Each chapter has a specific character narating it. I would appreciate responses and ratings plz. I might post all my chapters here but only if everyone likes it.
Prologue
Eric
I think we were all created for a reason… That reason, remains unknown… Some say we are devil’s spawn… Others say we are warriors of God… Personally, I believe we were sent by God, but I can’t say why. Some people abuse the power we were given, but that’s to be expected. After all, we are still human, even if no one can see it except us…
My name is Eric Johnson, by the way, and I am a Jewel-Eye. That’s just our personal name for what we’ve become. Others call us a great many of things. Vampires, werewolves, demons, angels, etc., we’ve been called all of that. We “feed” on certain things, like blood, energy, dreams, even memories. Being a Jewel-Eye can be a blessing and a curse. A blessing because we are inhumanly strong and fast, and we have the ability to regenerate and heal fast. A curse because we live so long and, of course, the need to feed. Just for all of you who are curious, I’m 117 years old.
I have a feeling that soon, we will know our purpose for being.
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Lets go into some history on myself, just to keep things clear. I was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1900. My family had moved to Chicago from Mississippi a few months before I was born. They did so to give me a better life. I had a good life. I had nice parents who cared for me. In the beginning, you could have said I was lucky.
But, that happiness didn’t last long. My mother died of influenza when I was 12 years old, and my dad died of the same thing when I was 15. After that, I tried to live on my own. I got a job and rented an apartment. It was hard going, but I was determined not to fail. Only one thing could have stopped me from having a normal life. And that was my conjoined twin brother.
We were different from most conjoined twin. We didn’t have two bodies joined together. We had two brains and two souls in one body. When they discovered we were conjoined twins and not crazy, they named him Derick Johnson, after my great uncle. There were times when one of us was dominant or the other was. There was no way to determine when one of us took over, it just happened. The only way you could tell who was in charge at one point in time was to look at the color of our eyes. When I was dominant our eyes were a light hazel color. When Derick was dominant our eyes were almost black because they were so dark. For some reason, I was more dominant than he was. Scientists tried to figure out why this was. They said it was because I had a stronger personality, but it was never confirmed.
I never had a good personal life. For some reason, my brother didn’t really like anything, me in particular. In fact, one therapist (we had to go through a lot of therapy and I’m not sure if we will ever be right) said that he actually resented me. Derick always tried to ruin anything that went right in my life. Sometimes, I wondered if anything would ever be good in my life.
I thought that until I met Jessica Holland. She was the girl of my dreams. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever saw. Everybody called her Bubbles, because she had a bubbly personality. She was a white girl, and I usually didn’t pay much attention to whites (I mean was living in the time of segregation). She wasn’t like a lot of other white people, she actually talk to blacks as equals. That was one reason I fell for her. Another reason I fell for her was her eyes. They were a sapphire color. Her eyes were so mesmerizing, that sometimes I actually thought that she hypnotized the people around her.
She lived in an apartment next to mine, and we met on my way to work (luckily Derick didn’t interfere with work). I’m not sure, but she seemed a bit sad the day I met her.
“Hi, I’m Eric Johnson,” I said. She looked at me and at that moment, I thought I saw tears. This caught me off guard. This was the girl who almost always acted cheerful.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “Did something happen to you?”
She quickly wiped her tears.
“I’m okay really,” she answered. “But that’s sweet of you to worry about me, even though you don’t know me very well.”
“Okay, if you’re really alright. I guess I’ll see you later.”
“Yeah, see you around. Oh, and by the way, I’m Jessica, but you can call me Bubbles.”
After we met, we hung out with each other a lot. We usually ate dinner at each others apartment and talked until one of us had to leave. I’m not sure if she ever saw Derick. I know he became dominant three times in the first month that I knew her.
Then one day, I was coming over to her apartment and I saw those tears in her eyes again. She tried to hide her tears from me, but something really bad must have happened. Her tears looked almost exactly like they did on the day we first talked. I always tried to ask her, but she said she was fine every time.
“Really, Bubbles, are you okay? I know something happened a month ago and you don’t seem to want to talk about it yet. I just want you to know that I’m here for you,” I told her.
“Thank you, Eric,” she said. Then she rushed into my arms and cried.
“Its okay, its going to be okay,” I reassured her. We stood outside her apartment in the cold until she calmed down. After she dried her eyes, she asked me to follow her inside.
I hung my coat on the coat rack by her door and sat on the couch beside her. She moved across the couch into my lap, and I wrapped my arms around her.
“I’m okay now,” she said. “But I want you to do something for me.”
“You should know by now that I’d do almost anything for you,” I told her.
“I want you to stay with me tonight and comfort me. I feel really vulnerable.”
I thought about what she was saying. She actually wanted me to stay over. No girl had ever asked that of me. Either she really felt really bad or she trusted me completely. Or it could be both.
