A sweet delicate scent reaches up to my nostrils, mixed with a bit damp soil's musty smell. It's oddly quiet and comforting.
An continuous array of tedious sounds are coming from someplace nearby; maybe a few cicadas or rhino beetles are clicking in chorus. And birds are weaving the pleasant notes along with them. It's incredibly peculiar and creative at the same time.
A subtle line of sun rays tickles my hooded eyes persistently, like an immature teenager holding onto an unrequited love. It's annoying.
I move an arm above my eyes to thwart the bold intrusion. Then it abruptly dawns upon me. I think, I feel lighter than usual, like almost a feather.
I raise myself up on the aid of my elbows, and look around to locate my surroundings. I get taken aback to find out what followed next.
Amidst the tall trees, the rippling waves of the blue bell flower field is stretched out wider as long as my eyes can go. It's all blue, as if someone has splattered blue paint whimsically on a green canvas. It's amazing.
I straighten up amidst the blue, my palms resting on the damp field. I look down at my body, to find myself spruced up in a blue wrap dress, I have no underwear on, and strangely I feel warm.
Subsequently, I get up from the ground, and start trudging aimlessly on bare feet.
"Elly!" A familiar voice calls out to me from behind, making me stop on my way.
I turn around quickly, and see a young Eric grinning at my way goofily.
"Eric?"
"Let's make a deal," he exclaims excitedly. "I'll start running from here on, and you've gotta catch me."
The daylight starts to dilute in the west sky, tinting the horizon in blood red.
"You know, I hate this game of yours," I mutter, as an unknown fear crunches up inside me. And I slowly start to walk up to him.
"If you can catch me, I won't run away from you anymore. But if you fail, you'll see me no more," he giggles as he starts to pace backwards, waiting for my response.
"Don't," I warn.
"Oh yeah!" With that, he starts sprinting off towards the woods, without wasting another moment.
"Eric, wait!", I call out, as I find myself running after him breathlessly.
"Run faster! Even a hippo can shoot faster than you." His voices reaches out to me.
"Cut it out, and come back here," I scream back to him, wading through the blue field.
"That way you can never catch up to me," he declares proudly.
"Ah-ah!" I flinch as a short pointy bough gets embedded inside the skin of my foot. I raise that leg on the other to inspect the wound, and see blood trickling out of there. But strangely enough, it's dark blue in color.
I pluck out the bough, and resume running again. But in that short delay, I have already lost sight of him.
I frivolously start running here and there, with the faint hope to find him. But the sun has already disappeared beyond the horizon, and it's starting to get dark now.
I don't know how longer I've been kicking around, stumbling everywhere but then in a heartbeat, I hear the commanding sound of currents, and after a few steps, I find myself standing in front of a beach. In front of my eyes, waves roll and break into soft foam near the shore, reverse back to repeat the same cycle over and over again.
I look back, and see the woods fading behind me.
"Elly," someone whispers in my ear, his soft warm breath brushing the skin behind, arousing something a diverse uncertainty inside me. I turn back, being startled and scared, but see no one around me.
"Get over here, Elly," that voice urges me, and in that lucid darkness I find Eric standing in the midst of the dark ocean, away from the rolling waves. He's the same Eric who just showed up to me yesterday, after five excruciatingly long years.
As if under some delusional trance, I start walking towards him without any second thought.
A tear runs past my cheeks, my lips tremble, and a suppressed pang tears apart my insides, as I walk up to him mutely, to hug him tightly, to embrace his warmth.
Suddenly someone holds my hand from behind, breaking the trance in the process. His touch is soft yet cold, but surprisingly, I feel a reliability nestling inside me.
I look back at our entwined hands, and slowly raise my gaze up, only to find him looking at me intensely.
"Gray," I whisper in disbelief.
He smiles warmly at me, which is so unusual of him.
"Don't go there, Quark," he says warily. It sounds more of a request than a statement.
And then out of nowhere, an enormous entourage of swirling sea wave slaps over our heads, submerging us completely. I stare into his destructively beautiful hazel eyes, as our entwined hands slowly slips away, and the room in between us starts to swell with crazy water waves. And in moments, I lose sight of him, and that dark water sets out to choke me.
