Experiment Number One
CHAPTER NINE

I pictured Mariana’s birth.

There was a blizzard in Lusha, everyone was snowed into their house by four feet of snow. The power had gone out and my mother, father, Amilio, and I were hunkered down in our living room surrounded by two dozen candles of all different shapes and sizes. I remember the vanilla aroma filling the air. My mother’s favorite scent.

I was eleven then, and Amilio was not even one yet. After he was born, our parents stopped fighting and became the loving partners they always claimed they were. They were present in my life and worked together to raise Amilio. My mother fell pregnant a few months after having him. They were excited to bring another Mendoza into the world.

On the day of Mariana’s birth, my mother sat in a kiddy pool in the middle of our living room, screaming in agony as Mariana bullied her way out. My father was clutching onto my mother’s hand giving her encouraging words to push. I sat on the sidelines and watched from afar. I tried to help my mother earlier, but she snapped at me like a stray dog and told me to leave her alone. So I grabbed Amilio, wrapped his tiny body into a thousand different blankets to ensure he didn’t freeze to death, and rocked him in our red recliner.

My mother didn’t watch her mouth; in the heat of the moment, she said some mean things to my father. Calling him stupid, worthless, a liar. She called him incompetent and claimed that we would do better off without him. As she kept rattling off the insults, I could see the flare in my father’s eyes starting to glow brighter than the candle wicks around him. His nostrils flared as he tried to keep his anger in. His jaw flexed with every word that came out of her mouth.

Eventually, Mariana was out in the world, filling the house with cries. My father got up and walked away, slamming their bedroom door behind him. Through pants, my mother asked me to go get a knife from the kitchen; I laid Amilio down in his playpen, and when I returned, she used the blade to cut Mariana’s umbilical cord.

Here, she said to me, wrap her in a blanket. I was reluctant to take Mariana; she was covered in gooey stuff and I never held a freshly newborn baby. I was so afraid I was going to drop her. But my mother thrusted Mariana into my arms. I leisurely walked her over to a blanket and began to wrap her. She stopped crying.

My mother got up from the pool, puddles of water following her as she limped out of the room. When she turned the corner, I knew exactly where she was going. To find my father. She could barely walk, having to bare her teeth to keep from crying out in pain as she made her trek. She grasped onto what she could for balance; the stains coating the wall from her infected hands marked her legacy.

I grabbed Mariana and rocked her in my arms, not knowing what I was doing. My parents didn’t let me touch Amilio until he was ten months, so I never had experience caring for something so fragile. I kept feeling like I was going to break her tiny bones with any foul move.

The three of us Mendoza kids sat silently in the dimly lit living room until the argument sparked. My father yelled at my mother and she just screamed and cried in return. I could hear her chanting I’m sorry over and over again. There were loud thuds shaking the foundation from objects being thrown at my mother. My father came raging out into the living room, knocking some candles over in his wake and snatched Mariana from my arms.

You don’t need me? How about I kill this brat right now? Huh? Are you going to need me then? He held Mariana’s naked body over the growing flame he created on the floor.

My mother screamed; she begged him to stop. She grabbed his arm, trying to pull him away from the fire, continuing her chant of apologies.

I got up from my space on the couch and grabbed Amilio from his playpen, holding him tightly as I brought him into the corner of the room. I cried soft tears; the screaming and yelling made my heart knock against my chest. The smoke grew in the room, and the fire spread rapidly. We were all going to die.

Eventually, when my mother got down on her knees and was threatened to be burned by the fire circling around the room, practically kissing my father’s shoes, he finally let up. He threw Mariana into my mother’s arms and walked over to the pool where she gave birth. He picked it up, spilling all the water on the ground that extinguished a pathway out of the living room. For a second, I questioned if he was going to leave us there to burn to death, but he returned with a fire extinguisher and put out the rest of the flames. He then went back into the bedroom, leaving me and my mother with two children, heavy chests, intoxicated lungs, and contaminated eyes.

My mother looked at me and Amilio in the corner. Emerye, come here, she said. I put Amilio back in his pin and walked over to her. Here, she put Mariana into my arms. You have to care for her while I rest. She struggled to her feet and plopped down on our red recliner. She placed an arm over her eyes and let out a sigh.

I looked down at Mariana, who was slowly smacking her lips. What if she gets hungry? I asked. Give her one of Amilio’s bottles, she replied. What if she needs to use the bathroom? I asked. Put one of Amilio’s diapers on her, she replied. What about clothes? I asked. Use one of Amilio’s old onesies, she replied.

