A Game Of Love And Lies

Part 20

I was frozen, unable to move or blink. Loki snapped me out of my trans. He spoke to me the way you do when you catch someone sleepwalking and you are afraid that you will spook them and wake them up.

"Do you want to stop?"

I did. I really did but if I stopped I knew that I would hate myself for it later. You don't get that far and then quit. I shook my head without shifting my gaze from the screen. Years of therapy, going down the drain. My eyes were burning. It must have been one of the side effects. The scene changed and the moment it did my left ear started to ring. I could physically feel the serum searching through my brain.

I must have been staring at the sky because all I could see was blue. I could hear the faint sound of waves lapping against the shore.

"Althea look."

I turned in the direction of the voice. A young girl (around 9 years old)  was playing in the sand making castles and digging holes. She had taken off her shoes and socks, a wise choice considering the bottom half of her trousers, was soaked wet.

"What's that?"

She seemed offended that I did not immediately recognize what she was trying to build.

"It's our house!"

I shifted my body weight to my arms and observed a house a couple of hundred meters away.

"It looks nothing like it. Where are our porch and the second floor?"

"I am not done yet!"

I started feeling the emotions connected to that memory. This should have been a happy moment. Me and who seemed like my sister were having fun on the beach, why was I feeling sad?

I got jealous so I started playing with the fine-grained sand as well. I slowly dipped my fingers as far as I could into it. The warmth of the sand comforted me.

"Do you think they will break up this time?"

I sighed. "Maybe."

"We shouldn't have snuck out. They stop fighting when they realize we are listening."

"They can not avoid their feelings forever Christy."

Our stress relief was the peaceful serenity of that beach. The sound of the ocean and the wind blowing lightly was quite therapeutic. Only a few seagulls screeching from time to time made more noise from what they should but I did not mind. Usually, no other people around to disturb us...but not that time.

A black truck with tinted windows showed up out of nowhere. I stood up visibly startled and scared. A blonde tall woman stepped out of the vehicle. I could sense myself relaxing. You usually expect a man, to own a track like that one and not a beautiful blue-eyed woman like her. She approached us and out of a safe distance, she asked.

"Hi...sorry for disturbing you but do you know where I could find a phone? I think I got lost and I'm running out of gas so I need to call my boyfriend."

She genuinely appeared as she could use some help. I pointed at my house and said.

"My parents have a phone if you want to use that one."

She walked a bit closer happier than ever. "Ooh that's perfect, thank you very much! Since I need to drive all the way there before my car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, I can give you girls a ride back home so you won't have to walk."

"It's okay...we can walk."

"Are you su-"

She took a step closer and I instantly took a step further. Her kind smile disappeared. She noticed how ready I was to drop everything and start sprinting as far away from her as possible. One of my feet was already pointing in the direction I was going to run. She knew that no matter how sweet and innocent she appeared I wouldn't trust her. The silence between the moment she decided to catch us was deafening. I instantly turned and yelled as loud as I could to my sister to run. If I hadn't she could have frozen from her fear. The moment she did, I did as well but it was too late.

The woman caught my blouse and pulled it as hard as she could, choking me and throwing me to the ground.

I was fighting with everything in me but I was not that much of a struggle for her. It took her only seconds to pull from her back pocket a cloth dipped in chloroform. It did not take long after for it to cover my screaming and make me faint. Before everything blackened I could hear my little sister shouting and crying as she was running away, trying desperately to reach our home...but home was never reached. A flash and a horrendous sound smothered her crying. Later I realized that the woman shot her. No witnesses that way...