Well as this is my first "in-progress" FF, I will try my best with updates. But, I need to know what you guys think, for not only my benefit as an author but for your enjoyable experience in reading as well & the M is for the graphic violence, language and possible smut in the future. Well, without further adieu... A Mask to Hide (haha sounds pretty epic already, doesn't it?)
Disclaimer: Own nothing.
Ayida was twenty years old when she died. Wisdom could be seen when you gazed into her calculating eyes. She saw everything and said little. It was the life of slumming in the street of Naples that made the lines under her eyes more pronounced, made her seem older. And she was killed by a man she never met but knew of, taking with her the tangled truth of corrupt secrets that died the second her heart stopped beating.
*
The wind was the exact depiction of Van Gogh's Starry Night. Regrettably, that was the only thing that resembled that beautiful painting on this blind early evening. The clouds were thick, gray, and covered the clarity of the purple darkness. The heat was long gone but the atmosphere was left with this thick seeping mass of black humidity that measured up along the entire East coast. The static kept the kinks in her hair and the thunder left a distinct bitter taste in her mouth that spelled catastrophe. And decidedly, it was way too hot for Olivia to be in her apartment. So, clad in NYPD shorts, a white tank top and a pair of sneakers she made her way to the roof. Away from the mustiness of her apartment.
As she walked up the stairs she heard the wails of infants and the bass of loud music behind the closed doors she passed; she felt alone in her descend upward as the only companion she had was her own lone footsteps hitting the speckled tile. At her destination, the heavy roof door slipped between her grasp and clicked back into place and at first she didn't feel herself blink when the wind made her eyes raw. She was too busy walking towards the ledge of the building. Closer to the empty noises that made New York.
It was there the noise that consumed her mind on a daily bases was exemplified. There would be no doubt that if she were a person who exaggerated every story she told she would probably say that the noise seemed to grow into castrophony so immense that it could be heard far away in space. Give or take a little variation in the word choice.
That statement wouldn't be far fetched considering the fact that everything did seem to intensify the second she closed that door. She felt the full force of the city as the gust of wind brought it around her like a chanting Indian dancing around a quelling fire. The distant curses of the New York Cab drivers, the symphony of falling dumpster lids and the birds chirping in their hidden nests; the black and white noises in the colorful city had a grip on her and she never seemed to be able to escape it.
The ledge was dirty and old and if it had a mouth to spit out its thoughts to every passerby it would probably talk about all the emotionally unbalanced people that felt if they closed their eyes and raised their arms out, letting the wind hug them, that they would be free once their feet left the roof floor. It was a morbid thought she knew, but still wondered about it as she leaned down and rested the side of her face on the weathered slab of concrete. Spreading her arms out as if trying to bring together the two opposite sides of the building.
The ledge gave her a biting response to her sudden need to relax by scrapping her fingers. It roughly hugged her back in some weird personified way as she soon began to forget about everything she kept locked up in herself. The noise was no longer closing in on her as she closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing. The thick, low wind smiled through her hair as the last couple of minutes soon vanished, replaced by utter silence.
She stood up and gazed at nothing as she pondered on her recent actions. It beat the shit out of her as to why she was hugging the building as if it were a tree.
God I'm losing it, she smiled.
It was a moment of honest contentment. And although it wasn't, and sadly, could never be considered pure contentment, this one moment was one of those minutes where everything in her life wasn't an everlasting row of falling dominoes. She breathed out air she didn't think she was holding and felt a little more relaxed as her eyesight passed the city, into the smoldering violet far away.
*
And as easily as the nice little time she had to herself came, it was gone equally fast.
A scream, she heard a woman's shriek coming from the ally on the side of her building. She didn't know what exactly made this woman scream but she knew it wasn't good as she instantly felt her blood curdle and a sense of apprehension shoot through her. An electric shock coming from some sensory nerve that probably stemmed back to some locked memory she had coursed through her body from head to toe. Her previous inclinations of peace left with the last bellow of wind.
Her feet propelled her to the side of the building and intently took in the scene below her. A women with skin the shade of hazel with a red scarf donning her neck. Her hands and feet pushing herself away from her attacker. The dirty cement probably smelled like rotting food as it smeared itself on her clothes, but under these circumstances she probably only wished she could disappear in it. The attacker, his back to Olivia, on the other hand probably had a smile on his face, like a preying lion eying a lame zebra, as he inched closer to her every time she futilely tried to back away. Luckily the light on the sidewalk gave Olivia enough light to make out a little of the perps appearance.
