Anabel

Anabel "Leev 5 Dolars undr the pigey bank or yu wil naver see Anabel agin!" -Anabel Stranger I smirked as I read the latest threatening 'ransom' note. Her handwriting had gotten a lot better since the last time she demanded money under the piggy bank. At 6 years old, Anabel definitely had a flair for the dramatic. Yesterday she had asked me for five dollars so she could buy a toy at the store. I told her that she would have to wait until the end of the week for her allowance like normal. And then I told her that if she wanted to earn some extra money, she could clean her room and make her bed. Hearing that she would have to wait, Anabel plopped herself on the ground and started to scream. She's not a patient child, but I couldn't have her screaming like that. Her little brother was still asleep, but more importantly, I had just replaced the windows in the house after her last meltdown. It's not cheap to replace windows, especially when the insurance company won't cover "uniques’ inabilities to control themselves". Trust me, I spent hours on the phone explaining that Anabel's screaming wasn't something that happened very often and she always feels guilty when she destroys something because she lost her temper. Once she really got going, I knew I had to stop her as soon as I could. I could already feel the glass in my hand start to shake. I sat down on the floor with her and started to sing Over the Rainbow. It's her favorite song, from her favorite movie. She immediately stopped, looked up at me with crocodile tears, and laid her head down on my lap. I stroked her hair as I continued to sing until I could feel the calm in the air. She was smiling when she walked back to her room. The rest of the day was uneventful and when Steve, my husband, came home from work, I told him all about the incident over dinner. "I'm glad you were able to think quickly on your feet like that, but I'm starting to think that we need to think about our options." he said. Shocked that he said this in front of the kids, I glared at him and said "Why don't we talk about this later?" We ate the rest of the dinner in silence except for Simon’s giggling from throwing food on the floor. Steve knows that I don't like talking about “what to do with her”. She is our daughter. Our first child, and with her blonde curly hair and big green eyes, no one could look at her and see anything but sugar and spice. The fight that night was one of the more epic ones. "She's getting worse! We can both see it. Why didn't you just give her the five dollars?! It's not like you didn't have it." he said. Steve was furious that we almost had a window shattering incident for the third time in a year. I didn't blame him, she was getting worse. But the only 'option' that he was willing to consider was sending her away to some school in Montana for unique children. The fact that he was so willing, and even eager, to just ship our daughter halfway across the country because he couldn't deal with her temper was something that I just couldn't understand. I explained, "If I just give her money every time she asks for it, she will think that she can just get anything she wants. She needs to learn to control her temper and earn what she wants! I'm not sending her anywhere! She's our daughter and she needs us." "She needs professional help! She needs things that we can't give her! And what if Simon turns out to be just like her? Can we really have two freaks in the house?" "Freaks?? I can't even talk to you right now. I can't believe that is how you see your own child! She needs LOVE and understanding! And Simon isn’t even two years old! We have no idea what kind of child he will be! And regardless, he is ours and we will love him the same! Our children are NOT going anywhere!" I was so disgusted with him, that I stormed out of the bedroom with my pillow and told him I was sleeping on the couch. I couldn't even look at him. I tossed and turned on the couch, still fuming over our fight. Freaks? How could he say that about Anabel? She was such a sweet and playful girl. Yes, she had a temper, and there are certain things that needed to be done in order to stop her from reaching supersonic volumes and breaking all the glass in the house. As a typical suburban mother, I got up from the couch and went into the kitchen to drink a glass of wine and smoke a cigarette to try and calm my nerves. It was the only thing keeping me from going back upstairs to yell at him more. When I finally fell asleep, I figured Steve and I would talk more in the morning, once we had both calmed down and come up with a reasonable plan. Lying back down on the couch, I knew that I was drunk. And I was almost indignant about it. It was his fault that I was drinking, and I hadn’t smoked in over a month. f**k him. When I woke up, Steve had already left for work. Maybe he was still too mad to talk to me. That's fine, I didn't really want to talk to him either. I started to make my coffee and breakfast for the kids. It was strange that at 7:30 a.m. that I hadn't heard from either of the kids yet. I really hoped that they hadn't heard our fighting and didn't get to sleep well. I went upstairs to Anabel's room and found the note on the door. I decided not to go in and start the day off with a bad mood. So I put