n i n e || Midnight Treats and Unexpected Attacks

|1st February 2019|

I tiredly fling my pen at the wad of flashy invitation cards strewn all over the dining table. Willingly working late nights so I can feel done with planning this marriage, not just emotionally and mentally, but physically too, has become the newest addition to my already hectic schedule.

Like I can't change that if I want to, ha. Sue me, dammit.

A pained sigh escapes my dry lips when my gaze moves from the pen to the words engraved in thick laminex charcoal ink on the cardboard lying beneath my chin for the infinite-th time tonight:

❝Join us on the 14th of February
to celebrate the grand union of the hearts of
Olwyn Gray and Aric Nithercott.❞

14th February, Valentine's Day.

When informed about the wedding cards that were to be designed and the date on which the wedding was supposed to be happening, there was nothing I wanted to do more than to slit Elliot's throat with the bluntest knife− so I could satisfy my hunger for his blood, of course, and also so he could understand how it felt when someone who was once so close, did something so grievous.

I mean, of all three-sixty-five days of the year, why Valentine's day?

He is highly demented. He has to be- only some highly retarded human-brain eater would kiss his ex-fiancee on the night of his engagement, yet continue planning a future with someone else, starting from Valentine's Day itself.

Utterly unfortunate as I may sound, slashing that inconsiderate jerk's throat isn't the only thing I want now. I want him. To heck with want, I need him. Except, not at the cost of the feelings of another woman, because she doesn't deserve to go through what I went in the years Elliot wasn't by my side.

From my peripheral vision, I see Zephrine dismount the chair on the other end of the table and approach me, sleepily rubbing her eyes before groaning my term of address out.

I rais my head to look at her properly, sparing the half-designed card that was being victimized by my scrutinizing gaze all this time a break. "Mhm?"

"Let's go sleep." she murmurs, pushing herself into my lap.

Poor child, I muse to myself. She has no option apart from putting up with my tendency to work at such ungodly hours due to her incapability of sleeping without me; a habit I had myself inculcated into her.

But it isn't like I had an option, either.

So, sighing, I placed her head over my shoulder and gently massaged her scalp. "Mom has work, honey," I cooed. Not that I couldn't leave my work aside and put her to sleep, no, it was just that regardless of how damaged my brain waxed into as the end product, I wanted to get over with this whole thing as soon as possible.

"Mom," whined Zephrine, tightening her grip around my neck. "You can do it tomorrow."

I sighed, again. "I'll tuck you in and return. How does that sound?"

I felt her shake her head against mine. "No no no no no,"

Goodness, how do I deal with this uncompromising kid?

"Honey, I have to finish this today. Dave will kill your mommy if she doesn't turn these invitation cards by tomorrow." I lied. Dave hadn't even returned from his holiday, and I had three more days' time to complete this set. Plus, that sweet-as-sugar old man would never kill me, not even if I threatened to kill him. Not that such a thought had ever crossed my mind, but still.

But then again, it isn't like I haven't already been successful in delineating Dave's image as a serial killer inside Zeph's brain in the past two years.

Why? one might ask.

Well, Dave had a very bad habit of leaving the work premises before me at least once a week so he could take Zeph for a ride around the city; just him and my girl, which, of course, was not a big deal.

The issue in his actions, however, appeared when she'd return home, looking like something worth a million facepalms.

Slimy melted chocolate would be smeared all over her face and fingers; large, ugly blobs of Coco-Cola would be spattered over the front of her once-clean-as-a-whistle frock, and the same chocolate-contaminated fingers of hers would be supporting a handful of bags carrying such unhealthy eatables.

He'd make my child look like she was picked from the slum area and manhandled by chocolate and carbonated drinks.

Really not appealing.

When Dave continued to spoil my girl, her teeth, and her habits even after posing fair warnings for more than eighteen times, I took the situation in my genius hands.

Ultimate meaning?

I lied to Zeph about Dave being really mean, and a bad person. Just like when I'd told her that unlike all other children of her age who had two parents; one male and the other female, I was her mother and father, both. And rather surprisingly, she never, not even for a second, doubted my claim, easily making my love for her increase to something more than what it already was, making it seem like the biggest infinity.

