Maybe Never Ending- Chapter 3

some years ago

Selena never knew that running away would be so much fun.

She hoped her father wouldn’t find out.

Suppressing a bubbling giggle in her mouth, Sel tiptoed over the scattered rocks, as the spring broke out in waves after each fall. The sun gleamed from between the huge waves of rising and subsiding clouds.

Taking extra care to not let her camera get the brunt of the continuous spray of water, she pulled her buttoned shirt over it. It made her look fat, but Selena was willing to make herself look undignified if it meant protecting her camera. The warm feeling of undisguised glee filled itself across her skin, as Sel felt herself invigorate back to her sense.

Sel remembered that she had had to be back before Mother found out that she was absent from her playroom, or even worse if Father found out that she had run away leaving her sick mother alone with the maids.

Did he think that the maids would harm Mother, the Mistress of the house?

Blah! She thought blowing an invisible raspberry, as she pictured the ever worried face of her father.

Grown-ups were so stupid.

Sel blew off the fiery, breezy bangs away from her face and let the stream water wash over her sneakers in its wake. Tilting her head over to the dim, overcast sky, she let herself sway on clumsy footing to the gentle smell of rain dancing around in the fast moving torrent of wind.

She wanted to capture it, store it, keep it and remind herself every single day of the time when she, Selena Bening, committed an impossible feat, and ran away from home into the woods, unchaperoned for the first time.

Sel’s head spun, a warm giddiness traversing her tanned skin, for the first time since a long month. She lowered herself from her awkward position on the toes, ignoring the constant jabs of pain that were sending signals tingling upwards to her spine. She ignored the warm feeling of sticky liquid pooling in her socks.

The rocks weren’t supposed to be that sharp.

The rather fortuitous day of father going on a business trip would be ruined if Mother found out. She would be grounded, locked in her room without an allowance.

That would be horrible.

Sel held the camera strap with a gentle grasp and lifted it from her shoulders, her toes stumbling over the hollow crevice, with every motion she made. A firm hold embracing the camera, she bit her lips and pretended that she didn’t almost fall into the rocky river, and that its rapidly advancing currents hadn’t just stung her. Selena wouldn’t leave until she had a memory made and preserved within her oblong camera. Tipping the ebony black lens upwards, a stray branch tilting towards the leeward side, that tickled the picturesque portrait being filmed in Sel’s camera.

Letting out an impatient huff, Sel tried to back away towards the flat side of the shady rock, to hop across the stream and inspect her toes.

Why did it hurt so much?

The camera strap buckled around her flat breasts like a loose seatbelt, and her thin hands clutched the ends of her shirt like it was the end of the world. The rippling rocks stood a far foot away, and Sel felt an unfamiliar dread ride across her whimpering figure.

Selena felt her toes ripping apart.

Her feet felt wet and dry and slimy. Sel made a fervent wish to God that it wasn’t blood. It would be so hard to cover up the traces then. The coniferous trees, in their green glory rustled in unsuppressed whispers, while a pungent smell that somehow seemed like fish wrapped her up in a swallowing embrace.

Sel held back a frightened shiver, all the animals in the Woods were caught, shot and poached in the Maynard lawn. Father had made sure that she had seen it and felt it.

There should be no fish.

Selena grimaced, a shiver of pain shooting up her leg as her feet gave away and she lost balance.

For a moment everything was blank, just pure, unadulterated fear and adrenaline that buzzed and tingled and kept her afloat among dangerous, unsteady currents. And then it was her lungs, burning, yearning for freedom, and her flailing arms aching under the constant pressure.

Oh, how she hoped within the blazing tendrils of her heart, that the camera could be saved.

Sel didn’t have a backup for all her pictures.

It was supposed to be a secret.

The dark water swallowed her like a monster, her feet crashing against the sharpened peak of a loose boulder, Selena's once pale lips now bruised and bloody.

And then the black night embraced her in its bloody threshold.

SeSeSe

The first thing Sel saw when she woke up was deep brown eyes, beneath a tousled mop of blonde hair. Her throat burned for water, and a strong numbness infiltrated her senses and threatened to push Selena back to sleep.

Sel felt a wave of nausea slip across her, Father would be so mad.

Although Sel felt too numb to comprehend the scrambled mess of her situation, small spots of disappointment that underlay were easy to detect.

She wished Mother would come and sit by her bedside, whispering sweet nothings that all would be okay and that she was there to protect Selena from Father’s wrath instead of a strange, blonde boy who had no business sitting in her room like he owned it.

The familiar portraits of her forefathers glared at Sel with their beady, judging eyes.

Why were there no maids?

A frantic thought whisked across Sel’s jumbled mind that sent her into a frenzy breakdown. Selena couldn’t open her mouth.

It was as if someone had sewn it shut.

“I’m Jake.” he said.

Sel couldn’t see his face.

“I saved you from the river.”

“I don’t think you can hear me though.”

Selena could hear his voice, it was as if it were laced with ash smelling smoke.

He must work in the factories, then.

“Your father asked me to call him if you opened your eyes. Don’t mind me.”

Shock pulsated through her veins, if Father were really here, then why wasn’t he by her bedside, trying to look angry and as if he weren’t worried about her.

What. Had. Happened.?

Maybe some of her emotions seeped through her painfully open eyelids, because Jake or whoever the boy was, told Selena where her Father was.

And the next few seconds snapped Selena out of her numb stupor.

Because Mother was dead.

Gone.

And funeral preparations were already underway.

SeSeSe