Sorry for taking so long to write more. Hope this is okay regardless.
She'd been putting it off, like always. Only she failed in obtaining herself a detention or a good enough reason to stay back late. Casey had no choice but to start walking home, no matter how long the journey was by foot to the house where she lived with her Uncle John. The longer it took, the better in her eyes.
Shrugging her bag over her left shoulder, she walked at a slow pace, her shoes and bottom of her jeans scuffling against the pavement as she passed through the wired school gates. It had already reached 5.30 in the afternoon and most of the students had gone home, aside from her and some of the school staff while she lingered about near the building.
Playing with one of the thick sleeve on her jacket that covered over her wrist with her fingers nervously, she glanced both ways before beginning to cross the road, the breeze sending long strands of her dark hair blowing around her. It was quiet at this time of the night. Peaceful, even.
Occassionally a car would drive past, disrupting the silence and startling her. But mainly it was quiet.
The closer she got to the house where she lived with her Uncle, the more tense her shoulders became. An unnerving feeling crept over all of her skin, making the little hair follicles on her arms and the nape of her neck stand up on edge, while her stomach muscles clenched, a sick anxious feeling building in her gut; Her usual feelings the closer she became to reach the home she shared with her Uncle.
It was always that way; She'd stiffen and tense like a rabbit being alerted to the sound of a bloodhound on the scent by its barking and its rustling through the grass. If she could, she would have avoided heading home altogether- though 'home' was not the word she would describe nor call where she lived as.
Casey had ran away more times than she could count on one hand, only for it to prove futile. The last time she attempted to run away, just four or five months ago, the police had found her on their nightly patrol wandering the streets. To them a school girl her age wandering alone in the middle of the night was a cause for concern. It had only resulted in the officers returning her straight back to her Uncle. If she didn't get a detention or find some way to prolong having to go home after school, she had no choice but to face the misery of being in the house with her Uncle.
The memory of last time she had failed to run away crept back on her...
Blue and red lights from the police car alerted her Uncle John to her arrival home. Casey glanced nervously out of the window from in the backseat of the patrol car, watching the blinds flicker open then closed as her Uncle peered out of them to see what all of the commotion was. Then his bulky silutte appeared as he opened the front door of the house. He stood out on the front steps while waving her and the police officers up.
Even then, Casey had been so sure she was about to vomit. Something sour had risen in her throat as she had turned to glance at the two policemen as they had exited the vehicle. One opened the car door for her, stepping back to let her climb out. She'd remembered peering up at the officer with wide pleading eyes, her heart thundering away in her chest.
Please don't make me have to go back up there, she had begged, wishing the man could have somehow had the ability to read her mind. Please don't make me go up there.
Only it had been too dark at the time. The officer had failed to read her facial expression, her tense body language. He'd beckoned her out of the car gently, and Casey knew it had been too late then. Grabbing her school bag by the strap, she had reluctantly shoved her feet out of the car, then stood, wincing as the officer slammed the door loudly behind breaths had become labored and uneven as she started stepping up towards where her Uncle stood, still in shadow on the steps. He'd had both hands on his waist; A sign that forewarned her that something unpleasant was bound to happen later once they were alone and the cops had left without a glimmer of suspicion.
No one would believe her anyway. Her Uncle John had always told her that, often enough it now had become a constant chant inside the back of her mind, a permanent belief, something ingrained deep into her. Who would believe her word over his?
Not even the school counselors or any law enforcers in a position of authority would believe her if they knew what really happened behind closed doors. Sometimes Casey felt as if she were truly invisible, as if she were always screaming at the top of her lungs on the inside, only for her pleas to constantly fall onto deaf ears.
Sliding her thumb beneath the layers of her sleeve, she bit down on her bottom lip with her teeth as it came into contact with the cut she had done to herself earlier in the bathroom at school. She rubbed the tip of her thumb back and forth over the tender fresh cut absently, remembering how disappointed her Uncle had been in her, at how unimpressed he was by her antics yet again of running away.
