows. "Fourteen people disappeared. All my friends. He would steal their names and locations from my head, then go kill them because I wouldn't break the last rule. I still haven't broken the last rule. I don't think I ever will."

        "Does he still bother you? Amistifer?"

        "He still visits me." She nods. "Usually at the most random times."

        "And the last rule? What is it?" I ask.

        She stares at me. A thousand thoughts seem to whisper in her head before she talks. "The last rule, that one last rule..." She sighs, gazing back up at the ceiling. And doesn't continue. Her energy seems drained. Maybe I can lift her mood with a different subject.

        "Where's your accent from?"

        "Nowhere." She flops over, her face in the blankets. "This isn't how I naturally talk, I have to slow myself down for humans."

        That explains a lot. I don't think she understands how to have a proper conversation. Maybe that's why no one's helped her before. Her words are too fast, she pauses in the middle of sentences to breathe instead of the ends, the longer she talks the more foreign her accent becomes, and her hand gestures don't make sense at all.

        "So naturally you sound like...?" I ask, as she rolls off the bed.

         "Well." She wanders the room, peaking in every closed space. "Without any filters or slowing down, I sound like this..." She drops to check under the bed before looking up at me and speaking.

        Well not really speaking...

        It's more...

        Well it's not a language. It's a tongue.

        And it is horrifying.

        I want to shield my ears and tell her never to speak again, but she pulls her backpack from under the bed and stops before I can say anything. Listening to that hurt.

        "Found it!" she exclaims, hugging the bag. But my ears are still flinching.

        "E-E-Emmeline. D-Do you even know what... that... That wasn't even in English! Emmeline, you were speaking in tongues!" I explode, my eyes wider than they've ever been.

        She begins to giggle. To giggle. Her eyes squinty and her shoulders shaking. "You're face right now is priceless! Your eyes are HUGE!"

        "You were speaking in tongues! Tongues!" I repeat. She quits laughing, but her smile tells me as soon as I look away she'll resume making fun of my face. I swear this girl is an alien.

        "I don't know any other languages. That was just me," she explains. "No need to freak out."

        "No need to...?" Forget it. I'll bring this issue back when we have another witness.

        "We need to figure out what to do next." She extracts a map from her bag. "Maybe find a priest or... or a Satanist, or—"

        "A Satanist?! Please explain to me how a Satanist is going to help us find out—wait! What are we even trying to do here?" I question.

        "Calm down. You're freaking yourself out." Her voice is smooth as she sits down beside me. "My goal here is simple. Stop the Demons from possessing me. Figuring out how to do it is the complicated part. I have a few ideas on people who may be able to help. But most importantly, I need your help." She slips her hand into mine. "This is your last chance to leave before getting too tangled up in what's going to happen."

        My heart skips a beat. "What's gonna happen?"

        She hesitates, unsure of what she's about to say, before holding her head up and stating, "What's supposed to happen is what's going to happen."

        I stare at her a moment. The beautiful girl who wants to fix the life she can barely call her own.

        "Of course I'm going to help you."

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