Mike’s POV

Nikita was in danger and I did not know how to save her. I didn’t even know where she was. Damn our mother for vehemently protesting our getting a mobile device.

I paced on the front lawn, torn between running wildly to look for my sister or to stay here in case she comes back. I began to recite random poems loudly, mixing the verses up,

Mary had a little lamb who’s fleece’s as white as snow

And everywhere that Mary went the lamb was sure to go

And all the king’s horses and all the kings’ men

Couldn’t put humpty together again

The cow jumped over the moon

The little dog laughed to see such a sport

Until my good is better and my better best

I recited more verses of my rendition of my panic poem, anything to get my mind off the fact that it was my fault my sister is in danger. I didn’t even know why I didn’t support Nikita. Of course, she felt awful, I couldn’t even imagine how it would feel like if I was forced to do things that are uncomfortable for me. In fact, I remember going on a rampage when I burnt my chemise while ironing it and mother forced me to wear my dad’s. I demanded I got a new one but was denied the request. The entire day, I was in a bad mood and almost got expelled for losing my temper. And here I was, a great hypocrite, telling Nikita to live for others when all I did day by day was life for myself. God I am such an idiot!

To trip it, trip it

Trip

Trip it

Trip it up and down.

Then completely out of nowhere, I felt a sharp pain in my head. It lasted less than a second and it almost seemed that I had imagined it but the residual lightheartedness showed otherwise. I had to sit down in mothers’ good plants or else I would’ve fallen over. Did the world always move in concentric circles?

There! It happened again, the same duration, the same intensity of pain. Nikita, where are you? I proceeded to lay down in mother’s flower bed because I suddenly felt the overwhelming urge to lie down. That was when the hypothetical shit hit the fan.

Whenever I closed my eyes, I was looking up at a white ceiling. I sat up, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. I felt so dizzy that it was almost impossible to keep my head up.

Come on Mike, you can do it.

I got up in a flurry of action and almost cracked my skull when I fell back down. After what seemed like a thousand tries, I dragged myself into the living room to get a breather. I wondered what was happening to me as I threw off my sweat-stained shirt. The weather wasn’t even that hot, how come I stained my shirt? All this while, I avoided closing my eyes to avoid looking at the images burned behind my eye lids. Then I heard Nikki’s voice.

My name is Rose.

I looked around the room, baffled at what I was hearing. Surely Nikki is playing with me, trying to scare me as payback for being an asshole to her, but Nikki cannot have me weird and hearing things. Then the migraine came to me again, knocking me off my feet. It was a pulsating incessant pain that caused me to scream in pain.

I’m not Nikita!

I was too riddled with pain to acknowledge my sister’s voice. It must be a brain tumor, that’s the logical explanation for what was happening to me. Yes, I was sick, I was sick and needed to go to the hospital.

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Looking back, I wondered what would have happened to me and my sister if I hadn’t closed my eyes. This is because when I did, I was looking at a boy, he was strangling me and I couldn’t breathe. I began to panic, flinging my arms and breaking mum’s favorite vase and writhing in it. The feeling was surreal, I was feeling the pain of the shards of the broken vase shredding my skin and I was also feeling being strangled at the hands of the boy strangling me. I forced myself to open my eyes and the pain stopped, but it got weirder, much weirder.

There was a man in the living room. He was as old as my dad and was adorned with gold and silver jewelry. He had about his body many tattoos in black and white of images of animals and plants and I would’ve seen much more if they weren’t covered with the kente cloth he was wearing. His skin was a smooth and shining dark chocolate and is eyes were a bright blue. His hair seemed to be in locs and were lied loosely into a low bun. He looked down at me in a regal manner and said,

“Do you want to save your sister?”

Of course, I did, why wouldn’t I want to? I told him so.

“The answer lies within you”. Despite the fact that I was apprehensive of this man and was shaking uncontrollably with fear for my sister, I found myself getting very angry.

“What the hell kind of advice is that?”

He cocked his head in apparent distaste of me and as quickly as he appeared, he was gone. It was going to take a while to process what I had just witnessed before me but I didn’t have time. I felt as though a veil had been lifted off my mind and so much information was being fed into it. The man was right, the answer did lie within me. I closed my eyes and the migraine and the strangling continued but instead of fighting it off, I embraced it. That was when I knew that Nikita was being strangled, not me. As I was figuring a way to find her, the regal man’s voice found me.

You knew the answer.

I knew? I don’t know the answer, how come he’s saying I already know it? I felt Nikki slipping away and now it was hard to establish connection with her.

I am going to die

I am going to die

Nikki’s voice made me go cold all over. I got up, eyes still closed and gripping my head.

“SAVE HER!”, I screamed to the man “Please save her I can’t do it! I tried!”. The sting of the silence caused tears to well up in my eyes. What kind of spirit or god doesn’t help people? Isn’t the essence of their being to save humans? I got so angry that I took about 5 minutes yelling obscenities that would’ve made Samuel L. Jackson turn his face in disgust. Now that I had that out of my system I had to think. Just as I was about to, the same voice spoke tormenting me,

You knew the answer.

After getting over my initial rush of emotion, I reflected on the answer I kept having. It was in past tense and by extrapolation, he was basically saying that the power was inside of me, they meant the same thing. I wondered if this meant that I had some sort of power or ability or if this was just some grand hallucination. If it were the latter, there was nothing I could do. However, it wouldn’t help to just assume it was the former and do something about it. If I were Professor X, what would I do?

I did the most logical thing a 13-year-old boy would do it they found out they had power. I closed my eyes, and focused on Nikki. Then the visions came to me, at first blurred and with too much light, but soon I focused and realized what was going on. Nikita was changing into something else.

More like someone else and this boy was strangling her because of it. Why I did not know, but I knew that if stopped this, my sister would be saved and she wouldn’t have to die. I tried to communicate with her but to no avail. The room was filling up with water but the boy only had eyes for her. I had to think fast, right now it was up to me. I had to stop the change Nikita was going through and from the rising of the water lever, I had 4 minutes; I did not know how I knew that either. What could cause such change? Then a mental image of a woman performing plastic surgery popped up. Of course, change doesn’t just happen, the one being changed had something to do with it, intentionally or not. I looked intently for more clues.

3 minutes more

This was beginning to sound less than having superpowers and more like taking a math test.

Nikita’s face was getting slightly paler, and her lips were red this time, like she was putting make-up. Then it hit me, it hit me like a freight train hitting a puppy. I was able to hear what the boy was saying,

No!

Remember the wind! What did you tell the wind!

Who are you! If you want to survive this, tell me who you are! Tell me your name!

I had heard enough and I knew what to do, the annoying man was right even though I thought his delivery needed work. I walked up to the hospital bed

1 minute more

I held the boy’s hand and he shot up to look at me with eyes black like obsidian. I told him that he can let her go now, I’ll deal with it and then he turned into light and disappeared.

I turned to my sister and touched her forehead. I told her how special she was, and how sorry I am for not taking her side but if she was ashamed of herself, she would die. She is who she is and its beautiful. I leaned to her ear and whispered,

“Who are you?”

Nikita recognized my voice and that triggered an internal action within her. It was like my voice in itself was an off switch. Later I would sit and think and realized how obvious it was, she knew that I loved her for who she was and knowing that someone loves you is one of the strongest forms of motivation in the world.