Chapter Forty-one

Chapter Forty-one

I squinted my eyes a bit as I tried to adjust my dewy eyes to the brightness of the room. I immediately recognized this place to be my room. A room I had left behind some years back, though, used to be my favourite place in the world. My own comfort zone.

Well… how did I get here?

Everything seemed strange all of a sudden. For a bit, I thought the whole world around me was growing larger and larger, filling my senses and numbing my mind somehow. It felt like I was in an illusion, and the colours of my dreams were spinning right there in my head.

“Honey, you’re awake.” My mother’s voice jolted me and I could finally feel my surroundings and the numbness in my mind started dissipating.

My mouth felt parched and dry as I tried to speak. I was confused as to how I came here. Maybe, I have been falling into a series of trances and nothing has ever been real ever since I stepped out of Brandon’s house. Or… what if I haven’t stepped out at all, and I am just in one corner of the house dreaming, caught in the world of my nightmares. Can I even wake up from this? Or should I say, when will I wake up from this?

Maybe Roland Bones wasn’t real at all, and maybe, it was all because I was missing my mom that I had such a sad dream. I really do hope it ain’t real in any way. But I feel heavy, numb, totally pressed down by something extraordinary. Maybe, the whole world was atop me.

“What can even be real?” my subconscious peeked a question in my mind.

“How do you feel now sweetie?” I heard my mom say again, and my eyes fluttered fully open to meet hers as she stared down at me through sad, wrinkled eyelids.

As I tried to open my mouth to speak, the words got parched up in my throat, unable to cross my guts. I could taste the dryness of my lips as I gently ran my tongue over it. It felt cracked and broken, like it had been stuck in a desert for years with no liquid grazing over it for once.

My mom was asking me how I was feeling, yet I had no idea what to say. I felt too numb in my head to even understand how I was feeling or what was going on. What do I say? She wanted to know and she looked a bit anxious, worried even.

“Why am I here?” I managed to ask in a cracked voice. That was all I could make out of what I was feeling. Why was I here, cos yeah, wasn’t I meant to be dead if I wasn’t dreaming at all? Why was I here and she, standing right here like some minutes ago, she wasn’t bound to a chair? Where was Roland Bones? Where was Max? Where was everyone that was hurting me? Why was I not dead? Or wait? Did he already kill me and my mom???

My eyes widened at my last line of thoughts, but before I could make out words to ask if she were also dead with me she spoke first.

“Honey, we know you hate hospitals so we brought you here immediately the doctor confirmed that you could be transferred back home. We had no other choice, baby, we thought we had lost you.” she explained in a sad, apologetic tone, and her face showed so much remorse, making me feel a pang of guilt in my heart. All along, she had been worrying for me and not herself?

“Mom…” I struggled to say through a cracked voice and broken lips.

“Baby…” she said as her eyes started pooling with tears.

“Don’t cry. Please.” I begged with a broken voice.

“I won’t. Baby, I won’t.” She said with tears streaming down her face, and when she couldn’t hold it in any longer, she clasped her right hand over her mouth to stifle back the sobs, and then she stood up hurriedly and walked to the other side of the room, backing me as she tried to steady her emotions.

I felt hurt. She must have gone through a lot for me. I wanted to cry too, but the tears only stung the back of my eyes and never came out. My eyes were too dry to cry, so I just laid there, watching the ceiling, wondering how things would have been if I had done things differently, if I had said no to Ethan that day and never let him dine with us, if I had just let Gin, and if… If I want to think of the “if’s”, I might just get more broken than I am, but what would have been if I actually did things differently?

Well… that doesn’t matter now. All that would have been has been and everything that has happened has happened and there’s no way I can change it now. I just have to learn from it, and maybe, find a way of escaping my desolation.

Escape? That word does ring a bell! Come to think of it, how did I escape the gruesome Roland Bones? The monster who was so bent on killing me in a slow, painful way.

Brandon! Yes Brandon. I knew he'd come to save me. I remember hearing him say “untie her!” If my senses had deduced rightly. Who knows, he might have been behind this all along, or am I just paranoid?

“Oh, God save the Queen! Galena Fields is really running crazy with questions, suspicions that need to be quelled.” I huffed silently.

“He came right? I knew he would.” I asked my mom with a bit of anxiousness in my voice. She turned slowly to face me, wiping off the tears from her face as she did so.

“Who are you talking about baby?” she asked instead with a confused look plastered on her face.

“The guy who saved me. Brandon.” I said with all certainty in my voice, and I could almost see her scoff at my confidence.

“There was only one big guy here, and you and I know him quite well, but he was certainly not a Brandon.” she said humorously, letting all the air of emotional brokenness dissipate from her end and letting the confusion float back to my end.

If it wasn’t Brandon, then who could it be that we both knew? Quite well? Who could this new Knight be?

“Who is he, mom?” I asked shakily, waiting for the worst that may come.

“He’s right there at the door.” she said nodding towards the door and when I turned to the direction, my mouth fell open at who I saw.