The Craving

Chapter Two- From Afar

Thora found herself walking beneath the long fingers of the Spanish moss that had been growing from the oak trees. If not for the fact she had walked this same path almost every day, the sensation of the branches would feel identical to that of a critter-as there were certainly enough of those in this part of the world. But where others would be thinking of poisonous snakes or deadly arachnids, Thora wondered who would have wanted to save her from her attempt to take her own life. She made a list of suspects in her mind but knew that none of them would have been capable of lifting her in the way this stranger had. It was almost as if she was weightless to him and with the full curves and nature of her full figure would have made this impossible. Of course the most reasonable explanation was that she had taken too many puffs of hemp or consumed too many bottles of beer-but she was always cautious in this instance as she knew she would have to answer to her father for smelling of either of these elements. But with each step closing in on her new home that she was in no rush to return to, she was unaware of the shadow of a man that had been following her. He remained in the darkness, covered by the fallen sun that exchanged with the moon as it hung at half full overhead. His gaze had fixated on her for reasons he could not explain to himself, but found it impossible to break away-as if he would do so that the world would simply fall off kilter. He remained in her penumbra, surviving from the cover that night had allowed him until she pulled open the screen door and turned upon feeling a gaze upon her. Even though her gaze had scanned the entire area to see only moribund grass on its final days from the drought, she was unaware that her guardian angel was watching her from afar. His sight lingered until the door closed behind her and swung as part of her shotgun house.

She brought her shoes from her feet by their heels and tossed them into the side of her room before heaving her body weight upon her bed and focusing on her cell phone. Her fingers slid upon the screen, having analyzed the truly “horrendous” feats of her high school peers as they spoke of packing for college and going on extravagant trips gifted by their parents. She rolled her eyes when thinking of how trivial these issues had been when she hasn’t been able to have a childhood since her father exchanged his love for a dark colored bottle. However, the silence in the home on this night had given her her own version of a graduation present as she wasn’t subjected to his verbal disgrace in regards to the church or death itself or the fact he would throw the glass bottles when his anger would rise. In reminiscing about this, her gaze slid over to a section of her room that one of his glass containers had smashed a palm-sized hole in her room. Without obtaining the skills of a craftsman, she did the best she could by placing a frame over the hole-but with the room between the bookshelf and frame-it still managed to serve as a heartbreaking reminder of her circumstances. As she had done every night, she slid her earbuds between either canal and allowed the sounds of Van Halen to soar throughout her mind until she fell asleep.

Her dreams would usually be of that horrible night that had changed her family forever. She would conjure sights of them having been smiling until the door would shoot open and they would be attacked. The guilt was present even in an unconscious state as she thought if she had only arrived sooner or called the police from the minute she felt uneasy...but none of it would do any good now. She would awaken with only a handful of hours of sleep if she was fortunate before finding her pajamas and skin sodden from her night sweats. However, the true nightmares would be when she would close her eyes and “awaken” in an alternate lifestyle when her mother would still be in the kitchen and giving Betty Crocker a run for her money and her brother would be playing some video game on the system connected to the living room television. As these would be images she would never see again, but was plagued to due to her own memories. She had wished that she could forget them at times as these thoughts were too painful of what she would never have-and so, she did whatever she could to not sleep for long periods of time; including listening to hard rock and setting alarms every few hours. This also served a second purpose as it allowed her to have time before her father would awaken that she could use just for herself. It was usually used to clean up whatever mess he had made the night before or put him into bed; but this morning, she hadn’t worried of anything but the mysterious figure who saved her the night before. If not for the broken pieces of twig still lodged in her hair from when she had laid upon the tracks, the moment could have been easily written off as a dream.