Caucasian, dark hair, strong built...
She was at a large disadvantage considering she was on the roof. She was practically helpless. This was going to turn into rape and that girl was going to go home afterward and want to rub her skin raw for feeling dirty. Olivia had to stop it, "Police! We have you surrounded. Step away from the girl!" Both zebra and lion snapped their heads up finding the source of the sudden outburst. He had a beard.
There seemed to be no hesitation as he called her bluff and pulled out a semi-automatic, firing at the brown blob that was Olivia. She immediately ducked and cursed herself for not having her gun. Well at least she knew that this guy meant business. The bullets wisped over her head as she made a run for the door. Locked. And the shooting stopped. Shit. Now she had to think fast.
Ah, how the hell am I- she smiled, she had an idea.
Before she knew it she had jumped down at least five feet to the rusty metal ladder with no hesitation and amazingly didn't sprain anything. Hallelujah. She descended down the slippery slope towards her bedroom window as the skeleton metal clanked against the building. Her ears were completely alert, dreading another pop. However, her mind seemed to be a filter because she didn't seem to hear the sudden gasp of little old Jenkins in 3E or the jerking of heads through the windows as she ran down the little stairs. Thank God her window was open.
Within seconds she had her gun, badge, and cell phone and was out her door, running down another set of stairs. Hopefully she wouldn't trip and get transported into Wonderland and have to fight off a fat cat in a skimpy little blue dress to finish what she started. Her mind was too warped around the girl at the hands of a man who looked nothing like a typical creep and could easily walk away into oblivion to take some extra precautions in her own safety.
With only the echo of her footsteps blazing down the steps the detective strained to hear gunfire. It wasn't like she had supersonic hearing since there was only a couple hundred slabs of steel and concrete separating her from the left side of the building.
*
The sidewalk was as vacant as the eyes of an abused child. It felt as if her heart was grabbing at her throat and her fingers trembled with the huge amount of adrenaline pumping down through to her finger tips. She had a moment to pause to think of the many things that could go wrong before she began to hurriedly walk as slowly as she could; straining to hear the slightest bit of movement. She pressed her back against the solid wall of the building and slid closer to the opening of the alley. Her gun comfortably nestled in the palm of her hand; her nimble fingers at a stand still, itching to pull the little red button that was commonly known as a trigger.
She didn't feel the hairs on the back of her rise and stand at attention as a chill ran through her back. This wasn't a movie or some book, this was the real world and the only thing she felt was the adrenaline and that clear narrow path in her brain where everything around it was a clamoring mess of flying circus people. She was always uneasy at the thought of going in 'blind'. Her stomach had this unsettling scrap of metal in her hand was lowered to the ground, just as she was trained to do at the academy. When she turned the corner, gun now drawn, the ally looked anything but cozy.
The dumpster was overflowing with week old spaghetti and pooped up diapers. Splintered crates, cardboard boxes and black bags filled the space around the dumpsters. She never realized how gross the dumpsters got at the end of the week. She saw no human activity, yet she felt an eerie feeling, as if someone was watching her. A loud banging noise made her jump as a wide-eyed calico cat scampered away from the barrels of her gun. A cat, how cliche.
A muffled gasp could be heard from the trash bags besides the dumpster. Olivia saw a bare foot and immediately rushed over to the body of the young girl.
Why did I take so long to get down here?
It was a question that would always torment her because when she lifted the bag, which felt like it was carrying a boulder of slosh, she saw what every cop, every woman, every person would dread.
What caught her attention first, sickly enough, was the smell of the huge quantity of blood pouring out onto the floor. It was a firm hand for a stumbling block. How precious life is. She didn't have to believe in God to know the sanctity of a human life. And she knew the similarities of blood and money: there was only so much of it, and she knew that this girls body wasn't about to regenerate its cell count for smell was rusty, it was bitter, it was coppery, and it forced itself onto Olivia.
The second thing that was brought to her attention, closely followed by a dim realization, was the growing blood stain at the girls side. She was no older than twenty and already shot. The suffocating smell was choking her throat as she was frantically trying not to let the girls life pool on the floor. That far away feeling in the pit of her stomach was telling her that what she was dealing with was not a sex crime. The girls clothes were firmly intact on her body and rapist didn't usually shoot at people, let alone people who claimed to be a cop. They usually ran.
