The blind man steps closer and gently taps on the trash can with the tip of his cane. He then considers me, well at least he looks like, turns his head to look briefly in the direction of the park, where Devil and his gang are still on top of their hill, watching, and says:

"A trash can, hey ? I can hear people laugh... quite nastily. Do you have any problem, young lady ?"

"Oh, no, not at all, we were just... having fun, you know."

"You don't sound good. Young lady, if there are people picking on you, you can tell me."

Certainly not ! I don't need a bodyguard ! Although... I don't feel comfortable, knowing that the gang is still over there, watching. On their hill, they look like they had their fun for the night and won't come after me, but I appreciate this man's company, just in case. Oh, look at me, I came to fight confident like Clint Eastwood, and now here I am, looking up at the blind man for protection. So pathetic. I force myself not to cry again, because if I did, it would take away the last remains of my pride.

"No, Sir, we were just... playing Jackass."

He doesn't believe me, I can feel that. He must have heard the pain in my voice or something... I heard that blind people are much more sensitive. I know what I must sound like to him, but I don't want to think about it. At least, he's not someone I know.

"Anyway," he says, finally giving up, "I was looking for a grocery store. I just arrived in town, and I don't know the place at all."

"Oh, sure." I'm pleased I can think of something else and I try to forget the pain and show my best side. "Well, it's easy, you see..."

"Sure I do."

"Well, I mean... okay, you just go on ahead, for about three hundred meters, and it'll be on your left. You'll find it ?"

"I think I will, I'll just keep my eyes open. You're sure you're okay ?"

"Yes, I am, don't worry. Good bye, Sir."

I watch him go, kinda relieved that I have not lost my face in front of him. But that doesn't change much for my state of mind. I pass my hand in my hair, and my fingers meet with the flabby texture of a banana skin. Dang ! I don't wanna know what else there was in that can ! I wait till I think he's out of ear range, and I release my anger on the innocent trash can that didn't ask for such a treatment. The others, on the hill, are gone too. I'm alone in the street, and I do intend to make good use of the situation to express myself freely, which means punching that can and screaming in the wild.

"I got beaten and disgraced by a Canadian son of a whore, and I'm FLIPPIN' PISSED !"

"Violet ?"

I stop and try to calm down. It's Cornelia.

"Violet, are you okay ?"

"Do I look ?"

"No... I guess not. I... I'm sorry about that. I wanted to help, but..."

But she couldn't, I know. What could she do, alone against them ? She's not a girl of action.

"Don't worry, Connie, you don't need to be sorry. It's me, I..."

That's the first time in my life I say that:

"I should have listened to you."

"Oh... but, you feel alright, I mean... you wanna talk about it ?"

I smile, sincerely. "Thanks, but I just wanna go home and have a good bath."

"Good idea... I don't wanna offend you, but you stink. And you're not so pretty, what's that ?"

"What ?"

She grimaces in disgust. "That's weird, you got something blue on your face..."

Uh-oh... there must have been some water into the can. Or maybe is it because I hit the snow or cried, but the make-up is fading away. I pretend to rub my face and say it must be some ink.

"Okay... you want me to take you home ?"

"No, it's okay, I'm going there myself. It's late, your father will be worried."

Actually, it's already very dark. Winter... we wish good night and go on our own ways. The pain is already almost gone, it must be thanks to my super-flexibility. However, I'm now cold, and still dirty. And still deeply angry and desperate. I walk home, and on my way, I pass beside a bus stop. There are a few people waiting, not paying attention to me. I feel an outburst of rage, and I kick the stop pole as hard as I can. Already, a middle-aged woman looks at me and looks like she's about to reprimand me, but she hesitates when she sees my face. Of course, covered with garbage and with half of my face paint gone, I must look like a freak. That's it, look at me, I'm a freak ! Booh ! I'm the trash can monster ! I used to be a little girl, but I was turned into a monster by a boy who was stronger than me ! Oh my God, what is happening to me ? I begin to run, faster and faster, I want to escape from my thoughts, but I can't. The tears come back. What's going on ? Wasn't the blueberry incident fair enough a punishment for all those years I kept bullying and belittling others ? Was it really necessary to make me fall from my throne in such a manner ? God, You must be having your fun, but You're torturing me ! Thinking that the day had begun so well... I should have known my joy from the morning wasn't meant to last.

I arrive home. I'm freezing. I go in, and the warmth inside already makes me feel a little better. That, plus a delicious smell of apple pie coming from the kitchen...

"Violet !"

Mom looks at me, visibly in shock. She comes to give me a hug, but somehow, she hesitates... must be the "perfume".

"Oh, my poor... what happened to you ?"

"Nothing, I just... I just had an accident."