She raised her head from my shoulder so she could look me in the eye. "Mom," she complained, a cute frown on her face, "Why did Davy become so mean all of a sudden?"

I cackled internally.

The chances of my blood staining Dave's fingers would have been really high (he was definitely making sure I'd get a free tour of Heaven after being enlightened with this particular news), had he heard of my innocent little girl's thoughts of him. He is one of the most disciplined, down-to-earth, and doting people I've ever crossed paths with, in whose description dictionary 'mean' is a non-existing word.

Still, finding it extremely funny that Zeph believed everything I told her, I decided to further design his character alike something unbelievably terrible in her perception. "He didn't become bad, honey, he was born that way. A bad omen, if you ask me." I lied solemnly, trying not to laugh at her shocked expression.

"Really?"

I bobbed my head in agreement. "Yes,"

Talking to Zeph has always been refreshing. And now, when my veins were overflowing with commands from my mind, ordering me to shut my emotional, motherly-self up and complete the work I was assigned, I found myself rebelling for my human rights− oh wait, more like, mommy rights.

Just maybe, I should take a break and let myself feel like a human rather than a machine.

So, before she could open her mouth and ask me more about Dave and I could lie more, I concurred with her request to go to bed. "A'ight, let's go sleep."

"But won't Davy kill you?" she questioned, her eyebrows furrowing in worry.

Damn you, Zephrine. Now because of you, my child, I'll have to lie some more.

"Aha," I exclaimed breezily, "He's nothing your mommy can't handle."

"But didn't you say you were completing this work because you were scared that he'll kill you?" she asked again, tilting her head to the left.

Awesome. Now just go ahead and stuff more rubbish in her brain so she can throw it all back at you, you trickster, the stupid, purposeless voice inside my head said, its tone clipped with intended mockery.

Could it be helpful, for once?

Bleh, regardless of what you think or say, I will always be the masterpiece who gave birth to a smaller masterpiece, I replied rather lamely.

It laughed one of those cackled-headed, maniac-like laughs. I couldn't believe this voice was inside of me all these years yet never learned how to laugh from me. Some real shame on it for that. Was that supposed to be funny? 'Cause I laughed anyway.

I ignored it, turning back to the nine-year-old in front of me. Now that I really thought deeper and wiser about its origins, that voice could be belonging to some telepathic psycho trying to invade my thoughts and make me one of his/her kind. But because I am iron-willed and recalcitrant since I was a mere fetus, I shan't let anything of that sort happen.

Good used to, and will always win over evil.

"As I said, I'll take care of everything, honey, now let's go," I told, ushering her off my lap.

"Mom," she protested, "I don't want you to get in trouble because of−"

"Eh," I looked at her as if she's gone mad. Who says that they want to sleep one minute and refrains from doing the same the next minute? "I'm going to bed, you're coming or not?" I demanded, standing up from the chair.

Ouch, doesn't it feel as if a million ants have been feeding on my flesh throughout the past four hours that I've spent perched on this chair so I could design cards for my ex-fiance's wedding?

"No, you complete your work first," she replied, pushing me back in a sitting position. Woah there, Baby-Hulk, we can talk it out, alright? "Then we go,"

My eyebrows furrowed in dissension. "Are you mad?" I voiced my thoughts from earlier.

"Not really, I need a profitable compensation for the same though."

Okay, now she's talking just like her mother. How ditto.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is one of the most significant cons of majoring in Marketing and Communication and having kids (more like a kid). They throw your skills back at you as if the subject has been flowing through their bloodstream since their birth.

I groaned. "And in what form might that 'compensation' display itself in front of you?" I asked, my eyebrows raised in suspicion of what she could ask.

I was staking 55% of my chances on her asking me to dress up as Deadpool, the same way I had last Halloween which Jael, Zeph and I had spent scaring each other and stuffing licorice in our mouths (that spandex outfit is a great way to restrict blood circulation and finally die, by the way); 40% on risking my life by waking the music-obsessed beast hibernating in the next room and literally begging her to turn the house into a disco room at three at night; and the last 5% on donating my unlocked phone to her (she didn't know the password) so she could spoil her brain by watching Oggy and The Cockroaches.

