The Supernatural Paradigm

Zariah moved into the kitchen—but Michael lingered by the front door, glancing around at everything in the house and feeling again vexed and intrigued, having never seen the inside of anyone’s home before aside from his own. He gazed into the living room, his eyes narrowing at the flat, dark screen against the far wall.

“You want a drink?” Zariah asked, pulling a cold bottle of water out of the fridge and placing it on the bar counter.

Michael blinked and tore his eyes from the living room, gazing over the counter at her. “Ahm… sure. Is that a…”

He pointed over at the flat-screen.

“Is that a TV? ” Michael asked her, seeming perplexed.

Zariah’s mouth opened, and she breathed out a laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s a TV. Have you never… seen one before?”

“I…” Michael shook his head once, giving the TV another odd glance. “Well, yeah, I have… just… not one like that.”

Zariah narrowed her eyes at him interestingly, scooting his water over to him and planting her hands atop the counter, giving him a vested sort of stare.

“How long have you been inside that house?” she wondered.

Michael faced her again and sighed. “Ah… pretty much… my entire life.”

Zariah blinked and shot him a double-take. “Y… you… really? You’ve never been outside before?”

“Not outside of the property… no,” Michael shrugged. “Not before today.”

Zariah stared at him in astonishment for a moment.

“Wow. Okay,” she uttered. “Everything about you makes a lot more sense now… holy crap…”

She fidgeted in her stance for a second, then gave him another curious and befuddled look.

“How did you not… go… crazy in there?” Zariah asked him. “How could you stand being locked up all your life?”

“Well… I was asleep for a lot of it,” Michael replied with a laugh. “All of us were.”

Zariah ogled him bizarrely. “Wha… why?”

Michael glimpsed down, making another shrug and sliding his hands into his pockets.

“Mom and Dad said it was best to wait,” he told her.

Zariah’s eyes narrowed. “Wait for what?”

“For… the world to be safe again,” Michael said. “They didn’t think it was safe for us to be part of the world yet… so, we’ve just been… waiting. Mainly just waiting for them to give us the okay to go out.”

Zariah eyed him strangely. “Why did they think it was so dangerous? I mean, the world can be dangerous, but… not so dangerous that you have to hide inside all your life.”

“Dangerous for us ,” Michael said seriously. “Mom thinks people would kill us if they knew what we were.”

“Okay… but… most people wouldn’t even believe what you are, even if you showed it to them point-blank,” Zariah informed him. “I’m a special case… believe me. Most other people aren’t so quick to believe in vampires and whatnot.”

Michael stared thoughtfully at her for a second.

Zariah sighed, then thought of another question to ask.

“And… technically… what actually are you?” she wondered.

“A hybrid,” Michael replied. “Mom and Dad came from two different classes, so we’re kind of…”

He trailed off, looking away and huffing out a breath.

“I’m not supposed to talk about that,” he remembered.

Zariah examined him intensely.

“Classes,” she uttered with interest. “The classes of the Supernatural Paradigm?”

Michael’s eyes flickered back to her, suddenly staring at her with intense intrigue.

Zariah smirked and held up a finger, then broke into a brisk stride and marched off to her bedroom. She returned moments later with a large, old book in her hands, a book with a bent, damaged spine and a brown, weathered cover, a single silver cross insignia on the center of it.

“It looks like a really old Bible… but it’s not,” Zariah said, placing the book down on the bar and flipping it open to the first page, revealing the ancient yellowish paper within. “It’s called The Secret Classes of the Supernatural Paradigm. This book came out in 1855, written by someone called Victoria V. It’s one of the very few records from back then that actually shows the realer side of this stuff. It talks about the classes of the paradigm, and how there used to be small, secret councils in the towns where the different classes met up and discussed how they would coexist and whatnot… all except for the Demon Class, anyway… and it also talks about the vampire fears that happened in the 1600s and 1700s, and how people of the Vampire Class had to move out of town sometimes because the villages would get paranoid and scared, because people were dying of tuberculosis and they thought it was vampires… I mean, there’s a lot in here.”

