Someone opens the door, pushing them and they hit the wall, starling me. I open my burning eyes that are bloodshot now not from the alcohol, but from all the tears I shred.
That Gypsy again storms in my room and hits the door with his hands as they are the drums he is playing on.
"Get up, you idiot! Uuuu, it's cold in here!", he says, nuzzling his palms on one another, breathing in them to warm. He pulls my blanket that is the shield that is supposed to protect my body from the coldness that is embracing this damp room that makes me sneeze.
"Give...", I sneeze hard, again from the cold moisture.
"No, no! C'mon down! It's time for dinner! Aren't you hungry?" On the mention of food my stomach growls. "You are, asshole!", he chuckles when my stomach sings a song I don't like, and he laughs as an evil villain in the cartoon that I used to watch as a young child who still had his mom on his side. And his dad.
Some gross smell fills my nostrils and it doesn't take me much to realize that it's coming from him. He stinks so much, Gosh for how long he hasn't been taking a shower?
"Just leave me." I bury my head in the pillow that is nothing more but a ball of cotton wool, fonded not that comfortable for my heavy and tired head.
"Oh, I won't! You can't just sit here and do nothing! C'mon, we have so many troubles to cause!" He pulls my leg with his disgusting and dirty hand.
"Let go of me!", I bark as a frustrated dog that makes him bounce back, startled.
"Uuuu, what a scary boy! Hey, T come here!" He again calls his sister and I roll my eyes burying them in the pillow. Yeah, those Gypsy people are what I really need right now.
"What?", her deep voice that keeps surprising me each time she talks, fills the room, revealing that she entered it.
"Let's show this idiot how we love to play here!"
"On it, bro!" I don't have to look at her to know that her lips are curled in a big smile, showing her black teeth.
While I wait to see how they love to play I hear faint whispering coming from the siblings mixed with muffled chuckles, while my head is buried in the pillow that just now I realized as well stinks. Why everything stinks in this damn shelter?
Before I turn to see their stupid amused faces I smell smoke. I scrunch my nose while turning my head from inside of the pillow and frown, rubbing my eyes, trying to adjust them to the darkness that is present in this room as well as it is in my miserable life, since the day my mom left me, taking the light with her.
"What the f..." I intend to ask, but before I have a chance, my gaze falls from their mischievous grins to the flame that is burning.
I scream, when I realized that it is on my pants and I search for something in this room that could put it off. I want to take the half torn and dusty blanket, but it's gripped in the guy's hands and when he sees that I'm eyeing it, he just waves it through the air with an evil grin, running out of room.
"Ya, guys, the man is burning in this room", he shouts, and not a second after people gather at the door frame, pushing each other in order to see what is going on.
But my eyes quickly move from them as I get up and take a pillow, hitting the place from where the fire is spreading. I hit myself with the pillow, panicking while the chuckles fill the room, no one bothering to help me, yet enjoying the way how this scene is entertaining them since here everything must be so boring.
"Yo, bro take off your pants or you will be buuuurneeeed", some idiot shouts, singing the last word and dragging it while rooting for me to take off my pants with his fist high in the air making others root as well.
No way I'll do that in front of these motherfuckers. No way. I glance at them, who are still rooting and whistling as if they were at the football game, enjoying the show, and then back at my pants and fire that is now spreading on my thigh. I can feel the skin underneath the material being burned, but now I don't care for the pain.
"What is going on in here?", some female voice asks. Then in the view comes a ginger woman with a pair of glasses who is trying to pass through the crowd of rooting hooligans, pushing their shoulder with her tiny body.
"What did you do Michael?" She eyes me up and down as if I was crazy.
"I... What did I do? Ask these fuckin'..."
"Okay, calm down! I'll bring the extinguisher." She rushes again trying to move between the crowd of kids who don't have parents, yet they are all happy, making fun of me and enjoying it, not mourning over their lives as I do. Maybe I should take notes from them and start behaving like them. But how can I join them when they are harassing me live this?
The employee comes back with the extinguisher. Oh, she wasn't joking.
