Sapphire Blue [The Grim Reaper Chronicles, #1] (Editing)

Chapter Eight

Samantha folded the last piece of the used and dirty towel into a circular form and placed it carefully in the laundry basket, yawning loudly as she picked it up with one hand and sluggishly wiped her forehead with the back of her other free hand. She passed the basket to Veronica, who took it from her and placed it on the cleaning machine next to her. Once they were done with their work for the day, they tiredly sunk into the nearest couch, each massaging their temple.

They slept very late last night and didn't have enough time to catch just enough sleep that would strengthen them to carry out the day's chores. The food they were being fed with might not be much of a help, but having a good night sleep would definitely be, because their beds were made of fine orthopedic foams and it gave them a form of massage and bone resetting. To pilgrimage deep into the story, Mrs Alice wouldn't have opted for those kinds of dignifying mattresses for the teenagers she never liked, if not for the kindly intervention of money donors. Although the money used in purchasing the basic materials didn't belong to her, she had the upper hand in the orphanage and no one dared to query her indelicacy. It was one of the reasons the mistreated ones didn't like her.

They laid there for a while, breathing very heavily to each other's amazement. They couldn't have themselves blamed for sleeping very late because the conversation they had last night wasn't something they could just wave off and get something else doing. Experiencing spooky and strange occurrences like that at random times when they were least expecting it, and having no one to share it to because people might find it hard to believe them was entirely another sort of pain for them. They simply could not carry out their daily activities with their mouths sealed while the incidents kept reoccurring and still, they couldn't do otherwise.

Samantha sighed in desperation and placed her leg on the other while she leaned in and rested her elbow on her upper thigh. She recalled how shocked and stricken she had been when Veronica told her she was in the same situation as hers too, last night.

It came as a bomber to her because she had thought she was the only one facing the challenge and hadn't expected it to also be happening to her own very best friend, without her taking any notice or at least, walk in when the incident was happening. A mere coincidence couldn't have paired her and her best friend together in the same creepy situation, at the same time, same location, with the aim of scaring the life out of them. There had to be a reason behind it.

Were the other kids also experiencing the same thing? Samantha thought inwardly and narrowed her eyes sharply. She had never noticed anyone of them act strangely or opt out fearfully when it was time to go out and pick the flowers late in the evening or even, refuse to start their cleaning when it's still very dark in the morning, and none of them even feared to go out in the dark when they were ordered to get food packages. It just came as a wonder that they were the only ones different from the set. Why exactly it was happening to only them was another question she didn't have an answer to. Maybe they did something they shouldn't have done and was now being punished for it. Samantha wondered and shrugged her shoulders devastatingly. She wouldn't know even if she was asked that kind of question. She had said it in her head several times that she had never offended anyone so deeply. Normalcy had it that one shouldn't be so sure of themselves, as they could have done mean things in the past and forgotten, but she was.

If past was going to come hunting someone, it should have been Mrs Alice. The woman undoubtedly deserved anything bad that could came in her way, in correspondence to the painful experiences she made people had while she was in power. She put people in excruciating pains, shunned then out of the outside world, made them feel bad about their existence, and worse, never provide enough needs. Who else deserved the ghost hunting other than her?

Veronica on her part wondered in her state of confusion if there was anybody she could suspect in the orphanage to have been involved in the incidence happening to them. Some of the kids she knew so well in the orphanage were very desperate and stone hearted and could have gone to the very long extent of pulling stunts on her just to get back at her for not accepting their offer to be their friend. Many tricks could have been applied to the tactics; they were in their modern days and nothing was impossible for them to do. They only needed to strategize the laid out plan and everything would come out as a quick success. Veronica thought and furrowed her brows at her realization. Maybe they had missed an important information.