Her thoughts remained inspired by the masked man that held an uncertain clarity to her. She wasn’t sure if she should be thankful or in disliking of the figure as she was questioning if he had saved her or only forced her to endure her circumstances longer. Regardless of her thoughts, she knew that no good would come from obsessing over it as she knew the events of the day would find her-no matter how deep she attempted to hide beneath her burgundy colored sheets. Realizing this, she collected herself from her bed after pulling the earbuds from her ear and moving directly to the shower. She began to play with the nozzle as it swayed from hot to cold until coming to a temperature that would be cold enough to wake her up. She allowed the water to soak her hair, having some of the permanent dye having shown a black hue near her feet as it hid her naturally dark blonde hair. When finished with this, she lifted the shaver to her skin, careful to not knick herself before finally ending her shower with body wash of a birch water and lavender scent. She patted her body with the towel until having come to a section of bites upon the upper left quadrant of her back-appearing as mosquito bites. They burned upon her touching them and realized this had simply been from the fact they had a bit of blood still coming from them. She wiped them off and thought no more of it as she carried on with her morning until exiting her room and into the room her father took as his own.

His figure was stretched in length upon the couch, three bottles of an unpopular but affordable brand of beer, and a nearly empty bottle of tequila having made a home on the carpet just near the tips of his fingers. She began to collect the bottles-disposing of the ones that were empty before moving his mostly absent choice of more effective alcohol and filling it with lukewarm water to try and dim the effects for that next night. A flash of the usual events that would transpire had shot through her mind as she found herself fixated upon the window just above the sink-having also forced the bottle to become overflowed with water. The sound of his escalated voice and shattering glass could echo through her mind on a loop whether she was asleep or awake as she broke from her gaze only when coming to a shadow behind a tree across her yard. But as quickly as it appeared, it had vanished within the matter of a simple blink.

She placed the alcohol back on the top of the fridge, where he kept his stash, before pulling herself back into her room that was forced to be almost bare due to it being a reminder of her mother’s decor. She had a single frame on a shelf across from her bed and a desk and dresser-but nothing else was allowed,especially anything of color. Her heart felt heavy at the thought before she saw the sight of her uniform that had given her a form of distraction for eight hours almost every day. With her father being a heavy drunk, it was up to her to supply the financial end of their existence which was a burden all its own-but not more than when she would be sick or unwell. Even though she should have been out celebrating her last summer before officially entering the life of being a real adult, she was spending hers in a gray and white uniform with her name imprinted on a rectangular tag hanging upon her left bosom. It wasn’t exactly the worst job in the world and she never had to worry about seeing anyone she knew as they all stayed on the other side of town, but it paid the bills her father didn’t, and gave her something to do before having to return home to defend herself against him. She would be expected to use utensils from the early nineties to do a job required for modern day-but did so without so much as rolling her eyes as she also came to enjoy going room to room at the motel to see who had come and gone. Of course, she would come across things in a hotel room that would make her brows rise in curiosity such as condoms set freely without shame and mirrors set on the tables and remnants of powder remaining-but nothing more curious than what happened the day after she had tried to take her own life.

Having entered room 2066 on the very end hall; her last room before she would go home, she found a single bag sitting on the bed and thought nothing of it as guests left items all of the time. But the nature of this bag had been odd to say the least. It wasn’t made of plastic, but an old leather that had a faint floral scent that she couldn’t quite pin. It had peaked her interest, but not enough to actually move close to it as she had made her way around the room-doing what was expected and came to the bed to make it. She was forced to move the bag to pull the sheets from its used nature to fresh ones for the next guest but caught how a luggage tag was placed upon the bag. She brought the phone near the bed to her ear as they were required to turn in every object they found in a room-but just as she connected to the receptionist, she found that the luggage tag said “To: Thora Delatrae.”. She looked at her name as if it was foreign to her before her curiosity grew the best of her and she pulled the zipper free, finding it impossible to understand why someone would leave such a thing-to her of all people. She brought herself to the outside of the room, looking around to see if someone was setting her up-but found only a solid black car with tinted windows to be in the lot and the figure to be looking up at her but impossible to truly see. She couldn’t bring herself to make out who it was and before she could really focus upon the figure, she then heard the woman’s voice on the phone to be calling out to her. Thora felt tempted by the items in the bag, feeling as if it was the world’s way of making things right with her. But the naive Thora was unaware of the implications that would come along with such a “gift”.