“‘With great power comes great responsibility.’”

 

“Your power isn’t all that great,” she pointed out.

Night and Day

part 9 of 12

by Trismegistus Shandy

This story is set, with Morpheus' kind permission, in his Twisted universe. Thanks to Morpheus, epain, and Karen Lockhart for reading and commenting on earlier drafts.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

One night early in the school year, when everyone had been in bed for a while, and the usual time at which Jasmine sometimes woke with a nightmare had passed, I went out looking for trouble. And I found it.

For the first time since I’d started my campaign, I found a crime in progress. I was walking along one of the more dimly-lit streets when I heard a scream up ahead. I ran toward it, turning on my power.

I glanced aside into alleyways and parking lots as I ran, and soon saw a man with a drawn knife who had probably been threatening the woman standing near him until I came close and brought them within my power’s field. Now they were both glancing wildly around, and groping to find some landmark. I had to intervene fast or he might slash her with the knife he’d been waving around.

“What did you do to me?” he growled.

“I didn’t do nothing, I swear,” she said in a high, trembly voice. “Please don’t hurt me.”

“He won’t hurt you,” I said in the deepest voice I could manage, which wasn’t very deep but didn’t sound like my normal voice either. As the guy was turning toward the sound of my voice, I was moving around behind him, closer to the woman. I kicked him in the back of the knee, but I didn’t connect well, and he stumbled, but didn’t fall. I took the woman by the shoulders and nudged her away from the man, whispering “Run!” in her ear.

I was barely aware of her stumbling off in the direction I’d pushed her; my eyes were on the man who’d spun around and was waving the knife in my direction. I backed up, but soon ran into the wall of the alleyway, and he was getting closer... I dodged to the side, but my foot slipped on a piece of gravel and I fell, skinning my hands and forearms as I caught myself.

“Who are you?” he called, slashing through the space where I’d have been if I hadn’t fallen. I didn’t answer, struggling to sit up. But then he stumbled over me and fell on top of me, and before I could react, I felt a stabbing pain in my right arm.

“Got you, bitch,” he said, sitting up straddling my belly, his left hand on my breast and the other still gripping the knife. “Don’t know how it got so dark, but now that I’ve got hold of you I don’t need to see you.”

He should have been pinning my arms instead of groping me. I couldn’t lift him off me, but I could try to distract him. I pressed my right arm close to my side, hoping to stanch the bleeding against my shirt, and with my left hand I scratched at his eyes. He yelped and brought the knife up, cutting my left arm too but not as deeply, I thought, as the right. I kept scratching desperately at his eyes, which he’d closed, and caught one fingernail in his nostril and pulled — disgusting, but effective. He scrambled backward and I was able to get up and run.

But I had two problems — one of them pretty serious. I was losing blood from my right arm pretty fast. The cut in my left arm wasn’t nearly as bad, but I had to bandage the right arm as fast as I could. And the only source of cloth for bandages, at this time of night, was either my shirt or my pants — I didn’t want to wrap that wound in a dirty sock.

I still had my power going, and I’d lost track of time in the scuffle, but I figured it should last several more minutes. Unless I fainted from loss of blood. I found another alleyway to hide in, took off my shirt and tied it around my right forearm as tight as I could using only my left hand. Then I set out briskly toward home.

My power failed me long before I got there. My initial brisk pace had slackened and I was trudging along, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, when the colors reverted to normal. I barely noticed it, and just kept on walking, soon turning onto a busier street that would take me to the street our apartment complex was on.

Then a police car pulled up beside me. My first impulse was to turn on my power and run, but, one: my power didn’t do anything. Apparently it needed longer to recharge. And two: I was too tired to run.

The police officer rolled his window down and started to say: “Ma’am, if you don’t cover up I’ll have to — Oh. You’re hurt.” He parked the car and opened his door; I backed away, looking back and forth. Nobody else was around.

