Panic Room

Part one; the sixth

I'm introducing a new character, Luna's mother, who I kind of based off of my own mom. If anyone has any suggestions to add to her character, I would be more than happy to hear them!

Saturday; 1998; Luna; Luna's house; 19:11 pm

As Luna walked back into the house, her mother caught up with her.

"Luna, honey, wait, what happened, where did you run off to so suddenly just now, and what on earth happened to your jeans and jacket. Luna look at your knees!" Luna looked down and saw that her knees were raw and bloody from her fall. She tried to shake her mother off as she steered Luna into the bathroom that resided just off the landing. Luna struggled against her mother's grip but she was no match for her mother's strength and eventually was frogmarched into the bathroom where her mother sat her down next to the sink, reached into the medicine cabinet for the dettol, applied some on a strip of gauze and pressed it to Luna's cut leg.

Luna felt pain shoot up when the antiseptic hit her fresh cut, but after a minute or so, the pain ebbed away. Luna's mother reached into the cabinet again and pulled out a panado pill and a glass. She filled the glass with water from the tap and pushed it into Luna's hand. Luna took the pill and felt the bitter substance dissolving in her throat. She knew that soon the pain in her limbs would fade like the pain that had forced itself into her body had faded after her mother had removed the dettol-soaked piece of gauze from her leg. Luna leaped off the counter but her mother raised a hand to stop her.

"Not so fast young lady." Her mother said, and Luna froze where she stood. Her mother put her back on the counter and applied dettol to the cuts on her other knee and elbows. Luna sat patiently until her mother was finished and then she once again stood up to leave. This time, her mother did not stop her and Luna hobbled out of the bathroom and into her bedroom where she sat down on her bed and fell backward onto her pillows slipping into unconsciousness.

When Luna awoke in the morning, she stood up and felt a crackling sensation on her elbows and knees. Luna looked down and saw large, reddish-black scabs covering them. Luna let out a sigh as what had happened the previous day came back to her. She felt ashamed that she had gone running to find a snake, a snake of all things, on the evidence of a fictional book. Luna rolled over, her face pushed into her pillow and let out another sigh. Then, strangely enough, Luna began to laugh.

She laughed and laughed until her sides hurt and tears rolled down her cheeks. Luna's mother walked in and asked Luna why she was giggling like a happy monkey. This sent Luna into another fit of laughter and after a while her mother joined in. Luna had a beautiful laugh. It was a clean and unburdened sound that rang through one's ears like church bells. When Luna and her mother had controlled their laughter and only let out the occasional giggling hiccup, Luna paused for a second.

She thought of how silly it had been to go running off to find a snake, on the hunch that it would be in the same place that it had been that afternoon and on the impulse that the snake would somehow turn into a man. But the snake had been there. It had come to her as though it had been waiting for her to appear. It had not turned into a man, but hadn't Luna thought that she had seen the eyes of a man staring out at her from the snake's face? The snake had looked so wise, was it possible that she had not picked that particular book by accident? Was it possible that she was supposed to find it and go looking for the snake? And then it came to Luna.

"The card!" Luna cried and her mother looked up, startled. "The card!" She leaped off her bed, running to the kitchen door, opening it and letting it slam behind her. Luna hurtled down the street, still in her night clothes, ignoring the stares and shouts of the people that had come out of the neighbouring houses to watch her. 

Luna ran headlong down the street, rounding corners with a deliberate force. Luna came to the orange leaved bush that she had come to yesterday, and scanned the sidewalk for a sign of the white card that had come out of the snake's throat. Luna searched and searched but she could not find it. She was turning to go when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw it. Stuck in a sewer grate was the little white card, flapping in the breeze. Luna made a beeline for it and snatched it out of the grate with relish. She spun around and heard the screech of brakes and the happy feeling drained out of her like water from a sink.

A car was moving toward her extremely quickly, and before she could do so much as utter a cry of shock, it struck her. Luna went flying into the air, her brand new glasses falling from her face and her auburn hair streaming out behind her. Luna thought crazily for a second, 'I can fly,' before reality came back and she was plummeting toward the earth. Luna let out a shriek that rang out through the day as she landed in a crumpled heap on the ground and the world went black.