Michael stared down at the book, gently placing his fingers to its front page, squinting down at it and reading the old faded writing beneath the title.

“This was published in Sheldon,” he murmured.

Zariah glimpsed down at it, then back at him, spotting the look of seriousness on his face.

Michael raised his head and met her gaze, tapping a finger to the page. “You know who Victoria was?”

“Ahm… no,” Zariah shrugged. “She just goes by Victoria throughout the whole book. She mentions that she was part of a supernatural class, and she and her husband went to council meetings, but she doesn’t talk about herself any more than that… and she never mentions names, either.”

“Sheldon… is a parish outside of Birmingham England,” Michael stated, tapping his finger to the page again. “And that’s where my mother and father are from.”

Zariah stared, instantly falling speechless.

“And… Victoria was my grandmother’s name,” Michael said. “Victoria Voltaire.”

“Oh,” Zariah breathed in surprise. “Oh, holy crap…”

They were both silent for a moment, staring down at the book with quiet intensity.

“So this was… oh my God… dude, you’re kidding me,” Zariah muttered, combing her hairs aside and suddenly examining the book as if she’d never seen it before. “This was written by Villy V’s mother? Holy crap , man… What’re the odds?! That is just wild …!”

“And the councils don’t exist anymore, either,” Michael remarked, looking and sounding severe. “That’s why my mother decided to keep us inside… because the populations of the different classes faded out over time, until there weren’t enough to even have councils anymore. The classes that remain are usually at odds with each other now… and they fight a lot. It wasn’t regular people that my parents were worried about. It was the other supernatural classes. They’d target us if they ever knew about us.”

Zariah gave him a long, perturbed stare.

“Why…?” she muttered.

“Because… we’re different,” Michael replied simply. “We’re not supposed to mix. Different classes were never supposed to start families together, or have kids with each other. Me, and Zander, and VV would all be considered mutts and abominations to the other classes… and they’d all just hate us right off the bat… because we’re not supposed to exist. Mom said that most of the classes have a superiority complex… and the one thing that most of them have in common is… they all think they’re supposed to be pure. Well… in our family… we’re not pure. So… y’know… here we are. In hiding.”

Zariah fell silent for a few seconds again, slowly shaking her head at him.

“That… is so… dated ,” she uttered. “Did they really all think that way? Because ew.”

“Well… not so much the Demon Class or the Holy Class,” Michael added. “But the other three did… especially vampires and werewolves. Demon Class and Holy Class function on bigger and more spiritual objectives in general… but the more worldly classes are the ones that got hung up on all that stupid stuff… according to my mother, anyway…”

“So… your family is like… rebellious,” Zariah tried to clarify. “They didn’t even follow any of the rules… they just said screw it and did whatever they wanted.”

Michael smirked and nodded. “Yeah. That’s how my mom and dad got together… a psychic and a vampire… and that’s how William became part of our family, too.”

“Who’s William?” Zariah asked.

“Oh… he’s our butler,” Michael answered. “And he was kind of a co-manager for my parents when they were touring back in the day. He came from the Werewolf Class.”

“ What …?” Zariah gasped.

“Yeah… he ran away from home in the 70s because he didn’t wanna do his family’s manhood ritual… which… I think… involved killing someone’s baby, or something,” Michael mumbled, stroking along his cheek. “I don’t remember the whole story… but Will didn’t wanna go along with all the crazy class traditions in his family, so… he ran away… and he just happened to meet my mom and dad. They took him in and gave him a job… and… he’s still with us now. Still being a family manager, pretty much. He’s like our uncle.”

