Broken Part III

Shelby, lost in the woods and having weird dreams within dreams, awakes in the hospital after her mishap in the woods, only to discover their is something different about her...

Chapter One

Broken

Part Three

 

 

My eyes twitched and light filled them. A screaming headache rushed in to fill my head and the blurred blobs of people’s figures could be seen as the voices trailed away to nothing more than a faint hum. I felt my arms being moved and where I was laying being bounced, the cool touch of skin on my arm and fingers running through my hair.

 

I blinked my eyes until my vision was cleared and I could see a room full of people surrounding me. They all stared at me as though I should get up and start singing a prepared opera song on the spot. Finally someone in a cream scrubs walked over.

 

“Sorry Hun but you’ll need to get off the bed now,” she said to a little kid sitting beside me patting my hand.

 

“Well, she’s not going to die is she?” the little girl asked, stroking one of my fingers.

 

“Oh no, she’s going home today and will just be wearing them for a little while,” I felt a brisk pat on my leg, “Off you go. Okay, let’s see here. How are you feeling Shelby?”

 

Shelby… that was my name. Why did she want to know how I was feeling? She leaned in closer. Her short, choppy brown hair outlined her face as she pulled on my upper eyelid and shined a light into it and wiggled it back and forth making my pupils quiver. I finally stopped looking at the light and shook my head trying to concentrate. I pushed my hands up against my eyebrows and rubbed them in circles trying to take in my surroundings.

 

“Where am I?” I choked out the words looking at the people in the room. My parents, I could see them standing in the corner holding each others hands; their faces were each pale and strained, they had been worrying. I turned a few angles to the left and saw the little girl, my cousin Sidney. She was bouncing up and down and her piggy tails were moving with her. She glanced at me and once we made eye contact, grinned from ear to ear and pointed to her socks. Her socks came up to her knees, were lime green, and had neon yellow polka dots up one side and hot pink stripes up the other. She was in love with high, colorful socks.

 

“Oh, leave her alone Sidney. She’s probably not feeling well yet,” Said a voice behind her.

 

Sidney stuck a frown on her face and wobbled over to someone. I squinted my eyes and when they finally refocused, I saw my Aunt Codi patting Sidney on the head.

 

“Alright Shelby, the police and search squad found you and then you passed out and got brought here to the hospital. Your leg is in a temporary cast, it should be off in about a week. We aren’t really sure how it happened but your foot was cut all around the ankle bone and the bone didn’t break but it began breaking. Do you know how it happened?” The nurse asked.

 

I thought, I racked my brain but the only shred of memory that I could recall was that of the dream I had. I strained and remembered tripping but that hadn’t hurt and wasn’t enough to cause my ankle to start breaking. Besides, it had hurt before when I was running towards the lights.

 

“I can’t remember anything. I fell asleep and can only remember my dream,” I mindlessly mumbled downward at my blankets.

 

“What was your dream about? I read that can give clues to what happened to you or the last few things on your mind,” My Aunt Iva’s voice blurted from the opposite side of the room.

 

I quickly turned around, startled by her voice.

 

“Well, it began with me chasing the ball Kelsi, Samantha and I threw into the creek…”

 

“Were Kelsi and Samantha there too? In your dream?” Iva asked.

 

“No, it was just me,” I started again.

 

“So it was just you in your dream? That makes sense since you were the only person in the woods,” She commented.

 

“I thought it was only me. There were, um, others there, but they were under the water,” I said rubbing the back of my neck.

 

I glanced over at Aunt Iva. She had a disgusted look on her face mixed with a swirl of astonishment. She shook the look off her face and directed her attention back on me.

 

“Okay, so there were dead people in the water and you?” she asked.

 

Now I knew the reason for her disgusted look. I began shaking my head.

