It All Happened So Quickly

Here's how it all began

Through the mirror I see myself starring back at me. The blonde hair that brushes against my tail bone, the blue eyes, my not-too-pale-pale skin; me. Fifteen years ago, on July 16, I was born with the name of Nicole in a small town also named Nicole. I live with my parents in a cherry colored town home. About sixty minutes north of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Being me, I like to sugar coat things and make life seem like this beautiful fairy tail, when in reality it's not even close. Lately, I've started to question that though, seeing that there's this guy I can't stop thinking about and knowing the sun won't stop shining and well, life's gotten better, then it got pretty bad, but let's just start the day it started.

June 18 2014; 6:24 A.M.

The shaking of the window and the sound of rain hitting every inch of our house awoke me. Turning over so I faced the opposite direction of the soaking window I saw the screen of my phone light up, silently ringing. I reached down and picked it up off my floor.

"Hello?" I cleared my weak throat bringing myself to my senses.

"Um hey, did I wake you up?"

"No it's fine, who is this?" I asked, remembering the caller ID was a number I didn't necessarily recognize.

"Oh sorry this is Carter, I'm Katy's friend, she gave me your number." Carter confessed.

"Oh okay, what's up?" I unplugged the charger from my phone and sat up, resting my back against the wall.

"Nothing much, what about you?" He asked.

"Trying to wake up."

"Cool." I could tell the conversation wasn't going anywhere so I made up a random excuse to why I had to go and hung up. Looking out the window I stared upon the water streaks, streaming down my window, one by one, racing each other to the bottom. Kind of like people, always racing one another to victory, always trying to out do each other. Just like raindrops. I dozed off and woke up hours later.

The rain had stopped and the sun was squeezing itself through the tight knit of the clouds. I pulled my phone from the corner of my bed, suddenly remembering the strange conversation I had earlier. Why was he calling at six in the morning and why me? I sat up and started to walk out my door, a mirror hangs on the back of it, which in this case probably saved my life. Almost as if I slept on blackberries, or as if someone threw paint on me in my sleep, whatever it may be, it was smeared along my lower face and neck. I dragged my finger across the dried liquid to find the liquid was merely blood, covering a majority of my head. I slowly opened my door and headed straight towards the bathroom, keeping my head down. Franticly I found a wash cloth under the sink, turned the facet on and drenching the towel in water, scrubbing at my face. The longer I scrubbed the more I started to not be able to tell the difference between blood and skin. Knocks on the bathroom door caught my attention and I dropped the towel.

"Nicole, I have to run into work, you going to be okay here for a while?" My mom said through the closed door.

"Yeah, I'll be fine, see ya later."

I heard the garage door close behind her and I ran back into my room and saw that the blood didn't hesitate to cover my pillow either. I took the pillow case off and buried it under weeks of dirty clothes. Taking a deep breath I sat back down, fumbling my phone in between my fingers. The screen was black and ever so slightly reflected a silhouette of my face. I stopped moving my fingers and slowly tilted the screen so the light would bounce off it and reflect a more precise reflection. You could tell my skin was still irritated from the uneven tones and blotchiness of the reflection. Even though it was like looking at a black mirror, the slightest sensation coming from my nose and the wariness of my head told me the blood wasn't through with me yet.