Lily (The Chosen, Act 3, Part 5)
Act 1:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
Act 2:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
Act 3:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
June 18, 2180
”Smile”, Mia said, her voice carrying the command that forced Lily’s brain to comply. The girl smiled, as tears ran down her face. ”Good girl. Now go shower and get dressed. We have an appointment with the president.” Telepathic energy caused the air in the room to almost vibrate. Had someone else than Lily been subject to this powerful mind control, they might not have survived it, but it was necessary.
Lily fought against her mother’s powers but failed to resist. She had succeeded earlier, when she had woken up in her bed, disoriented. Looking for Joel. Her mother had told her to stay in bed, had tried to make her stay in bed, but Lily had wanted to search for Joel. So, she had left the bed.
Since that moment, her mother didn’t suggest things anymore. She demanded them. And there was nothing Lily was able to do about it.
Lily watched her arms, her legs, her whole body, as she moved towards the bathroom to take a shower. The hot water ran down her skin, almost burning it. But her mother hadn’t specified the temperature of the shower Lily was supposed to take. Maybe she could harm herself enough to land in the hospital, outside of her mother’s grasp? Would they let her mother into her room, when she was recovering from burn injuries? Maybe it was worth an attempt. @suesa
Slowly, Lily turned up the hot water as far as possible. The temperature increased, and the girl’s skin started to turn red. Lily’s breathing became labored, as her body tried to fight off the heat. Tears began running down her face, until suddenly …
… the waves of pain washed away her mother’s influence.
Surprise made Lily breathe in sharply, which also caused her to swallow a bit of hot water, followed by coughing.
”Lily?” Her mother’s voice sounded through the closed door. ”What are you doing? Answer me!”
”I’m showering!” Lily replied between coughs.
”Hurry up.”
There was it again, the force of her mother’s voice. But the pain from the burning water that was still running down her back helped Lily to keep it out. Was that it? Pain? Could she escape her mother’s influence by inflicting pain to herself? Not a pleasant thought, by far not. But … if it helped to find Joel again? To save him? To flee with him and go back home?
Lily turned off the water, half expecting the pressure to get dressed as her mother had demanded, to return. But it didn’t.
”This might work”, she mumbled. But she needed a better way to inflict pain, Lily couldn’t go take a hot shower every time she needed to free her head. She needed something portable, something small that she could hide in her pockets. Something like … a knife? No. They would notice if she had a knife.
Searching for something suited for the task, Lily’s eyes wandered around the room. There wasn’t much that she could even consider. Towels, soap, a comb, toilet paper … none of it useful for inflicting physical pain. Following an impulse, she opened the door to the small bathroom closet. Female hygiene products, more soap, toothbrushes, nail scissors.
Nail scissors.
The kind with the pointy, really pointy tip.
Lily grabbed the pair of tiny scissors and pushed the tip into her thumb. A sharp pain flashed through her hand, more intense than the pain caused by the hot water had been earlier. Satisfied with the result, Lily slid the scissors in the pocket of her jeans, which she then put on. It was necessary to follow her mother’s commands until a chance to find Joel opened up.
Time to play the good girl again.
Lily finished dressing, looked in the mirror and sighed. Her hair looked dry and lifeless, her skin like parchment paper, and her eyes dull and sad. She was exhausted, and her body had started reacting to it. No “superior alien DNA”, or whatever her mother considered her heritage, was able to fix that.
”Let’s do this”, Lily told herself and left the bathroom.
”That took too long”, her mother remarked. ”I hope you’re at least clean now. You’ve been out there in the dust without a shower for too long.”
”Squeaky clean”, Lily said, with a fake smile. Mia sighed.
”It’s not like it changes anything, though. You’re still hideous. Your children will be luckier, of course. I just feel sorry for your breeding partners. They’re the ones who’ll have to look at that during mating, and I know from first-hand experience how awful it is to mate with an ugly hybrid.”
Her mother’s words made Lily almost throw up. They felt like knives in her stomach, every word pushing the blade deeper while turning it a little bit. Lily had always known that she was different, had always felt excluded, even ugly. And she remembered being called a monster by Tif, that soldier she had attacked several months ago. But hearing that from her mother still hurt each time.
And Mia said it often. As if Lilly was supposed to be thankful for her sacrifice. There were so many things Lily wanted to tell her mother, but she bit her tongue to suppress them. Together, they walked towards the building in which the president resided in.
”Behave”, Mia instructed Lily, as they entered the conference room. Lily felt the power force itself into her brain and immediately grabbed the scissors hidden away in her pocket and buried the tip deep in the sensitive skin of her thumb. Relief filled her heart when the strategy worked.
The president was sitting behind a desk made from dark wood. Lily suspected that it was already several decades old. Apparently, he had been reading up till the moment when his visitors arrived, as he put a bunch of papers down. Then again, maybe he had just wanted to seem busy. Lily could feel the insecurity and even slight fear that the president was experiencing, and only about half of it was directed towards her mother. This fact was weirdly reassuring for Lily.
”Mr. President”, Mia greeted him, and he nodded in reply.
”Please”, he said, while extending one arm and pointing at the two chairs across the table from him, ”take a seat.”
After her mother had sat down, Lily took her place in the other chair. She tried to “behave” as correctly as possible, to not alarm her mother. She couldn’t know that Lily’s mind had escaped her, not yet. The girl tried her best to carefully hide all traitorous thoughts.
”How are the preparations going?” Mia asked, skipping all small talk. Lily suppressed a frown. Which preparations?
”We’re almost ready. The rocket should be ready in less than a week.”
”And it will able to make the trip?”
”We’ve been using all alien technology we had been able to find and followed your instructions precisely”, the president replied. His composed façade was betrayed by his fidgeting fingers, that were ripping a piece of paper apart. ”As long as the data you’ve given us is correct, the trip should pose no problem.”
”Excellent. In this case, I’ll start my own preparations. Let me know as soon as the rocket is ready for use.” Mia turned to Lily and petted her head, a gesture she had never executed before and that left Lily confused. ”It’s time I bring this child to her home planet. It’s time to finally be reunited with my family.”
Signature by @atopy
Also, bonus points for making me cringe at the idea of shoving the pointy tip of the nail scissors between her nail and the nail bed. I know that isn't what was written, but I thought that was what she was about to do, and my nope nope nope started to kick in all the same :D
Mia turning out to be this evil (yes yes I know, "what is evil anyway", but look, she just told her daughter she's ugly) is really fucking with me. I don't think I am still in denial, but I feel like I wish I was :D
I was more thinking of the surface of the thumb, but between nail and nail bed might actually be more effective. So now it's that.
And it's always the innocent looking ones you have to keep an eye on. She surely doesn't think she's evil!
Wow! That must be a very big shock for Lily, that not only is her mother so insensitive, but that she also take her to live with her family ..... And on another planet?
That must be very overwhelming for her. Poor Lily!