"You really do need to stop this childish nonsense, Casey," he'd said as he used the tips of his stubby fingers to shove her backwards into the chair.
She fell back into it, her school bag dropping carelessly on the ground between her sneakers as she kept her light eyes low to her fingers, her body tense as a bow-string.
Showing your submission was always best, Casey had learned from an early age, ever since her Uncle had began to do this to her, even under the pretense of 'games'. She had swallowed against a bitter taste in her mouth as her Uncle had sighed loudly, the stench of beer wafting from his breath.
"Your a grown-up now. It's time to play grown-up games." John had placed his hand beneath her chin, forcefully lifting her face so that she had no choice but to meet his eyes. "What would your father think if he knew of this? Of how you keep running away like this? You think he'd be happy?"
It was his tactic of manipulation, she understood. He always brought her father into the conversation, using him as a bargaining tool to gain her obedience.
"I don't think he'd be very happy that the police had to drop you off home tonight. Do you?"
Uncle John's face had changed in that way it always did. It gave her warning that something monstrous was coming, something beastly. She didn't fight or do anything more to anger him. She used to when she was younger, but she hadn't for a very long, long time.
Casey had long since learned that fighting was no use and that her Uncle's physical strength overpowered hers each and every time. It had only resulted in her getting even more bruised or hurt physically than she already was during her Uncle's 'grown-up games', as he often liked to refer to it as. It did not stop her fighting on the inside however.
Often, during those times with her Uncle, she had allowed her mind to wander off. Casey would pretend she were outside of herself sometimes, when her Uncle did the things that he did. She had learnt it at an early age; A way to distance herself from her physical body. Sometimes she'd drift off, imagining she were somewhere else, a glorious land with endless water and sand. Somewhere far, far away where her Uncle couldn't touch her spiritually. But afterwards, she would always come down from the cloud, her body showing the marks and pains of what he'd put her through.
The sharp stinging sensation on her cut from earlier in the day brought her out of her thoughts and she dipped her head to look at it, swallowing. Her thumb felt wet and as she lifted her arm slightly to look closer at her cut, she saw her furious rubbing had reopened the wound, making it seep with fresh blood again. Just like that, her mind was flung to that odd man during recess. How he had remarked on the dirtiness of her jacket sleeve through the wired fence, how disgusted he seemed.
A buzzing noise and music broke out into the silence as she walked. Her heart jolted. It was her phone.
Swinging her bag around, Casey hastily unzipped her bag, plunging her hand in, trying to locate it. Once she found it, she checked Caller I.D. Her heart seized and jolted in her chest even more.
Her Uncle was calling her now. She knew better than to not answer his calls.
She thumbed the answer button, inhaling in deeply once. Then she held the phone up to her ear. "H-hello?"
"Casey, where are you?" he demanded on the other line.
Her eyes flew frantically around her surroundings. She hesitated before telling him what street she was in.
"I'm coming to get you in the car," he told her with no room for discussion in his tone. "Wait right there until I get there." He hung up before she could even beg him not to come get her.
Defeated, Casey switched off her phone and moved towards the sidewalk, sinking down into the gutter while she waited. That awful feeling overtook her again; those feelings she always had due to anything to do with her Uncle John. Clutching her phone tightly in one hand, she rested her elbow against her knees, curling them into her chest as she waited nervously, her dark hair falling across her face like a curtain.
She wasn't sure how long she waited there for, didn't even bother checking the time on her phone. But every second that ticked by, it only made the feelings within her grow worse. She licked and moistened her lips as she eyed her surroundings, leaves scattering in the breeze on the pavement. A few cars drove past, their headlights blinding her vision momentarily each time, but they were fortunately not her Uncle John in his car. He hadn't arrived yet.
Dropping her eyes to the tips of her sneakers, she shuffled her feet against the concrete noisily while she waited. The waiting, it was unbearable. The choking dread, the suffocating fear. She began to trace a pattern with her shoes on the concrete as a way to distract herself, blinking heavily. Then out of the top of her eye, she thought she saw it. A shape, a tall shape like a person standing across the road.
