Lovely Monster Read online

  I knew I shouldn't feel sorry for myself. I tried not to.

  Didn't I have the right though? If I wanted to? Hadn't I kind of earned that?

  Maybe not. Maybe I was still on the short end of the stick, as always. That was life. It sucked.

  I just had to keep looking forward, that was what therapists told me. Looking forward to what? That was always my question, and then they'd answer with, 'To the future'.

  Personally I think all therapists are hopeless idiots. My future isn't very bright. Unless they make hover boards. That would be pretty awesome.

  ♥

  I opened my eyes seeing the form of a nurse above me. I couldn't really feel what they were doing to me, only that they were doing something to my drowsy body.

  “We're taking you to the room now, sweet heart. Everything went perfect in surgery,” a calming voice replied.

  My throat felt scratchy, probably from the anesthetic. Otherwise she would have heard me tell her that I was far from being a sweet heart. More like a Warhead.

  The next moments went in and out, like a dream. I watched the lights above my head, then they were gone, and I saw Ava. She was smiling, waving a teddy bear at me. I think I may have nodded at her. I couldn't be sure.

  I must have fallen asleep after that, because when I opened my eyes again, Ava was there and she was taking out wrapped burgers from a Burger King bag on the table by my bed, and a large Icee.

  I loved Icee. No other brand of slushy drink, just Icee.

  There is a difference, believe me.

  “I snuck you in some contraband,” she said in a low voice, smiling at me. She took out the Whopper and even unwrapped it for me.

  “Thank you,” I told her, feeling completely drained, and tired. I just wanted to go back to sleep, but knew I needed to stay awake. Ava would have to leave soon.

  She smiled, sitting down at the edge of my bed. “The doctor prescribed you a pain pump for the night, so whenever you start feeling really bad, make sure to use it, Falon,” she said.

  I feebly reached for my burger, and Ava quickly moved to push the tray toward me. She was great at knowing what I needed.

  I chewed small bites. The skin graft had been done on my chest, but I could feel the pain throughout my entire body.

  I mostly drank the cherry Icee, while Ava ate my Whopper. She watched me, as if to make sure it was okay. It was. I had no appetite for solid foods.

  “Do you have to work tonight?” I asked her, rubbing my eyes.

  She nodded. “Yeah. Eleven to seven, so I'll be back in the morning,” she told me.

  I shook my head. “Just go home and get some sleep. I'll probably still be sleeping when you come back anyway,” I assured her.

  The argument would never stand, but it was worth a try anyway.

  Ava was a CNA, working at the assisted living in town. Most of the people there needed to be in a nursing home, but they weren't. Instead, my sister would spend most of her days caring for them more than she was suppose to.

  It seemed she was always caring for someone.

  Maybe she was just born to take care of people, but that seemed like a really horrible way to live. Always caring for other people, not having anyone to do the same.

  She never complained.

  “I'll be back in the morning, that way I can catch the doctor,” she replied.

  “And then you can go home and go to sleep.”

  “Then I can stay here and sleep.”

  “There's no sense in it. I'll just be sleeping.”

  Ava shot me a glare. “I'll be here with you, sleeping in that chair, until I have to go to work again. Deal with it,” she replied, sticking out her tongue.

  I stuck mine out in retaliation.

  I loved her so much.

  ♥

  Most people would probably assume that I dreamt of my experience every night, but that wasn't true. I could remember the event at the drop of a hat while I was awake, but when I slept, things were always better somehow.

  Someone famous had once said that when you met a person that made you want to stay awake because reality was better than dreams, you were lucky.

  Still looking, famous person, still looking.

  In my experience, my dreams were always way cooler and happier than my real life was. Most mornings, I could literally feel pain at having to leave my dream world and reenter the real one.

  I had been dreaming about my road trip. Only, I wasn't scarred. I had my hair, and my normal face, and my lungs didn't get scratchy like they sometimes did.

