Cassandra

People often ask me where I get my short temper. They tell me, “Elise, you’re wonderfully curious but terribly mad.” Maybe they’re telling me I’m crazy, but as Shakespeare said, “What is madness but to be mad?” As with most of my personality quirks, my quick anger traces back to my parents, specifically my mother. I suppose that’s how it is for most people; we all resemble our parents. No matter how hard we try, we can never fully escape the influence of those who came before us. Well, this story isn’t about me but is about my mother, and to gain personal insights it’s good to know where your parents come from.

Most of what I know about my mother comes from my father, for better or for worse. My mother never talked about herself, and when I broached the subject the answer was invariably along the lines of, “Shut the hell up.” My father was different though; my mother let him in and shared herself with him. He was closer to my mother than anyone else, not the least reason being he spent most of his time with her. He told me about her past and her as a person, both the good and the bad, but he never failed to finish any conversation on my mother with, “But she’s honest.” He forgave her all her faults with that. She was honest though, too honest if you ask me. I’ll begin then as my father did with the day my mother went to Huron.

Despite the name (which I always thought stupid) Huron is actually located in New Mexico. The Huron Corporation, a conglomerate that made much of its money through government contracts, worked with my grandfather (on my mother’s side) on many occasions. My grandfather, who preferred to go by Mr. Anderson even among his own family, was with the military. His only daughter, Cassie, was born into a hellish existence. My grandfather’s first words upon seeing my mother were, “A daughter . . . how useless.” Despite this, he came to the decision that his daughter was to be different, and she was. In the end her differences became the problem, for Mr. Anderson at least.

Mr. Anderson brought his daughter Cassie to Huron on a warm, dry winter day, a Saturday. Cassie was not so much going to Huron as returning to Huron. Mr. Anderson had her “upgraded” through then experimental gene therapy. Her father returned Cassie as one returns a defective product.

Cassie’s “defect” was the result of her gene therapy. The emotions of others to you or I are abstract, interpreted through facial expressions and actions. For Cassie, others’ emotions are very concrete; she could reach into people’s heads and feel what they felt and could share how she felt. There were no barriers separating her from others. It was a constant, painful struggle for Cassie to maintain a level of isolation needed for self-identity, isolation most of us treat as perfectly normal.

At the tender age of eight, Cassie found herself in a dark, unfurnished room, waiting. Her red hair tied back in two pony tails and slender frame covered in worn grey sweat clothes, matching the concrete walls. The door to the room slides open, revealing two men, one dressed in a black suit and the other in a white lab coat with red tie. The scientist is met with a stone faced girl peering into his soul; he remarks, “She looks . . . uncomfortably warm.” The man in the suit, standing straight with his hair buzz cut, coughs and says, “I don’t care, just take her off my hands.” The scientist looks into the girls eyes shivers and grimaces, “It’s a shame really, this whole situation.” The man in the black suit looks upon his daughter with scorn, “Yes, a real shame.”

A shame, the little girl now stuck in some concrete prison, is a shame. Why? Well, I shouldn’t be asking questions as I’m supposed to be answering them, so I’ll answer my own question. Cassie ruined Christmas. She was not an only child, but had two younger brothers, twins. Her father saw fit not to repeat the mistake of relying on God to give him the proper child, so he turned to Man. Man, I should say Huron, gave him two perfect sons, and Christmas was a time to celebrate this triumph of perfection; no time for Cassie. These young boys, as small children often are if not taught otherwise, were themselves convinced of their own importance. They gave young Cassie such a difficult time. The Christmas lights danced, draped over a plastic tree as dozens of carefully wrapped presents found themselves at the mercy of two ravenous boys. The little red haired girl sat huddled in a dark corner watching.

The presents unwrapped and the luster of the new toys they held gone, the two boys fell back on a perennial pursuit. Their sister in the corner, attempting to escape their childish narcissism and her own father’s hatred towards her, exuded a quiet desperation the two boys fed on and relished. They descended on her, as they did almost daily, and she shrunk back, as she usually did. They pushed and prodded, abusing her as they abused their toys; their apathy for her very existence far harder to bear than her father’s hatred. It’s never good to provoke an animal when it’s cornered, and her two brothers learned this the hard way.

