Fanfiction: Origin - Part Two
“It wasn’t human.”
“I know.”
“Then what was it?” Kelly asked, her hands shaking from her close encounter with death. They’d made it safely to the apartment and were now slowly climbing the stairs, exhausted from running for blocks and blocks. Faith’s back ached, and Kelly had some scratches on her face. “It jumped off a three-story building and wasn’t even hurt. That’s impossible.”
“I know,” Faith said again, taking off her beanie and letting her brown hair fall around her face. “I saw, too. Did you see its face at all?”
Kelly shuddered. “Yeah, it was…all messed up. Scary.”
“What are you going to tell your parents?” Faith said, pointing at her friend’s scratched face.
“Oh, I don’t know, a cat got me or something.”
Reaching the third floor, the girls exited the stairway and went down the hall to room 314. Faith took the key out from her pocket and slowly turned the lock, hoping that her mother wasn’t inside. When she had turned the lock all the way and quietly began to peak her head into the living room, the door was suddenly pulled inward, startling both girls.
“Where have you been?” Jesse demanded, scornfully glaring at Faith.
Sure that honesty would be the best course, yet scared of the repercussions, Faith just looked up at her mother and blinked. She could smell alcohol coming in waves, and it made her want to be sick.
“We went—” Faith began, but Jesse cut her off.
“Get in here!”
With that Jesse literally pulled Faith through the doorway, almost sending her to the ground in the process. Kelly was still standing out in the hallway, unable to get involved, but still a part of the scene because Jesse neglected to shut the door. Kelly wanted to run away, run all the way back to her parents, but she couldn’t go outside by herself again. The thing might still be out there. So she was forced to stay and watch what was to become another horrible memory for her best friend.
Faith grabbed her little beanie in both hands, holding it close to her chest like a shield. “We went to the park, mom,” she tried again.
Jesse stood over her nine-year-old daughter, feeling herself grow furious.
“What have I told you about going to the park by yourself, Faith?” she said coldly.
“I’m not supposed to go there by myself because it’s dangerous,” Faith responded, evenly meeting her mother’s gaze without flinching.
“So you disobeyed me,” Jesse said, folding her arms over her chest. “You’re going to be punished for this.”
“But you weren’t here to take us, and you promis—”
Faith was silenced as Jesse cruelly slapped her across the face. In the hallway, Kelly flinched and turned away.
“Are you calling me a liar now, too?” Jesse nearly shouted, grabbing Faith tightly by the shoulders. She screamed into her daughter’s face, “You ungrateful little bitch! Who feeds you? Who clothes you? Who?!”
“Y-you do,” Faith quietly said, eyes filled with tears.
“Oh yeah, go ahead and cry,” Jesse sneered, alcohol coursing through her body. “Cry because you’re just a little fucking disappointment to me.”
Now Faith really did start crying, an uncontrollable sobbing that shook her body and made her want to die. How could her mother say these things? After all the good grades, and all the hard work?
“But I got good grades on my report c—”
This time Faith was slapped so hard that she fell to the ground, her face stinging, tears running down her pretty face.
“Don’t change the subject!” Jesse yelled, roughly pulling Faith’s hand. She literally dragged Faith across the carpet and into her room, where she left her daughter crying on the floor in pain and guilt. “You stay in your room and think about what you’ve done!” And with that, Jesse slammed Faith’s door loudly. Muffled sobs could be heard through the heavy wood.
Kelly didn’t dare ask to use the phone to call her parents. Jesse shut the front door as Faith’s only friend stood there motionless in shock.
The following morning, when Faith had enough courage to come out of her room, she found her mother passed out on the couch, an empty glass lying close by on the floor. Mixed feelings drifted through her mind, along with troubling images of violence and hurt. Last night was not the first time that Faith had been slapped, but never before had such a strong feeling of embarrassment accompanied the memory. Faith knew that Kelly had seen, and that hurt even more than the slaps from her own mother. Why did Jesse have to do it like that? Was she purposely trying to ruin Faith’s only friendship? Scared that Kelly might not ever want to come over again, and still frightened of her mother’s wrath, Faith crept silently into the bathroom and confronted her own reflection. The tangled brown hair framed a sad little face, a face that still had a nasty red mark from last night’s punishment.
