Ally

She had been here before in this dark miserable place.  Now she stood in the middle of Central Park staring at the naked trees almost as if she could make the blossoms bloom.  She knew that it wasn't just the park, that beyond the dead trees and overgrown grass the whole city would look just as void of life as these trees.  She had an unmistakable knowledge that it was all her doing.  That she was responsible for the death of millions of people.  There seemed to be nothing she could do about it; it was her destiny to destroy this place and its people.  After all they were only humans she should not pity them.  They had it coming.  They would have done it to themselves eventually.  Part of her felt amusement at the thought, while the other part of her...well the other part was not allowed to have an opinion.  The wind seemed to have stopped blowing completely and she felt as if she was not alone here and that was different.  She had always been alone here it seemed to be her own personal hell.  She turned following her instincts and a figure was making its way towards her out of the smoke like a phantom.  She was not afraid, though she felt she should be.  There was something different about the man walking towards her but she could not put her finger on it.  The silenced part of her screamed inside her head to run, but she stood there unable to move, like a rat in a glue trap.  She opened her mouth to speak at the same moment he had but they were interrupted by the sound of his wrist watch.  He glanced down and said smoothly, "It's time to wake up. Happy birthday Ally."

Alyssa Mount snapped open her eyes and fumbled with her wrist watch to silence the beeping.  The wind from her cracked window whisped her curtains open and let the morning light in across her tiny room.  She zoned into it swaying back and forth, who was that guy.  A tap at the door snapped her back to reality.  Amanda or Mandi as she so pushed everyone to call her peaked her head in the door.  "UGH. I'm not ready for this." Alyssa growned, rolling out of bed.

If Alyssa were the type to have friends Mandi might be one of them.  But, the truth was that she never really fit in or had interest in making friends.  She tried not to get too close to anyone at the orphanage which wasn’t much of a problem, she didn’t spend much time here.  All the kids here eventually got adopted.  Everyone but Alyssa always found a forever person to call family.  Miss Clarke had told her the story many times.  That it was an unusually cold night in June when the doorbell rang at The Precious Children Orphanage.  Miss Clarke had found her swaddled in nothing but a blanket and a note with her name and birthdate.  Since then, Alyssa had gone through many foster families, each of them bringing her back saying she wasn’t right for their family.  A specific family stuck out more than the others; a preacher and his wife, the wife unable to bear children had adopted her when she was just seven.  They could not bring her back fast enough.  She remembered over hearing the argument between the preacher and Miss Clarke.  The preacher had been shouting and called her an abomination and told Miss Clarke how all the crosses in the house being turned upside down.  Miss Clarke had come to her room clearly startled and had asked her why she had done it.  Alyssa simply explained she didn't remember doing the thing with the crosses.  Miss Clarke had replied, "Just what am I going to do with you child?"  Alyssa never had an answer to that question.  After that no more families came to foster her.  

"Hellooooooo...." Mandi waved her hand in front of Ally's far off stare.

Snapping back to the present, Alyssa saw the green eyes that belong to the tall, auburn hair, annoyingly happy orphan, that was looking at her with such concern.  

"Happy Birthday, Ally cat." Mandi smiled as she turned to rummage through Alyssa's dresser. 

"It's your eighteenth birthday how do you feel? Any different?"  She almost cooed.

Alyssa just shook her head no.  The truth was she still had that empty feeling from her dream and she did feel different, even more so than normal.  "Mandi, do you ever have a feeling like," she stumbled to explain it correctly.  "Like I don’t know, like something terrible is going to happen?"  Mandi stopped going through drawers and skipped over to the bed and sat down.  "What do you mean?  Like knowing the phone is going to ring and then it does?" she smiled.  Mandi was so bubbly for a teenager that was just dropped off by her parents just because they wanted to travel the world and have no actual responsibility, it must suck knowing that your parents were alive but you were just unwanted.  She was so bubbly Ally just wanted to stick a pin in her sometimes.  "No, I mean... like something really bad and it was going to be your fault."  Mandi was looking at her like she had completely lost her mind.  "You must have had that dream again."

"No, I mean yeah. But, it was different this time.  Mandi do you think there is something weird about me."  Allys stood and walked over to the mirror above her dresser and tried to look deeper than her skin. She leaned forward examining the image that had looked back at her for eighteen years.  "Do you think i'm strange?" 

"YES! For sure.  You are probably the strangest person I have ever met in my life." She reached around and pulled out a shirt from the dresser and held it up to herself.  "You have the worst taste in clothes, I mean seriously do you have anything that isn't dark or labeled with some kind of band?  This jacket is so old the leather is soft.  Your wardrobe screams freak!"  She leaned towards her examining her as she had just examined herself in the mirror.  "Sometimes, I don’t even think you're human." She whispered. Laughing at herself she tossed the band tee at Alyssa. "Better get dressed freak, Miss Clarke has been.." There was a knock at the door and Miss Clarke peeked her head in.  "Happy birthday, girl.  I have some waffles downstairs and they aren't the frozen kind."  She snorted.  "You comin?"  Mandi was down the stairs with a bound. That girl could eat. 

"Yeah. I wouldn’t miss a real waffle." She lifted some of her hair and took a sniff of it.  Ugh, is this what rats smell like? "Just let me jump in the shower real fast."  Alyssa grabbed her jacket and a pair of jeans off the ground then squeezed past Miss Clarke. 

"My god kid, how long has it been since you bathed?"