And suddenly my eyes open for real, and I find myself staring at the curved glass ceiling of my room, from where the large gap closes on its own, and at once I realize that I'm completely soaked.
Damn! It's cold!
I feel numb, as I try to brush back those wayward hair strands which fell over my face and remained clung to there like stale sticky oil.
"Elle Carter! Get your lazy ass out of the bed!"
"Carter! Where the hell are you?"
"I hope, you are awake till not, and you better be!"
All these voices come through the intercom at the corner of my room, taking me by surprise.
Okay, they got me today!
I decide to ignore all these, because there is no possible way that they will be up by this time, after the way they returned home last night, and passed out the moment they went inside their respective rooms.
But they didn't forget to record their voices and activate the water blob.
Devil take them!
I heave rapidly, taking in more air to subdue the sudden shock, as I get out of the mess, and shiver all the way to the bath space.
I look at the clock on the digital screen in there, and my eyes widen immediately to realize that I'm doomed for today.
It's half past six!
And I'm freaking late!
Quickly I get under shower, while my mind swirls around the weird dream, which is both beautiful and scary at the same time, trying to figure out what exactly it just meant.
I don't really get dreams these day, and now I had this one, which strangely feels so vivid and real.
I sigh deeply as I shake my head to clear these useless thoughts. It is probably a side-effect of the sudden recent overflow of events burdening my life.
I turn around to scratch my back, and suddenly something queer on my chest, holds my attention onto it.
I walk closer to the nearby glass partition, away from the warm shower, and slowly reaches out to touch the skin with my foam-drenched hand.
There's some faint blue marks on the skin above my breast. Instantly, I shoot out of the shower cube and dashes towards the mirror.
Slowly connecting my intense gaze on my chest in the sheer reflection, I approach closer to the streamlined mirror, taking each step cautiously.
A faint hint of blue stretch marks have somehow managed to stretch across the skin above my breast, and a few lines are halfway down the nipples.
Trembling in both shock and fear, I shakily touch the skin and trace along the marks with one hand, while the other one press against the reflection.
My mind starts to get bombarded with various questions as I try to think of any plausible connection to relate with these marks.
Moreover how come I failed to notice them yesterday, or were these there last night at all?
It's similar to the stretch marks of going through puberty, but strangely they are blue, like I've been bitten by a highly venomous snake.
I don't know whatever comes over me, but in the chimera of the moment, I find myself letting my hands go further down, dragging the cold fingers across my drenched bare skin. I stare at my naked body, moving my hands over the folds and creases, watching myself carefully.
Covering my breasts behind the provocative fold of my slender arms, I turn sideways to look at my assets properly. A shiver runs down my entire body, as I touch my neck with one hand, and dips it a bit backwards. In that interval, I part my lips and let go of a soft silent breath.
What the hell!?
I take my hands off my body immediately.
I stand straight in front of the mirror, tuck my wet strands behind my ear, and slaps my both cheeks with my hands to wrap my mind around what exactly happened a few seconds ago.
Last time I checked, I never asked Brit for any joints, and there's no possible way that I have taken a few shots last night.
So why the hell I did that!
*****
I chop the red bell peppers in two halves carefully, and lower the temperature on the six-burner-induction, to make sure that the sausages don't get overcooked.
The sizzling of the fried meat on the skillet over the burner, the swift whizzing of chimney, the rough slashing of the kitchen knife-all have made the kitchen ambience busy and animated. I wipe away the sweat buds gathering voluntarily on my forehead.
Putting the diced bell peppers aside, I swipe away the sheer screen on the handle of the knife, and opt for the flaxen button. Instantly the edge of the knife changes into a spatula. I stir the sausage mixture a little with it, and after tasting the salt, I remove it from the burner.
Stuffing the peppers with it, and a cheese and egg mixture, I pop it on a tray and put it inside the oven.
"All set now!" I smile as I get up and take the apron off.
Since the maid bots are absent as well, I start arranging the trays myself, my eyes constantly gazing up at the screen clock on the kitchen's glass from time to time.
After 30 minutes or so, I take the tray out of the oven, and place two freshly cooked stuffed peppers on each tray beside the bowl of hangover soup. Filling up three glasses with apple juice, frappuccino, and herbal tea, I set them on the respective trays.
