"Thank you!" Victoria waves to the man, a bag filled with vegetables in her hands. She balances them, sifting one bag into one hand, while letting another rest where it is until the weight of them is equal enough for the woman to carry. She has a slight limp, putting more strain on the left leg as the knee protests with a jab of pain. She ignores it for the most part, it's been like this for nearly two years now and she's gotten used to it.
She smiles wide at the gate keeper who opens the hotel door for her and shakes her head when the young man meant to carry the baggage tries to take her bags for himself. She can handle it. She takes her time getting to her small apartment-like room, swinging the bags back and forth.
Victoria lets go of the bags in one hand, letting them gently lay on the floor and takes out her key card. She swipes it over and the door clicks. She pushes the handle down, opening the door widely as she bends to get the other bags back in her hand, hooking one foot around the edge of the door to slam it closed behind her as she goes. She is whistling all the way to the small kitchenette adjacent to her bedroom.
The next set of movements is fast and seemingly coordinated as she takes the items out, spreading them onto the table. She then takes each one and puts it in its rightful place, filling her refrigerator and packing the small pantry. She nods to herself, pleased with her work. She is about to leave - her show is starting in five minutes - when she quickly turns around, takes a tomato, washes it under a powerful stream of water. She falls onto the couch, remote in one hand, tomato in the other and turns the TV on. It's the intro playing - talking about what has happened in the previous episode or whatnot, she's seen them all before - as she plops up her feet onto the coffee table and bites into the vegetable. The sharp, acidic juice fills her mouth, the soft, fleshy bit giving way under her teeth and she lets a small moan at the taste. She's lost to the outside world for the next forty minutes.
The final words of the main character are fading when Victoria hears a stumble and a crash in the hallway. She doesn't worry; it's probably just the new maid - a clumsy little thing, shy - but the noise startled her. Her heart is still pounding and her breath is coming sharper in her own ears when a second crash comes.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, ma'am! I didn't mean- "
"You had better be sorry, girl!" Victoria recognizes the deep female voice as her neighbors. Not that they are really neighbors seeing as they are situated inside a hotel, but it is the person next door from her. Vitoria struggles to remember the name, tousling her light brown nearly golden hair with her fingers. She can't.
She jumps up and rushes to the door when the sound of palm hitting skin reaches her ears. While the maid has been pretty dangerous around breakable things it is by no means a reason for getting slapped. Her neighbor is a real piece of work, the woman decides resolutely.
Swinging the door open, the blonde woman surprises the other two outside. Victoria smiles benignly, but her eyes have darkened, a deep bleeding shade of scarlet, that betrays the underlying anger. Her neighbor steps back.
"Ma'am, I apologize for the commotion. It is my fault, I-"
"No, it's fine. It really wasn't. I'll deal with this." The maid has a swollen cheek, reddened in the shape of a palm, and a small trickle of blood from her lip. Her eyes are covered in a sheen of tears and she is biting into her split lip as if to stop them from falling. She is failing, fast, and so when Victoria dismisses her once more, the maid walks away swiftly, halfway down the hallway falling into a run. Victoria never takes her eyes off of the older woman.
"What do you think you're doing, young lady?"
The blonde scoffs at the other, noting with disdain that the old hag is dyed an awful shade of violet - bits of gray still peeking through at the crown of her head - and that the glare fixed on her is nowhere near powerful enough due to a clear layer of conjunctivitis. Victoria wants nothing more than to tell her where she can shove her "young lady", but she bites the inside of her cheek to stop the words. She turns her gaze to the now empty hallway.
"What did she do this time?"
"Broke two vases just outside my door when I was coming back from my afternoon walk."
Victoria nods, seeing the destruction for the first time. There are indeed shards from the, apparently, two vases all over the floor, some bigger than other. A shake of her head lifts the corners of her mouth. She likes the maid. She likes the chaos that seems to follow her.