the note in my pocket and walked down the hall into Simon's room and saw him still sleeping. This was a rare treat, so I checked to make sure his overnight diaper was still okay for him to keep sleeping and covered him back up. I went back downstairs to finish breakfast. I took the ransom note out of my pocket and read it again. As difficult as she could be, things like this were very cute. We would have a talk about earning money and being patient when she got up. Wait a minute... As of yesterday, at least, Anabel didn't know how to spell her own name. She always added an extra "a". Anaabel. And as far as I knew, she didn't know how to spell 'Stranger' either. And then I knew. I ran up the stairs to Ana's room and opened the door. Empty. I looked in her closet, under the bed, in the hall closet, under Simon's bed. Everywhere. While I was looking, the phone rang. I let it go to the answering machine. "Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Shields, this is Doctor Jack Wells from the School for Unique Children. I was just calling to confirm that we will be welcoming Anabel into our program this afternoon. Please feel free to call me if you have any questions and we look forward to meeting this amazing child. Thank you." *BEEP* I was frozen in shock and horror for a minute. Once I snapped out of it, I ran back downstairs, grabbed my cell phone and went to my speed dial. STEVE. No answer...... Steve Turn around. Go back home. This isn't worth it. We can work this out if we just talk it over calmly........ I couldn't decide if the voice inside my head was logical reason or not wanting to lose my wife. So I kept driving until I could figure it out. It was 1:00 a.m. and the Washington State Line wasn't too far away. "Daddy...? Where are we going?" I heard the little voice from the backseat and it startled me. I was so lost in my own thoughts that I forgot Anabel was back there. "We're just taking a trip, Princess. Go back to sleep. I'll wake you up when it's time for breakfast." I told her. I tried to keep my voice calm so I didn't scare her. “Okay Daddy.” She trusted me whole-heartedly..and that fact made me sick to my stomach about what I was doing. Go back. Call Wells and tell him you made a mistake. Put Ana back in bed and just hope that she doesn't remember any of this, or thinks it was all just a dream. I tried to shake the doubt out of my head. Anabel was only going to get more powerful and Wendy just refused to admit it. She just wanted to believe that we can handle anything that Ana could throw at us. That she was just an innocent little girl that just had a bit of a bad temper. A perfect little angel. She was an angel, of course, but she was not perfect. There’s something wrong with her. And I was being proactive, and taking her to a place that could help her. But I understood. I was four when I set my first fire. If that stupid dog hadn't bitten my foot while I was just trying to play with him, I wouldn't have gotten so mad. I saw red and... oh God, the smell. My mother spanked my behind so hard that I was bruised for days. Apparently she thought I had stolen one of her lighters and actually chose to set a goddam dog on fire. Like I was some kind of budding psychopath firebug, just practicing on animals before moving on to torturing humans. My mother didn't understand me, so she never tried to help me. My father couldn't handle me, so he spent his time with his head inside a bottle until he died. By the time I was eighteen, I had taught myself how to control my temper and hadn't set a fire since. Until tonight. After Wendy left the room in a rage to go sleep on the couch, I couldn't calm myself in time and the stupid pillow just burst into flames. Luckily I was able to put it out before the smoke detector started blaring. Of course it had to be her favorite pillow, and I had to sneak out the back door to throw it away. I was lucky that she had gotten into her cigarette stash, which she didn’t think I knew about, so the cigarette smell covered up the smell of the burnt pillow. Maybe if I had told Wendy that part of my past, she would have let me take Anabel to the school months ago, like I had first suggested. Maybe she would have actually encouraged it, if I had told her that my panicky and judgmental mother actually hired a priest on three separate occasions to perform an exorcism on me when she realized that I couldn't control it. So maybe this whole argument was my own fault. I trusted Wendy with every other part of my life, but I thought I had my problem contained and she didn't need to know. Anabel’s scream was getting stronger and now Simon was starting to act strange too. About a week ago, I heard him clapping and giggling from inside his bedroom so I glanced in on him to see what was so funny and I could have sworn I saw his Curious George doll floating in the air. It only lasted a second, but I had no doubt that Simon was going to inherit this horrible infliction as well. The only thing that could help us teach Simon to control his ability was if we didn't have Ana around shattering things every time she didn't get her way, or the attention she wanted. Wendy would see that eventually. She would forgive me. She would learn. Before I knew it, the sun was coming up. I had been driving for nine hours. It was too late to turn back now. I started paying more attention to the road signs and saw that we had already made it to Missoula, Montana. This was a good place to stop for gas and breakfast. It took about another hour before I found a place to pull into. I stopped the car and started to get out and stretch my legs. I thought about just buying Ana something for her to eat when she woke up on her own. I definitely didn't want her to be cranky, especially since we still had so long left to drive. I dug my phone out of my suitcase. 