Chapter 1 Seed

My hands ache as I pull the rough dry weeds away from my tomato plant. Under my feet, the dirt digs into the crevices between my toes. The late morning sun is warming up, but it feels good on my skin.

This garden is my very small fight against the evil in this world. With my hands, I make life, nurture it until it bears fruit, and then use that fruit to make a nutritious meal or to trade for other needed items. The fruits travel to places I can't to offer their delicious goodness to those who take them. At least I assume they do. I know Michael doesn’t really have to trade them since he can take what he wants. But he leaves with some of the vegetables, and he comes back with things like flour, milk, eggs, and meat.

It’s almost afternoon before I remember that there are other chores that need to get done. It seems that something so engrossing can’t be good, but Michael hasn’t said anything about it.

Mark and Mel poke their heads around the corner.


“Edy, are you going to be out there all day?” Mark grins at me. He’s always most comfortable during the day when Michael isn’t here.

Melanie is close behind him, still unsure about the entire situation. She glances around nervously as if Michael will drop down out of his hiding place in the sky.

“No, I just get carried away.” I stand up and wipe my forehead. “C’mon, lets go in.”


Two months ago, Mark and I found a surprise sleeping in the bed next to his. At some point in the middle of the night, Michael had dropped off a young girl with no reason given.

“So, Mel, do you feel like talking yet?” Mark says casually to Melanie as we make the beds. I'm unfamiliar with normal fifteen year old boys since the one I grew up with was so unusual, so I don't know if Mark's easy grin is something that is normal. But he's been wonderful for me to have around the past year, and he's proved to be wonderful for Mel as well.

Mel looks from him to me before she shakes her head softly. Every day, Mark asks her the same question. He says that he does it because he wants to give her an opening in case she wants to talk about it one day.


“Okay, well then." He looks over at her with his genial smile. "You asked for it. Where do you find a no legged dog?”

Mel laughs before she even hears the groan worthy punch line. “Where?”

“Right were you left him!” Mark’s smile widens as Mel laughs again.


Each day she doesn’t feel like talking, he tells her a horrible pun which she is supposed to find "torturous" but instead finds hilarious. It hasn't made her tell her story yet, but the laughter has drawn her naturally close to Mark in a way that makes me jealous.

I'm not sure she always gets the jokes, but in the end it doesn't matter. Her laugh is sweeter than any music.



Michael misses dinner. He’s been doing a lot more of that lately, and it makes me think something must be wrong. In the few years we’ve lived here, he’s kept a very strict schedule that I knew exactly how to follow. He'd be here for breakfast and dinner, and I'd be sure to prepare him a plate and have it waiting in the dining room.

But Michael stopped being easy to talk to on that one day which still haunts my memories. He became like all the other experiments-- distant with an edge to him than even I, as an ordinary human being, can tell means danger. Somehow, I doubt we will ever be able to be as honest with each other as we were when we were children.


After dinner Mark, Mel and I sit in the study. Mark reads a book on plumbing beside me and Mel practices reading out loud.

Melanie’s voice comes out softly, almost rhythmically, stumbling over words and reading others too fast. Suddenly she stops and glances nervously over her book.

Michael stands in the doorway of the study.


At the sight of him, Melanie almost melts into her chair in her attempt to become invisible. By my guess, Michael is only seventeen, but he has never acted his age. Even now, standing in the doorway, he is an imposing figure to the three of us humans all who have seen him do unspeakable things.

Michael doesn’t look at them when he roughly says, “Out.”

Mark hops up and quickly ushers Melanie out of the room. They give Michael a wide berth, afraid to touch him even accidentally.

He doesn’t even glance at them as he steps into the study. That’s how used he has become to the way he makes people feel. I stand up before him and fold my hands together in front of me. “I’m going to have people over. You’ll need to keep those two out of the way. Have them stay in their room or something.”

He doesn’t have to say who’s coming; I’m sure it’s the usual suspects. Michael only invites people he can trust into this house. If they are not invited, they can’t see it. A normal passerby wouldn’t even know we were here.

But if the kids are terrified of Michael, then they definitely won’t like his friends.


“Also, don’t spend all day in the garden.”

So he has noticed. It disheartens me a little. “All right.”

“They’ll be here in a few days,” he says before he teleports away-- most likely somewhere out of the house again.




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