"Oh, no, she'll ruin the party!", that chick called T, shouts, and gestures to her evil friends to try everything to stop the ginger woman from saving me and ruining this fun show which viewers they are.
So, they do exactly that, pulling one side of the extinguisher that causes a little woman with glasses to almost lose her balance. I don't keep my gaze on their fight anymore, but at the fire that is so near my cock, heating my skin and I bite my lip, trying not to surrender to the pain that the fire is causing me.
The extinguisher pays my attention because the woman came up with an idea to use it on my enemies and they quickly disperse. The kids are running away, screaming like animals when they get caught. Animals. That is the right phrase for them. They all have the strength of animals, think like them, hunt like them, survive like them, but still hold the same fear that animals do when people come near them, threatening to kill or capture them, taking their freedom. And that is exactly what this woman is doing and the reason why they are running away now, not amused by my pants on fire anymore, but scared for their survival.
"Okay, ready?" The woman suddenly turns to me, asking me and I open my mouth but before I can say anything she turns the extinguisher on, this time for real use.
I turn my head, shutting my eyes while she puts the fire off. When I open them again and look at my leg I see that the fire caused pants to torn and my red skin is on display. Her eyes fall on the red space on my thigh and she approaches me, putting the extinguisher down.
"Don't fucking touch me!", I snap, brushing her hand before it can press on my burned skin.
"Woah, look at him!", that Gypsy boy peeks, his hands pressed on the door frame, while his lips are curled in a wide grin.
"You idiot!" I rush to him, dragging my burned leg slowly and with torture, but the woman pushes my hands, just the way I did with her seconds ago, causing me to dart my gaze to her. She is so tiny compared to my tall frame.
"What? He did it! And his sister!"
She just shakes her head like that is a normal thing for them to do and avoids my statement, asking me something else:
"Do you have spare clothes?"
"I do." I run my hands through my hair, nervously before I glance at the place where the bag that Tyler packed that day against my will is supposed to be, but it's nowhere to be found.
I thought that's just the darkness playing with my eyes that still haven't adjust to it.
"Turn on the light", I demand and she goes over to the switch, turning it on and suddenly the light of the bulb enlightens the once dark room. I shut my eyes, bothered by the sudden light when I was so close to adjusting to the darkness. But, I could never adjust to it even though I have been embraced by it for so long. I rub my eyes and focus them again on the place where the bag should be. But it's not.
"It was there! I had the bag!", I yell, pointing at the place under the bed like she knows what I'm talking about. She just adjusts her glasses that I realize are in the color blue, on her crook nose.
I scan the room and try to look under the bed, wincing from the pain about which I get aware once I kneel. When I stop looking under the bed and lift my head, my eyes catch smirking eyes of that Gypsy, that is still peeking. He winks at me and runs away quickly.
"He! He stole it!" I point now at the again empty place and the woman turns to see no one. She must think that I'm crazy since everything I claim to be there isn't. Maybe I am crazy, slowly going crazy before the day when I'm going to be no one.
"That Gypsy guy! He stole my bag!"
"Okay, Michael. Calm down. No one stole anything from you."
"How can you say that?" I turn to her, angry, frowning now not sure if from the pain or from the way she's been treating me. "I know that I came with it! My best friend packed it! Even you saw it! Remember when I came and tried to escape you were the one who took the bag from the bodyguards who chased me and made me go back? Right? You remember that?", I ask, hoping that she will answer positively because I'm placing hopes in her right now.
"Okay, we'll find the bag, let's now find you something to wear." But let me tell you something. She lied because we had never found the bag.
She turns on her heel to go away from the room, but then that guy who didn't want to give me the cigarette, passes and she stops him, calling his name:
"David! Give me some pants!"
"Why would I give you my pants?" He frowns, studying the woman as if she is crazy. His eyes catch mine and now under the light, I can see him well.
