transmute

Chapter 2

The sight in front of the 5 teenagers was enough to send a shiver down every person's spine.

On the cream sheets of a twin sized bed lay the unconcious body of the brunette they saw earlier.

Her arms were covered in cuts, some deep and some were shallow enough but still serious to shed blood.

On her left hand she was clutching a bloody shard of glass which she must have used to mutilate her arms.

She held on to what seemed like a picture frame on her right hand and it was pressed on her chest.

You could see the blood still flowing and forming a pool on the sheets.

The first person who snapped out of the trance was Ashton. Not caring about the blood he rushed to the bed and carried the fading body of the girl. He was surprised because she weighed like a sack of feathers but shrugging this off he immediately turned to them and shouted.

"Oi, call an ambulance. She needs to be attended to now."

And with that Amelia took her phone and hurriedly dialled 911. Then the 5 of them rushed down the emergency exit with Ashton carrying an uncosncious and bloody Jane with the 4 of them trailing behind him.

~*~

The fragile body of the brunette was rilled into an emergency room and the 4 were advised to stay in the waiting room. A nurse on her early 20s gave Ashton directions to the washroom seeing his body covered with blood.

Calum and Luke sat down on one of those hard plastic chairs while Amelia was silently sobbing to herself. Michael comforted her and guided her to sit down on one of the chairs next to Calum. The room was filled with an awkward silence as Amelia stopped sobbing but became distant.

Ashton came back from the washroom and his skin was free from the blood but there was still a numerous amount of blood on his shirt. At the sight of Amelia he wasted no time asking her what in hell was happening.

"I'm sorry if you had to see that. It was probably best if you just went back to your apartment after the ambulance came." she said shaking her head.

"No, Amelia. We are here to help and what the hell was that anyway? One point she bitches on us and the next you see her trashing her own apartment and screaming bloody murder." Ashton frustratingly said. He had a bit of a problem controlling his anger especially when there were people getting hurt.

"She isn't a bitch." Amelia said while her voice cracked.

"Sorry I didn't mean to..." Ashton trailed off while looking at Amelia.

She took a deep breath and started to explain.

" Well, for one Jane is not a bitch. She has just gone through a lot lately. Cornelia, the owner of the apartment just across yours passed away 3 weeks ago. She was Jane's older cousin, although Jane rarely saw her as a cousin. She thought of Cornelia as her Mother. Her Saviour." Amelia said.

Her voice cracked on the latter but she took a deep breath as Ashton kneeled in front of her hold her hands for assurance.

"Jane, left her parents when she was 15. They were abusive and..." she continued but her voice broke again.

She dropped her heads to her hands as Ashton rubbed circles in his back. Luke was so distant, he had never heard a story this sad before.

"I once recalled Jane saying 'If they don't appreciate my presence, then they won't even notice my absence.' and then she took off." Amelia gave a humorless laugh as she bitterly shook her head.

"Now she had enough money to move from the Philippines here in L.A. She saved all of that up planning for college but then she had a fight with her mum. She told me that her mum hated her and her dad even abused her physically." she said with great sadness that made Calum whimper.

He had such a good relationship with his family that he didn't even imagine that it was possible for a parent to loathe their daughter.

"She called Cornelia in the middle of the night and at that time she was just boarding the plane. 14 hours later we greeted a beautiful princess with a split lip and her face filled with bruises and her eyes swollen from a taking a punch."

Ashton had tears in his eyes. Michael knew that Ashton hated seeing women hurt. Now knowing her background, he knew that Ashton would feel overprotective if ever Jane makes it alive.

"So basically  we fixed her up in Cornelia's apartment and she lived with me because I was living with our Parents. I am Cornelia's twin, Amelia we also have one more twin Ophelia but she's married now. We are actually Triplets and we took care of Jane since she moved in with us. But she was really close to Cornelia though. But last year Cornelia was diagnosed with Leukemia. Click that, even our grandfather died because of Leukemia, it runs in the blood so we weren't shocked when it hit her. Cornelia was different though, she didn't want to be treated because she said it was God's will. She kept it from Jane trying to protect her but here we are now." Amelia finished. She had calmed down and now she was pressed onto Ashton's chest for comfort.

"So what is Jane's problem? Why did she break those things and scream like she was about to get murdered?" Luke asked suddenly feeling sorry for his actions a few hours ago.

"Oh Jane is Schizophrenic. When she arrived here in L.A with her bruises, we asked her what happened and how she got those. She said that when she snuck out that night to catch her flight, her mum woke up so she ran as fast as she could.

A taxi was already waiting for her and the moment she was about to get in her father had ran after her, her mum must've woken him up and beat her mercilessly in the middle of the neighborhood.

She tried screaming for her mum's help but she just stood there.

The cab driver finally got out of the vehicle and punched her father once, he must've been surprised because he fell to the ground confused. The driver then pulled her up and helped her in quickly on the cab and sped away. He didn't even charge her, he just helped her go to the nurse's room in the airport, explained what happened to the medics and told them to clean her up before she went on the plane."

"Oh, wow" It was Calum who spoke up. He couldn't imagine the shit Jane went through and he was even surprised she was still here.

"She usually sees her Dad running after her and she even hears their angry shrieks of threats. Sometimes she sees that her father actually catches up to her and grabs on to her arms so she tries to "pry" them off by hurting herself like what she did today."

"We're really sorry Amelia. I didn't mean to call her a bitch earlier I was just so mad because how could such a beautiful angel do that to herself." Ashton says wiping away tears from his eyes and engulfs Amelia in a big hug.

Michael seemed to be lost in his thoughts and both Luke and Calum still couldn't believe Amelia's story. Calum was still waiting for those hidden camera's to come out already and for Jane to walk out that room smiling and announcing that they were just PUNK'D.

But no cameramen ever came. No pre-recorded laughs from hidden audiences. It was just the piercing sound of silence in the waiting area. Calum soon drifted to sleep when he felt Luke's head rest on his shoulder. He could see that Ashton had fell asleep leaning his back against the wall and Amelia slumbering peacefully against his chest. Michael wasn't asleep though, he was just looking at nowhere in particular seemingly lost in thought.