Wednesday, 13 January 2016

Maria's Journey Part 3



This news filled Maria with joy, so much so that she began to do a little hop and skip dance in-front of the creature known as Halon. She had long wished to be able to speak. To be able to tell her father that he was hurting her; that he was scaring her. To be able to tell her father’s friends that she did not like having pictures of her private area taken, it made her feel bad inside.
   ‘Settle down. There is still more that I must explain to you,’ said Halon, waiting patiently for the little one to calm down before continuing. ‘Now you remember when I told you on the rooftop that if you came with me you would never be able to go back to your father or that world again?’
   Maria nodded her head excitedly, she remembered.
   ‘Well the reason for that is because when I pulled you up on to the rooftop, you were already dead. You father had left you to starve in the cupboard while he overdosed on drugs in the sitting room.’
   Maria frowned. She couldn’t understand the concept of death. She knew she could feel pain but she had no idea what it was like to feel dead.
   ‘Let me show you,’ Said Halon as he carefully lifted the little girl up high enough so she could see the still water in the black cauldron.
   At first Maria could see nothing but her own reflection, her eyes, one green and one blue, staring back at her as if she was some kind of stranger. Then the water started to bubble, and it did that for a few seconds before it settled back down again to reveal the sitting room where her father and his friends would spend most of the day.
   Excitedly she pointed to the overweight man sitting in the chair at the far end of the room. It was her dad and he was doing something she had never saw him do before. He had a needle stuck in his arm and was pushing down on the plunger. She remembered the needles that the nurses and doctors put in to her arm to help her feel better at the hospital, but she had never seen her daddy use one before.
   Then, suddenly, her father began to convulse. A strange froth like substance started to spill from his mouth as his body jerked violently in all direction before it eventually went still.
   The image remained like that for a few moments and Maria was beginning to wonder if perhaps Halon’s cauldron was broken, when she saw her father stand up. But something was wrong. He was standing up but he was also still sitting in the chair with foam coming from his mouth.
   ‘What you’re seeing is your father’s spirit leaving his body after he died,’ said Halon, sensing the little ones confusion.
   They both continued to watch as Maria’s father wandered from the sitting room and into the bedroom where he kept her in the cupboard. Maria couldn’t help but watch in awe as her father opened the cupboard to reveal her sitting there in the darkness, but again something wasn’t right. She could see herself sitting in the darkness on the mattress but it also looked like there was another one of her laying down on the mattress curled up.
   ‘That’s you’re spirit after you died,’ there was a definite hint of sadness in Halon’s voice, as if it pained him to explain what the little girl was witnessing. ‘You’re father had left you in the cupboard for four days without food or water. You died while you were sleeping, Maria’
   The little girl looked up at the huge winged creature, still unsure what to make of it all. Even as the water began to bubble and the ghostly images of herself and her father began to disappear, she still felt confused.
   ‘I know it’s very difficult for you to understand right now, but we both know that your father was a very cruel man towards you. You haven’t been held by the arms of someone who truly loves you since you were just one year old, but that’s all going to change Maria. I’m going to take you on a journey that will re-unite you with someone who has loved you with all their heart since the very day you were born.’
   Maria could feel her excitement rise again. Inside she wasn’t sure what cruel meant, but if it meant that someone was being bad to you then her father certainly had been bad to her. As much as she loved him, even her young mind understood what was right and what was wrong. The thought of meeting someone new who had always loved yet never seen her before, was where her excitement grew from though.
   It was a nice feeling. To feel happy. To feel excited. It had been a very long time since she had experienced those kinds of emotions and her body felt a little overwhelmed with it all, but still she couldn’t hide how happy she was.
   ‘We don’t have much time. I can’t leave this place for very long or I will get into big trouble, so we must get moving now. And remember Maria, no matter what you see or what you feel you must trust me when I say I will let nothing hurt you anymore. Do you understand?’ Despite being such a fearsome looking creature the voice that echoed from Halon’s lips was soft and forgiving. A complete contradiction to how he looked.
   Maria nodded in her excitement and started towards the huge doors which had led them inside. She didn’t know why they would be going back in that direction, she just had a feeling somehow.
   If she had looked back just for a brief second she would have saw the first smile to cross Halon’s lips in centuries.

