Nature's Law

I had never been a superstitious person before. Before that night. Typically, it was Friday 13th, and ironically that happened on that day.
Yeah, there goes my love of Friday 13th. I used to enjoy seeing people worry and fret about bad luck and stuff on that day, call me mean but I just didn’t believe in it, so I found it quite amusing when other people were always worrying about it. Now, I was one of those people, the people who were afraid to even walk down a dark alley way, look round a corner on that day. Okay, so the corner thing was still a load of rubbish, but I refused point blank to go anyway dark and secluded on that day.
No one would change my mind, and no one could make me go anywhere dark and secluded on that day and if somehow they did manage I would scream and cry until they brought me back to my house, where I preceded to lock myself away in my room and cry endlessly. Actually, as a matter of fact I was scared to even be by myself at night, no surprises why that was...
Yup, I was most definitely scared of Friday 13th.

I was glad that I had passed the date of the 13th, which had been the Monday we went back to school. The 13th was alright...It was the Friday which terrified me, the Friday after the 13th September was the most terrifying prospect to me. I was sat on my bed, I hadn’t really moved since yesterday evening, Thursday 16th, I figured that it was safest to just stay put today, and things appeared to be in my favour considering that today we have the day off of school considering that it was a Teacher Education Day. Maybe sometimes the whole world wasn’t against me.
Jeanne came bustling into my room “Oi, you. I’m going to Marie’s till Sunday. She’s having a party tomorrow so I’m going tonight then I’ll help her set up. ‘Kay?” she paused “Wait. Why the hell am I asking you? I’ll do it even if you say no. Later loser” she skipped out of my room, slamming the door behind her. She had been wiping at her mouth with a washcloth again.
“Bye” I whispered after I heard the front door slam and car tyres screech down the road, Marie had an eighteen year old brother who was only just legally allowed to drive, having failed two tests. Mum wasn't over keen on Jeanne being driven around by him, but what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her...I guess.
Unless Jeanne turned up dead in a twisted lump of metal attached to a tree some place... But the odds of that happening are rather slim I guess.
There aren’t particularly any trees near roads around here.

I didn’t move from my bed until Mum came upstairs and asked me what I wanted for dinner. Knowing that I would be safe, I followed her down the stairs and into the kitchen-diner.
“Where’s Jeanne anyway? She’s being awfully quiet,” asked Mum, looking up at the ceiling, where all was silent.
“She went to Marie’s for a sleepover,” No point in getting her stressed about the party.
“Oh, right. Okay then,” Mum had given up on making Jeanne tell her all of her plans about eighteen months ago; she just goes with the flow now. Alright, so occasionally she gets angry with her but most of the time she just puts up with it.
Apart from Marie’s parties...she doesn’t like them at all.
“So, is there a party by any chance?” she asked a couple of moments later
“No.” I said, maybe a little too quickly.
“You know, Amalia, you have always been a terrible liar,” she smiled
“Thank you?”
She laughed quickly before busying herself with the cooking and muttering about Jeanne, listing ways of getting her to come home without another massive argument.

The wind battled with my hair, striking it time after time, causing it to whip my face, lacerations formed and began to bleed slowly down my cheek. It stung like hell, but my arms were strapped to my side, I just couldn’t move them. Nothing was holding them to my side so that I couldn’t move them; I just found it impossible to pull them to my face to comfort the weird fuzzy feeling that had erupted where the lacerations were.

“Amalia? Amalia!” I heard my Mothers frantic voice calling, but I couldn’t decipher the words, they were all slowly blending together and eventually the shouts died out all together.

I began to walk forwards, spikes prodded my feet, but that didn’t stop me, and after some time of walking my bare feet began to bleed from the small puncture wounds that the sharp grey rocks that littered the cliff top had administered.
I didn’t know what I was doing here, waiting for someone?
I had reached a jaggered edge so I looked down, ignoring the red stickiness that surrounded my feet. I saw a black ocean. White waves crashed against the sad cliff face so many miles behind me and the drowning pillars of grey rock that protruded from the choppy waters.
Something didn’t seem right. It was a surreal place. Somewhere that I wanted to escape from but at the same time hold onto for ever more.
I took another minute step forwards, my toes curling over the edge of the rocky cliff, sending small stones plummeting into the murderous waters below me.
“Lia!” Someone called behind me; I didn’t even need to turn around to know who it was. I was wearing the same floaty silk dress that I had been wearing in my nightmare the other week. Only this time it had blood on the left strap and grass stains on the back and hems of it.
As Scott stood next to me a weird sort of light shone above us, it was a neon yellow colour, but misty grey at the same time. Scott’s hair seemed to...absorb the light; changing its colour from dusty brown to a deep, rich chocolaty colour, it seemed to match his eyes.
“Lia,” he repeated slowly before pulling me into a tight hug.