"And that gave you the right to assault her?" the smile fades with the words coming out of her mouth. "She will have a bruise and she already has a split lip. She can press charges. She should press charges."
"Please." The fury scowls. "It will be her word against mine. She probably is already under observation with the frankly atrocious skills she has displayed."
"You're wrong." And she turns on her heel, the door to her room closing with a soft click. If she could, she'd take all these people - the ones thinking they're better than everyone, the ones that use violence to be heard - and throw them in a fiery pit. She sometimes imagines being on its edge and hearing their screams echo around her, caressing her ears as she laughs. Maybe there is something wrong with her too, she thinks after. Not like she cares enough to be worried, her time is wasting as it is.
She leans against the door, sagging her full weight into the metal. Her fists remain by her sides, slowly clenching, tighter and tighter and tighter, until she can feel her nails biting into the palms. She closes her eyes, counting the seconds as she begins heaving. Her heart sends a sharp impulse throughout her body, her breath rapidly forcing her chest to expand and soften. She wants to sob, but she can't make a sound, her voice stifled under the force of the mounting panic. Victoria blinks and almost shouts when she sees bleak walls and hears thudding steps for a fraction of a second. Air pushing inside and out of her faster, her ears pounding - a tunnel of noise, heartbeat and stuttering breath - and she sways. Steeling herself against the vertigo that is sure to overwhelm her, she forces her eyes open. Scarlet irises dart around the room, from one corner to the next, from the open window to the bathroom door to the kitchen and the bed. She finds nothing, no one.
A sigh. A long exhale. A shake of head. A step forward. She falls to her knees, the right one protesting under the strain, pulses of pain traveling from it up to the front most of her mind. She leans back and stumbles to sit on her ass, legs sprawling before her.
The blonde's hands clasp the material of her top at the sides, hugging her torso into herself. She bows her head, grits her teeth and focuses on her breathing. She is trembling, a shaking mass of limbs. When she closes her eyes next all she can see is the maid's blood and her cheek, puffy and pink from the hit it received. She shudders. She stays there, on the floor in front of the door, gently rocking with images of blood and suffering flashing through her mind for nearly an hour. Her panic has decreased, but she can't find the strength to get back up yet. When she does, it is to turn off the TV and lay in bed. Victoria allows sleep to claim her.
The sun blinds her in the morning, light streaming through the open window. A gentle, cold breeze washes over her body causing shivers and she wonders where the sheet went. An alarm blasts off next to her.
"Ugh, shut the hell up!" she groans, burying her head under the pillows and wiggling in the bed. She can't fall asleep though so she sits up, one pillow crashing onto the floor rather violently. She blinks the sleep away, sharp scarlet eyes scanning the room lazily. She yawns, rubs her chin and plops back down onto the mattress, an arm strewn over her forehead.
Her head shifts until she can see through the window, a white spot where the sun is in the sky. Her heart speeds up at the sight, mind filled with yells, orders, pain and 'wake up, demon'. She inhales deeply, closing her eyes, counting the seconds. She's at 14 when the door of the hag next door slams closed. She smiles to herself. Good riddance! The alarm gives another round of noise.
"Fine! I'm up!" it takes thirty more minutes until she finds her way into the shower. When she finishes brushing her teeth, untangling the mane her hair turns into every morning and putting on some lip gloss to conceal the reddened abused flesh of her lower lip, the sun has already moved higher up the horizon. She doesn't eat breakfast, but she does drink a glass of chocolate milk. Enjoy the little things or some other nonsense like that.
"Bye!" she waves at the clerk, skipping past him. She fishes out a key from her back pocket and opens the lock keeping her motorbike chained. As the engine roars to life, she grins.
YOU ARE READING
Purified by Fire
ParanormalVictoria was going to spend the rest of her life running. This was something she knew, like how she knew her bike was the best and forests sucked. But she never expected to end up trapped in a mansion with a young couple, not with her worst enemies...
