The Many Faces of Tully

This morning I’ve had a CAT scan, a full body X-Ray, and a physical in the lab room. It was the only room I wasn’t shown last night, and it is at the end of the wide hallway at the other end of our rooms.

I’m currently hooked up to a machine that is monitoring my brain waves and my heart rate. A camera is trained on me and I’m sitting in the sealed off room. The windows are rocket proof so it can withstand my explosions, which I am supposed to be trying to do right now.

I sit in the chair awkwardly, trying to raise my heart rate. The steady beeping from the machine next to me tells me that I’m failing. I feel their stares on me, but I try to ignore them. I try to think of something scary, or something that makes me nervous, but nothing happens.

“How’s it going in there Tully?” I hear Calchas say through the speaker.

“You tell me,” I say dryly.

“How about you talk about it? What normally happens before you explode?” he asks me.

“You know what happens. My heart rate accelerates.” I frown.

“What else happens?” Jace’s voice crackles through the speaker. He’s the one that’s been running my tests today. Him and Calchas. They’ve been here the longest, other than Kato, and they know the process the best, and how to run the machines.

“It feels likes the world is crashing in on me. My heart accelerates. My ears ring. My chest hurts. My heart accelerates more,” I say.

“Then what?” Jace says. I look through the window at him. He’s wearing glasses now and is taking notes on a clipboard. He looks like a doctor and a scientist at the same time, without the lab coat.

I clench my teeth as I remember the first time it happened. “Everything goes silent,” I say through my clenched teeth. “Everything stops, including my heart.”

He looks over his glasses at me. “Your heart stops?” he asks me, astonished.

“Yes. Then I realize I’m holding my breath, so I breathe out. That’s when I explode.” I see their bodies. Their broken, lifeless bodies. I hear the beeping start to pick up.

“Is that what happens every time?” Jace asks, seeming oblivious to my monitor. He’s too busy getting information.

“No,” I say. I see the snakes everywhere now. “I turned into a snake once. My venom killed her.”

“You morphed into a snake?” he asks me. I just nod. My chest is starting to hurt. “What happens after you explode?”

“I run. My bags pack, my features change, and I run. I always run. I erase their memories. No one remembers me.” I wrap my arms around my chest. The beeping is even faster now. It’s too late to turn back now. “I leave them. I leave them broken and dead for someone to find. They would hate me if they could remember me.” The thought hurts. I’ve never thought about it that way.

What happens when I leave? Does the family grieve from the sudden death? What happens when someone finds them in a pile of rubble? What do they think happens? What did my parents think? My ears are ringing. What happened when my parents came home, not remembering me, but seeing my room thrashed and a dead boy in it? What happens when I leave!?

I slip out of the chair and fall to my knees. The beeping of my heart is almost a constant noise. I’m panting and I try to squeeze my chest so it doesn’t hurt as much.

“Tully?” I hear Jace say. I can barely hear him over the ringing in my ears and the beeping of my heart. He almost sounds concerned, I think. The world crashes in on me so I don’t give it another thought.

The world goes silent. I open my eyes and look up at the monitor. The line is flat. I breathe out and I see the machine fly away from me with a flash of white light and hear it smash into the wall. I’m glad that it sends all the information to a computer on the outside. That way I didn’t just destroy all of the recordings.

I lean back so I’m sitting on my butt instead of on my knees and take out my mirror. I have straight, brown, chin length hair, my eyes are brown too and my lips are full. Freckles sprinkle across my small nose, and my hands are soft and childlike.

I hear the door open and I look up towards it. Jace and Calchas are walking towards me. I stand up and notice both of them seem infinitely taller than me. I must be really short now. I shove the mirror back in my pocket.

“It’s even more amazing seeing it in person,” Calchas says to me, smiling his missing teeth smile. “I feel better now that you aren’t taller than me,” he laughs. I give him a small smile.

“I want to go see the footage,” Jace says to Calchas.

“Can I see it too?” I ask. I’m curious. I want the answers more than he does.

“Of course, come on.” He walks out of the room and grabs the high-tech camera. Calchas is behind me. We pass by a lot of the guys and they stare at us with curiosity.

“What’s going on Tuls?” Nash jogs up to me.

“We’re going to watch the footage of my power,” I tell him. My change of appearance doesn’t seem to faze him.

“Cool! Can I watch? I want to see how you knocked me out yesterday!” he says eagerly. He’s such a kid. I just smile at him.

“Sure, kid. Just don’t distract us,” Jace says to him. Everyone seems to hear this and they jog after us. Apparently they want to see it too.