Alienus

Chapter Fifty

I woke up to loneliness.

I felt no better than I had the previous night. Or was it early this morning? I couldn't even tell. I didn't even know. I looked up at the way and sighed. Today was our day off. We didn't need to work until late evening and I was assigned Kitchen duty today. Menial jobs would be required of me.

They would be my salvation. I wouldn't have to think. I could stop letting words flow into my head and let the work rule my muscles, the pain take over the agony. I almost, pitifully, looked forward to it.

I closed my eyes, letting out a breath and lifted myself off my bed and headed to the bathroom. I washed my hair in record time and was out before my supposed-to-be allotted time of ten minutes were up. I just couldn't do it. I couldn't take advantage of the fact that I had unlimited access to water. It felt like I would demean what I had with Rafe if I took up the chance to use it.

A slice of pain shot through me at the thought of his name. I rubbed my chest, absently and pulled on the first suit that my hand touched. My thoughts raced to everything that had happened last night, or was it this morning?

I walked out of the room, heading to the elevator and stepping aside to make room for a few other girls, who lived on the same floor as me, got in after me. I didn't know why they were laughing or what they were speaking under their voices about. I just watched as their bright eyes and wide smiles lit up their faces and made them truly beautiful. I looked away.

I had seen my own face this morning on the reflecting surface on the wall.

I looked nothing like these women before me. And I'm not talking about something as simple as looks. I'm not talking about their shining manes and perfect shapes and poised statures.

I'm talking about that very essential thing. Life. I looked pale, my eyes were dull and my hair looked darker than usual, almost everything that made up its character was lost in a matter of minutes. And to top it off, a headache was still pounding at my temples and while a part of me appreciated their laughter and happiness, another hurting part of me wished they wouldn't be so loud. Every whisper of theirs was causing a knife drive its way through my skull.

I exited the lift while massaging my temples and knocked right into someone. I snapped my eyes open, not realizing I'd closed them and muttered a small apology to the human guy standing before me with a curious expression on his face.

He shrugged and walked away.

Between the pounding in my head and the buzzing in my ear, an unfamiliar voice filtered through.

"...you think he's drinking her blood or something? She looks so-"

"Drained?" someone else finished and I heard snickers spread between the two people.

My eyes snapped open and I looked around wondering who I'd just overheard. But to my utter surprise, there wasn't anyone who was close enough to me that I could hear them talk. Much less whisper. Confused, I looked around some more, before warily stepping towards the large counter of food.

But when I took the food and walked to one of the couches, a funny buzzing in my ear started up. I stilled, placing my food aside and rubbing at my ears. When it grew louder, I started to panic.

And it only grew worse. And this time, I heard snippets of conversations in between the loud noise in my ears.

"..he didn't seem to be-"

"..with her?"

"Do you really think-?"

"..about that. The gu-"