CHAPTER TWELVE : BY BLOOD?

BY BLOOD?

I keep calm like I don't know what I did. Nathaniel is there timorously. I ignore him the best. I feel nothing at that moment just utter guilt.

And at that moment I feel what I felt again on the road. That electricity, I feel that. It isn't good this time. This time my whole body shakes. I think the voltage shot up so I was taken off guard. My eyes shut immediately. My ears sing a deafening song one very irritable to the ear. My nerves went haywire. They decided to take no decisions from anybody. They betrayed my heart's sync. My heart goes off guard trips and loses its rhythm. My whole body goes off dumping my soul into the abyss.

I should have ended on the floor but he caught me, Nathaniel. I feel his warm fingers touch my dead numb back. I smell his lavender scent through my nostrils. Tears went to my eyes blurring my already shut eyes. I feel my lungs closed for business. They put up a sign: No entry, only respective gases for oxidative phosphorylation.

I'm out of it. I don't know what I'm feeling but I'm still conscious to know I'm feeling something right here and now.

Nathaniel doesn't know what to do. My so-called superior is clueless. (chuckles).

Look who they did wrong.

Nathaniel who stands there when I kissed the floor with my body in the Top's room is getting agitated. This time he cares, I think. This time he does something to make sure I am alright.

He opens the door that I shut. He goes down the stairs hurriedly almost tripping off his boots. He gets to where my father sat. He gets to where my aunts sit and lay. He gets to where they lay to ask for their help concerning my condition but the state they are in say otherwise.

They sit and lay there frozen as if time stopped to join in this furor. He is confused, dumbfounded. His lips sit close to each other not abandoning one another. He holds his hands to the lips then his head.

Turning back and forth at the sight.

What is he to do?

With me and them?

What's the solution?

He can't bear all of these nor swallow all of these happening. Should he rush over to the Top who's a four-hour drive away from here or should he keep to himself and sit the hell down thinking.

He does the latter. He does his bidding on the first step on the stairway. I still lay on the bare floor. Laylah lays near me, two meters away from me. My father and aunts sit like frozen chickens in the freezer.

"Who caused all of this?"

"Why is this happening?"

If everyone seems affected why not boy Nathaniel. As did what happened in the wind he never got affected. Why can't he get affected? Is he related to me in some way at all? Does he know the answer to all of this?

He remembers something. One he read in an old book Feline caught him reading. She seized the book from him and from that day he became enslaved by her. He is the only one who knows that she isn't who she seems. She's not the neighbor across a daily Nathaniel's daughter caught. She's something worse. A sticky glue stuck forever.

Boy Nathaniel makes up his mind to go against Feline. Her instructions are damned! He says in his mind as he advances the spiral stairs towards my room.

He gets to where I lay. Putting me on his lap. He breathes in twice mumbling that he can do this. He then takes action. He slaps the living hell out of me!

Does he think I am dead? Well, then when I awake I'd slice his throat. He doesn't listen to me cos he can hear me not. He continues to slap me. Each slap is harder than the previous one. After twenty slaps, he presses against my neck close to my right ear. Behind it, he presses a spot electrifying my whole body. He's sending more goddamn voltage into my bloodstream!

Just stop will you Nathaniel! But he can't hear me. To me, I scream beyond my vocal cords but to him, I only open my mouth not alone let words come out of it.

Unknown to me all previous actions were being reversed. My lungs put down the banner. My heart continues its unique rhythm. My nerves are in order. My ears sing no more. My body accepts its burden, my soul. My eyes open up widely. My body jerks a few seconds after accepting my soul. I sit down with full force panting like I've been racing a never-ending marathon. I have been awake all this while but dead still.

I look Nathaniel in the eyes wanting to question him about the slaps but I thought to myself why didn't he freeze? He mumbles some words when he came to my side after he alightes the stairs: Why is everyone frozen, Nathaniel, her aunts, the cats, everyone?

If I did that to everyone why didn't he freeze? There and now. Even Feline didn't. I noticed too. The supposed Top has something wrong with her except Feline and boy Nathaniel.

Is it that?

I am not sure but is boy Nathaniel and Feline related? By some spell? Enactment? Blood?

WHERE'S MY DAUGHTER?