Beyond Redemption

Chapter Twenty-Seven

"Sometimes you fall in love with the most unexpected person at the most unexpected time." -Unknown

Scarlet's POV

Usually, waking up to a warm, sunny day– rays of the sun beating down on my exposed skin and the feeling of contentment washing over me– was the highlight of my day. But this morning as the annoyingly bright light seeped through the curtains of the room the feeling of insipid dreariness fell upon me instead.

My eyes slowly fluttered open, only to be greeted with an insufferable headache. Not the ones that could be cured with an extra hour of sleep or a warm bath.

No, this migraine required a craniotomy to cease its incessant pain. Because it felt like I fell down the stairs, crashed in the ambulance on the way to the hospital only to be punched in the face by a wayward patient from the psych ward soon after my arrival.

Wincing at the brightness of the sun, I shielded my face with my overly sore hands.

I stood from the bed as slowly as possible trying to avoid making any sudden movements. But I immediately wished I hadn't because my legs felt like they were about to give out due to the soreness, my stomach was growling and the thudding in my head now felt like a balloon was under my cranium, slowly being inflated, the pressure mounting.

Somehow my eyes unblurred my surroundings and I didn't know where the fuck I was. This wasn't my room.

Shit. Shit. Shit. This is not my room. I panicked.

Many different, bizarre scenarios ran like a madman chasing nothing through the plains of my mind. Was I kidnapped? Did I break into someone's house?

Or worse did I... I almost broke my neck craning it to look if I was fully dressed. And to my relief, my clothes and dignity were still in tack. Now that that was out of the way I focused the little brain power I had at the moment to try and put two and two together as to how I ended up here last night.

My eyes wandered in confusion around the obvious bedroom. The room was very large and very spotless with hardly a speck of dust in sight. The walls were painted grey and they were bare of pictures and paintings. And the roof was super high with a black ceiling fan smacked in the center.

But then, for the first time since I woke up a smile graced my lips because when I looked to my right. I saw a wall housing book-filled shelves from top to bottom. It resembled a mini, old library with a ladder leaning against the shelf and a wide desk placed in front. Did I die and come to heaven?

Briefly averting my gaze, I spotted the king-size bed where I slept so comfortably last night, adorned with white silk sheets. The bed faced a floor-length window that stretched from one end of the room to the other, acting as a wall. I approached the window, carefully pushing the curtains to the side. It was hard to see anything but trees and nature, being so high up in the hills but it was still beautiful.

Closing the curtains, I ambled over to the mini-library I spotted earlier, taking slow and measured steps as not to fall. Pulling my index finger unhurriedly over each book, I perused the variations of genres, literature, and authors. From Foucault to Pratchett, Rowling to Dickens, Austen to Hoover, it was filled with every piece of literature you could dream of. My migraine, crippling hunger, and dry mouth were placed on the back burner as I placed my right foot onto the first step of the ladder, wanting to take a closer look at the spiderman comics I had glimpsed earlier.

But my movements were halted when I heard the slight creaking of the door opening. Startled, my left foot missed the second rung and I felt my body drift backward before feeling the hardness of the floor beneath me. Luckily I wasn't too far up on the ladder to cause a worse drop but I received a good enough fall to cause my already wicked headache to hurt even more.