Steel: The Transformation

Chapter 2

Chapter 2 

Cleo POV

The walls of the room moved closer. It was almost like a game, but a terrifying one. My pulse raised and my throat started to close off. I turned my head to the right and I could feel the wall on the left pushing against my side. When I flipped my head around, the wall was motionless. The walls never moved when I looked at them. Now looking to the left I could feel the right wall starting to crush my ribs. It pushed me up against the left wall and the already small space became unbearable. As I struggled for air and the wall was slowly crushing my body, the lights went out.

A moment of darkness and then the furniture in my bedroom started to come into focus. I sat up in the bed and tried to control my shaking body. Why won't those stupid nightmares go away?

I turned on the hot water in the shower and soon my bathroom was filled with mist. My coping mechanism when waking up from those nightmares was either hot shower or hot tea, something about the warmth helped with calming myself down.

I had thought when I first moved here, that being here would help me. That everything would fall into place. Finding out that the parents I never had owned a property and had put aside money for me was like being told by my fairy godmother that I was Cinderella. I had been drifting around from town to town trying to figure out what to do with my life, after officially being released from the foster system. I was living in a big city then, working as waitress when I had finally scraped together enough money to get a drivers license. I guess my application had triggered something on a government list of unclaimed trust funds.

To be honest, I had not asked any questions to the officials who told me that my biological parents had created a trust fund for me before they died. I had just been happy that I had somewhere to go, somewhere that might tell me something about who they were.

I stepped out of the bathroom and listened to the silence. It's funny how something as small as silence can be so important for someone who has always been surrounded by other people, strangers, foster families. Too many to count, too many cramped houses. Being here in this house, all alone, was something I could never even dream of.

Movement on the outside of the window broke my thoughts and caught my attention. I walked over, still only wrapped in a towel and looked out. A girl with beautiful black hair and a muscular blonde haired guy was moving boxes into the house next door. It looked like I was getting some new neighbours. I found myself wondering if they were brother and sister. But they didn't look alike, so maybe they were a couple?

I pulled myself away from the window and returned to my bedroom. If I didn't get dressed soon, I would be late and Jackson would have a reason to tease me about it all day.

~*~

The air was fresh and the sunshine caught my face. I locked the door behind me and pulled my hair into a ponytail quickly. I could already hear Jackson's car turn around the corner onto my street. He pulled up on the side of the road, leaving his motor running and I hurried down the veranda steps to meet him.

"Good morning," he had a mischievous smile on his face. I couldn't help but smile back at him. I leant over and gave him a quick kiss. He smelled as good as ever.

I reclined back against the cool leather seat, as he drove out on the road. Looking over at him, his brown hair was playing in the wind and a small smile was lingering on his lips. His hand had found its regular resting place on my knee. The big wooden houses and their leafy gardens sped past us and I couldn't help noticing how a warm and happy feeling was spreading from my stomach across my body. He was really a miracle, at least to me. It was hard to imagine how someone can come into your life and slowly start to mean everything to you. I never thought I would be able to trust someone the way I did now. I never thought I would ever be in one place for long enough to be able to.