CHAPTER TWO

‘Morning sunshine! Time for breakfast! Morning sunshine! Time for breakfast!’

I grunted, letting my alarm clock jingle run itself on repeat. After several chimes, it began being smart-cheeked with me, insisting I got my lazy ass out of bed. Funny enough, it was Sophie’s recording behind the red panda alarm clock bouncing back and forth on my nightstand. She thought it was a good idea, and that it would somehow strike some motivation in me to get out of bed.

Yeah, not today.

My hand swatted that damn panda right to the ground, the sound of it shattering into pieces not registering in my mind just yet. Not until I realized that the entire transaction was impossible if I was—

“DEAD!” I screamed, jumping up on my bed with my fist clenching my chest. My eyes bounced from one corner of my room to the other as I panted, my brain trying to collect visual cues of where I was. I went into denial as I looked down at my chest, realizing that there was no hole through it. I was alive, heart fully intact, and back in my apartment, with the sun’s rays pouring through my bedroom this bright Saturday morning…

“The hell?!” I had a million questions racing through me as I tried putting pieces together. But the harder I tried to work my way through what happened last night, the more my head felt like mush. It was giving me a throbbing headache, but I was desperate for answers. Dead one moment and alive the next. No, this wasn’t a dream. I’d already pinched myself once, twice, and then a third time for good measure. The sting was too real. This had happened. All of it.

I brushed my fingers down my cheek and gasped, “What am I, some sort of... ghost?” It was a ridiculous notion, but what else could explain this? The sense of sudden death, and now my inexplicable resurrection...

Wait a minute… was I gifted? Was immortality my ability?

It would make sense why I never knew about it, right? It wasn’t every day I would get to experience getting brutally murdered by a monster.

While that could be a possibility, everything still felt off about how I’d died last night. The monster was one thing, but that girl I saw… The harder I tried to focus on her image, the more my head was hurting. I swear she’d done something to me, something batshit crazy….

I tumbled out of bed and staggered to my phone on top of the dresser. I had no idea how I was alive let alone how I managed to get back home, and thought the best place to look for answers would be the last person I spoke to, Sophie. Her shifts on Saturdays were sporadic, so I figured I would try calling her first. With my hand cradling my head, I looked down at the mess I made out of my alarm clock. Hell, I didn’t know my own strength. Or my own weight for that matter. As soon as my foot had touched the floor, I felt heavier, but this pain in my noggin was distracting me from thinking anything of it.

“Jesus, what’s with this migraine?” I moaned, walking over to my dresser for my phone, until I made a full stop after I passed my closet mirror. I walked backward to make sure that I wasn’t seeing things, and when I turned my head toward my reflection, I saw this complete stranger staring back at me—some white-haired chad with a DMC t-shirt on and a pair of black plaid shorts.

I swear my heart skipped a beat.

“What the...?!” My voice trailed off as I gave my reflection a thorough inspection. I blinked, thinking that maybe I was still half-asleep and hallucinating. But the reflection didn’t change. The man in the mirror couldn’t be me. I lifted a hand, and so did he. I gave my head a shake, and his hair fanned out just the same.

The white hair wasn’t just dazzlingly white; it was a little longer, too. My eyes, normally a chestnut brown, were a vibrant electric blue. I lifted the hem of my t-shirt, revealing a six pack that definitely wasn’t here yesterday!

I leaped at my mirror, gripping it at the frame and zeroing in on my face. Two hard blinks traded, a left turn of my head, and then a right. Then I lifted my neck, noticing something like a holographic reflection bouncing off of my skin. “No way….” I had fucking scales?!

The scales didn’t go far, starting from my right traps and stopping just below my pec. It also covered a fraction of my shoulder like a short sleeve, while the other side of my torso was completely clear. I looked back at my reflection with my mouth hanging on the floor, until I realized something poking out of my lips, a set of short top row fangs!

“Holy shit, I’m a dragon!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, triggering an alarmed Sophie to barge into my room.

“Nero!?!” she called out, her eyes turning to me. The moment she realized something was off, her face went from worried to lost, the poor girl filled with instant regret. My room was a mystical emporium filled with strange secrets and even stranger surprises, and I was the main attraction. She was speechless, and so was I. But the awkward stare-down was interrupted when she slammed the door shut before running off.

If she was overwhelmed, imagine how I felt!

I could hear her talking to Mom, trying to get her as far from my room as possible. The back and forth banter made me tune into their conversation, where Sophie continued to lie to my mom about me finding a spider in here. It was a safe enough lie knowing how scared she was of them. Anything to keep her away until Sophie found out what was really going on.

Sophie managed to get her to leave the apartment for an appointment with her doctor. She shouted goodbye, but I was too cotton-mouthed to reply. Once I heard the front door close, Sophie crept my door open again. However this time, she peeked inside through the crack like she was afraid to come in. I rushed to the door, Sophie instinctively backing away from me until I grabbed her wrist and reeled her into my bedroom.

