Unkissed. (Rated R)

26.🐸

A part of me wanted to forget the old life I used to live and bury it deep in my cranium. Choosing to let time erase the horrid images of my past, too young and weak to face them.

Born with nothing, yet somehow lost everything. Living in filth, a father who would see to it to break me down at any given chance, deceased mother and sibling. Horrid memories that plagued my nightmares for years until I finally embraced my current circumstances.

I had my reasons to want to neglect my old life. Although the life I live now is on a thread, only a bullet to the wrong organ away from death, yet despite that nothing hinders me most at this moment. This feeling in my chest, the warm wave that flushes through me every time I blinked and saw her eyes. It feels so good, it feels so calm. The same emotion I felt when I first looked at her face all those years ago.

Could that have been when I first noticed it, the feeling of a crush? It always hung at the back of my mind, a burdening question I couldn't escape.

I'm scrambled all over again, staring straight ahead into nothing distantly, absent minded until slender ivory fingers snap within my vision, I'm pulled than from my daydream looking up to Charlotte sitting before me and Ray standing in the background arms crossed.

"Focus." she says, the hint of annoyance in her eyes as if this wasn't the first time she had to bring me back to reality.

Shaking my head from the remaining thoughts, scrambling her face from my vision as I come in tune with actuality. All three of us in my room, we were in the middle of discussing something before I got distracted. My hand runs through my hair in slight aggravation, "Uh, what were we saying?"

Charlotte sighs, "The plan Nasir, please focus we put years of thoughts behind this."

"That's right", I breathed exhaling a hot breath. "So, what have we got so far."

Ray steps in closer, pulling a chair so he is sat in the middle. An evident look of defeat in his eyes and Charlotte and I adjust our backs, preparing for the answer we feared.

"The organization grew." He breaks the Ice, and I stiffen as he adds on, "There are new leaders of the cults, a mammoth of kidnappings over the years, the decline of death rates for elders have decreased significantly, obviously skyrocketing the total of missing children."

My chest rams, but the blood in my streams Icen's to the news. "Who are the new leaders," I croaked, lips snarling from the anger.

"There were many names being thrown around, but none of these men have actually stepped foot out in the public."

... "And her father?"

"No word that he has participated over the last few years, in fact there isn't even a fresh trace of him anywhere, it's almost like he disappeared. Last seen was at the castle and since than he has vanished with no sign, but get this -"

Charlotte furrows her brows, but I remain stoic expecting the worse.

Ray digs into his pocket, a crinkling sound of paper folded in his hand. "One of the organizations was somehow found and exposed but when the team was dispatched to capture the leader -" fear clouding around his eyes, the back of his hand coated with goosebumps as he extended it, placing the paper on a desk in the middle of us.

Suspense building as we try and identify what we were seeing until Charlotte gasps looking at the image, "Oh my Gosh." she whispers.

A man lying on the grass, skin black and blue with a swollen tongue and white pupils.

Stoically I stare at the gruesome image, strange gashes and holes poked on the skin. "Were these snake bites?"

Ray shrugs, "We're insure, a snake bite would have clogged the blood stream, and seeing how it leaks from his eyes and nose it would seem to be a poisonous reaction."