Humans, Are Such Nasty Things

"I'll be free of sin through you," He said as he caressed my cheek with his hands.
Fear swallowed me up as my whimpers grew louder. My lower lip quivered as I stared at the man in the red robes. I closed my eyes and screamed but not before seeing his red attire transform in a sea of dark red blood which I started drowning in.

Scenes of my childhood floated around my head. The face of my mother broke into thousands of pieces that stabbed me all over my nude body. I swam in an attempt to save myself from the horrible sea full of screaming. I started to feel lighter as if I could escape, then beautiful white arms dragged me back down. Touching me, grabbing my legs and arms, and muffling my screams. Then the voices started.

"Wendy, Wendy," a high-pitched voice laughed.
"Be a good girl, little one," A man's deep voice chuckled.
"AND PURGE US OF OUR SINS!" An elderly voice shouted in my ear.

The arms dragged me under. The red was terrifying. The arms moved around my body faster, more grabby and touched me all over. The voices grew stronger and I couldn't breathe. I could only struggle, which tired out my body more. The pain was crippling.

"Little Wendy," was the last laugh I heard before hands covered my eyes. And then, absolute silence.

As the picture became clear there was darkness. Except that I saw a person standing. Even from the back, I could tell who this girl in the white nightgown was. Her peach skin, and her thick, pale burgundy hair all the way to her waist, and her small frame.

"Nandaleah," my voice cracked as I teared up at the sight of seeing a person with whom I could feel calm.
She look on my wordlessly, her big beautiful, hazel green eyes, sad. Her cherubic visage was troubled.

"My sister," I reached my towards, desperate to find peace in this hell.
"Disgraceful," Nandaleah looked at me in scorn. The distance between us multiplied by ten and I could barely see her walking away with flames embodying her.

'Selfish' the letters of the word chained me to the ground and the horrible arms and voices came back.

They pointed at my naked body and laughed. Faces came. Faces that resembled the Masks of Comedy and Tragedy spun around my head and laughed at me.

'You're so selfish,' A calm voice said
'Going to your sister like that.' another similar voice said.
'Do you expect she will make you feel better?' A third mocking voice chuckled.
"She helps!" I said crying out.
'Oh?'
'Does she?'
'Does she really?'
"Leave me be!" I cowered in fear.
'Why?'
'We're just telling it as it is.'
'Don't you want to know your ugly nature?'
"Shut up!" I yelled.
'That's fine I suppose.'
'No one really wants to know their true nature.'
'Hypocrite. You go around judging people when you should really be placing judgement on yourself.'
"Please, please just leave me alone," I sobbed as I hung my head, unable to bear this harsh treatment.
"NEVER!" A thousand voices chorused and laughed as pieces of my body were being ripped from me.

I woke up not screaming, but staring at the ceiling, my body numb with terror and fright. For a while, my breath was still. My mouth was just open. Then I regained some sense of awareness and the full impact of the nightmare hit me. My past, my fears all summed up in another night of hurt.

My breath was sharp and swift. I wiped the cold sweat on my forehead and tried to calm down; I was only getting much more anxious. My lungs couldn't get the oxygen quick enough so I was starting to feel dizzy.

There was a sound at the window and out of fear, I flung myself off the bed and scrambled in a corner. I sat there whimpering and shivering. The word Nandaleah said to me in my nightmare haunted me. 'Disgraceful.' I couldn't see myself but I would have to assume that's how I looked. Like a little circus monkey, cowering in the corner of her cage as the trainer comes with the whip, then being forced into strange and wildly coloured clothes. Disgraceful.

I hugged my knees and buried my face in it. With my free hand, I gripped the gold pendant of the necklace my mother gave me as a means to calm down. I found it to be a healthier alternative to the razors I used a year back. I tried to block out the memories of the voices. The scary voices that hurt me so much. I suppose the instant I saw Nandaleah standing, I should have figured out it was a dream. But the pain was too much to bare..

I looked to the ceiling with closed eyes. It was more like I tried to blink back the tears. My body still slightly trembling. I gritted my teeth and made my way back to my bed slowly. I told my self what I always told myself when I was having a moment of weakness.

"Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, wipe your tears, wash your face, endure, then do it all over again," I said aloud, my voice cracking at the last step.

I threw myself on the bed, sitting up, and took deep breaths. I looked on the digital clock that sat on my night-table. It was three-thirty in the morning. Fan-fucking-tastic. I'll never be able to get to sleep, especially if I'll have horrible nightmares like that again.

My memory of last night was fuzzy. I wondered what happened, but I tried to wonder not too hard, fearful that my dreams would return much more vividly. I felt something snake across my thigh. I looked and I saw the jack of earphones that were still in my ears. My memory returned.

After feeding that mountain lion cub my unwanted pork-chops, I ran inside to get my camera. I kept one solely for special events so that if Nandaleah's sight returns, (No not 'if' I rebuke myself for thinking that, let me re-phrase the sentence) I kept one solely for special events so that when Nandaleah's sight returns, I could show her many beautiful pictures. When I returned, the cub was gone. I waited for a while for it to come back, but it never did.

On my way back upstairs to my room, I discovered that it was a few minutes after eight. Not wanting to do much, I started listening to some music. I lied on the bed thinking about many thing that I've forgotten at this moment. And I suppose I fell asleep.

"I see," I said as I stared blankly at the wall, still playing with the heart shaped pendant in my hands. It was a gift from my mother, she gave me for my sixth birthday, it was the same day the people took me from her. It's strange, you'd think a person would remember the day their world broke apart, the day when everything you knew became a coveted dream, the day which left a permanent scar in your life, and it's your birthday too. Being young, I suppose to register the date in my mind was not an important factor. And perhaps the emotional damage was enough to make me want to block it out. Only that the only thing I could black out was the date.

My mother told me never to take the necklace off. She said that it held a charm that would protect me as long as I wore it. My six year old mind took it in a believed it completely. In a way, I still kinda believe it, but not as wholeheartedly as before.

After I escaped those people, I lived on the streets for a bit. The police rescued me and I ended up in some sort children care facility. I was transferred to New York where I was quickly adopted by Senator Bright and his wife. I though that I was adopted as a whim of his wife, Rachel, who seemed to be completely fascinated over my eyes.

When the adoption was finished, I officially became a Bright. Initially, I wanted to keep the name Gwendelyn Amunet Hotep, but Rachel, thinking the name was too ominous sounding, wanted to give me an entirely new name, Ruth-Anne Matilda Bright. After much debate, we settled on me keeping my first name and taking on their last name. I had no middle name.

The house was nice enough, perhaps a bit quaint for rich people such as themselves. I kept to myself, mainly confined in my room that had fragrances that burnt my nose. Nandaleah, being young and curious, always came up to my room and tried to babble with me. Mixing up memories and making many different stories into one. I would send her away, not wanting any company with these strange green-eyed beings who were so different from my mother and I.

I got very depressed but I didn't show it. I pick up the habit of cutting myself when a knife sliced my hand when I was helping Rachel wash up. She was hysterical when she saw the blood, but I never felt more free in my life, it was like a euphoric release of pain and for the first time in years, I smiled.

It was only a matter of weeks after that when Nandaleah started getting sick. Her asthma was getting aggressive and she had fevers that never let up. Most of her time was spent in hospital rooms, and most of her parents time was spent crying over her fragile little body so they didn't have much time to notice how I began to withdraw more or how their razors went missing. Yes, there was a small part of me that felt sorry for Nandaleah, but my mind was mostly on the sweet scent and sight of my blood.

On one of the rare occasions that Nandaleah was discharged, we went to an all-day fair in Arizona. I was going through a really hard time then. At the catholic school, I was being bullied and eschewed because of my eyes. The latest thing was when the girl sitting behind me in class cut off my pony-tail, leaving only a stump. I always liked it when Mother brushed my hair, so losing my once long luxurious hair had a hard impact on me. In blind fury, I picked up the scissors in an attempt to stab the girl, but fortunately for her, the teacher caught my hand and sent both of us to the Headmaster's office where we both received our punishments. Rachel said that I shouldn't have gotten in trouble and that, "There's nothing more horrible that having your pony-tail chopped off." Since that incident I kept my hair short and I grew a bit closer to Rachel.

