10 Into his trace, I hope for a miracle.

ALICE

After the groundkeeper rushed to my side last night, I wake up the next morning to two electric blue eyes, messy raven hair and face void of expression I can’t put a finger what.

“You’re awake,” the boy told me. I blinked twice. Stared straight to his empty dull eyes that don’t have a trace of spark.

“You’re okay?” I croaked. He didn’t bat an eye when he made a sound under his throat of saying yes. I want to reach out to him and brush his hair. I want to take my pencil and carved his impeccable beauty in my paper.

For many reasons other than one, he looks like Kenneth. If I blink my eyes and gaze to his small face, I can picture out the young Kenneth in his middle school years. I forced my eyes shut.

No matter how desperate I was. If I saw Kenneth’s face in every little boy’s face…how crazy have I become? I’m proud to have my sanity intact, but have I? I let my hands run the rough thin silk of the blanket wrapped around me.

The boy still continues to stare at me with his bottomless eyes.

“Can I touch you?” It might have been my imagination but he reacted. His eyes blink and a small change of his iris retract the static aura he held in his gaze.

“Why?” he asked, his voice carried no shape. I held myself up with my elbows and looked at him.

“I want to make sure you’re okay. Your wounds couldn’t possibly have healed did they?”

We both held each other’s gaze. I waited for him to say something. Waited for him to say yes. I can’t see the innocence a boy whose age between 13 – 14 like him usually have. Nor the mischievousness, the wild spirited, he had nothing of those.

Was it because he’s also a prisoner, a victim, a subject for experiment like me in my Aunt’s confederation so he lost those things? The very components that define children like him, like us…as normal?

He’s the first to look away. He didn’t leave his spot in the couch. He curled up. He stared ahead. Looked at the square open portion of the wall. Drink in the cold sight of snow crashing in the ground, coating the trees and tombs with white cotton fluff.

I followed his line of sight, trying to bridge the gap between us I sat and curled in the same way he did. I waited in silence. Drinking the tranquility of placidity. I try not to think about it. About the screams, the needles, the white room torture.

They said silence can drive you mad. They said darkness can bring out the cowardice in you. They said the things that can’t be seen, is the most dangerous thing there is. But they’re wrong. There’s more. A lot terrifying that your mind can no longer comprehend what it was.

Without intending to, my body begun to shiver.

Even thoughts have the power to put me on edge. My mind is fighting to swallow the horrors I’m forced to undergo in my Aunt’s hands. The feeling of someone ripping your skin – agonizingly slow and terrifyingly suffocating. The feeling of someone having control over your sanity. When you’re placed in forced subjection. Obey or die.

The fact this boy has the same expression I wear, the emptiness embedded on the inner part of his skin…

“You’re from there too aren’t you? I recognize your hair.” The boy said quietly. I close my eyes. I stabilize my breathing.

“How did you get out alive?” I asked. He abruptly turn his head at me. In an instant, he’s on his guard. He back away to the edge part of the couch. His eyes set to use whatever his little body can do to fight me.

A sigh escape from my lips.

“Do you recognize Adeline Vermillion?” I blurted out. His face didn’t show it. His eyes never expressed it, but his body is paralyzed in midair in shock.

I take it as a yes.

“She is my Aunt. When I was a child she raised me on her own – is what I want to say but she kept me in isolation and subjected me to test experiments every two weeks. I don’t have any idea what she’s trying to achieve in me. She said I am her little riding hood project. When I was fourteen – roughly the same age as you, she summoned me in the high council of the confederation. There she slit my throat in front of everyone.”

“Why are you telling me this?” he interrupted. I went on.

“I’m supposed to be dead. My heart stops beating. Too much blood loss from the slice wound on my throat. The world has records of my real name as ‘dead’. Together with my parents my Aunt ordered to massacre. So they have no difficulty of disposing my body by cremating.”

He let out an audible gasp. His eyes never left my desolated face.

“You’re lying.” He mouthed.

“If I am I wouldn’t be here.”

“Does that mean you’re a ghost?” His words evidently say he’s surprised. But his eyes and his expression never changed. Was it frozen too? Cursed to never change no matter what he feels inside?

“I’m trying to say that miracles exist.” He grunted in disagreement.

“It happened to me. And I’m sure it happens to you too.” I said. He resumes to look at the world behind the square open wall again. Watching the snow slowly cake the ground, freeze the earth, burying the names of those who have rest beneath the coffin, including Kenneth.

For the rest of the morning we never exchange words again. I know none of my confession makes sense to him. Maybe he shoved it as unbelievable. Too impossible to happen. Maybe he thinks I’m a ghost now.

I think I am too. But the fact that I bleed, that I feel cold, that I long for warmth, that I feel exhausted beyond the relief this world could ever give is the evidence that I’m still alive. In contrast to the haunting need at the very core of my being to die and be with Kenneth forever.

I loosen my arms from my knees. I picked up the shoulder bag left on my side. I closed my eyes and pulled on my memories. Shoving the bad images aside, Kenneth’s smiling face resurfaced and I sigh in relief.

I pulled out my sketchbook and pencil and began to draw. In that instant the world dissolve out of focus, my ears shut every sound dared to infiltrate. My hands flew at the surface of the paper, guiding the pencil to dance on the clean sheet. To shape his beautiful face. To put these maelstrom of emotions to expression.

Expression of longing.

Even if Kenneth left me high and dry I will still wait for him.

Miracles do exist after all. I’m alive. Maybe he is too. If I’ll just wait for him he will come to wrap his arms around me again.

I’m a good girl.

I spent fourteen years waiting for my Aunt to see me as another human being – not a tool. Though it didn’t happen, patiently waiting gave me Kenneth. Maybe it will bring him back someday.

I just need to wait. Another fourteen years? Twenty? Fifty? Years won't matter. Time is irrelevant. As long as I could have him back I'm willing to do anything.