Keep Holding On

Pastor Cox said he found me looking like I was silently screaming with my my hands shaking and a contorted facial expression before I collapsed to the floor.

I woke up lying on a couch in another room with a blanket covering me.
I wanted to think that it was all a dream. That maybe I had fallen into the shower and had felt so much pain that I had imagined my last gleam of hope faded with a phone call. Leslie felt so distant. Like she had forgotten all about me. Maybe she had. Maybe she never meant anything and said everything just to spite dad. I had been used like a bait dog in a fighting ring.

I sat up and looked at the dress. There was a large tear on the right side. It didn’t show anything but it looked terrible. My knees felt numb—along with my mind.

Maybe I could just stay in the upper section of the church, like a resident hunchback, where no one would notice my deformities and imperfections within our perfect world.

Sanctuary from that world.
Or, the most likely, be returned to my mental prison. Be ordered to be who I am supposed to be…at least until the day I could find the courage to walk into an oncoming car or go to the tallest building I could find, smash a window and throw myself off of that window.

That appeared to be my future.

The clock on the wall read four-thirty. I was sure it wasn’t in morning. Either way, I wasn’t yet arrested or taken into some mental facility.
“Or they could do that,” I whispered. Chemicals and therapy to reverse the horrible damage that was done to Taylor by Michaela, a demon, a witch. No, just a simple girl with a sliced-up head.

I got up, walked to the door and opened it,.

The hallway was empty. No police lights in the parking lot, at least from what I could see.
“Hello?” I asked into darkness at the other end of the hallway.
“Michaela!”
I froze at the sound of the voice saying my name: It was Tony. I turned around and expected a posse at his side, all ready to slam me into the wall at his command in revenge for several crowns and ruined braces.

It was just him; but, in my physical condition I knew he could bring me down to the ground. He wasn’t this father. I put my hands up and closed my eyes, in hopes that he would take some form of pity on me. But if he didn’t, then, I would have my wish granted to be taken out of the world.
I heard his footsteps on the tile floor come closer and closer and I clenched up, ready for the punches or some form of punishment.

His hand came on my shoulders—he was going to choke me—I knew he was going to.

He pulled me closer.
“Are you okay?”
My eyes flashed open as he looked straight at my face.
“Are you okay?” He repeated.
I shook my head and laid it down on his shoulder.
“We’ll help you.”
“Why?” I asked as I caught the metal on his teeth.
“Because I care about you. I mean, we care about you. No, it’s both. Ever since grade school.”
“But, I’m not normal.”
“We’re not going to hold that against you. My family’s kind of weird like that.”

I took a step back and looked behind Tony as his father, mother and sister came out from the darkened end of the hallway.

“You’re welcome to come home with us.”
“Until we get everything straightened out?” I asked.
“What’s to straighten out?” Mrs. Cox replied.
“Me,” I replied as I took another step back.

Tony took three steps forward and stood next to me. “The only thing you need to work on is your punch. You hit like a girl.”
“Tony.” His father said with a slight disdain.
Tony took a hold of my left hand and motioned to his parents. “You’re not alone.”