“This guy stabbed me,” I said, “twice! And I barely got away from him, and then I had to take off my shirt to bandage one of my arms...” I’d been on the verge of exhaustion, but thinking back to the fight made me angry again.

“Get in,” he said, opening the back door, “I’ll take you to the hospital... I’d go after the guy who stabbed you, but getting you help has to come first.”

I hesitated, and decided I’d better take him up on it. I’d been vaguely planning to go home and pour peroxide on the cuts, but that was kind of stupid; it was a bad wound and the blood had soaked through the shirt and was slowly dripping on the sidewalk, showing my trail plainly enough if the guy I’d fought had tried to follow me.

“I’ll get blood on your seat,” I said, sitting down. I positioned my wounded arms over my lap; my pants were already ruined too.

“Wouldn’t be the wost thing that’s ever happened to this car,” he said, getting back in the driver’s seat and shifting gears. We started moving; from the flickering reflections off of windows, I could tell he’d turned on his flashing lights, but I didn’t hear the siren. I guess he didn’t need it with the light traffic. “I’m taking you to the hospital first thing, we’ll get that arm looked at and fixed up no matter what. What happens after that depends on what you’re willing to tell me. What’s your name?”

I hesitated, but finally said: “Diana Sullivan.”

“I’m Officer Dave Kowalski. Is the person who stabbed you someone you know?”

“No, he’s just this guy I ran into.”

“Do you have a home to go to?”

I hesitated, not sure if I wanted him to take me home after the emergency room doctor sewed up my arm, or if I wanted to pretend I was homeless and get home on my own... the latter plan had a slight chance of getting me home before Mom or anybody woke up, and not getting me in trouble. He went on:

“If you don’t have a home, or if you don’t feel safe there, I’ll call Child Protective Services, and they’ll take custody of you after the hospital thinks you’re well enough to go. If you have a home, and you’re willing to go back, I’ll call your parents or guardians and have them pick you up from the hospital.”

I didn’t see a good way out. Maybe I could escape from the hospital or from Child Protective Services, using my power or just general sneakiness. But what if it took until dawn for the doctors to fix me up and say it was safe for me to go? Jamie would be there and have no idea how or why, and Mom would be awake and missing me about then... Or I’d probably change into him while I was halfway home, and leave him alone in a neighborhood he wasn’t familiar with... “I live in Cranston Apartments,” I said, and told him the address. “Number 213.”

“Do your parents have a telephone number I could call?”

“Could you just take me home after the doctors are finished?”, and even as I said that, I knew it was a stupid thing to ask, but I pressed on desperately: “I mean, my mom’s a sound sleeper, and I’m sure she hasn’t missed me yet. I just went out for a walk... If the doctors can fix me up in an hour or two, I could be back before she wakes up.”

“I have to report this to your parents.”

“It’s just my mom.”

“All right, to your mom. Will you tell me her phone number?”

I gave in. But he didn’t call while he was driving; he had me repeat the number once we got to the hospital and he’d helped me walk in to the emergency room and turned me over to one of the nurses. “I’ll call your mother and then go park the car,” he said. “I won’t leave the hospital until she gets here.”

“She doesn’t have a car,” I said, “and I don’t think the buses run this time of night, do they?” I’d lost track of time.

“I can give her a ride here if I need to.”

Unlike the time Mom had taken me to the emergency room for memory loss, my bleeding arms got fast service. They cleaned both wounds and stitched them up, and then drew blood and checked my vital signs. My blood pressure was really low, not surprisingly. Then they said I needed a transfusion. That took a while, and Mom got there while I was lying in bed watching some stranger’s blood dripping into my veins.

I was afraid she was going to be mad at me, and she was — later. Just then, she bent over and hugged me, sobbing. “Are you feeling all right?” she asked. “They said you lost a lot of blood and they had to give you an emergency transfusion, they couldn’t wait to ask me for permission... What were you doing?”

I was crying too; it must have been infectious.

