Chapter Six: Rapunzel
She was shaking. Only it was more than just a simple shiver. More than the nervous shakes you get when you have to present in front of other people. Or the jitters you get when you're about to go on that huge ride at the amusement park, fear and excitement mixed together until your fingers can't stay still. More than any of that.
She was shaking to her core. Like a building during an earthquake. The walls crumbling, the foundation weakened, windows shattering, support beams snapping. That was her. A building. Disintegrating as the world fell around her.
It'd been two days. Two full cycles of sunlight streaming in through the bathroom window and darkness coming soon after to swallow the light whole. Two days and she hadn't moved. Two days, and her body had managed to stop shaking, but her mind was still ricocheting inside her skull. Shaken to the core. Two days and all she'd had for sleep were the few minutes where she'd dozed off in the bathtub. Two days with no food and her only water coming from stollen drinks from the sink. Two days that she'd spent with blood stained clothing and a rusty frying pan as her only comfort. Two days since her own mother had attacked her and she'd had no choice but to fight back.
Her mother had been sick for weeks now. With what, she wasn't sure. It wasn't like any cold or flu she'd experienced before. She had an incredibly high fever. Her eyes had fogged over and her skin had begun to sag a bit more than her normal wrinkles and bags.
Her mother hadn't left her leave the house to get help. This wasn't out of the ordinary. Rapunzel's mother had refused to let her leave the house on multiple occasions. Rapunzel had grown up on stories of murders, thugs, rapists, and all the other bad things to be scared of out there in the world.
So, they'd had to make do with what they had. Ice packs and aspirins being the only things they had to work with. It wasn't until her mother had fallen asleep and hadn't woken up that she began to worry.
It'd been a full day, and her mother still hadn't woken up. Rapunzel checked her pulse. Checked her breathing. Checked her heart rate, her blood pressure, and her response to light. Nothing showed any sign of life.
It was then she went into full tilt panic mode. She screamed. She cried. She ran around the house, toppling tables and cabinets in a whirlwind of anger, panic and confusion. She didn't know what to do. She couldn't call 911. Her mother had told her to never call that number. She'd told Rapunzel that if a policeman ever found her, she'd be taken away.
She could go outside for help, her mother had told her not to leave. She'd never left the ouse on her own. Not even to go to school. She'd been homeschooled all her life.
They had no internet connection. No tv or computer. She had nowhere to go. She had nothing. She didn't have anyone to call or contact. She didn't know what to do. Her mother was dead. All she could do was cry and scream.
It was the fourth day after her mother had died that Rapunzel found herself locked in the bathroom.
She'd been in the kitchen, making a grilled cheese, while the corpse of her mother continued to rest in the other room.
She'd been numb for the last day. Her tears all spent and her throat al screamed out. There was nothing left. She had nothing left but to continue living as the corpse of her mother slept in the next room over.
The snap and sizzle of the sandwich filled the kitchen. The sound was the only thing she could here as she stood over the stove, mind numb and distracted by the sizzling sandwich in front of her.
She almost didn't hear the shuffling and moaning until it was too late. She turned to find her mother—or what was left of her—in the kitchen doorway. Rapunzel found herself frozen to the spot. She couldn't believe what she was seeing. Her mother had been dead. But now she wasn't.
The moment didn't last long. In the next split second, her mother lunged at her, arms outstretched. Rapunzel leaped away with a squeal, forgetting to let go of the frying pan in her panic and sending cooked bread and melted cheese to skate across the kitchen floor.
"Mother!" she shrieked.
Her mother had never come at her like this before. Sure, there was the occasional swat with a hair brush. The here and there grip of the wrist that was a bit too tight. But never an all out attack.
"What are you doing?" Rapunzel asked, panic and confusion coursing through her. Her mother was dead, but not dead. Her mother was dead, but standing here, attacking her, with unnaturally pale white skin, and a contorted face. She was moaning, spitting out intelligible words, instead of the usual string insults and reprimands. Her eyes were open, but they were dead, the pupils turned an unnaturally bright blue that was devoid of a soul. They were empty. Whatever this thing was, it was not her mother.
The corpse lunged again, teeth gnashing, fingers clawed.
Without thinking, Rapunzel spun out of the way, her arm coming around, frying pan still in hand. There was a Klang! iron connected with skull. Rapunzel felt as bone fractured under the weight of her pan and sent her mother forward for her head to connect a second time with the sharp corner of the counter-top. The body of her mother fell to the floor with a thick thud, blood leaking out form her head to fill the cracks and spaces of the tile with crimson.
Rapunzel stood there, her breathing fast, her heart racing, as she looked at the body of her mother on the kitchen floor. Lightning raced through her veins as she tried to comprehend what had just happened. She was soon overrun by panic, as well. Panic as the blood that spread across the kitchen tile filled her vision. Panic that her mother might get up and attack again. Panic as she looked at the crater in her mother's skull that she'd created.
Dear, God.
She had just killed her own mother.
She blacked out.
The nest thing she remembered was that she was sitting in the upstairs bathtub with the bathroom door locked and the frying pan still in her hands as her body shook uncontrollably.