I even lost count of the times she watched that stupid cartoon.

But what she asked for was something that never actually clicked, "Bubblegum ice-cream," she murmured, her voice shy and eyes gleaming with excitement.

I wasn't supposed to be scared for my daughter's well-being just because she asked me to get her bubblegum ice-cream at thirty-seven past two at midnight, in this sub-zero weather, right?

But I was, and that was because the girl standing in front of me was definitely not the same overly-sensible Zephrine who had, on my request, never again questioned me regarding the guy she had seen me kissing about a week ago.

So I immediately pulled her close to me and placed my hand over her pale forehead, hoping her fever was nothing serious.

"Mom, what are you doin'?" she quipped, her brows knit together in skeptical confusion.

"Shush!" I vocalized, silencing her. Kids these days, I tell you, they demand to know the reason behind everything. "I'm checking for a high, high, very high fever."

She subtly shoved my hand aside, muttering, "I'm fine, just get me an ice-cream."

"My beloved daughter, ice-cream is not something you eat during the winter!" I exclaimed, trying to get it past her thick skull that she wasn't getting any 'iced cream'.

"Mom, be nice! I'm your only daughter." she chastised me, a cute pout forming on her rosy lips as she folded her arms over her chest.

Despite the fact that I wasn't supposed to smile in such a situation, I did. "You're my only child, darling," I observed, pushing the stray strands off her forehead.

She was really lucky she had gone on me, and not her asshole-ic father. Which reminds me, even he held a peculiar sort of distaste towards people who ate ice-creams during the winters...

Oh, I just found the most solid reason why I shouldn't follow his footsteps by getting my baby a cone!

After all, what damage could a cone bring, right?

"Whatever," she rolled her eyes, leaning over my knees to continue persuading me, unaware of the fact that I had already agreed to her second request tonight; mentally, though. "Please mom, it's been so long since I last had it. I won't ask for anything more, I promise, not even that Barbie doll I told you to get me for my birthday. Just one cone, please." she whined, releasing all of her weight over my knees to a point where they started aching, but I didn't complain, because I didn't care.

"Fine, go put your coat on," I gave in, pretending to be cross with her odd appeal.

"Really?" she looked taken aback, but happy, nonetheless. "Thank you!" she exclaimed, tying her arms in a knot around my neck.

I smiled against her head. No matter how many necklaces I bought myself, her hands around my neck would be my most prized possession.

"Now go, shoo!" I gently pushed her towards the coat stand.

Although I knew the changes that Jael would wake up anytime before twelve at noon were a negative one, I left a note on the table just in case, saying that Zeph and I were out to take a walk and that we'd be back within half an hour.

I pulled a brown scarf around my neck, pairing it with a long maroon cardigan. Then, with Zeph's hand secured in mine, we set off.

As expected, the streets were deserted and the weather cold. But lucky for us, a stroll of six minutes was all it took to reach the ice-cream parlor which was just around the corner− with Zeph skipping all along the way and me trying to keep up with her quick pace, of course.

As we entered the said place, I noticed that there was no one around. I would never admit this to Zephrine, but I myself missed this place quite a lot. Who wouldn't, though? It was a piece of heaven cased in a four-walled glass frame and dropped onto planet Earth, assisted by two angels dressed as waiters.

Zeph rushed to the curved glasses as soon as we entered. Even as I slowly made my way across the clean floor to where she stood, I could already imagine the feeling of excitement and exhilaration roaming through her eyes.

I was pretty sure she would trade her second most favorite Barbie doll (I have yet to figure out what it would take for her to do the same with her most favorite one) for ice-cream on any day.

"What may I get you, girlie?" asked the waiter, his smile polite yet gentle.

She turned to me, smiling widely before turning back to the person in front of her, who I was sure she thought was one of the world's best people.

"One bubblegum ice-cream, please," she muttered shyly.