Faith tried to smile at herself and failed miserably. She tried once more and succeeded, but then thought that maybe she looked better with the frown.
Three quarters of an hour later, after she’d washed up, Faith placed her good report card on the couch next to her mother and walked out the front door, needing to get away from the apartment for a while. It was Saturday, the first day of winter break, and even though she had no school, her mom probably wouldn’t remember that until hours later, at the earliest. Stepping down the stairs, she got to the first floor and exited the building, finding herself outside in an extremely gloomy day. Much of the snow from the storm had melted, and patches of dirty street were showing through the white cover. The gray sky was moving by quickly overhead, the clouds tumbling and wrestling with each other as they sailed away. Faith experimentally opened her mouth and exhaled, slightly pleased when it still produced a tiny cloud of its own.
With no motivation to come out of her room this morning, she had taken the liberty of sleeping in, and the result of that could be easily spotted in the increased numbers of people walking by, many more than when she usually walked to school. There seemed to be some kind of fierce urgency on most of the faces, as if they were all going somewhere important. Noticing that several people were clutching newspapers and reading them intently, and in a few instances, even pointing and conversing with one another about the front page, Faith took herself a short distance away from the apartment building so that she could see the front page of the newspaper for herself. Easily finding the bright green dispenser but unable to provide it with the required quarter, Faith peered through the wet glass at the display copy, searching the headlines for the thing that had everyone so excited.
The only thing she found interesting was a picture of a dead man face-down in the snow. A small line of blood could be spotted creeping from his body. Faith read the headline to herself: Man Murdered by Unknown Assailant. Slightly confused about why this particular murder was so special, considering that crime ran fairly rampant throughout south Boston, she used her fourth grade reading skills to scan the opening paragraphs of the article itself. It seemed like the man had been killed at about six in the evening; body left on the snow-covered sidewalk; a pistol and shell casings had been found near the scene. Nothing there particularly caught Faith’s attention, and she was about to give up and go back home when her eye caught the very last sentences of the article.
Victim apparently died from two unidentified neck wounds and severe blunt trauma to the torso. Police have no suspects at this time, but claim the internal injuries and broken ribs the victim sustained could not possibly have been inflicted by a normal person. The victim’s gun was fired several times moments before his death, but no stray bullets were found, leaving detectives baffled.
Faith’s mind flashed back to the previous night, to the thing that leapt off a three-story building, stood up, and chased her through the darkness. She remembered the gang member, remembered the shots that were fired. He had saved the girls’ lives…and now he was dead, killed by whatever it was that could somehow not be killed by gravity or by bullets. The gang member might not have been the noblest man in the city, but he had given his life to protect Faith and Kelly from those horrible glowing eyes.
Suddenly afraid, Faith stepped quickly away from the newspaper dispenser. Checking to make sure that the thing was nowhere to be found on any rooftops or sidewalks, she ran back home, dodging pedestrians as she went. Reaching her building less than a minute later, she took out her key and frantically went inside, closing the door behind her. The silence of the stairwell was equally as disturbing, however, and she wasted no time in running all the way up the stairs to the apartment, constantly checking over her shoulder. If that creature had killed the gang member, it might still be after her, too, and that thought scared her more than anything she had ever known. True, Chris was often an object of terror in her life, and Jesse was beginning to become the same way, but they were still people. Human. Faith was certain that Chris, for all his drunken posturing, could not get shot twice and simply walk away, and she was equally as certain that Jesse wouldn’t be able to jump from a rooftop without taking a trip to the hospital or morgue.
So what was it, then?