Since the Princetons are too exhausted to come down, I carry the square TeleMe Box on the table, from the left bottom corner of the kitchen-cabinet.
I was about to place the tray inside it to teleport them to given destinations, but stop at the last minute when I see Ashley getting down the moving stairs, yawning and clearly displeased with the fact that she has to come downstairs after a perky day out.
And the question is there.
Why?
It gets briefly answered when I see a wrathful Brittany shooting daggers at me, her arms crossed over her chest and a pair of black ankle boots dangling from one hand, while her white side-mask is still on show.
Oh boy! I'm in trouble knee-deep!
Walking around her sister, she strides up to me and slams the boots on the table.
"The heck does this mean?", she demands, and looks directly at me, as she grabs the edges of the table firmly with the back of her hands.
I eye the boots up and see a mere hint of dust at the sole of one shoe. I must have missed that while dusting it off yesterday.
"From when on you started being so dramatic? I thought, only Ash owns up to it." I ignore her wrath as I puts the gloves on, and start doing the dishes.
"Hey! What's your fucking problem, dude? Can't you answer a normal question with a normal reply like normal people do!", Ashley complains as she scoffs frustratedly.
"Don't try me, bitch! You clearly know what I'm talking about," Brittany warns through her gritted teeth.
"First of all, it's not a normal question, but totally vague, so there's no normal answering to begin with. And second, it's not clear to me...at all," I reply nonchalantly, without turning to them.
I hear them sighing frustratedly, before Brittany speaks up again. "Playing dumb, are we now, Carter?"
"And have you seen? She's cut her hair short. Who are trying to seduce with that stuck-up look, Carter?", Ashley
I pause for a moment, and leaving the dishes behind, I turn towards her with a straight face, and leans against the counter.
"If you wanna complain about something, then do it properly, so others can get your point at once, don't just beat around the bush. It's annoying," I inform them curtly.
Brittany chuckles, with contempt gripping her tone.
"Did you fucking touch my shoes?", she barks.
"So what if I did?" I take those gloves off and fold my arms.
Ashley gasps, and blinks her eyes dramatically. "Look how she's peeling off her skin! Do you really have no shame? And moreover, where did you got money to get a new haircut? I don't think mama give you enough allowance to kick around."
"Hold your horses, Ash," Brittany snaps at her sister before turning her attention on me. "Hey, Carter! Do you have a death wish?"
"Do I?", I retort calmly. "I don't think so."
"You know, you're starting to get on my nerves," Brittany warns, as she rubs her temples. "Just tell me why you fucking did that?"
"Do what?"
"Fuck! She's too much," she exasperated, and slams a fist on the table.
"FYI, it's technically called theft, if you're not aware, bitch!", Ashley butts in.
"FYI, it's technically called reclaiming, if you've forgotten that those shoes were my mom's, and your dear mama confiscated them when dad died. Does that explain, Ash-ley?", I retort.
"Yes, the keyword is 'were', past tense. But now they belongs to my little sis, Brit, not you or your mom," Ashley argues.
"Fuck! Why we even wasting our times, talking to that crooked bitch! Please call 411. Let the law get her sharp tongue, and then we'll see if she can get away with it, only flapping that pretty mouth of hers," Brittany taunts menacingly.
"No one's calling the police in this house!" A voice, so loud and powerful, calls the shots.
In seconds, I watch Tiffany Princeton coming down the moving stairs, still in her explicit nightdress, as she ties her bed hair in a messy knot.
Getting down, she shoots me a baleful glance, before turning to her daughters.
"We can take care of her on our own. If she's flying too high, we can cut those troublesome wings," she speaks with detest on her tongue, and spares me a nasty look. "But there's no need to stabbing on your own back!"
"Woah, woah, woah! Hold on," Brittany chuckles bitterly. "What are you trying to say here, mama? Did you mean me by anyhow?"
"I don't have the energy, nor the desire to go on about it with you again," step-mother tells her off. "So quit nitpicking at whatever I say."
She settles herself a chair before the table, where the boots are still lying on. Her face grimaces at once, as soon as her eyes fall on the scene.
"And what the hell these shoes are doing here on the dining table? Get rid of these right away!"
"Mama! Carter stole those when we were not home," Ashley volunteers to let her mother aware of the situation in hand. "She's barely 18, and she's already showing her colors. You should do something about this."
