THE WOMAN

I have been living in this sick old hospital filled with sick people for over a year now. I don't know how to explain anything that happened to me and I think I will never be able to. But just trust me when I say it wasn't me... it was her.
I was an only child, who moved with her mom far away to another small town to forget the sorrowful past, the death of my father. He was a fat and short man. His skin was filled with scars of not well-treated acne and had a big black mustache, first thing people looked at. But despite his grotesque look, he was really sweet and good to my mom, buying her all the things she wanted. You could tell he had a good heart. He was the owner of an old bookstore, place where we also lived. He would sit and talk to me for hours about his dream of becoming a rich man, owner of a big worldwide known company any chance that he could.
At the age of 50 years old, he started to get sick regularly and would never stop coughing. My mom was really worried about him, but my father would tell her he was fine, that it was just a flu and that it would eventually stop. And then one day he just wouldn't wake up. Doctors later found out that his heart attack was caused by what they supposed was a terrible nightmare or saw something that scared him so much, that his heart stopped, but we never knew exactly what happened.
My mother, who loved him so much was destroyed. She had this big dream of marrying somebody with whom she could grow old beside and becoming a 35-year-old widow was just a hard realization for her. The colors were drained from her ever since that day, she just turned gray. Her cheerful personality turned into a quiet one. Her beautiful brown hair started turning white and her green eyes lost that characteristic spark that I would see from a mile away. We both knew we had to move from our home, so we packed our stuff, sold the bookstore and headed to England.
My father was the only source of income, and since he died we were left with almost nothing, so life became really hard. We moved into a small apartment in one of the low-class streets. The place was really old and it seemed like the wall were going to fall apart. The house was really small, it was two stories high but it was not that wide. You entered through a wooden door into the hallway. Just by taking two steps and turning left you got into the kitchen area, that was really small and to the left was the tiniest living area, which consisted in one small individual sofa, a chair, and a tv, situated just in front. If you walk straight from the entrance you could go up the stairs to the two small rooms and tiny bathroom. All the walls were a dirty white color. All the door were made of wood and creaked loudly. My room had enough space to fit a small bed and a closet. A big window was situated on the largest wall. There was also just beside my bed a small shelf where I put my toys and books.
I grew up in that house basically alone, my mom got a job as cashier in a nearby market and would spend most of her time there working as many shifts as possible to get paid more, but not much, and I would go to school from 7 to 12 which meant I was a lot of the time by myself doing homework and such. But the days where I didn't have anything to do, those were my favorites, because I would see the woman.
The woman was the commence of it all. I stated regularly drawing her when I turned 5 years of age, just one year after my father passed and when we moved into the new house. I didn't know where she came from but she was lots of fun. She was old and wore a puffy red dress, decorated with several fake plastic flowers of colors blue pink and yellow. Her face was really pale and skinny, her bone structure could be seen lying just underneath that thin layer of elastic skin. Her eyes were really blue, almost white, they looked white like pearls, like a nice polished marble floor, shiny and fragile. Her lips were thin and she always wore red lipstick with which she would over line dramatically her lips making them look wider but less proportional. Her hands wore delicate yellow gloves that went up to the elbows. Her hair was the color of a void, it short and really curly on the front but really straight and went down to her hips on the back. Her overall physical structure was that of an anorexic woman, all the pieces of clothing were too big, which made her look even thinner and made her limbs look even longer. She wore a pearl necklace and long golden earrings. And finally, If you looked down you could see the red boots that looked too big to fit her feet.
She would appear now and then, but she usually preferred to appear when I had nothing to do and was bored. I would be hanging out with my dolls when I would here 3 knocks on the door, that was the sign that told me it was her. I would clear my throat and say "you can come in" after that a few minutes would pass and the door would slowly open to reveal the women standing there. She would smile at me and come closer to me sitting by my side. And she would sit there just staring at me as I played with my dolls with wide eyes, smiling the whole time. I would sometimes talk to her but I was really shy. After a while, she would just stand up wave goodbye and leave the room, closing the door behind her. I would listen as she went down the stairs and left the apartment. As I started to grow older and older she would come and go, sometimes for weeks, sometimes for a whole year and in her place, Rufier would come, her white cat. Rufier was a male cat with orange eyes and a long tail, he would knock on my window three times just as the woman and would also sit beside me watching me play. I like to think that they were watching over me all the time.
But when I turned 13 things started to change dramatically. I was now in high school, and the famous cycle of bullying started. Kids would tease me and girls would reject me. They would tell me I was ugly and fat all the time. They would tell rumors about me that weren't true so I had no friends. I spent most of my time alone in the gray classroom drawing trying to hold my tears in the best that I could. I was so mad and destroyed that all I could think of was my father.
"Don't worry" I heard the voice say, as I looked down at y drawing a skinny hand placed itself on top of mine. I looked up to see the women standing there in plain sight. She had no expression, and her eyes were wider, and her lips were drawn back showing she was trying to create a smile.
"They are just trying to play with you," she said, no change in her face. "You just need to learn to play correctly". She would later tell me that the girls were planning out their moves to make a bigger impact on me. "What do you which to do to them?" -"I want to punch them," I said in an innocent silent voice. "Good..." she said elongating the word a couple of seconds. "Write it down and we will work on it" it's all she said.
So I would write my feelings down in actions with my red crayon. If Sara told me I was ugly I would write things like "erase her face" if Joshua pulled on my hair I would write break ankle, and like that my emotions would ease up. Of course, I never did the things that I wrote down, they were just written on impulse to cope with my feelings. The woman helped me in the ways my mother didn't, she was always by my side, whispering thing in my ear, making me laugh, keeping me company and teaching me so many things. We would dance together in recess and eat together at lunch.
But then came the day and enough was enough. The boys in my class were challenged by the girls to make me cry "Whoever makes her cry first wins" they said and of course, the boys accepted the challenge. They cornered me while going to the bathroom, made a circle around me and started calling me names, pushed me, while the girls watched from a distance. I heard putrid things said to me, words that I never imagined could come out of their mouths. And I just sat there crying in a ball on the cold ground until the teachers came. My mom took me home to talk, but I just wanted to be alone, so I went to my room. I was laying on my bed facing the wall when I heard her whisper "it's time!" I jumped up and turned around to face her she was sitting on the other side of the room. "Time for what?" I asked half asleep. "It's time to revenge yourself, to put an end to this" she whispered and giggled. I looked at her weirdly "What do you mean?" She stood up and from behind her dress, she took out the notebook where I had all my notes on the horrible things I wanted to do to my classmates. "No way, I can't do that!" I screamed "Shhhh darling, we don't want mommy to come" " I can't do it, I won't," I said. "Very well then, I will leave right away," he said and got up, leaving all the papers scared on the floor and heading towards the door.
"When are you coming back?" I asked "I am not coming back anymore" she spat at me. "What do you mean? Why?" -" I have tried to give you everything darling but you don't seem to like my ideas anymore, so I don't need to be here". I got up "No you can't leave, please you are my only friend, it's just that I can't do what you ask". She sat there her back facing me. I could feel her big smile as she whispered "would you let me do it then?" -"You don't have to... "I WANT TO" She said in a snap "I want to revenge you".
All around the place kids were found dead, tortured to the ground. And in every scene the same thing was found, a really detailed description of what was done to the victim... all written with a red crayon. And with neat handwriting on the bottom, the words "I enjoyed it, thank you for letting me do it- Zara Williams". And there I was trying to prove my innocence, but fingerprints were found, my fingerprints all around the victims.