Chapter 6: Life is like a vampire with a human; it sucks
Katherine breathed slowly as he pulled the thick wooden stake out of her body.
"You didn't have to do that!" She yelled at the man standing in front of her.
"Katerina... I thought you knew better than to play your doppelgänger by now. You can't trick me and you definitely can't trick Niklaus. So what was your plan? To figure out what we were up to and use it against us? Or maybe to hide in plain sight?"
"No, I wasn't... I didn't want to be here! All I wanted was to skip town, but they made me stay here!"
"Don't play games with me, Katerina." He said calmly as he drove another stake through her stomach.
"I'm telling you the truth! What would I get out of lying in this position?!"
"You tell me. And Katerina, this is starting to get annoying. We've been doing this for past
three days, and you know as well as I do that I can literally keep this going forever. Don't you think it's time to get over yourself and just tell me what you're plan was so I can stop this torture. Remember, this hurts me almost as much as it hurts you. Or not."
As the man injected small amounts of vervain here and there on her body, memories started to flow back into her mind. Piece by piece Katherine remembered the reason she was lying here, tied to a giant rock inside a moldy cave. Not really his typical style for torture chamber, but when it was someone you want to hide really well, you take a place that no one will ever expect you to be in. She was speaking from her own personal experience of course.
All of her thoughts went in short pulses:
She was going out of town. Why? She liked it here. They were coming back. Who? Who was coming back?
He hit her arm with a stake.
"T-t-t, Katerina. You know better than to ignore me." He said with his annoyingly calm but angry voice.
"I'm...Not...Ignoring you..." Her voice had a hard time coming through. Her breath was heavy, her lips were dry as hell and she was hungry. So hungry...
"Then why aren't you answering my lovely questions?"
"I'm... Not sure..." He drove vervain dipped stakes in her shoulder, her feet and her
stomach.
Her pleading scream echoed through the cave and the tunnel system. He looked at her with a cruel and amused smile that told her just how much he enjoyed seeing her in pain.
"Now we're getting somewhere..." He twisted the stakes and pushed them further into her body.
The stakes didn't have the same effect on her this time. She kept quiet, knowing it would piss him off and that he would make a mistake.
The stunt had almost the effect she wanted. He got furious.
"Now tell me Katerina! Why are you back in Mystic Falls?!" He cut her arm with a knife that came out of nowhere and pushed down vervain in the wounds.
She gave up as the pain got too overwhelming and screamed another echoing scream before she answered his question.
"I can't remember anything! It's all in bits and pieces and I can't remember if you keep freaking torturing me!"
"Well then, I'll just have to make you remember." He leaned towards her and looked into her eyes.
"You'll remember..." He was interrupted by her obnoxious smile. "What?"
"Nothing. I just think someone has forgotten he has pumped me full of vervain for a very long time now and as we all know; compulsion doesn't work if the victim has vervain in their body, you moron!"
The man bent over her body and whispered in her ear right before he drove another stake through her body.
"Well then, Katerina, I was going to let you of easily but now... we'll just have to do this the hard way."
"Class. This is our new student Alex Phillips. Alex, why don't you tell the class something about yourself."
Alex sighed looked up from her perfectly made nails. She had done this so many times before and it was always the same crap in the beginning of every first lesson at a new school. Homeroom had basically become the place where she said 'Hi, my name is Alex I just moved here from blah, blah, blah, and I hope I will make lots of new friends here!' and everybody looked very not so much interested in who the hell she was or what she was doing here, they just wanted to get out of school as quickly as possible.
She opened her mouth to start with the phrase 'Hi, my name is Alex' but was interrupted by the door opening and two girls flew in.
"We're so sorry for being late Mr. Frappuccino, but we got stuck in traffic on the way here." the shorter one said.
"Well you should have left home earlier then. Write an essay on tardiness in a thousand words and have it on my desk by tomorrow. And let that be a lesson for the both of you."
The taller one turned around so that Alex could see her face, and made a dissatisfied sound.
Alex was stunned. She knew that it wasn't who she was looking for, but it was pretty close.
"So, like I was telling the class before you guys came in and got yourself an essay to do and just because of that look you're giving me Elena, you'll also have one week's detention, this is our new student Alex Phillips who was just about to tell us about herself. Alex, sweetheart?" Mr. Frappuccino's face got the same color as a yummy heart when all of his blood went from his high-level boner to his face. My new classmates first looked shocked and then started bursting one at a time into laughter.
