Devil's Cherries
Running. It's an exercise, no it is much more. It's an excuse, my excuse, a way to ignore the truth. A way to escape reality and imagine for once I belong. Running is something I've done all my life. I ran as a kid playing games, I ran in school, and I found, I was good at it. Now running through the forest, panting, sweating I wonder why I have done this my entire life. The only regret I had now was never choosing to stay still for one moment, to enjoy life. I was always running before this day, before I knew of what I was. Before I knew I wasn't alone.
It happened my freshman year, an already troubling time for most teens. I had always been an alright student B's and C's maybe an A here and there. But that year everything changed, during the night of the first full moon of January. I had no idea what was happening to me at the time. How could I?
"Do we really have to live on the outskirts of town?" I asked
"Come on Ava it won't be that bad. You'll have your own room, and your own bathroom." My aunt Paccia said.
I did like the sound of that. My own room. My own bathroom.
"Now don't criticize the house too harshly. Its…" she struggled to find the right words. "Well it's got character". That was code for its old and falling apart. My Aunt had a history for buying things with "character" and trying to fix them up. Cars, houses, men even a dog here or there. That's how she ended up with me. She says I'm misunderstood. Misunderstood my ass. I just don't like people, school, or work. The only thing I really like is music, and running. Yes running I sure did a lot of that in the past. Especially from my family. They never wanted me anyway that's why I'm with my aunt and not my mother. My mother, Cyra, a drug addict's girl friend. From what I hear she couldn't put down the needle long enough to feed me. Since her and my Aunt, Paccia's parents are deceased, and no one knows who my dad is, she got me. She got stuck with the drug addicts screwed up daughter. She must be over-joyed
We pulled up a driveway in the middle of no where. It was overgrown with trees and dead rose bushes. The brick path was cracked and had grass growing all over it. The yard wasn't any better. The grass must have been at least knee high. Then I shifted my eyes toward the house up ahead. It was three stories tall by the look of it, and had vines covering almost every inch.
My Aunt placed the car in park and stopped the engine. She smiled brightly. I rolled my eyes and sighed.
"Well come on Ava, go check out the house" she said walking up the decrepit old steps. I unbuckled my seat belt and took more time then necessary to open the black sedan's passenger door. Slamming it, loudly. I began the walk up the aged sidewalk to the front steps, then to the door. Where my Aunt was fumbling with her keys trying to find the correct one. I reached into my pocket, turning up the volume on my I-pod, until I couldn't hear the birds in the distance anymore. The lyrics of Secondhand Serenade's A Twist in my Story filled my mind as my aunt found the proper key and opened the door.
The stench of a thousand years of dust and mold assaulted my nostrils, as I stepped through it. The inside was strangely nicer than expected. It was old there was no doubt about that, but it seemed warm and familiar. It almost felt like home. But it wasn't. It couldn't be. I don't have a home, and never would. It was my fate, to be alone, to be homeless even in a house. I walked further in and closed the door, which screamed in resistance.
"Oh don't you just love it" Paccia said in a sing-song voice as she threw her hands up in the air and smiled.
" I don't think love is the appropriate word Aunt Paccia" I responded taking my headphones out of my ears and wrapping the cord around the small device, then placing it in my pocket. Her smile became a tenderer version of its old excited self.
"You will…" she said with a sly look, turning her back to me. "Why don't you go upstairs and pick out your room".
I paid no attention to her weird behavior. She was well, for lack of a better word, weird. I walked across the room, passing my Aunt, to the stairs. They were old and needed to be carpeted or at least repainted. Grabbing the railing, I climbed the creaky, old, un-kept staircase.
On the seconded floor, there were three bedrooms and a bathroom. I didn't like any of them they seemed more like my aunt than me. Bright, well lit, cozy. That isn't me. I found my way back to the staircase and began to climb again.
On the third floor there wasn't much, just a desk in the corner and an old radio on top of that. I ignored it and went to the only door on the floor. It was decrepit, and a dusty colored burgundy. Opening it, I found the room dim with its only source of light being a single window with no curtains on the other side of the room.
"Now this is me" I said to no one in particular. The floor creaked under my weight, as I walk to the window. My hands running over the items I found on the way. A bookcase, a desk, a chair covered by a dusty sheet. By time I reached the window my hands had more dust than the room its self.
Peering out the window, down onto what I assume was supposed to be the backyard; something in the trees caught my eye. A person or something was out there. We locked eyes, and it was gone. And for some reason I was shaking. My knees gave out and I fell to the floor. Had my eyes been playing tricks on me? Or was there really a woman standing on one of the branches of that giant pine tree out back. Her eyes, they weren't normal, I swear I saw red.