Fae Fiefdom - M. Sinclair Page 0,3

Sure, physically I was fine but the things I saw? They were like vivid nightmarish hallucinations. I really didn’t need any more weird shit happening to me than what was already going on.

So, I made sure to stay away from prescription drugs. Hell, any drugs. The only luck I seemed to have had been with natural products…if weed counted as natural. Also, herbal supplements but honestly, I didn’t use either very often.

Denise stared at me for a moment before nodding. “If it gets worse, I expect you to tell me. We have several events this upcoming month and I can’t have any of you looking as though you are anything but the picture of health.”

That was just one more aspect of Denise that made us so different. She cared. A lot. About everyone’s opinions within this small, albeit affluent community. I just didn’t have time to. If I had to guess, it was probably her way of keeping entertained while my father was away on government contracting jobs in the Middle East. It sure as hell kept me busy.

When she began laying out the weekly plan, I found myself zoning out once more. I hadn’t been lying to Denise actually. I had been stressed out about the end of my senior year and even more stressed about hiding my secret. The oddities that had begun occurring on my eighteenth birthday three weeks ago.

Don’t get me wrong, there have always been shadows of odd creatures and things at the edge of my reality, right out of the corner of my eyes. Right out of reach. However, it had gotten far worse lately, and I could feel the energy building up around me, almost as if it was preparing for something. The problem? I had no idea what. It was starting to become impossible to ignore.

A pulse of pain hits my chest as the thought of whether my mother would have known how to handle this entered my head. Had she faced the same problems? I didn’t remember much about my mother beside the stories she would tell and the fact that she believed magic was real. Something Denise contributed to the ‘brain cancer’ that took her life. You know, hallucinations and shit like that. Except there was one problem with that…I didn’t think that was how she died.

I remembered the night of my birthday, how I felt. I remembered the boy in the maze. I remembered it all but knew at a young age to keep my mouth shut until I could figure out what the hell was going on around here. I’d yet to be successful. I didn’t think it was out of reach, but just like with the rest of this town, I couldn’t seem to grasp it fully. I didn’t like to take leaps or chances until I had surety that the outcome would be like I expected.

There was something different about Village Worth, and in some ways, I could admit that I was too much of a coward to explore what that was.

I closed my eyes briefly, flashes of my mother streaming before my eyes, and sporting a pair of eyes just like my own. I just knew that she would have been able to handle this. How to deal with the odd things that happened to me and the weird vibe in Village Worth. I just fucking knew it.

Well, that’s the story I tell myself. The tale that I spun. Isn’t it funny how long we can live in ignorance? We tell ourselves we want to take this adventure, that if we were in ‘his or her’ shoes we would have taken the leap…but this was my actual life, and as far as I was concerned, it was the only one I had right now. So instead, I did nothing and tried to ignore it until I could get away. Except, I had a feeling that it wouldn’t be ignored for long. I could feel it wanting to show itself. Violently.

I nearly sighed in relief as my stepmother stood up, cueing me into the fact that our briefing was over. My coffee was finished but my breakfast had been essentially left untouched. I usually didn’t have much of an appetite once Denise began talking about what was expected of me for the week. Expectations make my stomach uneasy.

Plus, I was trying to keep thin, or appear to be ‘dieting’ around Denise, and hanging onto the concept like a lifeboat. Oh, don’t think it’s about self-image either.