And then he pushed me backwards. Tumbling slowly...slowly...slowly.
And then came the crash, the pain and the sinking...the sinking into the unknown.

My eyes flickered open to be greeted by a harsh white light. It didn’t even have a hint of yellow in it. It was bright white. I shut my eyes tight again after a fraction of a second.
“Amalia, are you okay, love?”
I tried to reply, but something was in my throat, making me want to gag. Was I okay? Why was I here?
...Where was here anyway. It was a pristine white, and faint beeps were continuous in the muffled background noise.
As I tried to sit up, my head began to spin like crazy, pummelling my brain as knives were shoved in as well. It was torture.
I yelped out, falling back onto, what I had now sussed was a bed. A very un-comfy bed at that, the mattress felt like a plank of wood, and the pillows absorbed my head, making me feel sick and claustrophobic. A threadbare white sheet had been thrown on top of me.
“Amalia, are you awake?” Mum’s voice asked faintly as she rocked me gently, trying to gage a reaction from my now visionless body.
“Oh for God’s sake, get up Lia. Your eyes were open a second ago.” Jeanne’s high pitched, squeaky voice said agitatedly. Always nice to have her unique sympathy present.
“Turn it off,” I muttered, mainly to myself if I was honest.
“Amalia?” My mother’s voice questioned faintly once more.
Flickering my eyes open again, forcing them to stay open through the white lights that were making my eyes involuntarily fill with salty tears.
‘Turn it off,’ I mouthed again, my voice abruptly deserting me when my brain indicated that it wanted the slightest response.
“Can you repeat that please?” asked a high pitched females voice
“Turn....It.....Off,” I said, pausing for brief periods of time in between each word. But, hey, at least I got it all out.
“Turn what off, honey?” Mum asked me
I couldn’t find any words, so after a few minutes Mum took to listing all of the objects in the room which emitted sound. “The TV.....” I remained still; I was used to blocking out the sounds of what Jeanne had on TV “The....heart monitor.” I attempted to make a movement, and succeeded in slightly raising up my hand.
“I’m afraid we can’t turn that off, Miss Gray, that’s informs us of your condition and is an easy way to know...well, if you die for one thing.”
“I’m talking, aren’t I?” I muttered weakly, Jeanne laughed as Mum scolded me.
“Amalia, don’t be rude!” Even though my eyes were closed, I could tell that she was blushing furiously, embarrassed by my comment.
The female nurse said it wasn’t a problem, just a side effect from all the medication I had had, and that she had heard worse. And then another voice spoke, a vaguely familiar male voice...Scott?
I opened my eyes, mainly so I could tell him to get out, but it wasn’t Scott after all, it was just a male doctor, I guess I must have heard him in the streets or something, his voice just sounded so familiar...I just couldn’t place it.
“Good to see you’re feeling better Miss. You have some nasty scars scattered across your body, we’ve found. Has anything happened to you recently, or in the past to make you get them?” My Mums head snapped up and I was thanking God Jeanne had left the room to get a coffee.
“Amalia? Is there something you aren’t telling me? Are you....Are you depressed?”
“Mum, no!” I said as loud as I could...which, alright, wasn’t exactly loud.
“What was it then?”
“It was ages ago...three years ago. It doesn’t matter, I just fell, I can deal with it, the scar has almost gone now.” I muttered, but I really don’t think my mum was listening, she was ranting on at the doctors, telling them to dope me up with anti-depressants and interrogating them on the best psychologists in the area. She would make a good police officer with the way she is going about this. I’m not even depressed! Well, not anymore I’m not.

I was finally allowed out of the hospital a week later, thank God it had gotten me through the toughest time of my year, with people constantly at my bedside and looking after me. It had sheltered me from my mind, all of the medication, some of which I still had to take now that I was home again, and annoyingly I had also been pre-scribed a two week course of anti-depressants thanks to my Mums total over-reaction at the hospital.
“Amalia...I realised you said that those scars were from three years back. I remember what you were like three years back. It broke my heart, but you didn’t have to resort to those measures, Honey”
“Mum? What are you on about?”
My mother and I were sat on the sofa tucking into our individual tubs of Ben & Jerry’s Cookie Dough ice-cream watching re-runs of Friends on e4.
“When Harley left...you just seemed to brake. I know that she was your best friend,” My only friend “But, you could have talked to me, I would have understood”
“But, that’s the thing, Mum,” I said, stabbing my spoon into the pot “You don’t.” I stood up and replaced my tub in the freezer, chucking my spoon into the sink as I progressed on to the bathroom at the other end of the kitchen.
When I shut the door behind me, I realised I was trapped in a room with the over-powering smell of puke. Coughing, I immediately made my escape from the room, once again walking straight into my mother, who also seemed to have smelt the puke; she looked from the room, to me, coughing.
“Amalia...are you...are you bulimic?”