Over the next forty-eight hours, he teeth had stopped chattering and she could hold her fingers still enough to turn on the bathroom sink. She'd refused to unlock the door, though. Refused to step outside from fear of what she'd find. She'd spent the last two days, terrified out of her mind and she wasn't about to leave the sanctity of the bathroom until she had to.
It was sometime in the late afternoon on the second day, when she was starting to doze off in the the bathtub again, that Rapunzel heard a crash from downstairs. She was instantly snapped out of her daze, senses on high alert as she gripped her frying pan.
She could hear more noises from downstairs.
There were voices.
"Hey! Single zed. Kitchen."
"Dead or fed?"
"Dead, far as I can tell."
The voices continued, muffled by the floor between them and her. There were more crashes and sounds. From what she heard, she figured her mother had stayed dead, her body laid out on the cracked kitchen tiles.
But it looked like that wasn't the most pressing problem any more.
Rapunzel gripped the handle of her frying pan in her fingers and she strained to listen to the noises downstairs, praying that whoever these strangers where, that they would decide to stay downstairs. She nearly jumped out of her skin as the handle to the bathroom door jiggled.
She continued to sit in the bath tub, eyes wide, heart pounding, as her fingers twisted the handle of the frying pan and she stared at the bathroom door set in the wall opposite the bathtub. The jiggling stopped. She held her breath, waiting to see if they'd go away.
Suddenly, there was a Bang! as something large and heavy connected with the door.
This time, Rapunzel jumped right out of the bathtub at the noise. She was across the tiny bathroom in a second. The counter under the mirror was on a wall between the one with the tub and the one with the door. The counter was on the side of the door with the hinges, so that when the door opened, it opened towards the counter, blocking the entrant's view of the counter and mirror.
Rapunzel had crawled atop the counter and now sat crouching was she faced the door, frying pan gripped tight as the pounding continued to come from the other side. She jumped as the bolt finally gave, the wood splintering as the side of the door broke free.
The door creaked open slowly towards the counter and Rapunzel's hiding place, each second that passed only making her heart race faster. There was the soft thud, thud of boots on flooring as the stranger on the other side of the door crept forward. The stranger finally cleared the door, head turned away to reveal a head of long-ish brunette hair.
The stranger let out a sigh.
"Ah, alone at—"
Rapunel's arm shot out, frying pan connecting with skull for the second time to send the limp body of a man to the floor.
She froze as she realized the noises and sounds from downstairs had stopped. She'd forgotten that there had been more than one voice downstairs. And the sound of her frying pan hitting someone's head had made a lot more noise than she'd expected.
There was the sound of footsteps on stairs. Her heart began to pick up speed again. She held her frying pan out in front of her like a sword, preparing herself for whomever else was going to come from the other side of that door.
The footsteps neared, then slowed. Rapunzel could tell that they were right outside the door now. She held her breath at the sound of careful steps, her view still hidden by the open door.
The first thing she saw come into view from the other side of the door was the end of a metal pole, held flat. Soon to follow was the boy that was holding it.
He glanced down at the unconscious form of the first man, and then looked up to find Rapunzel, still crouched with her frying pan clutched in front of her.
He was skinny. But not in a way that was lanky. He just…looked like he hadn't had a good meal in a while. Maybe it was the oversized brown coat he was wearing. It was old, torn, and stained dark in some places. His hair was a chocolate brown that looked like it was in a permanent state of bed-head. His eyes were a warm, honey brown. Kind and inviting. Rapunzel was still holding her frying pan out, arms shaking with her elbows locked.
He froze when he saw her, face blank, eyes wide. But it only lasted for a second. He blinked, glanced back down to the body on the floor and then up to Rapunzel. He looked at the frying pan in her hands, pointed directly at him.
What he did next took her by surprise.
He laughed. A rolling, joyful laugh that seemed way too out of place for a tiny, cramped, and dank bathroom with a body on the floor.
"Hey, Bunny!" he called out the bathroom door.
Rapunzel's heart picked up speed as she heard an "Oi!" respond from downstairs. There were more than just two of them. Who knew how many there'd be waiting for her downstairs. They were robbers, most likely. Ruffians, thugs. All things her mother had warned her about. And now here they were, in her home, in her bathroom.
"Remember how you always said Flynn needed to check the corners first? I think he's finally learned his lesson!"
Rapunzel could hear a crash and then heavy footsteps from downstairs. She was breathing fast, her heart racing at the thought of another one coming up here.
The brown-haired stranger turned to look at the unconscious form on the floor again.
"Well," he said to her, giving the body a nudge with his foot as he let out a chuckle. "Looks like you're a princess that doesn't need much saving."
He looked up at her then, eyes bright, smile wide as he seemed completely oblivious to the panic she was experiencing.
"Name's Jack, by the way. Jack Frost. And this here," he gestured towards the body, "is my friend Flynn."
A/N: Heyyyyyy. So, I know I'm updating a tad later on this story than I have the other chapters. (Finals are a b*tch, btw.) But I'm back and finals free! So I decided to give you two chapters instead of one, just to make up for lost time. XD everyone's introduced now *whew* so an actual story line is soon to follow (and yay! they're finding each other!) so stay tuned and I hope you like it! ^.^