"Before Dawn"

Chapter 34: Darkest Before the Dawn

It's always darkest before the dawn.

Dawn Morningside has been living some dark days, and it didn't appear that any light was in sight to get her through it. It's been two months to the day since she'd had slain Wesley Price. The first week, she was sick as a dog from that horrendous rain. She'd gotten a fever, in fact but her father had nursed her back to health with doses of old school, yucky Nyquil. He tried to cheer her up by saying the infamous Nyquil-slogan when he'd give her the doses. The whole "it's the nighttime, sniffling, sneezing, aching, coughing, stuffy-head, fever, so you can rest medicine" repetition made her feel worse. He stopped saying it when she threw up on him.

Cat's arroz caldo—a chicken rice soup of some sort—helped, too. He told her it would really help her get back to normal. Dawn's appetite was nowhere in sight while she was ill. She didn't' care about test, she just wanted to get better so she forced herself to eat the arroz caldo. Cat had forced her hard-headed-self to down sufficient liquids.

Between the efforts of her father and Cat, she'd at least beaten the fever in a few days. Cold symptoms lingered on and her external bumps followed suit. As the days passed, she got better but all-the-while the emotional turmoil was a bitch-and-a-half.

Getting through the first month—let alone the first five minutes of when she killed Wesley Price—was so damn hard for her to do. Dealing with cops didn't help matters, either. The popo had come by the house a few times to talk to Dawn. As they had put it, they had come to ascertain if she had had any insight into Wesley's Price's disappearance from his home, seeing as digital forensics investigations revealed that she had had telephone contact with him prior to. They made it a point for Dawn to know that they were aware of Price's association—how'd they say it?—with the decedent as per digital forensics protocols.

Her father, Cat, and even Martha had schooled her up on how to handle the situation way before the police began snooping around. Tell the cops the truth about the last time you talked to Wesley Price, of course...and steer them to believe that maybe Beaumont "Mac" Reynolds, the decedent is responsible—with conviction. Dawn had been able to put on a show with the cops. Through it all, she'd cried real tears over Wesley Price. Through it all, she was still in trouble.

Dawn is far into her punishment now. Her father had put her on restriction for having a spare key to the van and taking it and everything else leading up to all of the events before slaying Wesley. She feels as though she's eight years old again. She's confined her to her happy place, and her room is now the saddest place in the world. There's no TV, and even her wakizashis had been taken from her. She misses the feel of the hilts in her hands, twirling them and practicing her strikes. She throws on her playlist and listens music from time-to-time through her earbuds but she doesn't feel any of the songs that normally mean something to her.

Honestly, she just wants to get out of her room and is happy when she's able to. The only time she's allowed to leave is to come down and eat or help her dad load equipment and tools into the van for his contracting job. He'd take those moments to check on her mindset, try to make her laugh with corny jokes that received half-hearted courtesy chuckles from her—and after hitting the bottle when he got home for his work always checks on her again. Otherwise, she's not allowed to leave her room.

Dawn's only outlet—and allowed past-time if that's what you want to call it—is reading up on what her actions have led to. She's keeping up with the news updates about the carnage at the factory. According to the news outlets, the gruesome scene at the factory had begun when a prop plane was low-flying over the area. The pilot was just chilling and saw the bodies—later determined to be drug-addict teenagers based on their emaciated corpses—all over the ground a good distance away from factory. Said pilot naturally contacted the authorities who in turn responded to the scene, and when they got inside of the factory—oh boy. The discovery inside paled in comparison to what was found outside, not to mention there was a large, abnormal dog along with other teens burnt to a crisp, and an overcooked man with what was initially believed to be costume-wings and a mask burned onto him. The discovery of the decedent's—Dawn knew what this word meant, now—reveals that this man had somehow made the necessary contacts to surgically alter his body, turning what should have been feet into hooves? Interested social media peeps agree that people will go to surgical extremes to fulfill their sick desires. It's true because crime scene investigators proved that the guy with the burnt-on mask, wings, and inserted hooves was indeed a man—but who was he?