28 missed called. 19 text messages. 15 voicemails. Damn. I wasn't sure yet how I was going to talk my way out of this so I didn't read or listen to anything. I had to figure out exactly how to word this so she would understand that this was the best thing that we could do for our daughter, and eventually, if I was right about what I saw, our son. Then the phone rang again. I thought that I should answer this one because it was only a matter of time before the next phone call was from the police. "....Hey babe..." The silence was almost unbearable. I felt like an eternity since either of us had said anything. I felt like I had talked for an hour before letting Wendy say anything, and now I was giving her a chance and…nothing. Finally, she spoke. "You… set fires… with your anger…" she said. Her voice was saturated with skepticism and I knew that I couldn't be upset with her about her tone. She had every right to feel everything she was feeling. I knew she would be pissed off. "Yes, honey. I set fires. I get angry lose my temper and… something catches fire. I know how unbelievable this sounds, but you have to trust that I'm telling you the truth." I tried to keep my voice calm as I spoke, because I didn't want another fight. My tail was tucked between my legs for taking Ana in the middle of the night, essentially kidnapping her, but I still firmly believed that this was the best thing for Anabel and for our family. Standing outside the car at some random gas station in Montana was really not a great place to have an argument. Plus Anabel was still asleep and I wanted to keep it that way for as long as I could. "I don't understand…" (an understatement, but I didn't indulge in that thought out loud) "…since you didn't feel like I could handle the truth about you, that makes it okay for you to take my daughter out of her bed in the middle of the night, fake a child's ransom note and just leave? You couldn't give me the benefit of the doubt? We couldn't talk about it like adults and make a decision about our child together? I could call the police. I should call the police!" She was starting to get herself worked up, and I could hear Simon making noise in the background, babbling with another voice. Wendy's sister, maybe. Excellent. Krista didn’t care much for me in the first place. "Please just listen to me, Wen. This school is the best place for her. If I had an opportunity like this when I was Ana's age, maybe I wouldn’t have been afraid to tell you about my past. You have seen how those poor unique people were treated when they announced themselves as different. She will learn to control her scream and to only use it when she really needs it." It was almost like I could feel the heat from Wendy's anger through the phone. Ironic. "Come out to the school. I will buy you a plane ticket right now and you can send Simon to stay with Krista. If you fly, you will probably beat us there. I swear to you that I'm not trying to take her away from you, or trying to just get rid of her. I understand her and what she's going through." Amazingly, she actually agreed to meet us at the school at 1:00 p.m. that day. I gave her the address to the school in Miles City and we hung up the phone. We had seven more hours to drive. By the time I got back in the car, Ana was awake. "Daddy, how much longer to the school?" If I had whipped my head around any faster, I might have broken my neck. "Anabel… how did you know we were going to a school?" "I dunno…. I just knew it…" she said, very quietly as I started driving again. She sounded like she thought she was in trouble. "You kept talking about school while we were driving, and that school was best for me. When will we get to school, daddy?" I knew I didn't say anything out loud. She was reading my mind… or my emotions. We knew she could break glass with her voice, but this was the first time I had ever heard her acknowledge knowing what I was thinking. This was even more serious than I could ever have thought. She needed to go to Dr. Wells, yesterday. I needed to set the cruise control on the car or I would catch myself going 100 mph. Part of me wanted to call Wendy back and tell her what had just happened, but I thought maybe she would take it as me trying to prove that I was right and poking a very angry bear. I may not make the best decisions all the time, but I am definitely not that stupid. "Daddy?" "What, sugar?" "Mommy doesn't get it. But I do. I know you love me, and you just want to do the right thing for me. But the school is a bad place" "Do you just know that too?" "No, daddy… I see it." Wendy Sitting at the airport, I couldn’t stop my mind from racing. What would I say to Steve when I got there? Would I be angry? AM I angry? I mean… he didn’t tell