Chapter Two
Her mind was numb, the constant feeling of being cold engulfs her in what felt like the embrace of death. Was this what it was like to die? The world around you just goes black, like the end of a long movie. No flashbacks of your greatest life moments, no last-minute chance to say goodbye to anyone you cared about. Just, darkness?
She expected to wake up, still balking at the idea this was real. Lydia tries to imagine herself jumping up from her bed shouting out of her spiked food induced nightmare. Yes, that was it! She was just tripping out on poisoned food. This wasn't the end, just the delirium of a bad high. She would wake up soon, ready to run to the toilet and throw up from food poisoning.
But nothing changed. Lydia was still falling, still swimming through a heavy fog of darkness with her arms and legs too limp to pull herself up from submersion.
How could she be dead? She was too young to die. She never got to see her friends again, she never got all her questions answered…she didn't even get home to apologize. Lydia grimaces with teary eyes, feeling helpless drowning in the abyss looking for a life raft. The girl gasps feeling the firm grasp of gravity carrying her limp form. It didn't feel like she was drowning anymore, yet she was still engulfed in a world of darkness. This was a good sign, she wasn't dead, just…asleep? The young girl was now confused lying there in the darkness. She was determined to move, but her body would not budge, her eyes never opened. She would try to scream, but nothing came out of her lungs. The girl ponders with her fragile sanity, entertaining the idea of sleep paralysis. It was something she never was familiar with but would hear past friends mention it. This had to be it! It was just simple sleep paralysis. The girl chuckles at the thought, all that panicking over sleep paralysis.
All she could do now was wait for it to go away, which was going to happen any moment now.
Correction, now, now she was going to open her eyes and move.
Third times the charm? Nope?
Nothing, as expected, happens.
This was going to stop soon right? She, she wasn't going to be stuck like this?! The girl breathes in deeply, counting to ten repeatedly to collect herself. Gradually the more she counts to ten, the more things start to come back around her. The first thing was her hearing, she could hear voices muffled around her in a hushed conversational tone. Whether they were male or female she couldn't be sure. One was soft spoken among the voices, sounded more clearer with how close it was to her ears. The other muffled voices varied in lower inflections with indistinguishing intentions.
When the softer voice speaks again, she feels her body land on a softer surface, almost fastened into a seat. Was she getting into a car? Holy crap, she thought, she was being kidnapped! Some perverts had drugged her and were carting her off somewhere in their rapey-murder mobile! Lydia started to scream with the sound traveling in the space within her mind. The girl was horrified her mouth wouldn't move but was replaced by the softest whimper. The soft surface of the car seat moves back with her head and torso following it. Her hand twitched as her eyes started to register the world around her with psychedelic blurs. Lydia awes the swirl of monochromatic shades dashed with red, letting out another soft whimper. Her twitching hand is held down, the unknown touch finishes strapping her to the seat. A heavy unknown object slides itself over her head, sounding like a machine, and quiets down when it sets around her eyes. The girl feels the cold sensation leave her senses once the phantoms step away from her blurred vision.
The girl suddenly grimaces, feeling needles poking into her right arm and neck, her body unable to move forward to pull off the things that were causing the stabbing pain. Then it began again, the swirling whirlpool of darkness dragging her back into the depths.
It was a ride she didn't want to be on, the dark abyss rapidly replaced with a zooming array of colors and patterns. The dizzying patterns zip across her visions before auditorily senseless noise bombards her eardrums. Lydia screams in pain covering her ears, feeling her limbs turn into noodles. The world turns back into the park with her sense of perception warping into rainbows shrieking. Lydia returns their shrieking with confused screams. The trees around her melt into rings of hypnotic earth tones that bled into a red sphere.
An eye, a bright red eye blinks at her from a distance. The blinking eye focuses on her in chatty whispers, and then the red from the giant eye starts to burst through like a torrent of water flooding in. Lydia tries fleeing from the eye in her psychedelic nightmare with her body morphing into swirls and her ears assaulted by her memories. She could hear the voices of her mother, and uncle, her friends, and the strangers muffled voices before the red water engulfs her. Her body tumbles around in the water gasping for breath, the girl hearing her voice echoing in her haunted mind. "You need help mother! The sooner you realize that the better!" The message mocks her repeating over again, "You need help, you need help, help, help, help, help…"
"Mother!"
