And what if our reaction to normalcy is different? What if what's normal to me is insane to you?
|Natsu Dragneel|
Chapter two
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Water.
Clear blue water.
Bent over, like an almost hoop, Lucy heaved a breath and dived into the pool water and she felt alive again. Other than hanging around with Rufus during free periods and after school while listening to his incessant rants of 'Eve that' or 'Eve this', spent her time in the school swimming pool which would usually be open to students a few hours after day school ended.
The best thing about that?
It was her alone time of the day which she spent in solace by sitting at the floor bed of the swimming pool which was considerably secluded at that period of time. Granted, that made her completely pregnable to the attacks of a certain insane serial killer but Rhealz had been gone. Not so long but long enough to elevate her fears of being assaulted and murdered.
She stared at clear blue around her, if there was one thing that distinguished from many others then it would be her ability to hold her breath up to 7 minutes underwater, Rufus once joked around calling her a mermaid but if it was one thing she could never resist doing when sitting at the bottom of the pool was thinking.
When she was underwater, it almost felt like Lucy could finally breathe.
Although Science would have her believe otherwise.
It was like outer space to her, freed from laws of gravity, Lucy felt like her burdens were lifted when she was down there, all the weights of consequences diminished to mere smears of dust, it felt like the water became a part of herself.
Her mind would flow in and out of thoughts she did not know existed which would later, raise questions in her but for the present, she would just think. An act of healing, an act of resurrecting what she thought was lost. Her thoughts fluttered in a flimsy process, going randomly about the most irrelevant things, like Greek gods, which led her to point out the fact that Ms Selene, her English teacher had the name of the Greek goddess of the moon.
The clock showed four and Lucy felt some part of her memory resurfacing.
"Lucy, please be home before I come, I'll need help with the grocery shopping" She remembered her mom clearly stating in the morning.
Wasn't that around three-thirty? She thought, abruptly as a few facts placed itself well in her mind.
The realisation struck her like lightning and she quickly withdrew from the pool and changed into her spare of clothes then walked to her dad's bike and drove herself home without a second thought.
"Hey Levi," Lucy grinned as her dog greeted her, it wagged its tail at her arrival, she patted its golden head as it curled up in affection.
"Well, at least I'm clearly not late." She muttered to herself in her head and paced into her house where nobody was home yet.
Unlike many residences, her house had an attic with no haunted spirit lurking about, something that she was glad of. Her attic was a clean place, a second bedroom if Rufus would crash over for the night and they would binge on Netflix series, which also meant that she knew the attic the best considering the amount of time she had spent there, which also indicated that space between the cupboard and the side of the bed in the corner of the room was most of the time ignored.
There was not much to see except for this big box there that had all her embarrassing childhood photos and a weird-ass journal (journal was the term and not a diary) when she was in Year 6.
If anyone were to find it, they would have acquired a lifetime worth's blackmail over Lucy.
Partly the reason, she's extra careful when Rufus comes over.
Ah. The humiliation, if he gets his hands on it, was positively petrifying.
Lucy removed a cloth that had been on her portable magnetic whiteboard. She hadn't used it for a long time.
Back then, her room was furnished she was coerced into sleeping in the attic. After getting over her fear of ghosts and whatnot, she had used the board to write a few reminders because, Lucy squinted her eyes at the board, let's face it, I have the memory of a goldfish.
Yes, that bad indeed.
But that was not her interest at the moment, Lucy would rant about the incapabilities of her memory some other blessed day, not now. She took the marker and drew the phases of the moon on the whiteboard and almost cringed at how well she knew of each of the phases.
Damn. That science class she had forcibly taken in summer long back really did help.
Besides that, there were eight phases of the moon needed to complete the lunar cycle. Which meant sixteen phases of the moon would complete two cycles of the moon so why were there eighteen people killed?
Because that would be the start of the third cycle of the phases of the moon. Then why did he stop so unexpectedly?
Did he feel like a sinner?
No, Rhealz was a thirsty, draconian killer, there was no way in hell or heaven that sympathy would arise in a man like that which meant that he could not be made to feel regretful of his sins even if he knew he was.
Did he lose interest?
