The Contract

Chapter 4 - Contract

Reminiscences. Recollections. Scenes flashed rapidly and vividly in my head. One moment I saw my father proudly cradling me and my mother's weary and satisfied smile, and the next I saw a younger me sitting on the couch watching television. It was like watching my life play back in third person in my brain as my eyes tried to register the lifeless form of my father. I could feel Melia hugging me from behind as I felt myself utter an anguished cry that I couldn't hear. In the depths of my memories resurfacing, I started recalling an accident that I had never recalled so graphically before. It happened when I was seven, and the uncanny sensation of déjà vu engulfed me no matter how hard I tried to fight it.

I had been so excited to go to the basketball court that day after watching yet another engrossing match on TV; I could barely contain my excitement and enthusiasm when my mom let me head off to the court by myself for the first time. Feeling like a grown up as I sprinted across the road, it was took late by the time I noticed it. I wanted to warn myself, to shriek out at my younger self to watch the road before he ran, but my voice wouldn't carry in this distant memory. He bolted across the road, indifferent to the fact that I was waving at him to stop from the other side.

A large stowaway truck was trying to get away; the police hot in pursuit after them. The truck didn't care that a child was sprinting across the road, hitting my young, excited body with full force as I saw myself fly, flinging like a rag doll to the sidewalk, my body scratched and my legs twisted in angles even the best gymnasts wouldn't be able to achieve. My stomach churned and nausea set in as I saw the bone of my knee protrude from the torn skin and tendons. It was like watching a horror movie, except this was real and I was watching my younger self tormented in unbearable agony on the concrete pavement.

I had remembered my vision growing dark, and my body feeling numb with pain when the truck hit me at that point in time. The flashing lights and piercing siren reminded me I was still alive, and the rest of the scenario was lost in the murky depths up until when I was in a hospital room. Or at least, what I was seeing in front of me made me determine that I was in a hospital. Another distant memory that I was experiencing from the sidelines again, much like the recollection where I had witnessed a truck collide with my younger self from third person.

My frail seven-year-old form laid on the bed with multiple bandages covering his body, his legs still bent awkwardly as a thick splint was set on my knee to straighten it. My parents were holding hands and sobbing as I heard the doctor say I would never be able to walk properly again, and that an amputation may have to occur as the tendons connecting the top right knee to the lower knee had been extremely damaged.

Sweat started to bead on my forehead as I wasn't sure where this was going. I didn't know that my injury was this serious; my parents always told me before that a miracle had happened and somehow, some way, my tendons had mended over the span of a week. Was this a false world I was existing in now? More importantly, did any of this even happen in the first place? My reverie was interrupted by the grating sound of a chair being moved, and I noticed my father excuse himself from the room.

Not wanting to be stuck in a room looking my mother's miserable face and my younger self's face contorted in pain, I trailed behind my father, unsure of where he was going. Perhaps to the bathroom, I suppose. It was ominously quiet in the corridors; I could feel the hairs on the back stand up in alarm, as though someone, no - something was watching me. No nurses, no doctors, no patients, nothing. It was the dead of the night; I could tell by the darkness threatening to seep into the windows aligned at the side of the corridors.

It appeared that my father's destination in mind was just the bathroom, just as I had assumed earlier. I was just about to turn around to head back to the room my younger self was in when I heard my dad speaking softly and hastily with someone. Who was that? I tried to go through the wall and see just who my father was talking to, but it was like walking right into a brick wall; I smacked my head inadvertently with a painful thud. Even though I was existing in my memory right now, I still couldn't do anything out of the ordinary like walk through walls. It was as if I was really living in my memory; I could feel the door, the walls, and the floor. Strange. At this point, I was immersed in the very depths of my memories; unable to see my father's deceased body anymore. Not that I enjoyed seeing a corpse, but I felt disconnected from the rift of the real world now.

