The Dead Face Girl

This is a continuation of an original fiction piece by flickagirl. The first part is found here! :)

Chapter 2

Missus

I was walking home. Exciting, huh? I bet you thought I was going something less ordinary, like heading to a secret underground government base so they can do tests on me or something. Well, it’s not. I was just walking home one fall afternoon, and if that’s not exciting enough for you, then go read a sci-fi book.

Anyway, I was walking down the road, admiring the amazing fall colors. And everything else about fall, really. Fall and winter are my favorite seasons because during the summer and spring, everyone’s outside. If I go out, the fun somehow stops. Either that or little boys start chasing me around yelling, “Whoever slays the ogre gets half of my Pokémon cards!”

Basically, not fun. But during the fall and winter, everyone’s inside sipping hot chocolate and watching reruns of their favorite reality TV show. (At least that’s what my foster mother does.)

So during fall and winter, everything outside is mine. But the fall is my all-time favorite, because it’s warm, but not so hot that you want to fall asleep (which happens to me during the summer), and it smells. During the fall, it smells like fall. Like calmness. Like life. But a life where having an ugly face doesn’t matter.

So during the fall, I have a habit of accidentally-on-purpose missing the bus and walking home. Just to absorb the sights, smells, and, above all, the feeling of complete serenity. But not today. Today was the day I met her, the first person to actually love me, to actually care.

It was just a usual day walking home, but the sound of my feet on the gravel road wasn’t right. It was too loud. I looked down and just watched my black All-stars move down the road. Right, left, right, left. Then I knew. I forgot to take my shoes off. I reached down and started untying the laces.

Just then, I heard the sound of a car, and quickly moved to the side of the road. That’s funny, I thought. Cars don’t usually come around here. But it was definitely a car. I could tell by the sound of its engine. As I turned the corner, I saw a bright purple Prius speeding away, leaving behind a trail of dust and muffled squeals to hurry up.

Immediately I knew that something was up. Bright purple cars filled with giggling teenaged girls just don’t drive around on dirt roads without a reason. And then I saw it. I had walked down this road a million times and never noticed it. It was a house. The house was tiny and was painted a dull yellow color. It was worn, but not in bad shape. There weren’t any holes that I could see, and no broken windows. Except for one…

I rushed inside and looked around. There were basically two rooms that I could see. I was standing in one of them. Below my bare feet there was a tan mat that looked like it was hand woven. The room was your basic four wall room, and each wall was painted a warm brown color. On every wall there was a picture of a beautiful young woman doing various different things. In one she was walking down the aisle, in another she was in a park throwing a Frisbee to a young man, in another holding two infants, and in the last, which was right behind me, running down a beach with her hair blowing in her face. She was beautiful, with dark hair and dark eyes.

Someone coughed. I tore my eyes away from the beautiful woman in the picture and squinted into the shadows of the back of the room. There was the strangest sight I had ever seen. An elderly lady, maybe in her sixties, sitting in a rocking chair knitting, with about a billion different cats.