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Being Herself
Her breath rattled as the dreams surged through her head. They twisted through every inch of her brain and flooded her mind like acid, burning up any leftover ideas of reality. She was trapped in a body that was not really hers and seeing the world at an entirely different angle – and she didn’t like it.
In an unfamiliar place the girl swam through the air. She was not gliding effortlessly; she was jerking and blundering, knocking nonsensical objects over such as egg baskets and lamps in the shape of squirrel-like cats, but with one last heave she rose into the air, seeing a blurry green hill and blue sky in front of her.
The girl twisted her head to look down at herself, seeing a strange, foreign body in place of the familiar structure she usually bore. Her brain seemed to pause for several seconds before triggering an alarm through every brain cell.
“This isn’t me!” the girl shouted. Through the distorted outburst a sudden torrent of water poured into her mouth and gagged her. Though distracted by her lack of breath, she couldn’t escape the feeling of falling that had overcome her. She was falling gently, but flailing widely.
She could see fists in front of her face and hear the shout of a horrible voice. She should never have become that person, never…
The young girl’s eyes flickered open in a dark but homely place. She was back in a body of her own but could not shake off the feeling of the alternate mind she had been in, though after she awoke it took a second until the sweat broke out on her brow and the panicked heartbeat started. However, once it did, it seemed it wouldn’t stop. Terror enfolded her so tightly that she couldn’t escape it and tears sprang from her eyes. She leapt out of her soft, seemingly innocent bed and stared at it fear-stricken, for that was the place that had lulled her into another world and another body, thus causing her such fright.
“I-I’ve got to get out, g-got to get – out,” she stammered fearfully, her voice shaking. “T-they can’t h-hear me, th-they mustn’t. She’ll kill me, sh-she s-said she wo-ould.”
The child darted to the door of her bedroom and pulled at the handle whilst shivering and sobbing silently. She ran down the stairs and shook all over, wondering where to run. She bit her knuckle too fiercely and a cry escaped her lips. The girl clasped her mouth suddenly.
“Andrea?”
Without pausing, the girl flew to the front door and tried to wrench it open. It was locked, of course. The girl whimpered and, in blind panic, grabbed a small stool to one side of her and threw it at the window in the door.
She screamed as it shattered, clutching her head and her long blond coils of hair that were now showered with shards of glass.
“Andrea! Wh-what have you done, darling?” the same frantic voice called from above her.
“Leave me alone!” the girl cried, and she hurtled herself through the smashed window, remaining slivers of glass cutting into her skin.
She ran for what felt like her life. Thundering down her home street on bare, icy feet she whimpered every time the cobbles hit the base of them, but it didn’t stop her. Within seconds she was out of sight from those on the street and was streaming down another road that lead out of the estate.
Phantom figures lurked in the dark. In the girl’s eyes, her shadow twisted into a strange, eerie silhouette that did not belong to her, tree branches reached out their gnarled arms to pull her down into the undergrowth and critters squawked hungrily in the shadows, ready to lunge out of the bushes and tear at her flesh. She ran away from these creatures; apart from the shadow – which she couldn’t avoid.
Without looking where she was going, she slammed straight into the chest of an old man in a musty-smelling leathery coat. She had met this man on several occasions and should have known that he was Ronnie, a neighbour who worked late into the night, but in her traumatized state, she didn’t notice.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” she gasped, more tears spurting from her eyes. “Don’t tell my mum where I am! Please!” she thumped Ronnie hard in his chest, not caring about his age and whether it would affect him. “Please don’t tell her where I am!”
“Andy, Andy,” Ronnie wheezed. “You c-”
“I’m not Andy, I’m Andrea!”
The girl forced her way past the man, tearing her way through the arms that tried to hold her and guide her home. He shouted after her but she refused to hear him, her purple-cold hands gripping her freezing ears.
By this time she had reached the outskirts of her home village, thus she could hear the swishing of waves lapping against the sandy banks in the village. The streets were empty and illuminated by streetlights. The girl stumbled and rushed down an empty road before turning down onto a short, wooden pier barred by rusty metal barrier.