  I felt no pain at all.

  And I was happy, two hands on the wheel, a pair of cheap shades over my eyes, and my foot on the gas.

  Where was I going? Well, I had no idea, because that was the point. It didn't matter where I was going, only that I was going somewhere.

  The point of life was just to be heading somewhere right? Didn't matter where you had been, only where you were going and all that jazz?

  The point was, I was happy. That was all that really mattered about my dreams. I was happy.

  ♥

  I wasn't sure what had woken me up. The pain was bad, but I think it was her that really woke me up. The sense of a presence in the room. Things like that woke me up nowadays.

  Waking up had been slow. I had barely opened my eyes to see someone walking around my room. The lights were off, except for the dim nightlight above my bed.

  She casted a small shadow across my room. I watched her, without realizing I was watching her so unabashedly.

  She was opening a card, so it would stand on the window edge. There was the dorky teddy bear up there too, but that was all I had gotten. I hadn't expected any more than that.

  I knew who she was instantly. I recognized the short hair, and her shape. I stared down her, following the curves of her body, how they seemed to spread farther down, despite how small she actually was.

  Beneath the nurses scrub (this time it was a Hello Kitty top, and black skinny jeans. Still converses though) that her body was thin.

  I didn't understand why she was in my room. For a moment, I almost considered that I could have begun dreaming a new dream. I hadn't seen the girl in over two weeks, but I could very well be dreaming about her.

  She turned around, and her eyes widened as she looked at me. It was only a moment before she flashed that sly smile and crossed her arms.

  “Hey! It's the frown guy!” she said.

  I raised my brow, wondering if I was really dreaming. I had to be.

  “Why are you here?” I asked, but my voice sounded weaker, and less manly than I had wanted. I wanted her to understand that this was weird, but I sounded more like I was embarrassed because she was there.

  She uncrossed her arms, walking over to the trash can. She tied the bag, kneeling down to do so. I was kind of relieved. My eyes had kept wandering to the back pockets of her jeans.

  “Don't worry. I'm not purposely trying to get on your precious nerves. My mom's the head nurse, sometimes, I help out,” she remarked, pulling the bag from the can and replacing it.

  I knew that if she could see, I would have been blushing. I felt the heat of embarrassment travel my neck.

  She stood up, and walked to the door, throwing the trash bag in something outside. I strained to see what she was doing, but quickly tried to act natural when she came walking back into the room.

  She stopped in front of my bed, and placed each fist against her hips as she looked at me. She held no hesitation in the way she looked at me, as if she were staring at a normal guy.

  But I wasn't normal. I knew she could see that.

  “Do you want anything? I can sneak you a bag of chips, or a candy bar if you'd like,” she replied, tilting her head with a soft smile.

  I knew I was staring at her as if she were an alien, but people didn't treat me so casually much anymore. When they did, it worried me, and confused me.

  “I'm good.”

  “You sure? Your sister said you really l
ike cherry Icees. I can run across the street and buy you one,” she replied.

  “You talked to my sister?” I asked.

  “Of course,” she said, laughing slightly. She placed her hands at the edge of the bed and leaned forward. “She asked me to keep an eye on you. Said you could be stubborn.”

  “I am not,” I grumbled, and she laughed. Despite my earlier notice, it was a nice sound. One of those that give you a chill, assuring you that it was good.

  “I'm gonna get you that Icee, and get me one too. I'll be back,” she said, but she had changed her voice to a Dracula tone, and had backed out of the room with her hands out like a zombie. I tried to protest, but she was gone before I could even get a word out of my mouth.

  I just sat there in the silence of my room, watching the shadows from the outside walk down the hall. For a moment, life didn't seem real.

  The clock on the wall read that it was three-thirty. No normal girl would go out at three-thirty to get an Icee.

  She must have been one of the crazy folks.

  I laughed slightly, pushing the button to bring my bed up to a sitting position. I sat there, staring into the darkness for a while, not really thinking of anything, because I didn't even feel awake.

