Still Human
Human: According to the new Webster's dictionary, being human means being a part of the human race, however, it also means having feelings like sympathy, love, etc.
Chapter 1: Never Felt
It had existed since she was young, a child of ten. That growing fondness of the dark where she would hide from the enemy that had raged into her life and taken her and her mother prisoner with a small golden band. Her name was Christie, but now she called herself a name that no one knew, a name she had given herself, Shadow. She stood in the field that was in front of her house. The wind blew her coal black hair into wispy torrents that seemed to reach across the land and touch everything with darkness. Her eyes were closed under her perfectly proportioned eyebrows. Her small nose was fairy like and slightly hooked. Then her lips smeared in black lipstick but still perfect in everyway. Plump, lush, shinny, and set in a line as they had been for years, since he had come. She stood with her arms crossed over her chest, not noticing as her white skin turned red from the dreadful sun, the dreadful light in the sky.
She turned finally and looked at the house behind her. It was a house, not a home. It was a place of endless torture and pain. The only refuge was in the shadows. She took a few timid steps before finally walking into the house where she saw her mother standing in the kitchen preparing for work. Christie hated her mother, if hate even existed in her mind anymore, if any emotion did for that matter. Her mother looked at her and sighed. "Wipe that black stuff off! Your father will be home soon and I won't be here to help! Just...stay out of his way for a change!"
Christie stared at her mother with no emotion on her face. Suddenly her stepfather's behavior was her fault. Forget the fact that it was her mother who had married him in the first place. She stepped up the steps deliberately slow until she reached the top. She stepped close to her mother, or the woman who lived in the house, and sneered, putting on a mask of anger she didn't feel. "Sorry, I forgot, it's my fault you married him."
She didn't feel the sting of the slap that slammed her into the wall, she never did. She simply turned from her mother with cold defiance and walked into her room. The carpet had several spots of dried and crusted blood on it. She slept on a cot, she wore rags, and she had only black makeup, which had been given to her as a mocking present. She flopped on the cot as she heard the door slam. The woman was gone. She wasn't her mother; a mother cared about her child's suffering. A mother knew that her graceful child hadn't fallen, hadn't tripped, and hadn't walked into a door. A mother knew that her strong child wasn't crying for no reason. Christie thought about the last one, she hadn't cried since she was fifteen. She was now seventeen and she didn't know what emotion was or what being human was.
She didn't know how long she had been sitting on her small cot thinking, time didn't matter, it had no meaning. One second was the same as one ant in an anthill; it was puny and insignificant. The door slammed and she heard the heavy footsteps of her stepfather as he walked to the refrigerator and pulled out a beer. He hadn't married Christi's mother for love, but for her daughter. He was a sadistic man, and he had found the perfect human to unleash all his anger on. He never laid a hand on the woman, or mother, as some would call her.
She heard the steps coming down the hall and she glanced at her clock. Thirty minutes, he was possibly drunk by now. She stood up and pushed herself deep into her closet then shut the door silently as the door to her room opened. Through the hole where a door handle once was on the closet, she watched him. He looked around with a lop sided and drunken grin. "Crissy, here Crissy, where are you hiding?" She didn't feel fear, dread, or anger. She felt nothing. Her mind was a void. All she knew was that he wasn't so stupid he wouldn't find her. She stiffened and prepared for a blow when he looked at the closet door. "There you are." The door was flung open and she was drug out by her hair then thrown on the cot and kicked in the ribs several times. She relaxed a little bit when she thought he was done but then a foot landed in her mouth and sent her head into the wall. "Don't ever hide form me you snot nosed brat!"
He slammed the door on the way out. She felt a burn in the back of her throat and leaned over her cot as blood dumped from her mouth. She stood up and looked in a small and cracked mirror. Tonight was Friday; she would never come back again. She had never run away before. She pulled her hair back and wiped her face off with a damp cloth she kept hidden. She reapplied her makeup and put a few things in her backpack before opening her window and kicking the screen out. She threw her backpack out first and then jumped and landed on it almost perfectly.
With her hand clutched around her rips and blood streaming from her mouth she took off at a dead run to a friends house, but she stopped half way there, feeling like her body was dried of every drop of water. She needed a drink. She looked around and spotted a small connivance store, one, which she didn't remember ever being there.
The store was odd in some way. The sign above it flickered in purple neon, but only the shadows of the letters showed. She knew the light was purple though because it reflected off the pavement. It went against every law of physics she had ever heard. She looked at the store, which was odd as well. The lights were on, but they didn't light up the area around the store. As she walked cautiously to the window to look inside, she was startled when she didn't see her reflection. She gasped, terrified for the first time in years, and stumbled backwards. "Christie!" She gasped again, now horrified, as she heard her stepfather's drunken voice and the squeal of tires.
She shut her eyes and pushed the door as hard as she could until it finally gave into her. She took horrified steps down the isles and jumped when she heard the small bell of the door. What he would do to her, all the things he wanted to, and now the perfect reason. She felt a swell of fear, the first emotion in a long time. She chanced a glance around the corner and saw her stepfather storming to the front desk. "Did a girl with black hair that's `bout five feet walk in here?" The sleepy looking cashier shook his head and said that no one had come in all night. She wondered if he had sensed her distress. But how was that possible?
She sighed and sunk to the floor as her stepfather lumbered out of the store and drove off. After the freezing and paralyzing fear left her fingertips she stood up and walked slowly to the front desk. When she saw no one there she leaned over it and looked around. No one. She whipped around, walking at a fast pace down all the isles. No one was there. There had been no cashier. But how was that possible? She walked to the door. Her thirst was gone, now replaced by the urge to get out of this place. She pushed on the door but it didn't move. She put all her weight on the handle but it refused to budge. She cupped her hands around her face and tried to peer outside but gasped when she saw that there was nothing but blackness outside in the parking lot, even the odd neon light was gone. The forest was gone, the parking lot was gone, everything was gone.
She turned to the back of the store and saw that the shelves, which were stocked a few seconds ago, were empty and run over with cobwebs. She chanced a glance behind her and saw that the once glass door was now a metal door with several pad locks on it and "NO TRESPASSING" signs all over it. She began to worry; realizing there was no way out of this place. She would die, not at the hands of her stepfather, but at her own hands. That was when the lights flickered out, but their glow remained somehow. It was light with no source. She began to tremble for the first time in years. She lifted her fluttering hands in front of her and began to sob all of the tears that had been held in all those years. "I'm going crazy!" She stood up, walking to the end of an isle where she saw a bottle of water, but she didn't pick it up. Something told her not to. She sat down, eyes heavy suddenly, and lay with her backpack as a pillow. She glanced up at the sky, tears brimming her eyes. "I'm sorry I ran away!"
Emotion had left her a long time ago, but now it returned in a torrent of memories. Father. Mother. Warmth. Love. Hope. Trust. She could remember those things if she reached deep into the recess of her mind. Mother would smile. Father would play with her. They never fought. They never yelled. Then the night came. A seven-year-old Christie was tucked into bed when she heard the phone ring and then her mother let out a gut wrenching cry. Christie didn't remember the funeral. She didn't remember burying her father. She didn't remember the endless cascade of flowers over his grave. She remembered the stranger that had come. He was tall with broad shoulders and a black mustache. He would become her stepfather. He would steal all of the laughter and all of the smiles and all of her mother's beauty.