“I’ll stay with you for as long as you want me-” she cut me off with an abrupt kiss. I stood up for a moment.
“Wait a minute,” I said. When in actuality I didn’t want her to. “You’re really vulnerable and I don’t really want to take advantage of that.”
“You really are a nice guy, aren’t you? Most guys would have me in bed by now,” she informed me.
“If I didn’t have self-control, I probably would have you in bed, too. But do you really want this, or are you just trying to force yourself to feel better? I ask this because I don’t want you waking up in the morning regretting what you did tonight.”
“You are so sweet, but I really do want this. I like you, a lot.”
“I like you too.”
“Then there should be no regrets after tonight.”
Before I could say anything else, she kissed me again. Only this time, I made no move to stop her. I kissed her until I felt my lungs about to burst from holding my breath. We stopped for a moment, breathing heavy like we had ran a race.
“Whoa, that was amazing,” I said. I kissed her again with more passion this time. My hand went in her hair, her leg raised to shape my body. I laid her down on the couch and kissed her again. We kept at it like that for a few hours. My hands traced over every inch of her body, while her hands did the same to me.
During that time, I started to feel weaker and weaker. I felt my energy being drained. I pulled at the sensation draining my energy, trying to reclaim what was leaving me.
I pulled more energy back into me. Bubbles let out a moan that drove me insane.
Then, she pushed me away from her. And as soon as she did, I almost collapsed. I felt so weak.
“What the hell was that?” both of us asked.
“Well, I-” we both started. We both looked a bit exhausted, me more than her.
“Okay, let me explain a bit,” she said. “It’s a long story.”
“Well, if you can tell me before I pass out, I’ll listen,” I told her.
“I’m not exactly human…” she started.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean that I’m a Jewel-Eye.”
“What the hell is a Jewel-Eye.”
“It’s a bit complicated and hard to explain. Basically It means that I was once human, but now I’ve been changed into something similar to a superhuman,” she explained.
“Um, that’s a bit weird, but how does that explain why my energy is sapped.”
“Well, I have the ability to drain energy from living beings. In fact, I have to do it to live.”
“Again weird, but I have to ask, were you going to suck all my energy out?”
“No, I would never do that! I was planning on turning you into a Jewel-Eye like me.”
“What!!!!” I exclaimed.
“Yeah, I was lonely,” she said this with a sad, almost pitiful, expression on her face. “My husband died a month ago. That’s what I’ve been sad about. Then, you came along and you remind me so much of him that I kind of fell in love.”
The fact that she had fallen for me was obviously flattering, but I couldn’t believe she had been married. She looked no more than maybe 16 or 17. Not many people got married at that age anymore.
“But you’re like 16 years old. I didn’t know… I never guessed,” I couldn’t find the words to say.
“Well, Jewel-Eyes can live for extremely long time. A century to humans is more like four years to us.”
“Oh my God. This is a lot to take in. So, am I going to be a Jewel-Eye?” I asked. I was thinking about my brother and how he would handle being a Jewel-Eye.
“Yes. You are going to turn into a Jewel-Eye.” Then her voice became a little sadder and she asked, “Do you really not want to be with me?”
“Its not that I don’t want to be with you. Its just… Well to tell the truth I am a conjoined twin.”
“Wait a minute. Conjoined twins are twins that are connected to each other. You aren’t like that at all!”
“We aren’t like other conjoined twins. We are actually connected in every way except for our brains. Its kind of like having two brains. Except for when he becomes dominant. I don’t remember anything when he becomes dominant.”
“And by this ‘he’ you mean your twin?”
“Yeah,” I said. Telling someone besides a therapist about my brother felt strangely relieving. It was as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulder.
“Okay, that’s a bit weirder than my story!” she exclaimed.
I thought about the two stories and I had to admit, mine did sound weirder than hers.
“Okay, so you are a conjoined twin. What does that have to do with you being with me,” she asked.
“Well, me being a conjoined twin is not the problem. I was just worried about how my brother would react to suddenly having powers. So many people could get hurt, even you.” As I said this she seemed confused.
“I still don’t get it,” she told me.
“Okay. He is like my opposite. He hates everything, mostly me though. He tries to ruin everything that goes right in our life. He scares and hurts people. If he had power, it would be a lot worse,” I explained.
“Okay, its sort of like an evil twin thing. Don’t worry, I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
“No, you don-” I started. I felt drowsy and weak. I tried to stand up and collapsed.
“Hold on. Its starting to take effect. Your body will be in the process of changing for a while,” she said. Her voice was sounding a bit distant to me.
“Wait a minute. How long will I be changing?”
“It depends on the person. Sometimes it takes a day, but more commonly it takes about three or four days. During the time your body will be changing, you will be unconscious. But don’t worry, I won’t leave your side until you wake up.”
She sounded even more distant. I could barely hear her now. I struggled against the darkness that was trying to swallow me, but I couldn’t win. Within seconds I was unconscious.