Elena and her shorter friend Alex was suspecting was Bonnie Bennet, the town's newbie witch who came from a long line of really newbie witches who everyone thought were really powerful, even though they weren't, exchanged weird looks before sitting down next to the blond vampire called Caroline and the Salvatore brother. The group all started whispering and Alex tried her best to hear what they were talking about.
Mr. Frappuccino loudly cleared his throat and turned to Alex yet another time to tell her to present herself.
"Like I've been saying: Alex, could you please present yourself a little?"
"You forgot sweetheart!" An idiotic jock yelled through the classroom.
The already embarrassed Mr. Frappuccino's face went even red-er and he turned mortified away from the class and started writing things on the board behind his desk.
Alex would almost have felt bad for the poor teacher who probably had enough crap whispering about him as it was because of his name being Frappuccino and all and he certainly didn't need a pedophile rumor on that pile, but it was all just to hilarious. She realized he still wanted her to present herself and she turned towards her laughing classmates.
"Hi, as you all know by now, my name is Alex Phillips and I might have middle name somewhere that is sweetheart..." The class burst in to more over excessive laughter at her wisely selected poor joke.
"But I rather go by Alex, if that's okay with you guys. 'A' also works fine, no similarity to Pretty Little Liars..." More laughter.
"Anyway, I just moved here from Washington and before that I was living in L.A, New York, Stockholm, Oslo, Sydney, Moscow, Tokyo, Mexico City, Rome, Paris and a hell of a lot of other places I don't like to mention because of various reasons. As you might have realized, I've moved around a lot. My dad was an ambassador and my mom a Navy lieutenant. Hopefully this will be my last high school before graduating, so I may have time to actually befriend some of you."
A brown haired, brown eyed cheerleaders hand flew straight up in the air.
"Yes?"
"You said they were. What did you mean by that? Did they quit or something?"
Alex pretended to get sad and let a tear fall down her cheek.
"No" She said and let her voice crack at the exact right moment. "They... Th-they died last summer..." The whole class' faces were extremely amusing. Everyone just looked so shocked and the irritating cheerleader who had asked the question looked like she was about to throw up.
"OMG! I'm so very, truly sorry!" She squeaked.
"It's okay" Alex answered and acted like she was recovering from the tuff question. "You asked and it's been over a year. It was hard at first losing them both at the same time in a shooting like that, but I'm kind of on the way of recovering now."
"So, if your parents are dead, where do you live?" A guy's voice asked. The jock immediately got smacked in the head by numerous of girls around him.
"OMG Tyler, you do not just ask someone something like that!" A new, blond cheerleader who sounded like she missed the brain store on the way out. "You have to say it gentler like this:" The girl turned around from Tyler who sat behind her, towards Alex who was still standing next to Mr. Frappuccino's desk. "So, if your parents aren't, you know... Not with us anymore" she whispered the last part and confirmed Alex' suspicions about her IQ-level. "...Where do you live?"
A numerous of voices sighed with the sentence "Shut up Jessica!" or "What the hell Jess?!"
"It's cool" Alex said. She knew these questions would come up sooner or later and it wasn't really like they were very 'touchy' for her. Plus, she had already answered them at so many schools, at so many first days, for so many years now, with the exact same story. So it wasn't really like she wasn't prepared for them.
"I lived with my grandma in Oslo for two months after they died, and then I was moved to New York where my cousins live. But they didn't have money enough to keep me and themself alive, because I didn't have access to my trust fund yet, so they put me in the system. And as soon as I was in the system I fought to get out and I was declared my own legal guardian four months ago."
"Cool" The Tyler kid exclaimed. Loud smacks were heard when the girls around him, hit him with their books again.
Mr. Frappuccino had now finished his writing on the board, he had probably written more and slower than he had to so he had an excuse to not look at the class until his face was less red and his boner less up.
"Thank you Alex. If you need to talk to someone about our parents, I can show you were the counselors office is, after the lesson."
"That's not all he's gonna show her..." That Tyler kid really was annoying.
"Thank you, sir, but I'm fine."
"Okay then. You can sit next to Dana who will be your guide around school today."
The annoying brunette cheerleader waved to her and smiled like crazy. Alex took a seat next to her.
"Well then, should we start with some information on this week..." Mr. Frappuccino clapped his excited hands and put on his most perky teacher voice again and looked like he tried to make the class forget he called a student sweetheart and got a very visible boner from looking at her.
Alex could barely hear they were talking about over Dana's loud attempts to show her around school. Something that failed before it even had started, since
Alex showed no interest in Dana at all, mostly because 1: she already knew everything there was to know about this school including where everything was and how to get there, and 2: she was more interested in hearing what the tight "help-I'm-a-vampire-club" had to say.
