Read Ridge Creek for Free Online Page B

find my words floating off as I realize
I haven’t even seen myself yet.  I know I look bad, but…
    “No mirrors.”
    “No mirrors?” I ask confused and a bit high-pitched.
    “You’ve been through enough.”
    I’m not so sure I agree with his theory but looking at the
set of his face I don’t think I’ll be getting much choice on the matter.  And
who cares anyway?  I’m still kinda wishing I were dead anyway.  I’m sure no one
looks good when they’re dead.   Feeling like I do, I probably look like a
‘Walker’ off the Walking Dead anyway.  Who wants to see that when they
look in the mirror?
    Handing the glass back to him, I slide back down the bed,
roll to my side, close my eye and zone out.  Lost in re-reruns of last night
again.
    After a few minutes of my own mental torture, I hear the
sound of him pulling his jeans on and then the door opens and closes.  Opening
my eyes to peek, he is gone.
     
    *****
     
    The rest of the afternoon and evening flies by in a blur. 
Partially because it is busy and partially because the pain killers are good and keep me relaxed and a bit out of it.
    Here’s how it played out:
    Shortly after Jake leaves, I hear a small knock on the door
and then silence.  Unsure if I heard it or not, I call out a small, “Yeah?”
    The door pushes open and Zane pokes his head around.  I give
him a small grin and he steps through the door.  He is carrying two big Target
bags.
    Huh?
    “Girl clothes,” he rumbles as he walks across the room and
puts them on the chair next to the bed.  “I don’t shop.  Don’t get excited.”
    He stands looking at me and I watch his blue eyes taking in
my swollen face for a few beats before he orders, “Heal.”  Then he heads back
to the door and leaves.
    The rest of my day is spent with Ellen fussing over me as
she helps me out of bed to find the toilet and bathroom.  She also feeds me. 
She is calming and gentle.  She also takes great efforts to meet all my
requests.  Except one.  She refuses to let me anywhere near the bathroom
mirror.  Even insisting I brush my teeth in the bath and not go near the
bathroom sink.
    It would appear she and her son are on the same page for
that one.  With steely grace she steers me away from the mirror each time I try
to approach, shaking her head solemnly.
    Back in bed, I get a visit from Pops later in the evening. 
He arrives quietly and sits in the chair next to the bed.  Staring at me
thoughtfully for a while, he leaves about ten minutes later.  Not a word is
spoken the entire time he is there.  Lost inside my head, reliving my own
torture, I stare blankly at him during his visit and am silently thankful he
doesn’t talk.  I don’t see Jake again that day.
    When I finally gain the courage to ask about his whereabouts
late in the evening, Ellen explains he has gone home for a while.  Confused,
thinking this was his bedroom and therefore his home, I send her a questioning
look but she says no more.
     
    *****
    I don’t see Jake again until nearly a week later.
    A week of my own living hell that I spend alternating
between sleeping knocked out with pain killers, or pacing the room going
quietly mad.  Ellen comes and goes often, feeding me, nursing me and chatting
quietly to me.  She tells me stories about her life and tells me about the
township of Ridge Creek.  A place she has lived all of her life.  A place she
clearly loves.
    Unable to talk back, I listen absentmindedly to her chatter
but offer nothing back of myself.  I don’t see the point.  I am a dead person
walking.  Tony is coming for me.  I know it.  No matter how many times
Ellen assures me I am safe here, I know I am not.  He will find
me.
    So as my body heals, my mind falls apart.
    Every waking hour I continue to relive the events leading up
to the present and I find myself spiraling further into a mental torture
chamber where all I can feel is pain and fear.  As the days pass, I become
obsessed with a fear that