A Niall Horan Love Story: Solo Mission?

Chapter 7: Trays and Other Casualties

~Niall’s Pov~

The sweet smell of fried meat wafted through the air and overwhelmed my senses as I wheeled the table of food trays closer to the bed, and reached over them to punch the door shut.

I was literally salivating. 

      Ladies find that attractive, right?

     Oh well.

I used my spidey-senses to sniff out the bacon sandwich, and in a matter of minutes, I had plopped onto the bed—bits of bacon flying into oblivion during this encounter—and was snarfing it down like a pro.

            Something caught my attention on the telly; the dramatic woman and her partner Bob were back, and they were still discussing this house escape.  I tuned in again with full attention, realizing that I had really wanted to know exactly what was going on with this poor lass.

“And if you didn’t see it the first time, here is the most recent picture of the girl—around seventeen years of age, missing since 6:30 tonight—Kylie Militrude Hemper:”

The screen flashed to a picture of a little girl—the shot itself was lopsided, and had evidently been taken carelessly under dark lighting—sitting cross-legged on a blue carpeted floor, her tattered dress too long for her tiny body, which allowed it to cascade beyond her knees and onto the floor.  Her shoulders were slouched casually over her lower half, the bones within both parts of the body prominent and threatening to lacerate the ripe, fair skin which sheathed them. 

Her gaunt face was smeared with dirt; the parts of her hands, which were tucked behind her back for good measure, that were visible were covered with tiny red bumps that stood out like a surprised deer in front of a car’s headlights.  Her red hair did not gleam, and it seemed stiff, short, and uneven, for it was extremely tangled, and it looked as if someone had chopped off the dead ends of her hair using no more than a Swiss-Army blade knife, and a pair of child-proof scissors.

Poor Kylie appeared to be around seven years of age in the picture, and she resembled the likes of an elderly lady more than those of—what should have been—a free-spirited child.

          She looked absolutely horrid.

This was their most recent picture of her? Seriously? 

Obviously, they did not like taking pictures of their child.

There was no way in HELL that these parents had been treating her like this, right?  People don’t do that to other people, right?

The fact that I had even had to ask these questions only confirmed my belief, which made me feel disguisting and guilty for not standing against it.  It made me want to upchuck every last bit of my bacon; however, I was generally unable to move or think about anything, the contents of my sandwich slipping from the protective membrane provided by the rye, and sliming onto the plate below it, at the moment in which I clearly spotted her eyes.

Despite her lurid appearance, the little girl’s shocked expression—most likely an immediate reaction to whoever had been taking a photograph of her when she was not expecting it—captivated me, and held me spellbound.

Almond-shaped and framed with orange-speckled lashes, the colour inside them was, as I reckon, almost inhumane; they were a mixture of dark, ocean-blue, which existed as rims on the outside, and beautiful irises that swam with a light blue resembling that of the shallow part of an ocean.  Contained within were glimmering flecks of yellow, turquoise, and the tiniest hint of violet.  Her right eye appeared even more beautifully purple than the latter.

What allured me most, however, was just how frightened they seemed.  Her eyelids were crinkled as if they had been used for many years to shun her whole person from the deadliest of bed bugs and the nastiest of tickle monsters.

            She had the irises of a young warrior, but the countenance of an elderly woman on Life Support.

Here eyes were both seals of approval, and contracts of an undesired ultimatum; both the green light and the red light; the flips flops and the ugg boots; the bear and the hunting gun.  It was as if they couldn’t decide between good and bad.  They were everything and anything and nothing all together, and in both their apparent confusion, and my undiscovered confusion, they managed to hold my own gaze until, and even after, the picture had disappeared, and the woman had begun to talk once more.

I shook myself out of my reverie, feeling so riled up that I instinctively dropped my sandwich and snatched up the remote, punching in random numbers and, consequently, changing the channel to a French cooking show.

I waited for five mississippi’s before bringing the bread yet again to the level of my lips.

Ahh, much better.  I thought, as I swallowed the remainder of my (now soggy) meal. See, food I can deal with.

I got up and walked over to the tray.

“Started with the bacon now we’re here,” I sung—purposely off key—as I closed the sandwich tray and pulled open the fry-filled tray. “Started with the bacon now I’m eating these yummy fries… Started from the bacon”—stuffing face—“nw wr HRR..”—swallowing—“Sshrted”—burping—“from the BACON NOW THE WHOLE. TEAM. HERE. YEAH.”

It was then that I spotted the edge of some parchment sticking ever-so-slightly out of the side of the last tray.

It had gone untouched and forgotten--not unlike that little girl.