“Okay… okay, wow, lemme get this straight,” Zariah said, pressing her fingers to her temples. “You have a vampire father… a psychic mother… and a werewolf uncle. Oh my God. Oh my God… this is a movie …”

Michael laughed. “That’d be an awesome movie. I never really thought about it before, but it totally would be…”

“Ohmigod… dude, this is crazy,” Zariah sniggered breathlessly. “This is so exciting… you have no idea. Can I ask you something weird? What do you eat? ”

Michael blinked and raised his eyebrows. “Uhm… usually just food.”

“Well, duh —I mean what kind of food?” Zariah laughed. “Blood? Or like regular food?”

“Ahhh… technically… I can eat both,” Michael told her. “But I’ve never drank blood before. I don’t really want to.”

“I always thought real vampires were an enhanced species that just happened to have an iron deficiency. Is that true?”

“Um… I guess so?”

“So you crave blood, but you’re not like actually draining lives or souls from people.”

“I guess…”

“Can you turn people into vampires by biting them?”

“Ah… my father can,” Michael knew. “He turned my mother into one. But… I think you have to be a pureblooded vampire to do that. I don’t think I could.”

Zariah paused, a wide smile crawling across her face as an idea came to her.

“Where do you have to go at four to look for your brother?” she inquired.

“Um… some club called Rock Rollers,” Michael replied.

“Oh… so it’s right through town on the back road,” Zariah knew. “Okay… well… would you wanna go out to a restaurant while we wait for four o’clock to come around?”

Michael’s mouth opened, and he gave a hesitant glance to the kitchen window, eyeing the sunlight outside.

“We don’t have to walk there,” Zariah assured, as if sensing his concerns. “We can just take my car. You won’t be in the sun very much. Don’t worry.”

Michael still remained quiet for a second, gnawing on his bottom lip and glancing down, gliding his hand across his skinny body and stroking his flat, empty stomach. He hadn’t noticed until she mentioned it—but he did feel rather hungry, and he hadn’t actually eaten anything since around this time last year. The hibernation hunger was the worst, and he knew he’d start feeling it as intensely as his parents usually did if he didn’t eat something soon.

“Huh. I never really thought about… getting food before,” he realized. “Will always went out and got everything for us. He used to make really good burgers all the time…”

“Burgers,” Zariah muttered, squinting at him. “Did you never have better food? Like steak?”

“Um… no, I don’t think so,” Michael said.

Zariah smirked again. She patted the countertop, closed her enormous book, and carried it back into her bedroom, returning seconds later with her keys in her hand.

“I have a feeling… you are gonna love a rare steak,” she said smugly. “I wanna see you react to that. C’mon.”

She headed past him toward the front door.

“You, um…” Michael uttered, turning to her and raising a finger. “You don’t have to do that.”

Zariah wheeled back around and perked her brow at him. “I don’t have to do what?”

“You don’t have to… buy me anything,” Michael clarified. “Food costs money, right? I kinda… don’t… have any. And I don’t wanna burden you more, so…”

“Oh… come on… I offered,” Zariah laughed. “And when’s the last time you ate anything?”

Michael paused, sighing and looking down.

“A year ago,” he murmured.

“Okay… yeah, see, that… that’s not normal,” Zariah said, wagging a finger at him. “I wanna eat, and you need to eat, so… c’mon. Let’s go.”

Michael made a sideways nod and followed her out of the house, Zariah locking the front door before leading him beneath the rusted blue car port.

When they reached the sleek silver Eclipse, Zariah opened the driver door, and Michael hesitated when he approached the passenger side, staring down at the car and feeling another touch of wariness.

Zariah paused and gazed over the car’s roof at him. “What? What’s a’matter?”

“I, um… I’ve never been in a car,” Michael replied sheepishly. “Is it dangerous?”

“It can be,” Zariah shrugged. “But only if you have a bad driver… or if you get hit by a bad driver.”

Michael stared expressionlessly at her. “Well, that doesn’t make me feel better…”

“Hey, you… listen. Look here,” Zariah said, raising two fingers and pointing them at his eyes, then her own. “Lookit me. Look. I am your ultimate tour guide for the outside world, and I am a pretty damn good driver. Nothing’s gonna happen. I got you. It’s all good. Okay?”

