Beautiful Monsters Novel
Chapter One
It was Friday night film night and me and Erin stumbled through the door of the cinema, out into the cold air on the street. Darkness had consumed the town while we were watching the film and the gritty texture of the night made the street look eerie. It was a small cinema, only two screens showing films that had come out 3 weeks ago in Sheffield, our neighbouring city. It sat on Regent Road which stretched from the middle of the city centre to the bus station a mile away. We bus station glittered at the end of the street, the lights from it casting a beacon to those in the town at night. As it was a Friday, there were people out on the town (as there always were on mine and Erin's Friday night film night) men with beer bellies, staggering from pub to pub, their girlfriends stumbling after them in their shorts skirts and high heels. They made a lot of noise as the shouted and balled and chanted football songs at the top of their lungs but they were pretty harmless and a lot of fun to watch.
Erin dragged me in to the side of the building as a man on a motorized wheelchair went past, glugging a bottle of Whiskey. Her big green eyes met mine and we burst out laughing, it didn't help that she kept pulling funny faces and imitating the people walking past. I laughed until my ribs hurt and when I could actually breathe again, I pulled out my phone and called my dad. He usually picked us up if we came out this late, he didn't want us catching the buses on our own. He answered on the first ring.
"Hello"
"Hey dad. It's me." And me. Erin shouted and giggled in the background, but he didn't seem to hear her.
"I'm two minutes away. Mind waiting?"
"Nope. See you in a few." I hung up and looked at Erin, a fake annoyed look on my face. She was so pretty, with caramel coloured waves that cascaded down past her shoulders to her waist and her big green eyes that glittered from the light cast by the street lamp we were under. She hopped from foot to foot.
"Tell your dad to stop driving like a biddy and get here quick so I can warm up"
"Yeah, cause that'll go down well. You know he doesn't drive like a biddy." Her eyes glittered at the memory. When my dad was getting rid of his old car, scrapping it, he took us both up into the woods and did some off-roading in it and then let us have a drive. Erin drove way too fast and I didn't know my left from my right and nearly banged into a tree, but hey, it was our first try.
"Do you think he'll let me drive back?" she asked, a mischievous grin on her pretty little face.
"You shouldn't smile like that Erin. You look like a monkey."
Her eyes widened and her face fell. She put her hand to her chest in fake surprise, like I'd caused her to have a heart attack.
"How very dare you?" she mocked, on hand on her hip, her face frozen.
"I very dare." I winked at her and a smile teased the edge of her lips.
"I am so kicking you out of the bed tonight. Your gonna wish you never said that when you wake up eating rug" An old man that was walking past nearly keeled over and when she realised what he thought she bent double laughing, but it only lasted a second, then the walked up to me and put her hand in mine.
"You have a problem with our sex life?" she asked, her eyebrows rising. Needless to say he just coughed loudly and walked away.
When he got out of earshot, we both started laughing again.
"He thought we were lesbians, you moron."
"So what? And what is this we? You're the rug muncher." She laughed and skipped away, thinking I wasn't chasing her because I knew I'd never catch her but I'd seen my dad's car. He pulled up at the side of me and I jumped in, her eyes widening as she realised then her running like an idiot to jump in the back seat.
"You took your time" she chirped at my dad as I looked round to see her sprawled over the back seat. We waited until she'd buckled up and shut the door before we set off home. It was warm in the car and it smelt like my dad's aftershave. Erin was singing along to Katy Perry's California Girls that had come on the radio, while my dad asked me questions about the film. After I'd summarised it to him, Erin started to sing louder and louder, I was slightly jealous of her looks but I was not however jealous of her singing voice, or her dancing for that matter. Yet I was about as good as dancing and singing as her so I joined in until LMFAO- Party Rock Anthem came on and then we began to wave our arms about like idiots, our matching charm bracelets chinging on our wrists.
We'd bought them year ago, me, Erin and Maxxie on a shopping trip in Sheffield. They had each had a charm with a heart that was split three ways but now they were loaded with charms that we'd bought each other for birthdays and Christmas's. My favourite was a carousel, which they'd both bought me online from Hong Kong. It was silver and delicate and it used a watch battery to make it work. The horses went round on their sticks, just like a real carousel. It sort of reminded me of magic.
