Marked by Death(on hold)

Marked by Death

Marked by Death Chapter 1

Stale air circulated in the small room causing the occupants to breath deeper for a simple breathe of air. The girl looked aimlessly towards the blank wall while the male flipped through a file of sorts. She was young but her body hid that fact. It had aged beyond her years causing her to have dark circles under her hollowed out eyes and slight wrinkles to form in various places. The one on her brow deepened when the man spoke.

"I am going to ask you one more time to be honest with me Veronica." He looked up from the open file on the metal table searching the dark pools of her eyes. His voice dropped down a notch as he pleads with the girl in front of him. "Veronica this is serious, let me help you..."

"My name is Vie." Her words were controlled and forced passed her clinched teeth.

This was progress and caused a tense draw to come to his lips that was not quiet a smile. It had been two hours since they entered that room and these were her first words. Using his thumb he swiped away a lost trickle of sweat that slide down his forehead into his eyes.

"Okay Vie." His head bobbed up and down slightly. The stubble on his chin was beginning to show now since the day had drawled on so long. "Vie what happened last night?"

He studied her face for a sign of response. Moving her long fingers from the cool metal of the table she swiped back a stray hair. The deep black hair was clearly dyed that color and several inches of a deep brown inched up from her scalp. Finally her eyes shifted to him as if she only now realized he was in the room.

"Officer?"

"Officer Clinton." He quickly answered her question to keep her talking.

Shifting forward on her elbows she narrowed her eyes to the policeman. "Officer Clinton this didn't start last night"

He sighed heavy before speaking again. "So why don't you start with the beginning?" The brow above his right eye shifted up slightly as he waited for her.

Dropping back against the hard metal of her chair Vie spoke vaguely. "I think I was ten or eleven when I first meet Jeffery..." Her voice trailed off when it started to crack.

Taking the moment for the break it was Clinton moved forward in the questioning. "How does that play in with last night?" he was keeping his voice controlled now in fear of appearing to harsh. If he did he might never get the answers he sought.

Those dark eyes shifted to his pale blue grey ones for a second. She studied them before looking away again. "Jeffery was always my savior..." She drifted away in her own mind for a second. A smile tugged at her lips when she started speaking again. "He is three years older than me so it took me four years before he treated me like a girl.' Again she faded away into her own mind and memories.

Clinton urged her forward. "So you were fourteen and he was seventeen?"

She snapped back to the small over heated room they shared. The smile faded away from her lips as she glared at him. Holding her teeth tightly together again she uttered,

 "Don't make it sound dirty." After a long pause she dropped her face and starred at the table. "It was never dirty like that then...I was still a child..."

"I didn't mean to upset you Veronica..."

"It's Vie! My name is Vie!" Anger flushed her face.

 Her insistent out burst startled him more than the fist she thumped against the table. Throwing his hands up in front of him Clinton tried to cool the situation.

"Okay Vie, I am sorry I forgot."

Tears caused her deep black eyes to sparkle now. "Jeffery was the one who gave me that nickname..." Her voice was not more than a painful whisper now.

She wiped at her moistened eyes causing the dark substance on her cheeks to smear. It hardly made a difference though she was covered in so much of it. The clothes she had worn were drenched in what seemed to be gallons of it as well. Now a bright orange top that was meant for a woman of a greater size hung miss shaped on her shoulders. The large blocked white letters on the back read INMATE. Vie was only around a hundred and twenty pounds at most and on her five foot three frame it looked lean. To lean to be considered healthy and her skin was extremely pale against her hair.

Twisting her hand over her wrist where the cuffs had been hours earlier, again she stared at the pale brown bricks of the wall behind him. The deep bruising up her arms showed the entry marks on her thin flesh. Purple and yellow with tiny unhealed sores in the middle they looked to be needle track marks. Noticing his eyes focused on the marks she twist her arms over to hide the places. Then out of the silence she spoke.

 "Can I Smoke?"

It was a smoke free building but Clinton wanted her to explain the last twenty four hours to him. So he pulled the bright pack of smokes out of his pocket and slides them to her. When she had one hanging from her lips he reaches over and lights the tip.

After a deep drawl she slowly exhales the grey cloud of smoke. It hangs above her head slightly causing her to appear to be inside a fog. Veronica flicked the growing ashes from the tip into an almost empty coffee cup. They sizzled slightly before she speaks.

"It all started when he came home from college after I graduated high school last summer..."

***A/N***

I know it is short but I wanted to set the story up. The rest of the chapters will be much longer : )