Green eyes stared back at Elias in the surface of the mirror. He was used to being tired in the mornings, in fact one of his most striking physical features was the deep bags under his eyes, which was why he couldn’t for the life of him understand what he was seeing in the mirror. His eyebags were gone–simply vanished.
It didn’t seem real, viewing himself through the looking glass, it seemed like he was wearing makeup–his acne had also vanished–not that he was riddled with it, but any teenager has some acne here and there.
What was worse was, despite any physical symbol of exhaustion, he felt especially tired this morning. He pawed at his eyes and cheeks, pulling and pinching at them to no avail. Eventually he just turned his head down and splashed some water on it, getting his dirty blond hair a little wet in the process.
After drying his face, and doing his halfway decent skincare routine–you know, rinse, moisturize, sunscreen, the works–he threw on the nearest clean clothes in his room, which happened to be a faded Iron Maiden t-shirt and black jeans.
‘Today’s Friday, so no work, but I still have class…My term paper is due in 2 weeks so maybe I should work on it...or not’
He pondered his plans for the day as he stretched the shirt over his head, when he glanced through the mirror again at his abdomen this time, and saw his old scar, which snaked diagonally over his belly button. It was an odd story, he was chasing a butterfly when he was six years old, when he tripped into a barbed wire fence which tore across his belly–it managed to get infected as well, and ended up leaving a rather nasty scar.
What Elias hadn’t known at the time–as a 6 year old he didn’t know much in the first place–and what still impressed him was that his scar grew. The original scar was only a few inches across, but as he grew, it dragged along his skin, and left a shadow much longer than the original scar. Altogether it stretched a little less than a foot across.
Elias quickly dropped the shirt down and moved to grab his belongings before leaving his room. He had one class today–Anthropology 302–with John, the TA, who often accompanied him to the library. John incidentally knew Ancient Greek and Latin, so he helped Elias translate some of the books he found, like he had with the Animal-Heads just a few days ago.
As he stepped down the stairs out of his building, he looked up through the towering apartment complexes, and further off the skyscrapers, at the sun, which his parents had named him after, only to find it obscured by a healthy layer of clouds. He looked the other way, across the water at Staten Island, before flipping his collar up for the coming rain, and continuing along the sidewalk. It was about an hour to his University by the subway, a commute Elias has always bemoaned since he moved to Brooklyn. He hadn’t really appreciated how big New York really was, and figured any place was as close to any other place, and didn’t blink when he saw his apartment was across the Bay from Manhattan.
Huffing along the way, he quickened his pace towards the Bay Ridge station, when he suddenly remembered he promised to meet his old friend Damon after class. As he turned the corner by the stairwell into the station, he pulled his phone from his pocket and called Damon up.
Damon was an old friend from upstate, who moved into the city at the same time and for the same reason Elias did, as they were both going to school in town–Elias at Columbia and Damon at NYU. Damon had always been the more sociable of the two, while Elias was more studious; nonetheless they were basically inseparable, so their faces did fall when they realized they were going to different colleges. The damage wasn’t so bad when they realized immediately after that they’d be in the City together, and it didn’t seem too terrible. Damon managed to find a place in Yorkville by the Park, which was great because it gave them an easy place to hang out. After a while though they decided it was too touristy, and mostly kept to movie nights and lunch.
Suffice it to say, Damon was an important person for Elias, and a constant feeling of home came with him, so when he never picked up the phone, it disappointed him, and somewhat confused him. Damon didn’t have anything going on today so far as Elias knew–which was why they had scheduled a hangout today, but Elias chalked it up to him sleeping in. Elias clicked his tongue as he slipped his phone back into his pocket, stepping down the stairs into the station.
-
Approximately 15 minutes later, in front of Elias’s apartment building
“You think he’s home?” asked a young woman with dyed red hair, staring up at the windows.
Her companion, older than her–probably around 30–with short brown hair and round classes, took a moment and looked at their phone, as if checking if they had the right place.