That was my night. The living room was thick with smoke and chemicals. Both of the babies were coughing, so I moved them into Amilio’s nursery. I opened the window to let in some fresh air but it made the room colder. I put Mariana in an over-sized diaper and a severely stained onesie despite being washed. When she began to cry, I fed her a bottle. I wrapped both babies in two layers of blankets and placed them in Amilio’s crib to fall asleep. I wrapped myself up in a blanket, sat in the wooden chair next to the crib, and watched their tiny lungs breathe. I fell asleep with them.

My mother was present a bit after Mariana’s birth. But as soon as Mariana could hold her head up, my mother became a part-time workaholic and a full-time drug addict. My father became an alcoholic. And I became my siblings’ caretaker.

I opened my eyes brimmed with tears and saw my hands lighting up in an electric blue.

It worked.

I silently moved my hands from side to side, trying not to extinguish the light while also trying get a glimpse of what was in the air. All I could see around me was the sticky black smoke, and when I looked down the hallway to see where it was coming from, there was nothing. I wanted to venture deeper into the corridor but the scratching picked up again. I turned to my left and stood before a steel door.

If a guard was behind it, I could’ve gotten caught and punished for trying to run away. I thought about leaving them behind, but if I were to do that, the smoke would kill them. I could already feel it coating my lungs. Maybe that’s why they were scratching; they were suffocating in there and trying to get out. I couldn’t just leave them to die.

I noticed the door used a normal kind of lock; one that uses a skeleton key instead of electricity. That was why the doors in that hallway didn’t automatically unlock like mine did. I figured that meant It should be easy to open. They do it all the time in the movies.

I stepped back to give enough space to blow the lock off without having my power ricochet back to me. I turned my head, shut my eyes, and willed my power to shoot itself from my palms and onto the lock. All I heard was a ping and a metal door creaking open. I almost took a moment to celebrate but the sounds of groaning interrupted the session.

I kept my hands lit as I walked into the room. Deep claw marks lined the door, but no one was near it. I go deeper. “Hello?” No answer.

There was a sound to my left, someone shuffling their feet against the concrete ground. “Hello?” I asked again as I moved towards them. “You don’t have to be afraid, I’m here to help you.”

As I got closer, the guard let out a soft whine. I could see them; they were dressed in the same gear the guards wore when they grabbed me from the cell that morning, but this one had pieces of their fabric missing, torn off in deep strokes like they were fighting with a bear. They walked towards me, and I noticed a chunk of meat missing from their leg, making my heart drop. “Oh God.” I tried to hold down a gag. “Okay, let’s get you out of here.” I tried to distinguish my light, but my power didn’t seem to want to let up. I tried to absorb it back into my skin. I tried to extinguish the flames of bolts by shaking my hands. I even tried to do the reverse of what activated my powers: instead devastation, I tried thinking about happy thoughts. None of it worked.

I reached out to the guard, but they didn’t take my advances. They were afraid of my bolts, and who wouldn’t be. But they didn’t even seem to be conceptualize what was in front of them rather staring at me blankly. “Come on, I’m not going to hurt you.”

As I grabbed toward their arm, my power in one of my palms miraculously diminished. By the work of the gods, I was able to reach out and pull them towards the door, but as soon as our skin touched, they let out a loud hissing noise. I raised my remaining light to their face to be met with a monster. Their skin was grey with a sheen of sweat lying over it. Their gums were receding, and their teeth were coated in a tint of red. Chunks of meat laid between them.

I jumped back and landed hard on the ground. The thing advanced and threw itself on top of me. I held my hand out, trying to keep the monster as far away from me as possible. I wanted to kick it off, but it seemed to have the strength of five of my father combined. Through our scuffle, my hand slipped on their blood soaked chest and allowed the monster to fall on top of me and take a bite of my shoulder. I screamed out in pain.

Then, the monster launched off of me.

“Emerye,” a voice called out. I was lifted off the ground.

My remaining power left my body completely, removing any sense of adrenaline from my nerves. My shoulder sent out sharp pains; I threw my palm over it and applied pressure.

I noticed the room around me was still lit and among the light was a man with a gas mask concealing his face. “It’s me, Wallace.” He didn’t even have to tell me; I recognized him instantly.

The monster started to get up again and Lieutenant Wallace pushed me towards the door. “We have to get out of here, now.” He guided me out of the room, a rough hand on my back lead me in the direction. When I looked at the monster, it snarled and cast-ed itself at me once more. Since I busted the lock, Lieutenant Wallace slammed the door shut right before it got to me and secured it with a long stick. The monster pounded against the metal and Lieutenant Wallace and I stared as it struggled to escape.

He looked at me and I turned to him. He said in between heavy breathes, “What the hell are you doing all the way over here?”

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