Chapter One

Chapter One

November 3

Dear…

     Who am I writing this too? Some girl I’ve never met? An invisible friend who can look into my head? I don’t know.

     This whole thing seems like a nightmare. I wonder if, if there is a god that now laughs at me? I’m sure there is, if one even exists.

     I’m in this fancy house with too high ceilings and cold floors and stiff furniture. It’s like everything is glaring at me. I feel like I’m the guest who has overstayed their welcome. It’s not like I wanted to be here in the first place. There’s no life here. This Angeline girl, she lived here. Simon told me. He’s the old, dear friend she talked about in her letter. He called me Angeline.

     I am not her.

My name is not Angeline.

There are pictures of her here, framed in silver and gold, gleaming in the soft yellow light. She stares out at me and smiles. But it is cold to me. I can’t help but feel shivers run down my spine.

She hates me.

She must be angry with me; this pretty girl who evaluates my every move from behind a glass wall, trapped within the recesses of her mind, my mind.

There’s a picture hanging by the front stair landing that I can’t stop looking at. It shows Angeline sitting with Simon on the edge of a fountain, both smiling and laughing. It is night, and the water behind them sparkles, washing them in a blue light. She is very beautiful, white blonde hair framing her face in soft waves. Her eyes are bright blue, bright as the sky, but also sharp like ice, cutting through me. Her skin is pale and soft-looking, like a baby’s. She is wearing a flowing green sundress with ruffled edges and four-inch heels. Her neck and arms are bejeweled with long strands of silver chains that seem to quiver.

In comparison, my reflection in a hallway mirror shows a girl with bedraggled and tangled hair in a messy tail down her back, wide and confused cloudy blue eyes, pale skin that looks wan under the light, dressed in jeans falling off her hips, along with a rumpled shirt and gray socks on her feet. We can’t be the same person, but, we are. Angeline and me.

Next to Angeline in the picture is Simon. His hair is a shining blue-black, gelled carelessly away from his face. His eyes are a misty blue-gray, like the sea after a storm. They are eyes to make you forget who you are. My heart throbs at the thought of him. He stirs the strangest feelings within me. Even if it turns out that I do have strong feelings for him, he couldn’t ever be mine. He was and would now always belong to Angeline. Angeline.

In the picture, Simon is dressed in baggy designer jeans with faded patches and roomy pockets, looking like he walked right out of an magazine ad. His skin, so much paler than Angeline’s and mine, looks soft and welcoming. I wish he would hold me! His shirt is partway unbuttoned, the white cotton framing pale abdominal muscles and hardened pectorals. His body is lean and muscular, cutting an intimidating figure.

It seems like a lot of things went wrong.

It all started with last night. November 2.

He found me in a bathroom. All the faucets were running high and the water overflowed onto the floor, underneath flickering, dim lights. I sat nearby, kneeling on the floor under the water, scrubbing at my skin and clothes, naked and raw. I was desperate. I just had to get the blood off.

The worst part was seeing the blood run down the drain. I saw it coated on my arms and legs. It had been in my clothes too, but they were as clean as I could get them.

I hadn’t heard Simon come in. He was as silent as a cat, like the predator creeping up on its prey. When I hadn’t noticed him, he gently tapped me on the shoulder. The touch had been like a jolt of electricity traveling through my body, and I had looked up to see him towering over me.

My hair was wet and stuck to my back, while my eyes felt puffy and red. The most embarrassing part was that my mouth hung open like an unhinged door. He looked at me with a confused and worried look in his eyes, his hands hovering near my shoulders awkwardly. But he was the most beautiful man I had ever seen.

He knelt and balanced easily on the balls of his feet, the dark leather of his boots gleaming. He looked into my eyes and tilted his head as he considered me. I couldn’t help but stare at him, helpless to turn away. His lips mouthed sounds that didn’t even register in my head. At that moment, I was incapable of making speech, as if I were an awestruck newborn baby.

“What?” I asked in a whisper nearly lost in the background noise of running faucets and draining water.

“Angie? Angeline? Cut the crap already,” he said, impatience leaking into his voice. “What the hell are you doing?”

Angeline? My muddled thoughts worked in a sluggish fashion to make the connection. It was a name. “Angeline?” I parroted. “Who is Angeline?” At least I managed to sound coherent. I continued to look up at him, my emotions leaving me in a whirlwind of overwhelming confusion.

“Angeline, if this is a joke, it’s not that funny,” he said. He reached out a hand to me, an offering of help, coming out of his crouch. “Come on, get up. I thought you’d have left already with Terrant.”

I stared at his hand, unsure of whether or not I should take it. “Umm,” I began, trying to find something to say that would explain my situation. He continued to look at me expectantly.

“Angeline?” he asked, but he sounded hesitant this time when he said it.

“Look,” I said finally, trying to gather my wits, “I know this must be weird, but, I’m not this, Angeline person. I’m actually not really sure who I am. I mean, I woke up in this church and there was blood everywhere and, yeah…” I finished lamely.