"Is that so?" She looks at me menacingly.
And boy! It's scary!
"Then we should make it even. Shall we take that dress away from her? The one she cherishes over everything else! Hmm? Shall we Elle dear?"
No hell way!
"Yes, yes, yes! Mama!" Ashley chirps excitedly, as she literally jumps off and warps her short arms around her mother's slender neck, in the delirium of the moment. "You are the best! I have my eyes set on it for a while. I haven't seen such a fine material ever anywhere in a long time...I love youuuuu!"
I'm gonna give it to you in the neck!
Her mother shoots her a nasty look, making her loose her hold abruptly, and get her act together. She smiles awkwardly before dismissing the sudden tension in the air.
"I haven't decided who I'm giving this to, so don't get your hopes up yet," step-mother says coldly with a flat face.
"And who said that I'm giving it to you?", I cut in, my eyes rigid, void of any sort of emotion, as I look directly into her gray eyes.
Step-mother turns her head towards me, and smiles cynically. She rests her chin on the back of her hand, as she swings a finger at me with the other one.
"You don't have a choice here, hun. Plus, it's not like they're taking it for like forever, I'm just borrowing it for a day. Plus, they are your sisters. Don't be so mean to them," she tries to talk her way through this.
"I'm not even letting any of you touch that dress, let alone borrowing!", I snap, and start to panicking inside, because I know what is going to happen after this.
Her smiles widens, the crease from the parts of her lips flatteringly touching the corners of her eyes. It disgusts me.
"I'm sure you don't want me to pull the strings, now won't you? You know, I still hold the royal flush, ace high straight!"
"So you're gonna hold that over my head from now on? Is that gonna be your new tic?" I tilt my head down and chuckle to myself, with mockery dripped in my tone.
I look back at her, with a subtle scornful smile. "But I never thought that Tiffany Princeton would ever lower her standards this much that she would be so eager to use that card against me in such a petty matter!"
She slams her fist on the table, startling both of the siblings, and stands straight up with a dangerous crease in between her perfectly trimmed brows, and rage in her gray eyes.
"You should know the difference between tolerating your stubborn acts and keeping my temper in check," she growls at me. "Cause if I lose it, I don't know what I'll do to you."
Her last words were brutally cold and steely, which send a chill run up my back.
Gathering her acts together, she sighs deeply and looks me in the eyes, as she cracks a menacing smile. "So be a good girl, and listen to your mama."
"You are not my mother," I inform her with disgust stumbling in my tongue. "You've never been, and you'll never be."
She smiles, and crosses her arms over her chest. "Bad girls get punished for behaving bad with their mothers."
"I guess, she's asking for that," Ashley comments, as she smirks.
Brittany tsk tsk under her breath, as she looks at me in the eyes. "When will you know your place, bitch?"
No, this way I can't get them. I need to think of something else.
"Thanks for the concern, Brit," I say to her, before turning my scrutinizing gaze towards others. "But tell me this, even if I give you, what'll you guys do with the dress?"
"That's none of your business," Ashley exclaims.
"Yes it is! First of all, it won't fit you, step-mother, it'll probably get stuck in there," I explain as I point my finger towards her chest, to make my point clear to them.
Then I turn towards Ashley. "Secondly, it'll be too long for you, so you might get covered in it, cause sorry Ash, but you're way too short to fit in. And people might make of you if you even try it once."
She was about to go through a tiny gap in my exposition, but I gesture her to stop, because I'm not yet done with it.
"And if you argue over cutting it short, then let me tell you this. It's a multi layered dress, made up of mulberry silk from Shanxi of China, the finest and smoothest silk ever. So trimming will only make it hideous," I explain.
"And the rest who's left is Brittany. It can only fit to her. But you see, it's not her type," I conclude, throwing a playful wink at my step-mother's way.
"She will do it then. Type or not," Tiffany, my step-mother, confirms, but not with enough confidence, as she tries hard to steer back the flow of the conversation in her favor.
"Fuck no! I don't wanna wear a decade old piece of trash!", Brittany protests.
Her mother turns to her to shoot her a look to shut her up. But little does she know that her daughter is hardly afraid of her little scary taunts. It might work on Ashley, but not Brittany. And that's why no matter however filthy she talks, but she's my knight in this game.