A frightened Lydia jolts up from a cushioned surface with staggered breaths. Her wine-colored eyes focused ahead on an industrial brick wall. She holds back her urge to vomit, lying back down on the bed shivering. The room was filled with natural light bouncing off the metal part of the walls, the light itself not harsh on her irises.
The girl instinctively pulls the heavy green comforter around her, the comforter tangled up her arms and legs heating up her chilled body. Lydia peeks out from the blanket looking around the room. The girl spots the familiar décor of her small bedroom. The room was a modest space with only the essentials for the young girl. Her corner bookshelf sat attached to the wall by the window with dust collecting on some of her old novels. Her computer sat on the foldup desk in the apartment with a cheap chair to match. Next to the bookshelf was a small chest filled with a few outfits to switch from, most of the outfits present. Lydia looks down at her chest to see herself still wearing her high school uniform from the day before. Her white shirt and grey skirt were wrinkled from moving around in her sleep, while the girl's shoes sat idly on the floor. The girl clutches the comforter disoriented.
"What-what's going on? How did I get back here?"
The girl looks out the window beside her bed, the outside of her window appearing the same as it was the day before. A sunny day filled with the sounds of the metropolis, pedestrians flooding the streets moving around in their own mundane lives. Before she examines the details of the outside world further, she then hears the bedroom door slide open. The girl turns swiftly to the door to look at her red-haired mother, who greeted her with a stern face. The youthful looking mother frowned at her daughter while carrying a steaming cup of herbal tea. She glides over to the bed after placing the cup of tea on the desk.
"Good morning." The mother takes a gentle hand to her daughter's chin and grimaces at her complexion. "Goodness, you still look so green, baby. I thought you would have gotten better after a good night's rest," The woman pouts while Lydia stares at her with eyes wide with befuddlement. The mother playfully chuckles and says,
"I think this is the first time in awhile I've heard you mute. How are you feeling? Are you still feeling nauseated?"
"M-mom, what happened? How did I get back here?" The mother's face drops back to a stern glare as if she recalled a dreadful night from before. "I shouldn't be surprise you don't remember. One of your little friends you griped so much about hanging out with had dragged you back home after calling me. She said you ate something weird at the festival and kept 'tripping out' until I came by to pick you two up."
Lydia lowers her head embarrassed and blushing thinking about the incident. An incident she, for the life of her, could not remember. "It was just all, a long hallucination?" The girl reaches beside her bedside for what should have been her favorite spot for her phone, and notices the handheld device missing from her favorite spot. She blinks still disoriented until noticing her mother still giving her nonstop stern glare.
"I took your phone away." She plainly states.
"What? But wh- "The woman puts a hand in front of the young girl with a scowl, eyeing her with disappointment.
"You think you deserve the privilege of a phone after I caught you high as a kite yesterday? I was worried sick for hours until I found you."
"What? But it wasn't my fault. I was- "
"Save it, Liddy. You are not having your phone back until your grounding is over." The woman turns to the door in a huff, not bothering to tell her how long she was grounded this time. She looks back to scold her again. "You don't know how much you worried me, Lydia. After the scare we had a few months ago, I couldn't bear to think what would have happened if…"
The mother stops herself midsentence and says, "You shouldn't be moving around right now. Take some time to rest more. I will start looking for another place to move to in the meantime…drink some tea. It will help your stomach."
The woman glides out of the room with the sliding door sliding shut behind her. Lydia stared down at the blanket on her bed drinking in the motherly guilt that had rained down on her. Her mother knew how to lay it on thick with years of practice.
The girl sighs and crosses her arms still rattled with chills. What kind of high did she accidentally put herself in yesterday? The girl frowns and lies back down on the bed wrapping herself up in the blanket like a cocoon. "What did happen yesterday? Why, why can't I remember any of it? It couldn't have all been some hallucination. It just couldn't have."
The girl's thoughts are interrupted by the spine-tingling sensation of eyes upon her. She could see it; her mind flashed the vision of red eyes watching her again.
It had to be the same feeling she felt before at school. Those eyes in her vision lingered, the cold taciturn gaze that felt strangely familiar. Where had she seen those eyes? She never met anyone with red eyes before. Was she still seeing things?
The girl clutches her head as nausea overwhelms her. She rolls into a fetal position on the bed with a groan looking back to the steaming cup of tea on her desk. The girl's eyes betray her watching the cup move on the desk. Her eyes shut and open to see the cup was on the other side. The disoriented girl reaches out for the cup. She gasps seeing binary symbols dash across the space around the tea. The girl still reaches out for the cup until she starts to see black swirls again. "What, why am I…no, mom…"
The girl's hand collapses beside the bed, lying motionless in the late morning sun.
