House of Horns

Two

It all started with an enormous headache.

Nella was sitting in Mr. Hedgeworth's advanced history class when it hit her. But where her migraine was usually a blunt, nauseating throb, this headache was of a completely different nature. It came for her forehead with the force of a sledgehammer, so sharp and sudden it made Nella twitch in her seat, and grab her teacher's attention.

"Is everything OK, Ms. Cornfield?" Mr. Hedgeworth asked, his bushy brow arched at the backseat.

Nella was pushing her head into the sleeves of her worn cartoon hoodie. The embroidered cacti-suit wearing kittens on her sleeves were looking right at her forehead with a concerned look, which they usually had for the embroidered cacti-suit wearing puppies on the sides that were pushed against Nella's face. She let out a small whimper, which provoked soft chuckles in the flock of 10th graders around her.

Had this been Nella's own class, the kids would have probably consoled her with mockery of varying degree. The High School sophomores in advanced history, however, weren't very well informed of Nella's social standing that landed her somewhere between a video game nerd and comic book geek. Nor had they decided what kind of a treatment a freshman reading on their level was deserving of.

The only reaction Nella managed to get out of them was a single "-the hell?" when she came falling down on the classroom floor like a game of jenga. She could hear a chair scraping the floor and a metal pen case landing right next to her face and exploding open with the power of a gunshot.

--

When her vision cleared enough for her to start understanding her surroundings, she noticed how the sun bleached posters of famous Middle-European buildings had turned into big illustrations of the human digestive system and brain. The muffled murmur that had been the concerned Mr. Hedgeworth, was now the Bellemont High faculty nurse, old Ms. Hill. She was talking softly on the phone, her frayed bun of grey hair turned towards Nella, who was lying on a couch.

The mildewy, 'thousands of sweaty teenage butts have lounged here before you' kind of smell of the old cushions made her slowly lift her head from them.

"What-," Nella groaned, raising her hand to her forehead that was now embellished with quite the majestic bump. "What happe-"

Before she could finish wording the thought, however, a sharp pain suddenly roared between her temples, seemingly right behind the bump she was feeling with her fingers. Her gasp was as sharp as the subsequent turn of the nurse's greying head. Through her fingers, Nella could see how Ms. Hill lowered the phone and covered the mouthpiece with her wrinkled hand.

"Are you OK?"

"Y-yeah," Nella groaned in reply, after pressing her hand against her forehead for a time.

Eventually she let go and inspected her fingers, as though expecting to find a trickle of blood on them. While there was none, she could still feel the ghost of the bump's throbbing on her their tips.

She must have looked puzzled as Ms. Hill, after having listened to a couple words through the receiver, lowered it again and said:

"Your little noggin took a bitty hit on your way down. It's nothing to worry about."

Her tone was gentle and almost exaggeratedly reassuring - better suited for addressing toddlers, Nella thought with subtle annoyance.

"Do you feel sick to your tummy?" the nurse mouthed at her as she went back to her phone call, pointing a finger to her midsection as an emphasis.

Nella shook her head 'no' while glancing down at the bucket that had been placed next to the couch. The notion that she'd been expected to do something along the lines of puking kind of made her queasy, but after brushing the thought off, the only kind of discomfort she felt had to do with her 'noggin', as Ms. Hill had colorfully described it.

The next x amount of minutes, Nella concentrated in pressing her hand to her face and listening in on how the nurse said "fall", "bump" and "she is a bit fuzzy, but OK" in a way that likely had little to do with Nella's hair. She could only hear a soft a babble from the other end, but there was no mistaking a fussing mother - even over a phone call, heard from 20 feet away.

--

Nella hadn't exactly pleaded Ms. Hill to let her get back to class, even if history had always been one of her favorite subjects along with art and English. Making a spectacle out of her fainting self on front of entire class of 10th graders had been endeavor enough for one day, so she was happy to meet her mother's beat up old minivan in the school parking lot.

Her mother, however, wore no smile on her usually easygoing face as Nella climbed to the front seat and let her shoulder bag slide to the floor. Alison Cornfield's attentive blue eyes darted back and forth on her daughter's essence before their gaze landed on her forehead.

Nella's instinct told to cover her poor beaten up face when her mom's eyes went wide with something she wasn't quite sure she recognized. The only time she remembered seeing her mother look even remotely like this had been when she'd received the acceptance letter from the Jester Press Romance Publishing and when she'd heard of Nella's grandmother having a stroke around last Christmas time.

And as Mrs. Cornfield darted across the front seat to swoop Nella's hair aside to better see her forehead, Nella could feel a cold sense of dread coiling up in her stomach.

"Mom-!" she exclaimed and tried to pull back, but her mom's hands were holding her firmly in place by Nella's childishly round cheeks.

"Oh no-!"

Nella felt a chill pooling in her stomach. When you've just hit your head and produced a bump the size of a potato, the disbelieving mutter of "oh no" from a family member is not among the things you want to hear.

"Mom, that's not funny!" Nella was surrounded by muffled bumping noises as she squirmed against the car interior. "What's wrong with you!?"

With this, her mother suddenly pulled back and let go of Nella's bangs which fell over the girl's forehead in a messy cloud of blonde curls. She continued to look at her daughter over the front seat, her eyes still fixed on the bump Nella was now covering. The parts not covered by her sleeves angled a baffled expression back at her mother.

"I hit my head! It's just a bump!" she spat, agitated with her mother's uncharacteristic behavior.

While these words finally broke her mother's intense fixation with the the wrong parts of her face, saying them also made Nella realize she had yet to see her reflection since she'd come to. She fumbled for the backing mirror of the van. Sunlight flashed across its surface as Nella turned it towards her and jutted her neck to better see the top of her head. But the reveal was much less dramatic than her mom's reaction had led on. Nella's round, freckle dusted face was adorned with a reddened bump that looked a lot smaller than it felt. She turned the mirror in her hand, knitting her brow and turning her face. There was a sense of ease that came with seeing the damage for herself, but the absence of her Mrs. Cornfield's usual motherness made her anxious.

"S-should we go to the ER? The nurse said it would be fine but-"

Mentioning the Emergency Room while referring to her children, however, seemed to finally break Mrs. Cornfield's stupor.

"E--no! Heavens no!" She then exclaimed and reached across the front seat again, this time less frazzled and more gentle, and stroked Nella's hair.

Her eyes, now on Nella's own, had a somber look to them when she continued.

"But there is somewhere I do need to take you now."