Chapter Five: Painful

I got out of the shower, staring at my finger, as it gradually stopped bleeding, unable to stop thinking about the feeling of an actual cut. My finger burned, even though it was a really small cut, but it had a beating, as if my heart was pumping right there on that tiny opening on my hand. I had my finals beginning in two days, and I'd see my classmates for the first time after Sister Ophelia put me in quarantine, as if I had a deadly virus no one could ever get in touch with, only Theo and her.

I spent the last two days of lockdown studying. By the next day, the cut in my finger was done, just the scar was left behind, as all other cuts I suffered throughout my life. I couldn’t pay enough attention to the goddamn books, because the pain I felt was unusual. Have I been misdiagnosed? Was CIP curable? Did that mean that I was going to actually suffer when Clarissa beat me up?

Sister Ophelia came three times a day to bring me my meals, for the past couple of weeks, that were gradually getting nicer. I was sick of chicken soup with too little salt that had no taste. There were always thirty students helping on the food, we had monthly chores, and being under the cook’s orders was the best of them all. He had an excellent taste, and food was always top notch. The cook, Mr. Wendel Wacon, a fifty years old creepy tall and skinny dude, mute and who looked a lot like Lurch from the Addams Family. We called him Lurch behind his back, obviously. He even has that pale skin with dark circles under his eyes. He never left St. Cadence, only for two or three years to study Gastronomy and came back. There is a whole sob story behind his abandonment, but we never really knew for sure what has really happened to him. Some say he was the son of a forbidden love between a nun and a priest, some say he was living in the streets of Bamburgh (the city where the Orphanage is from, we are a good 15 minutes walk from the city) until a nun found him while doing the orphanage’s groceries eating a raw and muddy fish. No one really knew. But he was always sweet to us, sharing the work evenly so no one got too much work on their backs. Why someone that could get out of here, willingly came  back, I’d never know. 

Chores were our way of paying for our stay at the orphanage. They gave us clothes, a roof, proper education, and a weekly allowance of fifty pounds a weekend, in return we had to do the things I suppose kids do after they are grown enough to help their parents at home, such as washing the dishes, cleaning the floor, bathrooms, washing clothes. Every month, the chores rotated among the students. We were three hundred kids, so the work was easily done. Our rooms were to be impeccable all the time, as the nuns had daily checkups on our rooms to make sure everything was in order. There were about fifty or sixty nuns to manage our schedules and take care of everything, twenty teachers from all around the country, most of them lived in the city, our dear Lurch, Miss Gertie that was in charge of the cleaning, that was almost as old as the castle and smelled of mothballs, and the beast itself… Father Phillips. Sixty years old, wrinkled as fuck, and he has been in charge of this hellhole for twenty years, or something. He has never done anything to me, other than give me blank looks, as if I did not exist, but there is something about that asshole that never smelled good to me. 

St. Cadence was the best orphanage in England, but the information was basically unknown, as it was way up north and it was on an enormous old 500-year-old castle not even the Queen wanted to have, on a hill, by the sea. So, she turned into what it is today. And all the kids that are left here, seem to be forgotten by society. I have wondered for too many years why was I left here, my theories went from being some royal’s bastard child, to being someone from the village nearby who had no money to raise me. It became boring to think about it as years went by, because I was getting more and more pessimistic as I grew up.

There are way too many scary stories about this place. It has been an orphanage for the last 100 years, and before that it was an Asylum, and before that, some weird cousin of the monarchy lived here with his wife and two kids. We were told that they all killed themselves, on different occasions, in different ways, for different reasons, they just… went mad.

Architecture was beautiful, eight towers, lots of halls, a lot similar to the Neuschwanstein Castle. It was indeed a good place to be, if it weren’t for the pale gray walls and huge doors all around. We had comfort, since there were more than 200 rooms, we all shared a room with only one person, and the rooms were all suites, so we had our privacy. You’d easily get lost among the rooms, because they all looked the same, with two large wooden single beds on each side, wooden closets by the side of each bed and a big desk linking the wardrobes, with two chairs. They were quite big, almost 800 sqft. Gray bed linens, gray walls, gray life. Inside the rooms, the walls have been rebuilt and cement covered the old brick walls, but in the hallways, the original bricks were carefully maintained, so was the main hall, where the cafeteria stood with five long tables, with huge benches on each side of them. We had breakfast, lunch and dinner together, Father Philip’s orders to socialize. That prick.  

Standards were way too high and rules were strict. Father Phillips ran the Orphanage as someone would run a sweatshop, and I’m pretty sure he’d hit us whenever someone went out of the line, if it weren't for the government’s monthly checkups, so we just had detention, and his detention was something no one wanted to get. Think about The Breakfast Club. Got it? Now get that grumpy teacher and imagine him staying inside the classroom, screaming in the kids ears every two minutes for them to write 3000 words about the mistake they have made for being there faster and faster. Thaaaaaaaaat was Father Philips’ detention. Just lovely.

Uniforms sucked, but that was my last month wearing knee-long burgundy skirts, white shirt and the black blazer with burgundy details with the orphanage's crest on the left side of it. It was actually beautiful, except for the bloody girly burgundy tie, making me feel I was on a leash, but I knew once I got out of this place, I would burn every single thing that reminded me of this place. I’m going mad. Any day now. Thank god, I’m out of lockdown. I guess.

Clarissa and her hell spawns waited for me in front of the door where the exams were going to be handled. Grabbing my arm, aware no one was looking at us because there was an army of people walking around noticing nothing and anyone, preoccupied with their own final tests, she made me look at her eyes filled with hatred and whispered 'Enjoy being able to write this week. It will be the last time you will ever use your hands.' and dropped my arm, walking inside the room with a completely changed face, greeting the teacher and taking her seat.

I found it strange she did not do anything during the week. The final exams were over. I was done. But for the first time in my life I was afraid. I was afraid of her silence.

On Friday night, a week before Italy, as the students were making secret parties with their respective friends inside the rooms, to celebrate the end of senior year as they pleased, sneaking alcohol in, and all sorts of drugs, the misfits brought from the city on one of their runs to the city everybody knew they made, once or twice a week by using the secret corridors beneath the castle in the middle of the nights. I cleared out my book closet to take them to my room. I did not have many things, but they were enough weight to make my back hurt a little. I felt things the entire week. For the first time in my life I actually understood the meaning of 'migraine'. It really did suck as Theo complaint every week before her period came.

I was seventeen, almost eighteen and haven't had my period yet. It was not normal, nor impossible. They say it is something hormonal. I just don't care. I wouldn't mind not bleeding every month. I'd save a fortune on tampons. Theo frightens me every single time I go to the bathroom while she's on one of those days and I look at the toilet trash. It's so bloody it looks like a crime scene.

Walking to my bedroom, I realized Theo was at one of the secret parties that were happening on the other wing, as our wing was way too close to the nuns. And the whole staff was having a celebratory dinner at the main hall. I was going to be alone tonight. I’d die today.

Lost in my terrified thoughts, I ran towards my room, I opened the door and walked in. My stuff were ripped apart, my clothes and my books were torn, shredded to pieces. On top of the mess there was a note with only three words, beautifully written:

Any last words? 

As I was dropping the books on the desk to shut the door, my door was shut very loudly, startling me and making me take a small jump back, by someone who was behind it, and it was the last person I expected to be… Shawn.