The Girl in the Rayne

“So what’d we get wrong you little punk?” The Neil imposter blew invisible steam from his nose like a train.

A sly smile spread itself across my face as every person on the tour, including ginger duck, turned my way. Tooth shuffled the leaves beneath his feet nervously, he had always hated attention.

“How about the part where the she didn’t die when she was thrown in the river? Or the part where she survived and floated downstream to a waiting homeless couple who raised her as their own? Perhaps you forgot to mention that she was raped and murdered by the man who was supposed to protect her after he put the ring on her finger? Did you know that man turned out to be Neil himself? None of that clearly occurred to any of you here.” I crossed my arms sternly over my puffing chest.

“What does rape mean?” A little boy dressed in Victorian clothing asked his shocked mother.

“It means nothing sweetie, absolutely nothing.” She said through clenched teeth.

Tooth elbowed me, a sign to shut up and that I was beginning to scare the children with the truth. It was a sad reality back in those days; incest was all too common amongst the richer families. They wanted to preserve their power so they simply wed within the family. Wedding between two cousins was one thing, a father and daughter was a completely different ball game.

A father was something I had never known no matter how much I desperately wanted one in my life. Jenna’s constant depression and guilt stopped her from ever exploring any other options that weren’t my biological father. Hell, I didn’t even know the man’s name after seventeen years on this earth.

“You have some nerve you little dick.” Ginger duck roared with his little duckling voice and made his way over to me.

He stepped into my view; each strand of wet, sweaty hair was now exposed as he rolled up the sleeves on his ugly gray sweater. Red blotches of blood settled under his chubby cheeks, daring for me to say another word. I’d be happy to tell him what was on my mind.

“Why do you lie to these kids? They deserve to know the truth-“

“Nine-year-olds don’t deserve to know what rape is-“ I easily interrupted his rambling.

“They know what sex is and where babies come from you know?”

Tooth gripped my wrist hard and pulled me away from the angry tour guide. My red jacket’s zipper dug into my pale neck. The cold air easily set in and irritating my now itching skin.

“You better pray I don’t see you kids around here anymore or I’m calling the-“

A choking noise sounded behind us as we walked away. Adrenaline pumped through my veins, ready for another round with the fat man. Even as Tooth released me and began to rush towards the choking man, I found myself simply walking forward.

An invisible mission was laid inside of my brain and it would be fulfilled. I would find Rayne no matter how many stupid tours I had to go on.
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“The EMTs said the fat ass would live. Can you believe the idiot choked on his own spit?” Tooth chuckled as he gripped the steering wheel of his beat up Jeep.

I stuck to staring out the window into the darkness of the woods that hugged in the side of road so tightly that I swore they would eat us alive. I watched for any sort of sign that would lead me to her.

“Where’s the next Rayne joke at?” I asked casually.

“I kinda wanted to talk to you about that, dude.”

He cranked the window down with a resistant squeak and popped a Marlboro into his lazy lips that had just abandoned a toothpick. So many times before he said he’d quit before anything bad happened to him, but hey, smoking is a drug just as much as Rayne was so I couldn’t exactly blame him.

“I think it’s time to forget about a dead girl. She’s been gone for what, two hundred years, man? People die and we move on from that, Nate. You’re only hurting yourself in obsessing over the thought that she’s real and waiting for you-“

“Excuse me?” I shot him an evil look. “Are you calling me crazy?”

He puckered his lips around the drug stick and let a thin stream of smoke escape through the gap in his teeth. His eyes were moving erratically as he thought of a nice way to put his opinion.
“Not crazy, but pretty damn close.”

I turned up the radio and frowned as the newest wave of poppy music flooded through his high tech stereos. My breath fogged up the glass of my window as I sat in silence. After the first cigarette disappeared Tooth spoke again.

“Is that yours?” He motioned with his head to my window.

Following his gaze I found a single long, brown piece of hair that swirled just outside in the chill of an October night. I carefully picked the hair away from the wet surface, only to watch it fall apart molecule by molecule in my hot palm.

A stench of decay flooded the car, causing us both to wind down the windows as fast as our arms would go. Tooth scrunched his nose and made an animalistic noise as the scent refused to leave. The hair was now only a small pile of dust inside of my hand.

“Get rid of that shit or else you’re steam cleaning my car on Saturday.” He hissed.

Losing a perfectly good Saturday to washing his car wasn’t on my To-Do List. I carefully put my hand to the outside world and released the particles into the wild like it was an animal under research. It made a sound much like rain that wasn’t quite a drizzle and not quite a down pour just yet.

Just as I got all of the dust out of my hand we pulled up to my house.

“I’ll pick you up tomorrow for school, okay?” Tooth said as he popped another cigarette into his mouth and lit it.