Lovely Alice
Two and a half months from now, my uncle and I had been eating corndogs on the couch watching, what was it? Scooby-Doo? Yeah. Heh. On our crappy old box TV. That day I had been pursued by my "favorite bully" . She was a constant. Always there to you know, trip me or push me into the boys locker room. By this time I had gotten used to it. The worst she had done to me by far was ruin my chances of having any friends. What else could she do?
Well, she managed to more. That morning, I had been pushed off of the front steps at my high school. When I looked back, of course, I saw her, my "favorite bully" turning her back to me. "Hobo freak!" she called, not even turning to look at me. Everyone already knew who she was talking about.
Me, the hobo girl. I had been homeless for only a month until my uncle took me in, but the name had obviously stuck. It turns out that I had landed on my ankle wrong and sprained it pretty badly. My uncle had offered to take me to the hospital to get it checked out, but I refused. I knew that we didn't have the money for the bill anyways.
I took the bread off of my corndog and handed it to Uncle Pete. I didn't really like the bread, too sweet. My uncle, on the other hand, has a sweet tooth. "Thanks," he looked over my face. Looking deep into my eyes, my uncle asked "Did that wretch do this to you?" he gestured to my red, swollen ankle, scraped palms, and bruised knees.
I grimaced, mostly from the pain, "It doesn't matter. I'll be just fine." But, I couldn't stop myself, tears came into my eyes. "Oh honey, don't cry. I can get her expelled if you want." I knew he wouldn't be able to. The teachers adored her as well as the principal. Nobody would protest against her, they all knew her wrath.
Plus, all of my teachers think I'm some kind of delinquent. My "favorite bully" would just say that I got into a fight or something and they, being gullible, not wanting to think of her as anything less than a perfect student, would believe her. I laughed as my uncle hugged me.
"No Uncle Pete, it's ok. I can handle them. I have for years, now isn't any different." He pushed me back to look at my face. "You look so much like your mother. Now, go put some ice on your ankle. You can
sleep on the couch today. I'll take the mattress." We had to throw out our old bed last week when the wire framing broke on the bottom. My Uncle was saving for a new one.
The mattress was placed in the living room next to our old, ratty couch. After tucking me in, Uncle Pete went to go lay on the dirty mattress . "G'night," he muttered, and soon he was asleep. I wasn't very tired, my ankle was keeping me awake. I decided to watch something.
After watching some new movie for about thirty minutes, that my uncle had rented, I stared to feel drowsy. I hadn't remembered falling into the deep swirl of sleep, but I remember, very clearly, the dream I had that night. For a couple weeks, every night, I've had a similar dream.
I am always standing next to a burnt house. It's night, but it is very hot. Inside of the house, I can see people staring at me through the window. Both appear to be laughing at me. In my head I can hear voices. "Hobo," or "Weirdo," they would whisper. Suddenly, I am looking right at a paper white man who is standing next to a lit street lamp with his hand held out.
He has no eyes where hid eyes should be, no nose where his nose should be. He was very tall and he seemed to be made of skin and bones. I knew the whispers weren't coming from him, he didn't even have a damn mouth.
Though I don't want to, I run to him. As I get closer the whispers fade and relief washes over me. I eagerly take his bony hand. Looming over me, he is always wearing the same modern, cold, black suit. That's when I woke up panting and drenched in sweat. I heard a strange static sound. Looking over at the source of the sound, I could see it was the TV. It was strange, the TV had never gone staticky like that.
I brushed it off. As I stepped off the couch I was careful not to wake my uncle. I padded into our tiny, freezing kitchen, glancing around the room. The window was wide open. Uncle Pete would always forget to close it. Sighing, I closed the window. I caught a glance of my reflection on the glass.
My gray eyes looked back at me. I took in my features. Nothing had changed from last year. Still the same stick straight, brown hair and pale sickly skin. The only admirable feature was my eyes. They were a shiny deep pools of gray with long, dark eyelashes.
I sighed as I looked past my reflection. As I peered outside, I was filled with the feeling that somebody was watching me. I realized it was true. Staring at me, standing under an old, slightly rusted street lamp was a tall, thin man.
He was wearing a black suit. It occurred to me, this was the man from my dream. How could he be here? He can't really be here, can he? Suddenly, the man reached out his hand in my direction, just like in my dream.
Like he wanted me to take it. I pinched myself, but nothing happened. I knew this wasn't just a dream. It was very real. And, as it was in the dream, I couldn't stop my body from moving, reaching, escaping the house, to go and join the faceless man.
"Alice?" My still groggy uncle was standing in the doorway, "What are you whispering about? What was that crashing sound?" Now that I was broken from my odd trance, I could suddenly feel the sharp stabs of pain all up my right arm and on my face.
I used to think broken bones hurt. Well, until now. It felt like my body was self destructing from the inside out. "Oh God!" Uncle Pete screamed, "Alice!" I was too busy feeling totally sick to speak. I looked at the window. It was shattered with little crystals scattered all over the kitchen.
The man was gone. "Alice are you able to stand honey?" I ignored my uncle and looked down at my arm. The pain was becoming unbearable and I was curious to see why my arm hurt in the first place. My arm was scattered with little glass spikes.
They were embedded into my skin, not too deep though. There was so much blood that I couldn't see my skin color under all of the deep red. The more I looked, the more sick I got. A black fuzz was starting to quickly cloud my vision.
I released a shrill scream and blacked out. As I crashed to the ground, I heard glass crunching under me and Uncle Pete screaming like a girl.