CLOSER TO HEAVEN

saviour

The following days were mundane. I sat in my room for hours on an end, closing my eyes just to visualise his eyes again. Green. Green. Green. So beautiful, so vivid. Abnus was unlike any other men around me. He was risque and inviting. I could not get him out of my head no matter how much I tried. My father hadn't talked to me about anything, I wasn't expecting him to but something about what Abnus said constantly ticked me off. My father, Lei Barlowe wasn't the kind of man to work anybody else. He wasn't the kind to s*******r on order.

"Don't you think you're thinking too much?", Mrs Whyre interrupted. "I've noticed that you keep to yourself these days. Go for a walk maybe it'll help you clear out your head."

"I'm not thinking too much," I lied, fiddling with the lace at the hem of my dress. Today was my father's birthday, I was told to dress up for a dinner party but I had no intention of showing up. His birthday dinners were always the two of us with a bunch of other murderers and criminals who were either runaways or had had their share of jail time. The entirety of my house was filled with smoke and the pungent smell of whisky. "Mrs Whyre, if I tell you something, would you keep it a secret?"

"Of course Mrs Barlowe, it's a promise," she answered honestly.

"What if I tell you that for a few moments, I could...I could see," she released a gasp in shock and I pressed my lips together, contemplating whether or not I should tell her everything. She was, afterall, my only friend here. "Do you remember the man with the serpent ring?"

A stool screeched and I knew I had Mrs Whyre's keen interest in my words. "I do, yes."

"He came to my house after I left," I drew in a shaky breath. "I think he's behind my father. He said he wants to hurt him and right before he left, he showed me a glimpse of what he was capable of." My own words sounded foreign to me. I shifted in my seat once again.

"Do you.....mean he made you see?", The old woman was confused. I didn't blame her. It was a very unrealistic situation. I hadn't heard of anything like that happen before. "Is he a donor? Or does he know a donor?" Her questions didn't seem to cease so I shook my head.

"No, he's neither of those," I exhaled loudly. "He's not human. He can't be."

"Miss Barlowe, I trust you with everything you say however, supernatural entities aren't something I've had much.....faith in. He was walking out in broad daylight, I would hardly believe his existence as a supernatural," Mrs Whyre's reasoning was correct in all senses. She was factually right, of course, nothing about this guy made sense.

"His name is Abnus and he has these," I stuttered a little, immediately feeling the need to close my eyes to visualize my vision of him. "These beautiful, beautiful green eyes."

"Abnus," Mrs Whyre repeated softly under her breath and I nodded again. "He did have green eyes now that I think about it but...how do you know that? Did he really gift you vision?"

"Only for a few moments but i can't shake those few minutes off as delusion, I know it was real. Everything was too vivid, too clear to be a dream."

I knew Mrs Whyre understood what I meant because she didn't follow up with any sort of confused sounds or anything like that. She simply breathed. Maybe it was the 'side effect' of being visually impaired that gave me a edge over others when it came to various sensations. I felt things more deeply than anybody could ever see them.

"Do you know anything else about him?" She asked finally and all I could do was to shake my head in response. I had met him once in my entire life. He wasn't even from this town for me to go enquiring around, as weird as that idea was. "If we don't know anything about him, how...how will we save your life from all this misery? He seems like a key."

"Mrs Whyre while does seem like my saviour, i hardly believe him to be a good man," I laughed a little. "He's after my father which implies he's either a cop or he's a bigger criminal than my father."

"He didn't look like a cop," she testified. I believed her. The serpent ring was proof in itself.

"I want to see him again," my confession was honest. I really did want to see this weird man again. He had the answers, I had the questions. The only problem was that only my father could lead me to Abnus.

When I was on my way back home, there was untamable turmoil in my head. I could go up to my father and simply ask him who the man in our house was but that could've been possible with a relatively sane parent. My other option was to tell him an exaggerated lie about how the man said he was planning to hurt him. Maybe I could coax his egoistic self to spit the truth?

However, what I never realised was that Abnus wasn't lying when he said he would hurt my dad because as soon as I got home, the pungent smell of blood flooded my nostrils. The house was cold and I was freezing like never before. Everything signified the presence of something unnatural. "F-Father?" I called out hesitantly.

"Cecilia! Ah, finally! you're here," said the voice I had been dying to hear. Abnus was in my house and before I could react, he was dragging me somewhere with a strong hold on my wrist.

"Where are you taking me?! WHERE'S MY FATHER?" My screams were seemingly blatantly ignored because even if he was dragging me away, his touch wasn't hurting me. His fingers were cold like those of a dead person and then he stopped to say something that made bile churn in my body.

"Your father wants to see you once before I take you away."