The Dragon King and I (2 page)

Which probably meant that she was sleeping with someone who had connections. I was mentally going through her current list of beaus to see if I could tell which one would be most likely to play secretary for a psychic when what she said finally clicked.

“Wait. What do you mean ‘luckily for me’?

“You’re supposed to see her Friday.”

“I’m not sure I like the prize behind door number one.”

“Don’t be a bitch. You think you’re cursed right? Who better to lift a curse than a psychic?”

“A witch, maybe?”

“Whatever. Talking to her won’t hurt anything. She may even be able to help. And as an added bonus it fulfills my promise to your mother by getting you out of the house for a while. You get some peace of mind. I don’t die. Badda Bing Badda Boom, we all live happily ever after.”

“Badda Bing Badda Boom? Who still says that?”

Finally losing patience with me, Rachel flicked the business card at my face. “Are you going to go or not?”

That business card was such a small thing. Pretty, yeah, but small and deceptively simple. I looked at it for a long moment and something about that robed woman had me nodding my head in feigned nonchalance.

“Sure. Why not? My life already sucks, so it’s not like I can sink much lower right?”

For the first time since busting (uninvited) into my apartment at 8:00 am, Rachel Montgomery smiled at me. “Now there’s the glass-half-empty mentality I know and love.”

I ducked my head, but couldn’t hide the answering grin that stole across my face.

* * * *

I’d done my fair share of research into my condition and had never been able to classify it as anything other than a curse. I was majoring in English with a minor in medieval studies so pretty much my entire life had been taken over by this…condition of mine. It started when I was three years old. I know, because one of my first memories was of ensnaring the young man who came to our estate to tutor me on important things like my alphabet and the memorization of my name and address.

I’d completely given up the overly complicated task he’d given me (which consisted of coloring within the lines if my mother’s account of events was to be believed) and had begun crying as children that young are prone to do. The man, Harold, had been beside himself. He’d gone out of his way to make me feel better, his antics becoming increasingly outrageous, not to mention, dangerous, because it seemed to distract me from my upset.

The part that blazes in my mind, the event that I remember firsthand rather than through the numerous retellings of those who’d been adults at the time, is when he stood up on the railing of our fourth floor balcony, and began to perform upon it like an acrobat. This, more than the funny faces, and his slap-stick comedy inspired skits, had captured my complete and undivided attention. I hadn’t been old enough to be afraid for him. Not for his life anyway. I knew that he’d be in terrible trouble if his mommy ever caught him climbing on things that way, but these concerns were shoved right out of my head when he began to flip. End over end, his hands and feet moving like magic over the thin railing, his balance impeccable.

I’d begun clapping, laughing, because I was just so…happy. Then he looked me in the eye and the normally brown orbs had been bleached out. It was as if his iris had exploded like some miniature bomb, so that he stared at me, but did not see me.

In later years I came to recognize the signs. The mindless way he behaved, as if his only purpose was to please me, and everything else, including his own life was inconsequential. The white eyes usually occurred when the curse had taken over someone completely. It happened rarely, but in the instances when it did it was unforgettable.

That day, when I realized that something was wrong with his eyes, I screamed. Even as I watched, the brown began to form again. A flower coming back to life. And with awareness came fear, and then my tutor’s once-impeccable balance deserted him, and he slipped.

Then he fell.

He lived, but that height had been nothing to sneeze at. I never visited him as I grew older, but I made arrangements to have flowers sent to the extended care facility where he lay to this day, paralyzed from the waist down. My mother kept his hospital bills paid, and we made a point to stay out of the way.

That had been the first, but it certainly hadn’t been the last. My gift seemed to lay mostly dormant for a number of years after that. My second victim was my first grade teacher, though the newscasters called him a monster.

What else were you supposed to call a man who kidnapped one of his students? He had me in his care for a week before the police found him. In many ways, my kidnapping was almost a vacation. He fed me, played with me, told me stories, and generally promised that we’d be together forever. I wasn’t sure how his wife and children fit into his plans for our future, but he didn’t seem concerned about them so I decided not to worry either.

No, my time with Mr. Rockwell was peaceful, fun. But the police recovered him while he was away from our hiding spot, and when they took him he refused to tell them where he’d stashed me. So for another week, I was all alone in the basement of an abandoned hospital in the middle of town. I’d run out of food and water quickly, and afterwards it was just darkness.

And fear.

Fear played a big role.

Mr. Rockwell only revealed my location after the aftereffects of my curse had worn off and he’d realized what he’d done. By then, it was a miracle that the paramedics and doctors that followed were able to save me at all.

Mr. Rockwell was followed a few years later by Marcus Grimball. I was in the sixth grade and puberty had managed to punch me solidly in the teeth. I was an adolescent’s nightmare. All gangly arms, pimples, and hair that just wouldn’t stop growing. I was also one of the first girls in my class to receive her ‘monthly visitor’.

