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Chapter Two
Monday Continued
Helena’s mother walked towards her slowly, an axe gripped tightly in her fist. So tightly in fact, that her knuckles were white. Her walking was slightly swayed, and her eyes were blank and bloodshot. She had a detached look that was deterred only by an insane smile playing around her lips. Her hair was out of its usually immaculate black flicks, and instead was blowing all around her head like a modern day medusa. Helena took a couple of steps backwards and stumbled bum first into a gravestone. They were in a graveyard? When the hell had that happened?
Helena pondered on this for only a moment before it seemed completely natural. After all, she had more important things to worry about .The woman who called herself her mother was coming ever nearer.
“Helena, darling, I just want us to be happy, as a family, together. Surely you can understand that?” her mother asked with a completely even voice, her head cocking to one side slightly. “And if we’re gone, dead, we’ll be at peace with each other! We can lie silently next to each other, we can be happy again, no arguments! Don’t you remember how it used to be?”
Helena’s mother stopped walking when she was standing about two feet away from Helena. She was gripping the axe evermore tightly, as if it were a lifebelt saving her from drowning. But then again, who knew? Maybe she was.
Helena stopped to think about the words her mother had just spoken. How it used to be? As far as Helena could remember (and she could remember quite a lot) then it had always been the way it was then. Nothing had changed for years.
The mist that was playing lightly on the ground danced around Helena’s feet, with a soft, cold violence. The iciness of it sank right through to her ankles and then sped all the way up her body through her bones. She shivered inwardly, pulling her black cloak closer to her in a feeble attempt to keep from shivering, in case her mother took it the wrong way and thought it was fear (because maybe it was). It did not work. She shivered visibly as the coldness seemed to seep right through her flesh, turning her blood to ice inside her veins, but refusing to come out as she breathed heavily.
Her mother raised the axe ever so slightly. Its sharpened blade shone with evil in the eerie light. Her mother closed her green eyes and raised it again. “I will be next, when you are done. We can be together, Helena. We can both be happy. You can be that daughter that we all always wished you were. I have already set the other three at peace. They were good, Helena. They did not complain, they understood the beauty of my words.”
Her eyes opened suddenly and Helena chocked back a scream when she saw that they had turned a very violent shade of red, the red of red roses, the red of red blood, the red that should never be in eyes, and when it is, you know it’s a bad sign. She tried to back away from her mother (who was slowly advancing again) but walked into the gravestone again. She turned around and was about to run away when she saw the name on the gravestone. Her gravestone, to be precise. ‘Helena Katherine Bridgewater’ It read, it stony letters that had been carved in a serious block capitals font.
Her few seconds’ delay were to be dearly paid for. A bony hand grabbed her arm. A hand that was, just literally, bones. Helena turned around in horror to find that the bones were attached to a skeleton arm, which was protruding from the long sleeve of the gown that her mother was wearing. Her mother was a skeleton. Helena looked up and felt all the wind knocked out of her as her eyes met those cold, insane, red ones- as her eyes met the eyes of her mother. She tried to twist out of the grip, but it was to strong, and anyway, the axe was already lifted, her mother was bringing it down with a speed and strength that Helena hardly knew she was capable of, it was about to collide with her neck, Helena could not breath she was so scared-
CRACK.
Helena woke up gasping and almost dripping with sweat. Her pencil pot had fallen over, spilling old pencil shavings and broken leads over a small patch of floor and causing the loud noise that had woken her. Her breath was coming in short, sharp bursts and she was shaking all over, much like how a mobile phone vibrates when someone is calling. She used the top of the thin duvet she had to wipe the sweat off of her wet forehead, and sat up warily, feeling as though any moment she may completely collapse and bash her head against the cold metal of her bed head. Propping her single pillow up, she rested her back against and sat there shaking in silence, trying desperately to pick out the details of her dream that she couldn’t quite remember.