What happened next was a mental assault, an emotional laceration that invaded deep into the minds of both young boys. One of the brothers, Elliot, felt his timid sister reach deep into his brain and dredge up his own apathy. The apathy started to eat away at his mind, consuming everything else. The need to stop this invasion overwhelmed the boy, and he clawed at his own head in frenzied frustration. His fingernails dug in, drawing blood, and he pulled out clumps of hair. Elliot clamored for a way to drain the apathy from his mind and relieve the immense pressure building up; he noticed a ball point pen carelessly thrown on the floor nearby. A good tool as any, Elliot seized the pen and with reckless abandon jammed the implement into his right eye. Warmth spilled out onto the floor and cold creped into his head to replace it. Elliot felt relief as he collapsed onto his side and ceased to move.

The other brother wasn’t so lucky. No release for Elliot’s brother Mathew; the apathy heaped on his sister for so long consumed his mind and left a dark void. A vegetable now sat where a human being once stood. The two boys, victim to their sister’s vengeance, lay utterly destroyed. The whole event took only a matter of a few seconds, too fast for the father to react before it was all over; Cassie remained in the corner, as she had been before.

The press for this tragic event clogged the airwaves for weeks. Underneath the initial amazement of a toddler committing suicide, whispers of, “abomination” and, “affront to God” rolled off the lips of many. These two boys, genetic monsters, should never have been. Of course, genetic manipulation does not cause such tragedies as toddler suicide, but people are fools. Huron knew the truth, Cassie being their experiment, but they could not reveal such information to the Congressional board of inquiry convened in the wake of Elliot’s death and Mathew’s incapacitation out of fear of losing their experiment to federal custody (and of losing their lucrative government contracts). Huron was eventually cleared of responsibility, but not absolved of suspicion as the truth behind the tragedy never was fully revealed.

The decision to return Cassie to Huron, a mutual one between Huron and Mr. Anderson, changed everything the little red haired girl. So Cassie went back to Huron and found herself in a concrete room in the company of her father and some scientist. Her father gritted his teeth and told her, “I’ll be glad to be finally rid of you.” Cassie shifted slightly, her movement startling the two men; her quiet voice filled the room, “You’re still confused . . . about Elliot and Matt. You still don’t believe what happened. If it makes you feel any better, they both found themselves in the end.” Mr. Anderson’s muscles all tightened up and his face twisted in impotent rage. On the verge of performance Cassie’s father instead turned and left the stage. The scientist glanced once at Cassie and quickly took leave as well.

Cassie is left alone, but not for long. The door slides open a few minutes after the two men left, but instead of her father and the scientist, there is a young brunette woman standing in the door frame. Wearing a black shirt with white jacket and pants, a red “H” painted over the heart, the woman smiles. Cassie finds that instead of the usual emotional responses that bombard her when she comes into close contact with someone else, this woman’s mind is nothing but smoke. The emotions completely obscured, the woman’s face is blurry and her movements fuzzy. Cassie hates this woman immediately. The woman frowns, Cassie’s hatred evident despite the mental-emotional fissure between the two. The woman starts, “Hi Cassie, my name’s Sara. I’ve been asked to take you with me.” She pauses but then offers her hand to Cassie; Cassie stands up and walks past Sara and out the door. Sara stands confused as Cassie calls back, matter-of-factly, “I thought we were leaving.” Sara stares at Cassie and with some apprehension leaves the room, taking Cassie by the hand. They walk down the concrete hall together.

