Free My Familiar Stranger by Victoria Danann

traditional dances were about to begin. I heard shouts. Then the sound of guns firing, automatic weapons. I know that because of movies. Most of us were so surprised we were... disoriented maybe. We just stood there waiting to see what would happen next.”
    Elora stopped, took another drink of water, visibly making an effort to retain her poise. She attempted a couple of surreptitious deep breaths.
    “People wearing black and carrying guns came running into the hall. At first it seemed they were firing randomly, but it became clear their intent was to leave no survivors. There was screaming, people fleeing and falling on each other, on tables of food. There was so much blood. I looked across the room and saw…” Her eyes suddenly filled with moisture and her voice broke. She took another sip of water.
    “ My father had taken a decorative sword down from the wall and raised it to strike at one of the attackers. He was armed with a dull, badly weighted sword against rapid fire assault weaponry. I saw his tunic stain with circles of red that grew bigger as I watched. His face looked,” she swallowed again, “so surprised.”
    Although she was successful at controlling the emotion in her voice, she couldn’t keep the tears from overflowing. They slipped silently from her eyes, running down her face and dropping on her chest.
    “I stood there and watched. Watched them die. I didn’t run. I didn’t scream. I did nothing. I kept wondering when bullets would claim me. I even wondered what it would feel like. But I was not wounded.
    People around me continued to fall and I almost felt like I wasn’t really there. Someone grabbed my hand and I was jerked back, almost off my feet. It was Monq.” The steps of her pacing grew longer and slower. Sometimes she would get caught up in a point of the story and balance her weight on one leg as if she forgot she was in mid step.
    “Monq pulled me through the kitchen and into a service elevator. When we were inside and starting down, he took me by the shoulders and shook me. Hard. I felt my teeth knock together. He said I needed to make myself present in the moment if I was going to survive, but, in that moment, I didn’t care if I survived. The elevator delivered us to the subbasement level. When the doors opened he ordered me to run saying that I was too big to carry. He sounded so very unlike himself. Fearful I suppose.
    I did not run. I was unresponsive. He pulled me all the way to his lab and ran to his safe. He was out of breath. I was thinking he must have lost his mind, that my family was being murdered upstairs while Monq was worried about securing his valuables. He pulled out a thing that looked like a remote control and, when he pushed a button, the wall next to where I stood opened up.” Her head jerked slightly to her right as if she was reliving the moment. “Simply opened up!” She repeated it almost to herself. ”And there appeared a tunnel that seemed to go on without end. It began to spin. I was entranced. I couldn’t decide whether to think about how impossible it was that my family was massacred or how impossible it was that a stone wall just became a spinning hole.
    Monq was talking about a locket, something about calibrating for a life pattern match. He said, ‘Look for someone very like me and give him the locket.’ It made no sense.” She looked at Monq. “At the time.
    When I realized that he planned to put me in that thing, I started to say no, but then he pushed me without warning. I wasn’t expecting it because, well, because it was not something Monq would do. Monq is methodical. When he wants to persuade us of a point of view, he reasons with us until we see the merit of his argument and choose to agree. He does not use physical force.”
    She stopped for another drink of water. Sol handed her a crisp, white handkerchief which she used to dab at her face. She had successfully stopped the flow and become determined to get through the rest of