Winter's Fury - Volume Two of The Saga of the Twelves (51 page)

Kimmy, what…?
A fragmented though lost in silence made horrible
with apprehension.

“
Jesus Christ, Kimberly.”
Hyun looked at her with a deepening scowl, her brain on fire.
“What’s going on? What do I not know?”

Kimberly let out a
fluttering sigh as though the action was beyond her control. She
blinked her eyes in rapid succession, shedding tears. “He trapped
me, Hyun…,” was all she managed before a strangled cry stifled
whatever else she was going to say.

“
What the hell do you
mean? How did he trap you?” Her confusion turned to protective
concern.

Kimberly was beginning to
sob with small, helpless groans, welling up from somewhere deep
inside. “He… h-he… he-e-e got real high one d-day a-about a year
and a ha-ha-half ago. He said he was tired of w-wa-waiting for me
to g-get the courage. He s-s-said he wanted to… y-yo-you know… to…
to b-be with me…”

“
My god, Kim, you were
only thirteen then, what the fu -.”

“
I know,
Hyun!”
She was not about to stop
now.

Somehow Hyun knew this and
shut her mouth.

“
I know, bu-but he smelled
so bad and looked like fu-fu-fu-fucking shit, and I was still a
vur-virgin, so I said no.”

Oh my god! No Kimberly!
No. No. No. Nonononononono! I don’t think I can stand
this!

The Emo teen began to sob
again. It looked as though she could not go on, but after a few
huge breathes, she found her voice. “H-h-h-he got mad at me. He hit
m-me w-w-with his fists. He knocked me down. I was s-s-so-so
stunned. I-I… I didn’t know what w-wa-was happening until I
felt-t-t him yank down my je-jeans…”

Hyun came off the lawn
chair. Her knees struck the carpeted floor, but it did not register
– her eyes, her mind, her body, her soul were all for
Kimberly.

“…
I-I-I promise, Hyun! I
tried t-to-to fight him. But, my head was p-pounding an-an-and he
was too strong-g-g. I tried, Hyun. I promise I did. It didn’t
mah-ter-r…, th-though. He raped me on the floor of his bro-th-hers
apartment. He turn-ned me-me into tr-tr-trash… He made me
worth-l-le-less!” She cried in earnest then and could not continue.
Her vile secret was out and with it came an absolute deluge of
tears.

Hyun could almost feel the
shame exuding from the girl in one palatable wave after another. It
pissed her off. “You have nothing to be ashamed of, Kimberly. It
was his fault not yours. He is the one to blame, not you!” she said
as she surged forward, ignoring the tearing sensations, searing
across her back. She was oblivious to the pain. Kimberly needed
her. She surrounded the other girl with her arms, trying to hug as
much of her as she could, holding her tight, though her back
protested.

Kimberly continued to cry.
Her own arms reached up and about Hyun, clinging onto her for dear
life as if she was trying to keep from drowning. “Ever since
th-then, I felt li-li-like I was nothing. So, I just let him do
wa-whatever-er,” she mumbled into Hyun’s shoulder.

“
If we ever get back home,
Kimberly…” It was pointless to say the rest. There was no
need.

They stayed like that for
more minutes than Hyun cared to count, let alone remember.
Clutching at each other, rebuilding some of what they'd lost, Hyun
was suddenly filled with despair. She began to cry as well. Her own
guilt multiplied by the second. She began to understand the real
reason why her one-time friend had changed so much over the last
two years. She was not the selfish bitch that Hyun made her out to
be. She was not the heartless, shameless wretch. She was not some
embittered teen who let her boyfriend beat up on some kid four
years younger and fifty pounds lighter than him. She was not the
person who did not care about anyone or anything. She was not the
drugged out waste everyone thought she was. She was not the girl
who was so stuck on her boyfriend, nothing else mattered. She was
Kimberly –
Kimmy
- caught up in things that had spiraled so horribly out of
control she had lost herself. She was lost. She forgot the mettle
that forged who and what she was. She was a…

…
victim?

Oh my god what have I
done?

The word hit Hyun like the
surging waters of a tsunami. It was a wave of loathing that kept
getting deeper and stronger with every passing second. It so thick
with debris and tertiary thoughts, the constant bombardment itself
was just too much to comprehend. It was too much to process. All
she could do was cry. Cry for the innocence her friend had once
possessed. Cry for all the time they had lost between them. Cry at
the fact she felt like a complete turd for not being able to see
through all the bullshit. Cry for not being intuitive enough, brave
enough, strong enough to help her friend. All she could do, all she
could manage, all she could muster were tears. She would weep for
Kim, weep for -.

That was when she felt it,
a kind of deep, bone-warming sensation. First on her back, then
throughout her entire body, and then (she would have sworn to God
himself) she felt it in the nucleus that made her, her.

It was a pulsing, like the
beat of tiny, second heart. It was a small thrumming of such
efficiency and economy it rocked her from the top of her head to
the soft soles of her feet. Before it, every fiber of negativity,
remorse, self-incrimination, sorrow, heartache and a million other
dirty, rotten things she had held in the centermost recesses of her
spirit, melted away. They simply were no more. Though she did not
know it at the time, though her ears heard every single utterance,
her mind did not register a single word. The rapture had come for
her and she basked in the pure goodness of what had engulfed her
world. She was oblivious in every sense of the word.

If she had not been in
such a state of overwhelming change, she would have felt the small
hand on her back and heard the tiny voice speaking.

Maybe she would have seen
the soft, golden light surrounding her and Kimberly both. If she
had, it would've been as if the sun itself had fallen from the sky
and blanketed them in its’ brilliant corona.

It was heaven.

