"I see things that nobody else sees," ~ Melanie Martinez, Dollhouse, Cry Baby.
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"Hey you guys."
"Hey you guys!"
"HEY YOU GUYS!" Evangeline shouted out finally managing to get all of our attention after her trying to get us to look at her for the past five minutes.
"What is it that you need dear?" Rosalinda asked her cleaning her hands on her apron and bending down to her height.
"Can we have a family movie night?" she asked tugging on the hem of Rosalinda's apron and then looking up at Astrid, Kye, and I with pleading eyes.
"What's a family movie night?" I asked them looking around at each of them in turn hoping for an explanation from at least one of them.
"What? You've never had a movie night with your family?" Astrid asked me with her eyes wide with shock causing her to accidentally spill her cup of orange Kool-Aid onto the tile floor. "I'll clean it up!"
"A family movie night is when the whole family gets together and watches a couple of movies before going to bed," Kye tells me picking up Evangeline and carrying her to the living room. "How come you've never had a family movie night before?"
"Well my family wasn't exactly the closest or definition of a good family. None of my siblings and I know who our fathers are, and we all have different fathers making us only half siblings. My mother was always surrounded by drugs and up and about meaning my older sister Jessica, who is now 25, had to take care of us. Because of that, she took on more jobs to provide for us the necessities to live leaving me to watch my younger siblings Millie and Josh. We were never all together because in a way, we really weren't a family. We were just kids filling in the abandoned roles," I explain to them in a quiet voice following Kye into the living room. "Jessica was like the dad, I was the mom, and Josh was the big older brother to Millie."
"That's the first time you've spoken about your family dear," Rosalinda says stating the obvious, but placing a comforting hand on my shoulder.
"And now we know why. That last part was pretty deep," Astrid commented nodding in agreement with her own words. I was starting to feel a bit uncomfortable and shifting my weight from foot to foot causing Kye to glance over and see my discomfort.
"So Evangeline, how did you come up with the idea of family movie night?" Kye asked her switching the topic of conversation away from me and my dysfunctional family.
"At daycare today, we had a movie day and watched both Hotel Transylvania movies, so I wanted to do it here and keep watching movies," Evangeline explained to us plopping down on the couch after Kye put her down.
"Do you have a movie in mind then?" Astrid asked placing two bags of popcorn in the microwave and then grabbing two bowls.
"Yeah can we watch Up?" she asked looking at Kye with puppy eyes, "I really like the dog in the movie."
"Sure we can," he tells her chuckling and ruffling her hair, "I'll put the movie in now, and we can just wait for the popcorn to finish popping."
"But where is Uncle Vladimir? We can't start watching the movie without him; he's family," Evangeline said getting up and running over to the DVD player to block Kye from putting the disk in.
"He went out with Hunter to track practice," Rosalinda says causing me to quirk up a questioning eyebrow, "They should be back home soon, so we can start when they get here." 'Track practice?' I mouthed at Kye lifting my hands up in a what the fuck manner. 'It's a long story,' he mouthed back at me shaking his head, 'I'll explain later.'
There was a knock on the front door causing Rosalinda to go over and open the door revealing Vladimir and Hunter.
"Speak of the devil, and he shall appear," Astrid mumbled out bringing both bowls of popcorn into the living room.
"Oh so you guys were talking about me babe?" he asked going over to his girlfriend and kissing her lips quickly only because all of us were in the room. I'm sure that if none of us were there leaving them two alone, they would end up having a full blown make-out session.
"Evangeline wants to have a family movie night but demanded we waited for you to come home before we put the movie on," I tell them not exactly looking at Hunter in the eye. Just like the first time I met Hunter, I got a strange and bad vibe coming from him again making me feel uncomfortable.
"And now that you're here, we can start the movie!" she exclaims jumping up and down happily and then grabbing a handful of popcorn to shove in her mouth.
"Well if y'all are doing some family thing, then I'm going to go away now. I don't want to intrude," Hunter says turning around starting to walk back towards the front door.
"Oh dear you don't have to do that. You're a friend of the family; you don't have to leave if you don't want to," Rosalinda tells him going over to him and pulling him back to the rest of us.
Much to my displeasure, he just had to come over and sit on my other side since Kye was on the other. As he sat down though, the smell of cigarette smoke and sweat wafted up to my nose causing me to scrunch my nose. But I didn't do that just because of the cigarette smoke smell, I mean I smoke too, but it just smelled too familiar. The smell only increased the weird feelings I got from him already. The more I thought about it, the more I smelt it, an overwhelming feeling of severe anxiety took over my body causing my body to shake and me to become unaware of my surroundings. Slowly bit by bit, Kye and everyone around me disappeared while a new room and different people surrounded me.
The girls and I sat in square patches assigned to us unmoving fixated on nothing in particular. My vision was clouded along the edges, and the faces of them were also blurred out. The only thing that was clear was Hunter's face in front of mine holding a peeling knife in his hand with a bread knife, santoku knife, and a kitchen axe behind him on the floor.
"Bad girls need punishment," he said emotionless placing the knife delicately on my arm. "Pay attention girls. You wouldn't want this to happen to you."
"Ahhh! STOP IT! STOP IT!" I screamed out falling onto the floor with my body withering and convulsing. The only thing I could feel was the repeated slices of different knives cutting into my skin.
"Momma? What's wrong?" I heard Evangeline ask in the distance along with the sound of Velcro being ripped. My vision suddenly changed and instead of me being struck, it was now Evangeline. My screams intensified, and I started flailing my limbs around hitting something solid in the process.
And then suddenly a sharp prick was in my shoulder, and my body became sluggish, my vision faded away. I was in darkness, and the last thing I heard was "Kye what happened?"
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