*
Ayida's skin was weaning away from its lackluster caramel color and paled as her black eyes were showing her full understanding of the severity of the situation. She was never going to walk away from this alley. Not alive at least. She sure as hell wasn't ready to fall behind the line into invisibility. And as she would of liked to have believed, there was no dark tunnel or flashing memories of her life. There was a blur of a woman pressing her red scarf into her stomach, and even then she could only see her eyes. The eyes filled with panic and concern, care and warmth.
She grabbed onto the women with the light brown eyes, it was beyond acknowledgment that her hands were warm with the blood coming out of her body, and tore the thin layer of skin on the woman's arm as the intensity of the pain that was beyond any other type of explanation started to heat of her body temperature was falling dramatically and the numbness she felt was just as awful as the the pain. There was so much she had to say... but she couldn't speak because her body was bleeding from the inside out. She closed her eyes and heard the soft murmurs begging her to hold on followed by the sound of a dialing phone, while she let her overworked body slack against the warm arms of the woman. Defeated and slightly grievous that this woman, this kind caring woman who only had the best intentions in mind, was now going to be sucked into the black hole that has been her life. She was glad that she didn't have to deal with it anymore. And that was sad.
*
Olivia's gun fell between two plastic bags as her hands were putting on pressure on the girls wounds. The girls hand, warm with her own blood, grabbed onto Olivia's arm. Her eyes piercing with an intensity so severe Olivia wouldn't have been able to of looked away, even if she wanted to. She grabbed the scarf around the girls neck and started pressing against the draining wound.
"Stay with me... come on sweetheart, you can do it."
The girls blood was covering the expanse of her body at an alarming rate. The dark red lathering itself onto her smooth dark skin. The essence of her life was coming out in multitudes as she grasped to breathe. The girl clenched her teeth and hissed out in pain, spewing her bloody spit onto Olivia's face, the white of her teeth pulling a tinge of orange and her short nails making little deep slits on Olivia's arm.
Not too far off of the surface Olivia's mind was racing, her screams for help seemed to land on deaf ears as she rattled around her flimsy pocket for her phone. "West 89th Street..."
As the girl lay dying in her arms, in the shadows was the lion, the attacker, the ripple in the surface of a smooth pond, the domino, the man who was payed to kill, and the type of thinker that would never be able to create, only destroy. Olivia was understandably distracted and didn't hear the stealth of the man approaching from behind her. He could very well do away with her. Shoot her, which was such a waste. Knock her out and take her to his car on the other side of the alley. He wasn't an idiot to see how beautiful she was. He could do away with her later.
He watched as the girls body went limp in the woman's arms, heard the woman murmur little apologizes into the girls ear, and knew the woman was probably crying. However, he also noticed the badge she had on her hip when she walked into the alley, the competence she had while handling the gun, and the word detective flow threw her lips as she called what he assumed was 911.
Yeah, maybe it would be easier to take her with him. So he lifted the but of his gun and hit it against her temple. She didn't even know what hit her and fell graciously to the floor. The dead girl was in her lap. Luckily, his usual impeccable timing was off as the sound of sirens was closer then he predicted. He weighed the option of carrying the unconscious woman or leaving her or killing her on the spot. It would be a waste to shoot her in the head and let her blood cover the pretty soft waves in her , he still needed to leave a message to whoever chose to investigate. Needed to make sure whoever wore their badges in their pockets and talked about him with their theories in what he was capable of, he need to make sure they knew he always finished what he started. So when the glory of his gun made its way to the loop of his belt and the knife that has met many throats flicked out into the open air, he wasn't too sure how he was going to mark her.
He lifted up her shirt to reveal her smooth skin and trailed a diagonal line with his fingers from her belly button to her pelvic bone and then danced around to other parts of her body. The sharp metal soon followed suit.
When he was finished he smiled and slid the knife back into his pocket without cleaning it. He stood up looking satisfied. His feet were already off the alley pavement by the time the patrol car made it to the scene.
*
A/N: Well, there you go for the first chapter. R&R please and I might give a speedy update, but then again. I can't promise you anything. I will try though :D Constructive criticism appreciated.