The Victimised Bloodline: Chapter 4

Chapter 4

 I woke to the sound of absolutely nothing. It was quiet in the house. The rain from yesterday seemed to have stopped. I thought it was going to rain for a whole day, and so did the forecast.

I let out a yawn, and sat up for a little while, listening to the not so mild breeze outside. Actually, it was next to storm. If I'd been hearing rain, I probably would've assumed it was a fierce storm outside. Because of my scrub of a room, I carefully moved through the small space between the furniture towards the wardrobe in the corner of it and I got changed into a white teal-striped tank top and a pair of ill-fitting light jeans.

 As I saw myself in the mirror, I saw a fourteen-year-old girl who looked like she came straight from Egypt, with dark skin and black hair, arranged to fall past her shoulder on to her breast. She was slightly taller than most people her age, but only slightly. Her eyes, much like her father's, were a light amber, almost illuminating the dark of the scrub.

 I sighed, blinked, and slowly wandered up the staircase, hearing the familiar sizzling of eggs in a frying pan. My uncle was up and about, early morning as usual.

 "You're up early." He told me. "Again."

 "So what?" I returned, and immediately afterwards forgot about it as I had other things on my mind... Actually, no I didn't. My mind felt extraordinarily empty, like something extremely incendiary happened and I suddenly forgot all about it. But that wouldn't happen, my memory's excellent. So I've been told by several people, and considering I can retell these events so accurately I suppose they are correct.

 I gently sat down at a nearby chair. If you could really call letting go of your leg muscles gently. I think way too hard about these things, don't I?
The eggs were finished before I knew it, and breakfast began as usual: silence, half-decent, half-terrible food, and cheap apple juice.

 The weird things didn't begin until later that day, right after breakfast. Frank was getting ready to head for work, and as things turned out today was when school started. I could've sworn it was Sunday, but I was wrong as I ususally were.

 School wasn't far from home. In fact it was only a few hundred meters, depending on which way you took. Me being me, I took the shortest route and shortly caught up with Reece. We talked for a bit, mostly about wether or not our history teacher was sick but also about that time Coal snuck into my backpack and wreaked havoc during maths. It was a fun time, that one. The teacher started outright screaming because she thought he was a rat. Rats have tails, hamsters do not.

 It was History class, we were doing an assignment about World War II. A group assignment, to be more specific. I was working together with Reece, a suspiciously top-heavy blonde by the name of Sarah, and Alexander, a boy who looked like he'd just been buried in sand. I, personally, was starving and I'd never gotten much work done. Reece was researching like a maniac because she actually cared about this assignment, while Sarah was leaning uncomfortably close to Alexander, who did his best to keep her and her perversion at bay.

 I was continously banging my head into the table when Reece told me strictly to shut up and look at what she'd found. I leaned closer to her to see what she'd found. Wikipedia wasn't always a reliable source, but the title of the page caught my attention anyway.

 I didn't have the time to read it, because Reece did so out loud the moment I laid eyes on her computer screen. "The pyramid of El Sayed", she said. "That's your last name, isn't it? El Sayed?" She asked me. It was a rethorical question, she already knew the answer.

 I read the article further. Apparently, it was a pyramid they found recently a few miles from Cairo. How Reece found it while researching World War II, I don't know. She was probably intrigued because of her wish to become an archeologist. Anyway, the pyramid was a pretty small one. It'd been hidden under a sand dune until a travelling couple stumbled upon it. Efforts to get inside it had been in vain.

 The name they got from a few hieroglyphs inscribed into the pyramid's outer shell, obviously by the ancient Egyptians. The catch was that no known pharaoh in history had been known as El Sayed and because of that this find was quite revolutionary.

 "It could just be someone who they called 'el sayed'. It means 'the master', after all." I speculated. I'm not sure what my parents thought when they named me Esme. Maybe they just liked how 'Esme El Sayed' rolls off the tounge, or they were completely stupid naming me something that literally translates to 'beloved'. Silly, isn't it?

 Reece sat in silence for a few seconds before respinding. "You have a fair point." She returned to searching for more information about World War II, but I could tell she hadn't stopped thinking about the pyramid.

 Meanwhile, on Alexander's side of the table, the boy had almost fell off his chair. Sarah, being Sarah, noticed this and leaned back, giving him slight breathing room before she moved her chair significantly closer to his. Alexander turned to me with a 'help me' look. I ignored him.

 That was my first big mistake.

 Around ten to twenty minutes later (don't look at me, I didn't count), me and Reece were headed for the cafeteria. Reece had brought her own food, while I was to buy whatever they gave us.

 "About the pyramid..." She said quietly to me, confirming my suspicions. "Do you really think they referred to the pharaoh as 'El Sayed'? It doesn't seem... well, Egyptian."

 "Who knows, I might be the descendant of some old Egyptian pharaoh. So what? Ancient Egypt is no more. Now, it's just another country that happens to have a history related to the Bible." I said. I was an atheist, still am. I don't believe in some godly power controlling our lives, and the importance of religion was futile in my eyes.

