How do you destroy a monster without becoming one? It kept running through my mind as I stared into the mirror wiping blood from my hands. The harder I tried to steady my breathing- the worse it got. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I didn't know how to register what had happened. Who I was becoming. Why me. Why this? Why? Why? Why? My eyes stared back at me with vibrant hazel. They were unusually wide, filled with uncertainty and fear. It just didn't make sense; I was always the one who had everything figured out. I knew everything. I was smart. Then how the hell did I end up here.
You'd think living in a house with 20 other people would make you good at communicating. Not for me anyway. It did teach me how to hide and be ridiculously quiet – if just for the sake of spending 5 minutes alone with your thoughts. I'd grown up in a group home in Northern Vermont. Really close to the Canadian border. The thing is nobody really knew where I came from. Most of the kids has files and paperwork. Most weren't allowed to look at those paper until a certain age – but they knew they were there. Me, on the other hand, had nothing. One of the Directors of the home had explained to me at a young age that I was like Moses, left in a basket. Except I wasn't left in a basket- I was left in a shed behind an abandoned house. You'd think that maybe the house had been abandoned around the time I was born and my parents had owned it before. No, that would have been to easy. The house had been empty for 15 years– and before that had been owned by a middle eastern family. I had no relation. I had no name, no history, not future. One of those people who grow up anonymously. I'd live that black and white life, and Id figure out a way to do it. Only problem – I didn't have long to figure out how to do it. My 19th birthday was just around the corner and it was time to leave the home. Its funny how people don't really call them orphanages anymore, they're just called homes. I don't quite get it- it was never really a home. Just a waiting place. And I was done waiting.
5 years later.
7 hours of running around this damn café and I was ready to crawl back to my hell hole of an apartment and sleep. That fortune didn't seem to be coming true any time soon. The lunch rush had just finished and the replacement waitress was once again a no-show. The bell above the door rang- odd for this time of day. My usual's were in their respective corners and apart from that the café was relatively dead during non-rush's. I glanced over my shoulder at the two men who entered. The two men were drop dead gorgeous- at least gorgeous enough that I knew they were strangers to this tiny town outside of Salt Lake City. I smiled and grabbed two menus, placing them in front of each man as they sat down at the counter.
"Hi there! Im Violet – let me know when you're ready to order" The phrase itself sounded fake and practiced. My smiled was – for once- real. The one on my left was the most beautiful man I'd ever seen in my life. His green eyes lured me into wanting to be hypnotized. The man beside him had long hair and a piercing gaze that both seemed kind and scary. The both nodded to me and I backed off. I'd been a waitress long enough to know when customers wanted to be alone. And these two were vibrating with anxiousness. The kind that had me curious- which in my boring life- was never a good thing.