  After a moment, I reached for the remote, and the pain button. I knew it would knock me out soon, and if I was lucky, maybe before she even got back.

  I turned the TV on, and flipped through the channels, but nothing was on but fuzz and infomercials. Not that I watched much TV anymore. Most of it was beautiful people with normal problems. Where was the fun in that?

  The girl came back only a few minutes after. I saw her shadow before I saw her, holding two large Icee cups and a grocery bag. She came in the room, smiling as she held up her products.

  “Didn't know what you'd like, so I got some different stuff,” she said, coming to the side of my bed.

  I watched in near silence as she moved my table over me, and set the things down. Then, she sat down on the other side, where Ava had sat earlier, and started going through the bag.

  “Let's see, we've got KitKats, and Snickers, and Doritos, and Pringles, because what kid can live without a can of Pringles,” she said, looking up to flash me a smile.

  I was instead staring at her drink. “What did you do to your Icee?” I asked.

  The drink was purple, but also red and blue. It looked like a rainbow in a cup.

  She picked up her drink, and my eyes followed her as she did. “Don't make fun of my Icee. I like all of the colors, so I figure, why not mix them all together. It really is pretty great,” she said with a shrug, sipping it and then sighing. “Once you try it, you can never be satisfied with one flavor ever again,” she said, shaking her head.

  I watched her take out a pack of Sour Punch Straws, and Butterfingers, before the bag was empty and she threw it away.

  She came back, sat down and opened the pack of Sour Punch Straws. “They really shouldn't even make any other flavors. The blue is the only ones worth eating,” she said, dipping one in her Icee, and then eating.

  She looked up, and I realized I had been staring at her. I quickly averted my eyes to my drink, busying my hands and took one long swig of the cherry ice.

  “I don't think you've told me your name yet,” she said, and I only looked up briefly to see she was watching me unashamedly.

  “Falon Walker,” I said.

  “Julie Michaels,” she said, smiling crookedly.

  I nodded, and didn't say anything to it. I still wanted to fall asleep quickly. The pain was substantial, but having a normal conversation was just unusual.

  I wondered if she was even looking at my burns. Was she dying to ask, but trying not to be rude? It wouldn't be the first time. Many people before her had done the same, trying to be nice by pretending I was normal.

  Most people just wouldn't look at my face when they spoke to me. Like they could pretend I was normal if they didn't see what I looked like.

  Julie wasn't avoiding my face though. If anything, I felt natural when she looked at me.

  “Aren't you going to eat something?” she asked.

  I shook my head, still trying to not look at her too much. “I'm not hungry,” I told her.

  She stood up, and came to my side instantly. When the back of her hand touched my forehead, I recoiled. She didn't seem daunted by gesture. She went about checking my fluids and medicine.

  “Are you in pain? You have the pump throughout the night,” she was saying, looking at me with concern written across her face.

  “I'm fine,” I told her, looking at her.

  She relaxed, smiling softly. “Fine isn't an emotion. If you're feeling hot, or strange, you should let me know, so I can get you something for it,” she replied.

  “Can you even legally do that?” I asked, squirming.

  Julie moved back to the end of the bed, lifting the blankets. I protested, louder than was necessary. She was only checking the blood pressure cuffs that were around my legs.

  “Just relax, Falon,” she said, meeting my eyes with a hint of amusement in her light green eyes. “I'm not going to try to rape you or anything,” she replied, holding back a laugh.

  I didn't say anything, but it was mostly because I was humiliated.

  “To answer your question, yes, I can. I'm in nursing school, so this is like one of my training exercises,” she told me, pulling the blankets back over my legs and sitting down again.

  “How old are you?” I asked her. There was a lump in my throat, so my voice sounded more caught than stern like I usually kept it. I sounded like an embarrassed schoolboy.

