Sleep Noise

 She woke up thrashing, flailing violently against the scene in her mind. The blood pooling at her feet fell upwards towards her face and she shrieked as the world spun around her. Mother, help me.

Mother took her by the arms and shook in short bursts in a desperate attempt to release her daughter from the cage in her subconscious. Faces, very clearly, flashed at her, fangs gnashing and glinting in the darkness.

“I can't wake her, Richard,” Mother whimpered in a half asleep daze. Father stepped closer to the bed and held her thin shoulders still as he pushed her dark blonde hair from her face.

“Elsa.” He said her name once.

“Elsa, you need to wake up.”

Her eyes crept open enough to let the golden glow of the door frame come into view. She clung onto the sight and her heart tripped out of full speed.

Her little fingers grasped the air slowly toward the blurry form of Father and he took them in his.

“Elsa, are you awake?” he asked in a voice like cool water over rocks. Her breathing slowed. Her voice shriveled, an almost incomprehensible squeak, “yes.”

“Are you alright, my love?” Mother's voice shook.

“No.”

° ° °

An old man stared with grey eyes matching rocky coast. His full, mahogany brown hair was silvering at his temples and his mouth had wrinkled into a unyielding frown. He was a block, wide in all the wrong places without the muscle of a work weathered man. His silver suit hung on his body tightly.

“Evander, I want you to do something for me,” he said coolly. His voice was slick film over river rocks while his hand laid limp at the edge of his wrist. The back of his chair faced the rest of the room and his favorite operative who stood very still next to the glass coffee table.

There was a shag carpet to protect the glossy wooden floorboards from the digging feet of the couch and table. Any material was black and smooth while any support was metal, polished and cold.

“What'd you have in mind, sir?” Evander spoke with a thick Greek accent, rich and smooth and articulate. Well educated by a hefty family inheritance, there wasn't a common language unspoken by him. There wasn't a social norm he couldn't have molded into nor was there an artery in the body left unexplored. He was austere in manner though his mind soared with a vibrancy often unseen in most psychotropic experiences.

“There's a girl,” Andelo spoke and Evander's eyebrows perked, “she knows things she shouldn't,” he paused, “and you know very well how that irritates me.”

“And how shall I take care of it, sir?” Evander asked politely, hoping he wouldn't say what he feared.

“Quietly. I don't need a pock mark on my record. The rumors are enough...”

The street gutters flowed with red tinted waters, little voices crying out from the fifth. Unblinking eyes stared up through dirty water at the hills peppered with happy, laughing, living couples. Swollen hands held onto the rocks by the riverside in hopes of being found by the mother who sat at home with a blanket to her eyes.

“Stanic,” the souls wept.

° ° °

“Do you know why I called you in today?” A young Andelo, lean and straight backed, looked up at a nervous girl standing in his office.

“No, sir.” She was thin and fragile. She wore her blonde hair up in a tight bun and her wire glasses sat firmly at the top of her nose.

“What have I hired you for?” His tone was harsh, accusational. Her heart sped up as she raced around her memory for something she had done wrong with no result.