me this huge part of his past. I couldn’t decide if it was because he didn’t trust me not to leave him, or if it was because he was ashamed of himself. Or maybe he was telling the truth and he thought he had it under control. I did wonder what happened to that pillow he said he burned and threw away. But once I discovered that Ana was missing, I forgot all about the pillow. My mother made me that pillow when I went away to college and I had forgotten all about it. He took my child in the middle of the night and drove away with her. That made me angry. But the reason that he felt like he had to, now that I knew the truth, just made me sad. I have never met Steve’s father. All I knew was that Bruce had passed away before Steve and I met. Steve didn’t like to talk about his father and I never wanted to push the issue. His mother, Linda, on the other hand, has never been a very pleasant woman. She always seemed to have this natural disdain for her only child. I guess I understand now why Linda and Bruce never had another child. They must have thought they had given birth to a demon and didn’t want to take another risk like that. She still has that kind of mentality. When she found out about Anabel’s “illness”, as she called it, she cut herself off from our lives so quickly that if she had been standing in front of us, it would have left a cartoon-esque cloud of dirt as she ran away. I didn’t get it, it’s not like Ana was the first unique she had ever seen. I looked down at my hands, and I had peeled the label off my water bottle and ripped it to shreds. I needed to do something to pass the time. I turned around to watch the news on the silent television in the waiting area. The headline on the screen instantly changed my train of thought. “Children with ‘super powers’ being hunted” Wh…..what?! Before I got a chance to read the closed captioning on the news screen, my plane started boarding. Surely Steve didn’t know about this. He may have made a rash decision in taking Ana, but he wouldn’t do anything to actually harm our child….. as far as I knew, at least. Steve is a smart, caring and logical man. On the other hand, up until a few hours ago, I thought I knew everything about my husband. Apparently he has more skeletons in his closet than I thought. I couldn’t call him and tell him about this because I was getting on a plane. So now I had to sit on this plane for 2 hours and think about what that headline might have meant. f**k. Flight attendant? Is it too early for an airplane bottle of tequila? I hate flying. It smells bad, it takes forever, and you can’t help but to overhear the conversations of the people around you. I tried to close my eyes and just let the liquor take over until we landed. But as soon as I felt my blood pressure start to go down, I heard it. “So we have the boy that can bend metal, and the girl who controls animals? What about the glass-breaker and the fire starter? Are they still on their way to the school? Okay, keep your eye on them. We have to get to them first.” My eyes popped open and I tried to look around for whoever was talking. How was someone even talking on the phone? I tried not to be conspicuous about looking around, but he was talking about my child, and presumably, my husband was the ‘fire-starter’. Maybe the tequila had kicked in already and I was just imagining things. Since 9/11, flight crews were pretty adamant about not using a cell phone while the plane was in the air. What kind of special clearance did this guy have to talk to someone about hunting children? He stopped talking before I could find out who it was, so I was just looking around at all the blank faces of bored people waiting to get to their stop. I turned back around in my seat and got out my pen and notepad. I wrote down everything that I had seen and heard in the last hour. I didn’t want to forget anything when I saw Steve. This was just proof that we needed to keep our girl home and protected from people who would use her ability to hurt others. Or, even worse, people who wanted to hurt her for what she could do. There it was. The tequila. God, I’m such a lightweight. I only had 3 bottles…..or 4… I drifted off to sleep, glad that I wrote everything down. When I woke up, the plane was nearly empty. I fixed my ponytail and popped a piece of gum into my mouth, so Steve wouldn’t know that I was drinking. He always had something to say about my drinking. After I got my carry-on bag out of the overhead, someone grabbed it from me and then grabbed my arm. He spoke so that only I could hear him. It was the same voice from before, gravelly and frightening. “Keep walking. Calmly. Act as though we are together and do everything I say. I know exactly who you are and why you’re here. Listen to me and you may get to see your family again.” He wasn’t hurting me, but he did definitely have a firm grasp on my arm, so I knew better than to try and run away. I did what he said and we exited the plane and walked together into the airport. He let go of my arm and held my hand, so we would actually look like we were a couple, I suppose. In normal circumstances, I probably would have found this guy extremely attractive. He had an accent. English, or maybe Irish, I couldn’t tell at the moment. He had a beard, but not a thick beard, green