"Recently." Alyssa laughed and made her way down the hall to the bathroom.

Stepping out of the hot shower Alyssa felt better.  She was shaking the heaviness of her dream and coming to grips that it was just a dream.  Yet, it still made her feel uneasy.  It wouldn't have bothered her so much if it was the same old same.  She had been having the same dream for so long. But, the guy, the guy was different and he had spoken to her like he knew her.  She had never seen him before but, there was a familiarity to him.  She would have remembered meeting someone that looked like that.  To say he was good looking was an understatement.  

Anyways, she had bigger things to worry about now.  She was eight-teen an adult, she would no longer be able to stay here at the orphanage.  Where would she go, what would she do?  Alyssa only had a few days to figure it out.  Miss Clarke had told her that she would help but do to some kind of stupid law she was not able to stay any longer then a couple of days pass when she was a legal adult.  Good going Alyssa. Lets blow off school. That way you have no way of getting into a university with a scholarship, which would mean..Hellllooooo a dorm room.  Shaking her head at herself she wiped the fog from the mirror and startled at herself as she had done in her room.  What was she expecting to see?  She looked a little different.  The image in the mirror didn't seem like what she had looked at for seventeen years, something was buried within her.  She was never tall or stick thin like Mandi.  But, she was slender and didn't mind her body neither did most of the guys in her highschool.  She ran a brush through her long blonde hair and sighed.  Just as she went to walk away from the mirror her eyes started to burn. Fucking shampoo. She rinsed her eyes and blinked hard. It didn't help.  Looking at her reflection in the mirror she was met not with her brilliant blue eyes, they were gone.  Instead the eyes that stared back at her were as black as tar.  It startled her so much she slipped and pulled the shower curtain from the rod.  What the hell was that? Ally you are losing it. Get a grip! Standing to face her reflection again, only her blue eyes stared back judgingly.  "Yep, that's it. You have lost your damn mind."  Suddenly she felt sick and lurched for the toilet.

Walking downstairs she felt hungry like she hadn't eaten in days and was grateful for the smell of syrup, waffles and sniff, steak.  Miss Clarke was really outdoing it this year; she must really be trying to make Alyssa feel special.  The table was already filling up with some of the others.  There was Mandi, Jeremy (who had been here almost as long as her), a few other faces she never cared to learn the names of and a little boy named A.J.  She had no idea what it stood for but she thought he was a cute kid.  He was five and had a foster family coming in tomorrow to meet with him.  At least there was hope for him.  

"Ally!" A.J. shouted grasping a paper in his hand and rushing over to sit on her lap as she sat down.  "I made you this! I didn't have money for anything so I drew you a picture.  Thats me and you and my new foster family." He was so proud of his stick figures and oversized sun shining out of the corner.

"Thank you A.J. I love it. Besides you getting a foster family is a birthday gift for me in itself."  That made him smile ear from ear, which in turn made her smile.

"A.J. get your butt in your seat and eat your breakfast." Miss Clarke, scolded.

Some of the new kids tried to smile at her, the ones that knew better just kept eating.  She watched them all shove waffles in their mouths specially A.J. where did he put all that food?  Her stomach growled just as Miss Clarke put her plate down.  That was strange; she could have sworn that she smelt meat, she could still smell it.  She cleared her throat, " Miss Clarke? Were you making some steaks?" Everyone stared and there was a sound of a fork dropping to the floor.

"No Ally, but there might be some bacon in the fridge if you would like some." 

"Oh, that’s alright Miss C. this looks good thanks."  Where is that smell coming from?

She leaned slightly towards Jeremy smelling and her eyes fell on his arm.  It was bandaged but she could see the dried blood that had soaked through and her throat went dry.  This was impossible. She couldn’t have smelt that from upstairs and it definitely shouldn't smell good enough to eat, she swallowed hard. 

"Jeremy, what happend to your arm?" she asked.

"I got in a little accident in the shop yesterday almost all the way to the bone you should have seen it, it was....." he stopped short and pushed himself away from the table and let out a scream.  Alyssa looked at her reflection in the window and saw what had scared him.   It wasn’t in her head in the bathroom.  Her eyes were all black again, she rubbed them and they went back to blue.  Miss Clarke was already next to Jeremy on the floor, asking what was wrong and if he was ok while he was pointing at Alyssa. Everyone was looking from him to Ally and mummering. 

Jeremy was in a fit "Her eyes! Shes not human!" 

She stood to argue but turned towards the door and ran out of the house to the street, Mandi followed. "Okay, what was that about?" she asked.

"I don’t know Mandi, clearly the shop accident went to his head." Alyssa spit back. 

"Do you need a ride to school or are you not going again?" she said with her hand on her hip.

"Not going i'm self taught, one plus one equals two, A plus B equals C and all that stuff right?." She yelled over her shoulder as she walked away.  Obviously this girl could not get a hint.  Ally didn’t feel like dealing with Debra Do-Gooder.  She heard Mandi shout something about shopping for a better outfit for tonight.  Miss Clarke always threw a not so surprise, surprise party for the kids that were there for their birthdays. Alyssa had told her after her thirteenth birthday not to waste her time. But it never failed every year on the sixth of June, the happy birthday banner and streamers were put up.  What the hell was going on?  What was wrong with her?  She had so many questions if only she knew where she came from.  Miss Clarke would be no good there. Without knowing where she was going she walked faster.  Maybe her feet would lead her to where she needed to be.  A half hour later she was staring at the entrance to Central Park.