Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Whatever Happened to Deborah’s Face?
I t’s Calista’s sixth birthday and she’s dressed like a princess. Wearing a pink dress and a tiara. She even requested to be carried from the house to her party on the left shoulder of her father. To Nelle’s surprise, their father agreed to do so.
He carried Calista from the house, bellowing in a deep voice that the birthday princess was making her arrival. That everyone should be quiet and clap for their princess. The party consisted of Nelle and her two sisters as the only kids. The rest of the guests were what her father called ‘associates’ and they were all adults. Men and women, young and old. Everyone clapped and cheered for Calista.
Their father rented a huge bounce house for the party too. This thing was meant for fairs and carnivals. It held over twenty kids at a time but only had the three sisters in it! That meant so much more space for jumping and playing.
Then came the birthday cake. Nelle remembered it being a mile long! (Well, not exactly that long, but definitely big—the length of two tables.)
Six giant candles flickered with small flames as everyone sang to Calista. She beamed with pride and joy, her cheeks blushing. A handful of people took pictures. Whispers of how the pictures could easily be used in marketing campaigns.
Calista was such a natural beauty. Everyone indulged on the expensive cake. Somewhere between them and some woman named Deborah, who had a big smile with red lipstick on her teeth, a man nobody knew was coming showed up. Dressed in black, head to toe. Black sunglasses on his face.
Calista tore open the first present and saw a baby doll with a bottle of milk that disappeared when the doll drank from it… As she looked up to tell Deborah ‘thank you’ the left side of Deborah’s eye, face, and head exploded open. Calista screamed as Deborah fell toward her, already dead.
Nelle grabbed Calista, ripping her princess dress, and pulled her back. She knew by then to wisely flip a table up and use it as a shield. The ambush could have been five seconds or five minutes, Nelle wasn’t sure. Poor Calista could only think about her presents being ruined.
Thalia hid behind a tree and watched the giant bounce house slowly begin to deflate, riddled with bullets.
When silence fell, Nelle hoped it was over. She slowly started to stand up but then saw the man dressed in all black approaching. It was too late. The man ran and grabbed the table and pulled it out of the way, then looked down at Calista and then…
Nelle screamed in her sleep, ending the horrible dream before anything happened to Calista. She gasped for a breath and sat right up in bed. Her muscles felt tense, then weak. Her heart jumping all around her body.
She reached for her phone and saw that it was only eleven at night. Too early for such an intense dream. A memory… mostly.
Everything about the party had been true. Including the man with the gun. Except in reality the man with the gun only killed Deborah, then ran off. Nelle spent the rest of the day and night cleaning Calista up, then washing her princess dress and sewing up the ripped part. Nelle lied to Calista and said that Deborah was okay. She got some stitches and the police caught the bad man with the gun and he’s going to jail forever.
That was their life.
Nelle touched her chest. Such a vivid dream. Such an awful dream.
And now she feared Calista was dead.