One Shots

The Mystery Girl

One: My insomnia wasn't killing me, that I was grateful for.

Two: I wasn't sleeping in my bed, and isn't ever the case in my home.

Three: There was a little girl curled up against my chest, sleeping alongside me.

Luckily, I wasn't startled by such differences, and my staring eyes hadn't awoken the child. But sadly, I had to move so I could prepare us both to travel back into town. So I had to wake her up to allow me to move off the couch. With a gentle rub of her back, she was awake and beginning to enter the conscious realm.

The sun in her eyes made her squint to see her surroundings, that or she just stared at me with barely open eyes.

Suddenly, and without any warning, she wrapped herself around me tighter and spoke into my ears for the first time.

"Don't leave me. Don't you ever leave me."

I was taken aback!

Her first words and they weren't a threat to me or a cry for help. Such things you would expect from a child who was just taken by some stranger, albeit for reasons of safety for both parties rather than for malicious kidnapping.

Instead, her first words towards me, are a plea to me. Spoken in a voice so raspy and dead sounding, that I almost thought I was still asleep. A quick moment of thinking and a sudden realization that she's was coiling her arms around me reassured me that I was well awake.

This was truly surprising to me. Yet, as I tried to get her off of my neck and chest, she clung to me harder and tighter. So much so, that her arms wrapped fully around my neck, and her head dug deep into my left shoulder. Almost to the point of choking me. Almost.

Between my own exasperated coughing, I spat out my own plea.

"P-Please stop holding onto me so tightly. Yo-You're choking me."

She flinched, quickly loosened her grip on me, and backed her head away so she could look me in the eyes.

It was then I realized, her eyes...

They were pitch black where her irises should be. Like big black marbles floating in her eyes. Staring into me. Yes, those eyes were real, and they worked, but such a unique feature was even more startling than the number of differences I would have to face today.

Now that light of the sun could show me what she looked like fully, everything about this child suddenly felt different.

Her eyes, were, unique of course. Along with her hair, now that I was this close, it didn't feel like hair, it felt like a light fabric. Then her weight, she was not only lighter than any other normal child, and I realize now that her hands on and around my neck felt nothing like skin, it felt more like leather.

She was like a living doll.

Then her gaze changed from staring into my own eyes to the window. Her grip on me loosened on me as well.

With this chance, I completely removed her from on top of me, to on just the couch, so I could stand above the child, and get an even better look at her. She obviously resisted immensely, at least she did until I placed her on the couch so we could sit across from each other instead of piled up together.

She was dazed by my quick movements, and she was trying to process everything that happened. When I sat down across from her on a spare stool I had, she must've realized that I wasn't trying to run away from her, or trying to kill her, or anything of the sort. Because then she said:

"You're... You're not leaving me?"

How did it take me this long to realize this?