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Post by Bella Raven - Crow Woman on Feb 17, 2020 2:26:59 GMT -6
Anna knew that Ryan was in denial whenever he refused to reveal the truth about the incidents that blighted our young lives. It usually meant that something has happened and that we believe that she will never understand. So Anna refused to leave Ryan’s room, walking towards his HI-FI system and briefly turning it off.
“What the hell, Anna?” Ryan asked, irritated, rising himself up from resting on his bed until he was sitting up, looking directly at Anna who had her arms folded, a serious expression on her face this time. She rarely gets this serious, but only when she knew that we have something to hide.
“Ryan……I just want to talk you.” Anna said.
“Don’t you mean you and Bella?” Ryan asked in dark sarcasm.
“I told her not to get involved. However, she may be right about what she saw……” Anna said, impatiently interrupted by Ryan again.
“She had no permission to get into my head!” Ryan protested.
“I know…..But Bella still has difficulty controlling her special…..Abilities.” Anna sighed.
“I thought that the whole point of her having a family therapy was for you to tell her to control her curse.” Ryan muttered, growing more and more irritated.
“Yes, and we’re making progress, but for now, I’m talking about you. I know that something has happened to you today……The question is……What happened?” Anna asked, hoping that whatever happened to Ryan, she hoped that he would handle it maturely instead of his usual aggressive and stubborn nature, refusing to leave his bedroom until he revealed the truth.
I was still downstairs, napping on the couch while listening to “Eva” by Nightwish through my earpieces attached to my iPhone.
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Post by LexingtonDeville1984 on Feb 21, 2020 11:02:20 GMT -6
"I told you, Anna. Nothing happened!" Ryan bristled, internally seething at Bella having the temerity to try and invade his mind to see what kind of events had transpired this day. If this was her way of trying to punish him for what he’s done while painting herself as the golden child, it was working.
"Then I’m not leaving this room until you stop being so stubborn and take responsibility for your own actions." Anna responded, not giving any ground as she kept her arms folded.
"So that’s how it’s going to be then, is it? Fine." Ryan grumbled, subverting the the rage inside of him, planning to throttle his stepsister when he had spoken his peace. He climbed off his bed, fingers grazing at the tiny cut on his lip as he breezed past Anna and opened his wardrobe, hanging his battle vest up on a nearby clothes hanger.
"Don’t think I appreciate your behaviour, Ryan.” Anna lectured, prompting him to slam that wardrobe door shut.
"I got into a fight round the back of the library, okay?! HAPPY?!" He snapped, briefly raising his voice, exasperated at telling the truth.
Those were the words Anna did not want to hear. "Please tell me you didn’t seriously hurt anybody." She sighed, one hand across her mouth.
"Would unfair odds, two knockouts, two fingers snapped, and a pretty boy blonde ringleader humiliated sound good enough to you?" Ryan asked, absentmindedly pulling the darts out of the dartboard on his bedroom door.
"That is not the point, Ryan. You can’t just go around Derry and start fights with people you don’t like." Anna spoke, disappointed in her stepson.
"So I just ignore some innocent kid being beaten up and walk on by? That almost happened before I made friends with an African-American kid named Sean. Some fat slob was picking on him, so I stepped in." He responded.
"That’s very admirable of you, Ryan." Anna said truthfully, silently proud of her stepson for defending someone with a different skin colour.
"You know me, Anna. I’m not a coward." Ryan replied, lowering his voice while dropping the darts on his bedside table.
"I never said you were. Look, I understand why you feel the need to stand up for those being bullied, but being headstrong and reckless is not the answer." Anna wisely reminded her stepson.
"The odds were five on two. That local jock wanker named Bradley and his lapdogs were beating up a kid named Max. He couldn’t fight back fairly, so me and Abigail stepped in and saved his life. If we hadn’t been there sooner, he’d probably be in hospital getting stitches." Ryan revealed, fully telling the truth.
"Hold on..... Abigail was involved too?" She said, slightly shocked.
"She held her own. Especially when she told me that ex Army Rangers taught her how to defend herself. She’s not like the typical mean girls of that school." Ryan chuckled, remembering how his future girlfriend joined him in battle.
"I can see why." Anna responded.
"Maybe you should ask Bella about how tough she is." Ryan insisted. "Abigail knows everything about how that little freak nearly split my head open last night. If it weren’t for me, Bella would probably be playing the victim card."
Anna knew her stepson would be honest. But this set of revelations was shocking. Even to her.
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Post by Bella Raven - Crow Woman on Mar 3, 2020 4:20:42 GMT -6
Downstairs in the living room, I continued to be oblivious to the real world which I always refer to as “the real world of misery”. My earpieces in my ears, attached to my iPhone played Sweet Dreams by Marilyn Manson as I slept the last dreadful hours in my mother’s office away.
