The Lake

Special

When I woke up we were parked in the parking lot of a grungy motel.  The makeshift cardboard sign in the window read:

Door Mouse Inn

Cheap rooms no cable no air no kitchen $15 a night

I woke up the others and we walked in. The clerk was gross. He was fat, wearing a tank top covered in mysterious stains. The whole room smelled of vomit and beer and it only got worse when he spoke. He got up from his bare armchair and hobbled over to the desk. We gave him $20 for the nicest room he had and took the key. We found our room and walked in. It was pretty nice for $20. It was decent sized with 2 beds and looked out onto the woods.

Once we all got inside Emily dug through her bag and produced a bottle of blonde hair dye.

"Can someone help me with this?"

Of course Lizzy gladly stepped up and helped her. About an hour later they came out and Emily's hair was almost bleach blonde. It looked great on her. It was about 11:00 and everyone was starved. We got out the food and ate. We ate in silence until Jackson broke it.

"So what's the plan? We can't stay here forever."

"I know we can't stay here. We are leaving tomorrow night. We will find other places. We can't go home just yet they could go to the police and easily find us."

Emily spoke up. "We can go to the police first, maybe. We had a reason to run with you guys. They weren't going to let people adopt us." She lifted up her shirt to reveal fresh bruises on her back and Layla showed off the burns on her wrists from what looked to be rope. Layla spoke up "They tied me down when they were performing exorcisms on me. They always tied me too tight." She had visible bruises on her arms I guessed. We decided their plan was a good plan. We would go to the police. The others opted to stay behind so me and Ricky left with the girls. When we got to the station we were greeted by a buff looking patrol man.

"Well look who it is. We just got a call about you guys from the orphanage. I'm glad to see you have decided to turn yourselves in. Where are your other friends."

Ricky spoke first. "We didn't come here to turn ourselves in. We just came to tell our side."

"OK follow me then." He took us back to the conference room and sat us at the big table. He called the nuns and the other manager for the case. I told our side.

"We had had a bad accident at the lake and found our way back to the orphanage. After I had mostly healed I went and slept in the makeshift living space they made for all of us. The next night it was storming pretty bad and the electric went out. I kept hearing noises from the attic so I went up to check it out. That's where I found Layla all alone. She looked terrified so I let her stay downstairs with me for the night. I grew attached to her. The next morning  after we got yelled at I asked if I could adopt her and was denied." I was interrupted.

"Were you married."

Ricky spoke for me. "No but she was later that day which I had told everyone about but to act surprised. So they knew  we weren't leaving for a while cause our other friends were still sick. So they had no right to deny us. They should have told us that we could wait until we were married."

"Is that true sister. Yes we knew she was getting married but we never denied her."

Emily and Layla spoke up. "That's a lie I was listening through the floor in the attic!" "And  I was right outside the door!"

The nun looked flustered. "Your lying!"

"We are not hook us up to the lie detector. Hook all of us up!"