Chapter two: Wha'?
"Honey. Honey, wake up. Common! Wake up! WAKE UP!... Please...common." The voice of my mom brought me out of the warm embrace of darkness.
There was a pregnant pause then finally a whining plea. "Please..."
Slowly my eyes opened. The blinding luminescent light wasn't the only reason my eyes snapped close. As my senses came back to me I could feel a warm, sticky liquid coating my skin in blotches.
Forcing myself out of my languished state, I lifted a heavy hand toward my face. I could hear my mothers' gasp at the movement over the strident sound of the ambulance sirens.
'I wonder why they're here...' I thought as I wiped the sticky gunk off of my eyelids.
I looked at my hand. Then looked some more. My eye opened impossibly wide. I ignored my mothers' now frantic cries.
I had blood on my hand. I had fucking BLOOD on my hand. And the scariest part was, it wasn't mine.
I pushed my way unto my elbows. I saw for the first time the horrid sight around me.
Blood splattered all over the once pristine white walls. I saw the paramedics pulling two carts with crisp white sheets covering the faces of the two people on the stretchers.
I tasted a metallic substance in my mouth, and when my mind registered what I tasted, I felt bile rise up through my stomach into my mouth.
I willed myself not to retch.
"What happened?" The question I've wanted to ask since I woke up finally left my mouth in a croaked gasp. My mother's face went from worried, to angry and then to cold, icy indifference.
"Two robbers broke into our house..." Again, there was a pregnant pause. But this time, instead of it being a 3 month preggy woman, it was a flippin 9 month, on the verge of labor, one. After what seemed an eternity of me staring at white-ish walls, and my senses starting to get a bit too sharp because opening my eyes with the heaviness of blood, was not easy, or pleasant. Tears started to leak out of my closed eyelids. My mom seemed to take this as a response to pain.
"Are you hurt?" Her voice rose at the end. I tried to shake my head no, but I couldn't. Instead I just said, "No, please...continue."
"They...they, they tried to...rape you darling." She stroked my hair, for a moment grimacing at the blood coating my hair in a sticky red cast. She kept explaining.
"One of them attacked you, slashing your cheek." she seemed to unconsciously go to stroke the minor injury. "They grabbed your knife and cut you arm. The big man.. he, he..." She took a deep breath before continuing. "He threw you into the wall, and you hit the lights, and the house blacked out." A tear ran down from her beautiful hazel eyes. "They couldn't see what they were doing, they clawed at you, but at the same time, clawed and slashed at each other. Somehow they got to your pants... but they ended up killing each other." Yet another pause. "Or so the police say." I opened my eyes for the first time since she started her explanation. I stared at her face that seemed to have aged 20 years since I was her yesterday.
I blinked, and went back to staring at the ceiling.
"But I thought..." My whisper trailed off. My mom didn't seem to hear me for she didn't pause in her absent petting of my hair.
"Excuse me ma'am." A young, chubby-faced but well built paramedic came up to use. "We need to take the young lady to the hospital." More people seemed to come and loom above me. I closed my eyes, and let them do to me what they must. I tried to ignore everything around me and eventually I succeeded, receding into my own mind.
I woke up in a small, harsh smelling room. Again, the florescent light blinded me momentarily.
"Oww..." The sound came almost involuntarily from my mouth, just as my hand came over my burning eyes. I realized that I was no longer covered in blood and I blushed. Blushed the burning red I was infamous for.
'If I'm clean, someone must have washed me...Damn, that's embarrassing.' I pulled the ugly overly starched sheets over my visage.
After the red receded from my high cheekbones, I slowly make my way out of bed.
'Damn, stupid hospital gown.' Was the only thing that went through my mind when I realized that there was no back to the flimsy material I was dressed in.
Peaking out of the door, I ran to the room I spotted titled 'Employ's Only.' After entering the room, my eyes narrowed upon one poor locker.
"Sorry ms. But your measly cheap lock isn't going to get into the way of THIS lock picker!" The thought of using the skill I had taught myself brought a small smile on my face.
Slowly I unlocked the clock, watching in satisfaction as it did indeed unlock.
'Score! I did it! I was scared I was getting rusty too.' I searched through the mess this person called a locker and when I finally found the clothes in all the mess of makeup and whatnot, I smiled a brilliant smile. 'Double score! This suckers's my size too!'
I quickly donned the woman's clothes, checked my new look in the mirror across the dun colored wall and left the locker room with my head held high and fake confidence gleaming in my eyes.
The exit got closer to me.
Closer.
And
Closer.
'I'm through!' I looked back at intimidating set of double doors. 'Sorry mom, dad, I'll leave you a note, but I have to leave.
I started walking in the direction of the place I called home.
'After all... I am a monster.'