She stared dizzily over the bars to the swirling black waves bellow, glinting in the leftover light. She panted and heaved, her coughs gradually morphing into retches. Tears streamed from her eyes and vomit rose in her throat, and the girl buried her face in her rigid, purple hands.
“Go away,” she muttered. “Go away, Mum.”
She couldn’t understand anything anymore.
“Andrea!”
The girl turned around and screamed. It was only her grandmother, rushing up the pier in a fright – but to the girl it was a horribly familiar person.
Andrea shrieked loudly and scrambled onto the rusty barrier and crawled over it, leaning backwards so that the only thing preventing her from falling into the dark sea was her bitterly cold hand that clung rigidly to the metal.
“Stay away from me,” she breathed. Then came frantic shouting, “STAY AWAY FROM ME!”
“Andrea, please!” her grandmother was shaking with more than cold, tears dappling her face.
“G-get away from me, y-you know she’s go-going to kill me,” the granddaughter sobbed, swaying alarmingly.
“No!” her grandma cried. She tried to remain calm. “No, Andrea. N-no one is going to hurt you, s-so can you just come back over onto the pier, darling?”
“You’re lying!” Andrea spat. “You’re helping her.”
“I’m not lying, darling. I’m trying to keep you safe. Now come back onto the pier,” Andrea’s grandmother swallowed. There was no option but direct command. “Come back onto the pier and over to me…right now.”
Andrea stared at the woman before her, then gritted her teeth and sobbed. She clambered over the railings and stumbled along the wooden pier, blinded by tears. She howled, head in her hands, as her grandmother wrapped her arms around her grandchild and tried to calm her.
“I was someone else, Grandma,” the girl choked through her sobs, “Mummy wouldn’t have liked that.”
“Your mummy can’t hurt you anymore, Andrea,” said her grandma, stroking the girl’s long hair. She hissed as she cut her finger on a shard of glass weaved into Andrea’s locks.
Then she noticed the girl was trembling.
“Andrea?”
“Granny…” she said shakily. “Granny, my legs really hurt.”
“Oh God,” her grandma replied. “Just a minute, Andrea, let’s have a look at you.”
The girl stepped back, clutching her arms in pain and whimpering. Her grandmother twisted her head to see her in the limited light, and she cried at the sight.
Andrea stood there, her blond locks showered with sharp glass shards that glinted in the moonlight like mosaic pieces. Her face was flushed and sticky with tears and her eyes were scrunched up in agony, extra tears seeping out of them, and as her grandma lowered her gaze to the poor girl’s legs she knew why.
The small, skinny, matchsticks legs that poked out of Andrea’s grubby grey nightie were cut and slit in seemingly every available piece of flesh. Blood leaked out of these wounds and trickled over her sliced legs, tarnishing the small slivers of glass still stuck into them and dying her pale skin an eerie, haunting crimson. If Andrea was a figure in a dark, dramatic painting of a suicidal young widow who had been driven insane by her loss she would have looked incredible and artistic – but she wasn’t a portrait. Andrea was a traumatized twelve-year-old girl who was hurting inside – and outside.
“Oh my God,” her grandmother gasped. “Oh my God, oh God! Stay still, Andrea. Don’t touch your legs, don’t move them at all, darling. Just wait a few minutes – I’ll make the pain go away, please don’t cry.”
She had no idea what to do. What with it being the middle of the night she hadn’t brought a phone, though she frisked herself desperately just in case one miraculously appeared. She couldn’t run back home to get one – leaving Andrea in such a state would be the worst thing she could do – and taking Andrea with her would only hurt her more.
“One second, darling,” the woman said frantically. She rushed forwards and kissed her granddaughter’s forehead. “I’m just going round the corner for some help. I won’t be long.”
The task of concealing her fright and desperation was harder than anything else.
She whisked round a corner, doing her best to keep her eye on Andrea to make sure she didn’t hurt herself more. She raised her fist and hit hard against the door of the first house she came to and screamed hysterically, unable to control herself any longer.
