Pearl

A Story by jaseyrae137

A story of obsession

Aria Copeland was 15 years old. She died today.

My mind was foggy as I woke, a dull ache clouding my thoughts. Dazed and confused, I surveyed my surroundings. White room. Bed and comforter in the middle. Small rectangular window placed on the ceiling, hidden beneath some shrubs. Cement flooring. A single light bulb was lit in the center of the room. A digital clock sat alone in the corner… no door.

Where am I? How did I get here?

Questions and concerns bombarded my mind as the fog began to fade. As I came to full consciousness, I felt a pang in my wrist and stinging on various places about my body. The ache in my head became a vicious throbbing and my body curled into itself on instinct. A sob escaped my lips as the pain hit me, and I finally took a moment to look at myself. My knee was torn open and I had scratches speckling my body, turned black and blue from bruises.

I had been gnarled into a gruesome form of myself. As my mind started to process the situation I felt a lump bubble up my throat, constricting my airways. My vision went white. My ears started ringing. Everything was so confusing. I couldn’t get any air. Why is it so bright?

I blacked out.

When I came to again, everything was a little bit clearer than before. The panic was settling into understanding, and this time when I looked around the room, I saw the details, too. I don’t know if it was from fear or what, but I could see every crease and crevice, every irrelevant speck of dust or chip in the paint. Somehow, this place seemed familiar. In the back of my mind, I knew that I’d been here before.

If only I could remember how I got out.

I stood from my bed, hoping to find something that showed a sign of escape. A break in the paint. A hole in the floor. I crawled on my hands and knees, searching beneath my bed and feeling for something uneven on the wall. There was nothing. I looked up to the ceiling, far above any possible reach, and as my gaze dropped to where the wall and the ceiling met, my eye caught on the window. Tiny. Mocking. A few beams of light made it in past the leaves, and for a short moment, I cherished them. I basked in them. Who knows? Maybe those would be the last rays of light I ever saw.

I realized that there was no way out. I had no plausible means for escaping this place. This place I had been sent to, somewhere, at some time. Who brought me here?

The idea of being stuck, no way out. It didn’t sit well with me. As I looked around this solid white room, no color besides the bushes outside and the overly luminescent light bulb, I felt so constricted. As though the walls were closing in on me, slowly shrinking in from their places, and as they did, my skin seemed to mimic their actions. All that I wanted was to cower back into myself. Hold my legs to my chest in the corner, close my eyes, and be somewhere else. Back in my sanctuary. My home. Alone with my dad and my best friend, swinging forward and back on that tire swing that they built for me, the cold wind whipping my hair behind me, stinging my skin. All that I wanted was to see the dark night landscape on the grass, damp from the afternoon rain. I just wanted to turn off the lights and wake up in my bed.

My hand went to my neck as I daydreamed, as it always does. My fingers curled in to clasp the pearl on my necklace. But they came away with nothing. It grasped again, hoping that I’d missed it. Nothing. I felt nothing. I looked down and stared blankly at my chest. It was missing. My necklace was missing. As I sat there, limp against the wall, long fingers crawled down my chest, took my heart between them, and squeezed. My heart shattered. My mom was gone.

Fragmented memories started flooding back to me. Memories that I should never have been able to recall. Those of my life back in Bosnia before we came here. My mother cradling me in her arms. Watching her gentle frame by the fire as she read Wuthering Heights each winter, a single strand of her long brown curls hanging in front of her chocolate eyes, in stark contrast to her pale skin. Seeing her face twitch ever so slightly as she opened the door to my uncle, uttering a strained greeting. Hearing the screaming back and forth between two people that were supposed to love each other -- brought into this world together. Listening to a harsh smack and a shout from the other room. Following my father as he raced through the rooms of the house, a silent stream of tears running down his face, and then finally stopping, frozen in place, as he stared down at the bloody remnants of my mother on the ground. The front door hanging open. My dad rushing me out of the house, out of the city, out of the country and away from him. Finding refuge in the small tourist town of Tarpon Springs in Florida. Those terrible memories fading over time as I found solace in this new place. Growing up as an introvert in a town full of loud people. Meeting Henry. My best friend. My safety. Rebuilding my life, at home, with my father and my best friend.

I remember walking home from school when I was 11 and taking a detour on the trail, trying to quench the curiosity that my youthful mind held. Stumbling into a place in the woods free of any trees. It felt unnatural. A presence came up behind me. Before I could turn, there was a pressure over my mouth. The last thing I remembered seeing was a gaping hole in the ground, and a brilliant white room inside. When I awoke, I was laying in my backyard beneath the stars. I couldn’t tell if I had dreamt it or not. But I never again wanted to veer off of that path. And there has been an ever looming presence in my wake since that day.

As I recovered the memories I had so long repressed, I knew. That’s when I’d been here. And all of the sudden the most minor details were coming back to me. The dark eyes staring at me from the carousel at my first carnival. The deep brown, unkempt hair that stood in the shadows. The deathly pale skin, unseen anywhere in this town besides on me. Pale like my mother.

My mind flashed image after image of the most dangerous man in my life, documented and put away into a folder in the back of my head until this moment. Storing them for the day that I could understand. My uncle was in this town, too.

The light in the room flickered, and then all went black. I felt panic rise in my throat. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t see. My head was spinning out of control and fear racked my body. My mind tried to ready itself for the end. But I couldn’t take it. I crashed to the floor in a useless pile. My eyes clenched tight together - the dark was too much. I held my head in dire need of some light, light to keep my sanity. To rid my mind of the thousands of terrible possibilities it was creating. Suddenly, the backs of my eyelids turned red. My eyes slowly opened. The room was lit again. I let out a sigh of relief and rolled onto my other side --

Pearl.

In large letters. Sprawled across the wall. Pearl. Red dripped from each letter. My gaze followed the drops down to the floor. To the clock. It was 4:19 A.M. My moms birth date.

A brown ringlet dropped in front of my face. My hand once more grasped at the empty space around my neck, clinging onto the idea of that pearl. The family heirloom. The namesake of my mom. In the back of my mind I heard my father’s voice as he gave it to me on my seventh birthday. She would want you to have this Aria. You’re the spitting image of her, you know.

I felt a warm breath blow across my ear.

A deep voice that I'd long forgotten pierced my eardrum. “Goodbye, Pearl.”