As much as Lucy wished to flinch in disgust and revolting nature of the question, she did not. Serial killers, in particular, were always driven by a motive to do what they did and from the looks of it, Rhealz was particularly interested in power and control.
She had heard of killers who would merely torture their victim's to pull reactions that intensify their feelings of power and control over the specific person.
Apparently, it was exhilarating for a killer to see a victim struggle. Soo hell no that man lost interest which implored the existence of another theory,
Something had happened, an external cause had prevented him from killing more people and so he fled the sight. In mere straight words, he went into hiding until it was the right time to strike but had killed two people more just to assure that he would return.
Lucy widened her eyes almost showing a close resemblance to a fish out of the water, had she single-handedly predicted the return of a feared criminal?
What the hell? There was no way it was true, she really should get her head out of those Agatha Christie novels.
A nagging feeling remained at the back of her head as she reached out to the duster.
But...but what if she was right?
"Lucy! You up there, hun?" She heard her mom call her name out loud, "Lu, dear, I just came back from the grocery store, could you please help me bring the bags from the car?"
Lucy shook her head and instinctively rubbed the whiteboard with the duster and placed the cloth over it.
Honestly, who did she think she was? Sherlock Holmes? No, this was just getting in her way.
She dismissed all her thoughts away, before calling out again.
"Coming mom." She responded, climbing down the stairs to help her mother as she tied her hair up in a bun.
Layla smiled, mirthfully, at her elder daughter who was helping her out with the overweight bags.
Lucy faked a smile, she wished not to worry her mother who was already troubled by her brother's *ahem*ahem antiques, well, much to everyone's chagrin in the house, Hibiki Lates Heartfilia was growing up to be a rebel without a cause.
The previous week he had demanded money to buy a motorcycle that ended up in a heated argument between him and dad which Lucy knew would end up severe if she had not stepped in, helping her mother to break the two of them apart and they had not been conversing as such since then.
She loved them both, really, she did but the nonsensical male alpha dominance that was drawn from both of them was suffocating to the point she wanted to kick both of them out of the house compounds.
Lucy was pretty sure her mother felt the same way and felt she might even lend a hand in doing so.
"Your dad's gonna be late tonight." Her mother voiced out, gently, as she began sorting out the things from the bags. "Apparently, Richard, his co-worker, asked him to swap shifts."
"Uhuh and dad had no issue with it? Because so far as I remember Dad despises working overtime in the hospital." Lucy inquired with a tone of doubt overshadowing her words.
"Yeah, seemingly, it smells like death during nightfall." Layla let out a stifling laugh.
"Couldn't argue with that anymore." Lucy relented with a giggle.
"Do you know when Hibiki will be coming home?" Her mother asked in a voice filled with concern after repetitively glancing towards the wall clock.
"He didn't tell but if you want, I could call his friends because he'd not respond to my calls anyways." Lucy offered, she wasn't blind to her mother's plight, it made her take note of dealing with her younger brother when he gets home.
She sighed as she heard her mother reply a 'No' in a small voice which just established that maybe she should call his friends.
Sigh. The perks of being the elder one.
Lucy rolled her eyes at the suggestion of the thought and went back to her room to study for a pop quiz that might be held in mathematics the next day.
As she sat down and continued to study, she noticed the rain had not ceased, it had been drizzling or thundering or something in between but had never stopped. Only for a brief moment, she looked out of the window and as she did, her gaze set upon a stranger walking past her house, his salmon pink hair peeking out of the cap he was wearing.
Almost sensing as if he was being watched, he stopped before looking up at her window.
Their eyes met briefly and everything melted in the cold rain. She inhaled deeply, feeling heat creep into her skin in spite of the atmosphere.
Lucy looked away as did the stranger then she went back to her desk.
What the hell was that? She wondered, Lucy had forgotten how that stranger even looked but his eyes, his eyes had drawn an impression on her. While everyone knew everyone in Lecastle, it would appear Lucy would have to go out more often to actually know them.
But there was something, a sort of suspicion that seemed to churn a heart-rending feeling in Lucy's stomach, like a harbinger of something.
And if Lucy had to be the right judge of it, it wasn't something good.
Gonna see him soon though.