Don't Get Caught (English Version)

|Chapter 2|

Engines rumbling and horns honking, people going in and out of the towering skyscrapers, the witty exchanges between hagglers and hawkers, the voices in commercial advertisements televised on huge screens—the city life—all of it, seemed miles away. It was no longer Ela's life anymore.

Any minute now, she would be turning her back on everything that never really mattered.

The weather was dismal. Overhead were enormous, gray, and pale white clouds that were commixed to lessen the usually sweltering feeling under direct exposure to sunlight. Standing on the riverside, the grass beneath her boots felt damp and slippery. She was able to discern a distant man aboard his humble boat, assembling his bait to be used for fishing, while some birds with cream-colored feathers were flying in circles overhead, perhaps waiting for a catch. 

Ela shut her heavy lids as she took a huge amount of air to keep another sob from escaping her chapped lips. Her eyes still ached and swelled due to incessant crying for days. The bite of the brutal December air did nothing to numb the agony she was enduring. This was it. She had to believe that she was not asleep anymore. The times for sweet dreams had long ended, even though they only happened two weeks ago. Her most painful part of waking up was not the gradual fading of dreams, but the materializing of her nightmares.

She reopened her eyes and they landed on the man whose usually waxed hair was now disheveled due to sleepless nights and tiresome days after the tragedy. His usual calm and collected disposition were nowhere to be seen on his face.

Dad.

This broken man was her father. The resemblance was palpable except for her azure, blue eyes that she inherited from her mother. Her enchanting eyes were graced both with the calmness of the ocean and the rage of tidal waves.
After the heinous crime, the pallid skin of her father's temples no longer wrinkled out of frolics but squints as he glared at whatever indistinct space that seemed to only exist in his internal battle.

The tragedy came like a storm surge that drowned and took away her father's radiant smile and all was left was this spiteful soul with stolid indifference as he let the ashes spontaneously fly and dispersed along with the strong wind and sluggish river.

Sad was both an understatement and an insult to the man's emotional status. She knew her father was devastated but he was great to put up an impenetrable shell—not mainly to fend off any invader from peering inside but to prevent himself from shedding any weakness to anyone beyond his internal barrier. A tear failing to dry up streamed down Ela's flushed cheeks despite the overwhelming and continuous gust of the wind on the riverbank. The first, fat drop of salty water was a forerunner of another weeping as she collapsed to the damp earth.

A firm hand gripped her shoulder—firm enough to snatch her attention but mild enough not to leave a bruise.
"You have to know, my child, that most demons aren't in hell. But in here," muttered in a grave tone of her father.

"W-we have to get them, Dad." Couples of hiccups blended with her pleading. 

"In time, my child. We'll have our vengeance."

His remark resulted in a flicker of something sinister inside her. And as she recalled that real nightmare to fuel the darkness that leisurely plagued her heart, she balled her trembling fingers into a fist.

There were things that she just could not run away from. Some things would forever haunt her. So she would bide her time until tables were turned. The time would come that she would make sure her enemies would face their demons.