Just thought I'd write here again. Gee, maybe this won't be so hard to work on both...how does Saturday sound as "write for fanfiction" day?
Chapter 2: Shiver
February 1, 1998
A cold night it was. Colder than anything December had ever experienced before. Maybe it was because she wasn't used to the Alaska cold air.
Was where she was at the moment risky? Yes it was. Why? Because of who she was going to live with for the next week.
Somehow, December's mother thought it would make sense if they traveled to see their cousins in Alaska. One of them which was a retard. Who in fact was the same retard that had tried to kill her two years earlier.
It was the first time December had ever traveled anywhere by plane. It was pretty fun and scary at the same time to her, but after they landed, she would wonder if Kike still had a grudge against her. Would he even remember? She was told over and over again by her mother that she should forgive him and that he should do the same to her, but would he?
Outside in the front of the house they were. About to enter a house that really, December had never seen in her life. And she was expected to believe the ones who lived there would be the nicest of all.
Maybe they would. She would find the answer once her aunt opens the front door and invites the two in.
As her mother rang the door, December ran back and stood near the road.
"December, where are you going?" her mother asked her.
December reached into her pocket. She pulled out a very bulky disposable camera. As she did so, memories of before she left home came back.
The memories of Nicky handing the camera over to her. The promise they made.
Nicky said to take a couple of pictures of Alaska, since he had never been there before. He wanted to go, but his parents wouldn't let him. Strangely, Rene was allowed to stay at the trusted best friend of December's mother. Now why couldn't December stay too?
Instead of fighting it over like she had when she was leaving, she picked up the camera to eye level and aimed at a choppy direction of the house. If she knew what a cheers was, then it would've probably gone, "To the house I will be in for the following week." But she was too cold to say something out of contexts and memorable, so instead, she stayed piped down and took the snapshot.
Kike was...pretty much the same. Not that he wanted to hurt December, but by the way he acted. He still messed up words like when he was nine. And even though December couldn't say it in better terms, she knew that he wasn't "all there."
by the end of the first hour, she had already noted him down like a checklist. She knew all she needed to know about Kike.
First of all, she could still have fun with him. He was "not there" at a certain level of intelligence, but it was enough for December and Kike to be at the right pace with each other.
Another plus was that Kike was a learning boy. He wanted to learn things.
The best of all; he was fun to hang around with.
They enjoyed playing with each other. The first game they played together was hide and seek. Then they would go to tag and others. Then came board games, where they incorrectly played games like Monopoly. It was all about the joy in it.
So December's mother didn't see the harm in leaving with Kike's parents to go and talk about grown-up things at a fancy restaurant.
Of course, they weren't stupid either.
They hired a babysitter in the neighborhood to take care of the two as they left for the talk.
So as soon as they left, it was just December, Kike, and Jessica the nineteen year old babysitter who should be working at McDonald's instead or something, sitting in front of the living room TV, watching Ash succeed on the Anime show.
"I wanna play Hide'n Seek again!" Kike stated.
"Don't you guys have these TV show character card thingies to play together with?" Jessica asked.
Kike looked at December. "Do you wanna s'play Pokémon?"
"Not really..."
"Oh come on, it looks like something pretty fun," Jessica put in, looking at Pikachu set off the sprinklers in Brock's gym.
"But I don't have any cards."
"I's have cards," Kike replied.
December just didn't know how to say it. She wasn't in the mood to play anything that had to do with cards at the moment. Really, she preferred if they played hide and seek.
"Can we play hide and seek instead?" December asked.
Jessica turned to see Kike. "You OK with that?"
"Yeah, Hide'n Seek is s'cool!"
"Do you wanna play too?" asked December.
"Oh, well I'm sure it'll be fun, but I'm too old to play hide and seek."
"No...you're s'good. It's fun!" Kike broke in
With just one more glance of back and forth action, Jessica gave in. "Alright, but I have to warn you two, I was the king of that game when I was small."
In a choice of rock, paper, scissor action, December was to seek. She didn't want to at first and wanted rematches, in which Jessica volunteered to take her place, but Kike apparently had to follow those rules of choice enough to make a religion that there was no going around it.
So, December was left alone in Kike's room as the other two ran off to hide.
December put her face on the bed, a bit disappointed, and started counting.
All fun and games. That's the child dream. In order to let the child mind progress with these fond memories of fun, there had to be cooperation. All cooperation was in this situation was given by the fate of the babysitter.
Fun, she hadn't done that in a long time. At least, not the kind December and Kike were having.
She hid in the closet. Possibly the most likely place to look, and that was the fun of it.
Kike watched. He saw her enter that closet. And once she had, he locked that door, and moved on.