"You'll listen to me, and that's final!"
I smirk slyly to myself, as I wait for the twister to lash out any second now.
"No! I don't want to, and I won't. And don't give me that look, mama! You know well, that doesn't work with me anymore. For fuck's sake, I'm not your puppet."
"Language, young lady," step-mother warns.
"Enough! Now shut it, Brit!", Ashley tries to snap her sister out of it, and grabs her shoulder to stop her going further.
Brittany shrugs her hands off her shoulder, as she snaps, "Stay out of this, Ash!"
"What she thinks she is! She can boss around everyone and make them her pretty little puppets, but tell her to keep her nose out of my business."
"Don't forget this baby, if it's not me who would be putting her nose in your business, you might be rotting behind the bars, instead of kicking around and throwing your fit on everyone."
Oh! She's really cold. How can a mother say this to her own child?
But although it may sound harsh, but she's not wrong.
I see a muscle twitch in Brittany's jaw as she digs her nails inside her palm.
"Are you not satisfied, mama?" Brit chuckles in incredulity. "Am I not earning enough? And you still complain for doing the tiny clean-up for once or twice? C'mon, gimme a break!"
"It's not once, but four times, Brit, four! I cleaned your nasty mess up for four freaking times," step-mother barks down. "And it wasn't easy to erase those surveillance footages from every damn street you go around!"
"If you're going to hold that over my head every fucking time, then stop fucking meddling in my business," Brittany yells at her mother so loud that it startles each one of us, even including Tiffany Princeton.
"And give me some fucking peace. Can't you, woman?"
"Brit, stop it," Ash tries with concern all over her face.
Damn! It is now getting out of hand!
"For fuck's sake, tell me how more money you need to give me that? How more, huh!", she screams like a mad woman, as she throws an antique pot on the glass floor, grabbing it from the centre on the table.
"Brit!", Ashley cries out to her sister.
"Should I make you a mansion like this, nah bigger than this, and fill that with my filthy blood money?", she chuckles deliriously. "So then will you stop, mama?"
"Stop this drama, Brittany. Right. Now.", step-mother tells her off calmly, as she steps closer to her daughter.
"Drama?" She chuckles before glowering at her mother. "Yeah, sure. It can be a drama to you, but to me, it's a fucking reality! A damn honest reality!"
"Oh! You know what, now I get it! I absolutely get it." She points a finger at her mother.
"You will finally stop when you'll also have me killed, like you killed daddy, isn't it so?"
I gasp at the mention of her father, and before I know it, a loud sound resonates through the glass walls of the living space.
It turns out that Ashley has slapped Brittany, and now looking at her with rage filled red eyes, tears prickling at the corners of black big orbs.
Damn! That's intense!
"Don't you dare say another damn word, Brittany," Ashley exclaims in a shaky voice. "Stop throwing garbage at mama, without even getting the whole picture!"
Brittany was unable say anything for a few seconds, unable to believe the verisimilitude of the moment, and the fact that her dear sister has slapped her for real.
Then slowly her face scrunches up, pain and anger splashed all over her pale face.
"Fuck you! All of you," she screams at the top of her lungs, as she storms off from there to upstairs.
Ashley slumps down on a chair nearby, as a tear trickles past her cheek. As for her mother, she is uncertain about how to react to this situation, and places a hand over Ashley's shoulder.
"It's okay," she whispers to Ash, and taps her shoulder lightly before going away.
I try to gulp down the whole situation in hand.
I had doubts that there's something fishy about their past, for the reason that they never talked about their father before.
But now I'm certain that their past is more twisted, than it seems.
©Shena
*****
A/N: Another short chapter. Hope you guys like it!
[P.S. Please like it, cause I'm working my ass off on it for a while :p. ]
Anyways, jokes apart! I made a slight change in the 1st chapter about Brittany, since it came to mg notice while making her character profile. So i suggest to check it out a bit (only her part), so you don't have a problem understanding this chapter.
Plus, I made more clarifications in the classification of robots in the 2nd chapter, and also added a chart for better perception.
Next chapter will take some time, cause I'm working on the outline of the story and Gray's character.
xoxo,
Shena