Dark Creations: Hell on Earth (Part 5) (31 page)

Arianna was nothing like her mother.  She promised herself years ago that she would never allow herself to be vulnerable and at the mercy of a man.  And if she ever decided to have a child, she would wait until she was older and more settled, and certain she could provide for it. 

Settling down and having children were distant, obscure possibilities.  School, however, was definite.  In less than twenty-four hours, she would enroll at yet another school.  Her eighteenth birthday had passed three days earlier and she was
sure she would be one of the oldest students in her grade, and likely the newest to the school.  But the months would fly by as they always had, and before long she would do something else her mother had never done: graduate from high school.  After high school, she wasn’t sure what she would do.  She quickly sheathed her knife again and tucked it safely in her boot.  She would place it under her pillow as she had every night for the last eight years, and it would accompany her to school the next day. 

The sound of tires kicking up gravel in front of the trailer distracted her from her brooding.  She looked up and realized the room had darkened considerably, that the sun had set some time ago.  A rumbling engine outside meant that her mother had returned.  Her mother had been gone for several hours and had likely found her wa
y to the local watering hole.  Arianna paused a moment in her room and considered going out to greet her and share a smoke with her, but the sound of a male voice followed by her mother’s laughter changed her mind.  She froze where she was.  Her mother did not like to be alone, and Arianna never liked the people she kept company with. 

“Baby, come out and meet a new friend I made in town,” he mother called in a slightly slurred voice.  “We got fried chicken!”

More giggling ensued, both her mother’s and the mystery man’s, and Arianna decided to ignore her mother and forgo dinner.  Hunger would be a welcome alternative to sharing a meal and part of an evening with another of her mother’s loser suitors.  Instead, she shut the door to her tiny room, and the world beyond it, and prepared for her first day in a new school.