Her mother, that was it. They had been somewhere dark and misty. Where, though? Although Helena racked her brain completely she could not for the life of her remember where. And her mother had been holding an axe; she remembered that quite well, along with the feeling of the coldness running through her as though she had fallen into an ice-cold pond. And her mothers eyes had been a brilliantly bright red, as she said- what did she say? Helena could not remember that, either. She did not even know why she wanted to remember, it was only a dream, for crying out loud!
But it always happened. Ever since Helena had started sleeping badly she had been plagued with dreams that haunted her for the rest of the day, as she puzzled over them, trying to remember all those tiny little details, trying to work out what it meant. If it meant anything at all, that was.
It was still fairly dark, but the light of the sun was beginning to creep up and it cast a strange, haunting light over Helena’s small attic room. It was not light enough to make out anything much, apart from a few dark shapes and shadows. Helena felt by the side of her bed, trying to feel for her torch. She felt its string and tugged sharply at it, and it came up from where it had been threatening to fall down the side of her bed. She flicked the switch up and pointed it at her still ever ticking loudly clock. It was the miserable time of four twenty am. Helena had been sleeping for only about two hours. Two, feeble hours. And she was still as tired as hell.
Helena tried to close her eyes again, but they refused to stay shut for more than a few seconds, stinging and watering until she had no choice but to open them again. The little sleep she had scraped had done next to nothing to help her; she was as tired as ever. She was extremely weary and had to drag herself out of bed, and it felt like her limbs were lead. Her skinny frame stumbled slightly, and she reached out an arm wildly, and thankfully her hand landed on her desk and she steadied herself, blinking back the grey spots that were complexly clouding her vision and waiting patiently for the dizziness that had overcome her to go away. Gradually her vision cleared and she was able to stand properly again. She rubbed some sleep from her eyes, and walked over to the wall by her door, where she flicked the light switch up. The room was illuminated in a few crackles of the bulb with the harsh and unnatural glare that electricity provides.
She squinted and blinked in an attempt to get used to the sudden brightness, ignoring the fact that her eyes were streaming and she was getting coloured blobs that swam in front of her vision. When it had all passed, she looked around sceptically.
Her room would have been quite nice if she had let it be that way. It wasquite small, with wooden beams that clung to the sloping ceilings. The walls were coloured a shade of light green that gave a crisp feel to the whole thing, although, she noticed, it was flaking rather badly. Darker green thorns had been painted around the walls, giving a tangled and creepy effect to her room. She could remember doing them about a year ago.
The loud clock was a shrunk version of a grandfather. It hung on the wall opposite her bed, with a white, wooden face, black curly minute and hour hands, and a curly red second hand. The silver pendulum swung repeatedly back and forth, back and forth in a manner that was almost hypnotising.
Her bed had its head against the wall and poked out into the room with out looking clumsy. There was a desk that was scattered with papers that had half finished poems and twisted, dark drawings, and a folded laptop was also on the corner that she had managed to take from Juda without him noticing when he got a newer one. Some Shelves on the wall opposite was laded with books, all of them falling apart from age and being read so much. They all seemed to have dark front covers and extremely frightening blurbs. Anyone who had randomly happened to walk into Helena’s room would have probably got the impression that she was a dark, depressing, mildly screwed up girl.
They would have been completely right.
Helena had a great love for anything mildly frightening or gory. She saw the beauty in everything, in a very gothic way. She was an incredibly gifted artist in just about every sense of the word; having the power to move people to tears with her words, twist people’s stomach with her art, capture a perfect moment in a photograph. It was such a shame as well, she could have been amazing. With the right guidance and teaching then she could have been made for big things, but her parents refused to recognise her talent. The one time she had showed them her work- it was ages ago now. She could remember it quite well. It was a simple yet quite talented picture, showing a girl by a river holding a single black tulip, while, obviously unknown to the girl, shadows were standing behind her and hands reaching out to grab her. The girl looked so happy and childish and innocent, and Helena had filled in every little detail to perfection.
She had run downstairs when she had finished completing it, and thrust it proudly underneath the nose of her mother and father, who were sitting at the kitchen table with some somewhat important papers scattered in front of them. “Look what I draw!” Helena had gurgled with innocence that only a child could have and the pride that only a person who knew that they had done a job well done could have.