We were nearing home and on the parkway when I felt the jolt. The car jolted and the sounds of crunching metal filled my ears. The jolt had knocked my sense of balance and I didn't know which way the car was going but I was pretty sure we were spinning. I looked toward my dad for a sort of comfort but I found no safety in his face, which was contorted, his brown eyes wide in fear as the car began to tip. Suddenly the roof buckled, the windows and windscreen shattered and glass flew into my face. The seat belt was cutting into my shoulder and hips and my body was being thrown and battered as the car rolled and rolled and rolled, the roof smashing to only an inch above my head. I felt a sharp pain at the side of my head and instantly felt the warm rush of blood. Colourful spots interrupted the chaos of my vision and my world went black.
I woke up upside down. The seatbelt had cut off the circulation to my arm making it numb. Blood ran down my hair and onto the broken roof, where both pooled among the shattered glass. I looked round at my dad; he lay on the roof, wounds on his head and a nasty cut on his leg, out of which blood was trickling down his leg and dying his jeans a deep red colour. I tried looking round at Erin but I couldn't as when I tried I got a shooting pain down my back. My hand went to the seatbelt holder, the only thing that was keeping me from falling onto the broken glass, and with one large push I clicked it open, bracing myself for the fall. I used my elbows to push myself away from the seat and so I fell onto my knees rather than my neck. It didn't work out exactly as planned as when my knees hit the floor, the impact caused me to collapse, my ribs banging on my bent knees and my forehead hitting the floor. I sucked air into my lungs and calmed myself before I looked around.
Erin was still held in place by her seat belt, but her head hung down toward the roof and one arm bent at an impossible angle and was caught in the seatbelt. Her phone was still in the hand of her other arm although her grip on it was loose now she was unconscious. I scrambled into the back and grabbed it, her skin was clammy and a bit cool when my fingers brushed it so I took her hand in mine and squeezed, spending a second to send out a silent prayer to keep them well. The phone was shattered and no good. I didn't have time to look for mine or my dad's phone, not at the rate he was bleeding. I didn't know exactly how long it would be till he bled to death but I knew it wouldn't be long. Headlights were silently going past on the road at the top of the steep slope and that's when the idea hit me.
I crawled out of the car and ran to the bottom of the hill, where I threw myself onto the hard ground and dug my fingers into the cold earth. I used my legs to push myself up the steep slope and grabbed on to anything that could help me up. Thorns and scrubs clawed at my clothes and skin, as if trying to hold me back and stop my progression to save my dad and best friend. A couple of times I lost my footing and slipped a few feet back down the slope but after just a few minutes I reached the top. As I stood up I realised just how far I had climbed and how much it had affected me. My hands and arms were filthy, and deep scratches were all over my arms, face and belly. A pain seared across my waist and my hips. The muscles in my legs felt like they were on fire and my whole body felt weak and wobbly.
A car was coming and I waved my arms to catch the attention of the driver, but the car didn't slow. I walked into the middle of the lane and stood strong. It was too late to turn back. I was going to save my father and best friend, even if it bloody killed me. The car swerved and came to a stand still to the left of me. A chill went through me as I realised, I could have been killed. I heard the door being opened and a large sigh as a man heaved himself out of the car. I heard footsteps as he came up behind me muttering, then he spoke to me.
"What do you think you're doing? Do you have a death…" he stopped as he dug his hands into my shoulders and began to turn me around. His eyes widened and the colour fell from his face, although I'm not surprised I must have looked a mess.
"What happened?" he asked, genuine concern on his face. He was tall, the same height as me, with blonde curly hair that fell awkwardly into his eyes. He was about the same age as my dad, with wrinkles appearing around his eyes when he frowned and shook me for not answering him.
"Tell me what happened" he said, his tone firm but his eyes pleading, he was scared.
So I told him, about the crash and where my father and Erin were. It only took about 30 seconds as the words came tumbling out of my mouth but he understood them, even if I didn't myself and dragged me back to his car. He sat me carefully in the driver's seat, grabbed his phone and leaving the door open, phoned an ambulance.