As she silently opened the door, being careful not to wake her mother, Faith’s mind worked furiously, trying to figure out a solution. She couldn’t tell Jesse; that was out of the question. Bad enough that Faith had been at the park with Kelly, but to have secret knowledge about a murder was infinitely worse. Who else could she go to for help? After some minutes thinking in her room with the door closed, Faith had come up with no names, but she knew that she needed help of some kind. Even if she did happen to find help, who would believe the fantastic tale of a nine-year-old girl, a story of an invincible monster with glowing yellow eyes? Maybe if she waited until she was ten? No, that wouldn’t be any more convincing.
What a way to start out my Christmas break.
Lying on her perfectly made bed, staring at the blank ceiling, Faith’s mind eventually started wandering away from her problem. And just when she had nearly forgotten about the creature altogether, her thoughts accidentally stumbled upon the one person who might be able to shed some insight into last night’s strange events. In fact, Faith was amazed she hadn’t thought of the idea earlier. Who was the smartest, nicest adult that she knew?
Getting up, Faith went over to her tattered backpack and started flipping through her notebook, searching for a particular phone number. She’d have to wait until Jesse went out, of course, but now she at least had a hope of fixing the problem. Locating the number, she ripped out the page it was written on and placed it in the top drawer of her dresser for later. Now eager to get her mother awake, Faith started to go into the living room, only to find that Jesse was already up, groggily rubbing her eyes with a yawn. Not wanting to appear overly excited, Faith stood in her doorway and waited for recognition.
Jesse, realizing that she had a bad hangover, finished yawning and reluctantly opened her eyes. She spotted Faith standing some feet away, a neutral expression on her young face. Taking a closer look, Jesse saw that the left side of her daughter’s face was slightly red.
“Hey Faith,” she said, squinting at the harsh light of reality. She yawned again and asked sleepily, “What happened to your face?”
“I rubbed too hard with the washcloth this morning,” Faith automatically replied, biting back an urge to accuse Jesse. Over time, she had discovered that trying to blame her mother only resulted in more punishment; Jesse apparently could never remember her own drunken domestic abuses once she drank a certain amount, and the only time that Faith had ever tried to tell the truth after being hit, she’d been grounded without TV for two weeks. So now she just made up little stories to avoid the violent truth. “My report card is right there,” she said, pointing.
Leaning over, Jesse scooped up the piece of paper and examined it. “These are great grades, Faith!” she told her daughter.
Faith even thought she detected a hint of actual enthusiasm buried somewhere in the effort, so she said, “Thanks, mom,” and went to give Jesse a hug. Mother and daughter embraced for a few seconds before Faith broke the contact, uncomfortable with being so close after last night. Besides, it was time to get Jesse out of the house for a while. “So, are you going out today?”
Still holding the report card, Jesse stood up and stretched. Still attractive despite the gradually worsening alcoholism, Jesse continued to favor form-fitting jeans, shorts, and t-shirts. With her birthday being on April 14th, she was now in her late twenties.
“Actually, yeah. I just kinda forgot where,” Jesse said, thinking hard. “Oh, I remember now. Yeah, I’ll be going out for a few hours once I get cleaned up.” She started to walk to her room, but stopped and turned around. “Wait, why are you even here? Shouldn’t you be at school?”
“It’s Saturday, mom. First day of winter break.”
“Oh. Okay. Well you’ll be all right here by yourself for a while, right?”
“Yeah.”
With that, Jesse went into her own room and closed the door, leaving her empty bottles in the living room. Gone was the mother that used to be so concerned about alcohol’s corrupting influence upon her daughter, and the empty bottles were something that Faith unfortunately saw every once in a while. One day, she had even dared to take a tiny sip from one of the bottles marked “Beer” when Jesse wasn’t around, but it had tasted awful and she’d immediately washed away the bitterness with some milk. She couldn’t understand what could compel anyone to drink something that tasted so horrible, and today she gave the bottles a wide berth, leaving them where they were. While her mother was occupied in her room, Faith went into the kitchen and made herself another bland breakfast of cereal, the only thing she’d eaten in the mornings for weeks now. But cereal was cheap, as Jesse said, so that’s what Faith received.
