His Blazing Witch, chapter one

Silver City. A metropolis with over one hundred thousand inhabitants. Despite being rather modern, its unique geographic location makes it rather isolated from any other big cities, as it’s bordered by a forest to the east, and the sea on the west.

Its most unique feature, however, is probably one-third of its population being werewolves. That’s right. Over thirty thousand werewolves, a hundred thousand humans, and… me.

I frown, staring out the window once again. Silver City’s dawn is pretty and quiet. The sky shines with the first sunlight, shades of pink and purple in the clouds.

I open the window, feeling some nice fresh air. It’s really early, we’re at the end of May. I wonder what all those people are doing, in the streets and skyscrapers.

I’m fascinated by the tallest buildings. I wonder what it’s like to see the world from up there. Do you feel like you belong when you watch the streets from so high?

I’m on the second floor, and I can’t understand what it could be like down there, or up there. “Knock knock, I’m looking for the little witch in room five?”

I turn around with a smile. Kelsi is waiting, pretending to knock on my door with a little frown on. She’s wearing her ugly, mint green sweatshirt, the one with a big cartoon cat on it, some jeans, and her usual multi-colored backpack.

“Hi. They let you in so early?”

I ask, a bit surprised. “Yep. Apparently, your sister gave them instructions that I could come in and out as I please. I’m pretty much a full-time VIP plus one now.”

“Oh…”

Kelsi drops her bag and comes to hug me gently, being careful about my bandages. She glares at the big bracelet around my wrist, grabbing it with a frown. It flashes with a little green light every ten seconds and is quite heavy too.

“Still there?”

“Still there,”

I sigh. “Hm…”

She takes a step back, tucking her long, black hair behind her ears, and makes a falsely severe expression behind her thick glasses. “Alright, Miss Garnett, morning check-up.”

“Oh, seriously, Kelsi? Again?”

I protest. “What’s my name?”

I sigh and nod, deciding to comply. I take a deep breath. “Kim Eun-Kyung,”

I recite, “You’ve been my roommate for over one year, and as far as I know, you’re probably my only friend. You go by your english name Kelsi Kim because you hate hearing people mispronounce your real name. You’re two months older than me, a photography student, and a geek… and you like ugly cat sweaters.”

“Good girl,” she says with a big smile.

“How are you feeling?”

“Still like a total stranger to myself,”

I sigh, sitting on my bed. “Your temperature?”

I show her the black screen of my watch with a grimace. “They deactivated the screen since they found out I used it for testing…”

“Oh, crap. No more experiments, then.”

“No…”

She nods and suddenly grabs her bag with a spark of excitement in her eyes. It’s an old and very used one, but apparently, she loves it enough to have covered the many holes with some funny patches. Kelsi takes out an envelope, barely hiding her enthusiasm.

“You found some new pictures?”

I ask. “Yep! Well, you already know we didn’t take many together, but I found some new ones from a party you apparently went to, two months before we moved in together. I had to chat with some weird guy who was a borderline creep, but anyway, I got these and printed them out for you. Look!”

I take the pictures, a bit hesitant. This is already the sixth batch of pictures Kelsi has found for me, but just like the previous five times, I don’t recognize anything in them. I spread them out on my bed, and it even takes me a minute to find myself in them.

It looks like some party in a big nightclub, with more people I don’t recognize. In the pictures, I am wearing a white sequin top with some black leather pants, and I am dancing in heels in the middle of a wild crowd. My hair seems longer too, and straightened.

Kelsi only selected the pictures I appear in, but I never seem to be the main focus. I’m always in the middle of a random group or in the background… “Still nothing?” she asks, biting her thumb.

I shake my head. I only recognize myself, and that’s because I’ve spent hours in front of a mirror since I woke up, trying to remember who I am. No one else in these pictures reminds me of anything.

It’s so infuriating. I can’t put a name to any of the faces, or on the place… even what I’m wearing in those pictures doesn’t remind me of anything. “Did the guy say anything about me?”