She glanced up through her eyelashes, her breath hitching in her throat. Only it must have been a trick of her imagination, a trick of the lamplight's dimply lighting her surroundings. Because next second, there was no shape there. Just a branch from a tree in someone's yard swinging in the breeze soundlessly.
Bright headlights from a car cut through her vision and Casey turned curiously. She recognized the car the instance it turned around the corner, cruising down the street. Her Uncle had arrived.
He must have seen her from where she sat, waiting in the gutter, because he signaled to pull over at the sidewalk. The car halted a mere ten inches from her sneakers. The dread rising, ballooning out her heart painfully, she forced herself to stand as the door opened on her Uncle's side. Instinctively she stepped back as her Uncle strode across the front of the car, blocking the headlights momentarily to reach her. He left the car running as he forcefully tore the strap of her bag off her shoulder, gesturing wordlessly for Casey to get inside the car.
Dropping her chin and swallowing against a lump that had formed in the back of her throat, Casey did, meekly and silently reaching out to open the door to the passenger's side while her Uncle went to shove her bag in the backseat. She had only just glanced down to buckle her seat belt in securely when she heard the odd noise.
The light noise as her Uncle carelessly dumped her bag in the backseat. Then another came after it; an odd muffled noise, followed by a strange thump. The car jostled slightly as if someone rather large and stout like her Uncle John had been bashed against it. Next instance, the back door was slammed shut briskly.
The car was vibrating slightly from the running engine as Casey curiously turned around in her seat. A shadow moved across the rear of the car through the window. Immediately Casey knew it wasn't her Uncle. The shadow belonged to someone taller, someone slimmer.
Something clearly wasn't right.
Her senses heightened due to caution, she brought her eyes to the side mirror, glancing out suspiciously. The road and the streets were lit just enough that she thought she saw someone's leg on the ground at the back of her Uncle's car. Like someone was lying on the road, someone's legs sprawled out from an attack. She recognized that shoe at once, attached to that leg just at the same time someone sat in the front, driver's seat of the car beside her, reaching around to click their seat belt on securely.
Her heart felt as though it were frozen in her chest. Her breathing automatically stopped.
Someone else was inside the car. Someone else that was not her Uncle.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of something yellow as the car continued to vibrate.
No sudden movements, she told herself while she tried to remain as still and quiet in the seat as possible; a deer frozen in the headlights. No sudden movements.
Turning her head the slightest fraction while strands of her hair flew around her face, Casey saw what that shade of yellow was. Her mouth dropped open as her eyebrows arched. Someone was wiping down the steering wheel with a yellow cloth resembling a handkerchief. She noticed how careful they were, how thorough to clean and wipe every surface of the steering wheel that they could reach.
As if wiping away her Uncle's sweat or germs from him gripping at the steering wheel...
Those fingers and hands definitely did not belong to her Uncle. Those hands and fingers were sinewy, longer, as if they could fit over someone's throat without difficulty, a horrifying, sudden thought to her. Those clothes most definitely were not her Uncle's clothes.
The person was wearing a bland, light grey color, head to toe, from the trousers, to the long-sleeved dress-shirt. Why did this person somehow seem familiar to her, as if she had looked at them once before?
As though finally done with frantically wiping down every surface reachable, the yellow cloth was carefully folded four times. Then both thumbs were used to smooth it of any wrinkles, before it was shoved into the left trouser pocket.
She realized she was shaking all over, her body shuddering with light tremours as the car was at last thrown into drive. She was thrown back into the headrest at the unexpectedness of the car suddenly becoming no longer stationary, moving again.
This man, he was driving the car now. Her Uncle's car. With her still sitting in it. Her Uncle... who he had clearly beaten and left either dead or unconscious sprawled out on the road.
Casey still felt as though she had lost all sense of feeling, as though she couldn't remember such a normal process as breathing as her eyes finally took in all of the person that was now sitting in the driver's seat of her Uncle's car, making her movements slow.