“Okay,” Michael mumbled, curling his fingers under the latch of the door and slowly popping it open.

Zariah sank into the driver’s seat, and Michael slowly did the same on the passenger side, bending his legs and squeezing himself into the small car. He then pulled the door shut and glanced over at her, watching as she inserted the keys and started the engine—and he made a sharp little gasp when the car roared to life.

Zariah glimpsed at him, smirking and strapping her seatbelt on. “You’re kind of adorable. You know that?”

Michael stared at her wordlessly.

“Seatbelt,” Zariah said, pointing at his.

He turned and examined the area where the seatbelt was, pulling out the strap and giving it an odd look.

Zariah laughed and leaned closer. “Here, let me just…”

She hunched fully over him, making him inhale and lean back flatly against his seat, his heart making a jump as she hovered incredibly close. Her hand clasped onto the belt buckle, and then she plopped back down in her seat, clicking his seatbelt into place for him before readjusting her own.

“You’re so interesting,” Zariah commented, shifting gears and slowly beginning to back out of the car port. “You know all this history, and all about the secret classes, and the Supernatural Paradigm… but you don’t know how a seatbelt works. You really are just… so unique.”

Michael barely seemed to hear her; he was gazing out the passenger window, watching the slow, steady movement of the world outside with rapt attentiveness.

Zariah drove backwards and turned the car to face the end of the driveway, then paused and stole a glimpse of him again.

“Are you scared?” she asked.

Michael blinked and faced her. “Huh? Oh, no… no, I’m not scared, I just…”

He turned back to the window.

“I’m just kind of… fascinated,” he laughed breathlessly. “I don’t know why. I’ve seen cars a million times in movies… and Will has one, too… I just never… I don’t know…”

He turned back to her, and when he did, his eyes were bright and rife with glee, a childlike smile spread across his face.

“It was always one of those things that was just for… everybody else,” Michael tried to explain. “It was something out of my reach that only everybody else in the world got to have. I don’t know… I guess I never really felt like I was actually part of the world before now.”

Zariah stared at him for a moment, then breathed out a laugh and nodded before slowly cruising onwards.

“Wow. Suddenly I feel like I take a lot in my life for granted,” she said, bringing the car up the incline.

Michael let out a faint snicker as the car rocked gently to and fro atop the gravel.

Zariah steadily drove onto the road, pulling off of the driveway and cruising down the right lane, the street empty and devoid of any traffic.

She gazed through the windshield, gently turning her music up and squinting down the extensive back road, seeing nobody farther down the way.

Then, she glimpsed over at Michael and flashed a devilish smirk—pressing her foot to the gas.

The car jolted as it shifted drives—engine growling louder—and Michael took in a sharp breath, clasping the side of the passenger door and feeling a spark of anxiety shoot up and down him like lightning as the car sped down the road.

For a moment, he looked mortified—but then, to Zariah’s surprise, Michael revealed a beaming grin, cackling joyfully as if he was on a rollercoaster.

“Oh—are you having fun? ” Zariah smiled, pressing her hand to the buttons on the driver door.

The windows all began to roll down, allowing bursts of wind to flood into the car from each one.

Michael turned to his own open window, beaming with delight and acting entirely on impulse; he gripped the top and pulled himself up, climbing halfway out of the car and sitting on the window, his upper half being positively pummeled by the air now, blasting his hairs back and making his white shirt flap rapidly in its wake.

Zariah glanced over and gasped, laughing in shock and driving with one hand, using her other one to try to yank him back into the car—but to no avail.

One of his hands remained clamped viselike onto the handle inside the car—and he leaned out as far as he could, reaching to the sky and not caring at all about the blinding sunlight.

“WOOOOOOOOOO!”

Michael felt suddenly more alive than he ever had, all fears of the outside world completely gone from him for the first time in his life, purely enraptured in the moment—howling and chortling with absolute joy all the way down the hillside.