Free Cursefell by C.V. Dreesman Page A

of a switch being thrown thundered through the silence.  It was followed by the flickering illumination from a fluorescent bulb.
     Broken chairs and china shattered into countless scattered pieces lay strewn before my reborn sight.  Streaks of charred and bubbled paint ran in frozen rivers along the walls.  My mother stumbled into view from the still dark living room, her feet grinding the small ruined dishes into fine grained dust.  Hands bound before her, my mother shook her head when she saw me.
     The broad shouldered man that followed gripped her arm in an ungentle hand.  I imagined he was responsible for the swollen bruise under her eye, the angry scratch that ran down her arm's length.  Even as his partner, a slender man sporting a scraggly peppered beard stepped out from the kitchen, I only had eyes for the odd shaped blade being pressed against my mother's waist.
     "Mom."
     Her eyes flickered back to the living room where a woman stood silhouetted in the moonlight.  She stood with her feet spread wide, the natural curve of her hips stretched to sleekness.  Confident, haughty, in control her stance said.
     "Let her go.  I will come with you if you let my mom go."
     That low chuckle echoed once again as she moved slowly, swaying, to stand between my mother and I under the light.  My gasp escaped without a struggle.  She was strong and vibrant in all the ways only a woman can be.  Only she wasn't a woman.  She was a high school student named Isabel.
     "Oh close your mouth, Thera, before you swallow a bug." She eyed me with a cold curiosity.  "How cruelly raised you have been, cousin.  I didn't expect you to have manifested yet, but of course there was always that chance.  But to not know?  Your mother, your father even, did not tell you?"
     "Tell me what?"
     "The truth," Isabel clucked her tongue, turning to my mother.  "Really, Diana, is the truth so easily discarded?  You broke the rules you know.  Maybe that is why you are so weak."
     "There was no need to tell her.  She showed no signs that she was turning.  She would have if she was going to."
     "Diana, it has been so long since the last one appeared how is anyone to know?  Why would you take that chance?"
     The tendons in my legs were burning from being bunched while they were talking.  Their words were not making any sense, so I ignored them to plan an escape.  Isabel was distracted, her back turned.  I still held my wooden stake.  Filling my lungs with a long draw of sour air, I held it and sprang at Isabel.
     Her hand shot out faster than I could believe possible.  It caught me about the collar without her ever having turned around to face me.  The hand was silvery white, nearly translucent.  Nails grown wickedly pointed cut and punctured the fabric as she twisted the wool into a strangling trap.  My hands shot up, dropping the stake reflexively, prying at the hand with all my strength.
     Isabel craned her neck about to glare with eyes gone completely black.  The tears swelling before my sight as my eyes began to bulge made her eyes seem like ripples on the deep dark sea.
     "Do not try that again," her voice rumbled.  She released her hold, dropping me painfully to my knees and gasping for air.
     "You," I coughed out.  "tried to drown me.  You are the mermaid."
     One of Isabel's dark eyebrows rose up to form a point.  She did not expect me to know her.  Good.  If she could be surprised once then there was still a chance to surprise her again, and maybe get out of this.
     "If it had been me you would not have gotten away.  But yes, I am a mermaid.  I wonder how you came to that conclusion without your mother's help.  It doesn't matter I suppose," she said, lifting me up, running one sharp nail along my jaw with a bemused smirk on her pouty lips.  "You know who I am, but not who you