Chapter 2: Anomalies

What happened next? For a long while I could not remember. The next thing I remembered after that was waking in a bare, sparsely furnished room. The walls were glaring white in the brightness of the light, the source of which was not readily apparent. I was lying on a lumpy white mattress on a bare white floor made of what looked like marble. There were no windows or vents and I couldn't tell where the door was. It was like an oubliette, a room that was seemingly sealed after I was put inside of it. No sounds or breezes to let me know where I was, either. I was seemingly in a white cube closed off from the rest of the universe.

Oddly enough, that was almost where I was.

I spent what seemed like hours trying to rebuild my memories of what transpired after the toast and the surprise guest's entrance. It was a long process that did not end when I left that room, for the memories were fragmented by the trauma of the event. It took months to fully remember and I would later curse my stupidity in trying to do so.

The voice belonged to a rather misshapen man who, if he could stand up straight, would have been quite tall. His misfortune that that was impossible. His back was about as straight as a slinky and it made him look almost hunch-backed. Add to that the green-tinged, splotchy complexion, the oddly mismatched (almost deformed) features, long, very greasy-looking mud brown hair, and long black trench coat covered with filth and the guy now standing in the middle of the living room lifting an empty wine glass sent the mood from festive to creepy in about nothing flat.

Mom came to stand next to Cat and me and we all stared at the grotesque man standing in her house without having been put on the invite list. "Who are you and what are you doing in my house?"

His nasty grin turned evil and I started to get a bad feeling. Working in public schools trains you to spot the good, the bad, the ugly, and the evil-in-training. Looking at this guy leering at Mom made me sure he got his doctorate in evil a loooong time ago. He tossed the wine glass over his shoulder with a chuckle, not even flinching when it shattered on the coffee table behind him as he walked towards us. Our family parted seemingly against their wills as he approached us.

"I have been watching Cat for a while now," the ogre commented as if talking about the weather and not stalking my sister. "I saw her coming down the subway stair one evening with all of the other sheep. I wound up picking someone else that day, but I have kept an eye on her ever since. Something about her smell, her aura of confidence, something drew me to watch her day after day as she walked down those steps until I finally followed her home one day after the evenings turned dark once more.

"And there she was, in all her glory. Relaxed and still powerful as she puttered around her home," he raved manically, drooling more than a little. I tried to move, to throw him out of the house, but found I was frozen in place, unable to move anything more than my mouth. But just as I tried to shout for help, my mouth froze as well and his mad eyes turned to me. That was when I noticed they were red, completely red. No corneas, no iris, no pupil. "Ah, ah, ah, none of that, Tiernan. This is a private party. Besides, all of your neighbors have decided to go on vacation just now and won't be back until it is far too late for any help to arrive."

He reached up and patted my cheek hard enough to make them blows, cutting the inside of my cheek on my teeth and flooding my mouth with blood. "Your turn will come soon enough, Tiernan, soon enough. You were quite unexpected, my boy," he said cryptically, turning away from me with a gleeful smile that showed peculiarly pointed eye teeth, though not much more so than anything a human being should possess, peeking out from his lips. "It has been a long time since I had company and I should have known the twin of someone like my Kitty-Cat would be special, too. But I came here anticipating finally getting some alone time with my Cat and I won't be denied that just because another pretty toy pops up on the horizon."

He walked over to my sister, a negligent caress to my mother's face which left red furrows as he passed her. I could hear her whimper and rage flared in my mind. I strained with all of my being to move, to hurt this taunting troll of a man, but nothing. Nothing would obey my commands, nothing would move. I had to stand there and watch as he approached my sister, gloating in the fear and loathing that was now plain in Cat's eyes.

He stroked gently over her body, loving caresses that made Cat shudder. A tension in her face made me sure she was trying to close her eyes but this evil was somehow preventing her just as he was preventing the rest of us from leaping to her defense and pummeling him into a noisome stain on the carpet.

He grinned up into her beautiful face, chuckling wickedly. "Such an exquisite dance you have played me, my dear. A long, hard chase come to naught, for here we are, together," he said, the hints of a foreign accent coming through his speech even as it dripped venomous ramblings. "'Twas hard on me, my lovely Cat, it truly was. Rarely have I strung such tortuous longings out as far as I did with you and so, I think, yours will be a dance I will remember for many a decade until even your delicate beauty fades into the mists of time and memory."

He slowly began stripping off the dress Cat had worn to lunch, shamefully revealing her lovely nakedness to the entire family, bit by exquisite bit. Frowning direly at the scar she had high on her chest just over her right breast and visible when he pushed the top of her dress down to her waist, pausing. Also revealed were two other scars, scars only the ER team, Sheridan, and I saw the night we pulled her off the floor of the house she shared with her husband. The shoulder scar was thanks to the beer bottle he drove into her chest, piercing a lung and breaking three ribs. The other two scars were surgical. Various broken bones went with those scars, but they did not leave any visible damage. What was left did not go unnoticed.

"What is this!" the troll roared, spinning about to glare at the entire family in a sweep, settling those mad, red eyes on me. "Who dared mar my beautiful Cat!? Answer me, damned you, or I will make your death something you will pray to all the gods in heaven and hell to forget!"

Suddenly my mouth worked. "Sgklah!" was all I was able to spurt out before collapsing into a coughing fit. Or rather, standing rigidly into a coughing fit. My body was still stock still.

I glanced up and my eyes met Cat's lovely breasts encased in pink silk and lace. Seeing where my eyes were, the ogre took two steps towards me and crushed my head. At least I began hoping he crushed my head because the single blow bounced my brain around enough to make me vomit with dizziness and pain. Added to that was the horror of seeing two of him standing before me, breathing rotten something or other into my face as rage dominated his twisted visage.

"You had better keep your eyes off my Cat or I will present them to her as offers of your apology," he grated roughly. A hand shot up to my head and gripped my hair in a cruelly tight lock, twisting until my head was once more looking at my half naked sister, despite this lunatic's admonition to the contrary. "Now explain what the hell happened to my Cat's chest and stomach and be quick about it. This is taking longer than I planned and I cannot tarry here overlong. I have other engagements that require my presence."

I swallowed my rising gorge and stammered, "H-her ex-husband u-used to b-beat her. The chest s-scar was from a beer b-bottle he r-rammed into her after beating h-her. Th-the other two s-scars were f-from where the doctors had to remove her s-spleen and repair her l-liver."

Those scarlet eyes began glowing, his rage lighting a flame within them. "What is this miscreant's name and where can I find him?" he demanded, each word chewed and spat into my face, beating incessantly on my mind until I could stand it no longer.

"Kevan! Kevan Kallison!" I screamed with the agony squeezing my brain. "I don't know where he went after Sheridan and I told him to get out of her life!"

The villain nodded and sauntered back over to Cat, caressing her scars before beginning to kiss, suck, and nibble on them. Her whimpering went from fear to obvious pain and soon turned into shrieks muffled only by her inability to open her mouth. I don't know when the nibbling became outright bites, but after several minutes I smelled blood and saw it dripping down her abdomen onto the top of her dress wadded around her waist. Cat's eyes began to look glazed, as if she had sent herself somewhere else while her body was being abused once more by an evil man.