The Unwanted Winter - Volume One of the Saga of the Twelves (14 page)

When she gazed beyond the
desks, she saw their wall-to-wall closet covered with
floor-to-ceiling mirrors. Though the mirrors were covered with
about a hundred stickers, pictures and cool drawing the girls had
collected over the years. The bottom five feet of their reflective
surfaces were blocked by the things they’d taped, pinned, or
pasted. It was impossible to see one’s appearance below that
height.

No, her room was the same,
but something else wasn’t.

She walked to her bedroom
door. She opened it as quietly as possible, not wanting to wake her
parents should they still be asleep at this hour. This was very
likely, since her mother usually “closed” on Fridays. It was her
custom to sleep in. Her father usually woke up at the last minute
to take Anthony to school, which wasn’t on the daily schedule for
at least another hour and a half.

Since
their
room was just down the hall,
to her right, she decided she would be as quiet as her little feet
would take her. She went left. She walked to the end of the hall,
passing, at the same time, the front entrance of the house and the
living room. They’d been on either side of her when she tip-toed
past.

She stepped into the
kitchen beyond, making her way to the great window, which looked
out from the far end of the breakfast nook at the front of the
house. She stood there for a moment listening, but heard no more
than the play of the morning birds beyond the walls of her
domicile. She climbed onto the long, semi-circular bench,
circumnavigating the table in a horseshoe-like fashion. She
knee-walked to its’ far end and looked out at their front yard and
the street beyond. She nestled behind the thin kitchen curtains to
get a better view. Her face came within inches of the icy pane of
glass, gazing over the small, green lawn and rose
bushes.

Although, she’d looked out
this very window, in this very manner, more times than she could
count, she couldn’t shake the feeling something wasn’t as it should
be. An unseen weight, she couldn’t describe or measure, but felt.
It seemed to be pulling at her from the shoulders, dragging her
down, making her stomach curl in disgust, while, at the same time,
she couldn’t explain how or why she felt it to begin
with.

This was her special spot.
This was her place of solace when she needed it, her place to go
and think. Her place to center herself, gather her strength. Yet,
this morning, it was providing just the opposite. More than ever,
she was puzzled, uncertain, as a wave of nervousness spread
throughout her small, slender frame.

On her knees, she looked
out the huge window. She sat back upon her heels, trying to
comprehend what was happening to her.

She was beginning to
realize this was a vain attempt, the “wrongness” was too alien, too
unnatural. She’d never left anything like it in the past. It was
baffling.

As much as she tried, she
couldn’t entirely recall what she’d been dreaming before she awoke.
She’d been somewhere cold, somewhere far away. Beyond that, nothing
more came to mind. She stared ahead at the red, pink, and white
rose bushes, surrounding the perimeter of their family home, trying
to find answers that kept slipping away.

The only thing she did
know, peering about her front yard, was they were in store for
another cold day. Though the sky above was strikingly blue and
clear, in her bones, she knew the sun wouldn’t warm her today. The
chill over the city would fester and prevail. The past few days had
been the coldest she’d ever experienced Los Angeles.

Her hands came to rest
upon the pane of glass before. One to either side of her face, her
breath fogged up the window, because she was so close. Absently,
with her finger, she wrote a stylistic “E” through the condensation
left in the wake of her breathing. A letter she’d always inscribed
there, in that exact location, on the window, when the weight of
the world was just a bit too much for her. It always seemed to
realign her thoughts, give them a degree of order.

Though now, this newfound,
unsettling, feeling wouldn’t stop bubbling up from within. She
could feel its’ inky clutch about her heart, making her wilt before
its’ intensity. It came from somewhere deep and could override all
of her emotions in seconds.

Almost as if… she realized
it then. She could finally begin to understand it. In its most
basic, simplest form, she
knew
. She felt her heart sink to the
very pit of her gut. It was a terrible dread, descending upon her –
fast, all-enveloping, total.

She could do no else, but
yell the name of the only person who had mental strength enough,
who was utterly calm when the rest of them were melting into chaos.
And why wouldn’t he? He needed to be, for her, because, he
possessed the most perfect arms to shield her from danger. From the
bottom recesses of her throat, she screamed,
“Daaaaaaddddyyyy!”

The details of this fright
hit her full force. She could no longer form coherent
words.

Still, she screamed for
her father.

For a second time on that
young day, her family awoke to wails of terror. For a second time,
there was the pounding of feet and the slamming of doors as the
family rushed to protect one of their own. As they came, wallowing,
by then, in desolation so deep, Elena hardly recognized them. She
no longer had the words to express what had chilled her to the
bone.

Her father hauled her from
the breakfast nook and into his arms. This time, things were
different. This time, things weren’t made right by his huge embrace
and the warmth of his body.

She knew, before the week
was out, her parents and her entire - wonderfully huge - extended
family would be dead. There was nothing, irrefutably, she could do
about it.

With her parents soothing
her, holding her, telling her all would be well, it was be a long
time before the girl regained the will to stop weeping in complete
despair.

She was lost… for a time…
in the vastness of pure panic.