As the cold night air rushed to meet her, Maria turned to look for Halon. Her smile broadened as she saw him quickly make up the distance between them with a few large strides. Soon they were walking side by side along the cobblestone courtyard towards a set of huge ornate gates.
   The gates began to swing open just like the doors to the castle had done, and Maria tried to look beyond them. She could see more tall buildings, but this time they looked more like the ones belonging to a city, like the one she had come from and looked strangely out of place considering the castle they were leaving behind.
   As they passed through the gates the cobblestones gave way to cracked and worn concrete. Maria noticed that there was no lights coming from any of the buildings that flanked them on both sides like monolithic broken statues. All the windows seemed to be smashed and if there was anyone inside them they weren’t quick to show themselves.
   ‘Despite what some people may believe, it is up to the souls of the earth to make their own Heaven and in this case their own Hell,’ said Halon, as he glanced from building to building expectantly.
   Just like death, Maria understood nothing about these places called Heaven and Hell. She never heard her father speak of them since he was the only one who ever paid her any attention most days. Despite her lack of understanding though, she could sense that Halon was on edge. He was expecting something to happen, and that made her want to stick as close to him as possible. The buildings and the burning cars that dotted the streets where starting to scare her.
   ‘Be strong Maria. I promised you nothing would hurt you and I will keep that promise,’ said Halon as he sensed the little one moving closer to him and he was surprised to see that she was reaching up for his hand when he turned to look down at her.
   Although his claws where as big as Maria’s body, Halon reached out and let her wrap her tiny hand around one of his nails; and like that, they continued down the deserted street hand in nail.
   Trying her best to think of something other than what was going on around her, Maria let her mind drift to a time that always made her smile. It was the day her father had brought her home from hospital. She was still wearing the bandage the doctor had taped over the wound on her throat as he carried her to her bedroom and lay her down as gently as he possibly could.
   Strangely enough she could never really remember the expression on his face at that time, so she couldn’t tell if he was sad, happy or anything else. What she did remember, and it still made her smile even to this point in her life, was when he leant forward and kissed her on the forehead before leaving her to get some sleep.
   Her smile faded though as she began to remember more about that day. She remembered her father kissing her on the forehead and she also remembered watching him walk out of her room and leaving the door open behind him.
   What she was only starting to remember now though was what began to appear in her mind. She recalled seeing her father standing in the hallway talking to the man with long greasy hair; the man who always wanted to take picture of her in places that made her feel bad. She could see their lips move as they spoke and without warning she suddenly began to hear what they were saying.
   ‘You’ll need to wait a couple of weeks until her throat has healed properly, or I’ll end up with social services kicking my door in,’ her father had said to the greasy haired man.
   ‘That’s a shame. The Japanese would eat up pictures like that,’ said the greasy haired man, his face wore a horrible smirk.
   ‘Yeah, well the wound turns me off, so just leave her alone until she is healed,’ There was a coldness in her father’s voice that Maria had never noticed before, and it made her heart feel like it was sinking down to her stomach.
   Tears welled in her eyes and in that instant, as the memory faded away, she wanted nothing more than to go back to her cupboard, lay down on the tatty old mattress and go to sleep.
   Halon stopped dead in his tracks as he felt the littles one body convulse. He looked down at her, watching the tears flow freely from her eyes. He understood what was happening to her. He knew now that she had passed over to his world that everything her little mind had tried to bury away was slowly creeping back.
   She was remembering everything.
   ‘Stay strong Maria,’ he said, gently wagging the nail she was holding on to. He wished he could smile at her as she looked up at him, but it would have been wrong. He had stay strong, both for himself and for her, and he couldn’t afford any cracks in his armour to show. Not now they were crossing through Hell.
   Even though Halon couldn’t smile, Maria could and she offered him the best one she could muster, even as her tears dripped from her chin. She wanted desperately to be loved more than anything, and even though the huge winged creature was normally the stuff of nightmares she would gladly accept him as a friend.
   They continued walking for a short distance, saying nothing to each other, but somehow they were beginning to tune into each other’s body language.
   When they reached the intersection of road with more decaying buildings running in all directions, Halon suddenly stopped yet again and Maria instinctively looked up at him for an explanation she knew was coming.
   ‘This is where you need to be really strong, Maria,’ said Halon, keeping his gaze locked on the street to the right.
   Maria followed his gaze wondering why he was paying so much attention to what at first looked like the exact same buildings they had just passed. It took a few moments for her mind to engage before she realized that the buildings she was looking at weren’t the same as the others. In-fact her brief stint outside on the window ledge had helped her actually see the apartment block she and her father had been living in.
   She remembered it being made of sandstone just like the one she was looking at, except that one was horribly decayed. A foul smelling sludge oozed from between the bricks like it was bleeding out on to the street.
   Her eye’s drifted to the entrance way to the building; its doors had been smashed and eventually ripped from their hinges. She could only imagine an adult would have the strength to perform such a deed.



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