18 DAYS BEFORE THE REMATCH IN HALLOWSVILLE

  My daughter was crying.

  Not Sunshine. She was in the middle of chasing Vlad around the facility with Moonlight. It was Sunflower, and each one of her tears felt ice cold inside of me, and her weak sounds filled my ears. Even before our bond strengthened, I could feel them, but it was never this powerful. It had to have been ‘cause of the loss of Rosalina and her powers. I wanted to fix it, but there was only one problem.

  Sunflower had been gone for nearly two days. I presumed that maybe she wanted to talk to me in private, which was why I’d decided to stay in the bathroom, staring into the mirror.

  If I couldn’t take her body out of me, then I’d just get through to my daughter another way.

  “I only met you this month, Flower, but I feel like I’m one of the people who know you the most,” I said quietly. “Second to only your mom, of course. But then stuff like this happens, and I realize that I really haven’t done a good job of getting to know you at all. All I did was look into Rosalina’s life, but not yours. I just made assumptions about your character when there’s probably more stuff I haven’t uncovered yet. Honestly, it reminds me of what happened between Sunshine and-”

  “Dude, why’re you talking to yourself in the mirror?”

  I flinched, and then turned to the door. It was a scientist, legs crossed like he was about to piss himself. “The hell are you watching me for, weirdo? You like stalking men in the bathroom?”

  “Yeah, I'm totally the weirdo in this situation,” he said sarcastically, trembling. “Are you done here? I don’t like peeing when other people are in the room.”

  “Go to another bathroom, man!”

  “But the closest one here is the women’s bath-”

  “Then go use it!”

  My shout startled the scientist enough to get him running out of my sight.

  I turned back to the mirror, groaning. “Now, where were we? Oh, yeah. It reminds me of what happened between Sun and I. There was one thing I couldn't wrap my head around though. Your mom isn’t dead. She’s still out there. With the enemy. Knowing that, I thought you’d be motivated to save her, and yet Sun tells me you’ve been slacking. That tells me there’s something deeper inside of you that I didn’t look at, that I failed to fix. If you tell me what that is, then I’ll try my very best to help you.”

  For a while, silence filled the room, and I believed that the insanity plaguing Jason’s mind had made its way into my own. The girl staring at me from inside the mirror only made that feeling worse.

  Was it an illusion? A hallucination?

  I spun around. No one was there. I turned back to the mirror and awkwardly waved my hand at the mysterious figure. Her skin was a swampy green, and she had a wretched expression on.

  “Uuuh, hell-”

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  I didn’t have time to react before the girl’s hand grasped my neck. Her arm was scrawny. I didn’t expect to get hurt. She proved me wrong seconds later, pulling me into the mirror.

  And not the kind of pull where my head crashed into the glass, shattering it.

  I literally went inside of the mirror, and now I was traveling through a deep, crimson world. We blurred past faces frozen in shock that were plastered across the walls. They looked like the plethora of Sunshine’s faces that were in the State Between Release, but without her hair.

  Was this Sunflower leading me somewhere?

  I was about to find out as we were inching closer to the light at the end of the tunnel. She threw me into it, and I landed in a meadow. If things weren't already strange, the creature standing in front of me made everything even stranger.

  It wasn’t an animal. It was a sunflower with small limbs attached to its stem — ones that reminded me of a puppet’s. It stared at me with an innocent smile, so it didn’t seem like I’d have to worry about hostility.

  Although, when it reached its hand out to me, I didn’t take it.

  “I’m alright,” I said, regaining my bearings.

  “Dude, I’m fragile,” it said with a feminine voice. “I’d die to a stomp. You don’t have to worry about me hurting you.”

  “Are you… Sunflower?”

  “I’m a Sunflower,” she replied. “But I’m not the Sunflower. I’m actually trying to find her myself. Want to help?”

  “Sure. I was already looking for her myself.” I surveyed the land for a sec. “Where do we start? Actually, where are we in the first place?”

  “Find first. Ask questions later.” She began running north. “Let’s go!”

  I followed reluctantly. “Could you at least tell me your name?”

  “Uuuum, I remember someone calling me ‘Hope’ one time. Call me that if you want.”

  “Alright, Hope! That’s a good name.”

  “Thank you!”

  *******

  The crack of a whip echoed through the air as we approached a crowd of people that were meters away. The cries of what sounded like a girl sent a chill down my spine. But what turned that fear of what I was about to see into anger were the laughs and claps that accompanied her screams.

  Grabbing Hope, I picked up the pace.

  Even though I was still a zombie on the outside, my sense of smell was back. Although, the stench of blood invading my nostrils made me regret having it.

  Once we got there, I pushed through the crowd of people. Most of them shouted at me, while others attempted to grab me. But the only thing that stopped my movement was the sight of Sunflower on the red ground — bruised and battered. Her “father”, Michael Corleone, was calmly walking around the bloody scene as a couple other men took turns striking her.

  Energy erupted from my feet, and yet I hadn’t moved an inch. Even though the laughter around me was sending my rage into overdrive, the invisible chains continued to tie me down.

  Hope climbed onto my shoulder and sighed. “You can’t interfere with the past, dude.“

  “Just watch me try!”

  “You’re not a god, dude. All you can do right now is stand and watch ‘cause that’s how it played out.”

  I screamed, and then screamed even louder, trying to drown out the torment. But my power was irrelevant in this world, this mindscape. The only person that got everyone to stop what they were doing… was Michael.

  All it took was a raised hand.

  “I know you sickos find the torture of a teenage girl to be amusing, but that’s not the goal here,” he said. “You see, my daughter here wants to maintain the legacy of her late mother, Rosalina — the savage who tried to kill me. She still wants to be called ‘Sunflower’.”

  The crowd booed.

  “Yes, that’s right. Very bad. So we need to dent - no, crack this girl.” Michael gestured for the baseball bat that one of his men was holding. Once he received it, he continued. “Kid, what's your name?”

  My daughter got on her hands and knees, panting. “Sun… flower.”

  Michael brought the bat down on her back, and my body began to heat up. “No. What’s your name?”

  “Stop it!” I yelled, but no one listened.

  She tried getting up again. “Sun… flow-”

  Another strike brought Sunflower back down.

  “That’s enough, Michael!”

  “I won’t call myself… Victoria,” she cried softly. “My name will always be Sunflower.”

  Her “father” raised the bat high in the air. Every part of me wanted to fly out there and smash my fist against his face, though I couldn’t. So I forced my voice to be even louder than what I thought was possible.

  “Leave her!”

  Michael froze — moments away from laying down another beating. An ominous silence filled the air as everyone in the crowd’s eyes locked onto me.

  “How… How did you do that?” Hope asked, lips quivering. “The past can’t be changed.”

  Before I could find an answer, Sunflower started to speak again.

  “My name is… V-Victoria.”

  That response was met with claps and cheers.

  “There you have it, folks!” Michael exclaimed, clapping along with the crowd.

  I gritted my teeth, fists shaking. “You should've let me stop it, Hope.”

  “I wasn’t the one stopping you. You can’t change the past. That’s just how the world works.”

  There was an indifference in her voice that really pissed me off. Didn’t she care about the girl? After all, she was the one who wanted to find her in the first place.

  “Your name doesn’t make any sense,” I said.

  Hope didn’t reply.