Book Two, Thirteen Reasons To Forget You (Chose Your Own Adventure.)

Page 7

Maddie slipped into her safe house. After checking for bugs she collapsed into bed, exhausted. She was asleep in seconds. Maddie had made it across the border and then had taken a hitchhiking ticket to Sweden. After evading a S.H.I.E.L.D. patrol, she had made it safely to her safe house, running on two hours of sleep in two days. Maddie had been through worse.  

The girl woke from her nap, felling refreshed. The time on her alarm clock said 4:50 pm. Maddie realized she had been sleeping for almost the entire day. She rubbed her bleary eyes and padded to the kitchen, wanting to find something to eat. 

Maddie ate an early supper of lasagna. It didn't take long until she was out, roaming the streets, getting to know them better in case she had to make a sudden escape. Beside's the fresh air helped clear her mind. Small snowflakes drifted lazily down from the sky, and the streets where piled with huge piles of snow along the sides. It was probably around negative 17 degrees out, but it didn't feel that cold out. 

 A few people where out on their daily walk. The good thing about Sweden was that people kept their heads down and they minded their own business. Maddie noticed a couple talking as they walked, heads closer together. The woman laughed at something the man said, and Maddie abruptly turned down a random street, swallowing the sudden lump in her throat. 

She refused to cry as her fingers drifted to her mask. She slipped them under the mask, feeling the healing wounds. Her finger's where icy cold from the cool temperature and she shivered as they slid along her forming scars.

 Her wounds where almost all the way healed, and she was expecting the stitches to come out any day now. Maddie knew she was going to hate taking them out herself. It would just be another reminder of the ways he had hurt her. She wanted to hurt someone.

 Violence was the only way she knew, and it was becoming more and more apparent every day. The assassin was tempted to take on a job, to start as a freelancer in Sweden. Maddie roughly put the thought from her mind. She needed something to distract her, but not senseless killing.

Maddie went back to her house. She didn't need to become unstable. Not now. It was 8:30 by the time Maddie got back, and darkness had fallen over this part of the world. The teenager punched a hole in the wall. Her anger and pain overflowing, she kicked the couch too. Then she proceeded to punch another hole in the wall. She was cursing in 32 different languages as tears started to run down her face. 

The skin on her knuckles had been ripped away as she punched the wall a few more times. She wasn't content so she threw a glass at the wall too. The shattering noise of glass did nothing to ease her pain. Neither did seeing said glass explode into a million shards, scattering across the floor like dangerous gems. She ripped her mask off as it suddenly became hard to breath. Her hands went to her chest as it felt like the weight of the world was coming to rest squarely on her chest, making it impossible to breath. 

The strength in Maddie's legs gave out and she collapsed to the kitchen floor, heaving for air. She leaned against the counter, staring blindly at the glittering glass shards. She couldn't hold back her emotions anymore, and she screamed. 

The inhuman noise was muffled by her wrist. Tears flowed down her cheeks as the full extent of everything hit her. It was bad enough that he had tried to kill her, scarring her badly in the process, but she had killed him. Now, his bloody, broken body came to mind and she punched the counter violently, over and over again. Her hands soon started to bleed, but she couldn't feel the physical pain, all she felt was the huge, crushing weight of her emotions.