eyes and curly brown hair. Oh man, I probably would have tried to drunkenly flirt with him if I hadn’t fallen asleep. Once we got out of anyone’s earshot, I asked him who he was. “My name is David. I work for an organization that has a very high interest in special abilities. I was on my way to find your husband and children and bring them to my bosses, until I saw you waiting for the airplane alone. I got the call that your husband had your daughter and was taking her to that school.” “Yeah, I’m on my way to meet them and bring them back home. How do you know anything about us? Are we on some sort of list? Is my daughter in danger?” “Yes she is, Wendy. I need you to take me to her. You cannot leave her at that school.” We stopped and he turned to look at me. Dear god, those eyes. I couldn’t decide if I was still drunk, or if I was just that mad at Steve, but something about this David guy made me want to just kiss him. This was a bad time for that. He was talking about my daughter. “The people I work for are trying to protect people like your daughter, your husband….your son.” Suddenly, I couldn’t have cared less about David’s eyes. “My son?! Simon’s not even two yet, we have no idea if he will have any abilities.” “He does. He can levitate things. And the older he gets the heavier things he’ll be able to move. Right now, it’s just his teddy bear or his pillow, but by the time he’s Anabel’s age, he’ll be able to lift up a car. Without our help, he could become a danger and the government will step in. They will take him away, throw him in a padded room and say it’s for his own good.” For a moment, I had forgotten how to breathe. How did he know all this? How long had my family been on his boss’s radar? I wasn’t even sure if I could trust this guy. Maybe he was the one ‘hunting’ kids with superpowers and they sent out their most attractive agent to convince me that he was on my side. “I need to sit down….” was all I could manage to pull out of my mouth. “I’m sorry, Wendy. We don’t have time for that. We have to get to the school before your husband and daughter arrive. If they get there before we do, it will be much more difficult to get them back. I already have a car rented, and you can sit down there. Time is very important right now, love.” If there’s one thing I adored about Anabel, it was that she was very mature for her age. She knew how to stand up for herself and be a big girl when she was scared. Her screaming was solely out of anger or frustration, never fear. She seemed so grown up for a six year old that sometimes I caught myself talking to her like a friend instead of like her mother. She always seemed to have this strange intuition about things as well. She knew Steve and I were fighting every time we did. She knew when Steve’s mother was coming around, and would ‘pretend’ to be sick, so she could stay in her room all day. Which, knowing Linda, was probably a good thing for her own sake. One snarky remark at Ana’s expense and I imagine there would have been glass everywhere. Driving in this strange man’s car, to a place I didn’t even know existed until a few months ago, I let my mind wander to all those times that Anabel surprised me with her maturity. Thinking about it made me realize that this entire time, I was angrier with Steve for taking her than I was worried for her safety. I knew she wasn’t in any harm. I don’t know how I knew it, but the thought of her being in danger hadn’t even crossed my mind. At least until I met David and he told me that the school was a bad place. About an hour into the drive, I finally turned to him and said “I need you to tell me everything that’s going on. Why is this school a bad place? Everything that Steve told me suggested that it was the best place for people like Anabel with the best people to teach her how to control herself. He said that if he had an opportunity like that when he was young, he might have told me about his ability when we met. What is the truth?” David sighed, and pulled over the car. “Listen to me, Wendy. The people at the school are collecting children with uniques so that they can train them to fight. We have found out that they want to use the children to start a war. They are only looking for the most powerful out there. I have already sent agents to your sister’s house to protect Simon. I was on my way to your home to move your family to safety when I saw you at the airport.” “But why now? We’ve known about Ana’s scream for three years and I didn’t even know this school existed until just a few months ago when Steve brought it up.” David looked at me with intensity in his eyes. Like I was supposed to have already figured something out. He was almost looking through me. “Wendy, did your husband ever tell you how he knew about this school? Did he ever mention that to you? Or did he just randomly mention it one day and decided that you needed to send Anabel there as soon as possible?” I hadn’t actually thought about that. Steve never mentioned how he found out about this school. I didn’t even know that there were other people out there with these kinds of abilities. I guess I was just naive in thinking that Ana was the only one. The thought of Simon being different wasn’t even an option to me. And since I thought I knew everything about