Why me?

Part 11

It was night time when Alice woke up and the minute she opened her eyes she felt excruciating pain in her stomach and her face cringed, tears forming at the verge of her eyes. "It hurts", she whispered to herself and lightly touched the place that felt like it was on fire, the middle of her belly. She could feel her soaked t-shirt under her fingers, but it was not wet from blood, but from her own sweat.

 She slowly got up to her feet and lifted the shirt she had on and right there, in the middle of her stomach, was a big open scar that had a bit of blood dripping down onto her shorts.

She quickly closed her eyes and covered the wound and decided it would be the best if she went to the bathroom to wash it, but also felt very scared to walk out of the room, not knowing what might await her there, on the stairs or even worse, somewhere around Berta's room.

"Oh God...", she mumbled, took in a deep, shaken breath and pressed the doorknob and a few moments later, she was in the bathroom, looking at her pale, swollen face and the almost black bags she had under her eyes. "These things never go away", she thought to herself as she pressed them with the tip of her index finger.

When Alice turned the water on, it started running brown and after a while it seemed yellow, but soon enough it seemed decent for at least a hand wash, yet Alice still hesitated. 

"I... Hate... This... Place", she said in between splashes of her face with the cold water that felt good on her heated skin. She washed off the blood and when she finished, she started quickly moving towards her room, looking all around her.

"Going somewhere?" Alice froze. It was Berta. Turning around, she faced the old woman and the scar on her cheek that had blood dripping down it seemed to be fresh again.

"Still wondering what happened to my cheek?", Berta asked in a raspy, tired voice, "I'll tell you... once you finish the attic clean-up. It's still a mess up there. Now come on. There's light at the top of the ladder that needs to be turned on".

"The ladder?"

"Oh, yeah. You need to get it out of the shack. And the key...", her hands dived into her pockets and soon enough a huge bronze key was in Alice's hands. "Here you go. Now hurry. He doesn't like it when someone's out there at this time of the night".

"He?"

"You ask to much, don't you know that? Too much questions coming from a child that is too ugly to look at for much longer than a few moments. I have to look away now, that's how ugly you are".

Alice frowned and suddenly felt ashamed of herself. Am I really that ugly? she thought, feeling anger build up in her chest. Mommy used to tell me I'm the prettiest girl in the world. But clearly I'm not.

Exiting the house, she could hear Berta talking to the toy Alice saw her with the first day. "Is it time, Frank?" Time for what, Alice wondered as she got out on the cold night air.

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Out there in the dark, she couldn't see a thing except from where her lamp shone, but that was a narrow beam of light so it didn't help much. Whenever she'd hear something suspicious, she'd quickly turn the lamp in that direction only to show that it was just a squirrel running past her or Sticky tumbling along.

When she reached the shack, the creak of the door made her arm hair go up and when she took the ladder she started running towards the house as quickly as the heavy burden in her arms allowed her to. But, when she reached the front door, the only thing she could do was drop them and scream.

Right in front of her eyes dangled Berta's body, hanged. Although she couldn't see much, it was obvious that her face was swollen and her breathing completely stopped, but it was obvious that the hanging wasn't the only thing that killed her.

She was stabbed in the heart. As her body rocked forwards and back, Alice could feel that her legs were starting to be nothing more than a pair of cooked noodles. 

"I have to run away from here", Alice thought and started running towards the gate. Little did she know that it was impossible...