His jaw is set high and his upper teeth look like rabbit's ones, while his cheeks are giving an illusion as they were full and his mouth filled with something when they aren't actually. If someone is wondering how can a person look like an animal, this guy is a living example because must have been a rabbit in his previous life. Though, his green eyes are burning with anger and fire. Well, I've never pictured a rabbit as an angry and dangerous animal.
"Michael needs them. Come on, give them to me! Don't be such a prick!" I find strange the way she is talking to him. How can she tell him that he is a prick? But soon I discovered that is the way employees here treat you.
They treat you like shit. Like a kid that was left by his parents on purpose or not, as we actually are.
"I don't get anything from that." He turns to leave.
"I'll give you another cigarette." On that he stops walking away, turning his big head comparing to his thin body, and looks at her, amused by her proposal.
"Promise?"
"I promise. Now, come on!", she rushes him, but he has already disappeared.
"The bag was there", I hiss at her, still in a kneeling position now more used to the pain that my red skin is giving me.
"Okay, I believe you", she answers the way people respond to the crazy person scared that they'll tempt them even more if they disagree with them.
"But you don't believe that Gypsy took it."
"I do. I'll search his room later and give it back to you", she tries to end this conversation and dismiss me.
"Here ya go!" David enters the room, throwing the jeans at the woman and she barely catches them, passing them over to me.
"I'm telling you if you don't find me that bag...", I threaten while she turns to leave the room, not bothering to turn and listen to my full warning.
"What happened, bro?" That David guy closes the door and his eyes fall on my red skin. "Ooooh, that must hurt."
"And it does", I hiss.
"They did you well", he chuckles.
"Would you leave so I can get dressed?" I guess he won't since he sits on the bed the same one he sat earlier.
I slowly take off my burned pants that still hold that smoky smell, trying not to touch my skin, but I fail and wince when the rough fabric collides with my now sensitive skin. I glance at David, while I put his jeans on. They are a little bit shorter due to our height difference, but still doing the job since I'm now not half-naked.
"Will you leave the room now?", I ask him once I'm finished dressing up.
"Not even a thank you? You are so ungrateful, bro. I should have known. That will be ten dollars." He gets up and waves his hand through the air, waiting for me to put money in it.
"But, I have nothing I already told you. Besides, you earned another cigarette from that employee."
"Yeah, but I need more. And I need you to give me back my jeans once you find other clothes."
"Okay, I will. I will pay you on Monday", I suggest, hoping that Tyler will give me some money.
"No, I don't wait for the money. People who don't give me money immediately never pay me at the end."
"But I will."
"Don't believe ya." He shakes his head and crosses his arms. "Heard that lie too many times."
"I'm not lying! Besides can't you see that I just got here, thrown to this woods with all you wolves! And I'm immediately burned!" I point on my leg now covered with this tight material that is just squeezing the red spot making it even more painful. He could have given me sweatpants instead.
"Bro, we are all thrown here, but you have to manage on your own. Listen, I will let you settle a little and wait for the money, but that is only because you are new and I was like you when I came. Needed time to figure out that people can only hurt you here and you have to be tough if you wanna survive, but you'll figure it out as well just like I did. It's not that hard. It's the same pattern that repeats. We are all just trying to survive in this world anyway. That is why Joel and T burned you. " I guess that is Gypsy's name, but the name of his sister is still one letter. I wonder what is her real name. In fact, no, I don't care. They hurt me and they won't get away with it just like that. As David says I just need time to figure this shit out so I can come back to that Michael I was before Stella.
Before Stella came into my life and pulled my feelings out, wanting to take a look at them so much, but was disappointed when she saw that I was numb. She tried to find my heart, only to discover that I was heartless. That my heart doesn't beat for her how hers beats for me. She let that darkness get away just to leave me and make it come back even stronger this time. But she wasn't the one who left me. I was the one who made her leave me because of my non-feelings. And I should have known that she'd try to come back at my life that now is just a huge mess that even I can't collect and clean, yet one girl who just keeps bringing her broken pieces as well, adding them at my chaos as a cherry on top.