I ask. “Not really.”

She sighs, shaking her head. “He had no idea who you were when I found you on his profile picture. He’s never heard of Clarissa Garnett, or a girl called Mara. He said he took a lot of pictures because it was his first university party, but he didn’t even seem to know half of the people there.”

“Okay… Well, thank you anyway for trying, Kelsi.”

“I’m sorry it didn’t work again, boo.”

“It can’t be helped. It would be weird if my memory came back all at once.”

I really don’t want to make Kelsi feel bad about it. She’s the only person who comes to visit me almost every day since she’s been allowed to, and literally brightens up my whole day. She’s been trying hard to help me fill in the gigantic hole that is my past, bringing stuff that supposedly belongs to me, or the pictures she could find.

She pouts, playing with her sweater’s laces, still staring at the pictures. “I don’t recognize anyone from the university either, but I can ask my friends. Maybe someone knows someone from your department who knows more about you.”

“Thanks.”

“Well, at least you’re sexy! I always noticed you had good taste in clothes. Aren’t you tired of the hospital gown?”

I nod. I hate it, but with all the bandages covering my burns, it’s the only thing I can put on easily without grimacing all the time. Kelsi did bring me a bag of clothes, but trying to put on a pair of jeans was so painful I cried.

She puts the pictures back in the envelope and places it on my bedside table. “I’d definitely suck as a detective, I could only find thirty pictures of you in six weeks, and I took half of them. I officially suck.”

“Don’t say that, you’re the best. It’s not your fault I was a loner.”

“I still can’t believe you don’t have any freaking social media. You’re an alien, or born in the wrong century!”

“You still haven’t found my laptop?”

“No…”

She pouts. “The last time I saw you with it was one morning before I went to uni, you were in the kitchen, typing something. I don’t think I saw you with it after that, and then there was the accident…”

It’s so infuriating. It’s already annoying enough that I have amnesia, but now, I can’t even retrieve the biggest clues about my own life. I know the smartphone I had got burnt in the fire, along with my belongings, even my clothes.

The police officer that came said they only found the remains of a leather bag and a matching purse, but more could have burnt, and they weren’t going to spend time analyzing ashes… “Did your sister come by at all this week?” asks Kelsi.

“No… Too busy, they said.”

“Damn, your family is weird. She is too busy to visit you, but she pays for a private room in this fancy hospital.”

“I feel like the room is more of a security measure than special treatment. She probably doesn’t have time to take care of her crazy younger sister…”

Kelsi frowns, and grabs my chin to lift it and have me look at her. “Listen to me, boo. You’re not crazy. You’re a gorgeous piece of woman, and a bad-ass witch, okay?”

Her very serious expression immediately lifts my spirits. I nod. “With a crazy friend who says so,”

I chuckle. She smiles back at me. “Exactly. Do you want to show your crazy friend your magic trick?”

I hesitate a bit, checking the door. If I’m caught playing with fire again, they’d have an excuse to send me back to an isolated room, with the handcuffs and all that crap. They even put two fire extinguishers inside my room, which is rather funny, I think.

Kelsi is waiting, looking a bit excited. Gosh, if it wasn’t for her, I’d go insane locked up in here… I take a deep breath and lift my hand.

One by one, I light a little flame on top of each finger. It’s like I’m growing nails, and the flame is strangely redder than a normal fire, almost pinkish. My friend bites her lower lip.

“Damn, if only one of us smoked, that would be so cool. It really doesn’t hurt?”

“Not at all. It almost feels a bit cold, actually.”

“Well, your watch isn’t beeping like crazy like last time, so–”

“Mara!”

Kelsi and I jump, and I immediately make my fire disappear. At the entrance of my room, the young nurse is staring at us, her hands on her hips. “Are you crazy, you know you can’t do that in here!”

“Sorry, Bonnie,”

I mutter. Thankfully, it’s only Bonnie. She’s probably the only nurse on this floor who won’t freak out about me only doing this much.

She sighs and comes in with a large tray, my breakfast.