I'm not sure I should be posting this seeing as it hasn't got much to do with Mistic Creatures, but I just want your opinion on this one. It's an X-Men fan fiction i'm writing, and just want to know what you think of it.
Here's the first part:
The glass she had been washing crashed to the flood as Marny spun round to face her mother.
“What did you say?!” she asked incredulously.
“Nothing,” her mother shot back.
Gesturing to the smashed glass on the kitchen flood, the woman snapped: “Pick that up!”
She turned her back and Marny heard her say: Great, and now she’s hearing voices! Marny froze.
“What?!”
Her mother turned back to face her, her eyes burning with anger and frustration.
“I said pick that up!” she repeated loudly, forcing every word as if talking to an idiot.
“No, not that,” said Marny, “After that. What did you say?”
Her mother looked at her as if she was being made fun of.
“I didn’t say anything after that!” she shouted, “Now pick that up!”
Marny crouched on the ground, picking up individual pieces of shattered glass off the tiled floor and placing them in one hand. She suddenly heard her mother’s voice:
Jesus! That girl’s nothing better that Marc!
Marny tensed at her father’s name. Her hand subconsciously closed over the razor sharp glass, slitting her skin in several places and letting the crimson blood spill through. Marny flinched, the pain bringing her back to reality.
Her mother had compared her to her father... The father who had left them four years previously... The father who had tricked her mother for another woman for so many years and who had suddenly left without looking back... Not once...
Marny stood, blood trickling down her hand.
“What did you call me?!” she asked, staring hard at the back of her mother’s head. The middle aged woman turned to face her daughter, her face twisted by anger.
“Stop playing games with me Marny Summerset!” she shouted, slamming her fist down on the table, “I didn’t call you anything! And of course you had to go and cut yourself! Jesus Christ girl, you’re as thick as your father was!”
Marny stared at her mother, and slowly twisted her fist to face the ground. With a deliberate slowness, as if in a sign of protest, she opened her fist and dropped the shards of bloodstained glass back to the floor. A clear and sharp chiming rang out around the room as the pieces crystalline glass hit the kitchen tiles.
She glared at her mother. The woman who had brought her up to have her own opinions. The woman who had brought her up not to hide her feelings or emotions. The woman who had taken all of her anger and sorrow out on her only daughter when the love of her life had tossed her away without a second thought...
In an instant, that woman stood in front of Marny, her face twisted into a scowl of pure rage. Marny didn’t have time to react, and only saw the hand when it struck her face.
The teenage girl stumbled backwards, clutching her cheek. The blood from her cut hand smudged across her face and strait brown hair as she took a sharp intake of breath, trying to digest what had just happened. Her face burnt as if someone had taken a flaming torch to it. With another glare at her mother, Marny ran out the room, flew up the stairs and locked herself in the bathroom.
Sinking to the ground, she took deep breaths and tried desperately to calm herself. As she did so, she felt the pressure of tears behind her eyelids and decided to let them flow. As the tears ran down her face, she thought:
Oh my God...
¤ ¤ ¤
A few days later, Marny sat in the living room, a bald gentleman staring at her from a wheelchair on the other side of the room.
“What exactly is this school?” asked Marny.
The man smiled at her, the wrinkles at the corners of his indigo eyes deepening as he did so. A second, taller man stood behind him and adjusted the mirrored sunglasses he wore, making Marny slightly nervous. The bald man turned to Mrs Summerset and said:
“Excuse me, could you leave us alone for a few minutes?”
“I suppose so,” replied Marny’s mother coldly, glaring at her daughter as she exited the room and closed the door behind her.
She wants to get rid of me, thought Marny, All she wants is for me to go to a boarding school somewhere far away so she never has to set eyes on me again.
The man smiled at her again, his blue eyes shining in the morning sunlight. He gently pushed a leaver on the arm of the wheelchair which brought him closer to the armchair Marny was sitting in, then said:
“Marny, I presume. My name is Charles Xavier and this here is Scott. We’re here to ask if you would like to join my school for gifted youngsters.”
Marny stared at him, then at Scott, trying to see through his sunglasses, and then back at Xavier. She frowned, confused.
“Gifted?” she said, “But I’m not gifted. Well, apart from my singing voice, but unless this is a Music school, then I doubt...”
She trailed off as Xavier’s smile widened and Scott’s lips twitched as if in amusement.
“What?” she asked.
Don’t you know what you are?
The voice resonated around the room as if it was coming from the walls themselves. Marny jumped, recognising the voice as Xavier’s.
But his lips didn’t move... she thought.
That’s right.
There it was again! That voice! Xavier’s voice... Marny looked at him and saw his staring back at her, his blue eyes sparkling with amusement. She froze, searching his face for some sort of clue to what this was.
“What am I exactly?” she asked hesitantly.
Xavier lent forwards in his wheelchair and said:
“You’re like us, Marny. You’re a mutant.”
The girl took a sharp intake of breath. A... mutant... She had heard about them on TV, but never in the world would she have thought she could be one.
A mutant...
She repeated the word several times over in her head, trying to get it all to sink in.
“But...” she stumbled, searching for the right words, “... how’s that possible?”
“Well,” started Xavier, clasping his hands together, “Didn't you wonder why you had that argument with your mother, what... three days ago? The one in the kitchen, where she denied having said things.”
“How...,” started Marny, “How do you know about that? Have you been spying on me?!”
Xavier threw back his head and laughed out loud, his voice echoing round the room.
“No, no,” he reassured with a smile, “I haven’t been spying on you. That’s not what we do. No, your high levels of stress showed up on Cerebro. That’s how we track people down.”
“Cero-what?” asked Marny, raising her eyebrows, “What are you talking about?”
She frowned and put her head in her hands, groaning. She muttered:
“Mmmmmhhhh, I don’t get any of this.”
Xavier lent forwards and took her hand reassuringly. Then Scott spoke for the first time:
“I know it’s a bit of a shock,” he said, “But be lucky your mutation only affected your mind. We’ve had to rescue mutants hundreds of timed from persecution because of their physical appearance.”
Marny suddenly lifted her head to stare at Scott. Her green eyes were filled with worry.
“My mind!” she cried, “What’s wrong with me?!”
Xavier shot Scott a fierce look and said:
“Scott, don’t make this any worse for her!”
Looking back at Marny, he said softly:
“Nothing’s wrong with you. You have developed a telepathic ability, that’s all. That’s why you could hear things your mother hadn’t said. You were hearing her thoughts. This school of mine is a place where we teach you to control there abilities and harness them so you don’t end up harming someone. We help mutants integrate back into society”
Marny fell silent. Tears welled in her eyes. So that’s what she thinks of me... She wiped the tears from her face and said:
“I’ll go with you...”
As long as I can get away from Mum...