"Their way of surviving is having fun and making other people's life harder while fucking with everyone so they don't have to think of how miserable their lives are in reality. We should all take notes from them", he repeats the same thought I have earlier, "and stop caring about people when they do nothing but harm us."
"So, you are saying they did fucking amazing thing by burning my skin?", I shout, trying not to admit how truthful his little speech was. He is so right. We are all in the same shit and we understand each other perfectly, yet instead of helping one another, we hurt each other, trying to ease our pain by giving it to others to experience, so it can leave us alone for just a couple of hours.
His chuckle fills the room and dimples appear on his pulped cheeks. "Well, maybe not, but as I said it's their way. Get used to it. Maybe after you settle we can think of revenge." He nudges me at the shoulder. "But, only when I receive the money."
"Okay, you will." I roll my eyes. "Wanna share that cigarette?", I suggest hoping he would agree.
"Uh, bro, you want me to start the interest process because, by the time you give me money, you will own me a double amount."
"C'mon! It's just a cigarette! Why do you need me to pay you for a couple of drags?", I ask, pleading, my voice sounds so desperate while I can feel my hands shaking, so I quickly put them in pockets, but I realize they are so tight, so I leave my trembling hands out. "Why do you need people to pay you everything you borrow to them?"
"Because I don't borrow", he emphasizes the word borrow. "Because that isn't how life works here. You ask for something you pay, you give something, they pay you. It's simple as that." He shrugs and I sigh, wondering how many rules this new universe holds. Will I be able to memorize and respect them all?
"Okay, so I'll give you more money. If the jeans are ten, then cigarette is..."
"Actually I thought of a better way to pay me for the cigarette." The amused grin crosses the pale face of the rabbit.
"You did?", I bewilder.
"Yeah. You give me your dinner because I'm really feeling hungry right now and the meals are so fucking small for my big appetite." I check his thin figure and wonder how the guy with it can have a big appetite.
I open my mouth to agree to this deal, but my stomach growls one more time, telling me that it is hungry as well and needs to be feed since it has been starving for days now. I need to smoke and that need slightly overcomes the need for food. I again feel my hands shaking and I know that is my desperate need for alcohol, so right now due to the lack of it, only cigarettes and nicotine can calm the trembling down.
I sigh, realizing that he has won and gained so many things while I'm still broke, without now even my clothes. Yeah, I see those wolves are all used to this life and are enjoying it while I'm the one who is struggling and mourning over the nice and happy life I once had. I realized that tonight I'm again going with an empty belly to the bed.
"Fine."
"Deal bro. See ya at dinner, then. Be sure to save it for me and act like you aren't hungry or no cigarette later." He winks at me and I wonder what is with their obsession with winking. First Gypsy, now him. David. I'll be sure to memorize that name. And Joel as well, but I prefer Gypsy.
With that, he leaves and I curse my father and my mom for leaving me and Tyler who saved me, and now thanks to all of them I'm here with all these hungry wolves just waiting to devour me. The wolves who steal, cheat, burn and bribe.
But I stop cursing everyone and make myself go downstairs to that dinner I have to give someone else so I can have something that I long for so much. It surely can't be enough to calm me down, to calm down my anger and addiction to alcohol that I as well have to find as soon as I can. But I can guess that it's still worth trying. One is better than none. And the dinner now doesn't seem like an alluring offer to me. Food can wait. Cigarette can't.
NOTE: This chapter wasn't supposed to be this long and it should have had Stella's pov as well, but once I started writing I couldn't stop, and yeah... Plus I don't feel that this chapter was that good, I feel like it has too many mistakes and the writing isn't on point, so I hope you don't mind, but no many people are reading this, so I guess it's okay and they must leave since my writing isn't that great.
So, this is the last time your reading Michael's pov in this book. The next time you'll see his pov will be in book three since book two is only from Stella's pov and her friends. Who are those friends try to figure it out by yourself. Btw that doesn't mean he won't make an appearance in book two. Oh, he will. And what appearance.
Okay, enough of my rambling. Only three more chapters till the end of this book. Excited? I know I am. And scared.