Unexpectedly, there was a knock on the front door. Startled, I sat up on the sofa, looking up the stairs, assuming that Anna or Ryan might of heard it.
But the knocking on the door became little more aggressive.
“Alright! I’ll get it!” I yelled.
I got off the sofa and stretched my arms and legs before walking towards the front door to see who was aggressively knocking……
“What?” I asked, seeing that nobody was standing on the front porch of the house.
“Huh?” I asked, shaking my head figuring that it was kids playing Ding Dong Ditch on me. My eyes darted downwards……..
“Ah!” I gasped in horror, falling back on my backside. It was a young boy with soaked short dirty blonde hair. He was wearing a soaked red and white striped shirt, green jean shorts, and sneakers that were all covered in dirty sewer water. The boy’s face was half torn: the left side looked like it was shredded or eaten by a wild animal. His left eye socket was black and several teeth was shown jutting through his torn jawbone, covered in blood. The right side of his face was normal, sewer water consuming his pale skin, his right a ghostly colour of pale white.
“Jesus!” I shivered, slowly scrambling away from the half dead child back, the door still swinging open.
“Will you help me find my daddy?” Asked the young boy, his mouth oozing black blood that dripped onto my feet. I backed away even feather.
“It can’t be!” I gasped, paralysed with terror…..”Joseph Miller?”
[i“Please help me find my daddy…..I’m scared…..I miss him so much……”[/i] the dead Joseph garbled, insisting for me to come with him to find his father.
If Joseph really was dead this whole time after being missing for over two weeks, that means that the creature had already consumed him. This had to be a trap for me to become IT’s next victim……
“No……You’re dead……IT got to you…….Right?” I asked the dead Joseph, who was now the verge of bursting in tears.
“I just want to go home!” The dead Joseph sobbed innocently, his cries suddenly switching to demonic and inhuman screaming.
“TAKE ME HOME!”
“NO! I know what you are!” I screamed, slamming the door shut and locking it, leading against it’s strong frame to prevent myself from falling into another one of Pennywise’s mind games.
My face broke out into a cold sweat as I took a deep breath and sighed in relief. Relief that was short lived. I peeked out the window to make sure that my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me.
Joseph’s dead face appeared on the outside window, his hands pressing onto the glass, screaming, more black blood drooling out from from his mouth that caused me to scream and fall backwards onto the wooden floor in the living room. I crawled back onto the sofa, curling myself in a foetal position on the sofa and covering my ears with my hands to block the sound of the child’s demonic screams and banging on the outside window
“Wake up! Wake Up! Wake up! Wake up!” I closed my eyes and repeated to myself, knowing that this was all just in my head and not real.
“Bella?” Came the voice of Anna.
As soon as her hand touched my shoulder, my soul nearly jumped out of my body. I leapt off the sofa, my skin covered in goosebumps. My blue eyes snapped opened, only to find the dead kid had vanished from the window.
“Bella, calm down. It’s just me.” Anna assured, sitting next to me on the sofa, “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Mom…..? I’m….Fine……I……I must’ve passed out on the couch…..” I panted, my hand on my chest, breathing deeply to ease my anxiety.
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Post by LexingtonDeville1984 on Mar 4, 2020 5:09:22 GMT -6
With his side of the story now told, Ryan changed out of his clothes that had been dirtied by the events of the day’s 5 on 2 brawl around the back of the Derry library. He discarded his black t shirt and jeans into a nearby clothes basket. Anna always maintained a level of cleanliness whenever she needed to wash her children’s clothes, ensuring that her hygiene standards were met.
Clad in only his boxers, Ryan winced as he touched the purple discolouration on his left thigh from where Bella had uncharacteristically pushed him over. Some of the bruising felt painful, but he was used to it. A lifetime’s worth.
"Can’t wait to hear Bella get grounded." He grumbled, opening his chest of drawers and taking out a clean pair of jeans, fitting them with a studded belt and placing them over his legs and groin. Next, he put on a black t-shirt with the Punisher skull logo that matched his mood. With his brother’s dog tags now hanging from his neck and his battle vest completing his fresh look, he decided to leave his bedroom and head downstairs.
"Just breathe, Bella. You’ve had a nightmare. It’s common when people fall asleep after long days." Anna reassured, sensing her daughter’s fading anxiety.
Ryan ignored this, breezing past his attention-seeking stepsister and into the kitchen for a glass of water. "She still dreaming of floating with clowns? Or is she scared the bogeyman might be hiding under her bed?" He asked mockingly, knowing that the slightest taunting word would get under Bella’s skin.
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Post by Bella Raven - Crow Woman on Mar 15, 2020 2:35:10 GMT -6
Ryan’s childish and taunting insults about my horrific hallucinations that I just witnessed a moment ago that involved the malevolent entity terrorising Derry at this very minute, targeting children, made me want to rise up from the sofa and give him a piece of my mind. I felt Anna’s hand gripping onto my arm to prevent me from approaching him……
“Bella!” Anna warned me, nearly begging for me to remain calm.