  She smiled, swallowing down her rainbow Icee. “Seventeen as of four days ago. I would have invited you to my party, but I have to have more information than that guy that frowns and leaves girls with their messes,” she told me.

  I honestly didn't know whether to take the things she said as a joke, or an insult. She said everything so casually, that it seemed like teasing, but her words were also serious, and honest.

  So I stayed safe and ignored it.

  “If you're seventeen, aren't you still in school?”

  She shook her head. “Got my diploma a few months ago, and my GED. I guess you could say I'm a genius,” she replied.

  “You can do my work then,” I muttered, and she laughed. I couldn't explain the bit of brightness that seemed to light up inside me at the sound of her laugh.

  “Are you home schooled?” she asked.

  I looked to her, and started to ask how she knew. How in the world could she possibly know I was a home school brat? Like it was written across my face?

  For a moment, I had forgotten my burns.

  I nodded rather than answering. She was still smiling though, and I was quickly starting to pray for sleep. “I was, too. I had a lot of free time though, so I usually did as much school work as I could at one time,” she replied.

  I didn't know why she thought I would care about her free time. Or that she was home schooled. I didn't know why she thought I would care about anything that had to do with her or her perfect life.

  “I can think of a quote from any book I've read,” she said, biting off the end of a Sour Punch Straw when I looked at her.

  Raising a brow, I smirked. “Really? That's just amazing,” I said, not masking the sarcastic tone to my voice as I said it. I knew I was being a jerk, but at the moment, I didn't care.

  She pursed her lips, and rolled her eyes. “It is amazing, Mr. Witty. Just give me a book, and I can tell you a quote from it,” she replied. I looked at her skeptically. “Go ahead. Try me,” she bantered, rolling her hand in a motion for me to try.

  I'll be completely honest when I say that I was definitely searching for anything that I didn't think she would know, just to make her look like a fool. Her knowing smile was beginning to get on my last nerve.

  “How about a Clive Barker book?” I asked. I didn't think she would even know who he was.

  I could just imagine her cur
led up with the Cullen. Love triangles, and golden eyes, and all of that other mushy crap.

  “Any particular book?”

  I shook my head.

  She smiled. “'Of all the rash and midnight promises made in the name of love, none, Boone now knew, was more certain to be broken than 'I'll never leave you.'. '” she said, then tilted her head. “Shall I continue? The next paragraph was actually my favorite.”

  I didn't really say anything. I was beginning to feel drowsy.

  “What time didn't steal from under your nose, circumstance did. It was useless to hope otherwise, useless to dream that the world somehow meant you good. Everything of value, everything you clung to for your sanity, would rot or be snatched in the long run, and the abyss would gape beneath you, as it gaped for Boone now, and suddenly, without so much as a breath of explanation, you were gone. Gone to Hell or worse, professions of love and all,” she spoke.

  Her voice had been soft, and soothing, and I felt the medicine finally taking over. My limbs were heavy, but my eyes were heavier as she quoted the introduction to Cabal with accuracy.

  I would know. I had read the book before.

  I was barely aware of her standing, nor of her pulling my blankets over me. The last thing I heard before I fell asleep, and it could have possibly been my mind playing tricks on me, was her soft voice saying, “Tomorrow will be better.”

  I certainly hoped so.

  ♥

  I woke up to a nurse drawing blood. Maybe I should have put up more resistance than I did, but I wasn't sure if I was even awake until the voice wasn't Julie's.

  The nurse had a rougher voice as she said, “Go back to sleep. Doctor will be here shortly.”

  I didn't fall back asleep, but I didn't do anything. I just sat in the bed, and stared at the table beside me, pushed away slightly so the nurse could draw blood.

  I looked at the can of Pringles, and the small note in front of it, with my name written on the front, surprisingly spelled correctly. She must have gotten that from one of my charts or something.

  Looking to the clock, I knew Ava wouldn't come by for another twenty minutes or so, and I doubted the doctor would either. Doctors were busy in the morning, right?