Krystal Chapter 02 – Revelations By Harrod200 Copyright © 2006 by Harrod200 of Orbital One. All rights reserved.				Email Codey’s World
Home	Up	Prev	Next	Email	Discuss

Glancing at my clock the next morning I saw that it was well into the day-11:35. At least the bathrooms should be free now, I should be able to get a show…no, I have no shampoo or shower gel. Actually, what do I have?

Taking a quick look around my bed I spotted a black holdall sitting at the base. The main section contained just a few clothes, couple of pairs of well worn and faded jeans and a few T-shirts. One of the side pockets had a small bottle of shampoo and another of shower gel, great I can take a shower, I don’t know how long it had been since I had one, my whole body felt like it’s been dragged through a field and caked it dirt. A quick search in the other side pocket revealed little else of use, just a pack of tissues and a half bottle of Cola.

After grabbing the towel from the end of my bed and a pair of boxers from my bag I slowly opened the door. In the daylight I could now see about four rooms on each wall, each with a plain wooden door, the only distinguishing features being a number and several names three and one plain. Old, dingy looking wallpaper covered the walls, the odd clean patch where a picture once hung. The home seemed quiet, just a couple of workers sitting talking in the reception/common area below. I slipped towards the bathroom without anyone noticing me. Locking the door behind me I dropped my boxers to the ground and took a look at myself. A scar I’d managed to miss last night ran from my crotch right up to my right nipple, and another across my left forearm. ‘Whatever had happened to me in the last few years it looks as if it wasn’t pretty’ I thought to myself as I looked at my back in the mirror, two more small inch-long scars revealing themselves. I stepped into the shower and cleaned myself off, enjoying the feeling of the warm water cascading over my body. After about ten minutes I stepped out of the shower onto the linoleum floor. While I dried myself of I desperately made a conscious effort to try to remember how I acquired the scars, to no avail. After slipping into the clean boxers I made my way back to the bedroom to get dressed, taking the first thing that came to hand-a plain white T-shirt and a pair of faded jeans I slipped on the pair of well worn grey trainers that were sat next to the holdall and stepped out of the door.

When I stepped out onto the landing one of the women below looked up at me, for a fleeting moment a look of what I’m sure was fear, quickly changing to apprehension crossed her face. When I looked at her, nervousness and fear betraying themselves in my face, hers melted into one of compassion and she walked up the stairs to me.

“I’m Maggie Kray, how are you feeling?” She gently asked as she knelt beside me.

“Mmmk” Is all I manage to push out.

“There’s someone downstairs who would like to see you, come one.” Gently but firmly she guided me down the stairs to the semi-circle of battered looking sofas along the wall opposite my new room and introduced me to the two people sitting there. “This is Adam Nicols, when I’m not working here then he will be,” she said pointing out the somewhat intimidating 6’ bald man sitting in an armchair with a slightly nervous smile, “And this is Cynthia Morris, she’s another of the workers here at the home.” She continued, pointing towards a middle-aged woman, with a matching expression. All these apprehensive, nervous looks were really getting to me by now.

“DAMMIT WHY DOES EVERYONE KEEP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT?” I shouted without realising it, their faces not quite as shocked as I suspected they should probably be. “Sorry…” I mumbled after I realised what I’d said. Guess I have a short temper, it’d certainly explain a lot of the scars.

“It’s ok Krystal, you’ve been through a lot recently.” Adam stated, in a voice much friendlier than his physique would suggest “The report from Dr. Sierra said that you don’t remember anything about yourself, if that right?” I nodded slightly, tears starting to form in my eyes again when I thought about how little I knew. “Ok then, you sit down and I’ll get you a sandwich, then I’ll fill you in a bit.”

As I sat down on an empty sofa the phone in the office started ringing. After a short exchange of grins and glances with Maggie the woman pointed out as Cynthia shook her head and slowly walked over to the door.

“After Adam’s finished with you, how would you like me to give you a tour of your new home?” Maggie asked ignoring my outburst. I didn’t reply to her, instead retreating into my sorrow as I tried desperately to remember anything about myself or my past.

Snapping out of my trance I looked up to see Adam walking out of the kitchen carrying two plates.

“You can have ham or peanut butter.” He said as he offered both plates to me. Have I ever had either before? Do I like them? I randomly took the plate in his left hand and took a bite. ‘Ok, ham is good’ I thought before looking up at the man now munching through the other sandwich.

“Can you tell me about…me?” I managed to squeeze out in a very quiet and nervous voice.

“Of course Krystal, Kris. I’ll start with the more important things first, ok?” Without waiting for a response he continued; “First you’re now in St. Michael’s House, in Stockport. Your social worker, Miss Winslow ordered you be transferred from another home across the city after your meeting with Dr. Sierra. I don’t know why exactly, she just walked into the office and started ordering the director to railroad it, it was quite funny actually watching her intimidate the poor guy until he had done it.” He chuckled, before his face turned serious, “You were sent to the doc because she is the leading authority on adolescent mental, uh problems. You asked earlier why everyone kept looking at you with apprehension? Well you’ll find out sooner or later, you were in court charged with GBH, ABH and assault with a deadly weapon. The doc’s report says that you seem to be suffering an odd form of multiple personalities, both personalities seem unaware of each other and are completely different; he is a very violent and short tempered person whereas you seem to be the Jekyll to his Hyde. It’s almost as if you are the boy he could have been under different circumstances.”