 "Well... If you are, it would be a pretty big deal. Just putting it out there..." Reece said.

 "I'm sure it's nothing. El Sayed is a common name after all, it probably is just a coincidence." I couldn't help but wonder whether or not it had been an old pharaoh who ruled with an iron fist, and I'm his descendant. Probably not.

 The cafeteria was in bad shape, tiny cracks lay scattered on the floor and the wallpaper was scratched and miscoloured from thrown food.

 I stood in the queue while Reece was searching for a suitable table to sit by when it happened. With an ear-piercing noise, the large windows at the one side of the cafeteria shattered into tiny bits, almost like a frozen lake splitting intona million cracks. For a moment, the windows looked like ice on a sunny day, then the millions of tiny pieces flew into the room. It rained shards all over the place. I used a tray from a nearby table to shield myself, then headed for the nearest exit. Around me, people screamed in panic and fear. I suppose I did too.

 Then I remembered something...

 Reece! I didn' see her among the crowds. Scanning the cafeteria, I saw a short, brown-haired girl taking refuge beneath a table. I ran towards her to try and help her out, but I slipped on a shard and fell. I felt the pain of glass stuck in my face.

 Reece looked up, and I saw her eyes. They were panicked, and not just because of the glass. I looked behind me. No one there.

 "Someone's coming." She said. I noticed something about her eyes. They were emitting a faint glow, a bit like my eyes sometimes looked like they did. Usually, I'd thought of it as an illusion, but now...

 Barely a second later, I felt a shoe-clad foot push me to the ground. Reece gasped, but remained under the table. I swiftly exhaled and hoped the glass shards wouldn't bury themselves in my lungs. I had a feeling I wouldn't be so lucky.

 I think the foot was going to break my spine when I heard a familiar voice above me. It was an American accent, and it sounded like someone who had a heartburn. I'd heard it before, I just couldn't put my finger on where or when...

 "You've cost me a lot of effort, little girl." It said. The foot pushed me to the floor only harder and harder. I saw Reece, shivering in panic underneath the table. I don't think whoever this foot belonged to had seen her. I heard the man whisper something above me... I think I recognized my father's name: Omar.

 "Rest assured, the end of your bloodline will help... Well, humanity." He said after a few seconds. I was in fear, I was confused, I was... was that dissapoinment?

 I felt the foot slowly lose weight, and for some reason I knew I was going to die. I did not want to die.

 Have you ever had a near-death experience and thought 'oh god, I've lived a horrible life'? That was the exact colour of my train of thought at that specific moment. I remembered my parents' death, my time with my uncle, that one time Coal fell into a cup of tea.

  And then Reece went bananas.

 The table she'd just been hiding beneath shattered into tiny bits, and they reformed into a mess of wood and iron that I think was supposed to look like a sword. Not sure what a medieval weapon could do against a crazy murderer, but that's beside the point. The man laughed, and told me, "Stay still." And the floor came up and swallowed my legs, and before I knew it my lower body was engulfed. in the concrete and wood floor.

 I saw Reece holding her medieval infantry weapon with shaky hands. If I'd be able to ask a genie anything at that exact moment, I'd ask it 'what the hell is going on' and leave it at that.

 Unfortunately, no genies were around at the moment. So you'll have to make do with a description of what happened except without any skill in retelling.

 Reece attacked. I suppose she didn't have much of a choice, but that's beside the point. The point is, whoever the man above me was, he stopped the sword mid-swing, and it dissolved into some kind of brown-grey wind. Reece completely froze. She didn't move at all. She was barely breathing. She just stood there, like she'd held a sword or something mere minutes ago. Looking back, it was kind of silly, actually.

 Then something happened. I wanted to get out, for the ground to release its grip on me. And the concrete floor just simply melted away. I climbed my way up and my head reached just for my eyes to align with the man's neck. I readied a fist, but I, too, froze. It felt like claws gripping every part of my body, burying their sharp nails in my skin. I tried to get out, but couldn't move a muscle. It seemed vaguely familiar...

 The man almost laughed. "I told you to stay still." He said. And at that moment, a large metal spike suddenly pieced my chest. It hurt. It hurt like hell. The piece of metal burned as it was stuck there, slowly leaking crimson blood.

 And then it all went dark. The last thing I heard was someone calling my name... And then I passed.

 But despite just being penetrated through the chest with a large metal spike, I felt... Alive. Dissappointed. Very dissappointed. Why the hell was I dissappointed? I was dead. Killed by an unknown man, and Reece would soon join me. What the hell?

 And then I heard it. That damned voice.

 "Idiot child. I warned you about this."

 As you can imagine, being dead doesn't really let you respond to mysterious spooky voices from the back of your head.

 As you can also imagine, I wasn't really dead. Now that I know why, I'm not surprised but back then? Holy shit I was confused.

 "Remember these words when you return, Esme. I'll make sure you do."

 And with those words in mind, I blew up the school.