“I’m sorry, Mom. I just get so bored sitting around the apartment all the time, I started going out for walks. I figured my power would keep me safe if anybody got mean, and it did, until tonight...”

“What happened?”

I told her basically what had happened, though I didn’t mention all the other predators I’d lured into alleys and beaten up in the last couple of months.

“That was very brave,” she said. “And really stupid, too. I know you have that weird power, but it doesn’t make you a match for a grown man with a knife.”

“I couldn’t just let him kill that lady, or rape her, or whatever he was planning. ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’”

“Your power isn’t all that great,” she pointed out. “And... I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you.”

“I’ll be more careful,” I started to promise, but she wasn’t satisfied with that.

“You most certainly will, young lady. You won’t leave the apartment at night again.”

“But that means never leaving ever! I only exist at night!”

“Maybe after a while I’ll let you go out in the early evening, when sunset falls earlier in the day... but you’re grounded for the next two months: no going out. If you find yourself outside at sunset — I don’t have any reason to keep Jamie from going out to watch the sun set — you have to come right inside and stay until dawn. No going out to watch the sun rise until the end of October, and no going out before sunrise for any other reason.”

I was about to protest, but just about then I started feeling anxious for another reason, and I pressed the nurse call button.

“What do you need?” Mom asked. “Is it anything I can do so we don’t have to bother the nurse?”

“I need to go out, or at least get to an east-facing window,” I said.

“Diana Sullivan! Did you or did you not hear what I just said? No going out at night until the end of October. You’re staying right here until you turn back into Jamie.”

“But I need to see the sun rise! You don’t understand!”

We argued, or rather I argued and Mom stubbornly repeated herself, until I suddenly found myself in the playground behind our apartment building. Jared was there too, and he said: “Hi, Diana. Mom told me to make sure you came inside as soon as the sun was down.”

“Hi, Jared. Mind filling me in on what I missed?”

“Let’s see... Mom said you were at the hospital getting a blood transfusion after you got your cuts stitched up. Mind telling me how that happened? She wasn’t very clear.”

“Later. What happened when Jamie came back?” I looked at my arms and hands. There was no sign of last night’s injuries.

“The stitches and IV needle popped out of his arms, and the blood transfusion started running out onto the floor. It was a mess, to hear Jamie and Mom tell it. The doctor looked at Jamie and couldn’t find any trace of the injury you’d been admitted for... so they sent Jamie home, and he and Mom got here just in time for her to go to work and him to go to school. I’d already taken Jasmine over to Mrs. Comstock’s apartment for the day, and caught the school bus, so I didn’t find out about all that until evening.” (Mrs. Comstock took care of Jasmine while we were at school and Mom was at work. I hadn’t seen her since my change.)

“Thanks.” I filled him in on what I’d been doing — not all of it, but as much as I’d told Mom and a little more. We walked into the apartment while I was telling him how I’d scratched the guy’s eyes and nostrils until he let me go.

Mom looked at me and said: “Good. Remember, I want you to come in as soon as you wake up every evening, and stay here, and I don’t want to have to send Jared to tell you every time.”

“You won’t have to,” I said. “I’ll remember.”

“Remember and obey.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I went to Jared’s room and studied while he watched a movie with Mom, and after they went to bed, studied for another hour and then watched a couple of movies. I was pretty restless by dawn, and unable to concentrate on the movie I was sort of watching, much less read. I told myself I wasn’t supposed to go out, but actually making myself stay indoors as the sunrise approached was easier said than done. I opened the blinds and looked out the window; our apartment faced north, so I wouldn’t be able to see the sun rise, but maybe seeing the sky brighten would alleviate the distress...?

Not so much. Several times I caught myself moving toward the door and forced myself back to the window. The sky outside brightened a little more, and then I was in the playground.

There was a note in my hand.

“What the actual FUCK, Diana? This is the first time since March that you forgot to change out of your tight girl clothes before turning into me. Don’t do it again.”

I crumpled it up and went inside.