Hell, I would've mistaken where I was existing in as the real world, had I not come across my sleeping body in the room earlier. Perhaps another dimension? No, I doubted it. Presuming I had blacked out would be the most logical reasoning as to why I was breathing in the very pits of memories I shouldn't even come close to remembering. I had never experienced these events before in my life, yet I could recall the scenario with such vividness. Was I dreaming? I wouldn't know until, or if I woke up.

I peered through the small slit of a hole between the door and the wall, and was taken aback by what I saw. My dad, conversing with someone who was fair-skinned, extremely tall, and didn't look quite human - his skin was covered in rippling warts. And to add to that - I recognized that he was also somewhat translucent, just like the shape that had stabbed my father! Rage coursed through my veins as my blood boiled, but I couldn't do anything. They probably wouldn't even notice me even if I had ripped the door apart to shreds. I had to wait this out, and listen.

"– Lord Adro, please, my son loves basketball, you must help him repair his legs. I would be a fraud of a father if I didn't at least make an effort to try and salvage my son's dreams."

The man known as Adro snickered and sneered at my father's words, as though he was communicating with someone worth less than dust to him.

"Your dreams, you mean. Your son is your hope to get out of poverty; I'm sure that's part of the reason why. You are a fool to summon me for such a trivial matter like the legs of your son. Why, I have done far greater deals than this; I've given much more and received much, much more. Who do you take me for? If you want something granted, you had better prepared something to give to me - something... special."

His voice, a serpentine rasp with a mix of mischief and lisp. He spoke in a foreign accent, one not known to man. For the first time in my whole life, I saw my father, a man who always fought for whatever he deemed right and never backed down trembling before someone who literally radiated power. All of a sudden, Lord Adro's eyes had a strange glint in them.

"I know, you can give me that thing you have over there on your chest for the transaction to be complete."

It was hard to see through the door; I was squinting as hard as I could, but it was difficult to see much through a small slit. Huffing in annoyance, I could only resort to merely eavesdropping to the conversation.

"This holds all my family's values and traditions in it! It's been passed on from generation to generation. Lord, please, something else, something more reasonable." My father pleaded.

The entity started to growl, obviously displeased at my father's reluctance to give up something that he desired, and stepped closer to him, causing my father to inch closer to the wall behind in fear.

"Okay! Okay. Okay, I'm willing to give you this pendant." Adro's mouth curled into a sly grin as he reached for the crystal clear emerald talisman that my father always wore on his neck. I didn't know why or how that pendant had so much value to the unhuman Adro, but my father still upheld the possession of the emerald amulet to this day.

It was as though a light bulb of information had exploded inside my head, and a sudden comprehension set in. I now knew why our family constantly moved about; or at least I had a hunch why. Not sure how my father managed to salvage our family's sacred emerald medallion and managed to cheat this Adro, who at this point was still an enigma to me, but cheating someone who made me feel just as squeamish as the strange dreams I had was a remarkable feat. Who exactly was he, and what kind of power could he wield to be able to perform the unthinkable – repairing my seven-year-old self's legs? From what I observed of my legs in the room, it looked bad; almost impossible to recover from.

"But –" and as my father said this he yanked the amulet back out of reach away from the greedy clutches of Adro. My father continued. "– only if you'll repair my son's legs before I give you this amulet."

Adro's grin quickly turned into a sneer and then a snarl as he resumed snarling at my father, although this time the snarl was more of desperation than fury, like he was yearning to get custody of that piece of jewelry around my father's neck.

"Fine. A deal's a deal. But – if I catch that you've deceived me…"

He pointed at my father and then at the direction of the room my younger self was recuperating in.

"I'll kill you right in front of your son."

I had to step back as my father exited the washroom, sweat beading on his forehead. Since it was twelve years ago, you'd expect my dad to look younger, but it was the opposite in fact. He looked just like an old man - his complexion was extremely pale, as though something, or someone was sapping his energy.

