Dear readers,

thanks so much for hanging in there! I apologize sincerely for making you wait so long. Life is totally crazy right now! But I love it!

Austin Bruce- Thank you! I'm so glad you liked it.

Little Miss Morbid- Graci for the tips. They really did help.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

-- Maya Angelou

You know how everyone can remember their childhood? Yeah, everyone but me.

The first memory I can consciously recollect, the first i woke up and registered that i was a living breathing person, was when i was seven.

At the time, I had been a little ragamuffin living in (and out, i should add) of various orphanages throughout the edges of northern Mexico. Of course, I had to be moved constantly- children were terrified of me, the nuns tried their best to ignore me. How ironic, It's in my nature to be subtle; silent; invisible; and the only thing i did was draw more attention to myself. One nun, a porky short woman with a hairy mole the size of a quarter protruding above the left corner of her lip, went as far as to nickname me. "Nina de la tierra", which is a Spanish name for a venomous spider that lurks under beds and bites unsuspecting bare feet with its long fangs. Aside from my bean-pole legs and black eyes, the spider and I have little in common. Perhaps, we share a love to creep; to hide in the darkness as soon as the light goes on, shunned by society. For whatever reason, the name stuck. My fellow orphans rejected me and it seemed that no matter where i moved, my friendless situation never changed. If i close my eyes now and think back hard, i can still see them, see their hate-filled eyes, hear the way they spat my name out like it was dripping with acid. There was one in particular, Marysa, the head nun´s 9 year old

daughter who was supposed to help the children adjust to life in the Orphanage...oh, how she despised` me. When it was time to play outside, her and her coterie of dirty faced hell-raisers wasted no time in seeing that my lunch was thrown down and stomped on, my hair pulled out, even graced me with a shiner every so often. She took it apoun herself to make my life purgatory. Little did she know i threw a hell of a left hook, and the day she finally pushed me too far, my fist connected beautifully with her fat nose. ¨Beastia!¨ She shrieked through a veil of blood and tears as she ran to find her tubby mother inside. I took possibly the worst beating of my life for that little act, the whole time Marysa watched, peeking in through an open window with a smirk of satisfaction stretched across her grimy face.

After my flogging done, I was dragged into a room with dirt floor and one small window. I scrambled into a corner as the wooden door slammed and a padlock clicked, and in the comforting shadows, wept until my bloodshot eyes refused to open again and sleep washed over my aching body.

"Alice..."

Reflexively, I answered through a cloud of dreams. "Yes?" I sighed out softly.

"Wake up, child."

I obeyed, sitting up and rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. They refocused and noted the starry night outside the window. I turned and searched the shadows for my caller. The little details began to return with my consciousness; the rough ground beneath me, the chilly air, the sore muscles, the cut in my back...,

"Right here." The voice called, no more than a few feet in front of me.

I followed the noise, and rested my gaze on the silhouette of a man. His features were unreadable through the inky black curtain, but his voice sounded ancient. "Don't be frightened."

"Who are you?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

"All in good time, Dear. We'll have eons of time to catch up later, but right now we have to go." A movement, a swoosh of wind. "Eh, you might want to cover your ears for a moment."

I did.

A soft thud, and the door flew twenty feet in to the air and crashed into pieces somewhere in the distance. The light from the moon poured in, and drenched the man in light. If I'd had any idea who the Greek gods were, I'd have sworn he was one of them. He was tall, statuesque, wearing a thin leather jacket over a faded brown linen shirt and denim jeans. A pair of shiny red eyes stared out at me from his luminescent ivory face, a light smile played on his lips. He stretched out a hand. "Come."

I walked toward him like a daze. When my hand touched his, a shock traveled through my system.

"Cold hands." I said, almost apologetically.

His eyes laughed. "A disadvantage of the immortal."

Before I had time to ask him what that was, he swept me into his arms, and took off, running past the peeling paint of the house I hated, over the fence that no child was ever supposed to cross, and into the empty streets of Mexico. The world flew by in a blur as he ran, the midnight wind stinging my face. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to think rationally, now that the fog of sleep had lifted.

A man broke into that room, somehow, even though the window is barely big enough for a cat to crawl through. The same man kicked a chain-locked door of its hinges and sent it flying like a baseball, and is presently running faster than the wind itself with me in his arms. I was pretty much convinced I was still dreaming. There's no way reality could be this interesting.

The wind seized as he suddenly stopped, pulling me out of my reverie.

"We're here." He said, setting me down on my feet, and quickly catching me when my weakened legs gave out. "Steady, now, Alice. You're very hurt." He carefully carried me to a nearby bench and laid me down on it, examining the damage, muttering angrily to himself, things like "Filthy Indian" and "..told her to take care of her, not treat her like a dog.."

I propped myself up, with some effort, on my elbows to look at him. "Why are you mad?"

His crimson eyes met mine with a hidden fire burning behind them. "Because a certain rotund nun did not listen to her elders. She should only pray that her god send an angel of mercy to her side on wings of lightning, for that will be the only thing that will stop me from r-" He cut off and gathered himself again, inhaling deeply. "What's important is that you're alive." He reminded himself, then began to pace around the bench. "Alice, listen very carefully. In a few minutes time, a different man will come, not like me.." What did he mean by that? Not like me? "You must stay with that man, do you understand? Do not leave his side. He's going to take you away from here. You'll be safe with him." He stopped pacing and ran a hand through his short tawny brown hair.

All I could do was nod, not processing much while under the impression that this was a wild dream concocted by my pent-up imagination.

"Right then, I see we understand each other. I best be on my way now." He turned to leave in the direction from which we had came, but paused a moment to look back at me over his shoulder. "Oh, and Alice?"

"Huh?" I managed.

"I've missed you very much, child. You can only imagine how boring the 21st century has been."

I waited a second before mumbling something of a thanks from the depths of my basically numb brain.

He smiled crookedly and, in only a blink of an eye, vanished into the dead of night.

I shivered, looking around to take in my surroundings. I was laying on one of the many white iron benches of a local plaza. I stared at the peeling paint, the faint scratches of names feebly carved into the bars, trying to remember what my instructions were. Ah, who cares. It was just a dream anyway. A very weird dream. My mind quickly slowed to a crawl, and soon, I was drifting off to sleep again, too childlike to comprehend the life altering events that had just passed, into a dreamless fog.

And now we wait..

…..

Review please! I love hearing watch you guys have to say.

I'll try to hurry it up with with chapter two, although a little more review action would help hehe

anyway, I hope you enjoyed it! (and please dont hit me with a shovel)

.x.x.x.x.x

Phia