From Dawn (published)

Eight

Saturday
7:00pm

Saturday night in a small town didn't look all that different than any other night of the week. There were no clubs with their pounding music and lines out the door. No fancy restaurants, movie theaters with a dozen screens, or anything else that a larger town would have offered as entertainment, either.

The closest thing you could find to a party was the bonfire that the locals tended to start in a less than legal gathering spot, near the rock quarry outside of town. No trespassing posters had been hung all around the edge of the property, but everyone ignored them. The local police turned a blind eye too. Even they had to admit that a bunch of teens and young adults could get into worse trouble than the bonfire, if they really wanted to. As long as the town's young people were partying around the fire, they weren't dong something worse out of sheer boredom.

It had been a while since Dawn had gone to a fire, and she remembered why within minutes of approaching the flickering light.

She was at least a few years older than anyone else drinking and listening to music around the roaring blaze that had been set. That fact was making her feel like an outsider. Or maybe it was the strange looks that she seemed to be getting as she wound her way slowly through the masses.

She was the only one hiding behind a pair of dark sunglasses, and a long sleeve shirt to cover the first darkening bruise. Along with the bruise that she'd found when she got up, there was now also a bruised ring around her arm where the blood pressure cuff had squeezed her. That had never happened before.

She'd used more make-up before coming out in an attempt to give her sallow complexion some color, but at the rate she was sweating, that wasn't going to last long. Even she had to admit that she probably looked like some sort of abuse victim.

It was still rather warm. The sun hadn't yet lowered enough to stop baking the earth dry. The towering flames only added to the heat.

Dawn was feeling more and more irritable, bordering on just plain angry. If it wasn't for the fact that she had promised to meet Kay there when she finished work, Dawn would have given it up and gone home. Her head thumped. Her stomach snarled angrily. And it was too freaking hot to be wearing long sleeves.

She made her way to the far edge of the gathering. The heat and flickering light from the fire was too much for her. Even though it wasn't dark out yet, she swore that the fire's light was irritating her eyes. It seemed unnaturally bright.

"You look like hell," Kay chose that moment to finally show up and she didn't sugar coat her words. "Did you go see a doctor?"

"Yeah," Dawn had to stamp down the urge to snap at her friend.

"Well, what did they say?" Kay began digging in her purse.

"He thinks that nasty water irritated my eye." She practically snapped. She was trying not to blame Kay for all of this, she knew it wasn't really her friend's fault. She could have said no to the dare. But in her current mood, Dawn was having a hard time being reasonable.

Pulling a small bottle of Aspirin from her bag, Kay finally looked up at her friend. "That's it? That's all he said?" She looked skeptical.

"Yeah," Dawn scratched absentmindedly at her arm. The first bruised spot felt weird. Itchy. "What are you doing?"

Kay was no longer looking at Dawn. Instead, she was busy shaking a few of the pills into her hand, looking around the clearing a little desperately.

"My head is killing me. Someone has to have brought drinks," Spotting what she was looking for, Kay told Dawn over her shoulder, "Your shift was just as bad as I feared. No wonder you're always in a bad mood after work on Saturdays. Anyone would be after the night I've had."

Dawn watched her friend down the pain killers, and half of the can of soda. The two of them ended up joining a group of girls that they only knew because of Kay's younger brother. There wasn't anyone else there that either of them really knew. As much as she tried to ignore her own discomfort, Dawn couldn't keep her mind from wandering from the conversation that didn't really interest her anyhow. She was silently cataloging her growing list of complaints when she noticed something new.

A strangle tickling sensation began to grow in her nose.

The fire's light only grew more obnoxious as the sun began to set. The dancing flames burned brightly against the dark sky.

Her bruised arm was starting to feel like there was something more wrong with it than just a bruise. A bruise didn't itch like her arm was itching.

Trying to discreetly push her sleeve up and get a look at whatever was going on, Dawn missed when a girl whose name she didn't remember came up next to her.

"Whoa. How'd you do that?"

Dawn looked up from her inspection of the now blackish bruise, to find her staring at her arm with a slightly disgusted look on her face. Embarrassment warred with annoyance as the blonde's pixie cut moved closer.

"Beat it Sheila," Kay tried to come to Dawn's rescue, but the others in the group had noticed the exchange. A few of them moved closer in morbid curiosity.

The annoyance won, and Dawn turned to tell them all to back off. She wasn't some sort of side show to be gawked at, but before she could begin her angry tirade, she sneezed.

Dawn wasn't sure what horrifying fact she noticed first. Maybe it was the warm gush of blood that began pouring from her nose to drip from her chin. Or maybe it was the shrieking of the two nearest gawkers as they realized that she had sneezed a fine spray of blood all over them.