That's a chance I had time to calm down on the way. I don't want to cry in front of my Mom.

"An accident ? But how... are you okay ?"

"Yeah, I'm okay. I'll just have a bath."

She doesn't insist. Maybe she believes me, or maybe she doesn't dare. I don't know. It's still quite new to me to consider her a mother and not a coach.

"Oh, by the way, put your make-up back on after your bath."

"Why, we're going out, tonight ?"

She gives me her special Colgate smile. "Haven't you noticed ? We have a new neighbor ! He just moved in the house on the right this morning."

"Oh, and that's what the apple pie is for ?"

"Yes. Go on quick !"

Uh-oh... a new neighbor... The house on our right is vacant most of the time, and there's a reason to it. Mom is terrible with new neighbors. She always wants to appear so nice and friendly that she ends up looking like a movie caricature of the perfect neighbor, and she progressively wears out their patience and their mental stability. I remember the last two neighbors we had in the house on the right. When I was eight, it was a divorced mother with her son who was about my age... they became quite good friends, but I couldn't stand her son who had kind of a bizarre obsession with me. To please Mom, I tried to pretend to be friend with him, but when he tried to get me to play doctor, I wedgied him so bad that he had to go to the hospital... they moved out a few days after. The last one was a while later, I was ten, I think. He was a nice, successful businessman, and a single... Mom was very friendly, and tried to court him so heavily that it went wrong: I heard that in the end, the man thought she was harassing him, and grew afraid of her, to a point that he had barricaded his windows and doors, and refused to go out. He spent some time in an institution and finally decided to leave the city. Of course, all these things I'm not supposed to know, but I know my Mom better than she thinks. I saw her trying to date several men, before, and she always has something in her smile and in her attitude that makes them run away scared. I don't know what is exactly wrong, cause I always knew her to be like that, but once she grew interested in my history teacher, and for about a week, he came to school under police protection. Actually, the only man I know who can approach my Mom without fear is Mr Prinzmetal, because they're very close friends, and I guess it's better this way. I don't need a father.

The hot water feels so good it has me totally relaxed. I almost already forget what happened in the park. I make sure my make-up is well put on - it looks even more natural than in the morning, I love the Japanese ! - and finish to prepare myself. Oh, it feels so great to feel my hair soft and dry, without any banana skin or other sticky thing, and to have that foul smell gone ! I put on some clean clothes and rejoin Mom in the kitchen. She's taking the pie out of the oven and wrapping it in a white cloth.

"Are you ready ?"

"Yep."

Here we go. I already feel sorry for the new victim. I know the reputation. People around say The House On The Right as if they were naming the title of a horror movie. Our house is at the end of the block, so we have the great chance not to have a house on our left. That would have been twice more victims.

"How is he like ?" I ask.

"Well I only saw him briefly this morning, when he came with the movers. He's in his twenties, I guess, pretty cute, and he apparently lives alone..."

"Don't try, Mom, he's too young for you and too old for me."

"What ?"

She's really surprised at my retort, but we don't have time to discuss it as we're already in front of his door. She knocks, and produces her brightest smile. I hate when she smiles like that, cause it scares people more than it pleases them. The new victim opens the door... and I have the surprise of the century: blond hair, red glasses, it's the blind guy from the park !

"Hello !" Mom begins cheerfully. "We are your new neighbors !"

The guy smiles at us and invites us in. His living room contains the strict necessary, a couch, two armchairs and a coffee table, the rest is all still packed in the piles of cardboard boxes against the walls. Kind of lacks decoration, but, well, it's not as if he could really enjoy the sight.

"Have a sit," he invites. "Do you want to drink something ? I have ice-tea and... I think that's all I have."

"That will be very nice, thank you."

"By the way..." he smells. "Is that an apple pie ?"

"Yes."

"That is very kind of you. I'm coming... err... right back."

And he disappears into the kitchen as we sit on the couch. He's a little nervous, I noticed. Must not be used to have guests.

"He looks nice," Mom tells me. "A little nervous, but nice."

"Yeah."

"It just looks rude of him to keep his sunglasses indoor. What's the need for sunglasses in February, anyway ?"

Oh, no ! I hold back a chuckle at the last second. She didn't notice ! Okay, I know she's a little... dense, but here, she didn't even get he's blind, that's a world record ! With what I saw of his rather strange sense of humor, I know I'm going to have a good laugh in the next minutes. We hear several sounds of broken glass coming from the kitchen.

"Excuse me," he says, "but I just moved in, and I'm still not used to the place..."

After a good effort and more broken glass, he finally comes back with three glasses of ice-tea on a tray.

"By the way, I didn't introduce myself. The name's Matthew Murdock, but you can just call me Matt."

