We Were Like Scenes Without Subtitles

Glin wonders about her father and how he really died, and if she has a possible relation to Anja.

Nearly a week and a half has passed since Glin's sixteenth birthday and she's come to terms that the crazy events that happened on her birthday weren't really as crazy as she thought. She's finally gotten the memory out of her mind through force.

On the up-side, she hasn't seen one of those shadows since her birthday, or the man at the mall or Anja.

But for the life of her, she can't stop thinking about her father. He died a while ago. Glin knows that he was murdered, but her mother never talks about it. She's asked before but her mother always responds with "Now's not a good time to talk about that, honey" or "You're not ready to hear about that yet."

What does that even mean? How could she not be ready yet? She's sixteen!

When her father was killed, Glin waited outside the hospital room. Her mother didn't want her to see him. The doctors told her mother what happened - though Glin knew that her mother knew there was more to than just homicide - and when her mother came back out she didn't say a word. Glin asked, "Is he...?" and her mother just nodded, tears forming in her eyes.

They never let her see her father, she never got to say goodbye and they never told her what had really happened. All her mother said was that it was a terrible accident and he wouldn't make it.

Throughout the day, Glin replayed that memory in her head. The look on her mother's face when she came out of the hospital room. The smell of the hospital, the feeling deep inside Glin's gut that her father was dying. The look on the doctor's face when he called my mother into the room. The sound of her mother's voice when she told her that her father had been in accident and he was in the hospital.

Patients in beds, doctors in lab coats. Nurses, surgeons, paper work to sign, agreements and discussions to be had. It all happened so fast, the whole process. At 2:32 on that Saturday afternoon, Glin's mother got the call. At 2:53 they got the hospital. At 3:45, Glin's mother came to her and announced her father's death.

And from that point on, there had been a hole in Glin's heart. From that point on, she wished she could see the man who killed her father in a hospital, seconds away from death. She wished to get vengeance on her father. She wanted someone to pay, someone to blame for her father's death.

When Glin gets home from school that day, she throws her backpack on her ratty old sofa and slumps down next to it. Her mother is at work and will be until seven tonight. Glin's mother doesn't work in the same hospital Glin's father had spent his last minutes in, she wouldn't have stayed sane this long if she did.

Glin stares at her living room for a few minutes, feeling as if her life was recently turned upside-down and has been going downhill ever since. Why is it just now happening?

What's happening to her?

Will it always be like this? Will she be asking questions about her life, questioning its normality? Will she always question Liam's normality? Or her father's death?

What really happened that day?

Glin hears a knock at the door and jumps. She gets up and looks out the peephole. A young teenage boy with blond hair and pale skin stands on the other side of the door, waiting for Glin to open it. She doesn't know who he is. But he's a simple teenage boy, how dangerous could he be?

But judging what's happened over the last few days, Glin locks the door and walks away from it. She doesn't even take two steps when she hears the knock again. It's not a knock like "I need you to open the door right now," it was more of a knock like he doesn't know what he's doing and he just wants someone to answer the door. Glin starts to wonder if he heard her lock the door or not.

Glin sighs and turns around. She looks through the peephole again and sees the boy sigh sadly and turn away. Glin debates in her head. He looks harmless, but that's how they all look. They look nice and sweet, but then they take out a gun and shoot you in the head.

That's probably what happened to my dad.

I've made a lot of stupid decisions, but this is among the top five.

Glin unlocks the door and swings it open. "Wait." She calls to the boy. He turns around and smiles.

"Hi." He says. The foreign accent in his voice sounds so familiar, but Glin can't put a name to it. "I'm John."

"G-Glin." Glin greets him nervously. "Can I help you?"

John grins, "Glinda Prater, correct?"

"How do you know my name?" Glin asks, trying to look confident.

John's face suddenly turns from happy and successful to reassuring and helpful. "I'm a friend, Glinda, not an enemy. May I just speak with you for just a minute?"

"You have five." Glin says, crossing her arms over her chest. "What do you want?"

John smiles and nods once. "I'm here on behalf of my sister, Anja. She said she saw you at the mall a few weeks ago."

Glin suddenly goes cold. She feels goosebumps form on her arms and the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Her heart skips a beat when she hears the name Anja. It sounds like a battle cry, a long line of insults. It feels like a harsh slap in the face.