He turned away so he could work on her order, but I stopped him. "Make that two, I'll have one as well."

"You're having one too?" Zeph cried, evidently surprised that her mom would be hypocrite enough to advise her daughter against having one, only to devour one herself later on.

My eyebrows shot upwards in amazement, a smile towing at the corners of my lips. She really wasn't expecting that. "I wasn't gonna sit and stare at you all the while you had yours, was I?"

"Oh, that's right too." she maffled. A soft silence lapsed around the place as both of our eyes' carefully followed the worker who was scooping the delicacy over our cones.

"Here you go," he said, passing me the two cones.

I paid for our dainty titbit and we left the shop.

I licked my cone, aimlessly wandering around the place for a while. I was awake to the fact that the area we'd just stepped into wasn't one I was very familiar with, mainly because I'd stop coming to this place when it'd been taken down for the construction of a subway a few years ago. I also knew that I was purposely delaying our return to our humble dwelling so I could spend more time with the little girl beside me who seemed too busy merrily licking away at her cone to even spare me− her mother, a glance.

It seemed as if there was nothing that could bring the moment between her and her precious ice-cream to a standstill; not even time itself.

I licked the cold cream once again.

My grip on our intertwined hands tightened ever so slightly as we entered a deeper and definitely darker vennel. I had no clue why I still hadn't taken the lane that led to our apartment, considering how places like these made a certain memory, one which never failed to make my abdomen churn in pain, reappear all over again.

It was one of those very common, yet stressful evening when I had to stay back at school so our band could practice the song I had written for the upcoming inter-school band competition, for the millionth time that week. It was unusually late that day, though, somewhere around ten-thirty when I'd left the premises, all alone. Normally, my mom would come to pick me, but because her health had deteriorated in the last few days, I refused to let her take the trouble.

The thing I didn't even understand, though, was why we had to stay back when our team was perfectly perfect.

But oh my-my, was I in for a shock that night, one that would reveal to me reasons why, even if our team was perfectly perfect, I wasn't going to be anymore. At least not after the sun would rise and I would wake up in someone's bed, the owner of which had apparently saved me the night before.

But Lord, couldn't that guy save me before I was raped?

Why did he even bother to save me after it had happened? Because according to what the police had told me later that week, was that were I to be left unattended at the same place for more than thirty-two hours, I would've expired; making it the easiest way out of self-humiliation, pain, and lifelong suffering.

But nope, he saved me, and back then, I almost hated him for doing that.

Like, seriously, dude, who asked you to save me? Couldn't you just let me die against that hundred-year-old wall?

Of course, I was too scared to stay around men anymore, let alone the guy who claimed to have saved me the night before, so I ran, away from him and to my mother, who was the only one who actually cared.

A gnawing ache was building inside of me as I entered the building, making me feel more troubled by the minute of how she would react when she'd see me in my torn clothes, how she'd take the longs and shorts of the reason why I hadn't returned home last night− considering the number of times she had warned me against leaving indoors after ten at night.

But when I opened the door to our little apartment to find her lying unconscious on the ground, my worries vanished, replaced by extreme gratitude towards the anonymous guy (I hadn't asked his name then) who had, unknowingly, saved another life, because if he wouldn't have saved me and I wouldn't have reached there on time, then my mom would've passed away, too.

So, after getting my mom admitted to the hospital, I repeated to myself a million times over and over that to save someone's life needs one to be humane, and that that anonymous guy had been humane enough.

So, I started hunting him down. But how lucky must I consider myself when I realized that I knew nothing about him. Not his name, not his address, not where he studied/worked− NOTHING.

It was all very heart-breaking; me being assaulted first, and then the police failing to find the assaulter and me failing to find the saver; but because mom's health had worsened then more than ever, and the shock could send her in emotional overdrive, I kept my dirty secret to myself, making the pain that resurfaced every time I thought about that fateful night unbearable− which, for the purpose of mentioning, happened much more than it should.

But life had to go on, right?

