s k i n s

HUIT

"Honey what are we going to do?" 

"We have to take her in, what if she doesn't have a family, what if she made them up while she was there."

"So we're her new family?"

"No, that's not what I'm saying, let's just see if she can find her family, get her some help and see if we can piece together what exactly happened."

"Alright." 

• • • 

They'd given me a blue pill so I could sleep. 

But they didn't give me anything to stop the nightmares. 

I didn't tell them about that either. 

I have also taken to vomiting everything I don't eat. 

Because I don't eat the bland flood they put in front of me like ghosts. 

And then there's the nightmares.  

Because when I close my eyes I see him in the darkness, and my breathing stops.

Gets caught in my throat 

I can't breathe, and all the voices are telling me to scream. 

Scream, like I've always wanted to. 

S　　scars on skin

　C　　　cries of silence

　　R　　　　ripped to pieces 

　　　E　　　　　eaten alive 

　　　　A　　　　　　alive but not breathing

　　　　　M　　　　　　  miss this dreaming 

I've grown cold, with hot tears streaming down my skin and all its disappearing.

I'm free but to what cost? 

• • • 

I clench the blankets between my scabbed palms as they all come in again with more questions I don't have the answers to. 

Why would I? 

"Hello Shadow, how are you feeling today?" My doctor says in a chipper voice.

I flinch at the name. 

I nod a little bit, though I'm lying. 

Right through clenched teeth and jaws. 

I actually feel like shit. 

Broken on the inside and beaten on the outside, I was a doll someone threw around for fun. 

The policeman from before walks in behind him and I immediately become alert. 

Standing next to the couple who look at me with hopeful eyes as if I'll heal right here and this will never have happened to them. 

Like they didn't get caught in this mess of my life. 

　　　　　　　　　　C h a o s. 

　　　　S t r i f e. 

"Have you found my family yet?" I ask. 

"Shadow I have some bad news, your family has never been recorded ever living here, nor have you gone to any schools here. In fact I could find no record or trace of your existence." 

"What?" I ask. My lip wobbles, so I don't exist?

"Where were you living before you were kidnapped?"

"Uh, I was, it was a small town." 

"That's all you can tell me?" He says and I feel a tear slip down that I instantly rub away. 

"Wait," the women says, "so you're telling us that she has no record or even being alive? What about hospital records, are you sure she's even from this state? What if he took her here so her family wouldn't find her." 

"We're looking into this case very carefully, again, we're sorry." 

"Don't tell me, tell this girl sitting in a hospital waiting for her family that doesn't appear to be coming." She says and he looks back at me with sad eyes, it's not his fault. 

Hell it's not mine, it's not anyone's. 

It's the damn cowardly bastard who locked me up. 

I tilt my face up to look into his, eyes downcast, telling me all I need to know. 

"I have more bad news, there has also never been any record in this state of your kidnapping, so either no one reported it or its somehow a missing file, which never happens." 

"Where am I?" I ask them, and they all turn their heads to look at me like I'm a ghost. 

"You are in the city of Portland, Maine." 

Maine, I lived in Maine before this right?

"Now I have some private questions for Shadow that require confidentiality of this case so if I could please ask everyone to step outside. Thank you." 

And then they're gone. 

He sits himself down on a stool next to my bed and brings out that paper again, ready to write whatever comes out of my mouth. 

"Now Shadow, I know this must be difficult for you, but could you please describe the day you were kidnapped by the man?" 

"Yeah, I had just gotten back from a party and actually I had seen someone, him, I mean, following me wherever I went. The mall, the movies, and then that night I had gotten into the more of the poorer side of the city somehow and I saw him, or he saw me and then he got me, and I woke up in a room." 

"Okay, could you describe the room?" 

"It was dark, and the walls were made of concrete. There was only one door, and I think it was a basement." 

I shake my head back and forth. 

Don't cry. 

He doesn't deserve your t 

　　　　　　　　　　　e

　　　　　　　　　　　　 a

　　　　　　　　　　　　　 r 

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　s 

"Hey, it's going to be okay, we're going to help you as much as we can."

"My name." I say in a whisper tone. 

"Yes?"

"It's not shadow."

"What is it then?" He says, eyes on me as my mind searches for the name that rolled off lips of my family, my boyfriend, and everyone else. 

It rolled off memories  grieve to hold onto before they vanish from my ghostly fingertips. 

I turn my head and look him in the eyes.  

His hand holds the pen steady above the paper scribbled with black ink. 

The fluorescent lights above me release heat, my body sweating. 

Cast itchy, hair clinging o my neck. 

Breathing ragged. 

Tears don't fall, and my lips part forming the letters of my name. 

"My name is Althea." 

• • •

Althea: an ethereal name found in the Greek mythology and pastoral poetry. The meaning of Althea is 'with healing power'