The Craving

Chapter Two- From Afar

Thora found herself walking beneath the long fingers of the spanish moss that had been growing from the oak trees. If not for the fact she had walked this same path almost every day, the sensation of the branches would feel identical to that of a critter-as there were certainly enough of those in this part of the world. But where others would be thinking of poisonous snakes or deadly arachnids, Thora wondered who would have wanted to save her from her attempt to take her own life. She made a list of suspects in her mind but knew that none of them would have been capable of lifting her in the way this stranger had. It was almost as if she was weightless to him and with the full curves and nature of her full figure would have made this impossible. Of course the most reasonable explanation was that she had taken too many puffs of hemp or consumed too many bottles of beer-but she was always cautious in this instance as she knew she would have to answer to her father for smelling of either of these elements. But with each step closing in on her new home that she was in no rush to return to, she was unaware of the shadow of a man that had been following her. He remained in the darkness, covered by the fallen sun that exchanged with the moon as it hung at half full overhead. His gaze had fixated on her for reasons he could not explain to himself, but found it impossible to break away-as if he would do so that the world would simply fall off kilter. He remained in her penumbra, surviving from the cover that night had allowed him until she pulled open the screen door and turned upon feeling a gaze upon her. Even though her gaze had scanned the entire area to see only moribund grass on its final days from the drought, she was unaware that her guardian angel was watching her from afar. His sight lingered until the door closed behind her and swung as part of her shotgun house.

She brought her shoes from her feet by their heels and tossed them into the side of her room before heaving her body weight upon her bed and focusing on her cell phone. Her fingers slid upon the screen, having analyzed the truly "horrendous" feats of her high school peers as they spoke of packing for college and going on extravagant trips gifted by their parents. She rolled her eyes when thinking of how trivial these issues had been when she hasn't been able to have a childhood since her father exchanged his love for a dark colored bottle. However, the silence in the home on this night had given her her own version of a graduation present as she wasn't subjected to his verbal disgrace in regards to the church or death itself or the fact he would throw the glass bottles when his anger would rise. In reminiscing about this, her gaze slid over to a section of her room that one of his glass containers had smashed a palm-sized hole in her room. Without obtaining the skills of a craftsman, she did the best she could by placing a frame over the hole-but with the room between the bookshelf and frame-it still managed to serve as a heartbreaking reminder of her circumstances. As she had done every night, she slid her earbuds between either canal and allowed the sounds of Van Halen to soar throughout her mind until she fell asleep.

Her dreams would usually be of that horrible night that had changed her family forever. She would conjure sights of them having been smiling until the door would shoot open and they would be attacked. The guilt was present even in an unconscious state as she thought if she had only arrived sooner or called the police from the minute she felt uneasy...but none of it would do any good now. She would awaken with only a handful of hours of sleep if she was fortunate before finding her pajamas and skin sodden from her night sweats. However, the true nightmares would be when she would close her eyes and "awaken" in an alternate lifestyle when her mother would still be in the kitchen and giving Betty Crocker a run for her money and her brother would be playing some video game on the system connected to the living room television. As these would be images she would never see again, but was plagued to due to her own memories. She had wished that she could forget them at times as these thoughts were too painful of what she would never have-and so, she did whatever she could to not sleep for long periods of time; including listening to hard rock and setting alarms every few hours. This also served a second purpose as it allowed her to have time before her father would awaken that she could use just for herself. It was usually used to clean up whatever mess he had made the night before or put him into bed; but this morning, she hadn't worried of anything but the mysterious figure who saved her the night before. If not for the broken pieces of twig still lodged in her hair from when she had laid upon the tracks, the moment could have been easily written off as a dream.