Code Red (Book#2 of The Runaway Club)

10. Unfulfilled Wishes

*

*

*

Blood.

I had never seen so much of it. And they were rapidly spurting from Marco's head. I tried to press my palms on the bullet hole to try and stop it by they leaked past my fingers and down my forearms to stain my white dress. He lay dead motionlessly in the carpeted floor of my childhood home.

"¡Despierta, Marco!" I sobbed, "No! No! NO!"

"Dominica?"

I looked up with teary eyes. There Marco was, smiling down at me with amusement and hands tied over his chest. I blinked and looked down at the Marco who was lying dead in my arms, drenched in his blood. I looked back at the smiling Marco.

"Marco?" I called him tentatively, as if trying to figure out what was real and what was not.

"Who else?" He laughed, "What are you crying for silly?"

"B-But you... You are dead..." I whispered brokenly.

"Indeed, I am." He crouched down next to me, still smiling fondly at me. "But you already knew that."

I looked down at his crippled body; his brown eyes, which I shared, was wide in terror and glazed over by death. I looked to the side and there was papa and mama leaning back on the white blood-stained wall, hugging each other even in death. I watched my tears dissolve into his blood.

"How is it fair?" I sobbed. "I want to go with you as well. I don't want to go to the orphanage. I really hated their food and they beat me all the time. I don't like chores. I should have died with you too."

"You could have. If you didn't go to meet your little boyfriend."

"I didn't—"

"It's okay, gatita. One day, you will meet us." He pointed to the sky with a wide grin. "Up in the heavens when you die of old age. Until then you will live a long and happy life."

"No." I looked up at him with an excited grin on my face painted with his blood. "Somebody will kill me sooner or later and I will be with you. I am a mafia boss now you know?"

"I know, mi gatita. I know."

He looked down at me fondly and caressed my matted hair. My eyes caught something behind him and saw my parents watching us with soft smiles on their faces. Marco noticed too.

"I have to go now. Take care, Dominica. I love you."

"No, no, no!" I tried to latch on to his shirt, uncaring that all the blood on me will stain his immaculate shirt. But Marco's dead body's weight held me down. "Don't leave me, Marco. Marco!"

I watched him and my parents walk away from me. I screamed till my voice broke, begging them to take me too. I looked down at Marco's glassy eyes and hugged his limp head further into my stomach as I cried.

And I cried and cried; till a loud siren wailed outside.

"Ms. Bauer." I woke up with a start. The speakers above me rasped, "Please fasten your seat-belts. We will be arriving at Son Sant Joan Airport in in Palma, Mallorca."

I looked down at me and found myself wearing a revealing white sundress with a golden waist cuff and thigh-high slit. I nearly fell out of my recliner when I noticed my black hair which was dyed blonde. I looked outside the small window and scenic blue seas and white strips of land calmed me down. The sun hit them just right to show a hundred different gradients of blue and green in the water. I watched them mesmerized. That was when everything came back to me.