When Clyde Parker, the wayward son and the rotten-apple of the Parker family-tree, storms his way back into Avery Fields, he sets out a flurry of butterfly effect in Dawn Marshal's life.
...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
PHANTOM-BOY, EMPTY EYES and the color green, she suddenly had the urge to hurl down the contents of her gut on the pristine marble floor of the Parker Manor. She doubted Rosa, who'd perhaps devoted hours to scrubbing the floors clean would like her very much afterwards.
She could feel it festering inside her - the crippling anxiety, sweaty palms, shaky hands, riveting thoughts, the bile rising up her oesophagus. And the pit inside her stomach was no longer a pit, it was a six feet deep trench dug up on earth, a cobbled grave. Her stomach twisted and coiled, her heart almost lurched up her throat. She needed to get away.
"I need to use the restroom...Can you tell me where it is?" She smiled weakly at Caleb all the while her insides were tearing themselves apart like ravenous wolves feasting on a chunk of flesh.
"How about I take you there instead?" He furrowed his eyebrows together, concerned.
"Oh don't trouble yourself, Caleb. I will be fine on my own." She reached out to smooth the folds between his eyebrows, "Don't you worry about me." She smiled and hoped he'd believe her.
•°•°•
Her palms curled around the edge of the ceramic washbasin, her knuckles paling. Water gushed down the faucet and she splashed plenty on her face, slapped her pale cheeks to color, all the while chanting all the numbers in pi under her breathe. The familiarity of those words felt a bit like home to her, without Caleb's pretty green eyes serenading around her, she felt like she could breathe again.
The Guinness World Record for the highest numbers in pi to be memorized is 67890 recited by Lu Chao, while Dawn Marshal was no Lu Chao, still her fascination for pi was consistent throughout middle school that was before she learned that pi was an irrational number and therefore infinite and Dawn Marshal was smart enough to not chase rainbows. Then those numbers she'd memorized by heart, all 39850 of them, turned into a silent-prayer she chanted under her breathe to cope with panic attacks.
She wiped her face in a linen towel which smelt like five-star-hotel. If only she could find a pillow to scream into, or shred to pieces with a pair of scissors or to smother herself with. Or perhaps for all of the above. With that pleasant thought, she departed from the over-the-top fancy guest-restroom. Her eyes lingered on the crystal chandelier that too was the show-stopper for the restroom. She shouldn't have put it past the Parkers to have a chandelier in their guest washroom.
The townsfolk often joked about the Parker's wiping their asses with 24K gold-foil toilet paper. Well after all she has witnessed today from the chandeliers and fountains and the glass spiral staircase, she wouldn't really put that wild possibility past them either. Her dirty old sneakers which never could hold a candle to the floors of this chateau, squelched on the carpeted floor. The second floor of the manor almost resembled a hotel lobby.
At least, they didn't have their powder-rooms carpeted. Carpeted Bathroom- it sounded like the title of a 'creepypasta' novel. She shuddered at the mere thought.
