Chapter 3 Stranger

She looked nervously and desperately among the running crowd for his dad, thinking of nothing but only wishing that the gunshot was nothing. That it was merely a trick of imagination or that it was just a warning shot, without the intent of killing, although she was finally assured with only seeing the scene that the one who pulled the trigger was her own dad himself. He was now immobilized, sitting on his knees scraping the grass, bulging hands on his back handcuffed, and dozens of arms wrapped almost all around his limbs, including his bare neck.

Although far away from the scene, she could clearly see his struggle of trying to get out of them, including breathing, while the gun had been finally retrieved from his hand while someone pointed a gun directly at his head. She wasn't sure who he actually was, but the brooding intensity he was emanating around was enough to choke her throat against screaming. With just a command alone by this merciless authority she was certain it'd be her father's death without justice, this that would not be treated as homicide but merely a form of self-defense.

She and her dad's eyes unexpectedly met and his steady, almost pleading gaze, tender and solemn, was now enough to penetrate his thought.

Run, Maddie.

"Seize the girl!" Edward instructed, rapidly approaching toward her, shouting with all his remaining voice, pointing at her direction.

At least for her life, she ran. While doing so, she asked herself, almost in rage, why her dad went all the way here alone? How did he know she was here? Where were their bodyguards? Even through her blurred vision, both from her own tears and sudden raindrops, she looked around the empty cemented road for help. She saw her dad's car parked innocently alone outside, and so there she went, but when she was about to open it, it secured itself from any intrusion. It was locked, and the keys might be on her dad. On the other hand, her hired driver and his car were inside Edward's premise, and obviously she couldn't go back. So she resorted to other ways. On her east, she saw an approaching vehicle. Because of the headlight blinding her sight it was indistinguishable. But anyway she shoved herself in the middle of its way and it screeched, the driver pulled back on his seat, and the horn echoed repeatedly against the surrounding silence.

She was fortunate it was a taxi without any passengers. No negotiation took place outright between the driver and her but she just opened the door, dumped herself, and instructed him to take her anywhere except here. For a moment he was still hesitant to follow, not until she promised she would triple the fare. Eventually he nodded and before the guards including Edward came, they were already on their way going somewhere, to where? She didn't know exactly, but she couldn't care less any longer. She was now at ease partly because of the smooth driving, however it was evident she would not be for long, for there were approaching cars appeared behind them later on, speeding up to more than the maximum speed allowed, desperate to reach and corner her. So she pleaded the driver to do the same, and somehow he did after all the inquisitive stares on the rear mirror.

This was a moment of desperate time that called for desperate measure. She already had to give all that she had in exchange for a longer life. Upon them reaching a traffic jam, no more space for overtake but to just suddenly halt and awfully wait, she finally decided to escape by feet. She was about to pay- because she couldn't just leave, she simply couldn't, beside she owed her life to him-when she realized at last that she had nothing, carrying nothing but herself, no phone or money, anything. What now? She was about to resort to just cry miserably in the corner and just surrender and be fucked and imprisoned and later on just take her own life through falling to a bridge down the deep murky river and just be found a week after floating kilometers away from the site-already so white and started decomposing, when the driver meekly pointed to her face and told her to just give to him one of her earrings. To her it was a sort of revelation, and therefore without hesitation, she removed it hastily that her left ear even bled, but pain wasn't belong to the vocabulary of her current emotions, not anymore, when everything was too much to bear already. Weakened by everything, the burden of being nothing, the uncertainty of her life and her dad's life, she opened the car's door and ran barefooted down the unfamiliar street and looked not for the nearest light, even not for the most populous area, but to the darkest and most absent, and leaning against the cold wall she was finally relieved when she heard (after everything that happened) nothing any more than but the deafening silence and her dribbling heartbeats racing for her life's sustenance.

Finally, being given a new chance to survive longer and further against the world's and human's cruelty, whatever lay before her now she would gladly welcome with wide open arms, with love and beauty, with tenderness and unyielding hope, even another death. Because what else? How else? How to make sense of the world and her life anymore but to make the most out of her pain and sadness and loneliness and sorrow, turn it into something tangible that would at least carry her (not otherwise) and to simply move forward and continue living until she didn't have to, despite despite despite, and most especially because even though she was nothing more but only lesser than an afterthought? Doomed to be forgotten and ignored, worthless. So fucking be it!

Across the hallway, towards nowhere and no-when, in silence, through the darkness ahead of the unknown, she walked, slowly at once then moderately as if called, until a voice, a man's, behind the shadow, chillingly spoke. Her heartbeats skipped a lifetime for this momentary chance of divine providence, of finally being seen, heard, known, touched, and felt, by none other than light itself.