“Thanks for covering for me,” I said as I closed the door behind us. I thought she was protecting me until I turned to her, only to realize that she was carrying a rolling pin!

“Sophie?”

She glared. “Look, I don’t know who you are or what you did to Nero, but I’m going to make you wish you’d never broke into our home!”

“What? No, Sophie, it’s me!”

“And how do you expect me to believe that?! You are just a no-good shape-shifting shadow-walker!” she retorted through her teeth. “You filthy monsters are truly sick! Slipping into his clothes, waking up in his bed! Don’t think for a minute that I won’t beat the shit out of you to get some answers! Now, where is Nero?!”

“So, seriously, it’s really me!”

“Liar!” she growled, and then swung at me with that rolling pin full force. Honestly, I didn’t think she would attack me so easily, feeling the hard impact on my forearm as I raised it to shield my face. Surprisingly enough, her swing didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would, given how hard she’d swung. She was relentless with it, too, whacking me like a god damn Piñata.

“Sophie, stop!” I begged, but she kept hammering on.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Give-me-back-my-Nero!” she insisted with every whack, until I managed to wrangle the rolling pin away from her. I tossed the kitchen utensil across the room, surprised at how quickly it flew. The handle crashed into the wall behind us and lodged there in the hole I created. My new strength threw me off, my eyebrows furrowed at the power behind these new set of muscles until I turned my head back to Sophie introducing me to a juicy left hook shot!

“You think disarming me will save you?! Think again!” she bellowed, Sophie cocking her fist back and letting me have it. Her fist landed hard against my cheek, but my head didn’t move.

I grabbed my jaw, thinking the pain might have been delayed, before I saw her foot angling for a cheap shot between my legs. Yeah, not happening.

I wasn’t getting through to her. If I wanted any kids in the future, I needed to tame this heated situation quickly. So as she tried to swing at me again, I grabbed her arm and tossed her over my shoulder, slamming her back on my bed. I sprawled on her just as she tried getting up, pinning her arms down and keeping her legs locked before I insisted, “I’m not here to hurt you or Mom!” I pleaded. “Honestly, it’s me! I get that shadow-walkers can shape shift, but this isn’t the case here. I’m really Nero,” I said with a softer tone. “Yeah, I know I look like some anime fan’s wet dream right now, but... I can prove to you that I’m me. Remember that time we snuck out to watch that meteor shower? Or when you sprayed me with that skunk perfume on April Fool’s day? What about your first talent show? You sang ‘Chasing Pavements’ by Adele and you forgot the words halfway through because Tommy Jacobson was making faces at you from the audience! But I was still there to support you, cheering you on, remembering the words you forgot and whispering them to you from off-stage, remember?”

Her eyes widened as I reminded her of our shared past, her body gradually relaxing under my weight. But she was stubborn, that was for sure. She still tested me, her voice shaky and uncertain. “And… what did we do after the talent show?” she demanded, still holding onto some shreds of doubt.

“We went to Joe’s Diner. You ordered a double cheeseburger with extra pickles and a mango smoothie while I had chicken parm.” I replied instantly, recalling the night vividly. “It was the same night you told me you wanted to be a chef.” Her breath hitched, tears threatening her eyes. “Those monsters can’t fake memories.”

“Nero? Is… is that really you?”

I smiled. “Yeah, it’s me.”

She blushed and gave me a sheepish look. “Then why do you look like a pretty-boy K-pop star?”

I cringed, instantly peeling off of her. “Egh, it’s not that bad, is it?”

She sat up on the bed and gave a quiet giggle that ended in a relieved sigh. “God, Nero. You seriously scared me.” Her eyes flitted over my face, taking in my new features before she reached over and snagged one of my fangs in my mouth. “They are real… but you’re not a demi-human….” she said, before she got up on her feet.

“Believe me, no one’s more surprised by this ordeal than I am.”

“Sorry I sucker punched you.”

I snorted. “I was ready to sucker punch myself in the mirror too when I saw how I looked. I woke up like this!”

“Like what? With a gift?”

“Honestly, I don’t know what to call this…. Sophie,” I called out to her solemnly, hoping she could fill in the gaps in my memory. “How did I get here last night?”

“Hmm? What do you mean?” I cocked my eyebrow at her, Sophie promptly elaborating from her point of view. “You came back from the shop like you usually would every Friday night at 7pm and—”

“Seven pm?”

“Yeah? We had pot roast for dinner, we watched a movie, played some board-games, totally kicked your ass at Uno by the way, and then we retired for the night.”

I was starting to freak out. Why the hell was her recollection of last night so much different than mine?!

Was I living in the twilight zone?

She scrunched her face at me. “Nero, what’s wrong? It looks like you’ve seen a ghost or something.”

Hell, I should have been a ghost! I saw that walker eat my heart! I saw him reach for me to finish me off, before—that blur…

“Nero?”

I remembered the monster’s head blowing up… and I remembered her holding me, and then this intense pain… God, that pain! Soon after that, everything faded into black.

