Carla's childhood

Carla joined her hands and even though she was still reluctant to tell about her story, she forced herself to comply with Jamal's request.

Jamal had already a general idea about how was her childhood, that was why he was not surprised at all about the beginning of her story.

" I'm an orphan who was born inside a bus, that's what my grandma never stopped telling me, but reaching a certain age, everybody can figure out what really happened " she began her story with a melancholic voice, " I call her my grandma but you have to know that we're not related in anything, she was an old lady who just happened to find me, when I was infant, in a garbage can or in whatever dark corner I got dumped. She must have felt pity for me and she picked me up. She raised me until my 5 years old when she died from there, as I inherited all her wealth as well as her belongings, some false relatives started to appear from nowhere and battled with each other to decide who would have my guard and thus possess my grandma's properties. They were like a band of hungry hyenas, " as she was describing them her face changed to illustrate her loathing of them.

" At the end, it was her ungrateful son, whom I had never gotten a glance of him for the 5 years I was living with grandma, who won the battle to become my tutor. Along with his whole family, they moved to my grandma's house and we have been living there for two years before I decided... to run away ".

She wanted to skip that part of her history but she glanced at Jamal and he had a calm expression and even though he was silent, she felt like a reassuring aura coming from him, as if he was telling her to not mind it, that everything was alright and that he understood. Carla began to consider him like a trustworthy man with whom she could share her pain.

She sighed, " for the time I was living there, the entire family plotted to do whatever they could to push me to leave the house, on the first day we met they directly made clear that I was not one of them and that I didn't belong to the family. My grandma's son looked down at me and told me that I was just a toy his mother had picked up on the street to entertain her as she was bored. And since that day they did their best to turn my life into hell ".

" They firstly started by making me drop school, they said a toy doesn't need any education and instead I would have to do all the domestic tasks and take care of the house... as repayment to let me stay there. They had 3 children, one daughter, and two sons, their first son was 4 years older than I was, their daughter and I were at the same age and their last son was younger. And the three of them were more dreadful than their dad. The older, at that time, was on martial arts cartoons and he loved testing on me all the techniques he had learned from the TV, I recall that he broke my arm three times. The daughter used me as her doll and her slave, I had to always play with her, be her guinea-pig whenever she wanted to test her mother's clothes and makeup, she even forced me to treat her like a princess, and therefore I had to satisfy all her wishes. And finally, for the youngest one, I was the principal subject and the unique victim of all his awful jokes and pranks, one day I was sleeping he emptied a bucket of frogs over me, cut the light off, and held me in the cave which was playing the role of my room. I have spent the whole night there in the absolute darkness with those noisy and disgusting animals until the daughter came to release me because she wanted me to prepare snacks for her friends and her ".

When Carla paused, Jamal couldn't help but ask, " so what about the mother? "

" She didn't care much about me, in fact, it seemed like my presence in the house was making her life easier so I think she didn't see any reason to torture me again ". Seeing his confused expression, she got that he wanted more details, " thanks to my grandma's money they had stolen from me, she had enough money to offer herself all the luxurious stuff she wanted. She was not working and I was the one who was taking care of the house so when her husband was at work and her children at school, she could focus on cheating on him ".

" Wasn't she worried that you may catch her and go expose her to her husband? " Jamal asked.

" Not at all, we had made a deal that I would close my mouth about all the men who used to come by, as well as whatever happened when all her family were out, and in exchange, she promised that she wouldn't make my life worst. For me, it was enough. And she even menaced me by saying that if I decide to betray her it would be easy for her to kick me out and seduce her husband back ".

