THANK YOU so much to everyone that reviewed. I really appreciated it.
I'm so sorry for the delay in updating. You see, when I posted the first chapter, I hadn't thought a plot line for this story (I was stupid, I know) and I had to think of one before I continued. Sadly, that's how I start all my fics – write first, think later. Ugh, it's a completely stupid and ridiculous way to write, but that's what I do. Hope everyone can forgive me.
Okay, back to the story . . .
BPOV
The dark was a crushing weight on my lungs, burning my trachea. Panic, blinding and staggering, thundered in my heart like a stampede of elephants fleeing over the savannah. It shot through my veins, a terrifying high. I pressed my palms painfully to my eyes, trying to push out reality.
I heard screaming – the high pitched, terrified scream of a young child. Jessica. My fingers clawed at my ears desperately as I curled into a ball, trying to block out the agony of sound. I couldn't remember where I was or what I was doing lying down.
Then another memory assaulted me. The sunlight scorched the top of my head, my hair a halo of fire. Humiliation was swift and strong, causing tears to fill my eyes. I knew that if I tried to cover my nakedness I would only be punished more. And so, with sunburns beginning to form on pale skin, I stood naked in the backyard of our suburban home, in the place where father had ordered me. He had chosen this spot specifically because the neighbors prying eyes couldn't reach into this corner.
My punishment was five hours.
I jerked violently awake, terror lodging like a stone in my throat. Anticipating the hard blow that would inevitably result from my having dozed off, I cradled my head with my arms, cringing.
Yet nothing happened.
The world was strangely quiet around me, and whatever I lay on was soft and broad. Confusion fogging my mind, I opened my eyes. Immediately my bewilderment only multiplied.
The room was dark and quiet, unfamiliar, foreign. Slowly fear began to spread within me. Where was I? And how the hell did I get here? My heart rate began to rise drastically. Sitting up in the strange bed, I looked around the room. It was a shabby apartment, haphazardly cleaned so that only a corner of the room was clean. I saw only two doors – the front one obviously leading to the hall and another one I assumed joined a bathroom. Was this only a two-room apartment? Somehow I would have thought my imagination could come up with something more original than a dirty apartment.
Then I saw a dark jacket thrown over the back of a recliner and my memory surged like a thirty foot swell.
I gasped, holding the side of the bed tightly for support. I remembered everything. The sting of the belt buckle, Jessica's screams, the brutality of the front steps as I tumbled down. Then I vaguely recalled crawling into a ball in the road and the angel with the platinum halo that had cradled me in his arms.
Disoriented, I quickly swung my legs off the side of the bed, standing up. Immediately my head felt absurdly light and I staggered, grasping the wall frantically so I wouldn't pass out. Pain exploded up my side, a deep throbbing originating somewhere on the back of my skull. I gasped at the agony that seemed to go all the way through to the organs deep inside me.
"Oh God," I panted, lowering myself to the floor. Eventually my vision cleared and I began to crawl towards the door I assumed led to the bathroom. My hand grazed a black object and I glanced down, pausing long enough for my mind to register that it was some kind of gun.
A wave of nausea passed over me, and I knew to quickly move to the bathroom or I would vomit over the gun and the three others that peeked out from under the bed. My sweaty palm found the doorknob after what seemed hours of crawling, and I fell into the bathroom.
Crawling to the toilet, I vomited into the spotlessly clean white bowl. There was nothing but dry heaves from my empty stomach, acidic bile rising in my throat. The heaves caused sharp lances of pain to stab through my abdomen. Unable to stop myself, I sobbed once, a thick tear dropping from my cheek to the toilet, mixing with the few bits of regurgitated food swimming there.
Wiping my mouth with my hand, I struggled to lift myself to the mirror above the sink. Gasping from the extreme effort, I finally leaned against the sink, my stomach pressing into the white porcelain. When I could breathe again without feeling as if slivers of glass were being driven into my flesh, I lifted my eyes to the face in the mirror.
The girl I saw there was a stranger. Her hair was dirty and tangled, dark circles smudged under her eyes, and her face was pale as white-out. Her lips were both busted and swollen, filth smeared over her skin. Thick, dry clotted blood crusted on the back of her head when I turned slightly to look. And her dark eyes were simply . . . empty – devoid of any and all emotion.