“The Map said it should be apartment F32, so if the person isn’t there we just wait in the hallway until he gets back,” the companion said, matter-of-factly
“Won’t that take too long?” The red haired girl wondered with a little laugh, “Someone could get to him before us and huuurt him…”
The red-haired woman’s companion scoffed and said with an audible tinge of scorn “What tells you it’s a guy? There are other genders too, you know.”
“Oh whatever, Zara, you know what I meant,” the red haired girl retorted with a tinge of exasperation, “I’m just excited, you know that. I’ve been the newbie for waaaaaay too long now.”
“That,” Zara said with a muttered sigh, “I can agree with.”
The two of them loitered around for a few minutes, checking their phones and watches respectively waiting for something to happen, before they eventually decided to make their way into the building.
“It should be the 3rd floor,” the figure named Zara whispered over to the other, “we’ll just hang out in the hallway and wait for the newbie to show up.”
“I still don’t get why we can’t go out and find him now,” the red-haired girl complained, “who knows what could happen to him in that time?”
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“Like I said,” Zara barked through her teeth, “if someone else could track them, we would know by now. We just have to be patient. It’s what we did for you, you know. You were in class until 6pm that day.”
“I suppose you’re right…” the red-haired girl said, putting a finger to her lip pensively, “I had a really long lab that day.”
“Um, excuse me!” The two heard a creaky voice behind them shout out, “you can’t be here unless you have a key, and I don’t recognize you!!”
The two mystery guests turned around to see an old lady, maybe around 60, wearing a floral dress, glasses, and slippers inching her way over.
“I’ll call the police on you kids!”
Zara raised an eyebrow and hissed out under their breath, “Kids?...”
They marched up to the old woman with a fuming look before saying at a near shout, “I am 31! I’m a full grown adult with a real job and life! I swear to God all you ancient creeps–” Zara seemed to catch themselves in the midst of a fury before visibly centering themselves. They exhaled and quickly pressed their right thumb on the old lady’s forehead before saying “I am a real adult, she’s a kid, alright? We have every reason to be here and it isn’t a problem. We’re just waiting for a friend.”
As she said that last part, the old lady, who had recoiled at Zara’s touch suddenly relaxed her body, and her face went cold as a dull tan light shined where Zara’s thumb touched the lady’s forehead. Zara released the old woman from their grasp after that, and she stumbled back a few steps, before turning around as if nothing had happened, and went into her apartment down the hall.
Silence covered the hallway for what seemed like an eternity before the red-haired girl broke it by saying “It always creeps me out when you do that, Zara.”
“Can it”
“Okay!” the girl shouted with a mischievous grin, giving a salute.
The two of them made their way to the 3rd floor, and sat down opposite each other at the end of the hallway, all the while eyeing apartment 32 just a few doors down.
-
A few hours later, Elias was returning home after a very weird day. In class, he felt like John was giving him the evil eye the entire time, and it was really strange the whole time, and Elias couldn’t concentrate that well. Then, when he was leaving class he called Damon again, and got no answer again. Elias decided to text him while he was walking to check if he was okay, but while he did, he tripped on a paving stone and fell down the stairs into the subway station. He got up with a couple of scrapes and probably a bruise, but most of all made sure to grab his phone which had skittered a few feet away. After gathering himself again and dusting himself off, he looked down at his left knee, which had started to bleed a little.
He sighed and went about his day again, making sure his phone hadn’t shattered, and finished writing that text to Damon, which too had no reply. He managed to find a seat on the train home, which was nice, but since he was sitting, he noticed that his knee, which was not 10 minutes earlier beaded with little red blobs of blood, had seemingly healed already. It wasn’t a terrible injury of course, but even then it was rather fast for a scrape to heal. As Elias groped at the healed skin on his knee, he was reminded of the paper cut he suffered in the library two days ago.
"Maybe I wasn’t imagining it…” he muttered to himself.
As the train screeched to halt at Bay Ridge Avenue, Elias got up from his seat and passed through the rickety doors into the station before emerging to the surface world again, and made his way home.
