The Red Nights

Carla joined her hands and even though she was still reluctant to tell about her story, she forced herself and anyway started talking.

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 to but reaching a certain age, everybody is able to figure out what really happened " she said with a melancholic voice, " I call her my grandma but you have to know that we're not related in anything, she was a young lady who just happened to meet me when I was infant, in the garbage can I surely was she felt pity for me and picked me up. She raised me until my 5 years old when she died, from there as I heired all her belongings some false relatives started to appear from nowhere and battling each other to decide who would have my guard and my grandma's properties, like band of hungry hyenas. " As she was describing them her face changed to ill.u.s.trate her loathing of them. " At the end it was her ungrateful son, I had never glanced him for the 5 years I was living with grandma, who won and became my tutor and 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 gazed at Jamal and he had a calm expression and even though he was quiet in her mind it was as if he was reassuring her like " never mind, everything is alright, I understand ", she was clearly aware that he had never said those words but they sounded more sincere than from anyone else.

She sighed " in while I was living there the entire family plotted to do whatever they could to push to leave the house, on the first day I met they directly that I was not one of them that I didn't belong to the family, 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 a 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 queen and therefore I had to satisfy all her wishes. And finally for the younger 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 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. "

She paused and Jamal couldn't help but to 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 that he wanted more details she carried on " thanks to my grandma's money they had stolen to me she had enough money to offer herself all the luxurious stuff she wanted, she was 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. "

" She didn't worry that you may catch and go tell everything to her husband? " Jamal asked.

" Not all, we 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 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 and 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 some furniture thrown on the ground while making a broken noise. At a moment the husband came out from their bedroom, walked quickly and furiously toward the door and left the house, and 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 firstly went to the kitchen and came out carrying a cooking knife in her hand, she walked slowly toward me by making very short steps and her eyes were the ones who were ill.u.s.trating all her anger at that moment. She started to split 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 weak 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. "

She paused and glanced at Jamal, she wanted to see his reaction to get an idea of what he was thinking about that, but 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, he gazed at her " what happened to you after you ran away? "

" You're a kind too straightforward, don't you know that you must be more gentle with women? " she tried joking, something she never did before. However she 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 " he responded firmly, even though he was less credible than before.

"After that I started living in the streets, spending all the day looking for something to eat and all the night looking for somewhere warm to sleep. I tried my best to survive as I could, there was a guy who taught me how to steal and by myself I found a place where I could resell the jewelries, materials and stuffs I took from others. I did that for half a year before I got caught, I stole the hand phone from 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 went off he pulled me toward a corner where there was lesser people and started scolding me ", while remembering that moment she chuckled " he gave me a lesson of 15minutes about how children like me should behave 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 **** me but he would just have to explain to the police that I was just trying to steal a hand phone and caught me on the action and I would have been the one to end in jail, so I gave up this. He was saying stuff about my parents that they failed in my education because they should have taught me to not steal in the streets, I remember that at that precise moment I exploded of anger and started spitting at him that I was a homeless of 7years old with no parents to care of her, I was so angry that I even carried on by telling 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 as you're doing now, and when I was caught by the emotion and started crying, he gave me a tissue to wipe my tears and held me in his arms to calm myself. "

" He noticed that I was actually starving so he told me to wait for him and 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 agreed 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. After we finished he stared at me and told that he couldn't just let carry on my life of homelessness as well as my daily struggle to survive, so he proposed me a deal. He said that he had a friend who was the director and the owner of a private school which was going from primary school to high school. He said that he would do his best to add me to this school and to repay all the money he would spend in my education I would have to work in his store. "

" I gazed at him a moment, trying to localize a hint of lies in his eyes but there wasn't. He was sincerely wanting to help me. So I accepted the deal, he called his friend, explained to him the situation and also told him about my past. The guy understood and accepted without hesitation to let me join and the day after 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 my previous family were mere 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 few times later Nelson finally became my tutor. "

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

" All things went well until the great tragedy of 2 years ago " she said said with a gloomy face, " during that night I lost the one who saved my life, I don't even recall what really 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 figured out what happened next as it is the same for everyone, when the city started to become a mess Nelson, by his charisma, quickly went up to take the command of the city, he said that it was our duty to bet our lives in order to save the other people's, 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 power? how did you become what you are now? That's what I want to. "

She sighed, advanced her arm along the table until she straightened it, her sleeve was already curled back, she tied her fist and the instant after 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 few months ago, during a fight I got almost killed. In fact, it really started 2years 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 later that I became stronger and faster than I was than any normal people, I didn't tell that to anyone even to Nelson until, I trained myself secretly to be able to control my new strength and still secretly I helped the army and permitted them to stay alive until now, even though I couldn't save everyone. And as I have told, during a secret mission I was doing to prevent for the next battle, I got caught in an embuscade, the information I got were false it was just a trap set to lure me, even though they didn't know about my special abilities they had still figured out that I was the principal threat which caused that they couldn't win. I was in abandoned building, I entered in an empty room and got caught from behind, someone held me in his arms while someone else quickly injected a drug in me before I could fight back. I sensed my strength slowly leaving my body, they were six guys in total including the one who was still holding me, before me the five of them started to strip themselves thinking that they would serve as their s.e.x 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 on 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 b.a.r.e 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, " 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 " he acknowledged.

After a short silence Carla asked him, a little shyly " so then, what will do about me ? "

Jamal 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 the other one like you. "

She jumped from her chair and put her hands on the table " really? You promise ? " she asked all excited.

" Yeah, why not " he replied, all relaxed " in fact I just wanted to confirm if the way you get your powers was similar to this person's 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 to meet this person. "

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

Jamal threw toward her smile full of mystery, he 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.