𝑷𝑳𝑨𝒀𝑬𝑹 ᶠᵒʳ ᵃ 𝑩𝑶𝑺𝑺

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

It was strange how the utterance of a single name could throw me back  into a dark ocean that took me years to even be able to barely breathe. Her name was enough to halt everything within me, It was strong enough to make my heartbeat rise and my legs wobble.

I knew the chance of the girl being the real Nicole was highly improbable,    yet I still couldn't stop shaking. Even though I knew she couldn't be the Nicole I knew, the tiniest possibility that she could be her was something that made my blood run cold.

I gripped tight on to my right hand to stop my hands from shaking while repeatedly wiping my hands alternatively on my skirt to dry my sweaty palms. Oddly enough, Jason left the elevator on 33th floor without noticing anything that could lead him to believe I was going into a full blown panic attack. 

Please, just not here.

I tried to think of happy thoughts just like how my childhood therapist Mr.Holmes taught me. I thought about  the time I made cake with my mom for my 6th birthday. I thought about how we played around with the icing and ended up ruining the birthday cake we made. This memory actually made me crack a painful smile despite my situation.

Do I have to go through this every time her name comes up? When will this ever end?

As the pain intensified, I lost my way to the happy memories and bad thoughts plagued my mind as if they were waiting for the right moment to get hold of me. As if I was strapped to a chair with a big screen opened in front of me, I watched the all too familiar movie over,and over,and, over again.

Flashback

After nearly two years of being in therapy since I first came to the orphanage, I waved a shy hello to Nicole who at that time was also eleven years old. That hello was my first ever sign of communication I willingly did ever since I came to the orphanage when I was 9.

After that we became close, she helped me with homework and we ate our food together, we spent time together. To me, she was my first ever friend in the orphanage while the other kids never really acknowledged that I even existed. She was loved by everyone and was bound to be adopted because she was such a smart kid.

She used to tell me that she was the sun while I was the rain and together we will create a rainbow. That was her way of saying,' we are opposites but we can make this friendship work.' I believed in our friendship more than anything I ever believed in.

She told me she had something special planned for my birthday after she nagged me for hours about to tell her when my birthday was. The perk of being the favourite kid in the orphanage was that she smooth talked anyone to get her what she wanted. That day it was my therapist.

Thus, she convinced him to get a birthday cake made for me and invited him to come with his daughter Katherine who was one year older than us. She also invited her friends and we all gathered at the bench near the oak tree that was located in the orphanage.

She was very excited that day like she couldn't wait till the program could be started. She brought the cake that was covered then, and gathered the gifts at one place. Because Katherine suggested that this time we do things differently, they sang me Happy birthday song first and then open the box that covered  the cake that Nicole had personally gotten made for my birthday.

The writing on the cake was what made me motionless and pale. It said,' Happy Birthday Murderer' . I couldn't believe my eyes,No, I didn't want to believe that what I saw was real. I wished then that I was just in a nightmare I could wake up from. I couldn't believe that she of all people played me like that. I could never in a million years think that Nicole could be this evil,that she would go to this length to tell me that I was nothing but my mother's killer.

I failed to see her devil's horn she hid behind her innocent and caring angelic self. At that time, all I could do was stare in disbelief at the scene that was unfolding in front of me. I just grabbed the gift that read 'from nicole' and fleed from the place. After going to my room I opened the gift trying so hard not to break down.

I thought that if someone had messed with the cake then her gift would reveal that she was being framed. But it was poor me just giving excuses for demonic Nicole. Inside the gift wrapper was a little red knife with a note written in her handwriting.

I'm doing you a favor by giving you this knife, so you can bleed to death like your mom, crazy murderer.

That was the day I stopped trusting people. That was the day I stopped having friends. That was the day I attempted my first suicide. That was the day that started chaos on my already complicated life. That was the day that I realized that the sun and the rain never really made a rainbow, they fought for dominance over one another.

Flashback ends

Before the horrible movie replayed itself, my knees buckled and I collapsed ,unable to keep up with the full blown panic attack I was having. But I didn't fall to the ground, I fell into the hands of a man that has gotten into the elevator amidst my panic attack whose face I couldn't see because of my blurry vision and my tear stained eyes.