Third Eye Open

Written by Sailor Stroiketcy

The soft bumps and nudges she had felt for most of her life had never exactly bothered her. It was odd yes, to feel a gentle hand brush across your neck when you were alone in a room - but it had always been thus, who was she to question the workings of the world?

She was still quite young when she realized she was the only one who felt them. She couldn't have been more than four or five when the soft bumps became harder, and the nudges turned to kicks and rough pokes. When they became aware that she felt it - that was when it became a misery. She complained one night to her father, declared she did not like the invisible people and could he make them leave her alone?

He didn't believe her until she raised a small chubby arm and he saw the circle of bruises around her forearm; and it was then that he realized how many of his fears were coming true. He had slammed her bedroom door shut then, refusing to acknowledge any further the damage that had been done - she would from that moment believe that her marks were shameful and embarrassing, and would spend much of her life draped in cheap cloth, in a desperate attempt to cover them.

The first time she really saw them, she was twelve standard years old. She had been in an out of foster homes for the better part of a year now, while her father tried to pull Cherry out of debt; he'd promised to take her home when he could, and she tried to maintain the hope that it would be soon.

Several months earlier she had made a dubious friend in a boy some years older than she, through circumstances she would later understand as far more contrived than she had at first imagined. She found his dark complexion and close-cropped hair charming, and allowed herself to be manipulated by it. Many afternoons she would slip away from whatever creature was fostering her at the moment and run into the streets of Coruscant; a few coins slipped from her companion's pockets would get them a ride almost half-way to the surface, where there were people who lived real lives, people who had seen the sun before and didn't struggle for every credit.

Once they went higher, when he had saved up enough to get within only a few dozen levels of seeing light. The tanned creatures frightened her, but he promised he would protect her. From there he had taken her to a garden, he'd given her a flower he stole from a slope. It had made her sneeze, and she'd felt horrible for ruining their day.

He had touched her shoulder gently and whispered that it wasn't over yet - and promised she had ways to make it up to him. She was young enough to believe him, and agree as he led her back down the many levels to his small apartment. In later years when she cast her mind back to that day she knew why his brother was not home when he should have been, though she never questioned it at the time. She thought this might be her salvation - a boy who could rescue her from her personal hell. She thought that when he lead her back to the home of her temporary caretaker that he would come for her, probably the next day! That they could run away together to the upper levels and see the sun...

The next time he appeared, weeks later, he had no lift tickets, but day he had promised her a special candy he stole from his brother; which, he declared in a stage whisper, had been intended for a pretty girl down the street, but since everyone knew his brother had no shot he was kind enough to save him the humiliation.

What he thought would be her response to the long strand of spice and what actually happened were, as such things tend to be, very very different. If he'd been of the mind that a little bit of the stolen drug would give him a pliable, easily controlled pretty little blonde, well then he had clearly not researched the effects of glitterstim very well - nor was he aware of the unique effects it would have on this particular pretty little blonde.

He pulled her off to a side street, and then a deeper alley where all the lightpanels flickered unreliably and no one would interfere with them - if anyone heard or saw them anyway. He pulled out two vials, and grinned at her.

"Pick one honey," he held out both hands and waited. She hesitated a bit, then reached a trembling hand for the darker of the two. He waited until she pulled it back then opened his own bottle, downing a few pieces of the dark substance - carsunum, his brother had said. The immediate rush to his brain blinded him for a few moments - then he saw his girl pulling out a long thin strand of her own spice; he grabbed her wrist - she whimpered, as if he was even holding her hard! - and held it up to the flickering light. It began to spark, slowly then faster. He let her go and he heard a voice - was that him? - telling her to swallow it whole.

She watched him, eyes wide and frightened, but she followed his command and shoved the piece in her mouth. She took a few deep breaths, and then found herself staring in shock at the new world that had somehow appeared around her.

She had never wanted to see the invisibles and now she felt like she could see nothing else.

They knew it too, the moment she locked eyes with one it knew and it came for her. She screamed, all the remembered pain of her scars and the fear of something that was coming toward her - it echoed sharp and shrill in her voice.

It was too horrible, they all watched the solid world hungrily, staring now at Carmelle and her companion as if...as if! She couldn't stand to imagine it.

If he had told her exactly what she was taking - what the spice would do to her - she would never have touched it. If he had known, he would never have let her. Her screams terrified him and he wasn't sure what to do. There was no speech in her scream, not that he could understand anyway. Occasionally something that sounded like a familiar word passed her lips - but he could make no sense of it.

He shook her, trying to get her to stop her terrible shrieks but a solid kick with her heavy boots landed on his chest, and he fell back with a grunt. He ran at her, grabbing and throwing her into a pile of garbage to muffle the sounds. A scream of pain got his attention and he saw blood pouring from a long, deep gash across her chest. A sharp bit of metal stuck out from the trash, dripping crimson. He stumbled back, trying to get away now. Honorable he might not have been, but he was never violent. He fell, feeling a pounding in his chest and a ringing in his ears. He saw fingers of black creeping across his vision and he could not breathe.

She hid her face in her knees and pulled her arms over her head. She couldn't tell if she was still screaming, she just needed not to look, she was okay if she could just not see it - but perhaps not seeing it was worse. She looked up and saw the vague outline of a small but overweight alien she couldn't identify, it grinned at her, all rows of teeth sharp and shining with an otherworldly glow.

She kicked out at it, and to her amazement she felt it connect. The creature was equally shocked; it was pushed back near a meter by the force of her shove and its own confusion. It growled at her but turned away. She was still hyperventilating, and her eyes drifted to the trash pile her companion had fallen in. He was shaking and his eyes had rolled back in his head. Her voice was too high when she whispered his name, and the wet sounds he was making frightened her. She called his name again, louder and he stopped shaking.

She let out a relieved breath...until she saw him, in unnatural green double vision, standing above his own motionless body. He looked at her, confused. She stared back, horrified.

It was all beginning to make a terrible, terrible sense to Carmelle Cherry.

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