After breakfast, Faith went into her room, checked the time, and impatiently waited for Jesse to leave. It was only a bit past ten in the morning, but Faith had work to do, and it couldn’t begin until her mother went to do…whatever it was that she did during the daytime. Eventually, Jesse finished up in her room and said a quick goodbye to Faith before leaving for an undetermined amount of time. Faith, for her part, couldn’t be happier to see her mother leave. She was still understandably bitter about last night’s punishment, plus she had something she needed to do, and those were two reasons for Faith to wish for some time alone in the apartment. It wasn’t as if she was unable to use the phone at all when Jesse was present—she could talk to Kelly sometimes—but making this particular call required stealth, especially considering the somewhat abnormal subject matter. Going to the phone, she quickly punched in the numbers.
“Hello?” answered a female voice on the other end.
“Mrs. Matthews? It’s Faith.”
One day while still in second grade, Faith had come to class with a black eye. No amount of posturing could have fooled Mrs. Matthews into believing that the injury was due to an accident, and she had made the decision to give Faith her phone number just in case of emergency. For almost two years, Faith had not called; she generally preferred to work through her own problems without outside assistance, but this time was different.
“Hi, Faith,” the teacher said, sounding as if the call had disturbed her sleep. Her voice immediately became concerned once she actually began waking up, however. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Faith said into the receiver. “Sorry if I woke you.” The phone was located on a wall in the kitchen, and the cord was thankfully long enough so that she could sit at the table and talk. “I called because…because I need to ask you something.”
“I’m glad you finally called me,” came the warm-hearted reply. “Ask me anything you like.”
“It’s sort of a weird question, so don’t laugh, okay?”
The teacher gave a short laugh. “I promise, Faith.”
“All right.” Faith took a deep breath and began. “This morning, I saw the newspaper, and it said that a man was killed last night, and there was a picture, and I think I know who the guy was, and I think I know what killed him, and—”
“Take a breath, sweetheart,” Mrs. Matthews cut in, chuckling.
“Sorry,” Faith apologized, barely slowing down, “but I got scared because the article said that the guy was killed by something that had more strength than a normal person.”
Mrs. Matthews went suddenly silent on the other end, as if this news was especially disturbing. Faith didn’t even notice and kept talking right over the barely discernible silence.
“And also, last night, Kelly and I were chased by something that couldn’t have been human, Mrs. Matthews. It was scary. We saw its eyes—”
“Did the article say anything else about what could have killed the man, Faith? Besides the injuries you already told me about?” the teacher questioned, her voice utterly serious.
Faith thought for a few seconds, trying to remember what else she had read. “Um…it said something about two neck wounds, I think. Does that that help?”
Faith thought she heard a sigh on the other end, and the reply was unusually sullen.
“Yes. Yes, it does. But you said you had a question, right?”
“Oh yeah, I almost forgot.” Faith started relating a quick version of the previous night’s events. When she was done, she asked, “Mrs. Matthews, are there things that aren’t human? What kind of thing could jump from so high, or run so fast?”
“Faith, what I’m about to tell you is a secret, okay?” The teacher’s voice seemed almost sad. “The thing that chased you..it wasn’t human.”
Having suspected this, Faith wasn’t very surprised by the admission. “Okay. What was it?”
“I can’t explain further right now,” Mrs. Matthews calmly answered, a bit surprised that Faith could so easily accept the concept of inhuman creatures. But then again, the views and beliefs of a child could be easy to alter; once a person grew up and became set in his or her ways, those beliefs were nearly unchangeable. “But don’t be scared. It can only come out at night, and if you stay inside, it will never be able to hurt you. There’s something I have to do right now, but would it be possible for me to come over in a little while? We have things to discuss.”
“Sure,” Faith answered, figuring that her mom wouldn’t be home for hours still. “Do you have my address?”
“The school keeps everything on record. I’ll be able to find it.”
“Okay. Thanks, Mrs. Matthews.”
“You’re welcome, Faith. I’ll see you soon. Take care.”