the man I shared my life with for seven years, it never crossed my mind that he was the same. On top of being in denial about my entire family, I was so adamant about not sending Anabel away that I refused to do any research on this school; where it was, how long it had been open, the kinds of people that were there. I was the equivalent of a child with her fingers in her ears and stomping her feet every time Steve tried to talk to me about it. After a minute or so, I guess David got tired of waiting for me to say something, because he put the car back in drive and we were back on the road. I tried calling Steve, but I had no service. “How far away is this place?” I asked David. “We’re probably another two hours away. It’s very secluded.” He paused, as though he needed to say something else but couldn’t figure out how. “There’s something you’re not telling me. I can see it on your face.” “Yes. There is. I have only known you for a couple hours and I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to tell you….” he tapered off, trying to find the words. I couldn’t take the silence anymore. “What? Tell me what?!” “Wendy…. Your husband works for the school. Well… it’s not really a school. The people doing all this advertise it to people who feel like they’ve lost hope. Steve has been helping them collect children with abilities for years. The only reason he waited to take your daughter until now is because he believes that she’s powerful enough to do what they want with her. We’ve been keeping an eye on him for about ten years, but we haven’t been able to catch him. He was mostly inactive for the last two years or so, we thought he had stopped.” There was that spinning feeling again. David kept going on about the kinds of things that Steve had been doing and the kind of person he was. This man, who I had known since high school, who had slept by my side for seven years was a kidnapper. How is this possible? Now I was trying to find the words. I finally went with, “What are they trying to do?” I could tell David really didn’t want to hear that question, but he must have known that I would ask it eventually. This was my daughter, and eventually my son, he was talking about. He closed his eyes for a moment and finally spoke. “They want to take over the country. Maybe even the world. There are people everywhere who can make fire, smash glass, read minds, and so on. The men in charge of this operation have convinced your husband that this is the only way that he won’t feel like a burden to you, or anyone else in your family. He doesn’t feel like an outcast with these people. After the years of abuse and misunderstanding that he faced as a child, it didn’t take long to convince him that he needed to help get rid of everyone who wasn’t like him. Did you ever read Harry Potter growing up? It’s like that. There is someone at the top convincing these people who feel hopeless about themselves or their children that the only way to be accepted is if the world were nothing but them. There is a Voldemort out there and he’s gaining strength. That’s why we have to get there before Anabel does.” “Why Anabel, though? She is a glass-breaker. There must be people out there with more dangerous abilities than that.” I kept my eyes closed while we spoke. I wasn’t sure if it was the windy roads or this horrible subject we were talking about, but I was doing my best to keep the vomit down. “From what I’m told, breaking glass is only one of her abilities. And the only one that you’ve experienced. She has the potential to be the most powerful child in the world.” He kept driving in silence for a minute, maybe waiting for me to say something. I just couldn’t. This was all happening so fast. Yesterday morning, Anabel asked me for five dollars while I was washing dishes. Now, I was in the middle of nowhere with a man I had just met, racing to save her from helping Voldemort take over the world. What the hell was going on with my life? Steve How long had I been driving? Twelve hours….maybe thirteen. Anabel was being so patient in the backseat, playing with her toys and taking good naps. Part of me was still trying to talk myself out of this. I couldn’t count how many times I had almost called Wendy and told her to go back home and I would meet her there. Then I thought about Dr. Wells. He had a good plan. Anabel would never again be looked at like a freak. She would be revered, worshipped. And people like us wouldn’t have to hide our talents anymore. He assured me that once Anabel had arrived, then the process could begin. She was the key, even if she didn’t know it yet. But I had a feeling that she did know it. I could feel her instincts becoming stronger as we got closer we got to the school. It was almost as though she felt the presence of others like her. It’s taken a long time to gather the highest talents in the world. Years that I had to hide what I was doing from Wendy, telling her that I was on a business trip, or going to visit my mother in Colorado. I hated lying to her. Despite everything I had been doing, I really did love my wife and children. But she would never understand me, just like everyone else I have ever known. But Dr. Wells understood me. And he knew what needed to be done in order for me to feel accepted and like I belong. I didn’t have to hide myself around these people. And now Anabel would learn how to control herself. And as soon as she could control her glass-breaking, she could open herself up to her full potential. Even I didn’t know what she was capable of, but Dr. Wells has been telling me to bring Ana to him for a long, long time. