Open Your Eyes

Chapter 15
Clean finally. Annalee thought to herself making one last swipe across the window with the chemical sprayed rag. She stood back appreciating her handiwork. The plywood she pulled off the windows lay in a neat pile next to the garbage can in the alley behind the house. All the windows were wiped clean of dust that accumulated over the years. She had to work extra hard in the corners; if they got wet before she wiped them they would turn into a messy black goo and therefore be harder to remove. The task had taken nearly three hours particularly because the house had three levels if you included the attic or four if you also included the basement. She supposed her mother and father had planned on many children when they bought the place being it had four bedrooms and three bathrooms. One occupied the first floor with the downstairs bath and three on the second with the second bath and a master suite. Each bedroom had one window along with each bath. The living room had three, the kitchen had two the basement had four and she hadn’t even bothered with the three in the attic.
Her mother and father occupied the room next to hers off the main landing for the first two years of her life. They had put her in the room next to theirs for safekeeping and easy trips in the middle of the night. When her mother died her father forced her to the room at the far end of the hall as if keeping her at a distance might keep the awful memories at bay.
Looking back at the window ledge she noticed there were still ugly holes in the walls where the nails had held it in place. She was too enthused by the fact that she could see out the window to care about that at the moment. Each one she had noticed was tacked in place by thirty-two nails exactly. That one wasn’t hard to figure out, her mother had died at the early age of thirty-two. She was supposed to be their miracle child after having tried for many years, her father had slurred her to sleep with the story many times when she was younger and he had still remembered it. The older she got the longer and more drawn out the story would be. More descriptive and vile; he made sure to let her know she was a disgrace in his eyes. She was meant to be the absolute joy they shared he would tell her, right up until the day she had killed her. By the time he reached the end of his little bed time story he would be livid. Most nights Annalee had no choice if she was going to sleep; it was lights out and a big headache in the morning.
There was movement beyond the window that grabbed Annalee’s attention and pulled her out of those dark memories. Two houses down a petite blonde woman stepped onto her front porch backwards struggling to get something through after her. Succeeding a small boy was lurched out onto the porch after her making the woman stumble back. She quickly gained her balance to grab his wrist again and used her other hand to unlock her car with a small remote. Annalee gasped when the boy’s face was lit by the porch light. It was only five o’clock but the sun had been quickly receding from the sky and all the porch lights down the street had flickered on not fifteen minutes prior. The boy was barely half the woman’s height by their similar appearance she pegged them mother and son. He had blonde hair and blue eyes one of which was circled in a large purple bruise. A slight trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth…
Annalee couldn’t explain it; didn’t know why her feet started moving and couldn’t remember at which point she went from a fast walk to a full on run out the door and down the street. By the time she got there the woman had opened the back door of the car to start pushing the boy in. Annalee hesitated a moment before walking straight up and tapping the woman on the shoulder.
“Hello,” she began, “My name is Annalee I live right there.” She pointed to the house when she got the woman’s attention.
“AND?” the woman spat. She was wound up tighter than a rattlesnake ready to bite.
“I noticed your son is bleeding and was wondering if I could help somehow,” she said sheepishly now regretting the run across the street. She looked past the mother to the boys terrified wide eyes. She knew it was no accident, she had seen that terror in her own eyes a million times when she woke up the next morning to clean the blood off her own face.
“You, little girl,” she roared venom dripping off every word, “can really learn a lesson in minding your own business. I was just taking him to the hospital.”
“I just wanted to help,” Annalee said soflty.
“Get back to your house and mind your own that will be all the help we need,” she said slamming the back door and moving to open the driver’s side. Again inexplicably Annalee moved without willing it, to catch the woman’s hand. She couldn’t let her leave with the boy, who knew what she was planning to do next. The loathing in her voice told her such. If she had been prepared for what happened next she would have stopped it she wasn’t going to be a victim anymore. The fact was though that she didn’t know; she had no preconceived notions that the woman’s other hand would clench into a fist, swing back and knock her to the ground. It wasn’t the hit that knocked her out completely, that would have been too easy. It was the hard concrete driveway that her head bounced off of like a basketball. She felt her feet being kicked aside and heard the car start before being enveloped in the black cloud that she welcomed to take her pain away.