Untouched The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,1

one of her nostrils to her upper lip.

He had not intervened since.

“Aleksandr!” The shout came again, and Aleksandr turned, blasting away from the river, up into the air above. The chill was back, the coolness of early morning, but this time it was fused with the tickle of the flames that wreathed him. His father was following, he knew. He won’t let me go. Not after what I’ve done.

He climbed higher and higher in the sky, felt the chill increase. He looked down, and the Tunguska River was so far below that it was but a line. He felt the flames start to die, saw his skin peeking out from beneath the place where the fire had burned so hard only a minute earlier. He’ll catch me. He’ll lock me away. I won’t be able to stop him.

The air was thin, and he couldn’t breathe. He gasped for breath, but it didn’t seem to help. He looked back; father was gaining on him, coming up behind him, his face fixed, eyes blazing in a way that told Aleksandr that this might be the last time...

He felt his father’s hand close around his arm, felt it tighten, then felt the bone crack, and Aleksandr Timofeyevich Gavrikov tried to cry out with a breath he didn’t have. His father had broken his arm, and the excruciating sensation felt as though someone had jammed a knife into his upper arm and twisted. He felt the pull of his father’s strength, dragging him down, down, down. He fought, he struggled, but without breath he failed, sagging. He was pulled down, and after a moment he felt his breath return, felt the chill start to fade.

Felt the heat under his skin return.

“You have killed her!” His father’s words were barely audible over the wind as they descended. “Your sister is dead because of you!”

“I did not mean to,” Aleksandr’s words came out ragged. “She touched me and...”

“You killed her,” his father said again, and backhanded him across the face with his free hand. The smell of the swamp water below reminded him of the night smells, of the fear.

The heat under Aleksandr’s skin grew, his breaths grew deeper and less forced. He beats me during the day and tortures Klementina at night. “You will never be able to hurt her again.”

Another backhand was his reward. “I never hurt her!”

“You hurt her all the time.” Aleksandr heard a menace in his own voice that had never been there before. It reminded him of the time he’d had courage. The heat underneath his skin was unbearable; it was burning, aching to get out. “I may have killed her this morning, but you have killed her every night since she was a girl.”

“LIAR!” His father struck him again, and the heat became intense within him. His eyes were burning, his skin was burning, and suddenly it was on fire again, and his flesh was covered in flames. “What...?!”

His father yelped and his hand withdrew. Aleksandr felt himself fall for a second before he took over and felt the power of his own flight return. He hovered a few feet from his father, staring at the old man with unfettered contempt. “You have flown for as long as I can remember, Father.” The menace was there. The courage was in his voice. His father was cradling his hand, a blackened, burned husk of what it had been: a strong, powerful limb that he used to beat his children. “It appears that I have taken more from you than I would have imagined.”

“You are my son,” came the ghostly reply.

“I am not. I am my mother’s son.” He felt the heat, still under his skin, even as the fire raged on top of it. “I am my sister’s brother. I am Aleksandr; not Timofeyevich nor Gavrikov, because I want nothing of yours that I don’t need.” Without hesitation he flew at his father, slammed into him, and the searing under his skin unleashed as they fell toward the earth below. Seventeen years of hell, he thought, and it all came out at once—a torrent of rage, fire, flame, an explosion of his anger. He watched his father’s skin blacken, his eyes disappear in the initial flash of heat, watched his flesh burn away, then the bone turn to ash and then dust.

The world went white all around, the trees below were like little pieces of tinder in the wind, picked up and flung through the air, the landscape flattening for