He was coming…

…
To kill them
all.

~~~~~~~~<<<<<<{ ☼
}>>>>>>~~~~~~~~

Questions

Friday, November
19
^th
,
8:45am…

Raymond Herrera placed his
car keys in the small basket on the kitchen counter. He and his
wife used it to store the entire collection of keys for their home.
Since they had the annoying habit of misplacing those important
items, they’d decided long ago, a designated place to store them
might eventually break that practice. If not, then at least it
would keep them from running around the house at the last minute,
cursing, while they frantically searched.

He waved absently toward
his wife, Myelly, giving her a silent greeting.

She nodded back at him,
talking into the phone. She pantomimed someone shoveling food into
their mouth - her soundless way of asking if Raymond was
hungry.

He shook his head in the
negative, smiling at the crazy things his wife sometimes did to
communicate with him. He walked over to the coffee maker and poured
himself his first and only cup of java for the day.
Funny thing
, he thought,
as he went through the motions of adding sugar and stirring his hot
beverage. He seemed to be the only one who understood each and
every one her unorthodox methods of articulating her messages.
Others would often stare back at her in utter confusion, with an
ever-familiar half-smile, deer-in-the-headlights look frozen in
place upon their faces. Raymond chuckled to himself at the thought,
adding another teaspoon of sugar to the drink before him. He walked
over to the freezer to fetch the one ice cube he’d place in the mug
to ensure he wouldn’t burn his tongue from the heat of the coffee,
which he absolutely hated.

Across the island in the
middle of the kitchen, Myelly said a terse goodbye and hung up the
phone a little harder than normal.

“
What’s going on?” asked
Raymond, eyebrows raised, taking a tentative first sip of his
morning comfort.

“
Ah, it’s just work
again,” she began, running her hands through her auburn hair,
picking up her coffee mug, transferring it from the island
countertop to the microwave. She promptly hit the “reheat” button.
“These new owners at work are completely unrealistic when it comes
to the special events we’re supposed to be holding once a
month.”

Raymond grunted for her to
continue, sipping his coffee for a second time.

“
Because we’re slow right
now, they moved up the date of The Event to tomorrow, which was
hard and stressful to begin with. I had to schedule another person,
last minute, to make sure we placed a phone call to each and every
of our one thousand top customers, notifying them of the change. We
absolutely had to or else no one would’ve showed to the
event.

“
Then,
just right now, they sent a ridiculous e-mail stating they were
changing their minds - again! Apparently, too many of us managers
were complaining there was insufficient time to prepare for the
event properly, which is true. And on and on, you get the picture,
right?” She nodded at him. He nodded back. “SO, the geniuses at
home office have now rescheduled the event for a second time.” A
twisted sneer ravaged her typically pretty face. “They idiots
changed the event back to the original date! Uuurrgh! So now, I
have to call
somebody else
in today to re-make
all
of the already remade phone
calls, so our customers will come on the correct date, AGAIN!” She
threw up her hands in disgust.

“
Good
God, what a pain in the ass,” said Raymond in support of his wife,
taking a larger sip of his Joe. To himself, he thanked god he
didn’t have to deal with the sort of corporate bullshit she did on
a daily basis. The fact he had to deal with all the bullshit he
made on his own was more than enough for him.
Thank you very much!
Being a
full-time writer and a stay-at-home Dad had its
perks.

“
And you know our
customers are going to get it all confused. Add the fact they have
money and are used to having everyone cater to them, they’ll bitch
and complain, and I’ll never hear the end of it!” The microwave
“dinged!” She turned to retrieve her coffee. “Talk about screwing
up my day, dammit.”

This was more than the
usual level of anger he typically witnessed when his wife had an
issue with work.
Deflection time!
“Yeah, especially with us getting so little sleep
last night,” added Raymond, thankful for his coffee as well. He’d
nearly cracked his head open with the monstrous yawns he was
stifling on the way to Anthony’s school earlier.

The comment seemed to take
Myelly’s mind off the things she couldn’t control. Her attention
shifted back to her family. Raymond watched as she took a deep,
cleansing breath. She gripped her coffee mug with both hands as if
to warm them. It was still, after all, cold in the house, even with
the sun completely over the horizon. Raymond made a mental note to
turn up the thermostat once he and Myelly finished
talking.

“
I know, what was going on
last night, anyway? I cannot remember the last time Anthony had a
nightmare like that. I think, he was six or seven, wasn’t
he?”

Raymond shook his head
“no”, his thoughts mirroring hers; he honestly couldn’t remember
Anthony crying out at night. He had to have been a toddler or maybe
even an infant. On occasion, Anthony would walk in his sleep,
moreso when he was a young child than he had in his teen years. It
was incessantly true; he talked in his sleep all the time. Any
little creak or bump in the night could draw a confused, often
hilarious, string of words from him. Nevertheless, not once, had a
nightmare caused him to scream out in terror. That sort of thing
just never happened with him. It must’ve been an intense dream.
Aside from his hilarious sleep-talking, he was actually quite
silent once his head hit the pillow. He moved infrequently. He
didn’t have to get up during the night to go to the bathroom. He
never even asked for a drink of water. Simply, he slept like a
rock.