" So what caused you to run away? "

She startled a little bit, surprised by that sudden and straightforward question. She closed her hands to stop them shaking, " one day her husband figured out by pure coincidence that she was cheating on him. They had a violent altercation, for 3 hours we heard them arguing and shouting at each other, we even heard the mother screaming in pain and some other noises of furniture thrown on the ground. At a moment, the husband came out from their bedroom, walked quickly and furiously toward the door, and left the house, and a few minutes later the woman came out too, she was bleeding slightly and tears were mixing with the blood on her face which was deformed by ecchymosis. She first went to the kitchen and came out carrying a cooking knife in her hand, she walked toward me by taking very short steps while her eyes, fixed on me, were illustrating all her anger at that moment. She started to insult me and yelling that it was all my fault, that I was the one who snitched everything, that I broke our promise and I had to pay for that. She jumped on me, her knife ahead, and tried to stab me many times, hopefully, she was enough weakened for a 7 years old girl to push her away. I was so scared that I ran away from the house and I never came back ".

Carla paused and glanced at Jamal, she wanted to see his reaction to get an idea of what he was thinking about that, but on contrary to earlier his face, now, didn't reveal anything. He didn't put any kind of emotion in it, as if it was just a puzzle he wanted to resolve.

" After that? " he suddenly asked while gazing at her, " what happened to you after you ran away? "

" You're a kind too much tactless, don't you know that you must be more gentle with women? " she tried joking, something she never did before. She, anyway, managed to put a slight smile on his face for a short moment, " don't forget that it is a punishment, I'm not supposed to be kind, " Jamal responded firmly, even though he was less credible than before.

"After that I started living in the streets, spending each day looking for something to eat and each night looking for somewhere warm to sleep. I tried my best to survive as I could, there was a guy a few years older than me, another abandoned kid I guess, who had taught me how to steal and by myself, I found a place where I could resell the jewelry and all the other stuff I took from others. I did that for half a year before I got caught, I had stolen the handphone of a young white lady when an Algerian man saw me, I know he was Algerian because he told me later. He directly grabbed my arm took the phone in my hand and gave it back to the lady while telling her how much he was sorry, although we didn't even know each other. After the woman walked off, he pulled me toward a corner where there were lesser people and started scolding me ".

While remembering that moment Carla chuckled nostalgically, " he gave me a lesson of 15 minutes about how children like me should behave like normal children and emphasized very much in what we should, especially, not do. I tried many times to escape but he was holding me firmly, I thought about screaming that a weird guy wanted to rape me but I thought that he would just have to explain to the police that I was the one who tried to steal a handphone and caught me on the spot and I would have been the one to end up in jail, so I gave up ".

" He was saying stuff about how my parents failed in my education because they should have taught me to not steal in the streets and I remember that, at that exact moment, I couldn't contain myself anymore, I exploded with anger and started to tell him that I was a homeless girl of 7years old with no parents to care of her and I was so carried by the emotions that I even told him the hell I was living in my grandma's house and why I preferred stealing than returning back there. I told him everything and he calmly heard me out... just as you're doing now, and since I was crying a lot, he gave me a tissue to wipe my tears and held me in his arms to calm me ".

" Later, he noticed that I was actually starving so he told me to wait for him and he ran to go buy me something to eat, he came back with two bags full of oriental food, he told me that he disliked fastfood because it was unhealthy and I honestly agree with him, I don't like those kinds of places too. We sat on that corner and we ate without caring about the glances of the people around, and after we finished he stared at me and said that he couldn't just let me carry on my life like that, so he proposed me a deal. He said that he had a friend who was the director and the owner of a private school that was going from primary school to high school. He said that he would do his best to enroll me in this school and to repay all the money he would spend on my education I would have to work in his store ".

" I gazed at him a moment, trying to see a hint of lies in his eyes but there wasn't. I thought that he was sincerely trying to help me and to be honest, I was also tired of sleeping in carton boxes. So when I accepted his deal, he called his friend, explained to him the situation, and also told him about my past. The guy understood and accepted without hesitation and the next day I started to go to that school. I was sleeping there during the week and I came back for the weekend to help him with his store. Oh, by the way, his name was Amir and his friend I was talking about is Nelson. And I learned after, that he along with Amir went to the city hall and the prefecture to ask for my guard, they explained to them that the members of my previous family were monsters who were seeking the fortune I had inherited from grandma, they told them the torture I went through and after a short investigation they found out that I was telling the truth and a few times later Nelson finally became my new tutor ".

