Witness | Major Editing

1. New Identities

[copyright AubreyParsons ©2015]

1 | New Identities

      "Aislyn Kurt?"

      I raised my head, blue eyes meeting brown ones. A police officer stood quietly in front of me. Dark eyes bore into mine with years of experience, not that it came of much of a surprise to me. "Yes?"

      "Are you ready to leave?" he asked, crouching down to be eye level with me from my chair at the station. He couldn't have been more than twenty eight now, with short brown hair and a soft, sympathetic smile to match.

      I nodded silently, standing as he did and following him towards his office. I was immensely thankful that none of the other officers payed any attention to me or the man I followed as we stopped at the wooden door. It was locked, and I tucked a strand of my long, straight blonde hair behind my ear as I waited.

      Officer Wade opened the door to his private office, stepping in and stopping to hold the door for me. He waited and made sure that no one was paying any attention to us before closing the door behind him.

      I grinned and flung my arms around his waist without hesitation. "I've missed you so much!"

      He chuckled and hugged me back. "I missed you too, kid."

      When he pulled away, he took a seat at his desk and motioned to the chair across from him. I sat down with a smile, ecstatic to be able to see him again after the two months I'd been gone.

      His full name was Brian Charles Wade, and he'd been the officer to find me after my parents' murder. I'd been sent to foster home after foster home over the last few years after the incident. Brian made sure that I was never in one place for too long, and came to visit me at each home whenever he could. Eventually, I'd come to trust him and think of him as an older brother figure in my life, being as he'd become the only constant I'd had for years. He'd cared for me, made sure I was safe, and helped me remember to never become too attached to anyone at the foster homes before I'd have to leave.

      I know how that sounds—never having any friends or people to lean on. You'd think it would be hard, I know, but caring for somebody just to be forced into leaving them behind indefinitely feels a lot worse. You see, seven years ago, my parents were murdered. My mother had been killed in an alley on the streets of New York, but it had originally been written off as a mugging. That was a cover up, of course—her wallet and phone were still in place when the police found her body. She'd been stabbed fifteen times in the chest and had what appeared to be an 'S' carved post-mortem into her stomach.

      It had been no surprise to me when my dad decided to move to Tennessee a few months later. Living in the same city where my mother was murdered made coping difficult for the both of us, but that didn't matter for long. Within a few weeks of being settled in, our home had been broken into and set on fire from my dad's bedroom. My ten-year-old self had managed to slip out of the back door before the intruder knew I was there, but not before hearing my dad's screams of agony as he suffered the same fate, and being dealt plenty of injuries from an exploding window.

      A few hours later, Brian found me curled up in an alley a few streets away in my polka dot pajamas, covered in blood, broken glass, tears, and first-degree burns. Against protocol, he'd pulled me into his arms, rocked me until I stopped crying, and didn't press me on what happened. Actually, neither of us had uttered a single word until he'd carried me back to his police car—which was, thankfully, far enough from the house that I wouldn't see the flames.

      It was discovered soon after that my parents were killed by the same person—there was an 'S' carved into my dad's stomach as well, along with the very obvious sign that I was next.