My head was spinning with everything he had told me, I felt that I needed to lie down and think about what he had told me while another part of me was yelling to ignore what he had said but the problem was the more I thought about it the more this multiple personalities thing made sense-I can’t remember most of my life because this other person was in control, which would definitely explain all the scars, and everyone was afraid when they looked at me because they couldn’t know who I was just by looking at me. I stood to go back to my room but as soon as I got up I felt myself falling to my knees before everything faded away

***

I awoke on my bed to a throbbing headache, opening my eyes took a lot of effort but after a moment I managed to focus and look around me. The room itself was pretty unremarkable-a rather worn but not yet threadbare green carpet, a lightly patterned sea green wallpaper hung on all the walls. The door in one corner with a desk next to it, and in each of the other corners sat a single bed with a small chest of draws. The only light right now was from two windows opposite the door.

As I sat up I felt a twinge and a dull ache in my back that hadn’t been there earlier. The clock by my bed read 14:57, I’d been out about two and a half hours. I stumbled over to the desk and sat down hard into the office chair, resting my head between my hands I thought about what I had been told by Adam. As thoughts ran through my mind about how much of my life I had missed a single memory leapt forward to me-when I was about 5 my parents began to occasionally take notice of me instead of just ignoring or not even noticing me like they had before, I never really left my room except to get food. Some day when I was in the kitchen making something my ‘mother’, drunk or coming down from another drug trip, or both and started venting anger at me. I’d had an imaginary friend for some time then who had comforted me when I needed it most and who stood up for me at times when I needed courage. On that day it was as if he took over, I was watching what was happening but couldn’t do anything about it, he stood up for me through me. It was a little after that when the blackouts started.

After a few minutes there was a light knock at the door and Adam appeared, now sporting a fresh looking black eye.

“I figured you would want this.” He said as he placed an aspirin and glass of water next to me and sat on the end of my bed. “How are you feeling?”

I sniffed and wiped away some of the tears that had gathered before I could reply, “Did I…?” is all I could manage, looking towards his eye.

He chuckled slightly before feeling his eye and replying “That’s one mean right hook you’ve got there kid. Look don’t worry, it’s not your fault what happens when he takes over. When he appears you are literally a different person, so forget it. Now, how are you?”

“Mmmk.”

“Kris, you’ve had a lot of information thrown at you today, I can’t begin to imagine how you feel. The other boys’ll be back soon,” he said glancing at the clock, “I’ll ask them to give you some space for now. You can stay in here if you’d like but you will have to come down for dinner later. Don’t worry Kris; we’ll get you through this. Dr. Sierra will be coming by tomorrow with some pills for you, they will make sure your alter ego can’t take hold as easily and she’ll have another talk with you. If you need anything I’ll be downstairs, ok?”

He watched me for a moment before getting up and walking out, closing the door behind him.

With the hammers in my head slowly subsiding I sat on the end of my bed and started looking through my bag, hoping to find something that could tell me more about who I am. My few clothes easily fitted in the drawers, but aside from an old comic there was nothing more.

The sound of laughter and shouting came from downstairs, soon followed by the thump of feet running around the landing outside the door. After a few moments the door burst open and two damn near identical boys walked in deep in conversation.

“…he just hates everyone, nobody ever passes in his...oh umm, hi.” One of them said as he noticed me, “Um, I’m Sam and this is Greg, hey you’re Krystal Longley, aren’t you? I’ve seen you on the news, is it really true that you…”

“Sam, Greg can you come with me please boys.” Adam commanded from the doorway where he had just appeared.

“Aw we didn’t do it, Mike made us, really Adam! It’s not our fault!” the one identified as Greg started to plead before catching Adam’s hard stare.

“You’re not in trouble boys, at least not yet anyway, just go wait for me by the office. I’ll be down in a moment.” Reluctantly, the two boys trudged out of the room and Adam turned to me. “Kris, a lot of the boys have seen you, well the other you on TV, I know you don’t remember any of it and I’ll have a word with them, but you will probably be asked a lot of questions you don’t know the answers to. Don’t worry about it, I’ll make sure all the boys know what’s going on and don’t hassle you over anything. If anyone does give you any trouble then come to me and I’ll deal with it. Now, let’s go see what these two haven’t done.” He finished with a little chuckle and walked back out, closing the door again.

After about five minutes the door opened again and the two boys stepped in with a shy expression.

“Um sorry about earlier, we didn’t know about your umm…” one of the mirror images started and trailed off to the end.

“Yeah sorry.” The other added in an identical voice, “I’m Sam Hartlett and this is my twin brother Greg.” Both were nearly identical, each around 4 feet nine, with spiked red hair. The only difference I could see was that Sam had icy blue eyes while Greg had grey. “You can tell us apart ‘cos of our eyes but even then you gotta look hard.” An evil smile crept onto his face before he continued “It’s really cool to screw with the minds of the staff and teachers.”

After a few moments of silence Greg spoke up; “We’re going out to the garden, we’ll seeya later uhh, Krystal?”

“Kris.”

“Ok seeya later Kris.” With that they both left me alone again.

With my mind tumbling with all the information I’d had unloaded on me, trying to get a grip on it all I walked over to the middle of the floor, sat cross legged and closed my eyes.