Any child- and Helena could recall that she had been about nine or ten at that time- should have been praised on this amazing piece of work. Any child should have been told how good it was and the parents should have been proud. But on the contrary, her father barely took one glance at it, before dismissing it as ‘a piece of crap’ and her mother started at it long and hard before giving Helena a smart slap across the face and saying that she was stupid enough as it is, and should be studying in the chance she could have at least some future, not drawing stupid pictures that people would pay not to see.
Their reaction hurt and haunted Helena more than they would ever know. Even now, a good many years later, she remembered every time her pencil or pen was set with love and care upon the page, she remembered it every time she completed a art work and felt that satisfaction of being able to call something hers, it was with her all the time. She had gotten over it now, but in the days that followed she had almost broken down completely, fearing that the only thing she thought she could do, she could not do at all.
Helena sighed into the silence that was disrupted only by the continuous and somewhat rather annoying and continues tick. Tock. Tick. Tock of the clock that just did not stop. Helena sighed heavily again, sat on her bed, pulling out a pencil and paper, she began to pour out all she was feeling onto the page.
Three hours later, Helena was just getting ready for the day ahead. Her blue spiral bound notebook that was half full and almost collapsing into a flurry of papers and pictures had had another couple of pages filled and Helena was happy with what she had drew. Anyone who randomly happened to flick through her notebook may have been extremely scared, and they probably would have thought that Helena was a strange and incredibly twisted little girl.
They would have been completely right.
Helena carelessly threw on a black long sleeved top and a pair of faded blue denim jeans, and she then put a hooded jumper on over the top- the town was usually cold at the best of times but in the bitter winter (as it was at the time) then the cold would turn your very flesh and blood into snow, and you may have ended up with icicles hanging from your hair or clothes. Most people were adapted, but as Helena very scarcely went out then the cold succeeded in knifing her like a murderer every time she felt it. Her immune system succeeded in letting her down a lot and she was a constant sufferer of a mild cold, which meant she had to continuously have a packet of tissues. Her sneezes were small and infrequent, but they made her eyes stream and nose run so much that it could be mistaken for her crying.
Helena pulled her stringy brown hair into a messy ponytail, and the usual few strands of hair escaped and fell in fine wisps, framing her face. Her eyeliner had smudged in the night and it gave the impression of dark shadows below her eyes, making her look even more tired and weary than she already was. She sighed and began to walk slowly down the stairs creeping carefully as to make sure not to wake anyone.
The plain, thinly worn dark blue slippers that she wore on her feet masked any unnecessary noise that she may have made as she made as she came to the bottom. The floor creaked loudly as she stepped back onto the normal flooring, and she winced and lifted her foot swiftly from the plush, almost unnaturally clean cream carpet. The walls were painted a cheery shade of yellow that smiled sickeningly to Helena. Pictures hung on the wall at various, precisely measured places, pictures painted by famous artists who were at the height of fashion or photos with perfect smiles hiding a cracked family. The photos shone with a glossiness that took all emotion away from the faces apart from the fake ones so obviously plastered on their faces. Helena, of course, was not featured in any of these. Her face would spoil the picture, her parents had said. They had also not trusted her with the camera to take photos, preferring to trust a complete stranger with their expensive and top of the range camera to take the pictures.
When Helena thought she looked respectable enough to face the day ahead, she walked down the final flight of stairs into the kitchen. Through the rippled glass panes in the door off the main corridor that entered into the living room she could see her mother sitting on the sofa. Her legs were curled underneath her and she was sitting in complete stillness and silence. The curtains were still drawn even though Helena could tell she had been there goodness only knew when. Her only movement was to frequently life the glass in her hand and to tip yet even more almost pure vodka down her throat, The bottle was about half full and sat comfortably by the sofa, and every so often she would reach down to refill her quickly emptying glass. Autumn watched her for a few minutes and was surprised to see tears flowing silently down her mothers face, leaving black streaks down her cheeks. Helena felt rather chocked, as though she had walked in on something private that she should not have seen.