Chapter 10.2

While there were a lot of pleasant things about living there, it was also around this time, when the nightmares started. Not every night, but most nights, I would wake up screaming and the scars left on my body burning, I would thrash about as if in a fit, pulling and resisting the bed sheets that tangled with my limbs.

Most of the time I couldn't remember what I was dreaming about. Maybe that was a blessing. When I was aware again, there would be hot tears streaming down my face and limbs tingling. Eliania would be there holding me steady until I calmed down enough to go back to sleep. She would stroke my back in soothing circles while I rest my head on her shoulder and while apologising over and over because I woke her up.

I found that sleeping on the floor soothed them somewhat, so instead of sleeping in the bed, I often slept next to it, on the floor. Maybe it was because it was what I was used to, but I felt safer. They complained at first and insisted on me sleeping in the bed, but after the first few weeks they relented, put a thin mattress on the floor next to the bed. Later on when it was clear I wouldn't be using the bed, they put it in storage, which opened up a lot more floor room to move about in.

In the daytime, Elliana and Sean took turns teaching me when they weren't working so I could join school in the fall. Sean taught me humanities and science, he seemed to be passionate about ancient wars and battle tactics but was careful not to mention anything too violent or too recent. He told me about the ancient civilisations and long forgotten continents, and how our lives now would be so different without their inventions. The concepts involved in science were novel to me; even at the orphanage we weren't taught anything like it. As long as we could read and write it was considered enough. Chemical reactions, atoms, endothermic and exothermic, cohesion, adhesion… these terms swarmed around in my mind in a confused mess most of the time.

Elliana taught me Regaen literature and maths; she was a part time teacher at one of the nearby schools and those were the subjects she taught so she was well versed in both teaching methods and the subjects. By far these were my better subjects, but Elliana was a surprisingly strict teacher and would make me do it until I got it completely right, even if that took hours.

Alex had far less to catch up on in school, so he loitered about, or played games without me. but during the breaks from lessons he continued to teach me new games. He was in the process of teaching me a game which involved kicking a ball, when I belted it too hard and it disappeared into the bushes at the back of our garden.

He was taking a bit too long, so I thought we lost it, just as I was about help with the search, Alex started yelling.

"Elli! Elli!" Alex's voice was filled with alarm and I instantly rushed to where he was, skidding to a halt when I saw what was lying at his feet, half hidden in the leaves. My eyes transfixed on it. I couldn��t look away.

Suddenly, I felt sick, my stomach twisted and felt warm bile rising in my throat.

It was a cat. It was a dead cat. It had been dead for some time, its tongue flopped from its dead mouth and dried out in the heat. Its eyes were overcast and dull, flies and ants mercilessly assaulted the corpse, getting in its eyes and cavities and places where bugs shouldn't go.

The smell of death was suffocating. I couldn't breathe. Why did I feel like this? The faces of Emmerson and Rosa Lee, Jason Smart and his security guard, and all the other nameless people whose deaths I'm responsible, flash before my eyes.

I saw their gruesome deaths with each and every gory detail replayed. The enemy general with the knife slash across his throat, the expression of surprise, and the blood erupting from the wound, spraying me in warm red liquid. The sound of gunshot and Jason Smart's hole in his head; the purple swollen face of his security guard and the claw marks on his neck as he clasped at the invisible rope that was strangling him. Many, many faces of soldiers whose features I couldn't recall. But I remembered how they died. The blood and dirt, and the weight of a weapon at my fingertips.

I felt blood on my hands, and no matter how hard I scrubbed them I couldn't get them clean.

Alex was saying something, but I couldn't understand him. My mind was numb. I needed to get them clean, I rubbed them on my trousers, but I could still feel it. I wiped them over and over, but the red was still there. I vaguely saw Elliana try and grab my hands, but I pulled free and even more intently try and clean them. She shouldn't touch me when I'm dirty. I remember thinking. She more forcefully grasps them in hers, she's looking right at me and she's saying something. I can't understand her.

At some point, I'm led inside, but the next thing I release is that the dead cat is gone, I'm sitting on the sofa with a warm cup of coco on the table next to me. There's the taste of vomit in my mouth, so I must have been sick at some point. I took a sip of the coco, the sweetness burning the back of my throat, but it washed away some of the bad taste.

"Are you okay now?" Elliana asked in a soothing voice.

I nodded, taking another sip of the coco. I didn't understand why a dead cat would make me act like that.

"It was Miss Greyson's cat from next door. Remember she came over the other night saying he was missing? We put him to rest properly."

I nodded because I didn't know what else to say. If I wasn't so tired, I would have been embarrassed that something like that made me freak so much. When she said I could have the rest of the day off from lessons, I curled up on the sofa and napped until dinner time.