Queasiness found its way into my body once more as my vision starting to spiral out of control. I would never get used to the dysfunctional method of which my memories shifted about by. Shutting my eyes to prevent my head from spinning any further, I opened them once the whirling stopped, and my sight was greeted by a sudden, intense situation at my house. It was a messy sight; books and picture frames were sprawled on the floor and tables and chairs were flipped upside down. A few luggage bags were present, enough to carry everything important in our house. The lights were turned off, and it was almost pitch black save for the moonlight filtering through the closed curtains.

I didn't see my younger self around, and I definitely didn't recall being witness to the verbal fighting of my parents; the younger me had probably been staying at an uncle's place or something, because there was no way an argument of that scale would go unnoticed by me. The topic they seemed to be arguing about was how stupid my father was, risking the lives of his whole family for the sake of my younger self's legs.

"For god's sake - I'm pregnant right now and you suddenly uproot us from our home? What is this? I get that you're concerned about our son's future - our future, but this is no way to go about it!" My mother shrieked at a frenzied pitch I had never heard coming from her before, not even in the hundred or so previous quarrels the two of them had.

"Listen, I get that you don't approve of the decision I made." My father had a calm front, one that I had seen before he stated some important fact to support his point. "I don't think you know how discriminated our son is. He's a half-blooded child - a Caucasian African-American. Basketball is one of the only things I have seen that make him smile. He doesn't belong at school, for real! He wants to mix with the black kids and the white kids, but they both don't welcome him! What do you think being a cripple would do to him? It would utterly destroy him. He'd be a depressed child. Do you want a depressed, disabled son?"

My mother kept quiet, and my father stopped his rant, believing that he had gotten his point across. Heavy breathing was exchanged, but no words were. It was as though the both of them had reluctantly agreed to settle the argument. A knocking on the door broke the tense atmosphere, and my mother went over to see who it was, but my father hastily pulled her back.

"It's him." My father whispered in a hush, anxious tone. "We should leave at the back before he discovers we were even here."

My mother looked equally as panicked. "Didn't you say he was a god or something? Why wouldn't he just slam the door down, regardless of consequence?"

"If I had to guess, it would be because a thing like this wouldn't go unnoticed even in the eyes of us mortals. They'd see a strange phenomenon eerily similar to what previous research have shown and stated about him. We humans would start to question the existence of gods themselves." My father murmured. "Let's get out before he notices we're actually down here."

My mother gulped. "But to where? A big city, or a slum?"

"We'll head over to a big city first, then move to somewhere more quiet when we get the chance. We'll have to try and sustain an apartment in New York, no matter how severe the financial difficulty may be."

My parents embraced solemnly. It just occurred to me that I had never seen them hug it out after an argument before. Something about watching the two of them left me with a heavy heart, because I knew that my father wouldn't be present in the future anymore.

"My, my. Would you like to see that happen again in the future?"

Startled, I whipped around at the sound of a familiarly unfamiliar voice. There was no one but myself in the dimensional plane of the memories I was currently existing in. Or was there? I tried to cover up my moment of vulnerability by putting on a brave front in the face of whoever was nearby.

"Who are you, and what the hell are you doing here?" I tried to threaten, but my voice broke slightly.

Hearing a chuckle, I clenched my fist. I didn't like to be mocked, much less by someone I didn't know. The bearer of this voice stepped out of the shadows, and I was greeted with unpleasant memories that I had experienced vividly in the recent dreams I had been having.

"You." I could feel a growl bubbling up from inside the depths of my throat, but I tried to force it down and play cool. This wasn't like me. Not one to easily get angry, I was surprised at my unforeseen growing rage building up. Almost at my limit now, I really felt like releasing and venting my anger and frustration out on something. Be cool, Brad.

He grinned widely. "Me."

Taking a step back, I was horrified at the fact that this figure was standing in front of me in the flesh. Even though it probably wasn't real, even though it probably was just a fragment in my subconscious brimming up to the surface of this memory I was existing in, my body grew rigid and the hair on my back stood up straight. I should've been sweating due to the intense heat radiated from him, but I felt cold freezing down to the bone.

