Hey guys! I'm really sorry about disappearing for two months, but I was on vacation. (Well, some of it was vacation. The rest of it was strenuous study...ugh) You'll be getting regular updates now, so never fear! Thanks for sticking with the story! D If you have any ways you think I could improve, by the way, please say so! I'd always love to hear how I can make it better for you. Are these chapters long enough for you?
"Morning Dad," Rio said as she walked into the kitchen and started to pour herself a cup of coffee.
He grunted, rifling through the newspaper in his hands. "Pour me a cup of coffee," he said.
"Yes sir, want any sugar?" she said, taking down another coffee cup from the cabinet.
The early morning sun glinted in through the window and off of the counter, making her squint. She heard the shuffling of her mother's slippers as she came in the room.
"Morning," Rio said brightly.
Her mother didn't reply. "Have you shown them to her yet?" She asked her husband almost accusingly, as if something were his fault.
"No," replied her father unsatisfactorily.
Rio started to pour coffee into one of the cups. "Show me what," she asked, glancing from her mother to father. Both of them were wearing angry expressions "Did something happen?" She asked quickly, her heartbeat speeding up.
Standing up, her father folded the newspaper and set it aside. Turning to look at her, he threw something down on the table. "Do you recognize these," he said quietly, dangerously.
On the table were brochures to famous (and not-so famous) art colleges. Her heartbeat kicked up another notch.
"Uh...no? Where did they come from?" Rio tried to act nonchalant. There was a sudden burning pain on the back of her hand--the coffee had overrun its mug and scalded her hand. It felt like a thousand pins and needles. She jerked her hand away and put the coffee pot down.
"We took you in," her father began, stepping closer to her. "We fed you, we clothed you, even treated you like you were our own daughter..." His voice raised several notches, "And now you dare to lie to our faces?" He shouted in Rio's face.
"Dear, remember your blood pressure," Rio's mother reminded him gently, looking concernedly at his beet-red face before rounding on Rio, every trace of tenderness gone from her features. "How could you do this, Rio? We raised you from a baby. You have always been my daughter. All we asked of you is to be a respectable daughter and get a good degree, as something respectable, like a doctor or even a lawyer! We would have even been happy with you wanting to be a wife," she said, her voice rising steadily as she spoke. "And you repay us with THIS?" She yelled, picking up the brochures and throwing them in Rio's face. "We forbade you to follow this path, Rio! Artists are nothing but scum, leeching off of our good society!"
Rio flinched at her mother's fury. Slowly she bent down and picked up the brochures, smoothing out the newly formed creases.
"I'm sorry, " Rio began. "But--"
"You're sorry? You're SORRY? IS THAT ALL YOU CAN SAY? YOU--"
"I AM sorry," Rio continued, interrupting the beginning of her mother's tirade. "BUT I can't do what you want me to do. It's not for me. I want to follow my dreams." She said sadly, resolutely.
There was a loud smack. Time seemed to slow as the sound rang in her ears as the force from her father's hand burned her cheek the instant it made contact. She fell to the floor, her knee landing in more scalding coffee that had dripped from the counter onto the linoleum. She cried out from the pain of it. Whether from the pain of her cheek or her knee, she couldn't tell.
"No daughter of mine will disobey me, " her father yelled, red-faced at the top of his lungs. "I HAVE no daughter named Rio, GET OUT!"
His blotchy red face became blurry and started to fade. She could no longer distinguish anything about the room, and it started to go dark. Her hand and knee burned like fire.
No Daddy, I love you. Don't make me leave--I'm your daughter! Don't you love me?
...Daddy?
"Don't you love me?" Rio cried outsearching for his answer. For any answer.
She felt a hand smooth back her hair comfortingly. The sharp pains of her mind gently melted away.
"It's okay now," a voice whispered.
Rio fell back into a much sweeter slumber, filled with much happier dreams.
Rio's home was much quieter since she had left. Her family passed the days, pretending that nothing had changed. Her parents had bluntly refused to answer any questions from their children of Rio's whereabouts from the day she had disappeared almost two weeks earlier. They stopped asking, one-by-one, after threats of severe punishment.
Her mother and father sat together on the couch in their den, watching an early-evening TV show. Ever few minutes her mother would look chidingly at her father. After quite a few attempts to catch his eye, she finally yanked the remote from his hand and turned off the TV.
"You know we have to tell him, Bo." She said, giving him a meaningful look.
"He won't be happy, Doris," he reminded her. "She was supposed to stay here at all costs. He'll be very angry." He gulped as a few images of fury passed before his mind's eye.
"It's better than him finding out on his own," she said. "IF we tell him now, he may not be as angry," she reasoned.
Bo snorted, as if the idea would have been laughable if it were not such a serious situation. "Impossible," he said. "But you are right. It will be worse for us if he finds out on his own."
"Are you going to try tonight?"
"I'll have to. He'll be checking soon, you know how he is..."
"Don't worry, when he finds her he'll need us again, so he can't do anything too bad to us." Doris kissed him lightly on the lips and went upstairs to check on her children.
Bo got up and shuffled towards an adjoining room, his shoulders hunched together in stress and worry.
It feels so good to sleep in a bed again, Rio thought. The blankets are so much warmer than the newspapers, and the room isn't drafty like it is out in the open...
Wait.
Beds? Blankets? No draft? Where was she?
Rio shot into a sitting position as she was jerked from her warm slumber with sudden realization.
The room she woke up in was very plain and clean looking, instantly reminding Rio of a hospital. It was of an average size, no bigger than her bedroom at home, although it seemed that way due to the sparse furniture. There was a bed, a nightstand with a lamp on it, a dresser, and a window seat. A few chairs were pushed up against the far wall, probably for visitors.
Noticing that she had been changed into plain white pajamas, (which eerily seemed to have been made for her,) Rio looked frantically for her backpack, finding it next to the bed beside a pair of slippers. Rifling through it, she found that nothing had been confiscated except for the dirty clothing she had stored in there.
Not too much of a loss there, Rio thought. They had even left her most recent paycheck.
Dropping her backpack back to the floor, Rio climbed out of the bed and walked to the window. There were metal bars across the outside of it, and the window itself was locked, so she couldn't even raise the first layer of glass. Nobody walked over the grass or through the garden off to the left that she could see, though.
Figures that it's locked, she grumbled to herself.
Outside of the glass, though, there was a plush green lawn with a gigantic fountain of three mystical-looking women holding brooms that spouted sparkling water into the air up above their heads.
Trying to brainstorm, she looked around the rest of the room. The white walls were bare, and the soft white carpet held no secrets for her there.
"Shit!" She cried out, yanking her hand back, the skin prickling with the sharp electric charge that had been sent through it.
Won't be getting out that way, she thought to herself.
Examining her hand she noticed that she had burn scars on it from the coffee. When touched, the skin was much hotter than the unburned skin around it.
That's strange, she thought. The coffee wasn't that hot, was it? Maybe it was. I can't remember anymore...
Rio dismissed it from her mind, sighing to herself as she sat back down on the bed. She rubbed her temples as the last memories of her earlier dreams were purged from her memory.
This looks like it's going to be a long wait, Rio thought as she laid back down and stared up at the stark white ceiling.