And it did− as if it would never end. Mom got discharged from the hospital after a few days, school never got delayed, neither did the inter-school band competition. It actually came to me as no surprise that despite not being able to stay back until late since that... fateful night, we secured the first position.

But I learned something valuable that day, something about the male head of the school whose band had won the second position. Something that I had spent the past two weeks breaking my head over.

Something that had a lot to do with the name of the guy who had saved my life.

And that, mesdames et messieurs, was how I met Elliot Bryson, the guy who had saved a girl whose innocence had been forcefully ripped off her soul before her breath got ripped off her body too.

Dhun, dhun, dhun.

I distinctly recall approaching him at the fest itself, but he was rather cold and abrasive at first, trying his best to deny the actuality that he was, indeed, the one who had rescued me the other day. But then, Frans, a friend of his showed up, behind his back, of course, and confirmed to me that he was the one I had been looking for.

The fact that he had managed to share such heartbreaking news with his friend when I couldn't even tell it to my mother, let alone a friend, came off as a somewhat surprising occurrence. But I didn't blame him, because the impact the incident had left on me was killing me from the inside, so he hadn't really done anything wrong by releasing a small amount of it.

It was a few days after I'd found him, and as I look back on it now, I remember being eighteen then, and hell-bent over convincing Elliot into befriending me. So much so that I visited his school− which was a thirty minutes walk away from mine− thrice a week, just so I could see what exactly had compelled him to take a raped girl home. Because the man who had raped me was someone I didn't even know, making it crystal clear that he would get nothing by forcing me to go through hell. Yet, he did it, for the satisfaction of the rock he called his heart. But Elliot, on the other hand, had saved me. There had to be a reason he did what he did, right? After all, in today's world, humanity comes at a great price.

So, as we were walking to the orphanage Elliot was going to sing at later that day, I didn't give up my charade of pestering him with questions about various topics, all of which zeroed down to a simple, yet complex Why?

Then, he said:

"You know, humanity is just lost amidst a selfish crowd. It isn't dead. Not yet, at least. All we need is someone who's ready to jump in and make an impact, Celeste."

"And you're ready...?" I had whispered my question out, my gaze intent on the left side of his face. Even then, I knew Elliot's reply would matter a lot to me, chiefly because it would show me if he really was different from the other guys out there or just an imposter desperate for attention.

And what he said didn't confirm my assumptions as I thought it would, because it wasn't as simple as the 'yes' I'd expected him to mutter in reply.

He said, and I quote: "We all are, klutz. And you might disagree with me, and I won't be surprised because," he had turned in his steps so he could look at me, and I noticed that one of his rarest yet gorgeous smiles had crept over his thin lips. "That's what you do almost all the time, but trust me when I say, you are more than just an ordinary girl who had been through stuff you don't deserve− nobody deserves to go through. You have the potential of making a great impact on this world. I mean, look at you..." he exclaimed, looking me from the crown of my head to the tip of my toes.

"You have two legs, two hands, two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth, two lips− you can do so much with all those. But," he said and paused for a second so that when he would continue with his next words, they would be embedded permanently in my memory. "The extent of how much you can do lies in how much of your personal potential you're willing to put to use."

After that day, nothing was the same, ever again. And courtesy of Elliot, a five-line pep talk was all my life needed.

Hmm... those days. I so badly wish them back.

Anyway, in the present instance, Zeph's body huddling close to mine and her grasp tightening around my hand was what knocked me off the train of mental recollection of the old days.

"Mom," she whispered, her tone wavering.

I followed her gaze and saw a burly man heading our way. Although he was far enough for me to remain unable to make out the features littering his face, from the outline of his body structure, and judging from the way he was walking towards us, his steps large and intimidating, he, by no means, let out an aura of comfort.

Uh oh.

###

So, what do you all think of Celeste's past? Oh, and if you were wondering why I didn't give so much of an insight into what Celeste felt after that kiss in her apartment last chapter, then that's cause it's been a week since the incident. She's obviously gotten somewhat over it. Clear enough?

Good.

Anyways...
...any changed perspectives when it comes to Elliot?
I honestly won't be surprised if that has happened. ;)

Bye for now!