This face frightened me. I knew it was my reflection I was staring at yet I didn't recognize myself. When had I become a shell of my former self? When had I receded deep within my mind so that my emotions no longer showed even in my eyes? I realized now that I felt nothing. No fear, no confusion, no pain.
I was hollow.
Standing back from the mirror, I lifted the hem of my shirt to see a network of bruises so elaborate that they covered nearly every inch of skin. They were colored dark blue and purple, a few yellow around the edges.
And still I felt nothing.
I wondered if I would ever feel anything again.
EPOV
I had left her asleep on my bed, her broken form inert under the blankets. I had felt the strangest sort of reluctance as I left her to gather the last half of my payment for getting rid of Phillip. Reluctance was not an emotion I had experienced often, especially over a woman. Esme expected me to be at the coffee shop in just under an hour and I had never once been late in the entire time I had been employed there.
Now as I made my way back to my apartment, taking the stairs two at a time. My teeth were clamped together, my jaw hard and taut.
I was so fucking pissed at myself. Why had I been so stupid as to take her to my apartment? Wouldn't it have been easier to simply drop her off at a homeless shelter so that they could sort her out? What the hell did I expect to do with her? Her injuries would take weeks, perhaps months, to heal. Did I intend to keep her until them?
Cursing myself for being so impulsive, so stupid, I pulled out my keys and inserted the apartment key into the doorknob, turning. The lock slid easily out of place and I slowly swung the door open. The first thing I noticed was that the bed was empty. The sheets were tangled and dragging on the carpet below. I cringed when I saw the horrific state of my apartment. I hadn't had much time to clean before I had to leave to meet Riff and the condition of the room was a testament to that.
She must have been in the bathroom. Suddenly, harsh, bitter memories assailed me again. Unused to reliving the past – I was usually exceptionally gifted at pushing away my memories – I paused and closed my eyes tightly.
"Don't play with the bleach," mother had said, taking my hands away from the cabinet under the kitchen sink. Her fingers crushed my eleven year old wrists and I felt my bones crack painfully. Tears had risen to my eyes as I bit my lip, trying to be a man and not cry. Mother was never aware that she hurt me when she did things like this.
"I'm sorry, mother," I said, moving to stand pressed against the refrigerator. I had watched as she bent down to pick the jug of Clorox up out of the cabinet. Unscrewing the top, I watched with a child's naïveté as she poured bleach into the Spiderman cup that I had been drinking from.
The orange juice mixed with the bleach. Calmly, she set the jug back in the cabinet, closing the wooden door.
"Are you thirsty, Edward?" my mother had asked, turning to look at me, her dark auburn hair glowing like a fire in the light of the sun from the window. It was difficult to see her face with the light behind her and I squinted.
"Yes, mother, I'm thirsty."
"Here," she replied, handing me the cup that now held both bleach and orange juice. "But listen to me, this is very important. Only take a tiny sip, understand? Barely enough to coat your tongue."
The intensity that smoldered in her eyes frightened me as she leaned towards my small body. "I understand," I said, my voice wavering. With her urgent eyes on me, I hesitantly sipped from the liquid inside my Spiderman plastic cup.
"Does it taste any different, Edward?"
I paused, keeping the liquid on my tongue for a moment before swallowing. "Not really," I answered.
"That is because I only put a small amount in it. It doesn't change the taste so much as the smell. Now, if one were to drink this entire cup, the small amount of bleach would have painful repercussions. The individual would most likely die from the effects of the bleach eating through the lining of the stomach and digestive tract." Mother took the cup from my hands, dumping the rest of the liquid into the sink. "There would be acute, agonizing pain."
My eyes widened. "Mommy," I began, using the term I hadn't employed in years. Since I had turned six, she had forbidden me to call her anything other than mother. I forgot that now. "Mommy, am I going to die?"
She smiled tolerantly, running her hand over my hair. "No, silly, you're not going to die. It is proven that experience and hands on learning creates the most effective education. Now you know that bleach does not have a taste as long as it is in small quantities in a drink of strong taste." Bending down, she kissed my forehead tenderly. I grinned and hugged her neck.
I didn't care what the boys at school said, my mother wasn't strange or crazy. I loved her because she loved me and protected me. Or at least, that had been my logic when I was eleven.
Now, I gasped, shaking my head violently to rid myself of the memory. I knew now that my mother had been at least partially mentally unstable, her sense of reason and logic screwed up.
