BLESSED
an excerpt

Roxanne crashed in through the door and slammed it shut behind her, she leaned against it as her bags slid off her arm and into a pile beside her. She was breathing heavy from that run home and her chest had begun to hurt.

She grabbed her clothes away from her chest and she just stared at the floor. In a moment, the hadn clutching her shirt was splattered with tears, and once she realized she was crying, it all just flodded in at once.

something had happened back there, That van, in all rights, in all the lawes of the world should have hit her, she should have been dead! Maybe not dead, but at least injured and on her way to the hospital. but instead of that something had flipped the van over and away from her. She was mostly terrified it was herself. If it was her, this was something that was unnatural and attention drawing.

And then a thought struck her, several people had seen her, was anyone that might know who she was be in that crowd? Would they come looking for her to see what had happened. She stood up, frightened, her hands now clenched in fists, and slowly she turned to face her door. part of her shook as she reached for the door knob, and slowly she twisted it, and cracked the door open to take a peek outside.

No one was there. she was filled with relief for the moment, and she shut the door again with a little more force then she had wanted, making her jump. At least no one was here for her yet. Roxanne locked her door, and then figured at least if they knew who she was, if she was quiet, they'd figure no one was home when the came to her little house. Then, she would call in sick tomorrow, despite how much of a chewing out she'd get from her boss, and take a long weekend, and then, hopefully by then, everyone would have forgotten about it, and if they didn't know who she was, she would be safe by then. She'd ignore that flipping the van could have anything to do with her, and that it was just a freak accident and it would all be ok. absolutly peachy. yeah, that's what she would do.

Roxanne whipped the tears from her eyes, a new devotion in her just to avoid this sticky plot, and begins doing what she usually does to waste time before she finds that she has to get some sleep, otherwise she'd be too tired to work the next day, not that she was planning on going anyway.

What Roxanne does is takes a damp cloth and wipes all her counters off in the kitchen and bathroom, sweeps the tiled surfaces and gives a quick vaccuum to the carpeted areas, and this keep sher house pretty clean. Since this usually takes about an hour she's ready to makes dinner. Opening her fridge she finds it very empty, and lacking in all things food. Which reminds her that she was supposed to get payed, so tomorrow and this weekend she'll be living on crackers and toast.

But all for the sake of avoiding anything to do with that van. Sacrifices had to be made.

On a whim she searched her cupboards to see if she could find anything she had hidden away from some other time, Luck seemed to be on her side in that respect anyway, there was a can of Tomato soup hidden behind old bags of who knows what, she sighed, and made notes to herself about cleaning up that mess tomorrow, she didn't want to really worry about it now.

Roxanne clunked the can down on on her counter, and rumaged thorugh the draws for her can opener, after finding it she grabbed a pot from off the drain board and placed it on the front right burner and turned it on to medium heat, opening the can she dumped the red gooey contents into the can, picked up a spoon and started scraping out the rest from the insde, then taking the milk from her fridge she poured that in the can to measure and added that to the soup rather than the water, creamier was better in her opinion, she stired it up and waited for it to heat into that nice Tomato red colour. She eventually turned off the heat to it, but left the pot on the burner, so that what was left would still be warm if she wanted more. She pulled out her chair in the same movement that she put the bowl of soup down, it sloshed a little but didn't spill over the sides.

The table sat four people, she didn't know why she had such a big table, she was hte only one who sat at it. she picked up the spoon and dipped it into the soup, blowing the steam off the top of it as she brought her spoon up, she stared at it for a moment, and her hand began to tremble. She dropped the spoon back into the bowl and brought both hands to her face as she began to cry all over again.

It wasn't just the table, it was everything. She had always been alone, no one was going to check to see if she was alright, what would have happened if se had died? would anyone have cared at or was she really just so alone? She definantly felt like it.

She shoved her soup out of the way, sloshing it over the edge this time, she didn't care, she just folded her arms upin front of herself and cried into the table.

This had been comming for awhile, she had felt it before, but it was never enough for her not to be able to ignore it. This time however, she just didn't know what to do other than cry.

And she did for the next hour.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When roxanne had finally calmed down, she didn't bother eating, she wasn't hungry anymore, she just dragged herself to bed for another sleepless night. Tonight she didn't even bother getting undressed, she just fell into bed, and curled up and tried to sleep.

"I don't want to be alone anymore" She whispered to herself.

She didn't know when it had happened, but the next thing she knew, she had found herself in the dream world. She stood this time, in the deep red world and she looked around, she never got to before. The Bloody black hands where held at bay now, by some sort of invisible barrier. That of course was perfectly fine, and she turned to leave them, simpley because even if they where held, they still creeped her out.

But someone else was there. A tall man with tanned bronze skin, the kind you knew wasn't from being in the sun, his hair, spiked up almost widly like a birds feathered head, and deep black eyes, and he stared at her.

"Are you ready to come home?"

Roxanne, felt incredibley confused, "What do you mean?"

A grin spread across the dark mans face, "I guess you are today." and he held out his hand, "Come on."

It was a shattering, not unlike glass, that made her jump, instinctively she knew it must be those hands that always drag her down in her dreams. but somehow she knew something was different, and she grabbed the mans hand and his smile widened even more, "Let's go." and he tightened his grip on her hand, and...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Roxanne woke up, her head pounding from all the crying she had done the night before, she grabbed her head and just cringed.