Shield

10.- THE Dream.

A small, bad-nourished girl walks silently through rich furnished rooms, her hands nervously dancing across the frills of her dirty pink dress of tulle and trims trying to wipe them clean. She sniffles loudly snot running freely over her upper lip, this little girl trips on her silver tulip shoes with oversized bows, her mouth salty. This morning someone told her it was her birthday so she had to get up early to dress nicely for the party, she fusses and fights while others dress her in a parade of people losing their patience, pulling her hair back, tightening her with ribbons and a small white cardigan to protect her naked arms like armor over her delicate girly dress. To them, it's like fighting with a wild animal.
She feels stupid but a pretty lady tells her she is too, so she believes it.
The little girl sits in the garden close to the swimming pool waiting for her promised friends and her promised party.
No one comes. She waits for what feels like hours and hours. Still, no one comes, she's hungry but can't eat the food till the guests arrive, no presents or cake in till the guests arrive.  She waits alone.
The little girl walks fast through empty furnished rooms sniffling loudly, her mouth puckered backward as she chews on her bottom lip "Nelinha," a firm voice calls out to her "Come..." he commands and she stops in front of an open doorway, the library house of delicious smelling books that always feels dark. It scares her. Through the window she can see the shadow of a giant hung doll, hanging from the neck swaying from the tree outside, she does not want to go in, the doll scares her.
"Daddy" She blubbers out like a lost whisper in an empty mansion that no one can find, no one will come, no one can come. She is all alone here, alone with him. She hates it.
"Nel, hurry in" he is angry, Daddy is always angry. Nel wonders in tripping over herself, her now dirty skirt crumpled in her little sticky fists that only tried to clean it.
Emmanuel sits back in a deep armchair; shadows fall over his face obscuring his bronze features off dark eyes and tight lips. The library is always so dark just like her father.
Nel hurry's closer, her thin infant legs waddling closer feeling suddenly cold and sweaty, her brow is damp and the first thing she thinks of is the smell of lavender as her gaze goes back and forth between her father and the hanging doll. How does she know how lavender smells? Who has ever smelled like lavender?
The boss, the father, Emmanuel puts his impossibly big hands over his small offspring's frame, he is heavy and feverish, and his hands' smell of smoke and silver, a giant ring catching light, he and the scary men around him always covered in precious metals and jewels, Nel is scared, trembling softly in place, she sniffles once tasting the salt of her own snot and he tightens his grip the heat of his skin is now pain and pressure and the pure desire of running away.
"Daddy?" Nel sniffles once more and her father strikes her hard across the face, only his hand keeping her in place, stopping her from flying away, grounding her in her pain.
"Stop," he warns his voice scary, his face serious, the doll swaying closer and closer to the window, begins tapping it softly "Stop crying" he warns and Nel laments with a low moan staring at the window, Emmanuel strikes her again and when a squeal escapes, he instantly strikes a third time "Are you ready to stop?" he repeats himself.
Nel nods frantically her face a hot mess of faithlessness and fear, o burnt cauldron of boiling poison with extinguishing coals being fanned underneath it.
"You are just as useless as your mother. For fuck sake at least stand up straight" he shakes her in reprimand and suddenly the window illuminates outside, the doll not a doll but her mother hanging purple and swollen from the neck; lips puckered around a protruding tongue and bulging eyes, he pushes her back too hard and she falls, the boss breaths out in frustration "I swear you do it on purpose, get up!"
Nel fumbles to her feet wanting to run away she murmurs "Mommy" Nel tries to point to the window, for her father to turn around and see her, she pushes herself up from the ground with her tinny, tacky palms but her body is too heavy, it's weighed down by an invisible force that grounds her and keeps her shaking like a leaf in a thunderstorm.
"GET UP!" her father yells at her and she shutters swallowing a scream "I swear I will fucking kill you! Get up now!" her father was not a patient man and, when she hears the creak of the armchair being freed from his weight, as he gets up the overwhelming fear of the monster lights her a flame as an arsonist with a new lighter.
All Nel sees is red and pain and fear as she feels herself being raised off the ground by the hair, her caramel-colored locks locked in a fist.
"If I ever have to hear your pathetic crying again it will be the last time..." Emmanuel snarls disinterestedly while his daughter holds her breath, snot and tears rolling down her face in fountains of nuisance emotion. As Nel clamps her eyes shut trying to escape the monsters, in pure terror she can hear a boy's laughter as the Ringling of a belt being unfastened, behind her the window thuds.
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Nel awakes startled in a run-down love motel, her head aches and her mouth tastes like regret, at least she could always count on her recuring dreams to keep her company, memories she did not know if they were real or fake. The monsters that lived inside and around her.
Shun was gone, she was not surprised, and for a second Nel wished she were gone too. With a groan and a sigh, she gets out of bed and calls reception "Doc?" a cough answers "I won't be assisting you today, I have a date at the clinic" Nel announces in her business voice, the Docs chuckles through the line "Go get yourself killed kid, see if I care to put you back together once you end up on the Butchers slab or filled with more led than a Christmas ornament. If you go don't come back." And with this he hung up. Nel couldn't help but to smile to herself and the sudden drop her stomach felt by the simple idea of leaving her room and decided against it, cursing she laid back down.