Clair

            Clair slowly opened her eyes. Dried make up and a fuzzy head tried to keep them closed. Slowly she put a hand to her head. What happened? It was hard to remember anything at all. Her body didn’t want to cooperate either. All her muscles felt slow and cramped. What happened? Slowly thought and memory came back to her.

            She could remember running out of a Café. Her heart and mind so conflicted she didn’t know what to do. She had left him there, all alone. She was mad at herself so disgusted that she could do anything like that. She was sure that he liked her, and she liked him, she just wasn’t sure she liked him like that.

Sometimes it was so hard finding someone that liked you for you and not because they thought you were beautiful and wanted something. People always seemed to like her just because she was pretty. Soon she got to the point where she played that part because it was easy. Then William had come along. He had never meet her, he didn’t want anything form her except to talk. She started to like him just for that. Then he had told her to be true to herself, to be her own person. She could feel herself falling in love with William when he told her that. She had drawn strength from his words and changed her life. She changed, and promised herself that she wouldn’t do something just because it was easier that way.

Then she had broken that promise to herself that day that she had found out it was him. How could it be Hod? Why was it Hod? He didn’t even like her. Did he? She thought of him as a friend, especially since they had hung out so much over the summer. Did he think of her as a friend? He had never asked her out, held her hand or tried to kiss her. All the things that other guys had done. Did he know it was her? Had he done all of this just so he could make fun of her? Or make her go out with him? But he said he didn’t know her. Was he lying? It wouldn’t have been the first time a guy had lied to her to get what he wanted. These thoughts and thousands like it rushed through her head as she stared down at Hod. How much time had passed? She didn’t know. Hod turned his head to speak to her and Clair realized she didn’t know what to say. She panicked and run. She ran away leaving him there alone without an explanation, without even telling him it was her. Her only consolidation was that he was blind and hadn’t known it was her.

Since that day she hadn’t been able to talk to him. She couldn’t talk to William because she was too ashamed. She couldn’t talk to Hod because she felt to embarrassed. She wanted to talk to him and tell him that she was Elisabeth. But every time she was about to he would look at her with those pale blue eyes that almost looked like snow, and she couldn’t. She couldn’t ruin what they had. Out of all her friends she was sure that he treated her like everyone else, like normal. He didn’t act deferent around her like most guys did because she was pretty. How could she ruin that?

Clair thoughts and memories started coming back to her faster now. Avoiding Hod so she didn’t have to feel guilty. Driving down to walking by the water in English Bay. She tried to figure out what to do with Hod. She knew that if she didn’t nothing she would lose him. For some reason that made her terribly dejected. That’s why she didn’t realize until too late the filthy rag over her mouth and a sharp pain to the back of her head and everything going black.

She sat up suddenly, and immediately regretted it. The pain rushed back and made her put both her hands to her head. Her vision had gone bleary and she couldn’t see anything. When it came back she wished it hadn’t. She was laying on a pile of filthy cloths. Like someone had taken a dirty laundry basket dumped it in a pig pin and then dumped it in here and her on top of it. She was in some type of crude cage, made from everything imaginable. Wood 4x4 were nailed to bent bikes. A broken door was connected to a chain link fence and connected to a box create. There was also a car bumper complete with a car door and the hood from yet another car. They all had a dirty wet feel to them as if they had all spent time at the bottom of the harbor. There were so many holes through the whole structure that it was easy to see out of it. Sadly none of the holes was big enough to even attempt crawling through.

Slowly she turned her head to look all around her and jumped to the other side of the cage as far and fast as she could from where she had been sitting. Staring at her though a hole was what looked to be the giant face of a frog. When it saw her jump and move back at gave a laughing crock. It lips pulled away from its mouth reviling row upon row of shark like teeth. Tusks protruded from the sides of its mouth. It had no neck on a thin body with all the appendages to long. Its skin was gray blue and looked as if it couldn’t decide if it wanted to be slimy and leathery or scaly like a fish. Seaweed hung from its head like hair and of its back and shoulders. Trash an odds and ends stuck in and out of the seaweed. Clair was surprised she was still conscious, the creature smelled like 3 month dead fish. It had a loincloth made from roughly sown together cloths and holding the whole thing up was a grisly looking belt made out of skulls, some of them human.

“Haha, yep yep. My pretty. Shiny pretty awake. You up?” the thing said in a throaty voice. “You hungry, you eat now.”