She wasn't sure how long she slept after she fell asleep, but she knew it had to be hours later. The girl opens her eyes with grogginess and yawns looking at her tiny bedroom. It was nighttime in the metropolis, the moon shining crescent in the clouds. Lydia sits up from the twin bed and forces herself to get up from the covers. The girl still looked sleepy wandering around the bedroom with unexplained suspicion. Everything looked the same, not a detail out of place. Well, with exception to the now cold cup of herbal tea on her desk. Beside the cup of tea was the flashing signal of a video message on her computer screen.
The girl raises an eyebrow and moves towards the computer to turn it out of sleep mode. 'No, nothing weird so far', thought the teenager. The computer flashes on with a happy bunny mascot cooing a high pitch sound and bouncing along the holographic monitor. The bunny on the screen suddenly pulls out a cell phone while dancing on the screen, and shouts 'You got a message!'
'Remind me why I liked this bunny thing again?' she asked herself. Lydia presses a button to listen to the video message on her computer. The screen pops out the image of her mother giving a cordial smile in her recording.
'Ciao, Tesoro. Presumo che ti sia svegliato di nuovo tardi. Speriamo che tu ti senta già meglio' The woman had a beautiful Italian accent as she spoke with elegance to the girl. The language itself wasn't a common lingo anymore these days. It was one that well, only certain people the Federation didn't like used when talking about certain things that may or may not help Immigrant lines hide information…but also for her mother to yell at her in another language. Apparently her go to for scolding her couldn't stay at English.
The woman ceases smiling to look sternly at her daughter, as if still peeved about the day before.
'Se ti senti meglio, ti ho lasciato del cibo da mangiare in frigo. Una volta che hai finito, ti ho lasciato una lista di cose da completare intorno alla casa come punizione.'
The mother in the prerecorded message springs up a lovely list of 'fun' for her daughter to complete and says, 'Mi aspetto che tutto sia fatto prima di tornare. Usa questo tempo per riflettere sulle tue azioni, signorina. Ti voglio bene, sii buono.'
Lydia gawks at the screen incredulous at the list that popped up after the message ended. "You gotta be kidding me? It wasn't even my fault, mom!" The girl groans and mumbles reading the list of house chores to complete. 'What was the point of arguing with a screen?'
She starts off the evening by packing up items around the apartment. Before that, she was forced to dust off everything before boxing things up and dusting off the rented furniture that came with the apartment. Lydia moves on to sweeping the floors and cleaning the glass on the balcony door. Next, as she grumbled some more, she goes on to snack on what was left for her in the fridge and returns to mopping the floor with an old-fashioned mop. "What's the point of cleaning if we're not going to live here anymore?" grumbled the girl.
She sighs while wiping her forehead and takes a seat on the sitting room couch to admire her labor. There was still a little bit more to pack, but all that seemed left was the bathroom, her mother's room, and lastly her own. Lydia looked forlorn thinking about the move, her mom having her way on this decision again. The fifteen-year-old felt tired of doing this constantly. What kind of life was it always running away? Even if this was for her stupid job, what kind of job doesn't give you enough protection to keep you in one place longer than a year?
The girl covers her face with her hands and sighs again. 'I don't want to leave. I actually like it here…Why do you always make me leave when things start to get great for us?'
'Yeah that sounds like it freaking sucks!'
"Who said that?!" shouts Lydia. The girl looks around the room freaking out at the disembodied voice. It couldn't have been her mother. The girl knew around this time her mother wouldn't be home for another six hours. The voice wasn't even female, the pitch too low for a woman's voice. Perhaps it was…well as stupid as it was to hope it was him…
"Uncle? You're here? If so…since when do you curse?" Lydia pauses listening for the voice. She waits for a few minutes until she hears nobody in the sitting room. What the hell was she thinking? Her uncle?! The guy wasn't even in this part of the galaxy for another month at the earliest. The girl's face was bugged eyed as she peeped behind the couch in the sitting room looking behind her. The girl lets out a pitiful 'eep' waiting for something to appear.
She could have sworn she heard someone. "Hello? Is anyone there?" The girl waited there listening for the source of the disembodied voice. In the shadows lingered a pair of figures hiding out of sight. One whacking the other upside the head with a paper fan.
