Mythzone Origins: The Denver Divas, Pt.14

And that’s pretty much all I have to say. I guess now that my story is over, it’s only natural to pass the torch onto someone whose story had just begun at that point. Molly, could you come here and tell the good people how it went for you in all the years we spent together, so to speak? Huh? You feel like it would be kind of embarrassing if you were to tell them everything that happened after I was put inside you? Oh come on, I had to rest on the embers of a fireplace and had hardly a decent attire to my name before I met your father, it wouldn't be that bad to tell them your story!
Alright, now that I got Molly to be a bit more cooperative, let's have her tell you the rest of the story, okay? You can come out now, dear! Uh, before Molly can begin, could you please turn around for a few seconds, it can be a bit uncomfortable for both of us if you stare while Molly gets ready. Do it. Thank you.
Okay, you can turn around now. Sorry that Mom and I had you look away for a few seconds, but changing back and forth between being a magical woman and a young adult usually tends to have a bright flash of light to start off the transformation. We just didn't want you to go blind because of it.
You mind taking a seat over there by the lamp? Don't worry, some genie from Arabia won't just magically pop out of it if you knock it over, but it might be a good idea to not lean back. It's just courteous that way and it won't ruin the wooden floors.
Now, for your viewing pleasure, I, Molly Bettencourt, present to you the story of how I became a defender of the good people of Denver. Well, it's more like I was forced to become one and-Ow! What was that for? Mom, I was just trying to add a little honesty to the story I was gonna tell! It’s kinda hard to not become a defender when you’re born guaranteed the position!
‘Sigh’ Sorry about that. Anyway, as I was saying, here's my side to the story. The best way to start it off was when I was able to form words that my dad could understand. To be precise, the day I turned three years old.
Judging from my baby book pictures and the stories Dad told me about my earlier years,  the faculty at the preschool I went to were surprised at how I could form some decent sentences despite a few hiccups. Other than that, there was also the fact that I really cried a lot whenever the teacher read the Cinderella story they had on the shelf, even if it came to the happy ending.
Later on the road of my life, it came to a point where I was forced to take a standardized test in the fourth grade, at the ripe young age of nine no less. The test itself was your standard stuff comprised of understanding fancier words in a paragraph, figuring out scientific problems by determining which principles are used in the problem, using mathematics that most of us were just recently just getting the hang of, and just trying to make sure the teachers were each getting a decent paycheck based on our successes.
My run through the exam was fairly normal until I saw that the penultimate part of the English portion contained particular phrases that were in French. My eyes became a bit foggy and soon saw the phrases in English, almost as if they replaced my test booklet with an easier version of it. When I presented the changes to my teacher and ask him a few questions about the matter, he said that the phrases looked like French to him and shrugged. It was almost like he was saying I was crazy.
Not one to argue with an educator, I went back to my seat and finished that portion of the exam, with no one the wiser about my brief mind slip. Another incident like that happened again when I entered the eighth grade, only the instigator of it wasn't a few questions about a test, it was during my work on a paper for my fourth hour writing class. The prompt for that paper was a question about how fiction can have either a positive or negative effect on the psyche of people as they grow older, with our choice of showing the pros or cons of the matter.
I was in the minority of the paper’s argument by saying fiction can do both harm and good for everyone, it’s just a matter on how well you take to heart the messages the stories you read are projecting onto you and others. What? You thought that was the strange part? My friend, the bizarreness happened when I was in the middle of my essay’s presentation, the more I went on about the good of fiction, I began to hear a strange voice. It was that of a woman, it kept telling me, “Molly, listen to me.”
I thought it was the teacher at first, but later on, when I was assessing the essay of a fellow student as I was listening to them talk, the voice spoke again, “Can you hear me? Molly, we need to talk.” When I asked who was talking to me, everyone looked at me like I just said, “I like to chew the tires on my dad's car.”
A similar event happened before when I was just starting out in the seventh grade. When I couldn't figure out problems concerning the x and y axis and how to calculate which of the three kinds of triangles I was looking at for my mid semester exam, the same voice was walking me through the problems I couldn't comprehend at the time. It was different then before, as the voice was but a whisper that only spoke in brief sentences. It’s new tone was a lot more unnerving then you’d expect an invisible voice to be.
