Chaos Reigns, Chapter 1

    What she wore on her face was a more literal mask then most talk about. Her face was an array of crisscrosses and stars, scars born of a psychopath's fancy. This mask covered her normalcy, stole her beauty, and brought stares to her face wherever she went. Her escape lay in the paint brushes, paint, and strong paper that she took all her agony out on. But instead of it dripping out in deep dark blacks that represented the space of time in her life where she saw no sunlight, instead of it showing itself in the shades of red and crimson that took form as her skin was pinched and nicked deeper with the knife that was the man’s tool of choice, it showed itself in explosions of bright, miraculous color. This was because the girl was full of a beauty that no longer showed itself on her face. Its outlet became her hands, and it could be said that the girl would lock herself in her room for days barely coming out for basic needs. These were the days she found herself in a trance of colors that dazzled her mind and took away her pains and worries. On these days her parents were left in chaos, sure that their damaged little girl’s scars went deeper then the surface. They telephoned the doctor, did what they could, flitted about, because the girl did not show them or anyone else the miracles she was making. They were her little secrets, an escape, and if anyone found out where she was hiding she believed they would come and steal her away from the bliss. So she sealed each of the pictures with a kiss and sold them away under a different name, taking the money and saving it up for the day she could afford a new normal face to fade into the edges of life with. Her scars would be erased.

    She received a phone call, an urgent at once kind of phone call, and was asked to meet a man that liked her work in a small little coffee shop on the corner of this street and that. The girl did not like strangers, did not like talking, but the man’s voice had a certain allure, a taste to it that made her want to roll it around on her tongue, and so she almost agreed. She wrote down his number in blue pen on the yellow pad next to the phone as a “just in case” maybe, and tucked the maybe away. It was not until she was off the phone did she remember she had never given her phone number out to any of her clients. The girl was confused but she shut the emotion away to make room for the ideas floating around her head ready to break free. This was not the man from before, the only man who could ever hurt her, and therefore she was not afraid of him, of his existence, or of his intentions with her. Instead she replayed his voice over and over again in her head as a sort of lullaby while she painted memories she wished to make across tiny pieces of quality canvas

    But later that day when her parents got home and asked her to come and have a little talk, she realized she was going to have to go back to the psychiatrist’s office before the day was done. The girl closed up, her pink little mouth becoming a thin line as she went to her room to paint the dark over the light. Chaos crept under the door and stole into her heart and soul as she found herself gasping for breath at the thought of seeing him again, his deep voice like fingernails to a chalkboard for her heart, his quizzical eyes taking in everything that she worked hard to hide with her baggy clothes and short, boyish hair. But the fact she was a girl, or rather the fact she was almost a woman, stood out firm and clear in her delicately made face, her thin fragile arms, the set of her body’s blossoming curves. She could not hide her wide childish blue eyes screaming innocence or the subtle arch of her dark brow. She lay awake on her bed for the remainder of the afternoon in a cold sweat. It did not matter that she was not asleep, but awake, because her nightmares were returning with each forced step she took back to her tragically interrupted youth. Pieces of her memory opened her up and burst their way out until they formed dark pictures depicting her kidnapping from horrifying start to finish. She painted pictures of her parents fighting, of her mother’s liquored good night kisses, of her first visit to the “helpful” man. She painted him picking her up from school one day, the cold dark place where he had locked her up, the knife he brought to her face so fresh with tears. She painted her duck-taped hands and feet as she was placed blind folded on her parent’s front porch two months later, a discarded package. She painted out all her pain in the very real colors so unlike the ones she’d used to capture the beauty in the pictures of before, and she did so until she came up with the final solution…and then she painted that too. Proof taped to her walls, a final goodbye, before she stepped out her front door that evening for the last time.

    Later that evening with the presence of her mother’s hand taking her to the office she dreaded more then anything in her world, she kissed her mother goodbye with a finality that caused the woman to second guess her and her husband’s decision without a clue as to why. Instead of following her intuition, as people rarely do, she walked away to meet the girl’s father for dinner at the fancy restaurant down the street. The girl was to meet them there when she was done attending therapy that day at six o’ clock. She was dressed accordingly, black pantsuit slimming her down far more then was needed and revealing what she would no longer hide. Her short hair was held back with bobby pins, allowing her scarred face’s determined mindset to show more clearly. In her hand she held a purse and in her purse she held her two puzzle pieces of life’s path waiting to be put together.

    Her foot bobbed in the waiting room chair as she waited for her name to be called in the upscale office one last time. Heart racing, she answered the call of her name and walked into the office that abhorred the many secrets that had made her who she was that day standing tall. He sat at the desk, cool and calm as usual as he asked her to please take a seat. His dark hair was impeccable, capable muscles somehow not quite hidden in the suit he was wearing, and his cold brown eyes looked at her like a coroner would a dead body, indifferent. The girl complied, her pulse still racing but never once did she second guess herself. You don’t second guess fate, and as the fine grains of sand in the hour glass paused for only a moment the girl-almost-a-women did just that, didn’t question fate. She took out the gun with the silencer and shot the man who had written his story across her young face not so many years ago in the heart. With that act she tried to erase the pain and humiliation that had occurred while he held her down. She tried to erase the impact he’d had on her life starting from the moment he’d taken away her choices and offered her no escape. She tried to erase the many scars, both physical and the ones left across her mind. Dropping the gun back into her fashionable suede purse, the girl brought her free hand to her face to trace the scars she had grown familiar with to find them exactly where she expected. Only then, after she’d confirmed their continuing existence, did she spare the cause of her pain a pity-less glance. He sat in his chair exactly as he had when she’d walked in, the only difference in the red spreading its stain over everything it could, and in his face, betraying its shock only by his parted lips.
Who knew there was so much blood in one human being , was the only response she would spare him.
Her plan had taken form in the cold color of steal and memorable deep red of his blood spilled across the floor hours ago when she had drawn it out and hung it on her priorly empty walls. There was no regret, no panic, for once the girl-almost-a-women was calm in this normal realm of the world she was visiting. She smiled him a goodbye kiss as she took her leave from the office that for once was going to keep her little secret and feigned a migraine to the foolish secretary. Walking calmly out from the office, her debt repaid, she took from her pocket her “just in case” maybe, and dialed the number to freedom, the final missing puzzle piece.

    He was there when she walked in; waiting for her among the fading light like he had for so long: her true love, her soul mate, the man who had tied her so firmly to this ground when no one else could. He was a stranger in dark clothing drinking black coffee while he watched her make her way towards him. They kissed like lovers with experience with one another, his hand on her cheek, her hands in his hair, although this was their first kiss of many. He had fallen in love with her artwork, and her with his voice. Both knew they were in the right place at the right time as he flavored the remnants of her fear with the bitter taste of coffee that lingered behind, fresh on his breath. They firmly held hands as they left the coffee shop together, not one in front of the other, but side by side at the exact same pace. In harmony they drove away from the city with its cops on the search for a 5ft 6in woman with sandy blonde hair, blue eyes, and an unmistakable face. In harmony as the man walked away from the only life he’d ever known, from his girlfriend of six months and mother who was slowly losing her mind and nearing the brink of insanity. In harmony as the mother and father fretted and boo-hoed over the daughter who they had really lost years before and hadn’t returned. In harmony together they went to make way for a new life, a better life. And as she rested her head on his comforting shoulder she knew she’d made the right choice, by and by, for you see anything is possible in a land that chaos reigns.