"Nice to meet you, Matt. I am Scarlet Beauregard, and this is my daughter Violet."

"I think we have already met, young lady... I'm glad you changed your perfume."

He smells. "Blueberry pie ? I didn't know there was such a perfume."

Mom's rather impressed. "You... you can smell her perfume as she's at least two meters away ?"

"I have a very sensitive nose."

We briefly explain how we met (changing the story just a little), and as we enjoy the pie and the ice-tea, the conversation quickly goes to the usual topics. I then learn that Matt is nineteen and comes from New-York. He's a student at law and wants to become a lawyer, and he began studying at the Columbia University, but he suddenly felt the urgent need to move away from New-York - he says that city was getting on his nerves - and he left in mid-term to enroll at the University of Atlanta, that's why he's here today. Mom says she's surprised he rent a house instead of having an appartment or a room on the campus, and he replies he was looking for a quiet neighborhood, and he was so surprised to see this house cost almost nothing that he took it. He then adds that the agent told him the house was so cheap because all the previous inhabitants left for rather bizarre reasons and it had gained a reputation of being haunted. When he says that, I laugh so hard that I almost choke with my drink. It's very hard for me to keep my calm during the conversation, with my poor mother who still doesn't get it and keeps punctuating her phrases with "you see" and Matt who keeps replying with a sarcastic smile "yes I do".

"Oh, I would love to show you around," she says. "Atlanta is a wonderful city. Plus, we're not that far from the city itself. There's Piedmont Park that you should see, and the Georgia Aquarium too... maybe when spring comes, we should have a day out, what do you think of it ?"

"I would love to see all of this."

I can't resist the way he stresses on the words, and I literally howl with laughter.

"Violet !"

Mom sounds pretty embarrassed, but I can't hold it. Even Matt begins to laugh.

"Miss..."

"Scarlet, you can just call me Scarlet."

"Scarlet, what makes us laugh is how we've been talking about seeing and watching... didn't you notice anything unusual ?"

She frowns, for a moment she doesn't get it. Then, it comes, slowly but surely: the lack of decoration... the dim lighting... and the inscriptions on the boxes written in the Braille alphabet. She turns really scarlet, and it makes me laugh even more.

"Oh ! I... I... I'm really s-sorry, I... I didn't notice, you are..."

"Blind, yes. But that's no problem. As long as I keep my sense of humor, everything's okay. I just don't want to be pitied for this."

"Yes, of course."

"Actually, I lost my sight at the age of twelve. An accident, involving a truck that carried toxic waste. I received some on my face, and... it just burnt my eyes."

"Ouch, I'm sorry..."

"Can I watch ?" I ask. I know I shouldn't, but I can't resist.

"Violet !" this time, she's almost angry at me. "That is rude and morbid !"

"No, please," Matt says, "don't get mad. It's normal, it's children's curiosity. I don't mind at all, it's just... it makes a lot of people uneasy."

And on these words, he takes off his glasses and looks at me. I have a thrill, I can't help it. I have never seen that before: his eyes are white, all white, except for a very light blue shade where the iris was supposed to be.

"Jesus," I whisper, "that is creepy..."

It gives me shivers, yet I can't stop watching, I'm fascinated.

"Violet, that's enough ! Sorry, Matt, that must be very embarrassing."

"Not the least," he smiles as he put the glasses back on. "It was only embarrassing the first weeks, but I got over it. Actually, I'm quite proud of it, it is an excellent trick to initiate the conversation with girls. I just have to act as the poor blind guy who got lost, and they get caught everytime. The only problem is that I can't see how the girl I'm dating looks like."

"Then how do you know if you will like her ?" I ask.

"Easy, I rely on the smell."

"Hey, wait a minute ! Isn't that what you were trying to do, this afternoon ?"

He sniggers. "No, I swear, I was really look... searching, for a store."

If he's totally open about his blindness, Mom is still quite uneasy with the subject and quickly switches to other topics. It gets late, and we invite Matt to come over and have dinner with us. In the living room... where there are all my trophies. 263 trophies. I could add the 264th trophy for "Humiliated Kid Of The Year". I begin to hate these trophies, but Mom, of course, feels the need to talk about these, and how she's proud of my successful career. Then, she goes on by talking about her job. At this point, I almost fall asleep out of boredom. I mean, I know she's very proud of her job, she talks about it everytime we visit someone: she sells workout equipment and other sportsgear over the internet, and she also produces aerobics and fitness videos. Okay, I can't really complain, cause the business works and we're pretty wealthy, but in town, everyone knows my mother as "Miss Twenty Minutes". I'm surprised to learn that, in spite of his athletic figure, Matt doesn't like sports.

Later this night, Matt has already gone home, and I'm about to go to bed too. This dinner has cheered me up, I already feel like my misadventures of the day happened a long time ago.