I didn't hear exactly what he said and only really listened when he asked me a question. In minutes the flashing beacons of the ambulance came round the corner, the sight of it warmed my cold body, and for the first time since I'd woken up in the car wreck, I had hope. I drifted in and out of consciousness then, only responding to peoples questions. A member of the ambulance team came to check me over and I'd gotten off pretty easy. The pain around my waist came from 2 broken ribs and the welts caused by the seat belt on my shoulder and hips wasn't as bad as it looked apparently, I had a busted lip, a black eye and a small wound on my head. I sat in the man's car, having a woman with kind eyes probe my body for injury, when I began to drift off. I had done it, I had got the ambulance, I had saved Erin and my dad. My eyes were heavy and pretty soon, I had fallen into unconsciousness and fell into the black abyss of dreams.
I woke up with crinkly hospital paper stuck to my clammy skin. My eyes took a second to adjust to the brightness of the hospital room and I had to rub them hard. I winced in pain as my finger caught my right eye. I sat up to look around. I caught sight of my reflection in the window and I couldn't stop the gasp that escaped my lips. My face was white except from the splashes of colour that blossomed from my swollen eye and lip. My long black hair was matted and messy from the wound on my head. Blood had seeped through the scratchy fabric of the blue patterned hospital gown from the welt on my shoulder.
and was crusted around the scratches on my hands and arms. I could feel my hips and ribs were bruised without even looking, not like I could look. My eyes were just drawn to my face, which was black and blue and looked almost swallowed by the mass of hair that frizzed around it and stuck to the dry sweat on my forehead.
I flinched as a hand gently touched me on the arm. The flinching hurt my ribs so I was wincing when I turned to see my mum. Her eyes were red and swollen with crying and her makeup had run down her face in streams. She was shaking and turning a small objects over in her hands and for a second I was trying to work out what it was but her voice broke my train of thought.
"How you feeling, pigeon?" her voice was strained and for a second what she had said confused me. Pigeon was my fathers name for me, my mum always called me sweetheart.
"I'm okay, I guess. What are you doing here?"
"Waiting until you woke up, sweetheart. I was worried about you."
"Shouldn't you be with dad." The question fell out of my mouth before I could stop it, which I wish I had done after I had seen my mothers face fall. She looked down at her hands and sniffed loudly, and for just a second, I got a glimpse of what was in her hands. It was my father's wedding ring!
My heart stopped beating for a second, and then it started again, making up for the lost beats by pounding faster and harder in my chest like it was trying to escape. Grief overtook me and I had to move, to run, and to pretend like this was all a bad dream. I swung my legs out of bed and as soon as my sore, bare feet touched the cold floor, I ran. I heard my mum shouting after me but I couldn't stop. The already knackered muscles in me burned with the exercise and within a minute my breath was rasping out in rags, each breath I was taking that my father was not ripping me apart.
Suddenly my whole body went numb, I saw myself falling to the floor and heard the sickening thud as I landed but I didn't feel it. I wished that I could be like this forever, numb, denying it had happened, pretending that my life wont change but as soon as my feverish forehead touched the cold floor, I was brought back. The pain in my hip from the fall was fading slightly, but I wasn't thankful, I wanted pain, I wanted to be in so much physical pain, that I didn't recognize the grief gnawing at my insides, tearing my slowly apart. I wanted anything other than the echoes of disappointment and rage that were building up inside me, just waiting for the crescendo. I wanted death. I deserved death; I hadn't been able to save my dad. As the blackness that I wished was death began to take me, I wondered about Erin, maybe I had saved someone after all. The lift a few feet away opened and out wheeled a cart with a white bag on top. The two staff didn't notice me; the one pushing the trolley just stared ahead as if trying to not look at the body and the other grasping a bag of the persons belongings in her hand. Another life gone. I sent a prayer to the family of this person, as I knew what they were going through. The bag clinked and I cast my eye over it for a second but couldn't take my eyes away when I recognized one of the belongings. It was slim and delicate, the chain strong and still in one piece despite the trauma it had gone through. The charms jingled together in the bag but one stood out. It was a heart. Not all of a heart but part of it, a zigzag line showing where it was once placed with the other two of the set to make a full heart, a raw zigzag line that represented the person that would never be there to make the heart full again. Blackness teased the edge of my vision as they turned a corner and as I lost sight of the body and the charm bracelet of my best friend, something broke within me and I sunk into the darkness as if the floor had swallowed me whole.