************************************************************************
When I awoke four days later, Bubbles was right beside me, just like she said she would. She explained what happened a lot more about my new life. I was a Mesmerizer, that’s a specific race of Jewel-Eyes. She told me that she was also a Mesmerizer.
I looked into the mirror after I awakened and saw that the way I looked didn’t change much. The only differences was that my skin tone was richer, my muscles were firmer, and I didn’t have a trace of acne. The thing that made the biggest difference was that my eyes were no longer hazel. They were a bight, topaz color.
Bubbles and I stayed together while I was adjusting to my new life. I mastered my new found powers and even learned a little martial arts.
Ten years later, I discovered something amazing about myself because of Bubbles. She told me that my eyes changed color when my brother became dominant. Bubbles could tell when to restrain me after that. On the 15th year of my transformation, I proposed to her. We were married the next year. From then on, she was known as Jessica Johnson. I vowed on the day of our marriage that I would find someway to separate Derick and me.
We had a great life together, although it was short lived. In 1947, on the day of my birthday, my brother was dominant. When I regained dominance, Bubbles was dead. I don’t know exactly what happened, but Derick wrote a note to me. The note said that I would never find true happiness.
I was angry and depressed for a long time. During that time I didn’t eat or feed like I was suppose to. I have a theory that Derick fed a lot when he became dominant, but I have no way to prove it yet. All I wanted was to die and take Bubbles’ killer with me. I tried to kill myself several times. Each time, I failed. I found it was extremely hard to kill a Jewel-Eye. I began to wonder how did Derick kill Bubbles. No one back then could figure it out.
It was 26 years before I snapped out of it. The person who did it was someone name Jessie McKinley. Its funny when I think about it now. The person who snapped me out of my depression was someone whose name was almost the same as the person who I was depressed about.
I met Jessie one day while I was wondering on a new way of trying to kill myself. I was thinking of drowning myself that day actually. I saw her and for the first time in so long actually noticed how she looked. She was 5’9 with reddish brown hair. Her skin was a smooth almond color and her eyes were pink. Not like she had contacts though. They were jewel-like.
She’s a Jewel-Eye, was the first thought in my head. I ran up to her and turned her to face me. She had a baffled expression on her face until she looked at me. After she saw how I looked, and I have to say I looked like the living dead, she looked a bit sympathetic.
“Does the word Jewel-Eye mean anything to you?” I asked. If she was an ordinary person, she might have called the cops on me. But she answered, “Of course it does, Mesmerizer. You should be able to tell just by looking at me.”
I was baffled. Not only did she know I was a Jewel-Eye, but she also knew what tribe I belonged to.
“How did you know that I was a Mesmerizer?” I asked.
“Well, I could tell by the color of your eyes,” she replied matter-of-factly.
“My eyes?”
“Yes. Males who are Mesmerizers have topaz colored eyes, while females have sapphire eyes.”
The simple fact that she said sapphire brought back the pain that I was running from. Seeing that I was heart broken, she invited me back to her home. Another wave of pain swept over me, as all the memories of Bubbles came rushing back to me.
Jessie laid me on her couch. As I was wallowing in my misery, a boy walked up to me.
“Hi, who are you?” he asked. He looked no older than twelve years old. He had the same almond colored skin as Jessie so I assumed that he was her son. He had low cut, reddish brown hair and big, bright ruby-colored eyes.
I couldn’t really say much at that moment, so I felt pretty bad when he frowned at me and walked off.
“That was my son, Jarron. He gets into a lot of trouble,
but he’s actually a good boy,” Jessie said as she walked back into the room. “You can stay as long as you want to,” she told me. “You don’t have to tell me what’s wrong but maybe it would help.”
I told her my whole story. She helped me work out my life and got me back into the living world. A few years later, she adopted me. It was nice having someone to call mom again. She also had an adopted daughter named Kaci. Kaci was an Anima, that’s a race of Jewel-Eyes that transforms into animals. Her animal was a house cat. Jarron was an Elemental, a race that controls the elements. His element was electricity. I also discovered that Jarron was a bit of a kleptomaniac.
Jessie was a Romancer, that’s a race of Jewel-Eyes that can actually make people fall in love. I still live with Jessie and her family to this very day, even though now I act as Jessie’s brother. Derick hasn’t made anything bad happen the whole time I was living with Jessie.
In 2006, I met Rose Summers. She was so beautiful, that I had to talk to her. She was the first girl that I felt such an attraction to since Bubbles died. I got to know Rose for a few months, and eventually asked her to be my girl. We’ve been together ever since. I knew that I had to get rid of Derick before I got to serious with Rose. Otherwise, I would end up in the same situation as last time. I don’t know if anyone would be able to pull me out of it if it happened again.
Mon Jul 19, 2010 9:16 pm by Kimusume
Subject: Jewel-Eyes: Prologue 