To add to that, I noticed that my skin never scarred. I saw it once scar in my earlier days of cutting and it was the most beautiful pink strip I ever saw. It was right on my shoulder blade and it sliced the blue marking. Not long after, the scar healed and the blue returned as if nothing ever happened. But after then, my skin never scarred. I would slice it, deep and long and when the bleeding stopped, the skin would just scab then fall off in hours, revealing my skin the way it was before. The frightened me, and forced me to really think I wasn't human like what all the kids at school said, and it also angered me, because I thought that I would never see another beautiful pink stripe again.

Because of that, I feel into a deep depression. I wasn't so angry anymore, I was mostly sad and lonely, I couldn't go a day without crying and staring at the razor, then at my skin that wouldn't show anymore beauty, just white. I felt as if the whole world has conspired against me. I felt as if I was a scapegoat for some scheme I'm ignorant of. I felt as if I was falling in a deep, dark pit of nothingness. I felt trapped.

When Nandaleah won the glasses and gave me because she thought it would stop the pain, I wasn't happy, I wasn't elated, I wasn't ecstatic, I was liberated. It was as if, she was a shining light in that dark pit of oblivion. She gave me hope, she gave me a meaning, she gave me life. It was an amazing feeling, to believe and know that someone cared for me. I fell down right there on my knees and then I cried, I gripped the glasses in one hand and Nandaleah's little hands in the other and weep.
"Thanks," I said with tear streaming down my cheeks as I looked up in her confused little face, "I'll always cherish them."

A few months afterward, Rachel was gunned down while shopping with Nandaleah. Nandaleah blacked out after screaming in fright as her mother's blood bathed her. I heard from a few eye-witnesses that Rachel actually shielded Nandaleah from the man with the gun and gave her life in return. I was at the hospital with the senator when Nandaleah woke up. Seeing absolute darkness sent her into hysteria. I grabbed her arms and tried to calm her down while I was feeling sad as well and fighting back tears myself. I don't know when it happened, but it seemed as if Rachel eccentricity made me like her and she snuck her way in my heart.

I didn't care for her enough to mourn her death to the level that her husband took it. He just last it. First it was nightmares, I had to rush in and calm him down myself in the middle of the night. Then he refused to look at Nandaleah for month, she looked too much like Rachel. Eventually, he gave in to alcohol, drugs and loose women who looked like his dead wife. I thought him to be like a super-hero; but instead of Average Joe by day and crime fighter by night, he was Senator Bright by day and the Drunk Menace by night. I can't count how many times I found him passed out on the door-step in the wee hours of the morning.

He ignored Nandaleah too. At the hospital she was at, Nandaleah seemed to have an allergic reaction to the food. I had to provide breakfast lunch and dinner for her, and of course the occasional snacks. I had to manage the house and made sure that no one was starving. I cooked and cleaned and even did a bit of managing the bills. I provided emotional support for her when her father avoided her, I spoke with her and confided with her many secrets. She slowly came back to me. She got out of her dark pit, and I was glad even though I was still in mine. When she was sad, the light in my dark pit grew dim and I hated that, and I hated how selfish I am to depend on her so heavily to rescue me. I became her sister, I became her confidant, I became her care-taker, I became her guardian as soon as I could, but most importantly, I became her dearest friend. In truth and fact, Nandaleah was the first friend I ever made.

She missed her father though, I could see. I didn't hate the senator, I hated his weakness, I hated his absence when his child needed him, but one event, made me hate him altogether. It was also another key factor in why I moved to Forks. This happened a bit over a year actually.

It was in the afternoon, I had just got home from school. Nandaleah was with us now although she was in a wheel-chair. I sent the nanny away and started dinner. I was lazy so I began to make soup. It was a rough day for me. I was shoved down stairs, had my uniform stolen after gym, I failed a test because with everything it was hard to study, I got beat up twice, had milk thrown over my book-bag, some bitch thought it would be funny if she locked me in the bathroom stall, and I got in an argument with an even bigger bitch of a teacher who told me that I was a creep that no one liked and had the whole class laughed at me. I told her to fuck off, gave her the finger and then she gave me a demerit and a Saturday detention. Then for the last few hours of school, everyone ignored me and pointed and laughed when I was spitting distance.