Jamal considered and analyzed those pieces of information calmly, he was relieved to see that all her life was finally not filled with pain and sadness as he had been thinking, and even though her childhood was very awful, in the end, she managed to find a place she was belonging.

" From there all things went well in my life until the great tragedy of 2 years ago, " Carla said with a gloomy face, " during that night I lost the one who saved my life, I don't even recall what happened as my souvenirs are befogged. At a moment I lost consciousness and when I woke up I knew that Amir was gone. You can figure out what happened next as it is the same for everyone, when the city started to become a mess Nelson, thanks to his natural charisma, quickly went up to take command of the city, he said that it was our duty to bet our lives to save the other people. He came out with the idea of forming an army to fight against the outlaws and that's how we ended here ".

" You didn't say anything about the most important thing, " Jamal recalled her, he paused and said, " what about your powers? how did you become what you are now? That's what I want to know the most ".

She sighed, and after a short moment of hesitation, she straightened her arm on the table with her sleeve already curled back, she tightened her fist, and the next instant something happened. Jamal could see it clearly, the hair of her arm became hard, he approached his finger to touch and as he thought they turned into thorns.

" I discovered that a few months ago, during a fight where I got almost killed. It really started 2 years ago when I felt that my body was somehow changing, even though I couldn't see any obvious changes, I felt different. I figured out much later that I became stronger and faster than any other normal people. I didn't tell that to anyone even to Nelson until now, I trained myself secretly to be able to control my new strength and did my best to help the army to survive as much as I could without being discovered, even though I couldn't save everyone ".

" And as I have told you, during a secret mission I was doing to prevent for the next battle, I got caught in an ambuscade. The information I got was false it was just a trap set to lure me, even though they didn't know about my special abilities they had somehow figured out that I was the principal threat that caused them so much trouble. It was in an abandoned building where I got caught after I entered an empty room. Someone held me from behind while someone else quickly injected me with a drug before I could fight back. I sensed my strength slowly leaving my body, they were six guys in total including the one who was restraining me. Before me, the five of them started to strip themselves thinking that they could use me as their sex toy for the night. I was scared, very scared, I wanted to react but I was too weak, my adrenaline went up and I felt something growing up in my body, my skin felt hard and before I realized the who was holding me collapsed and I regained all my strength. Without thinking I jumped on the five men and I killed them all with my bare hands ".

" After my adrenaline dropped to its normal and finally calmed myself, I gazed at my arms and saw these spines, " she said while showing her arm, " and that guy who had caught me had holes all over his body. That's it, I tried to practice how to control that but it's more difficult than when I practice for my super strength. I just managed to hold them anyway to not catch the attention but as you have noticed I tend to lose control when I get angry ".

" Yeah I saw it, " Jamal acknowledged with a nod.

After a short silence, where Jamal seemed to be deeply in his thoughts, Carla asked him a little shyly, " so now, what will do about me? "

Jamal slowly stood up and stretched out, " well I didn't decide yet as we have other priorities, we should finish first with this war before we start thinking about something else. For now, we will say that your punishment is over and I will also promise you to let you meet with that other person who, like you, has extraordinary abilities ".

She jumped from her chair and put her hands on the table pushing her face close to his, " really? You promise ? " she asked all excited.

" Yeah, why not " he replied, all relaxed " to say the truth, I just wanted to confirm if the way you get your powers were similar to that person, and most importantly, I wanted to be sure of your true intentions whether you were good or bad, whether you will be harmful or not but I already got all the answers and they are all positive so I don't know why I will you stop you two to meet ".

" Thank you, " she sighed, relieved. " By the way, you're making a huge mystery around this 'person', could this 'person' be your presumed girlfriend? "

Jamal turned toward her and grinned without replying, enlarging of mystery. He, then, turned around toward the exit of that secret garden and said " who knows? Well let's go, Nelson and his crew must be already back ".

The young woman shrugged and quietly followed him.