I heard the clatter of plastic, my head snapping towards the bathroom door. I heard the sound of frantic fingers and the rattle of pills inside plastic bottles. I clenched my eyes shut before opening them wide – trying to dispel the vision of my mother pouring bleach into my favorite cup for me to sip along with the orange juice that was already there.
Then I pushed the bathroom door open.
BPOV
A startling, splitting headache was throbbing near the back of my skull. Wondering if there was any aspirin in the medicine cabinet, I pulled the mirrored door open. My hand accidentally brushed against one of the orange bottles and they fell from the shelves, clattering into the sink and over the floor. I cringed, praying that no one was around to hear.
I still was unsure of where I was and how I got here. Frantically trying to pick up the spilt bottles, I racked my mind for my possible whereabouts. There was the angel of last night that I was sure I had dreamt up. Yet . . . perhaps it was possible that this was his bathroom. I found it slightly strange how clean the lavatory was as opposed to the bedroom/living room.
Abruptly the door swung open, the knob hitting the pale wall behind it. I froze, my hands pausing in my attempt to stuff the medicine bottles back onto the shelves. My heart faltered in its beating, horror dawning within me as thickly as hot tar. Slowly, I turned towards the door.
He stood tall in the doorway, no longer cast in shadow. His hair was tangled, hanging carelessly over his brow. The man possessed a strong kind of beauty – the kind that made young virgins sweat in their beds at midnight as they fantasized of the way he would ravage their bodies. His eyes were the darkest green I had ever seen, lit with shrewd displeasure as he analyzed my form. He had full sensual lips and broad shoulders that tapered down to a narrow waist. I felt a strange sort of fluttering in my lower abdomen, as if my slumbering flesh had only just awoken and was very aware of his proximity.
"What are you doing?" His voice was the same gentle yet slightly frustrated voice of the angel of last night. But now he had traded his halo for dark circles beneath his tragic eyes.
"Um." I bit my lip, unsure of how to explain. "I felt sick."
He was silent, staring at me with internal anger broiling inside him. I felt small under his scrutiny. "You are filthy," he finally said.
I blushed, knowing he was right. "Would you mind if I used your bathtub?" My voice was faint despite my attempt to sound strong and confident – two emotions I had never experienced in my life. For the longest moment he didn't answer and I feared he was going to ignore my words.
But he nodded once, quickly. "Never touch the medicine cabinet," he ordered.
"Of course," I replied quickly the moment before he shut the bathroom door between us. I leaned back against the sink, deflating like an old party balloon the moment he left. His absence felt strange, as if I was missing something vital to my essential make up. I felt numb again, unsure of what to do now that he was in the other room. I thought about opening the door while I ran the water and got undressed simply so that I could see him and reassure myself that I had not in fact been hallucinating last night. But I quickly decided against that, reaching out to run hot water in the tub.
There was such . . . tragedy in his eyes, as if his soul held all the sorrow of the world. The pained slant of his shoulders suggested that he had witnessed more death and agony than most men short of war veterans.
EPOV
Why hadn't I told her to leave? Why had I allowed her pain to sway me? I should have grabbed her by the wrists and pushed her out into the hallway. I should have hardened my heart to the girl with blood in her hair and fear in her eyes.
Closing my eyes, I leaned against the door. She was going to screw my life up. I could not afford to care for an injured girl, no matter how pretty she might be under all the bruises and filth. A girl like that would complicate my life. In my career, it was a lethal mistake to be involved with anyone at all, much less romantically.
Groaning in frustration, I sat down on my chair in the corner, facing the small television set that was currently turned off. I heard the sound of water running, and I closed my hands into tight fists.
This woman, this girl, was going to ruin everything I had worked to gain – respect in the underground world, a steady, if petty, stream of customers, and the brittle faith that my way of life would not destroy me as I had so feared.
No, I couldn't allow her to remain and obliterate the life I had made for myself, however shitty that might be.
Which was why I had to get rid of her.
Again, let me apologize for not updating AND because this was a short chapter. Mrs. Cullen959 has graciously helped me with the plot for this story. Without her, you wouldn't even be getting this chapter.
I hoped you enjoyed this chapter! Thank you so much for reading and PLEASE review.
It means so much to me. Not to mention makes me update quicker. *winks*
-Oriana
