Let Me Stitch Your Broken Heart

Carly couldn't move. Was she seeing a ghost? Was her subconscious creating fantasies to save her from such an unhealthy zombie state?

Colton leaned over and opened the passenger door. "Have a seat, Carly. I have a lot to tell you." She sat down and pulled the door closed. As he pulled out of her driveway, he began his explanation, "I know you're probably in a bit of a shock." Carly could only nod. He took a right turn. "I'll just pick up where we left off at the restaurant." The memories of that night made her stomach turn flips. "Alicia and Stuart Shelley have a son named Scott. Most people don't know he's their son, as I said before. He's your age, or appears to be." Carly's eyes faced out the window. She watched the bank, the downtown shopping center, and the soup kitchen fly by. She noticed that Colton was driving significantly slower than he had on that first car ride.

Then, she noticed something else, "Wait! Where are we going? This is the complete opposite direction from school!"

"Glad to know you're still capable of speaking. And, I know." Carly could feel the fear creeping up. She'd never skipped school. Sure, she'd stayed out sick before, but she'd never played hookey.

"I can't skip school! I have a clean record! I wanna go to a decent college! My parents--"

"You do realize it's Labor Day, right? There is no school."

"But you said-"

"It was an excuse to get you in the car."

"Oh. Okay. Sorry."

"May I continue?" She nodded sheepishly. "Thank you. Okay, so Scott appears to be about your age. Seventeen to be exact. You might know him."

"Huh? He appears to be seventeen? How old is he actually?"

"About 350."

Carly turned to look at him to see if he was really serious. Colton's face was completely straight. There wasn't a hint of humor there. "You're serious aren't you."

"Yes."

Slowly she turned to face the front again. Carly struggled to get her thoughts together. Scott. I wonder if I've met him....Hmmm....Scott... She searched her mind for a seventeen-year-old who didn't look so seventeen. Wait. Scott. My Scott? No way. That's impossible. It's impossible to be 350. Not Scott. Not mine. Not my Scott. "Colton?"

"Yeah?"He spoke cautiously. He knew this came as a shock to her, especially since she was human.

"What's Scott's last name?" Please don't say Yale. Please don't say Yale. Please don't say Yale.

"Yale." Carly winced. "So you do know him."

"Yeah. I used to date him." She thought of the times she'd made out with Scott. Now, she had discovered he was an extremely old man. Gross.

"You. Dated. My. Uncle?!"

"Your what?!"

Colton seemed to be mentally calming himself. He took a deep breath in and let it out, "My uncle. Scott Yale is my uncle."

Her eyebrows furrowed, "I don't understand. This makes no sense!"

"I know. That's because you didn't let me finish my story."

"Errgh!" This aggravated Carly. She snapped, "Fine then! Finish your goddamn fairy tale! By all means!"

"It's not a fairy tale! It's true! You promised to believe me!"

"That was before I knew you were mentally insane!"

"Aaarrrgh! Carly! Why can't you just snap out of what you humans call reality and see what's right in front of you? The world isn't black and white, rainbows and butterflies, humans and zoo animals. It's 'fantasy' meshed with 'reality'! Where do you think they get all those stupid 'myths' from? True life! Those things weren't invented in some human's wild imagination, Carly. They're true. Don't make me prove it to you! That could get messy. Just listen to my story and believe me."

"Why should I?" Carly wasn't going to give in that easily.

"Colton's face softened and the fire in his eyes dwindled, "Because I asked you to."

Carly sighed. "Fine. I'll listen. And I'll try my best to accept. And, Colton, I don't know what you are or how you think, but 'us humans' like our little world where make-believe isn't real, so it's kinda hard for us to accept the fact that it is. You just have to understand that and put up with it, okay?"

"Alright. If you'll try to believe, then I'll try to sympathize with you when you find it difficult."

"Thank you. You may now continue your story."

"You're welcome. Okay, since I jumped the gun and told you about Scott being my uncle, I guess the best thing to do now would be to just give you my whole family tree. Alicia was a human when she married Stuart. Before he was able to turn her into a vampire, she became pregnant with twins by him. Obviously he couldn't make her one of his kind while she was pregnant since she'd be frozen in that stage of pregnancy forever. They could only wait out the painful process. For some reason, she went into labor after only three months. Lots of things about that pregnancy were weird. By some miracle, Alicia survived and was turned into a vampire by Stuart. The children survived, too. They named them Scott and Trina. The twins grew at an accelerated rate and suddenly stopped when they appeared to be around seventeen or eighteen. They were actually about seven. They were half human and half vampire, a strange species that hasn't been researched very thoroughly yet. The slang word has come to be 'humire.' Anyways, Scott eventually met a human girl named Natalie. She knew what he was, but never wanted to be turned. She liked growing and changing. She didn't want to live forever. Natalie was very interested in the afterlife and jumped from religion to religion trying to find one that suited her. I don't know which one she eventually settled on. That's not important. While she and Scott were married, she became pregnant. They hoped and prayed for the baby to be human."

"Was it?" This was the first time Carly had interrupted. She knew that Natalie had died. It was quite obvious, but she desperately wanted the baby to live somehow...for Scott's sake. She couldn't begin to imagine the pain he must have been through.

"She seemed to be, but she died soon after birth so we'll never really know. They named her Gemma because her eyes sparkled like brilliant blue gems. There's not a real rock out there in the world that could compare to those eyes. That's what Scott says anyway. Natalie died soon after Gemma. We aren't sure what killed her. Was it the tough labor, the pregnancy, the depression caused by her baby's death, or the fact that she was just a weak human who couldn't handle the strangeness of our world?"

"Maybe it was everything combined," Carly jumped in sadly. The story was very depressing so far. She didn't like it.

"Maybe," he paused for a few breaths. "Enough with the bad! On to the happier, more successful side of the family!" Carly looked up, a bit startled by his outburst. "So, Scott's twin sister Trina met a werewolf when she was about five. Keep in mind now that the twins had the minds of three years old when they were born. Their level of understanding and intelligence increased by three years each literal year. So she was mentally eighteen when she met him. His name was Nashoba. That's Choctaw for 'wolf.' Rather fitting, don't you think?"

"Yeah..."Carly could feel her belief slipping.

"All Trina ever wanted in the world was a family. She knew that in a few years she would either die or become frozen in time. She needed to act quickly. Ahem. If you know what I mean."

"Haha. Yeah,"Carly laughed nervously. This didn't sound like it would end well.

"So she and Nashoba fell in love. He understood her wishes and agreed to try. They weren't even sure a 'humire' could get pregnant. Turns out that she could. And here I am. Hello, I am Colton Black, a werehumire. One-third human, one-third vampire, and one-third werewolf.I drink blood, look human, am immortal at seventeen, and I can turn into a wolf on command. But, please, don't command me. I'm not a dog." Carly was speechless. She didn't know why, but she believed him. It made perfect sense to her. "Come on, Carly. Say something. Oh God. Look, I'll take you home if you want me to. You'll never have to see me again. I'll disappear off the face of the Earth. I didn't mean to scare you, Carly. I just thought you deserved to hear the truth. I'm so sor-"

"Colton."

This caught him off guard. He spoke cautiously, afraid of scaring her away, "Yes?"

"Did she survive?"

"Who?"

"Trina. Your mother."

"Oh. Yes, she did."

"I want to meet her."

"Now?"

"Yeah."

"Oh. Okay." He pulled into the driveway of a house they had been about to pass and turned back the way they came. "Here we go."