Human
She was human, wasn’t she? She had memories of her mother, her father. She remembered the time where her older sister pushed her when they were skateboarding and she had rolled down the cement hill with her leg bleeding. Her sister, Willa, had hugged her and sobbed that she was sorry as her grubby hands tried to wipe the blood away. Eliza still had the scar on her knee; the twisted pattern of silvery lines across her brown skin. Yet, she was human right? These memories, these feelings, her appearance. All of it was human. Right?
“What are you.” Her mother breathed out horrified. She was holding Eliza’s little brother to her chest, her body hunched over him as if to protect him.
“It’s me.” Eliza pleaded. “Mom it’s me.” Even as she said this though, Eliza didn’t feel like herself. There were bright, luminescent lines spiraling around her body. It started with her middle fingers, twisting around and up her arms and shoulders, and up her collar bone, up her neck to rest at her temples. There were dots sprinkled across her face like freckles, but they flickered like lights.
“I don’t know you. I only have two children.” Her mom pleaded, hugging little Kent closer to her. Eliza couldn’t understand why her mother was saying such things. She was her daughter. She remembered being sung to sleep by her mother. She remembered when she was sick, her mom would sweep the hair from her sweaty forehead. This was her mother wasn’t she; she was her daughter, wasn’t she?
“Mom,” Eliza coaxed, her tone taking on a hysterical edge to it. “Please, it’s me, Eliza!”
“I don’t know you!” Her mother shouted in a way that Eliza had never heard before. “I don’t know you! I only have two kids. Willa and Kent! I don’t know who you are and I want you out of my house! Get out! Get out!” She was screaming and the pain in Eliza’s head sharpen from her screams.
“Listen please!” Eliza shouted, but her mom kept speaking over her. Kept yelling and with every yell, her head ached more and more. Flashes of images behind her eyes appeared and disappeared. The space, large and vast and home. Darkness, but not in a sense of color, because the galaxy was not dark. It was littered with stars, nebulas, and debris. Colors that swirled and burned. The metal ship. Home. Her parents. Her real parents. They were like her. Light that spiraled around their body like veins. Her mother, the real mother, leaning down to cup her face. Speaking in a language and Eliza never heard before, but it was like an old song that was lost in memory. Be safe. Protect yourself. The rest will find you. They tucked her away in a small area. She was breathing heavily, her little heart pounding away in her chest. A bubble appeared around her, soft and elastic looking, but when she placed her hand on it; it was harder than any metal she felt.With one last look into the yellow eyes of her family and she was launched into space. The galaxy was frightening as much as it was beautiful. She was in awe of the stars and planets that surrounded her. She looked to left and right to see more bubbles launching out of ships. The children. They were being sent away. Being saved. Then she entered an atmosphere and her bubble was crumbling away and it crashed into the terrain planet. Dirt and debris erupted from the ground and her protective bubble flickered before extinguishing. Her lungs seized from the foreign air, her skin prickled and she felt like she was dying, but like shifting tile, her flesh flared from the inside out to adjust to its new environment.
“What happened?” A voice whispered.
“Olive, don’t,” Another warned and her yellow eyes met two inhabitants of this new world. She took them in and her appearance rippled like a stone in water and adjusted to the appearance of them. Her gleaming veins sunk into her flesh and disappeared her skin darken from its powdery green color. Her yellow eyes, browned and pupil rounded. She mimicked their appearance. She projected memories, emotions of maternal and paternal instincts. Memories she copied from their own and inserted herself into them, but the crash landing and the throbbing in her head she projected not only to them, but onto herself also, wiping way her memories of her true self and of her home world.
“Eliza,” her mother admonished and picked up the toddler off the ground. “Don’t wander off.”
Eliza groaned as she bent over, her fingers threading through her hair. “What am I?” Her mother? The woman was still screaming at her.
“Stop, yelling!” Eliza roared and suddenly Olive was being flung across the room. Kent screamed and sobbed as his mother’s arms left him. Olive’s body hit the wall with sickening thud. Her head hung loosely to the side as the dry wall around her cracked like a spiderweb. There was blood where her head hit the wall.
“Mom!” Kent sobbed and shakily crawled to his mom. The eight year old curled near his mother. He clung to her body. Eliza staggered back in horror. She was dead. She knew it, she couldn’t hear her breathing or her beating heart. Eliza could hear a calculating part of her mind whispering that she cracked her head open, but that wasn’t the cause of death. The force of Olive hitting the wall had snapped her neck. Eliza felt like she was going to vomit. She felt sick. The pillows off the ground began to float in the air, the remote, the table, the chairs. Everything began to lift off the ground. She had to get away, she needed to get away. Eliza ran from the room and once she left the house, she could hear everything fall to the ground. Her mind was spinning; she was hyperventilating. Oh God, she killed her mother. Where was she going to go? She need to leave. She began to run toward the exit of their neighborhood, but a hand snagged her arm and pulled her to the side of a house. Body strung tight, she was ready to fight, but she saw the familiar eyes of Evan Dominguez.
“Evan?” She stuttered.
“Fuck Eliza,” He swore. “You really fucked this one up.”
“I,” She was confused and Evan smirked as his hazel eyes flickered to yellow, silted eyes.
“Yeah, I’m like you. I was supposed to keep an eye on you. We all change when we hit puberty. Welcome to the club, but you really made a mess of this.” Evan sighed and ran his hand through his curly, dark hair. “We need to get out of here. When our true selves come to we kind of black out places.” He grinned that pretty grin that would make her heart clench. “Not to brag or anything, but I blacked out a whole damn city, but you kid? Fuck your parents must have been someone. You blacked out this town and the next damn two.” There was the sound of a siren and the loud engines. He pushed her lightly against the wall. “We got to go.” Evan said, suddenly serious.
“Where?” Eliza felt her stomach clench. Where do Aliens like them go?
“To HQ, dork.” Evan rolled his eyes as they bled to human, hazel eyes. “We need to go before the gov sends their people after us again.” Evan gripped her wrist tightly and before Eliza could say anything a police officer came around the corner, gun drawn.
“Freeze, hands where I can see them.” He ordered and Eliza was ready to comply, but Evan just smirked. He held his hand up, but his left hand was still around her wrist as he held both of them up. Then, both of their veins shone brightly and like fireflies, their bodies disintegrated in light swirling away.
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