"So? Do you think it's her?" The blond, handsome football player who was clearly the only human in the group, asked.
"What do you mean?" Bonnie the loser witch asked.
Oh God, This was worse than she had suspected the loser Bennet witch was not only an über-loser witch, she was also the world's second greatest idiot! The world's greatest idiot was her ex-boyfriend who was just so stupid for not getting why…. Okay, let's just not go there.
"He was asking if you guys were all thinking the same thing; if I might be the new vampire in town! You moron!" Alex almost shouted before realizing that it would ruin everything. She had to gain there confidence first and then ask them if they could help her find what she had been looking for since the 1890:s.
Because that's what she was here for, finding out if the Salvatore brothers and the Petrova doppelgänger new something.
"I meant if you guys think she's the new…" Matt looked like he was looking for the best adjective to describe her with.
"Awesome? Bad-ass? Supercool? Extremely creative?" Alex whispered to herself.
"Ruthless psycho-killer vampire in town?" Caroline filled in.
"Okay, so not really what I was going for. But ruthless psycho-killer vampire is okay, I can work with that rep." Alex said and shook her shoulders.
"What?" Dana asked and looked really confused.
"Nothing, don't worry about it." Dana still looked weird. "I'm a self-talker, okay? Since my parents died I've had no one to talk to, so I kind of talk to myself a lot." Dana's face turned to a big, relieved smile.
"Oh, okay! Then I understand. But don't you have any friends?"
Alex acted like a very emotional person every time there was a question about her past. She had learned early on, back in the day, that if you don't want people to ask questions about your past, you let them know some stuff that is kind of heavy, and then act like you don't want to talk about it because you're still sad. It worked every single time since everyone were so "understanding" and "caring". Ahhh, the beauty of humans and their big, bloody.., yummy….. hearts…
"OMG, look! Here we have some of this schools kind of legacies!" Dana woke her up from her daydreaming. Alex looked up and saw the "gang" stand in front of her. "Alex, this is Caroline Forbes, Matt Donovan, Elena Gilbert, Bonnie Bennet, Stefan Salvatore and Tyler Lockwood, they're kind of Mystic Falls high school's royalty. And you guys all know Alex from homeroom right?"
"Yeah!" They all said in a perfect union and reached out their hands to shake hers.
"Wow! You guys must have known each other for like forever to get such a perfect union!"
Alex smiled and shook every single one's hand. When she got to Bonnie she saw how her face went from concentration to disappointment in a second when she didn't see death by touching Alex.
Oh no, you little bitch, Alex thought, your loser magictricks won't work on me!
Everybody laughed and explained all the stuff about Matt, Caroline, Bonnie and Elena being friends since as long as they can remember and that Stefan and
Tyler joined the click later, that Alex already knew all about. So instead of listening, she saw how Stefan's eyes met Bonnie's and she shook her head to confirm that Alex wasn't the vampire, and then Stefan passing that on to Caroline and so on. Eventually the whole group had stopped with the awkward laughing and they all looked very disappointed.
"Well, we should be going to are classes now. See you later Alex, Dana." Stefan nodded and the group started walking away.
Before they had come even as far as a dozen feet, Tyler turned around and yelled "Oh, I almost forgot! I'm having a party on Friday after the first game and you're both welcome! I hope I'll see you there!"
"Smart to yell it out in the hallway like that." Alex muttered.
"Why do you sound so ironic when you say that?"
"Well now the whole school knows about it." Alex explained in an attempt to look like the poor infant girl who'd never been to any parties in her life.
"Well, the whole school already knew about it, but no one ever gets an invite! I mean it's a Lockwood party at the Lockwood mansion! The only people who get an invite are the royalties and the football players!" Dana seemed to be all up and above about this party. Like a high school party filled with drunk high school kids were something to be excited about. "So, are you going?"
"No, I don't think so. I mean, I have all of this new homework I have to take care of… And I also have to get into the fact that I'm living in a whole new town, again…" Alex stalled. "But you can go without me, if you want to."
"Want to?! Of course I want to! I have to go to this party! But I can't go without you! The only reason Tyler Lockwood… OMG Tyler Lockwood just invited us to his party at his mansion is because of you! So you have to go!" Dana said it like it would be the most catastrophic thing in the world to miss a Lockwood party, so Alex said reluctantly yes.
"OMG! We're going to a Lockwood party! INVITED!" Dana jumped upside down and continued jumping all the way to class.
Quietly Alex whispered "Oh please, kill me now."