After everyone went to bed, I wrote Jamie an apologetic email explaining why I’d been so distracted and had forgotten to change clothes. I made sure to change clothes well before dawn after that... some nights, I never changed out of the loose sweats Jamie had worn when he changed into me. Why bother when I couldn’t go anywhere or see anyone? Mom wouldn’t let Bobby come over after sunset while I was grounded, and my interaction with Jasmine was limited to telling her a bedtime story just after I woke up — her bedtime was just a few minutes after sunset now.

Some nights were harder than others in terms of resisting my compulsion to watch the sun rise. One morning I failed to resist; I was out the door almost before I realized what I was doing. I tried to go back inside, but I couldn’t make myself do it, even though I knew Jamie would report me and I’d get in trouble.

I knew it was a mistake, but it was still an indescribable relief to finally watch the sun rise after being cooped up inside all night for so long. Sure enough, as soon as the sun was over the horizon, and I was suddenly looking west at the post-sunset sky, Mom grabbed me by the arm and marched me indoors, lecturing me about obedience and wondering aloud what else she needed to do to me to get it into my head that I needed to mind her... I let her rant. I felt relaxed, only then realizing how on-edge I’d been over the past few days. Mom forbade me to watch movies for the remainder of the period I was grounded; she and Jared moved the TV from the living room into her bedroom just before bed, which had Jared glaring at me as though it were my fault. I just nodded and said “Yes, ma’am,” and after they went to bed, read another book about astronomy that Jamie had checked out of the library for me, then did schoolwork for a while. I was able to concentrate on it better than I had for the last few nights.

But even though going out and watching the sun rise was so beneficial to my mental health, I couldn’t keep doing it. Not often, anyway. Mom would keep escalating until she was locking us all in at night and creating a fire hazard.

After Jamie started eighth grade, I got in the habit of regularly taking a shower near the end of the night, so Jamie wouldn’t have to. (We’d discovered that if one of us cleaned up near the end of our “shift,” the other one would be clean when they came back.) A few weeks after school started, the day came when sunrise fell after Jamie had to catch the school bus, and I finally got to go outside with permission — carrying Jamie’s school backpack, and a second bag with a change of his boy-clothes, while I was wearing the loose T-shirt and sweats that we usually wore at sunrise and sunset. Bobby was there, and Jared, and Wanda from upstairs, who were waiting for the high school bus, and some younger kids were waiting for the elementary school bus.

“Hey,” said Wanda, “I haven’t seen you in several months. Where have you been?”

“I used to only go out at night,” I said, “and now I don’t even do that, because I’m grounded.”

“Is Jamie sick today, do you know?” she asked Bobby, after staring at me in confusion for a moment.

Bobby looked at me. “Should I tell her?”

“I might as well,” I replied. “I’m Jamie,” I said to her. “Or at least I turn into him at sunrise... any second now.” The sun was already poking its head over the horizon.

One of the buses was approaching down the street, but I couldn’t tell yet which bus it was. Wanda was still staring at me, and looked like she was about to ask a question when I suddenly woke up in the playground that evening.

The next morning I had more time to talk with Wanda. “You’re really a separate person from him?”

“Yeah, we have the same memories up until the day we transformed back in March, but different ones since then.”

“You seem different in other ways too.”

“I think we both got some personality changes from the transformation. Me, I’m more comfortable being a girl than I would have expected, and him... I’ll let Jared or Bobby tell you about him. All my interactions with him are at second-hand.”

“That must be weird.”

“You have no idea.”

“When I first saw him a few months ago, I thought he was my age... until he got on the middle-school bus.”

“Yeah, the transformation made both of us look older.” I turned to Bobby. “Haven’t seen you in a while, what with being grounded and all. How are you doing?”

But he hadn’t told me much before the sun rose and I was back in the playground.

Four of my novels and one short fiction collection are available from Smashwords in ePub format and from Amazon in Kindle format. Smashwords pays its authors better than Amazon.