Challenge #117/ #134
Option #4: "Lies!"
Note: Since I'm still fairly new, I went back through the prompts to find another one. I figured I should probably keep going since I put a little cliffhanger at the end of the last one.
Peeping Alice pt.4
He lies!
"The what?"
"Don't you remember that day, Alice?"
She stares at him, green eyes darkened by her trigged memory as she slouches into a seat across from him. My, parents...
"I came to your house that evening. It had been raining all day, your birthday, and you were there with them celebrating quietly in the living room." He speaks slowly and expectantly, waiting for her to remember.
"I don't..." She sighs, and folds her head in her hands. "I remember you; blonde hair, blue eyes, leather jacket. I thought you were the most facinating man I'd ever seen." An angel. Her voice is soft, and she speaks as if reliving the moment over inside her head.
"Your parents lived there for many years. You lived there with them, with your sister...Carolyn until that day. You were five, don't you remember?"
"...No." It can't be.
"I took you in that night, brought you here," he points to the door, gesturing to his own apartment across the hall, "kept you safe".
"Safe? My parents, my sister, they weren't safe?" Tears well in her eyes as she raises her head from her hands to glare at him, her coffee forgotten.
"They were safe. You were not. I explained this to them, they understood. There were things that they could not do for you."
"But you could?"
"Of course. I had been waiting for you. Waiting for the right moment."
"So, on my birthday..." Alice starts to remember. The day was dark, because of all the rain. How the party, her birthday party was cancelled due to the rain. She lets her words drift off into silence as she remembers her parents, her sister on that day that Vincent came to the house. The storm that battered around their house was so loud, they could barely hear one another talking. She and Carolyn playing quietly in the living room while her parents lit candles so they could see, and then sat watching them, whispering to each other. "...they knew."
He nods. "They had an idea of what might happen. Do you know why it stormed so harshly that day? Do you remember the people, the crowd that gathered?"
"I remember. My parents were frightened by so many people. They were everywhere. Our lawn was covered, and they looked in at us from every window. And they were so loud. They...were praying, I think." She wipes at her cheeks with her sleeve to dry the tears that have streaked her face. "They stood in the rain, and the dark, and they got soaked through and through. But they would not leave."
She composes herself, and lets her mind replay everything. She sits for a long time just remembering and Vincent sits in silence watching her. Waiting. In her head, she compares the two houses. The one from her memory of all eighteen years ago on her fifth birthday, and the one from earlier in the afternoon. He's right, of course.
"Is that why you came that day Vincent, because of the people?"
"No, Alice. I was there that day for you"