The voice was thankfully absent whenever I was around someone I could rely on pretty well. Brian, my first love, is such an example. We met around the first few days of ninth grade and hit it off rather nicely. Granted, his younger fraternal twin brothers were a bit of a different story, as they liked to agitate him to no end, not to mention one of them was trying to make a move on me every time Brian was gone for a few minutes.
Brent was the name of the more upfront half of the twins. He had a knack for playing rather silly instruments as he always tried to come up with some silly lyrics to his library of hastily put together love ballads, whereas the other twin, Ken, was always the backup singer in most of those little numbers. It was a good thing Brian always came back in a flash when we were in his house, otherwise I would've dreaded going back there. There's only so much lame pickup lines that can be put to songs that I could endure, especially if it has banjos and saxophones as the instrumentals.
The voice talked to me here and there at school, but thanks to the power of our school's scheduling I never had a class with Brian outside of 7th period, so any and all stress that my supposed hallucination, according to my stepmother, would be partially justified due to all the workloads and stress the day gave me in handfuls. Brian himself didn't even seem to care about the voice, he just comforted me on our walk to the bus taking us home by placing an arm around my shoulder and whispered into my ear, “It’s alright, Molly, just walk a little further and we'll be home free.”
I would have groaned a little bit at the pun, but it was still nice that he had some decency for the fairer sex, which is more than could be said about the other students with a “Y” chromosome. Most of them looked like they’d die if they weren't around some of the more trashy, self important, stuck up alpha females who had about as much charm and intellect as a wet cardboard cutout of themselves, and looked about as pleasant.
Brian’s only major issue was the fact that he didn't exactly feel comfortable around anyone else besides me, always giving them a wide berth or tried to shy away from the more endowed and unintelligent dames our school had to offer. Other than that, he usually was a pretty okay guy, just be sure to look for any cross shaped necklaces he might have been wearing at the moment.
His father was a preacher at a church, always spreading the word of God and his infinite wisdom by having people read whatever kind of things the Bible would have in store for them every Sunday at ten in the morning. I may not agree with the notion that a higher power is planning every single thing we do on a daily basis, but one day I was certainly given a new calling by entities of a higher plane of existence, one of which having the habit of wearing an owl hat and the other being a bombshell that inadvertently sent in motion the Trojan War.
It was a little after I graduated from high school and was looking at the classifieds section of the newspaper. It seemed that no matter what job I looked at, it usually had to do with custodial work or something else related to my step family's line of work. My stepmother was constantly exhausted from being a bus girl at some Italian sports bar and grill, while her daughters worked for a soda company stacking the bottles on the shelves. How could I possibly be any different?
Thankfully, my prayers would be answered as soon as I left the house to go out on Brian’s and my third anniversary, with the added bonus of me having to meet his parents. His father was relatively easy to talk to, whereas his mother was a tad more bizarre in her mannerisms, namely the fact that she tried not to place her feet on the floor, instead opting to place them on the cushion of her chair.
When I asked her why she was doing that, she explained, “My manner of sitting is key if I wish to maintain optimal performance of my talents, young lady. If I were to sit as you do now, it would only allow me to harness a mere sixty-four percent of my magic.”
Brian’s father placed a hand over his wife’s shoulder and said rather affectionately, “Abby, the voodoo you do so well is always welcome to me, no matter the percentage.” He then gingerly placed his wife's feet down upon the floor and added, “Let's just sit back and relax and not worry about the things that might go bump in the night, alright?”
She turned towards her lover and replied with but a simple little grin, signifying her cooperation with her husband. The two love birds then turned their attention towards myself, almost as if by instinct, and let loose a wide variety of different questions, all of which were related to my relationship with the eldest son in their little domicile.
I answered them to the very letter, but for every single one that had a bit of dishonesty in them, Abby’s gaze at me became a little more furrowed. Thankfully, honest answers made her less furious, but it wasn't enough to make the look she was giving me disappear, or at the very least more relaxed.
Kinda wish I could've seen what happened next after all the inquiries were answered, albeit with mixed results, as the very next topic for our table’s discussion time was concerning my family's more recent history.
I told them the story of how my father met my stepmother. It was a standard rebound story concerning his recovery after my birth mom disappeared due to mysterious circumstances. Sure, it didn't have any romanticism involved in any detail of it, but the fact that I didn't know my birth mother wasn't the reason things started to happen.