Chapter 5
Sight See, Sight Gone.
Throughout her childhood, post-Elison, Eve had been shuffled from foster home to foster home to orphanage to foster home again. She'd met dozens of new people and never stayed long with any of them. They were nice enough, she supposed, but it became quickly apparent that not many parents wanted to take in a kid with a mental health history. Or a kid whose family was brutally murdered in front of her as a child. They tend to have problems.
And Eve was both.
Half an hour after slamming the door on the writer, Eve was still fuming. She'd fixed her broken door frame as best as she could with some super glue and then set white candles to burn in each corner of the apartment. She'd also hung a bunch of mistletoe by the front entrance, solely because before the herb was used to attract love it was used to keep demons from entering a home. She was hoping they would be enough to keep the Wraith out until she found something a little more long-term.
But she still had lingering irritation after that so she stripped her clothes and submerged herself in a hot bath, holding herself beneath the water for as long as her lungs could take. Afterwards, when she raised her arm into the air she could see steam rising from her skin.
She laid in the bath until her fingers and toes became wrinkly, until she nearly fell asleep, and got out to dry herself. In a pair of unbelievably comfortable sweats and an even softer shirt, she wrapped her wet hair up and set up camp on the couch with a bowl of popcorn, a table full of junk food, and the blanket from her bed. She'd splurged on the treats with her money from Ink Drop and been glad to do it.
Cal didn't respond to her invitation text but rather turned up fifteen minutes later with a stack of movies and even more junk food to add to the pile.
“You know what I love about having a friend with her own apartment?” Cal asked as she sat cross-legged on the couch in her own lazy clothes. She bit off a piece of beef jerky and chewed, throwing her arm out to indicate everything around her. “This.”
Eve snorted and clicked play on the movie.
• • •
Halfway through Texas Chainsaw Massacre the 2003 version, Eve and Cal hit pause, pulled on a pair of shoes each, and left the apartment to make a run down to the corner Stop 'n' Go. They were laughing at something Calla had said after arguing over which ice-cream flavor tasted the best when they passed an alley and a girl stumbled out of the shadows.
“Dara? Dara, is that you?” she clung to the brick wall beside her like it was the only lifeline she had.
Eve moved forward to catch her as she came away from the wall and nearly fell. She was drunk or injured by the way she moved.
“Hey, you're alright.” Eve said, sliding her arms around the girl to keep her upright. “You're okay.”
She held onto Eve tightly.
“Help me...” she pleaded. The voice sounded almost familiar.
“Cal, call an ambulance!” Eve instructed and the other girl ran out of the mouth of the alley, her phone already taken from her pocket.
It felt as if Eve was trying to hold together a bundle of sticks; the girl kept almost slipping out of her grasp as she trembled, taking in frantic breaths.
“Please... “ the girl pleaded. “I can't see. I can't see.”
And that's when it clicked. That's where she'd heard the voice before; the Ink Drop the morning Sydney Meyers and her boyfriend came in. The same day she apparently went missing.
“Sydney?” Eve cupped the girls cheek in her hand and tilted her face up, letting her hair fall away. She had her eyes squeezed closed but it was definitely her.
“What's wrong with your eyes, sweetie? Why can't you see?” Eve asked her, gingerly touching the skin around the area. It didn't look wounded.
“Where is he?” Sydney asked, her once pleasant voice now sounding on the verge of shattering at any moment. “He took it. He did. Where is he? Where is Dara?”
Eve shook her head in confusion. “Whose Dara?”
Sydney suddenly stiffened and grabbed two fistfuls of Eve's sleeves, bringing their faces barely a breath apart.
“He took it from me.” she hissed in a low whisper. “He took my sight.”
And then Sydney Meyers opened her eyes.
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Withering Starlight
Teen Fiction. "We're candy to them. They're poison to us." • • • All seventeen year old Eve wants to do is work at her friends tattoo parlor, make it out of high school, and put her to...