Only, my first period wasn’t marked by mandatory speeches concerning the birds and the bees. Oh no. Instead it was commemorated with four hours of fright when a group of eighth graders followed me into the shower room after swim practice. They were old enough to know what they wanted to do, but young enough to still be afraid to do it, not to mention, ignorant of how to go about it.

It wasn’t like today. Today it was almost normal for thirteen and fourteen-year olds to have sex lives of their own. Back then, it was practically unheard of. Back then you were a deviant if you even knew what acronyms for sex meant, and that was the only thing that saved me from something worse than the beating I actually got.

It turns out, that when young boys don’t know how to express sexual aggression, they hit things. In my case, I was the designated punching bag. I did however, manage to get away. I ran and shut myself off inside my own locker. They tried to get in, and when they realized they couldn’t, they eventually gave up and left. This left me trapped inside said locker, until a custodian heard me screaming and let me out a few hours later.

After that, things got much, much, worse.

My overabundance of hormones almost got me killed more times than I can count, but eventually things sort of leveled out. It still got really bad around the time I was menstruating, but other than that, I was able to find a groove. I wasn’t happy by any means, safety was a laughable pipedream, but I could go through the motions of a day to day life by firmly refusing any and all overtures of sexual interest and or help.

When I started researching what may have been wrong with me, I’d turned to scientific or medical explanations. I went to doctors, psychiatrists, and palm readers. The internet told me I had an overabundance of pheromones. A conspiracy theorist told me I was the offspring of the alien from Species. A bum off the street claimed I was a government experiment and that Big Brother, as always, was watching the shambles that was my life and taking notes.

It was the palm reader who first whispered of curses.

“I can see it.” she said, staring intently at my hand, heavily kohled eyes narrowed with either concentration or in protection against the heavy layer of scented incense smoke that hung in the air.

I waited, but the silence stretched on and I finally rolled my eyes before responding.

“See what?”

She traced the weird squiggles on my palm as if following a road on a map.

“This line represents your life.” she traced another, “This is your heart.”

She tapped one more and nodded her head decisively. “And this is your luck.”

“I have a luck line?” I asked doubtfully.

I knew I was in the wrong place when she nodded.

“Yes. From what I can gather,” she leaned over my outstretched hand until her nose nearly touched my skin. “It says that you were cursed from the very beginning to be an object of desire.” she used the hand that wasn’t holding mine still to gesture as she spoke. “These men you tell me about. They don’t love you. How can they? They have a greed for you, however, that goes beyond reason. They want you in the way that men once craved fire and warmth. They grasp at you like madmen wanting to hold the sun. If they catch you, they’ll try and fool you with pretty words, try to make you believe that their feelings are sincere. But the result would be the same.”

Despite myself I leaned forward, eyes wide, and asked, “What result? What would happen to me?”

She released my hand, and smiled. “I’m sorry, but our time is up.” the look on her face turned sly, “Unless of course you’re willing to pay a little extra to extend the session.”

While that had pretty much been my one and only foray into the freaky and strange, I’d taken at least some of the charlatan’s words to heart.

I, Alexandria
Marie Greyson, was the victim of a curse. It was the only explanation that made sense, though as years passed knowing what was wrong with me was of little to no comfort. Having one answer meant that I now had dozens more questions.
How had I been cursed? Why? Who had done it? And most importantly; how do I fix it?

* * * *

The main thing that I loved about living alone was the silence. Sometimes simply talking to people was like listening to white noise. Often I could tune the sound out and be all right, but other times it was like hearing nails on a chalkboard. Almost painful. I loved talking to Rachel of course, but even that had its limits. It’s one of the reasons why I enjoyed the rest of my week so much. After Rachel’s visit, I was even able to catch up on a couple of assignments from school in addition to my sleep.

I didn’t clean anything, but I did cook for the first time in almost a month which meant that I didn’t have to stare at left over take-out boxes the next day when I finally decided that a trip to a medium would be the same as a trip to a palm reader.

Pointless, not to mention a complete waste of money.

I was doing all right, wasn’t I?

What was so great about joining society anyway? I didn’t like anyone out there. I even had an active aversion to at least fifty percent of the population. Wouldn’t it be simpler for all involved for me to just stay exactly where I was and travel beyond my doors as the need arose? I was already going to school from home. Why not take it a step further and work from home, too?

I was so pleased with my own genius that the next time my mother called to check up on my progress I actually answered the phone. One could even say that I was…happy to talk to her.

I guess that was a warning bell in itself, because she stopped in the middle of asking me to join her for dinner next week, to say;

“People are beginning to talk Alexandria. I heard the wait staff gossiping the other day in the Country Club about how you were a lunatic and a,” her voice lowered with outrage, “strumpet. Now I don’t know what new nonsense you’re on about this month, but I expect you home for dinner on Sunday. And if this little excursion with Rachel is the only way to make sure that you do that, then you’d better be there. Now,” her voice was satisfied as if she’d made some grand point that she didn’t expect me to argue with. “You are going tomorrow. Aren’t you?”