But even worse than all that, it brings all the memories she wanted out of her head running straight back. It reminds her of everything that happened with Liam, and the man at the mall. Anja, the German girl standing next to the man, the way she seemed to familiar. So similar to her father, her facial features, the way she stood. It all comes rushing back, and Glin has to lean against the door to stop herself from falling.

This boy in front of her is Anja's brother. It almost felt like it were her herself standing in front of Glin.

"Miss?" John asks. "Are you alright?"

Glin swallows back her sudden feeling of dizziness and manages a nod. "Anja. Your sister. What does she want?"

"She asked me to send a message." John explains. "She told me to tell you that what you're about to witness over the next few days is what you need to know, and that it will change your life."

"What am I -"

"I must go now." John interrupts. "Guten Tag."

Glin frowns as he turns away and starts to head back to his car, "But -"

But by the time she says it, he's too far away to hear.

"But what am I about to witness?" She asks herself. She clutches her stomach, suddenly feeling sick and alone. The memories of everything that happened on her birthday, her father, and Liam. It's all too much. She closes the door after watching John drive off and then stands with her back against the door. What was he talking about? Why did he come to tell me that small, redundant message?

Glin looks around, bracing herself for what's about to happen? Will someone pop out from around a corner? Is Glin in danger?

But, surprisingly, Glin can't think of anything but Anja and her father again. They looked so alike, so similar. They have to be related, but why hadn't Glin's mother ever brought John or Anja up in conversation? Was it too depressing to talk about it, like Glin's father's death? Did John or Anja kill him? Did Glin have a completely unknown, German side to her family?

Glin tries to stand up straight but can't lean off the door without her legs threatening to give way. She stands there for a long time, scared and cautious of what's to come. Should she leave the house? What if it's outside? What is it anyway?

Glin starts shaking and shivering, unable to move. Her feet start to get cold, along with the tips of her fingers. Slowly, her whole body is covered in goosebumps and she's overcome with the feeling of being unsafe in her own home. She looks across the hall to the kitchen, looking for shadows, movement, anything. If she sees something, will she be able to move? To run away? Or will she be stuck in one spot, too robbed of courage to move?

All the sudden she feels mad, extremely mad. Mad at John for leaving her confused, mad at her mother for not telling her about her father, mad at Anja and her father. Mad at anything and everything she could think of.  Her hands form fists and she feels like screaming. All at once, she feels the cause of  her shaking and shivering to change from being cold to being angered and infuriated.

She looks down at the ground and sees a shadow. Not a shadow cast by anything, she realizes, but a thick, shifting, blob of black. She stares at it, wanting to grab it and throw it away, as if that would keep the shadows out of her life for good. She begins yelling at it, "Get away from me! Stay away! Get out of my life!" She goes on and on, getting angrier and angrier with every word she screams. Eventually her head starts to throb and that's when her knees finally buckle and she sinks to the ground.

The shadow inches closer until it wraps itself around her legs. She feels something different now than with her first encounter with a shadow the day before her birthday. Last time, something in her knew that she would have a dream.

This time, she knows it's just here to scare her. To haunt her, frighten her and worry her. She knows that when she's finally forced to pass out, there will be no dream. She'll lay here, passed out, unwillingly letting the shadow take her over until . . . Well, she doesn't know what will happen afterward.

She feels her eyes droop, knowing there's nothing she can do. And honestly, she doesn't care.

She's been sucked into some world that she has no control over. She has no control over how fast her knowledge of it comes or when or how. But somehow, it's happening. John was right, and she can feel it. She knows her whole life is about to change over the next few days, whether she tries to forget the events to come or not. They'll always be with her.

Her life is about to change.

She now feels it inside her; the shadows are just the beginning.

Author's Note

I like this chapter a lot and I think it really leads into what I have planned for the chapters to come. Tell me what you think.

Reviews

[Jacques]

Very good chapter and i'm liking the approach you've taken and i feel the changes you've said to have made may have been a right move and there's so much you can go with this book and there's so much to get from it and come from it . so much heart and soul and it's nice to have the chapter back onto Glin . great chapter , i'm sending you a suggestion title in a message K