“HELP!” she cried.
She continuously hammered against the door, harder and harder until she’d made an imprint on the faded paintwork. She was shouting and smacking the door right up until the moment it opened. It swung on its hinges and hung slackly on the side. A white-faced young man with scruffy, dirty-blonde hair answered, half-asleep in his baggy nightclothes.
“Who the hell are you?” he yawned, squinting at the elderly lady.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I’m Jennifer Lopez, but-but my daughter – no – my granddaughter, sorry. She’s-she’s hurt, she’s got glass in her legs and she’s cut all over, please – please help me!”
“Wait, wait, slow down,” the man said weakly, though waking up slightly. “T-tell me again, I can’t hear you.”
Andrea’s grandmother stammered out her story just as frantically and desperately as before, but the man seemed to make some sense of it.
“Ok, ok, I’ll get Sanchez to call an ambulance. Hang on,” the man turned round and shouted up the stairs of the dark house. “San! Get down here, idiot, I need your help!”
There was a groan from upstairs and a shout of some foreign words and some English words that Jennifer couldn’t make sense of.
“Get here now!” the man snapped. “There’s an injured girl hanging around and the least we can do is help. For God’s sake!” The man sighed. “Eu…eu penso que é essa menina abusada.”
There was a silence. Jennifer didn’t have a clue what the man had said, but she knew there must have been significance as to why he chose to speak a language she didn’t understand.
A few seconds later, a second yawning man blundered down the stairs, with tousled curly hair that was brown in colour.
“Make yourself bloody useful and call an ambulance,” the first man said, pointing crossly at a phone.
The other man frowned but nodded sympathetically at Jennifer and then started dialling the familiar three numbers.
“Come on, let’s find her and get her back here before the ambulance comes,” the blonde man said. A yawn shook him as he stepped out of the house.
“Please let’s hurry,” Jennifer said.
They rushed round the corner and down the rickety pier. Andrea was sat on the floor, sobbing against her hands as it hurt her knees too much to lean against them.
“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” Jennifer sobbed, rushing up to Andrea. “I said I’d get help, didn’t I?”
The girl continued howling blindly.
“You’ll be fine, darling,” said the man, though he looked taken aback by her cut legs. He looked at Jennifer, “Should we prop her up on either side so she doesn’t have to walk?”
Jennifer nodded silently and they tried to prise Andrea’s arms round either of their necks. She couldn’t clutch them very hard because she was hurting too much, but they could just about haul her along.
At long last they turned the corner and steered the cut girl into the man’s house. They laid her down on their cracked leather sofa in the darkened living room. Jennifer stared endlessly at Andrea and cried, but she excused herself to use the phone to call Harry, Andrea’s grandfather who was waiting at home anxiously as he had a limp that was too severe for him to suddenly rush off in the middle of the night.
At long last, the ambulance arrived. Blue lights splattered the brick buildings and flashes flew high into the air. Several medics entered the house in which the sleeping, pained girl lay and manoeuvred her into the waiting ambulance. After thanking the two men several times, Jennifer clambered into the vehicle after them.
In the light of the inside, Andrea’s eyes opened a crack. A happy, bouncy medic with long, curly black hair and dark, ebony skin smiled as if no tiredness could ever affect her.
“Hello, Andrea,” she said, as if she were talking to a perfectly well child. “We’ll get you nice and sorted in just a tick. Should I call you Andrea? Do you prefer Andy?”
Andrea was too tired to answer for herself, but if she had her strength she would have objected uproariously. Jennifer answered for her, far more calmly.
“She’d prefer Andrea, I think,” she said. Under the calmness was a deep, frosty bitterness. “She’s always Andrea and always will be. She’s protective over being herself – her mother’s made sure of that.”
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Ok!
So I just want to know what people think about this as an opening chapter. There shouldn't be any spelling mistakes as this has been written on the computer, but any suggestions, any feedback...all welcome!