BUT WHAT ABOUT CHARLIE?

I emerge from the pool, dripping with blood and look around. The room is empty. I gently float through the air, tumbling listlessly as I approach the door on the left wall, a trail of blood dripping from me in my wake. It’s not my blood, or at least most of it isn’t. I subconsciously bring a hand to the line in my wrist where it had been repeatedly cut open. “She didn’t need that much blood,” I thought to myself. I placed a palm against the door. I closed my eyes and focused. It was always weird doing it for the first time, even so, I knew how it worked. They whispered it to me. The instructions: I merely needed to follow. My hand twitched and flickered and sank into the wood. I smiled as I felt the door become spongy beneath my palm, my hand beginning to flow through it. As it became softer and softer, my mind homed in on the correct action, like tuning an antenna. And with a click, and a small twist of my brain. I could feel it, it was an odd one, it was a thing I did with my body as a whole, other than something more intuitive like moving a muscle. The only comparable one was flight, although flight had felt so natural, I had started doing it nearly immediately. I passed through the door, feeling the wood run over my body with an almost static tingle. I looked into the dark room. I could see in the dark. Unlike something like high photosensitive vision, or night vision goggles. I could truly see in the dark. The room looked as black to me as it would to anyone else. the difference was comparable to that of someone running their fingers over brail text who doesn’t understand it, versus someone who does. It was the exact same information, just with different meaning more or less imperceptible to one person. I floated through the dark room and entered the shower, still dripping blood on the tiles. The smell was strong enough that it would probably cling to me until the next infusion. It always did. I turned on the hot water anyways, spraying the red liquid off of me, it was a lot harder to deal with once it had dried after all, and I began to hum. I don’t know the name of the song, or where I learned it, but I remembered it, nonetheless.

I don’t know how long I had stayed there, floating in the shower. I was there long after the water ran clear into the drain. But I eventually shut off the water, deciding to face the universe. I grabbed a bathrobe from the hook on the wall, and slipped it over my body, I tied the belt around myself and floated over to the door. I paused. Could I bring the bathrobe through the door with me? I could just open the door, but I should probably learn what I can and cannot do with this new ability. I immediately begin trying to phase through the door, just my arm though. Immediately, the sleeve of the robe fell through my insubstantial flesh. I frown. I note that now that my flesh had been interposed by the sleeve, I could no longer solidify it. That’s good, if I could do that, she’d make me deliberately solidify inside a solid object to see what happens. I pull my arm from the sleeve entirely before re-solidifying my arm. I ran it back through the sleeve. This time I tried focusing on including the sleeve along with my arm. I pushed it into the door. I watched as my fingers passed into the wood, followed by the rest of my hand, then the sleeve itself. I fully incorporated the robe, then flowed through the door. I wondered what the limit was. Surely, I couldn’t put a hand on the ground and make everything fall to the center of the earth. I floated through the room, the cold floor still covered in blood. Well, I assumed it was cold, I hadn’t touched the floor of this room since I could fly. But I remember it being cold. The air was cold, and the floor was stone, so it made sense that it would be cold. I left the room. Floating through the wall on my left and entering the hallway. I wondered how far into a solid object I could go. Could I burrow miles into the earth? I suppose that isn’t something for me to find out on my own. My head poked through the wall as I took in the hall. A maid on the other side letting out a yelp of surprise as she saw my disembodied head coming through the wall. I looked at her. She was dressed in a sleek black uniform, showing almost no skin, save for her ears. Her face was covered by a porcelain mask with a pained on smiling face, the mask contoured to fit the expression. This marked the eighth time in my entire life I had heard one of the maids make a noise, not counting miss Laurel, my personal maid or the maids who brought dinner from the kitchens to the dining room every evening. They always said bon appétit before leaving. It should be noted that one of the other seven times I heard a maid was when I was about five or six. I’d fallen from a tree and broke my leg, what I’d heard through my screams of agony was her calling for an ambulance.

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I floated towards the dining hall. I was always hungry after each infusion, this time being no exception. Well, there was an exception, that being I was considerably more loopy than usual. It was probably the blood loss. I floated higher, looking at the ceiling. The dining room was two floors up, did I need to go to the stairs? I hovered higher and poked my head into the floor above. I looked around the carpeted hall, finding it empty. I grinned and pushed the rest of the way through the floor. Followed by the one above. I smiled, arriving on the second floor proper. I immediately began searching for the dining room. I knew where it was in principle but had to take a second to get my bearings. I turned and made a bee line for the food.

I floated into the dining room, thoughts of dinner bouncing around my mind. “Charlie! No flying in the dining room!” my younger cousin shouted at me from behind her phone. I lowered myself to the ground. “S-sorry,” I managed. She just huffed and returned her attention to her phone. My bare feet slapped on the heated tile floor, as I walked across the room. Sat down at the table, crossing one leg over the other. My gaze fixed on the lacquered wood surface before me. I glanced up at my cousin across from me. I realized I didn’t actually know what time it was. Or when Dinner would be served. I’d left my phone in my room before the infusion. I sighed. My room was on the first floor, but I didn’t feel like going all the way there… or… did I? With a twist of intent, I fell through my chair and the floor, now ceiling, thereafter. I floated into a dusty guest room. I Floated through the door, and into the hall. Again, looking around to get my bearings. I swirled through the air to my room. I pushed my head through the door… and saw her. My aunt. She was sitting on my bed, looking at me expectantly. I wanted to go back through the door into the hallway… but that wouldn’t help me. I pushed through the door fully. Entering the room. “Come,” she said. Her voice made me flinch like the crack of a whip. I grimaced internally, before sliding fourth. She extended her hand, glaring at me until I placed my palm against hers. “Push through,” she said. I obliged, my hand passing through hers smoothly, the tingly numbness that followed lingering for just a bit longer than usual. Not long enough for me to be sure it wasn’t just my imagination. “Hmm,” she said. “Have you tried solidifying inside another object?” she asked. “Yes, Ma’am,” I said. my eyes anchored to her feet. “And?” “I can’t. If I’m overlapped with something else, the ability won’t deactivate.” She nodded. “Good enough for now. You look hypovolemic so, we’ll begin testing in a few days. You know what to do,” She said standing. She strode past me, leaving the room. The door closed behind her, and I collapsed, breathing heavily. Chills running up and down my spine. I lay there on the floor of my bedroom, for what could be an hour or a minute. Letting my breathing return to normal. They screamed at me the whole time, not telling me to do anything, just… screaming. It was always like that when I was near her. The closer I got, the louder they would scream and the worst part… was that they didn’t want me to get away from her. They wanted me to be near her at all times, follow her every whim, and they wouldn’t stop screaming. I pushed off the ground, floating into the air, I drifted over the nightstand, head down, and grabbed my phone. It wasn’t worth it.