"Miss me?" The grin stretched up to the very corners of his face until the point where no human could actually smile to, giving me the creeps.

Crimson, blood red hair. He towered over me by at least half a head, and his lanky build from before was replaced by something you would see at a bodybuilding competition. The boy from before who looked like an average boy who played at the park was now a fully grown man who looked like he crushed windpipes as a hobby. The most notable feature of his that almost instantaneously reminded me of his identity was his devilish, burning red eyes.

What in God's name did I do, or anyone in my ancestral lineage do, for me to get here? As if being a bystander to the death of a parent and spectating the surreal events hidden in the past whilst existing in a strange memory that seemed so realistic wasn't bad enough, now I come face to face without yet another individual with power. Someone I identified in my mind as the Devil himself. I didn't know what to do or what to say, and was contemplating just making a run for it when the redhead powerful being in front of me spoke up.

"You haven't answered my question. Would you like to see that happen again in the future, or not?"

At a loss for words, I hesitated and wondered what the hell was he referring to.

"Are you dense or something?" His voice raised a pitch louder, and burning, intense heat emanated from him, scorching my body with a searing blast of wind that stung. "I'm talking about your parents - together again!"

I don't know what happened to me, but something inside just seemed to snap in half. Feeling as though my eyes were going to burst with all the red that hindered my vision, I was more than a little irritated by his question with all the information I had never known about bursting through the seams in my recollection. All I ever wanted was a relatively normal, peaceful life where I worked hard and reaped the rewards of my effort; all distorted ever since the day my father did the deal with Adro.

And my parents - they never told me what was going on. They could've given me a sign, a warning, something! I always hated change, especially when it came from an external source. Moving to a different state, meeting new, different people, playing on a different basketball court - I despised all that. Never one to voice out my opinions as I knew my parents had it harder, I guess I wanted something more from my parents. Their attention. Their love. And most importantly, their trust.

"That's right, Bradley. Let it all out. Let the seething fury escape from your body so you can think straight for once in your life, you useless twerp. All you do is whine, just like a pathetic infant who complains even though he has his parents supporting him with their breaking bones. Go on, cry, like the baby you are!" His face twisted into one of extreme amusement, and at that point I just couldn't take it anymore.

Screaming with an animal-like wrath, I balled my fist up and lunged for his face. The next thing my mind could register was that I was lying on the ground of my memory, coughing out blood. The left side of my face felt swollen, and through my hazy vision, I saw a few bloody teeth lying on the floor beside me. But as excruciating as it was, nothing hurt more than knowing that my family had been torn apart by that rippling butterfly effect.

We would never be the same again. Soothing, cooling water cascaded down my cheeks as the saltiness burned the bloody wounds in my mouth. If only I had known about the deal my father made earlier. If only I had read the message on my table more properly, and not rushed away to college just like an i***t. I hated being weak; I hated the tears uncontrollably flowing from within, and I hated the fact that I just couldn't change anything.

I don't know just how long I laid there on the floor, crying my eyes out. Whatever our modern society cruelly forced upon me as a male just crumbled all right down. As a boy, I had always been taught to hold back the tears, mainly because it was an extremely miserable thing to do, and that only girls could do it. But this time, I just couldn't stop myself from weeping. My vision was blurry. It was difficult to breathe, with all the mucus clogging up my nose and mouth. The stinging agony from the blow dealt by the Devil earlier hurt, but it could never hurt as much as my soul did.

A hand found its way to my line of sight; the same weather beaten hand I had seen twice in my dreams. Dreams that seemed so distant ahead from this memory.

"I get your pain. And that's why I want to offer you a contract."

Wiping both of my eyes so I could see more clearly again, I forced myself to stare right in the eyes of the Devil, curious as to what he had to offer. It was extremely difficult to speak in a hoarse voice, and my body felt drained of fluid - particularly my eyes. So this dehydration was crying. As much as I hated this new sensation, I have to admit that my chest felt lighter, and the load on my shoulder was no more.

"What's in it for me?" I croaked.