She felt her heart race spike up as it occurred to her who this man was. His hair was short, cut close to the scalp. He was wearing glasses, glasses that shined and reflected harshly in the headlights of oncoming traffic heading past them. She could only just see his piercing blue eyes as he heaved out a loud sigh while pressing down lightly on the breaks, slowing the car speed down.
It was the man who had talked to her earlier through the fence at school! The one who had seemed so weirdly offended over the fact that she had blood staining the sleeve of her jacket after she'd cut herself!
But why would he do this? Why do this to her?
His jaw muscles twitched as the car came to a full stop, as though he were gritting his teeth. It was if he was suddenly frustrated by something. Annoyed, even. His fingers clenched tightly over the steering wheel, then loosened, his knuckles straining under the tight grip. Casey tore her eyes away from him for one second to realize the source of the man's frustration. They had arrived at a red light, which meant evidently the car had to come to a stop.
The car had come to a complete stop!
Realizing and seeing her way out, Casey kept her eyes forward, focused on the cars lined up in front of them at the red light. Careful not to make any sudden obvious movements, she lifted the hand that was closest to the door handle. Her entire body shook as she breathed deeply and shakily through her mouth, her palm skimming the cool handle to the right of her.
But then it was too late. The light flickered green to go, and it was too late. The back of her head was flung back against the head rest again as he slammed a foot back down on the gas, sending the car shooting forward and mobile again.
"Still dirty." His voice suddenly broke the tense silence around them in the car.
Casey let her eyes fall on the side of the man's face again warily as she stiffened. She was unsure whether he was speaking to her or not, his Bostonian rough voice filled with gruff disgust. But then the man sent a fleeting look in her direction to show that he was in fact directing the words at her, his lips pinched tight, the corners pulled downward. Again it were as if he were sucking on something sour, something unpalatable.
"Your sleeve," he abruptly elaborated with an inpatient jerk of his chin. "Your sleeves still filthy. It's got blood all over it. It's disgusting."
Casey's eyes flitted down to the sleeve herself, noticing the dried stain where she'd cut herself earlier. The blood had soaked through the fabric, leaving a splotched red stain.
"Take it off," he suddenly demanded like a dog barking an order.
Her eyes flew up at his face again, stunned. Take it off? Why? But why would it bother him so much?
Clearly she had took too long to obey. "Take it off, I said," the man repeated, lifting his voice. He wasn't exactly yelling at her but his tone wasn't exactly friendly either. She caught an odd sense of desperation in his tone, in the way he was breathing even, as he shook his head. Even though the front of his shirt, she noticed the way his chest rose and fell in panicked, stressed exhalations. "You can't be filthy when we present you. He wants you clean."
He wants her clean? She caught onto the keyword as she slowly yanked the zipper down on her jacket. He? And we. When 'we' present you. Casey's mind raced. Whoever this man was, he obviously wasn't doing this alone. There were others involved.
Obviously this wasn't a case of a normal car jacking if the guy had no qualms about Casey still being in it. And presenting her? Presenting her to who exactly?
She let her eyes fall on the man again while she struggled out of her jacket with the seat belt still on. Her impression of him earlier today, with how he seemed so anal about stains and cleanliness, she realized she were right on the assumption. He appeared to be full-on having a panic attack over the stain. She watched, puzzled, as the man loosened one hand over the steering wheel, only to bring it to the top of his closely-shaved scalp. His slender fingers shook as he ran his palm over his forehead, his breathing shallow.
Managing to fling her arms out of the jacket sleeves, she let it fall at her feet on the floor of the car. Then she used her sneakers to kick and tuck the cloth beneath the bottom of the car seat, her eyes still glued to the man in control of her Uncle's car.
Slowly, throughout the light rumbling sounds of the engine, she could hear the man's breathing go slower and slower. More relaxed, less panicked and more at ease. Brushing his hand away from his scalp, he corrected his glasses before placing it back on the steering wheel, flexing his fingers around the leather again tightly.
But presenting her? Presenting her to who?
Thank you all for your alerts and reviews, I really appreciate them and am flattered. Would love to know if you are still interested in a Casey/Dennis story? :D