Note: I don't own anything
Interlude 0.1: Taylor Hebert
She woke up in the middle of the night in an unfamiliar room. Almost everything in it was probably white, but because the lights were off the room looked like it was split in the middle between greys and blues. It was a pretty small room, and the only things of note in it, besides the window, were the hospital bed that she was lying in, a small wooden bedside table to her left, and a chair to her right. She turned her head and checked if there was anything on top of the table, squinting her eyes in an effort to overcome her poor vision. Someone left her glasses there, her spare glasses that is, as well as a piece of paper under them with something written on it, a pen, and a glass of water. Slowly, she turned the rest of her body on its left side and grabbed her glasses and the note from the table. Then, just as slowly, she returned to her previous position. Her body felt fine, but also tired and exhausted at the same time, which was confusing. It didn't hurt to move, but when she tried to put just a little bit more effort into her movements than the bare minimum her body just gave up. After about a minute and a half of struggling against her own body, she finally got herself into a half-sitting position on the bed, put her glasses on and started reading the note:
{From Dad,
Taylor, I hope you're feeling alright when you read this. You're in Central Hospital. Please, don't worry, and rest. The doctors and Panacea said that nothing is threatening your life or your health. I will come to visit every day.
Love you}
She could see a few uneven circular spots scattered on the paper, and she had a pretty good idea about their origin. When she woke up, she couldn't immediately remember what happened, why or how she ended up in a hospital, but now the memories of the worst day of her life were returning to her.
She remembered how she walked into the school building. It was Monday, January 11, the first day after the break. When she moved in the direction of her locker, she could see a crowd of students standing there. This was probably the best sign fate could've given her to run, because nothing good would ever draw such a large crowd in Winslow High. The bitches left her alone for a whole week before the break, and this had given her a false hope that they finally got bored and left her alone. She let her guard down, and this left her open for the most vicious "prank" so far.
As she moved through the crowd, she noticed the horrible smell. The Trio stood in the middle of the crowd, a few steps away from the locker, bored and disgusted expressions on their faces. When she finally got to her locker, they gave her the smuggest of grins she has ever seen from them. She thought it would be just a simple, childish "Ha-ha, your locker smells now, and so do you. You suck, Hebert!" prank, just taken up to eleven. She resigned herself to her fate and opened the locker. That was when she realised how wrong, how horribly mistaken she was. Her locker was full of used tampons and other disgusting things, and when she opened the door, not only did the smell of rotten blood and whatever else got a hundred times worse, but most of the contents fell out on the floor, right where she stood, burying her legs in disgusting, rotten trash.
She started to vomit, and that was exactly when someone, probably Sophia, kicked her in the back, shoving her face-first into the locker and closed the door behind. She heard Sophia say something, but she didn't hear exactly what she said because she hit her head on the way in. Her ears were ringing, her eyes were itching, her head hurt and felt heavy, and she could barely move her body. The smell started to get worse, now that the locker was closed, and the smell of her own vomit did not make it better at all. A few seconds later she started screaming, first in panic, then in anger, demanding they let her out. All she heard in response was laughter.
After the first bell, all she heard in response to her pleas for help was silence. She screamed, and cried, and kicked, and scratched until she couldn't do any of this anymore. Any movement, any action would just bring her more pain. She thought that she was going to die there, that the bitches would actually torture her to death. Then she lost her consciousness and woke up here. She felt like she wanted to throw up again, but her stomach was empty and a few seconds later the feeling left her. She turned back to the table, grabbed the glass with a shaking hand and drank the water. She didn't even notice until now how dry her throat was. After she put the empty glass back on the table and looked at the note again. The note in her right hand was blank on the other side, so after about a minute of thinking about everything that happened to her, she put the note down on the table, empty side up, grabbed a pen and started writing:
{Dad, I feel fine, don't worry. I woke up in the middle of the night. We need to talk. Don't trust the school.
Love you too}
She put the glasses back on the table and put the pen on the side of her note. When she was lying back down, for a brief moment she thought that she saw in the corner of her eye a human figure outside her window, but when she turned her head to look there was nothing there. After staring at the window for half a minute, Taylor decided that it was either her tired mind playing tricks on her, or one of the local heroes was flying by. A few minutes later Taylor fell asleep.
Author's Note:
Anyone who has more than two brain cells to rub together probably noticed that when Taylor woke up, she wasn't overwhelmed with bug senses.