 

“No! They weren’t even real people, I mean, they were but they weren’t actual people. They were mermaids and there was three of them I think. I had fell into the water and I think they saved me. Then I woke up but I awakened into another dream… if that makes sense. Anyway, I was in a second dream and almost the exact same events happened. In the second dream though, it seemed unnaturally real. I can still feel myself screaming and the current pulling my forward when my foot was stuck in the rock and I was about to give up when the first mermaid came,” I began to trail off.

 

Everyone in the room was staring at me; eyes open, eyebrows raised, lips slightly twisted upwards into a confused position. Sidney just smiled and rocked back and forth on her heels with her hands clumped behind her back, still grinning towards me. Iva took a step forward with her finger pointed at the sky then slowly pointed forward to me. She let her finger rest in my direction as I sat there and waited. She rubbed her chin then began shaking her finger slightly up and down.

 

“I think you were having a dream, or two, about what had happened to you. You and your friends had been chasing the ball, the three mermaid people could have been you and your friends. I’m not sure about the drowning part but I’m guessing getting your foot stuck resembled you cracking your bone, which is still a mystery on how that happened…“ she kept ranting.

 

I nodded and said that what she was saying was probably true although I had a feeling pounding through my chest saying there was more to my dream. More than Iva was realizing. More than what I could tell from the mere memory. More to it that was driving me to go back to the creek to figure out what it is that I wanted to remember.

. . .

 

I woke up by smacking my alarm clock off the stand next to my bed. It landed with a thud and kept beeping, causing me to slide off my bed and drag my cast across the floor. It felt fine and I was getting it off tomorrow. It had almost been a week since I came back from the doctors, from the woods, from the creek. I was extremely happy it was all over and I was already going back to school now even though mom had to drive me. I undid the straps of the cast and quickly put on my sweats and then put the cast back on. I threw off my old t-shirt and threw on a sweatshirt a size or two to big.

 

I grabbed a sock, shoe, my crutches and my backpack and trudged downstairs. It was an extremely difficult task because my crutches were hard to navigate on each stair. My backpack swung back and forth, rubbing my raw shoulder skin, every time I went down the next step. Once I had ventured to the bottom of the stairs, I made my way into the living room to throw my backpack near the door and after that, I made my way back into the kitchen.

 

I went over to our silverware drawer and pulled out a spoon and threw it over on the table. Then I went over to the get a bowl from the stack by the dishwasher, which I then walked to set on the table. I trekked back and this time leaned my crutches against the counter and extended my body upwards towards the cereal cabinet. It was a small challenge but I new I could reach it. I finally grabbed the handle but, as I opened it, a box of cereal fell, pieces flaking everywhere. It bounced off the top of my head making me jerk back and stumble towards the table. I let out a brisk scream as I fell backwards into the table. I slowed my rapid heartbeat by taking a

few deep breathes and then closed my eyes momentarily. I opened them and drug my leg over to the sink and filled a glass with icy water and drank it.

 

“It’s only a box of cereal,” I whispered to myself.

 

“What did you find?”

 

I jumped back and flung my body in a half circle throwing my empty cup. I grabbed a knife sitting on the counter and tightened my fists around it so much, my knuckles became a pallid white and my fingers cringed in fear as I made my way into the living room. My eyes were wide and bulging and my ears were alert for even the most miniscule sound.

 

“Whose there?” I asked into the dark living room before flipping on the light.

I don’t know what I had expected-- a dead body, a person sitting in a chair holding a lit cigar-- as I turned on the lights but whatever I expected wasn’t there. The room was as empty as it had been as when I had thrown my school supplies in there. The voice had been exceedingly clear and loud though, someone had to be in the house.

A lump arose in my throat; I knew that voice. The voice I had only a moment ago heard but had heard last week as well. The voice I had heard in my head now was

the soft spoken voice of the person I heard at the hospital, the girl under the water.

 

Flashbacks flooded my mind of the mermaid girl under the water saving me, telling me not to talk, cupping my face… I dropped the knife and it landed not an inch away from my foot. I stood there dumbfounded with my mouth open and my hands holding the side of my face once more, stroking my hair, trying to comfort myself. Why had I heard the voice from my dreams just now? I had moved on from the dream, I didn’t want to be remembering the lifelike events that had taken place only last week. It seemed like forever since then.

