Frostbite

Chapter Eight

Wow, okay. 11 months. I am officially the laziest little shit that I know. I am so sorry. Well, here is chapter eight, and it sucks because this story has no plot but for some unknown reason that I cannot fathom, people are reading it so I decided to try to write something. I mean something is usually better than nothing unless this is actually fully terrible, but the time has just moved from night to morning so I have to go to bed. But, anyway, thank you so so much for all the random reads and library adds and votes and comments and fans - I have no idea why, I am about as reliable as something really unreliable (can't think of anything lol). But thank you. :)

Mister Aladdin sir, what will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, jot it down
You ain't never had a friend like me!
- Aladdin friend like me

CHAPTER EIGHT

The original plan had been to simply sneak inside, upstairs and go to sleep. The emphasis being on simply. Except, having the mother from hell, nothing was simple. The second I clicked the door shut behind me she was on me.

She stood leaning against the back of the couch, arms crossed with her hair bound up tightly into a neat bun. She wore no makeup, and the faint lines of weariness that creased her face made me feel a twinge of sadness. I had contributed to those over the past few days. She sighed.

"Heather... I can't even find the energy to be angry with you. I feel like I don't even know you anymore."

I opened my mouth to reply but she waved me away.

"No, just...just go upstairs."

I shrugged and trudged upstairs, closing the door to my room behind me with a quiet snick. Slipping off my dress, I threw on some pyjama shorts and an oversized t-shirt that said "Bite Me" - don't ask where I got it, it was a strange gift from a strange aunt.

A quick trip to the bathroom to wash my make up off and then I crawled into bed gratefully and sleep claimed me instantly.

Soft coils of darkness surrounded me, thick and viscous, pulling me deeper into the shadows. I opened my mouth to scream but I couldn't make a sound. Hands reached out to me, clawed fingers digging into my skin, and everywhere I looked, eyes, gleaming in the darkness, watching, always watching.

I woke up with a start.

For a moment all I could hear was the hummingbird thrumming of my heartbeat pulsing urgently in my mind. Then I heard it, the sound that must have woken me from my sleep, an echoing shriek.

My breath was misting against the window pane before I had even realised that I had moved. My hands left prints against the glass as my fingertips slid across its smooth surface. And then I was pushing open the window and swinging myself out into the tree outside. I had used the window as an exit from my house before, but never in the middle of the night, and never like this. The branches creaked menacingly as I hung for a split second before landing, with cat-like grace, on the ground below.

Some part of my mind was screaming at me to stop, to wake up, but my feet kept moving, their path leading me across the street and through the alleyway behind the dairy. My familiar neighbourhood was less comforting in the dark than it was in the daylight. Shadows leapt up at me, clinging to my clothes, and I could still hear the faint echoes of the cry that had woken me.

Except, now I knew. It hadn't been a scream of pain, or terror. It had been a call, and it was meant for me.

My bare feet sunk into the grass, frost coating my skin with tiny crystalline fragments of ice. The flakes fell in my hair too, tempering the fiery shade with silver. The leaves on the trees curled inwards on themselves, sensing the presence of other. I felt it too, the unnatural cold, and the way the trees around me seemed to arch over me as if they wanted to crush me beneath them.