Feel Again by Fallon Sousa Read Free Book Online Page B

Maybe he did
not hate it so much after all. Especially not after what happened
next.
    Lionel was almost asleep by
that time. He was just dozing off when he realized that Sam had
come to see him. She had snuck in against her father’s wishes,
presumably. He looked up and could not believe what he saw. Samakri
looked even more beautiful than she ever had before. She was
dresssed quite scantily in an exotic-looking Yalmax chemise, which
pressed tightly against her skin, showing the lines and curves of
her form.
    He looked directly into her
eyes, staring into them like doors to her soul, for what seemed
like eternity. Her eyes turned blue. He walked closer to her and
took her face into his hands; kissing her. She did not fight him.
He let go of her face, moving his hands down the rest of her
perfect white body.
    He lifted her strange gown
off over her head, revealing her bare beauty, then he took off his
own garments. She still did not protest. He kissed her again, their
forms sliding down against the wall of the prison cell. He went
inside of her, and then, something strange happened. Her perfect
skin darkened; her hair turned from purple to flaming
red.
    Samakri was
human.
    The last thing that Lionel
and even Samakri would have expected as an outcome of their
encounter was that Samakri would become human. Yes, she was a
beautiful human; just as much as she had been a beautiful alien.
But, how could she possibly explain what had happened to Blekrin.
If he came to know, he would surely kill the both of them, or, at
the very least, Lionel. However, as Zebdian Armpha, he would also
surely know without being told. So, they devised a plan.
    “First,”
Samakri told Lionel when she became aware of the situation, “You
will return to Earth; no questions asked, and you will do so in
secret, lest my father know what is going on.” For the first time
since Lionel had met her, Samakri appeared to be feeling true
emotion. After all, she was human now; she was different, of
course.
    “How can I leave you now,
Sam?” he asked her, hoping sincerely that they would not be forced
to part ways so soon, though a little voice in the back of his
head; his conscience, perhaps, was telling him that this just might
be the case.
    “I do not know,” she said.
“I do not know.” Silence. “Then,” she continued, fighting back
tears as best as she could, “I will tell Blekrin that I have
changed form in order to disguise myself. Hopefully, I will soon be
able to join you on your home planet of Earth, though that is not
completely certain as we stand here today.”
    Lionel was trying to come up
with the courage to ask Samakri a question that he had been holding
back for quite some time; a question that she would only be able to
answer truthfully now that she was human. Yet, for some reason, he
was more afraid to ask this question of her than he would have been
to ask it to a complete stranger. He wanted to send it to her by
way of thought bond, but then he remembered that she could not read
his mind anymore.
    “Before I go,” he began.
“I mean, before you send me back to Earth...”
    “Yes?” Sam asked him.
“Please continue.
    “I would like to ask you a
question.”
    “Go on,” she said. “Ask
me.”
    “Do you
love me?” Lionel asked Samakri, feeling the words flow from his
tongue like a mixture of fire and ice. He would understand if she
did not love him back. After all, she had only yesterday been
inhuman; frightening.
    “I do,”
she said.
    Lionel prepared himself for
the inevitable. Samakri marphed him back to Earth. One minute, they
were together; Lionel surrounded by an orb of eerie green light;
the next, he was completely alone back on Earth. Back where he had
started.
    He
looked around the room and realized that it was his room, back at Carla’s house. It
was the ugly carpets, the ugly wallpaper, the broken furniture and
the ghetto peeping from beyond the windows. It was home, and yet it
wasn’t really home