As soon as she heard Faith hang up, Mrs. Matthews quickly pressed down her own receiver, then began dialing a long distance number. She waited while the call was transferred over, listening to the ring on the other end. Several seconds passed with no answer, but finally someone picked up.
“Hello?” said a female voice with an English accent.
“This is Lindsay Matthews.”
“Hold, please.”
Several more seconds passed as the call was rerouted to someone else. Mrs. Matthews twirled the phone cord around her hand absently while she waited. The answer was not long in coming.
“Hello, Lindsay,” said a deep, similarly-accented male voice. “What can I do for you?”
“Things have changed, Mr. Travers. We need to accelerate our plans for Faith.”
“And why is that?” came the skeptical reply. Quentin Travers did not like to have his plans altered unless it was absolutely necessary. “What exactly has changed?”
“She knows about vampires,” Mrs. Matthews said, troubled. “Last night she and one of her friends were chased by one, and she’s smart enough to realize that anything that can leap off rooftops isn’t exactly human. She asked me what it was, Mr. Travers, and I had no choice but to tell her to stay inside at night from now on.”
“This is…unfortunate.” Travers took a deep sigh. “The situation with Faith has always been delicate, and this is only going to make matters worse. She’s too young for the responsibilities of a Potential Slayer.”
“I’m sorry. There was nothing I could do.”
“It’s not your fault, Lindsay,” Travers said. Over in London, he opened one of the drawers of his large oak desk and pulled out several files. “I’ll see what I can do about sending a Watcher over by the end of the month. We need to handle this carefully; from everything you’ve told me, Faith is still too dependent on her mother, and we can’t risk altering that relationship much. Until the Watcher gets there and makes contact with you, Faith is your responsibility. You know what to do.”
“Yes, Mr. Travers.”
Mrs. Matthews listened as Travers hung up, then she put down her own phone and began gathering some things that she would need to take to Faith. The Watchers’ Council of Great Britain kept extensive records of any Potential Slayers, and a bit over two years ago, through the use of locator spells and seers, they discovered that a young girl in Boston had the characteristics of a Potential. Travers contacted Lindsay Matthews, an American agent of the Council, and had her placed as a second grade teacher at South Boston Elementary. They forged a teaching credential and created a false record of employment at certain elementary schools throughout the country. The staff at S.B.E. thought that she had been teaching for close to ten years, when in reality, it was now only her third year. Easily avoiding any complications that could have resulted from such a blatantly illegal action, the Council ensured that Faith would be placed in Mrs. Matthews’ class. Highly educated and amiable towards children, Mrs. Matthews easily adapted to her new job as a teacher while keeping a close eye on Faith. She made exhaustive notes about Faith’s physical and mental traits, her personality, and other such things, and it didn’t take long for Mrs. Matthews to realize that Faith’s situation was abnormal.
There had been debate in the Council over what should be done about the young brown-haired girl. Some argued to take Faith away from her mother and bring her to England to begin the training at an exceptionally early age, while others suggested that even though Jesse was not the best mother, Faith was still extremely attached to her, and to have that taken away would be detrimental to her mental health. And so the decision was made to continue surveillance without taking any further action. Mrs. Matthews had watched Faith move on to the third and fourth grades, always appearing as the smiling, friendly teacher that Faith could come to for help or simply to talk.
But that time was over.
This matter would have to be handled very carefully, especially in consideration of Faith’s often-violent home life. She had already started to exhibit early signs of fearlessness, probably stemming from her constant exposure to violence from her mother and Chris, both of whom the Council had files for. Faith had seemed to accept the fact that the vampire was not human without much surprise or fear, and that was good. It would make the rest of today easier for her young mind if she could already believe that the supernatural existed. Certain Potentials had had difficulty accepting the reality of demons and alternate dimensions, but Faith had seen the vampire’s abilities with her own eyes, and that left little room for doubt.
After taking a quick shower, Mrs. Matthews packed a little bag with items for Faith, and then she got into her car and began driving towards Faith’s apartment complex.