“As a matter of fact…..!” I paused, the flashback of myself roughly shoving Ryan and the back of his head colliding with the frame of my bedroom door flashed across my mind.
“Never mind!” I muttered quietly, slumping back onto the sofa, sitting beside Anna, avoiding making eye contact with Ryan as much as possible as if he wasn’t in the same room as Anna and myself.
"How surprising." Ryan sneered, his voice as low and as condescending as possible.
“Ryan…..Please go to your room……This is between Bella and me.” Anna politely asked Ryan, telling him to leave while Mom and I were once again about to have another family talk about my current actions for the past few days since we moved to Derry.
Ryan didn’t budge, ignoring what was happening.
“Mom, I told you already……I was only trying to help someone who was being harassed because she was……different.” I spoke, admitting that Jack and I were only trying to help my new friend, Ross back at the Ice Cream shop who was being racially harassed because of her Mexican accent.
“And I appreciated what you did for Rosa. Even though the way you approached the situation was harsh, but it was brave of you to think of others rather than yourself.” Anna admitted a soft smile on her face.
This made Ryan roll his eyes. "What a pile of s**t." He grumbled, still in the kitchen with a glass of water in his hand, waiting for Anna to get to the part when she was supposed to ground me for disobeying her again by leaving the school grounds when she was supposed to pick me up.
“Are you still mad at me for waiting for you after school?” I muttered, my arms folded, assuming that Anna only wanted to talk about how I “disobeyed” her again.
“No, Bella……I’m not mad, but I am disappointed that you once again decided to go against my wishes just because you don’t like it.” Anna admitted, “It’s like me not wanting to go to work because nobody likes to go to work, but I do it because it helps me take care of you and Ryan.”
“What are you getting at, mom?” I asked.
“Everyone has a choice……But more importantly, the choice to do what is right for yourself and others. Like I said.” Anna spoke, recalling our last conversation about me making the right choices in order to right the wrongs from my mistakes.
“Ryan has made mistakes too, you know.” I reminded Anna, referring to his previous fight with Bradley and his friends at the library with Abigail, who was also involved in the fight with him.
“Yes, but like you, he did it to save his new friends from being harassed because they’re different.” Anna pointed out, “It’s one thing to stand up for those around you and that is always a good start, but you also need to learn to stand up for yourself too……”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“You can’t keep running away when things get difficult for you, Bella……You’ve got to learn to take a stand and conquer your fears if you want people to take you seriously and let them know that you won’t let anything stop you from accomplishing your goals, but to also take responsibility for your actions. That’s all it takes to be a true grown up.” Anna wisely said about standing up for myself.
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Post by LexingtonDeville1984 on Mar 25, 2020 12:09:15 GMT -6
Ryan rolled his eyes again and let out a mild snicker. "The chances of that ever happening are about as rare as Bella becoming a nun." He snorted, not impressed by his stepsister’s story of standing up for someone being racially harassed.
"Ryan, this is not the time. I told you to go to your room." Anna spoke, silently proud of her children, but unprepared for their next round of arguments and confrontations that were to follow.
"Sorry for sticking around, but I don’t buy it." Ryan retorted, flat out refusing to believe that his sullen, miserable and attention-seeking stepsister would stand up for someone she didn’t know.
"What?" Bella asked, a disbelieving look on her face upon hearing her stepbrother’s denial.
"Your little heroic deed. Who are you trying to be? Mother Teresa?" Ryan spoke, finishing his glass of water and rinsing out the glass before drying it and putting it away in the cupboard.
This forced Bella to leap off the couch and storm over to Ryan while his back was turned.
"Bella, don’t.......” Anna spoke.
"I’m telling the truth, you asshole!" She hissed, just as her stepbrother turned around to stare her down.
"Bully for you, half-pint. At long last you finally grew a spine and stopped moping and moaning." Ryan snapped back, not rattled by her insult. "Where were you when I was standing up for an innocent African-American kid who was getting the s**t beaten out of him?"
"Standing up for my new friend named Rosa, actually!" Bella fired back, unaware of her stepbrother’s good deed.
"What? You and Captain Emo?" Ryan sniped, referring to Jack as that word which she despised wholeheartedly.
"Shut up! Jack is not like that!" The angry teenage Wiccan seethed.
"Then why didn’t he jump in and protect you this morning?" Ryan responded, disdain behind his green gaze. "You’re lucky I stopped Abigail from wiping the floor with you."
Anna watched her children argue, fearing the worst was to come. Their body language showed barely concealed hatred for one another, refusing to give any ground in this sort of circumstances. She could only pray that one of them stands down when things reached boiling point.
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