Chap. 2
I slowly edge my way inside my brother’s house. The carpeted floor feels soft beneath my feet and I sigh for pleasure. My dirty blonde hair falls is sticking to my face due to the sweat which is dripping on the floor. Liam notices my strained movements and asks “Are you ok?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I say through clenched teeth. I honestly have no idea how I ran with this kind of injury. I mean, I have had worse but still this had to be a 3rd degree burn. He must’ve noticed that I was favouring one side because not long after he demands,
“Lift up your shirt.”
“Why?” I ask him, not wanting him to panic over me.
“Because I said so,” he may not be a parent, but he is pretty close to one already.
“You don’t know how weird that sounded.” I muttered before lifting up the side of my shirt. Liam’s eyes widened in horror so I put it back down. I stare at him with narrowed eyes for a minute before continuing upstairs. I was nearly at the bottom of the wooden staircase when Liam cleared his throat. I whipped my head around but a little too fast because my braid that the majority of my hair was in, whipped me across my blue eyes. They stung like crazy and a waterfall began pouring out of them. I heard Liam stifle a laugh so I flipped him off. I peered through blurry eyesight at my brother. His olive skin perfectly matched with his dark brown hair and chocolate eyes were completely different to my fair-ish skin, blonde hair and blue eyes. I sometimes wondered if we were even related. We didn’t have any birth certificates to prove anything. Our mother and father wanted to hide us from society. Our mother gave birth to both of us in the living room; we were never enrolled in school and we don’t have anything to prove we’re here. To the government, even the world, we do not exist. That is how come child protection agencies didn’t collect us after our parent’s disappeared, or even while they were here. Our parents were known all around the world but yet they managed to keep their kids secret. They didn’t show any affection or love towards us anyway, so it wasn’t like they were acting in public, they were just being their cruel, heartless selves.
Liam snapped me out of my trance by flicking me in the forehead. I slapped him lightly on the cheek and he picked me up over his shoulder, they way people do on TV when they are kidnapping someone. “Ow, ow, ow, ow!” I yell out because his strong arms are roped around my burn, “what the hell are you doing?” He didn’t answer me but just dumped me in the car, put my seatbelt on and climbed in the driver’s seat. Not only when we were driving did he answer my question.
“I’m taking you to the hospital.”
“What! Why?” I demand not wanting to go to the wretched place that smelt too much like the lab at home. I basically have a phobia of cleaning chemicals since my childhood, that was what I used to smell 24/7 every day.
“Because you’re much burnt and a band-aid won’t do this time!” I use this as an opportunity to tune into his thoughts and hear what he is thinking. Neither of us uses our powers very much, only when we really have to, but I wanted to know what he was thinking. Liam hates that hospital the same amount, if not more than I do because of the accident.
It was just another day of being experimented on at our house. Our parents had tied Liam, who was 9 at this time, and I, who was 7, up in a chair so we couldn’t resist as much when they poke us with needles or worse. Today, my father had been in the corner mixing up something that could have passed over an evil potion in a fairy tale; whereas my mum had been injecting us with all sorts of chemicals from adrenaline to zinc. It had more been focused on me until my father came over with a large needle containing a sickly purple liquid. I saw him grin as he said “If this works, then Liam will be stronger than ever before!” That was another reason why I despised my parents. They always said ‘if’ and they didn’t really care what happened if it didn’t work. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Liam gulp and try to put on a brave face. I was always in awe of my brother and the fact that he never showed weakness to his parents. I tried to give him a reassuring smile but it didn’t go across well since I was a 7 year old experiment. Father walked over and grabbed Liam’s arm, feeling for a vein. He pressed his thumb down hard and injected the needle. At first, nothing happened, but no more than 3 seconds later, Liam was screaming at the top of his lungs. I couldn’t make out what he was saying but I was pretty sure that it was something along the lines of ‘It’s burning!’. Tears streaked down his face as I watched in horror of my brother slowly becoming quieter and quieter. Father looked impressed with himself and Mother patted him on the back. I wasn’t sure whether it worked but soon froth started foaming out of Liam’s mouth. Father looked confused and Liam woke up, barely for a second before his eyes rolled back into his head. The pulse monitor that he was hooked up to started slowing and panic was obvious on both of my parent’s faces. For a second I thought that maybe our parents actually cared for us but I realised that they were only panicking because they were about to lose one of their best subjects. The rage that I was feeling was overwhelming and I couldn’t help myself but I started to cry. Father unsuccessfully tried to revive my brother before picking up the entire chair and running out with it. My mother followed the lead and did the same with me. They threw us in the back of their van and started speeding down the road. I stared at my brother’s limp body, rolling around the back. I grabbed him and kept him still while patting his face. I didn’t want him to die, he couldn’t die. The van’s brakes were slammed on and the back doors flung open. My father grabbed my brother, quickly untying him from his chair and running inside the building that was outside. My mother was more careful with me and as soon as I stepped outside I knew where we were. We were at the hospital. I was directed into the waiting room while my parents ‘tended’ to their child. The white walls of the waiting room suffocated me and I thankfully drifted off to sleep.
I was awoken rudely by my father, his face a cold as steel. For a moment I expected the worse but I noticed my mother was holding Liam, and that he was breathing. A huge wash of relief swept over me and I drifted back to sleep, thinking that my father just wanted to tell me that my brother survived. But I was wrong. As soon as I closed my eyes he slapped me across the face. I sat up rubbing my cheek and looked at him. “I want you to use you mind abilities to tell the doctors to forget everything they just saw and did,” he said gruffly, not bothering to use manner.
“No,” I replied to get slapped again. This time a lot harder and my cheek throbbed.
“Now,” He stood up and led me to doctor after doctor using my abilities to tell them to forget everything.
That night we got home and my parents didn’t care for their son like he nearly died, they just treated him like normal, which is rock-bottom parenting. I remember that night, curling up with Liam and crying on his lap while he told me everything was going to be ok. It was that night when I decided that I hated my parents.