Huron showed great interest in my mother. They took great care to put her in an environment where others wouldn’t get hurt while she developed better control over her abilities. The abilities my mother developed came as the result of gene splicing; the company took the genetic material of those who developed similar abilities in the past and sought to create a new person with “advanced abilities”. The discovery and development of these “new people” occurred accidentally. Even at the time my mother was adopted by the Huron Corporation the process of giving people new abilities was nothing more than a series of controlled accidents, hit or miss. For every success there were hundreds of failures; my mother just happened to be very lucky she even survived the process, let alone developed useful abilities that didn’t tear her mind completely apart. Lots of question marks filled the spaces between the small amounts of knowledge Huron’s scientists had on the workings of meta-human abilities; there was too much focus on the body and not enough on the mind. Those brave Huron workers never wrapped their heads around how my mother worked.

Early on my young mother Cassie couldn’t know what Huron had in store for her, nor did she care overmuch. She simply went along, taken in hand by Sara to mysterious destinations. Sara explains the situation as she pulls Cassie along, “I’m supposed to take you to your room, but I don’t have time for that right now. My room’s closer, so I’ll take you there. Besides, my brother’s there, he can keep you company.” Cassie grimaces at the thought of sharing company with another boy, having just escaped the company of her two wonderful brothers. Fate is cruel to young Cassie. Sara comes to a stop before a plain door, and she opens it to reveal a messy room. Clothes on the floor, bedding in a pile unmade and papers obscuring a computer monitor sitting on the desk in the near left corner of the room. A plasma television bolted to the right wall sits unused. The boy, Sara’s brother, sleeps on the bed.

Sara sees the boy, sighs, and starts shaking him; she says, “James, get up.” The boy sits up groggily, wearing the same black and white outfit as his sister. Sara admonishes him, “I asked you to clean my room . . . whatever; you can do it later. I need to go.” Sara turns and about to jolt out the door is forced to halt when the boy asks her, “Who is that?” He points to Cassie. Sara responds, “Oh, her name is Cassie. She’s new here. Look after her while I’m away.” Sara leaves the room and the two children are left alone.

Cassie examines the boy; he’s different from her brothers. This boy is about her age, but instead of apathy he radiates fear. James eyes Cassie suspiciously. She stands like stone-faced with her back to the door. Cassie breaks the silence and asks, “You’re afraid. Are you afraid of me?” James is surprised, more surprised by the question than the foreign presence probing the deepest parts of his psyche, instead a tinge of relief sprouts at having found someone who he might be able to understand his situation. James answers Cassie, “No, I’m not afraid of you.” He looks at his feat sitting on the bed, anxious. Cassie presses on, “Then what are you afraid of?” Fearing humiliation for giving his answer, James avoids her gaze and takes a few moments to work up the gumption to speak. He eventually says, “Ghosts, I’m afraid of ghosts.” James is quick to explain, “Whenever I’m with my sister I see them, but she refuses to acknowledge them. No one sees them but me.”

James looks into Cassie’s eyes searching for a kindred soul. She gives him an answer with authority in her voice, “There’s no such thing as ghosts.” Cassie glances at James as she evaluates the emotional effects of their conversation on him. The feeling of anxiousness she sensed in James before grows; he feels more alone. Cassie is concerned and moves to make him feel better by saying, “I can help you. I’ll show you there are no ghosts.” The anxiety and fear prevalent since she first entered the room subside and give way to admiration. He admires her. This sensation is new, and it makes Cassie feel good. Filled with excitement, which confuses James, Cassie grabs him by the hand and pulls him towards the door. James asks, “What are you doing? We can't leave.” Cassie smiles coyly, “Why not? Who’s going to stop us?” She pushes the button that opens the door and pulls James out into the lighted hall. Cassie is flooded with a new feeling, a feeling she won’t ever let go of, one of pride.

Pride was my mother’s first and last refuge following her escape from her brothers and father. I think much of the anger she directed at me when I was a child stemmed from the perceived lack of respect I showed her. She wanted more than I gave her. I can see why Pride is labeled a deadly sin; we as humans tend to indulge in that feeling too much. We do unto others before they do unto us. We defend Pride before we defend family and friends. I hope this gives some insight into where I got started, and if not I apologize.