He looked at me for a long minute, his expression inscrutable. What I said must have caught him off guard because he was quiet for awhile. His gaze meandered down to the floor, away from my face, going from the wet piles of clothes to the flooding sinks, the faulty overhead lights and the ugly yellow tile. His face was cast with shallow shadows. He glanced at me once, but I cast my gaze away from him, glancing instead to his clothing. He was dressed all in black; long dress pants that seemed crisp and little worn, a dark polo shirt, and a suit jacket that seemed a little too stiff, with flashy gold cufflinks.

“So, you don’t remember what happened last night? Or the night before?”

“Well, I could tell you what happened when I woke up today, I guess,” I said, unsure of what he was asking for. Was there something that I was supposed to remember?

He sighed, shaking his head. “Let’s get you out of this mess,” he said at last. I shifted my body at his words, and managed to stifle a gasp as pain shot through my legs.

Without any sort of warning, he swooped down like a great bird of prey and suddenly had me cradled in his arms. I didn’t even have enough time to gasp in surprise. My heart began to beat way too fast and I felt the blood rush to my cheeks. I wanted to insist on being put down, but instead left the words to choke and die on my tongue.

He carried me out of the bathroom, his arms fitting snug around my body as if he were used to bearing my weight. For me, it felt awkward, although I was grateful for the help. He brought me to the large room which I had found myself in upon awakening. Oddly enough, it was a church. He set me down on a hard pew with a gentle hand and took a seat next to me.

I shuddered, both from nervousness and the cold. I was also more than aware of his presence next to mine. I could feel every shift in his movements. I wanted to reach out and touch him, to do something, but it didn’t exactly seem right. My eyes peeked over at him and my cheeks flamed up again when I saw that he was looking over at me too.

He caught me off guard when he leaned over, quick as a camera flash, and came within an inch of my face. His body overshadowed mine, and I felt his hand on the pew brush against my hip, sending a shiver down my spine and throughout my body. He raised a hand and brushed it along my jaw.

“Don’t play games with me,” he whispered, his lips inching closer to my own. For I forgot how to breathe as he leaned in closer. “Angeline…”

“I…” I said, meaning to say something, but words flew my head as he leaned in closer, brushing my lips lightly, then deeper, like an eager child. I melted into the kiss, even though it felt discomfiting. He grasped both sides of my head, his hands running them through my tangled locks. It was beautiful. I loved the way he touched me, I loved his desperate tongue penetrating my mouth.

Maybe that’s the point where things began to falter between us. His kisses grew less insistent, and then he withdrew. His hands slid from my face, and he leaned away from me a little.

“You really aren’t her, are you?” he asked me quietly, although I felt like he was talking more to himself than to me. I felt a gap begin to open between us, made deeper with the belief that I was no longer Angeline. This upset me, and I can’t figure out why. Or maybe I don’t want to think about the why of it.

He cleared his throat after a moment, straightened in his seat, pulled at his coat, all before he spoke to me again. “My name is Simon Barclay.” His tone was dull and flat, his eyes staring at a point directly through me. I wanted to smile, to do something to relive the tension between us, but Simon less than interested. Instead I nodded, wrapping my arms around my body to draw in some warmth.

Simon glanced over, then got up and disappeared one second later. I blinked, trying to convince myself that I was now hallucinating. Maybe I really was crazy, and Simon was some illusion born from my own mind to keep it sane. Now that he was gone, I’d now know the truth. Hesitantly, I reached over to where he had been sitting and felt at the spot. My heart palpitated when I felt warmth emanating from the pew. It felt good to know that he was real after all. But, how he had disappeared so fast?

When I looked up again, I almost had a heart attack. Simon stood impatiently in the row behind me, holding out a wadded bunch of paper towels and some folded clothes towards me. My numbed hands reached out and took his offering, then let them drop into my lap. Simon watched me for a moment, not saying anything, then turned tail and left me on my own. When he was gone, I shook out the folded item on the top. It was an oversized shirt suited for someone Simon’s size, but it was dry, something I could be thankful for.

I moved the clothes from my lap and set them next to my feet, then began rubbing myself down roughly to increase my circulation so I could warm up. When I was comfortable enough to call myself dry, I pulled on some panties that miraculously fit me, the oversized shirt, as well as loose sweatpants that hung limply past my feet and a baggy sweatshirt that I nearly drowned in. My feet were bedecked into a pair of sparkling gold flats that I had no recollection of.

“Thank you,” I mumbled when he came, too shy to say it to his face. He parked himself on the seat in front of me, easily clearing the pew. He turned around to face me, one arm resting on the ridge of the wooden bench. His expression was blank and unreadable, although there seemed to me a very thin hold on this calm he exerted on himself.

“You’re welcome,” he said, short and abrupt. He changed the subject without missing a beat. “Look, I was supposed to come here and accompany you- Angeline, and Terrant after the transformation took place. Seeing as it’s only you here, I want some answers.” He paused, pulling at the lapels of his coat in an agitated fashion. “Just tell me what happened, from as far back as you can remember.”

“Oh, yeah, well…” It wasn’t exactly a subject I wanted to rehash. Still, I had to share it. I couldn’t keep it inside of me.

Taking a deep breath, I began to speak.

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Reviews

[Juliet]

Woah! Full of imagination, your title really pulled me in, then your first couple lines just captured my full attention! I cannot wait to hear more from this! Please update soon :D