This Unconventional Kind of Love

Chapter 2: The New Assistant

Copyright © 2020, Nikki B. Lourie if you are reading this work on any other domain than Wattpad, it has been plagiarized. 

Janessa had agreed to attend the interview, but sneaking out of the house to get there had proven to be difficult. She was so stressed that she was frequently losing control of her muscular functions—a symptom of her type 1 narcolepsy—and finding herself waking up in various rooms of the house. Her mother was home today, and although it was wrong, she hoped there was a medical emergency that would let her have a moment of freedom to escape. Luckily, her father was judging a capital murder trial and he would be too preoccupied to stand watch.

It was much easier for Janessa to sneak off when only one of her parental units were home. Together, they were a united front so strong that even a door creaking open would put them on edge. "How are you feeling, honey?" her mother probed, lifting her daughter's right and then left arm. Janessa groaned, wrestling her limbs away, sitting up in the plush, purple velvet settee in her parents' study.

She had been on her way to the backyard when she had fallen asleep. Her excuse would have been that she had had an episode while walking in the gardens. Their house and yard were big enough. After the middle school incident, her parents had packed up their quaint house and moved her to a more secluded area in the black community. The house used to be frequented by the previous governor but had been sitting barren for three years before the Iros became its new occupants. The place was made to entertain. Six bedrooms alone on the second floor, three oversized bathrooms, a large sauna in a closed-off room on the rooftop which Janessa wasn't allowed to use on her own, and another three bedrooms, a study, and a library on the first floor.

Their living room alone was large enough to hold family gatherings, which they often did every other Christmas or Thanksgiving, but that was the extent of the company Janessa was able to be with. Not that it mattered, even her own relatives thought that she was a freak. Her cousins often made fun of her for her condition, and when that became old enough, she would find herself awakening to figures drawn on her face or dressed in different costumes. Eventually, her parents had a big falling out with their siblings because of it and it took years for them to come around. Matters only got worse in the first two years of middle school. They were overbearing and overprotective. Janessa often contemplated suicide, she tried it once, slashing her wrists, but it was too painful.

She was left with a thin, raised line on both of her wrists. It was forever a reminder of the lengths she had tried to go to escape her prison. She was looking for relief, but her suicidal stunt only made her parents increase their security. Utensils were switched to baby thick plastics and anything glass related was exchanged for plastic cups. She couldn't use knives and was only allowed to open cans with parental supervision. Mirrors were taken away except for in the bathrooms, and any form of pills was locked away in safes. Ropes and loose materials were discarded, curtains removed and strings cut off...her parents had thought of everything except letting her be a normal child again.

To this day, Janessa couldn't bear to be in a room without curtains. It made her skin itch and brought back memories she didn't want to conjure up again. "You're up again," her mother sighed, softly caressing her long hair.

Janessa moaned, wishing that she could get a handle on her condition. Drugs could easily remedy it all, and after her parents gradually began to loosen the tight ropes keeping her imprisoned once they learned that she was no longer a risk to herself, they had tried the medication route. But the side effects were too taxing on her body. Either they caused her to suffer from insomnia which in itself was wild, now having to combat narcolepsy in the day and insomnia at night. Or she would experience crippling digestive problems and migraines. The light side effects ranged from dry mouth and lightheadedness to bedwetting and sleepwalking.