"What do you think of him ?" Mom asks as I help her with the dishes.

"He's very nice. Kind of weird, but very nice."

"Yeah, weird, that's the word. But what do you want, he's a New-Yorker."

"Perhaps..."

"However, I really didn't like how you talked about his blindness."

"Oh, come on, he said he's very comfortable with it."

"Even if he is, these are not things to say. Imagine he got upset. I was afraid he would get upset. Could you imagine how embarrassing it would be, for all of us ?"

"I suppose so... but I need to ask you a service too."

"What ?"

"Well, I'm sure he could become a very good friend, so please don't freak him out, like the previous one."

She looks at me weirdly. "Young lady, you seem to know a lot of things you're not supposed to..." she smiles. "Okay, deal."

She then looks at the clock. "You should go to bed, now. It's late."

"Okay. Night, Mom."

"Night. I'll come to see you when I'm finished."

I go to the bathroom to brush my teeth and then strip to my pajamas. In the bedroom, I stop by my bookshelf. What could I read in bed ? I'm not really a book worm, my shelf contains mostly comics. Be warned I will kick the first person who says comics are not for girls. I hate stereotypes ! Let us see... Chronicles Of A Serpentiform Human, Shadowgheist, Splatterhouse, Stalvolk, Mikoyan, Electric Eye, Codename: Stinger Black... I got a whole bunch of those comics written by Renaud Roddecker, the guy who's also known as the Crazy French. Mom hate those, she says it will rot my brain. Stories of hitmen, vampires, conspiracies, spies, cyborgs and ninja vigilantes, no wonder why all the mothers of the country hate it, but that's just what I like. The worst is that Mom forbids me from reading his Lucifer Kid comics because she says it's outright Satanist propaganda. So retard... why do the adults always have to take the fun out of everything ? I finally pick up Snakes Hate Chocolate. It's been a while since I last read it.

About a quarter of an hour later, I'm warm in bed with the book, but oddly, I'm trembling. This book used to be my favorite read, but now it creeps me out. Really. The story is about Snake, a young mercenary, who's hired to investigate on bizarre cases of disappearance and traffic around Walter Wincott's Great Candy Factory. So he infiltrates the facility during a visit organized for five children who won a contest, only to discover Wincott is actually an evil scientist who preys on children to pursue his experiments, and so his investigation turns into a rescue mission as he tries to take the five contest winners out of there. You've not noticed anything creepy ? Walter Wincott and his Candy Factory, that would be an odd coincidence but still okay. Except that the contest winners are five. Veronica, Mickey, Viviane, Charlie, and August. Respectively a rich heiress, a computer genius, a bully, a poor, and a lardass. The book was written long before the actual Wonka Golden Ticket Contest. That's too much a coincidence to still be okay. Want worse ? The characters and locations are drawn very ressembling to the real ones. And now that I read it again, I can't help but identify myself with Viviane and remake the Tour through her eyes... Gosh, everything written in the story could have happened during the real Tour ! It gives me cold sweat even to imagine myself one second in the Wincott Factory... I used to hate Wonka, but he's Santa Claus when compared to his alter-ego !

A knock at my door, and a sudden fright makes me gasp and drop the book on the floor. But thanks God, it's only Mom who comes to wish me good night.

"Are you okay, sweetheart ?" she picks up the book. "Still reading those horror stories... you're gonna have nightmares if you read that too much. No more read, time to sleep."

She puts it back on the shelf and comes to sit beside me. "With all that, we didn't have much time to talk about your first day back."

"Oh, there's nothing much to say, you know..."

Yeah, nothing. Really, nothing.

"It wasn't too difficult ? The lessons, and all ?"

"No, it was okay, really."

"And that accident ?"

"It was nothing, I was walking around with Connie and I slipped on ice and... I brought a trash can down with me. Just stupid."

"Are you sure ? You know, if there's something wrong, you can tell me. I have not always been there for you, I know that, but I want it to change. Okay ?"

"Kay."

"Good."

She gives me a kiss and tucks me properly in bed. I know I'm not five anymore, but still I like it. She wishes me good night one last time, and turns off the light. In the dark, as I'm slowly falling asleep, I decide that I won't tell Mom or anyone about the Devil. I learned to face my problems on my own, and that's what I'll do. I was surprised, the first time. Know, I know what to expect. Next time, he will pay. I promise.

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Okay, just a little footnote: none of the books from Violet's collection are actual books. Snakes Hate Chocolate is actually my first (and still in-progress) CATCF fanfiction, with just the names and a few plot elements changed to make its appearance in this story believable. As for the other books, they're projects for original stories that I have in my head and that I will write... someday. I'm just terribly lazy...