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. She was my little girl. The turning point was a phone call I got from my mother about ten months ago. It had been a long time since I had heard from her, and I was pleased to hear from her out of the blue. For about five minutes. After the pleasantries were exchanged, the judgment started. “You know, Steven, I saw on the news that there is a hospital in D.C. that you can send the girl to. They specialize in illnesses like hers and they can fix her.” she said. I had heard all this before. You are just sick, but you can be fixed. I had been hearing that my entire life, which is why I never told anyone about my fire. Then, ten years ago, I got a call from Wells. He told me he knew all about me and that I wasn’t alone. That I didn’t need ‘fixing’. I was a higher race and that I needed to find others out there to join with him and prove ourselves to the world. I was very hesitant and skeptical at first, ignoring his calls and emails, but when the first few uniques came out publicly and I witnessed the fear and bigotry those poor people faced, I knew that Wells was right. We needed to show them that we are the rightful leaders of this world. We wouldn’t have been given these powers if we were made to hide in the shadows with them. Still, though, I had to keep myself under control until I knew how to explain it all the Wendy. Anabel was the key to the unique salvation and redemption, and I just knew that Wendy would see that once she met all the others. Or….at least I hoped she would. She could be a little irrational sometimes. Hopefully she didn’t have anything to drink on the plane. Her drinking had gotten worse since learning about Ana. I understood it, but that doesn’t mean that I was okay with it. She was using it as a crutch to be able to handle her child. Sounded too familiar to me. That’s exactly what my father did because he didn’t want to understand me or even try to help me. I needed to figure out what I was going to do if Wendy became difficult. Wells told me that I could lock her in the basement of the school. We needed Anabel for the plan. And no one was going to stop us. It seemed wrong to me to lock her up, but I would have done it if she didn’t give me a choice. Even if I had to lose my own wife, it was a small price to pay to pave the way for my children to become accepted as the superior creatures they are. We turned onto the long driveway towards headquarters. We were finally there. I could feel the weight lifting off my shoulders. “Anabel. Wake up, baby. We made it to school.” I tried to use my most soothing Dad voice so that she would retain her trust in me for as long as possible. She may only be six, but she might be one of the smartest and intuitive children I had ever known. What happened this morning kind of explained the intuition, and explained even more why we needed her. “We made it, Daddy? Are you sure we can’t just go home? I’m scared, Daddy.” “Don’t be scared, princess. This is the best place for you. You are going to help a lot of people with your powers. You have to trust me.” I said to her, still trying to remain calm. As we pulled in to the parking lot of the school, there she was. Wendy was standing there waiting for me. With some tall guy standing next to her. Oh hell… it was David Graham. That intrusive prick. I thought he had lost interest in me; I hoped he had been shot or something. He was standing too close to my wife and he was here to stop me from doing what needs to be done. I hate that guy. “Hello, Mr. Shields,” he said. He seemed to be gleaming with pride that he thought he had caught me. Like I was some kind of criminal. “You need to rethink this. Anabel can’t stay here. The entire world will be in danger if she learns to tap into her full potential.” I looked at Wendy. I don’t think I have ever seen her that angry. She was looking for Anabel in the back of the car. She refused to look at me, but she started towards me. She was going to ruin everything. I really didn’t want to pull out the gun. “Wendy, stop. I don’t want to do this, but you’re not going to stop me. I’m taking her inside, and she is going to rule the world.” “Steve! What the hell are you doing?! You just pulled a f*****g gun on your wife!? Have you lost your mind? I’m taking my child and going home!” She said that, but she didn’t move again. I heard the back door of my car open and shut. “Ana, come here. We have to go inside, honey. Your mom is coming with us.” “Okay, Daddy….this is scary.” “I know, but you’ll be safe inside.” “Why do you have a gun? Are you going to shoot Mommy?” She started to cry and run towards Wendy. I felt myself start to lower the gun and I knew it was her. I grabbed her arm before she could get to her mother. Keeping the gun pointed at Wendy and David, I pulled Ana inside the building. This was it. I had finally brought in the most powerful child the world would ever know. This was the beginning of the revolution.