Of that she was
sure.

~~~~~~~<<<
ᴥ
>>>~~~~~~~

~ 29 ~

Injury

Day Four, Sunday, 5:01
pm…

Elena could not remember
the last time she felt as relaxed and stress-free as she did at
that moment. Nothing could better. Things being what they were,
sitting on the air mattresses with Mikalah and Louis, playing with
all their newfound toys was the best. The ability to have fun -
pure and simple fun - by itself was like Christmas, a holiday they
would not celebrate this year. There was no way. They would not be
back home in time.

It was still a small
consolation that all the toys, like everything else, had transmuted
with the store. Now, they were for her and Louis and Mikalah to
play with. Every single one of them, and that was good enough to
make her feel happy, if only for a while.

There were so
many!

There were Lego building
blocks of every imaginable type. There were Bionicles, Barbie
dolls, dollhouses, Magnetiks, iDogs and Robo-Raptors, and toy
animals both stuffed and plastic. There were Hot Wheels by the
thousands. There was just about action figure ever made, complete
with their complimentary accessories. They could play for days and
still not play with the same thing twice. It did not matter if
there was no electricity running through the store. There were so
many batteries lying about that they could play with just about
every toy in the place!

For now though, they were
playing with the action figures. They were not playing anything
specific, not even following any sort of plan or dialogue or set of
rules or theme. Rather, they played at whatever came to mind, at
whatever made their imaginations run wild. What else would one do
while playing with Transformers, Bionicles, WWE, Bakugan, DC and
Marvel, even Star Wars action figures all at once? One would have
to play along some distorted, unconventional storyline,
right?

Sure!

More than once, all three
of them had laughed aloud at the funny scenarios they were
inventing. The storyline of their game changed every time they
introduced one arch-type after another. They each added to the plot
with such wild convolutions, it was amazing they could keep at it.
Each time they did this, they increased the side-stories and
intrigues three-fold. To anyone older than twelve years of age, it
would have been mindboggling.

Louis spoke, scattering
Elena’s thoughts.

“
Hey do you guys want to
meet Optimus Prime’s not so powerful and hesitant younger brother?”
he asked with an overdone look of seriousness on his face. It made
him look comical.

“
Sure,” replied
Mikalah.

Elena only nodded at the
boy.

He pulled a small, beat-up
looking robot from somewhere behind him. Louis announced, “Hello, I
am Primarily Optimistic,” in a squeaky, pathetic voice.

Elena could not help but
laugh. She buried her face in one of the open sleeping bags as
tears of mirth welled up in her eyes. Her chest began to hurt from
the exertion. Yet, she could not stop laughing. She could hear the
others laughing alongside her, giggling as much at her as they were
at Louis’s jibe. It seemed like a full minute later when she picked
herself up from the soft bedding and glanced over at her two
companions. They were still giggling across from her.

“
Louis, you are so funny.
You made me cry,” choked Elena through bubbling rushes of laughter,
still impeding her ability to speak.

There was a mischievous
glimmer in Louis eyes as he glanced between the two sisters. Then,
he broke off into a short fit of laughter himself. “You liked that
one, huh?”

“
Yup, that was funny,”
chimed-in Elena’s sister, wiping at her own eyes.

“
I don’t
know where they come from, but I know deep down inside…
I have a million of them!
” he joked, trying to do his best Groucho Marks. He failed so
bad both of the girls were bouncing with giggles.

Holy cow! That was
pathetic
, thought Elena, though she
laughed just the same.

“
Have you ever thought of
becoming a comedian when you get older?” asked Elena, believing,
even at his young age, he could succeed in that line of
work.

Louis chuckled a bit
longer. He looked at Elena with a touch more seriousness than he
had a moment ago. “No, I like to laugh and make people laugh at the
same time, but I have always dreamed of being a doctor.”

“
Really?” questioned
Elena, twice as interested as before. She gave Mikalah an excited
grin, which her sister returned, because she knew the source of her
enthusiasm.

“
Yeah, really. I have
wanted to be a doctor for as long as I can remember. I mean, I
thought of becoming a chef from time to time, because I like food
so much,” he rubbed his round tummy with a goofy grin. “But the
thought of helping people always creeps back up the surface of my
brain. I have a feeling it would be the right thing for me to do
when my life comes back. Although, I’m not sure I’d be smart enough
to get through all the schoolwork,” he finished. His expression
became wistful as if he were gazing far into the future at
something only he could see.

“
That is so weird, Louis,”
remarked Elena.

She received a
stunned
“why”
expression from the boy.

“
Not that you want to be a
doctor is weird. I don’t mean that,” she explained, chuckling
before she could stop herself. The kid’s impression of her comment
had been way off. “What I mean is, since I was a little, little
girl, I have always wanted to be a Pediatrician.”

“
No way,” replied the boy.
The coincidence was difficult to take as real.

“
Way, Louis. She’s not
lying. She has said she has wanted to be a kid-doctor since she was
real small. In fact, I think she was saying that before I could
walk,” mused Mikalah, looking back at Elena with a knowing
smile.

“
What a funny coincidence,
huh?” contemplated Louis, scratching at his head. “I mean what are
the chances that two of the Twelve would both want to be doctors.”
He shook his head in thought. “Well, that’s good, Elena. If you
want to be a doctor too, you can go to work every day and help
people get better, and make the world a better place to live – just
like me!” He pointed at himself and beamed.

“
I know, huh?” responded
Mikalah. She was in awe over the odds, a smile of wonderment on her
face. “Out of the millions and millions of kids in the world only
we Twelve were chosen and yet two of us wanted to help cure
people’s illnesses. That’s pretty cool, if you ask me.”

Elena was about to agree
when she thought she heard a strange sound, but was not sure. The
sound made her turn and look over her shoulder.

She saw Hyun reach for
Kimberly almost out of desperation. She crouched over the Emo waif
from a kneeling position, hugging her.