Into the kitchen. Normally, a child in the kitchen would mean snack time. Though snacks weren't what Kike was looking at.
Other than food in a kitchen, there were more shinier things. Reflective things. Things that you wouldn't want to see a child with. Only, Kike was a child in mind, not in age. In age, he could reach that object and wait around the corner for some victim to come around.
He could play killer.
Or, he could do something else.
Looking away from sadistic thoughts, Kike found the fish bowl. There were a total of five tiny goldfish.
He grabbed the entire thing, and exited the kitchen.
"Okay, ready or not here I come!"
December turned around. There was absolutely nothing but the solid quiet noise—and the not so solid room. She didn't expect to find everyone in zero point three seconds, but that would've been nice.
She walked out into the halls. Down the hall was the kitchen. She walked towards that area, unknowingly passing the door that held the babysitter, who didn't know she had no way out of the closet.
Closer to the kitchen. Then in the kitchen.
Water on the floor. Hmm, drops? Leading to the living room? Why not follow then?
To the living room she went. The drops continued to the front of the house. And the door was wide open.
December looked outside, wondering if either Kike or Jessica actually went to hide outside. Then she saw something on the street.
She looked closer. It looked like...
the goldfish bowl? Were the goldfish still in it?
Quickly, December made her way out and closer to the street. As she did, everything got a lot colder. She wasn't wearing her jacket.
Out on the street, she bent down and picked up the bowl. Yep, the fish were in there.
But when she turned around, the front door was closed.
The sky was getting darker and the air was getting colder. December quickly ran on back to the door. When she tried to open it though, she found it to be locked.
"Hey, open the door!" she screamed. She put down the bowl. "Come on, it's cold outside!"
After standing and screaming for at least a minute, she ran to the window. She knocked hard. Not a moment to spare, Kike was on the other side.
"Kike, can you open the door?"
Kike didn't answer. He just looked at her, with an expression of pressing on. It was the expression that showed he didn't even know December was right in front of him, only, she was.
"Kike?" December asked.
The blinds were pulled down and shut.
"No! Kike!" December screamed. She pounded on the window. He wasn't coming back. Kike had just left December out in the cold with no telling whether he was going to bring her back inside.
December was getting even colder. She circled the house and tried to find an entrance, but found none. The garage was locked from the inside and no windows were opened. Not even the basement windows which were always—or at least where December lived—left open for some strange reason weren't open.
It was torture. There was nothing December could do.
Now, in a logical situation of this kind, it would be the best of common sense to say knock on a neighbors door and enter, be safe.
But December was taught strangers were bad. And in the neighborhood she was in, everyone was considered a stranger. Therefore, everyone was bad.
Five minutes outside. Colder than ever. She had to do something, or else she would die. For a child, she knew that this was bad. And she knew that it was possible.
So she thought up a plan.
Quickly, she pulled a heavy silver garbage can towards the side of the house. It really smelled horrible. Once she was at the side of the house, she began to kick at the basement windows. They were way too small for her to crawl through, but there was warm air down there. She knew that because she knew there was the heater down there. That was from experience in her house.
Again, she kicked. She kicked several times, and finally, a small shard of glass broke in. it was just enough to stick her finger through.
December looked around the area for the first time. There was a shovel holding a fence as if to keep it locked. It was a very stupid way to lock a back, but she didn't care at the moment. She didn't even know that it was stupid to do so.
With the shovel, she hit the basement window. She went at it several times again, trying to get the glass hole bigger.
Then it was finally big enough.
She got on the ground and reached in. hot air rolled over her hand. Heat. She wanted more of it.
She sat against it, her but to the small opening. She tipped the garbage can all over herself. She couldn't believe she was doing it, but the disgusting and somewhat wet trash felt warm all over her. She didn't want to know why, she was just happy that it was.
Then she sat there. A tear rolled down her cheek.
"I wanna—go home!" she screamed.
No one would hear her. That night in fact, she fell asleep out there. When her mother came home, when she and Kike's mother and father entered the house, they only found Kike. And they found that Jessica was pounding on the closet door wanting to get out.
They did not know where December was. Kike wouldn't tell. The police came over and were ordered to search the entire neighborhood. It wasn't until one of the police men entered the basement, that he saw the broken glass and December's but where the window should've been. Where trash and some very sick looking black and brown liquid were flowing inside. Ew.
The police went around the house and picked up the sleeping girl. She was cold. She felt dead cold, but she was breathing.
And off they went in the white car with the flashing reds.
The answer the police want now is why this happened. Only December and Kike know. And niether of them would tell, both for the same reason. Fear.
Asleep in winter.