 

I fell into the recliner to gather my thoughts. I probably only thought I heard the voice, it was in my head. I got back up, picked up the knife and hauled my leg into the kitchen again. I set it in the sink and ran some water to wash it off with from my incident of dropping it on the floor. As I was filling the sink I poured my cereal and began to eat it so I could wash out my bowl as well. I turned off the water and finished eating my breakfast while thinking about why I had the dream girl’s voice stuck in my head.

 

I put away the cereal and milk and put my bowl in the sink and began to scrub. I washed off the knife and set it in its holder again and began on my bowl.

 

“Andrea? Is this you? Urvashi? Manue?”

 

I froze. My hands that had been scrubbing dishes were now reaching towards the knife again.

 

“Shelby?”

 

The voice sounded clear but frightened and nervous. I stopped moving and breathing all together. I realized the voice wasn’t coming from the room at all but from my head and it new my name. My stomach lurched and my mouth opened but was unable to form words.

 

“Stay touching water if this is Shelby!”

 

I snapped out of my current state and began to put my hands back into the water.

 

“Who is this? What, why are you in my… how are you in my thoughts? My mind?” questions flooded my mind and began pouring out of my mouth in fear and amazement.

 

“It is you. I have been waiting for you. I knew you were like us. My name is Heather,” the voice almost sung in my head.

 

“I don’t know a Heather,” I replied to the voice.

 

The voice giggled but then was silent. Suddenly, my vision went black but I could still feel the warm water my hands were resting in. I held still for there was nothing else I could do. Abruptly, light began filling my eyes and I saw the outline of a girl, the girl. Her golden brown hair floated indolently while caressing her face in the water. There was a strip of what looked like seaweed just large enough to cover her chest yet long enough to hover in the water in front of her stomach. She was smiling as her eyes showed a brilliant purple with yellow pulsating around her pupils. Her red lips opened and she began to speak.

Author's Note

I need hard core critique. This is the last part of chapter one. I broke it into pieces to make it easier on the reviewer.

Reviews

[Coyote Poetry]

I'm reading backward. I do it often on this site. I get stories in the middle and have to back step the read. The chapter is very entertaining. The girl awake with confusion what is real or not? I like the feel and emotion of the people around her. The chapters begin to open many doors to why she is confused at the moment. A excellent chapter.
Coyote

[halflives]

I'm definitely continuing to read. I'm drawn into this book. It's very interesting. And i'm glad that you broke it up into parts; it's very much easier to read this way. Thank you.

[Ian Faraway]

I don't get it! What? You're telling me that Shelby is like a mermaid even though she doesn't have gills and the tails and what not? GET OUTTA HERE! I do like the jedi telepathic mind tricks, though. I thought that was a good thing. Also the character development is sort of coming along, I have a feeling something is missing but I can't put my finger on it. But I think you have a story coming along here, I like the concept.

[.shalynn.009.]

Good job so far, this story has potential. Another word of advice: You're starting a lot of sentences with the word "I" and it's making your writing sound redundant. I would think about how to start your sentences other ways. I know, I'm repeating myself, but it can't hurt. Also, at the beginning of the hospital scene, the nurse says, "then you passed out and got brought to the hospital." I suggest revising that to somethign like "Then you passed out and the ambulence brought you to the hospital." I avoid the use of "got" in my writing, because it generally makes the phrasing awkward and confusing. But this is coming along and it is definitely doing better than the first tow parts. It will need some revisions, but that can all come in later drafts, of course.

[steph]

This is doing better. You are evolving from the part 1. Good flow, no tricky phrases and an excellent plot so far. Keep up the good work

[M.a. Benjamin]

This is written well. I like that you're writing from a first person perspective, just be careful with it, tends to get complicating at points.