[1] ALEXA, and her hell ✓ [Editing]

Story Time ✓

Sub Urban — Cradles
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"your past is just a story and once you realize this, it has no power over you." —Chuck Palahniuk
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The 21th of April, Year 2020.

     Within another week, Alessia...

     "Alexa."

     ...Alexa gains enough weight to begin training. She's being fed properly and taken care of. She looks at Petro weirdly every time he brings her food although she's thankful. She hasn't gotten used to asking for a bathroom break during her talk sessions with the man and will sit stiffly until he notices that she needs to go. This kind of normal treatment is alien to her and, as much as he gives her options, she doesn't ask for anything, not even answers, nor reassurances like the other kids.

     "Sir." She whispers, lifting her head to acknowledge Petro.

     "Are you ready to give me details of your one year disappearance?"

     "You could've asked at any time." She tells him, noting that the man's consideration was unnecessary.

     Petro isn't used to this. From what she's obviously been through, he had the thought that she'd be sensitive, but every time he prods her cautiously, her simple responses are kind of scary, causing him to be more cautious. He finds himself treading carefully and treating her as delicate as they would an explosive. She is way too different for his liking. He didn't expect to be getting as tired as he is these days at his retired age. What the hell did he pick up off the streets this time.

     'Should I have listened to Lucy this time? I hate how he's always right.'

     "Okay," Petro frowns unsurely, ridding his mind of the Elite he commissions to help him find kids every five years, "go ahead."

     Alexa's intense silence afterwards is deafening. They are both in her new bedroom. She's sitting at the edge of the bed, opposite the pillows and he's seated in a cream couch that faces her. Petro looks at everything but her, waiting for her to snap out of whatever trance she fell into, remembering that she had done this multiple times in the passed week.

     His eyes flit to the short, white, transparent curtains, hanging by her unopened glass window, hovering over the bed's low headboard. He glances at the untouched stack of story books he had placed on her empty dresser by the bathroom door. Then, he stares down at the cream, fluffy carpet beneath his gray socked feet and her pale toes, pointing down from the bed.

     "He promised me if I spoke, he'd let me go." She begins and he looks up at her, seeing tears rush down her cheeks to her chin. "That's all he wanted, but I was never one to talk, since every time I did so, I got myself in trouble. I was always beaten rashly by my mother when she started going out with him. She claimed she was teaching me manners. I never went to school, so my English was bad back then—all the more reason to keep my mouth shut—but I learnt quickly from all their fussing." And, she proceeds to tell him more than he asked. From the very beginning of her mother's neglect parenting after her father left, passing her wish to die, to what happened behind the restaurant where the story ends.

     Petro didn't expect to have found someone so used, done and broken. All the kids he picks up are either homeless, runaways or critically depressed, maybe all three at once, but none of their stories can compare to hers. He notices that her tears are streaming endlessly down her face and he asks her, "Who's he?"

     "Sebastian."

     He doesn't need her to say anything else after that. He did enough reading to know who Sebastian is. "Here, wipe your eyes with this." He passes a hand kerchief that he had brought for this reason. It was good to see that she is human after all, producing tears, though it looks more like her eyes are leaking.

     "What a waste of bodily fluids." She grumbles blankly, dabbing at the liquid.

     Petro leans back in the sofa, pressing his lips together. What was he expecting?

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