The Wolflan King

Reflections

Waking with a start, I flew out of bed and jumped into the air. My fists were up, throwing punches while a strange language seemed to barrel out of my mouth. My heart threatened to abandon my body, eager for a host a tad less complicated. 

"Lalaina, Lalaina!"

Suddenly coming out of my stupor, the ambiance turned cold and exhausted. 

Crap.

Another dream. Why does it always feel like life or death? 

"Girl, are you okay? Was it another nightmare?"

I opened my mouth to speak, but no words would come. Instead, hysterical sobs rocked me to my very core. Crumbling down next to my bedside, I felt defeated. 

I can't do this anymore. 

"Oh, Johanna, why can't I be normal? These night terrors are taking me over, and soon I doubt there'll be anything left. So what am I going to do?"

"Ssh, Laina, I've got you. We've got each other. Think of nothing else."

As she pulled me in, I caught a glimpse of a large mirror, unable to escape a very disheveled reflection. Why wasn't it covered? Every mirror is just a medium for communication. Darkness lies within, and it's coming for us all. 

Staring for a moment too long, the glass began to swirl, bubble, and transform. Then, a veiled gust ushered in a billowing cadence of clouds salivated in crimson glee within one blink. 

"No!"

Bolting from the small apartment, I left my roommate, and the smell of leftover take out at my heels. 

When will this stop? Today is my birthday, for crying out loud, am I not allowed even one instance of peace?

Lalaina...

Laina..

Chaotically spinning on this merry-go-round of horror, a familiar sensation began to feather my snow-blushed forearms. Oh, how deadly and seductive they stroked. Instinctively squeezing my eyes shut, even now, I felt drawn to those frightening red beams that burrowed forcibly. 

These are the same ones that lay beyond the Red Sea. 

They said it was only a fantasy. Just a reaction to the trauma I've endured. 

They were wrong.

One wrong move, and I'll be right back in that asylum. I'm so tired of being alone and misunderstood. It's maddening. 

I have no one.

I command you to open your eyes.

His voice was strapping, reverberating the undeniable undertone of a superior alto. Across the sands of time, he had finally found me. Perhaps my detachment called to him like a beacon in the darkness. A siren call, or maybe it was just another inevitable circumstance. 

I left behind nothing more than a trail of long blue hair intertwined with complementing shades of day and night. Yet, from the very beginning, I caught the attention of the most prominent minds in medicine and science. 

There were no boundaries in the name of progress, no stone left unturned, no matter how monstrous. 

As glowing cerulean tears licked my rosy yet defined cheekbones, the wind moaned in ornery displeasure. I wouldn't even risk a glance, no matter how tempting it was. 

The universe had always been stubborn. And here we were once again with the ethereal fist closing, anxious to grasp its every desire. As helpless as an ever-predictable damsel, I was about to finally surrender and accept the fate of the cards when I felt the hand of a stranger sweep away this typhoon of legends. 

Like watercolor freshly splashed across tightened burlap, all the pigments swirled and blurred my vision to irrelevance. Almost as if a haze of smoke pilfered every swell of my curvaceous body, I ached for an ultimate release. 

"Hurry!"

The voice was soft and feminine, but this urgent panic that was laden within quickened my pace. 

It was a valiant effort, and no one denies that. But it was futile in the end. 

During our pursuit behind the hidden alleyways of this godless city, a glinting light caught the corner of my cloudy glass of eye. One look was all it took. 

Objects in the mirror are often closer than they appear. 

I always knew those words meant so much more than a simple car side warning. Funny how that same mirror would change the very fabric holding my life together. 

How ironic.