This time being in the house all by myself didn’t bother me. Then again, nothing was creaking and it was bright and sunny outside.
I made it to my room and didn’t bother with shutting or locking the door like I normally would because I was all alone in the house and psycho killers weren’t supposed to hit your house up until after dark, or so the movies always showed.
I stood in the middle of my bedroom and stared at my unmade bed. Leaving the bed unmade wasn’t like me. Keeping my limited number of belongings in good condition and looking nice was important to me. My bed had been messy since Thursday morning when I’d unceremoniously dumped my pretty comforter in a heap on top of my tangled sheets. This was not my norm. I took care of all my things because I never knew when I’d get new ones. Ever since I’d been given new bed clothes after we moved here I’d taken pride in making my bed every day because I never took any gift for granted, even something as simple as blankets and sheets. My room looked sloppy, but still barren. My bed looked unappealing and I wasn’t about to crawl into the tangled mess of sheets and blankets. In that moment, I realized I wasn’t physically tired but emotionally and mentally tired. How to heal those things? I wasn’t into meditation. I was into soaking in a bathtub full of hot water and bubbles though. I was a firm believer that bathtubs much like hot tubs held extreme magical rejuvenating abilities and I had a larger than normal bathtub in my bathroom. A soak in the tub might be just what the doctor ordered to sooth the emotional train wreck that was now my life.
As I made my way to the bathroom I stripped off my clothes as I went. I stepped out of my flip flops, pulled my t-shirt up over my head and let it fall to the floor, unhooked my bra and let it slide down my arms. My leggings went next and I had to hop around awkwardly from foot to foot to get them off my legs and cleared of my feet. I started the bathtub up in nothing but my underwear and didn’t take them off until the tub was half way full and I slipped into the water.
The top layer was made of fluffy, white bubbles that reminded me of clouds. I sunk down past the clouds and into the water. It was so very hot it burned. I loved it. My body immediately relaxed into the water. This was exactly what I had needed. Happy, I laid my head back and closed my eyes.
I felt my troubles simply melt away. Quinton kept doing terrible things to people with magic in my name. Not my problem. It’s not like I was doing these things to people. What did I care? Most of the guys expected me to date them. Admittedly, this was weird, but it’s not like they could force me. If I didn’t want to date any of them I simply wouldn’t do it and they’d still keep me around no matter what. Problem solved. I had magic which made me special. I was no longer a normal girl and had never really been one in the first place. And nobody could take that away from me. It’d be mine until the day I died.
And that, that right there, made all my problems seem a lot less important to me. Who cared about Chuck, I had magic. Granted, I didn’t exactly know how to use it yet, but I had it to use for when I did figure it out.
With my eyes closed and a mind full of magic and all its possibilities I missed it when she came in. I had no idea how long she’d been standing there.
I opened my eyes and screamed. My mother’s face hovered less than a foot above mine. I hadn’t heard her come into the bathroom or even my bedroom. I had thought I was alone in the house. This would teach me to not lock my bedroom door.
My heart tried to beat out of my chest. Why was she here? Why hadn’t she told me she was coming home? How long had she been watching me? I shivered as I realized the bubbles had all dissolved, leaving my naked body on display. A body her eyes were running over with a cruel sneer on her beautiful face. Her eyes, so much like my own, were filled with a burning hot rage.
“Wha-”
She didn’t let me finish. Her hand appeared and she slapped me across the face. My right cheek stung from the force of the blow. Even kneeling over me she’d still put her weight into it. I wanted to lift my hand to press my palm to my wounded cheek but did not out of fear of drawing more attention to my nude body.
She grabbed a fist full of my hair and yanked my head to the side.
Leaning in closer to my face, she snarled, “You little bitch. Were you hoping I was Marcus? Are you the reason he sent me home? You and your tight, teenage body?”
The fist wrapped around my hair tightened and she shook my head uncontrollably. The back of my head bounced off the bathtub. For a moment, my vision blurred and pain shot through my entire head.
“Answer me,” she screamed in my face.
The look in her eyes was the single most frightening thing I had ever seen in my whole life. Those eyes that had been filled to the brim with a rage so fierce it burned bright for all to see just moments ago now looked dead, vacant. The lights were on but no one was home. She’d never had dead eyes before, there had always been something going on, something visible in her eyes to be seen. She was smart, manipulative, cruel and a whole lot of insane. But never vacant and empty, dead in the eyes. Seeing it now, for the first time ever, it scared the shit out of me.
She was crazy, yes, absolutely, but checking out entirely during one of her insane acts of violence on my person was an entirely new level of crazy.
I feared for my life, my face throbbed and my poor head could take no more pain, it simply could not.
I had to stop her, or at least try to stop her. The problem was I’d never fought back before. I’d run away from her plenty. I’d even curled up into a little ball and wrapped my arms around my head while I prayed whatever damage she inflicted didn’t hurt too badly and
wasn’t lasting. But fight back against her? Never.
I didn’t know how and I wasn’t even sure I had it in me. Even when she hurt me I wasn’t sure I had it in me to strike back at her. Or anyone for that matter.
“Answer me right this second,” she screamed in my face again. Spittle flew out of her mouth to land on my injured cheek.
I blinked my eyes at her and realized I’d lost time to spacing out. I think my head injury had to be worse than I’d originally thought.
I whimpered in agony as she pulled my head up by my hair again, dragging me closer to her face.
“Ariel,” she screamed my name an inch from my face.
I blinked again, slowly. This time opening my eyes in time to see her open hand rushing towards my face. She slapped me, over and over. She hit my cheek, my eye, my nose, my mouth, my ear. After the first one, I raised my arms to ward her off but it did me no good. She released my hair to claw at my arms and hands. She didn’t mess around and she had sharp nails. I bled every time she touched me. My hands, my arms, my nose, my bottom lip. They all bled thanks to her. I begged and pleaded for her to stop but she refused. I cried. I screamed. I even tried to shove her away from me. I asked for help from someone, anyone, and as soon as I did the water began to boil around me. It bubbled and gurgled loudly. It also burned, but oddly, did not hurt me. My mother paused, her hand in midair, ready to rain down another blow to my face.
“What are you doing?” She screeched as her eyes bulged at the sight of the boiling water.
What was I doing? Other than trying to live through this horrible moment in my life I had no clue.
“What… What’s wrong with you?” She screeched. She let my hair go and sat back on her heels. “What’s happening to the water?”