57th entry

Season: Autumn

Weather: Fine with scattered clouds. Warm breeze.

Day of the week: Sunday

Date: 21st April, 2024

I went for a walk in the dewy dark of the very early morning. The moon was three quarters full and made the grass and bushes all gleam with a soft silvery light. The breeze wasn't cold, but it wasn't exactly warm either. I hadn't thought to bring a jacket and so I shivered when the wind blew hard.

Nocturnal animals scurried across the footpath or on overhead walls, busy with their nightly schedules. Bats flew almost silently overhead. It was the first time I realised just how busy the night creatures were around here at this time of the night, and how many of them there were. Most of them cast a glance at me and then continued on their way.

As I walked, I felt increasingly alone. As if I had been encased in a bubble that separated me from the rest of the world.

I wondered about Bezel and the evil demon. Had that evil best friend of hers told her his secrets yet? Was Bezel alright? Was she warm? Was she safe? Was that guy taking care of her?

I had a flashback to how I had somehow lost consciousness after getting off the train. I had woken up to pain. The pain of being beaten and whipped while being tightly bound to a pole. The smell of dust and blood. Bezel had unleashed her emotions on me, using a heavy old knotted and frayed synthetic rope with which to beat me.

It hurt. Not only physically, but in my heart as well.

Exactly how much did she hate me and why? What had I ever done to her? Hadn't I only ever done my best to help her? Why could she not see that?

The evil demon had been nearby, building bombs while he had egged her on. The two had discussed what they would do with the money after they sold me.

He could build bombs now. That reminded me. I had to be more careful of that evil demon, because his target had gone from destroying the family to destroying me and anything around me. I still didn't get it. Unlike wordy villains on TV and in movies, the evil demon didn't like to speak when in person. He acted first and assumed that people would know what was going on. He had always been like that.

Did this foster brother of mine hate me just because of our birth parents' feud? Surely there was more to it than that. Had I accidentally killed his pet again or something? Because that was possible. He used to like to raise insects, but I would kill them when I found them, wondering how so many pests got into her house. I had used insect spray. I only found out much later when I heard him crying while burying them, whispering their names. Did he hate me from that time on? It had happened more than once. Bezel had even killed them a few times herself.

Why did he not hate her?

I had walked until I felt tired and fallen asleep on a park bench where I was poked awake by an irate policeman.

"No loitering. Get a move on," he had frowned.

"Oh. Sorry. I didn't realise I fell asleep," I had apologised, walking away only to hear the policeman scoff and mock me under his breath.

"Damn homeless bums. Can't get a job and just make a nuisance of themselves."

That wasn't very nice. Some homeless people wanted jobs but couldn't get it because they lacked a residential address or were limited by physical or mental disabilities. Most of the homeless people didn't want to be homeless, you know. Well. Most people. There are always a few exceptions.

On my way back to the apartment, there was a drunken party of drunkards blocking the lobby entrance. They caroused, threw up and refused to make way. They didn't seem to see or hear me, just shaking me off. When I attempted to squeeze past, one of them got annoyed and tossed me to the side where I fell and cracked my head on a tree trunk.

I sat there on the flowerbed dirt while the irate policeman stormed over and kicked me while I was getting up dizzily so that I fell down again. I tried to speak to him but he wasn't listening. He was more prepared to vent his anger on us.

The drunkards got into a fist fight with the irate policeman and then it all turned into a free for all brawl. I ended up squeezing myself into a ball in the bushes when I could no longer get out of the frontyard. It was as if the drunks had it in for me when I tried to get away. When the other policemen arrived to break things up, the fighting escalated. I wasn't able to escape being pulled into the fight, groped and then tossed back out.

I hid inside a bush where it would be hard for anyone to grab me again, ignoring the mosquito bites.

By the time it was all over and the policemen had hauled all the drunkards away, only one policeman asked where I, the only female who had been dragged in, had gone.

"She's probably long since run away," muttered the irate policeman. "She's just a homeless bum that I found sleeping in the park earlier. Once she saw she couldn't get anything from this lot, she should have left."

"All the more we should help her," scolded a more senior policeman. "We should at least bring her to the women's shelter to see if they can help her."

"People like that can't be helped. They don't want to be helped either. They just want to lie back and do nothing while getting the dole payouts."

"You can't stereotype. Not all of them are like that and that woman might not even be homeless."

"She was. Why else would she sleep on a park bench?"

"Tell me. What other reasons do you think could cause a woman leaving home on a cold night like this to hide outside? What is she's a victim of domestic violence? What if there are other circumstances we don't know? Don't make assumptions based on your own prejudices or you'll miss the chance to help a lot of people out there or be slapped in the face by your own biased one day."

The policemen took the violent drunkards away, while I lay shivering in the bush. I had drifted off to hear the voice of the kind, senior policeman talking with Deaglan's worried, high pitched one.

"Have you seen a woman?" asked Deaglan's voice. "About this high, with dark hair and big eyes. She's got bags under her eyes and walks with a slightly shuffled gait," Deaglan asked and described me and my clothes in detail.

"I'm sorry," the policeman said. "I haven't seen her. Why? Is something wrong?"

"She's not at home. She's not the type to go out on her own. She's too scared. Her foster siblings ran away and are trying to kill her, so she shouldn't be going out on her own anyway," Deaglan said, sounding so agitated he was barely comprehensible.

The policeman got him to slow down and repeat himself and then got the whole story out of Deaglan.

"Oh. She's that woman," the policeman said. "The chief has been talking about organising a security team for her but there's been a lot of opposition from his rivals. How high a chance do you think there is for her foster siblings to track her here and kidnap her again?"

"I don't know. Pretty high?" Deaglan said. "I mean, the last we saw them, they promised to come for her."

"I see. Then we'd better search the area. Do you think she might have come out for a walk while you weren't home? There was a woman caught up in a brawl of drankards here earlier. She was wearing similar coloured clothes to what you described. That might have been her. She might have been injured."

They found the signs of my body being tossed into the wall earlier and the blood I had left behind when I had crawled away from the fighting.

"Jane! Janey. Oh here you are," Deaglan cried out when he found me in the bush. He and the policeman helped me out and then sat me in a pool of light to check me over for injuries. "Janey, talk to me. Jane?"

"I think we'd better call the ambulance," the policeman sighed. "She doesn't look good."

And that's how I ended up in the hospital for most of the day, only returning home again when it was getting dark.