Elias found his way up the stairs to the third floor of his building when he noticed two figures sitting at the end of the hall, one red-haired woman around his age, wearing a large, flowy black dress, and the other, older, with short brown hair, the roundest glasses Elias had ever seen, and tight-fitting grey gym shorts and sports bra. Elias didn’t recognize them, and the fact that they were loitering was a little odd, but if Elias had learned anything about this city since moving here, it was that stranger things have always happened, and it’s usually best not to ask any questions. The two figures returned his gaze for a moment, before all three quickly broke eye contact. Elias turned to open his door, but the moment he went to put his key in the lock, he could feel the red-haired girl’s eyes on him again. There was a moment of hesitation as a strange wave of anxiety washed over Elias, and with his key halfway inserted, he finally retracted it and turned around to leave as if he had left something downstairs.
However, before he could even twist his body around, a hand fell on his shoulder and he seized up, convinced he was about to get mugged.
“Hi,” a voice said from behind him, “are you the tenant in apartment F32?”
Ice shot through his veins, and his nerves on the fritz. He looked at the one with their hand on his shoulder. He accepted that he couldn’t just say he didn’t live there after going to unlock the door, and turned to the two strangers, eventually responding “...yeah? Do I know you?”
“Unfortunately,” The red-haired girl behind replied, “you do now!” The red-haired girl stepped forward and reached her hand out for a handshake, “Hi, I’m Ally, this is Zara. We’re here to help you…mostly.”
“Ally,” Zara looked over, “this is supposed to be my job. Just follow my lead for once please.”
“Look, whoever you are,” Elias said hesitantly, “I’m not buying whatever you’re selling. So can you please go away. I’ve had a long few days.”
“Yeah that’s usually how it goes,” the girl named Ally continued with an unusual joviality, “odd coincidences, strange accidents, and then you finally use them and it dawns on you.”
Zara quickly moved to shush Ally, and released their hand from Elias’s shoulder. He quickly stumbled back, trying to get away, and said, “Look, I don’t know what your problem is but you need to leave me alone. I’m sure you two have better things to be doing that fucking with me.” And though he was strongly refusing the solicitor’s advances, he couldn’t help but think back on his quick healing, the disappearance of his acne, and ultimately back to the animal-man in the book at the library, and he frowned a little.
As he turned around to leave, he heard the person named Zara’s voice, monotone and matter-of-fact, say “She’s not wrong, is she?”
That simple question seemed to hit Elias finally, and he stopped in his tracks.
“Was it glowing eyes? Were random objects appearing in your hands? Maybe you started floating?”
Elias turned back around, looked at Zara a bit sheepishly, and replied, “No, nothing like that…I just-I just don’t think I can be injured anymore…”
He saw Zara raise an eyebrow, seemingly confused, as they said, “That one doesn’t ring a bell, really. Does anyone else live in there with you? Maybe we’re here for them…”
“No,” Elias sighed, “it’s just me here.”
“Well that’s great!” Ally interjected once more, “It’s gonna be really confusing at first but you’ll learn to love it.”
By this point, Elias had gotten rather confused, and his head started to fog up with memories and thoughts of the last two days, each one seemingly more bizarre than the last. First he thought of all the little cuts that healed in minutes, bruises that vanished, his acne, then he thought about the weird dream he had, where he saw his room illuminated by a blue glow, and faint voices calling to him in a language he didn’t understand.
After a moment he fell to the ground in defeat, before peering back up with an unsure look at the two strangers, “What do you mean ‘It’? What’s happening to me?”
“We’ll try to give you a basic rundown on the way back,” Zara said with an apologetic look on their face, leaning down and reaching out to the seated boy, “for now, just your name would be nice.”
Elias looked at the outstretched hand in front of him, and the smiling girl behind, before sighing and accepting the help up. “My name is Elias. Elias Dunhurst.”
Zara seemed to finally perk up at that, and smiled, “Nice to meet you, Elias Dunhurst. We’ll help you figure things out.”