I was tired, I didn't want to do anything. The words that teacher said to me really hurt me. But does she think I don't know that already, all she did was voice the truth. So why did it hurt so much? Why did I find myself locked on the bathroom with a razor to my neck? Why did I not think of how much it would hurt Nandaleah if I died? Why did I do it? Why did I slice my neck with the razor? Why did I bleed out on the floor? And why, with that amount of my blood lost, didn't I die?

When I came to, for I had black out, all I heard was arguing. I didn't recognize the voices at first, and I didn't care, just the realization that I wasn't dead depressed me. I turned on my back and found myself in a sea of blood. It shocked me at the amount. Before I could wonder why I had survived, because I knew a person couldn't survive losing that much blood, I heard a loud crash followed by the unmistakeable scream of my little sister.

Instinct over intelligence, I jumped up and broke the closed door down with one kick. I flew downstairs to find Nandaleah's father holding her arms too tightly and sobbing, "Rachel, Rachel, I'm so sorry." His eyes were red not from tears, but weed. Nandaleah wasn't screaming, but she was convulsing in agony. She was out of her wheel chair, which at the moment was overturned and by the way her legs twisted, and the purple bruising of her skin, her legs were broken.

I pushed the sobbing worthless excuse of a man off her and pick her up with a strength fueled by the pure heat of the moment.
"Save, save her!, Save Rachel," He cried as he clenched my skirt.
"SHUT UP! YOU PRIMITIVE, UNINTELLIGENT BASTARD! YOU CAUSED THIS! I HATE YOU!" I shouted as I tried to kick him off.
"Blood! IT'S BLOOD!" He said as he looked down on his hand and started rolling on the floor.

The blood I was lying in must have gotten on his hand. I didn't look back to check. I was already running out the door to the nearest hospital, carrying a now screaming Nandaleah in my arms. I tried to hush her but the pain was so traumatic that her brain didn't register it to cry. I cried in her stead.

I bust in the hospital and instantly hollered for a doctor. When they asked me what happened, I didn't want to give them to much detail, so I told them to shut up and do their job. They nodded and seemed to understand my situation. That night and the following morning, I spent my time at Nandaleah's bedside. The doctors asked where all the blood on my uniform came from and I told them it was a result of weakness. They gave me the number for a suicide hotline and told Nandaleah what I tried to do without my consent.

"Sister," she said to me after she found out, "why would you do something like that?"
"Forgive me, I was weak, I was stupid and I wasn't thinking - " I stammered before she interrupted me.
"Hush, stop right there. You were always there for me and even though I'm blind and crippled and it seems as if I'll live out the rest of my days in a hospital, I want to be there for you. So please, let me share your burden, as you have been doing with me,"

Her words stopped me in my tracks. Her word, which were much beyond her years made me feel an emotion that I can't describe. It was like being accepted and loved, where at the same time I waned to bawl like a baby. And, it was very warm. Like a mother's embrace.

"Oh, my sister," I cried as I hugged her waist, barely mindful off her legs. She patted my head and I felt her tears splash on the nape of my neck. It was in that moment I threw razors and decided to never make Nandaleah cry again. I will never do something to cause her more pain than she had endured, even if it means I have to be strong and hated, even if it mean I have to give myself to her, I will. For in that moment, I became hers, my life no longer belong to me, it belonged to this beautiful, frail, cute little girl.

I came back to the present and found tears streaming down my face. My vow still strong in my heart, my will still unbreakable.

There was another rustle in the tress, this was too big and loud to be a bird or cat. In an instant, I slid the wood off the side of my night-table, revealing my GLOCK27 and grabbing it quickly. I pointed it at the closed window balancing myself with my knee on the edge of the bed and my other leg stretched out on the ground in case I need to make a run for it. My other hand is the house to my cell-phone, 911 already in and my finger hovered over the call button.

"Who's there?!" I demanded.
Silence.
"Answer me!"
Silence.
After a minute I returned the gun in it's hiding place and sighed. I figured I was jumpy because of surfacing memories of the past. All this excitement in the early morning made me hungry. I went down to the kitchen to make some warm milk and bread with honey in the forlorn hope of falling asleep.