So I'm a little ticked off. For some unbeknownst reason, I typed this chapter all up and it doesn't save. The cherry on top? The document I had of the chapter erased too. Had to start from scratch again for this one. Frustrated beyond belief. So sorry.
Ugh.
~Hunter
Enjoy.
The flight home was long and uneventful, and Max slept for half of it. She even missed the complementary breakfast, and could do nothing to hush her yowling stomach for the next eight hours in the air. The young woman next to her snuck sidelong glances as loud growls echoed from her abdomen, but she quickly turned her pudgy face back into the book she had been reading. Max had soon done the same for the ninety-nine cheap cliche romance novel she had bought in one of the gift shops while waiting for the plane. It was written completely in German, one of the many languages she was fluent in.
16 to be exact.
Seventeen years of solitude and a horrible case of boredom was what Max liked to blame her intelligence on, but she knew the truth. All the little games that were played, every book she read, the places she had been taken as a child, they were all part of training. She was born to train, raised in training, and sent to kill. It had been her whole life, whether she liked it or not.
She didn't quite know if she did like it or not. She hadn't known any different.
And maybe that was the root of her internal battle. Perhaps she wasn't sure if she was happy being an assassin or trapped into killing. She was able to draw the line of how she felt towards people; she would never let anyone in because people were just as unpredictable with feelings as she was with murder. Maybe a screw came loose in her head, which was the only explanation she could comprise for why she had no sense of humanity left in her stone heart. She was a robot trapped in a human body and she knew it.
She just didn't know how to change, if she wanted to change.
But looking around the cabin full of diverse people, idly playing on phones or reading or sleeping, she decided she was not like everyone else. She never was and never would be.
She wasn't supposed to be. She wasn't supposed to feel. It wasn't allowed in her line of work.
So when she exited the airport with just the briefcase in hand (after flushing the horribly boring German book down a toilet) she didn't feel joy when she spotted the old and dented 1999 Camry, didn't feel warmth in the arms that engulfed her and welcomed her home with a plastic smile, and didn't feel safe as she buckled her seatbelt in place.
And that's just how it was.
They didn't talk in the car, didn't even glance at each other, but listened to the audio book that had been playing-The Shining by Stephen King-at a particularly horrific chapter. Max let her mind zone out but kept her eyes open.
The car ride home was much longer than it needed to be since the paranoid-ridden man was always convinced someone was watching him; they took backroads down one way with headlights turned off before u-turning and heading back the same way. The process repeated down several turns and unknown highways. He made his own maze in his head that only he could solve.
It was most likely the only thing Max had inherited from him.
Max was jolted back to reality when the car suddenly screeched to a halt just inches in front of a worn down, wooden two-story house. The building looked like it would collapse soon, and Max assumed this was why nobody lived inside it. Unbuckling her seatbelt, she bent down to grab the busted briefcase and handed it to the outstretched hand waiting to receive the gift. After handing it over, he unlocked the car doors, letting her get out. He stayed in his seat to marvel at the green paper inside.
Stretching with her hands over her head, Max let out a yawn before checking her surroundings. It was night, and completely dark besides the moon and stars since they weren't allowed to have any light. The only sound that could be heard were the toads and crickets harmonizing, as well as the tall dead grass rustling in the harsh wind of winter.
Then she spotted the boulder.
A completely obvious, almost hilariously huge gray hunk sitting out of place among the cleared area. Rolling her eyes, she still thought they should have put a tree. Putting both hands on the rock, she shoved the heavy thing into the barbed wire fence, revealing a set of metal doors that had been hiding under.
Home.
She tapped the doors in the beating rhythm that had been the code for as long as she could remember, and they opened up like an invitation to a black hole. Max clambered in, letting the skinny dark arm assist her down the steep ladder. Her father followed her, locking the doors back together with a chain and engulfing them in complete silence and darkness yet again.
And that's where they lived. In the quiet black bunker of hell that hid under a boulder.
Because the devil lives under a rock.
SOOO much longer than it was supposed to be and I liked the other version better, but what can you do, you know? Ugh. So sorry. Please review. It'd make my day.
Thanks.
Song of the chapter: Internal Dialogue by Maria Mena (she's seriously awesome)