Sophie grabbed my arm, looking up to me genuinely concerned. “Nero, you’re starting to scare me again. What’s wrong?”

“How do you not remember?”

“Remember what?”

“Text…” I whispered, then dashed to my drawer, picking up my phone to show her the timestamps in our conversation. The proof will be right there, I said to myself, pacing back to her as I scrolled, before I realized our entire conversation last night wasn’t there. “What the hell?” I gasped, turning my phone around to make sure that it was mine. “What happened to it?”

“To what?”

“We were texting back and forth last night.”

She pulled out her phone and went through her messages. “The last message I got from you was that frog meme.”

She really didn’t know I’d died last night? Or did I?

Nothing was making any sense. Not the missing texts, not the monster, not the girl, nothing! I had no solid proof to counter her claims of what happened or didn’t happen. The only thing I had to work with was my 180 appearance.

I kept my mouth shut about what I remembered. It was better if she didn’t know the hell I had gone through. For her sake, and for Mom’s. Since our stories were off, I may never know the truth, but I wasn’t as pressed about it as I was when I’d first woken up. Now, I just wanted to know where I could take it from here. I looked different, and I felt different, but was I actually gifted?

“Usually gifts don’t change people’s physical appearances,” Sophie went on to confirm. “Unless of course your super power is active.”

“There are rare cases where they don’t have to be, though.”

“You’re right! I mean, you’re already a rare case! Getting a gift not even 24 hours after you turned 18? The probability of that is low enough as it is! So tell me, what’s your gift? What do you feel?”

“I feel stronger. But I don’t know if that’s all I have going for me.” I looked at her promisingly. “So you’re sure this is a gift?”

“Um, what kind of question is that?!” She smiled. “What else could it be?”

I walked back to my mirror and gave myself another look over. There was no doubt in my mind that these last few hours were absolutely unhinged. I’d died, and somehow, was brought back to life. Whatever supernatural forces it be, it happened. I could beat myself about it all I wanted to and kill myself trying to figure it all out, or I could make something of it.

This was my second chance, my big moment. I smiled at my reflection, accepting what Sophie had said. I was strong, this could very well be my new ability blossoming. Sure my appearance changed, which threw me off a bit, but it wasn’t something I couldn’t work with. I still looked like myself for the most part, just leaner. And now I had white hair, so I really did look like Dante from DMC.

“I could… get used to this,” I whispered to myself, sounding less convincing and more appreciative.

“I’m happy for you, Nero!” Sophie congratulated as she bounced off her tiptoes. She clasped her hands together and looked at me like how sponsors looked at their hunters.

“I thought you’d be bummed out about me having a gift? You always called us the undefeatable commoner duo.”

She shrugged. “Seriously? I was just saying that to make you feel better!”

I smirked. “Your support means everything to me, Sophie. Thanks. I really needed to hear that right now.”

“I could say the same about you though. I was expecting you to be thrilled that you finally got what you’ve always wanted!”

I chuckled. “Truth be told, I’m seriously overwhelmed right now. I don’t know how to process all of this. It hadn’t sunk in yet. Me, having an ability… this is nuts….”

“I bet it’s the same for every kid who finds out that they have an ability! There’s so many emotions going through your head right now, it’s easier not to try working them out all at once. But I’m so excited for you, Nero! You better go over to campus and register before it’s too late! Sign up ends in less than an hour!”

“What?” I paused. “Oh, right!” I flashed her a confident smile and nodded. “Thanks for reminding me.”

“And in the special skill section, just jot down super strength. That’s all we have to go off of for now, right? Hurry up and get dressed! We’ll talk more about it on the way there.”

I reached over to my closet to snatch a clean shirt, getting excited for the first time about this. Sophie was right—I had a talent now. We didn’t have a category for it yet, but one thing was for sure, I was stronger than I was yesterday, and that was all that mattered.

“So, what happened last night?”

“Huh?” I turned over to Sophie as I stuffed my keys and phone inside my backpack, startled by her question.

“Sounds like there was something that I was supposed to remember.”

“Oh, it’s… nothing. Got my head all jumbled up, I was rambling nonsense, heh!”

“You sure? You sounded pretty anxious about—” I grabbed her shoulder, cutting her off with an overzealous smirk.

“Who cares?! None of that matters! I have a meta-gift, Sophie! A real-life, god damn, fucking gift!” I laughed hysterically. “Man, if I could do backflips, I would! This is it. Right here, right now. The start of something new, something better! Finally, the change we needed. You and Mom will never have to work a day in your lives again! Just think about it….” I took in a hard breath as I swelled up with emotion. “No more worrying about rent or bills, no more scraping by paycheck to paycheck. We can have anything we want. Mom can finally quit that godforsaken job at the factory, the jewelry boutique, and the landscaping... and you…. You could go to college! You wouldn’t have to put your dreams of going to culinary school on hold, working in that slave kitchen! This is perfect. This is what we’ve been waiting for!” She smiled back at me, Sophie wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. “You two could finally start living….”