Whispers in the Dark (Being Rewritten)

Chapter 9

9

I was yanked out of my dream by a loud slam. Shooting up out of my floor-bed I crept down the stairs, worried it might have been the man from before. Peeking out from a safe spot on the steps, I was able to see the door, a clear view. Mom was stumbling around, trying not to laugh, a man standing behind her. Her skirts were crumpled and her shirt had been miss-buttoned at multiple places. Hair spilled out of her bun and she was slurring as she talked to the man in what I guessed was her idea of quiet.

I bit back a groan. Sometimes parents could be total dumb-asses.

The man had ugly, dull blue-brown eyes and tumbleweed platinum blond hair. His jaw was too defined and his mouth too long. He reminded me of one of those really ugly Vikings. Seriously, I thought, rubbing my temples, mom could do way better. But, after dad, I couldn't really blame her.

"Mom?" I made my way through the kitchen and stopped a few yards from them. Bracing my shoulder against the wall I watched her turn to face me. The look on her face was one of a doe caught in someone's head lights before she got hit.

After a moment of drunken silence she smiled. "Hi, Christie. What're you doin' up so late?"

"I couldn't sleep. Who's he?" I jerked my chin in the man's' direction.

Mom moved in front of him, as if her small form could hide his huge Viking self. "Who?" she asked innocently.

This was getting sad.

"I can still see him," I told her, rolling my eyes. "Ugh, just be quick. I want him out of here before I wake up." Stepping closer I glared up at the man. "And be warned, I wake up really early." Okay, that was a lie but it didn't matter. I might as well have been talking to a brick because that's how smart he was. Whatever I said to him went in one ear and out the other.

Fucking dumb-ass.

I walked around them and grabbed my shoes by the door.

"Where are you going?" Mom was already halfway up the stairs with her "friend" when I looked back at them.

"School." I tied my shoe laces shaking my head at my mothers' idiocy.

"Oh. Okay!" She beamed and was up the stairs, frolicking to her room for a night of divorced bliss.

I vowed to myself then and there that I would never let her drink again. She'd be lucky if she could drink orange juice.

When I was out the door my feet flew and I was running. I was in a place where there were no problems, no asshole jocks and no snobby sluts. I was floating in an oblivious state of mind. Everything disappeared and I was home. In my empty little apartment, lying in my soft, warm bed, surrounded by my mounds of stuffed animals, talking on the phone in a three way chat with Greg and Morgan. When I slowed to a stop I found myself in an abandoned park. I seated myself on one of the rusted swings and stared up at the endless sky of black filled with small white diamonds. I didn't mind the park being abandoned. It was just another place where I could go to think or read when people were annoying me. I actually liked it. I'd be sure to come here again.

After gazing at the stars, playing on the swings, sliding down the slides and hanging from the monkey bars, I decided it was late enough for Jumbo to have done his business and leave. Dusting myself off, I started back on the path toward home hoping to whatever God there was out there that I wouldn't have a sister within the next nine months.

Then I saw them.

They stood at the edge of my peripheral, at the other end of the park under the streetlamp, a dozen or so yards to the right from where I stood. Two people- a boy and a girl. The girl was a bit older than me, maybe a senior if she went to Day Light High, with straight auburn hair. The boy was much younger, about five or six, his brown hair short and thick. They looked normal, like they were brother and sister walking home or something, but I knew better. They had that way they held themselves. Like Chelsea when she was getting ready to insult me. They weren't relaxed kids. They were something worse and more dangerous.